Sermon Scraps: The Commitment (Part 2)

Here is more from the lost sermon on marriage, The Commitment.

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Some time ago we came across an argument between Jesus and the teachers of the law. I mentioned that the way theological arguments happened in those days was through a successive appeal to authority. The ultimate authority, for those first-century Jewish teachers of the law, was Moses, the man who wrote the first five books of the Old Testament.

So in the course of your argument, if you’re able to prove that your position can be traced back to Moses’ words, then you win. Jesus knew that the Pharisees held Moses in the highest regard, and he probably didn’t feel like arguing that day, so he just conceded the point: What did Moses command you? Jesus is like, “Okay, I’m more interested in teaching than arguing, so just give me your best argument right off the bat.” Let’s just cut to the chase.

And the Pharisees presented Moses’ position: “Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and send her away.” Before we move on, we should probably ask the question: Where did Moses say that? Great question! It’s actually in Deuteronomy 24. I bet you didn’t even know there was a Deuteronomy 24! Let me read it to you.

¹ If a man marries a woman who becomes displeasing to him because he finds something indecent about her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce, gives it to her and sends her from his house, ² and if after she leaves his house she becomes the wife of another man, ³ and her second husband dislikes her and writes her a certificate of divorce, gives it to her and sends her from his house, or if he dies, ⁴ then her first husband, who divorced her, is not allowed to marry her again after she has been defiled. That would be detestable in the eyes of the LORD. Do not bring sin upon the land the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance.

Interesting. Did Moses ever say a man can divorce his wife? He didn’t, did he? The law here is not, “Here are acceptable grounds for divorce”; instead, the law is, “When one of you gives your wife a certificate of divorce…”. Moses never permitted divorce; he just conceded that divorce was a reality when human beings marry one another.

But Jesus isn’t ready to concede that point. Look at how he interprets this passage in Deuteronomy 24.

⁵ “It was because your hearts were hard that Moses wrote you this law,” Jesus replied. ⁶ “But at the beginning of creation God ‘made them male and female.’ ⁷ ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, ⁸ and the two will become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. ⁹ Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

The fact that laws like this exist, Jesus says, points to the reality that you’re all a bunch of hard-hearted sinners who are too stubborn to humble yourselves, work through your issues together, and persevere through trials in order to keep your commitments. No, Moses wrote you this law because you’re only willing to fight for what you want, you’re too proud to admit it when you’re wrong, and you’re ready to drop your commitment the moment others start impeding upon the realization of your selfish desires. That’s why Moses just conceded the reality of divorce—because he knew people too well.

Jesus knew people really well, too, but he’s not willing to concede the reality of divorce. Jesus has far too divine an imagination to settle for a world in which divorce happens.

The Pharisees have made their appeal to Moses. Now Jesus is going to make his appeal—to creation. And remember, he was there. The New Testament declares that Jesus was present at creation. He remembers how things were originally designed. He knows, firsthand, what God’s intention had always been for marriage.

God did not build divorce into his creation because he did not build sin into his creation. He did, however, build marriage into his creation because he also built self-sacrificing love into his creation by creating human beings as free, moral agents. But God has never been willing to concede the reality of divorce. He says through his prophet Malachi, “I hate divorce.”

So Jesus quotes from Genesis 1 and 2, the only passages in the Bible, until Revelation 21 and 22, that are unstained by the presence of sin. “But at the beginning of creation God ‘made them male and female.’ ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.’” God had a plan, and that plan did not include divorce.

You see, we were not originally created as hard-hearted sinners who are too stubborn to humble ourselves, too proud to admit that we’re wrong, or all too ready to drop our commitments the moment others start impeding upon the realization of our selfish desires. That is not how God made us. That is not found in Genesis 1 and 2.

But we were made as ‘male and female’, the perfect complements to one another. Perfect partners. By design. According to plan.

Moses looked at the world and conceded the reality of human sin. Jesus stepped into our world and refused to accept our reality, then he went about changing it. Here’s the most important thing I or anyone else will ever say about marriage: We’re supposed to be looking at Genesis 1 and 2, not Leviticus 24. Our model is the beginning of creation because Jesus came to make all things new, to restore creation to the way God originally intended it, to undo all the evil that has been wrought upon God’s good creation by sin and death. When it comes to marriage, we claim Jesus as King must look to Genesis 1 and 2. Male and female. For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. And we must conclude what Jesus concludes: "So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate."

Christian marriage is not based on romantic love or sentimental feelings; it is based on the beginning of creation being re-created in our hearts and in our most important relationship. Marriage predates Moses. Marriage predates sin. Marriage was built into creation by the Creator himself.

Sermon Scraps: The Commitment

Last weekend I was scheduled to preach a sermon on marriage from Mark 10. I was really looking forward to it, but God had other plans for the message that night, so the marriage sermon had to be scrapped. I promised to post some of the excerpts here on the blog.

My blog has taken a back seat lately. Working a fulltime job in the marketplace has limited the amount of things I can do, and, unfortunately, I've had to all but eliminate two things that have been very profitable for me in the past: reading and blogging. (And don't even get me started on blogging about reading!) I'm hoping that this will be a temporary adjustment period, and that I'll find the time to read and blog again soon.

I suppose that's enough of a pity party. Here is some of what I was going to say about marriage last week at Ember.

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Marriage is a difficult subject for many. Divorce is even harder. Many of you may be children of divorce. You’ve watched your parents turn on each other. It’s often been said that what kids need most is not to know that their parents love them, but that their parents love each other. Divorce destroys that love foundation. So, before we look into our passage for tonight, I want to briefly lay a theological foundation of a love that never gives up, burns out, or fades away.

Because of what we see in Jesus, we can know these things: God always keeps his promises; God always follows through on his commitments; There is perfect, eternal, infinite love between the three members of the Trinity; We are invited to fully participate in the divine love of the Trinity. The Trinity will never get divorced. The love of God that exists within God is infinitely strong. It can never be broken because God is perfectly selfless, humble, and unstained by any sin.

In a world of dissipating love, it's a comfort to know that there is a love that is stronger than life, that sustains creation, and that resides within the heart of the One that made all that exists. Our new family--the family of God--is built on a foundation of self-giving love that does not change over time.

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I'll share more on this tomorrow. There's a much longer section that I hope will be worth reading, but I wanted to put this theological foundation up today. I hope this provides some perspective on what love is and where we can find the love that never lets us down.

Limiting the Gospel

This past week at church I talked about one of the ways that we tend to change the Gospel: We limit the Gospel by thinking it applies to everyone but us. "Sure," we think, "Jesus died for everybody's sins. Everybody but me. I still have to work my way back to God. God will only accept me today if I manage to commit little to no sin."

Do you do this? I do it. Many of the great saints of the past did this. It's easier to believe in God's love and grace for others than for yourself. Maybe we think that's humble, or noble. It's not. It's stupid.

You cannot earn the Gospel. The Gospel is a record of historical facts:

• Christ Jesus died for our sins, according to the Scriptures.
• He was buried.
• He rose again on the third day, according to the Scriptures.
• He appeared to many.

You can no more earn the Gospel than you can earn the American Revolution. It already happened! All that you can do with the Gospel is receive it or reject it. You either receive it as it is or you reject it. Any twisting, limiting, changing, or adding to the Gospel is a rejection of the Gospel. It is disbelief.

The facts of what God has done in the past (the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus) indicate, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that God loves you right now. (Unless you go to Mark Driscoll's church, in which case God hates you...at least according to Mark Driscoll.) So quit trying to be noble and self-sufficient, and quit feeling sorry for yourself. The Gospel has happened! Receive it, and let it be the defining story of your life.

Sermon Recap: Scarecrow

Last Sunday was the fifth sermon in our series on Jeremiah called Run with Horses. The sermon was called Scarecrow, and the text was Jeremiah 10:1-16. In this passage, God compares the nature of idols to the nature of himself as Creator. He gives us a look behind the curtain of idolatry, showing the process of the creation of an idol, then comparing that to his act as Creator of the world.

The main point of the sermon was this: Idols are made; YHWH makes. Idols are fakes. They are things we create, and then treat as though they were creators. We make an idol out of money because we think it can create security. We idolize power because we think it can create success. We make a god out of sex because we think it can create happiness. But there is only one true creator: YHWH God.

IDOLS ARE MADE; YHWH MAKES

But the reality is that the only thing our idols can create for us are problems. I quoted The Notorious B.I.G. on this point (which people seemed to find endlessly amusing): "I don't know what they want from me. Seems like the more money we come across, the more problems we see." Sure it's funny to hear a 32-year-old white preacher quote Biggy, but he's right. The only thing our idols create for us is problems.

YHWH is the only real Creator, and the only one who can create solutions to the problems caused by our idolatry. He is the only one who can create good out of evil and turn darkness into light. That's exactly what we see in the cross, where the height of human evil was turned into the greatest good for mankind. That's the power of God.

The sermon audio is available in the sermon player in the right column on the blog.

Sermon Recap: Shiloh

Our series through Jeremiah, called Run with Horses, continued this past Sunday night with a sermon called Shiloh. The text for the passage was Jeremiah 7:1-15. In this passage, God threatens to destroy the temple in Jerusalem just like he had destroyed the tabernacle in Shiloh over 400 years earlier.

The point of the sermon was that, sometimes, exile is rescue. The lesson of Shiloh is that God will destroy what we consider sacred in order to save what he considers sacred--us. You've heard it said, "Whenever God closes a door, he opens a window." Not always. Sometimes God closes the door, boards up the windows, and then sets fire to the house with you inside. Sometimes, Jerusalem has to become Shiloh in order for us to learn to abandon our idols.

EXILE IS RESCUE

We become what we worship, and God so passionately loves us that he will do whatever he needs to do to save us from our idols. When we worship the true God, we become more and more like his son Jesus. But when we worship false gods, we are transformed into false images, into a nothingness and a broken cistern. God wants to rescue you from your worship of empty, false, and lifeless gods.

Because we become what we worship, being rescued from our idols is painful. Idolatry puts us in the position of pain, either at the hands of the false gods, who only seek to destroy us, or at the hands of the one true God, who only seeks to save and restore us. Exile will always feel like exile, but in the hands of God, exile is rescue.

Jesus quoted this passage when he judged the temple by driving out the moneychangers. He went so far as to say, "Destroy this temple and I will rebuild it in three days." Essentially, he was saying, "I am the temple of God. You can kill me, but I will rise again three days later." Jesus became Shiloh for us. Jesus, the new and living temple, became Shiloh when he was crucified, not for his sin or idolatry, but for ours. His exile is our rescue.

Sermon Recap: Return! Return! Return!

This past Sunday night at Ember I preached a sermon called Return! Return! Return! It was the third message in our series on Jeremiah, called Run with Horses. The text was Jeremiah 3:6-4:4. I originally preached the sermon in three parts, broken up by a song of reflection and communion, but you can listen to it all the way through in the sermon player on this blog.

The point of the message was that God is calling us to return to him, but we can't come back to him on our own terms. We must come back his way, and his way involves three commands to return.

RETURN IN REPENTANCE

First of all, we must return in repentance. We can't pretend like nothing has happened. We don't get to ignore the fact that our sin and idolatry has severed our relationship with God. We have to admit that we are wrong, that we have sinned, and we must be truly sorry for it. We can't get back to God unless we first repent of our sin.

RETURN THROUGH GRACE

Secondly, we must return through grace. We come back to God by walking through his grace. We don't make it back to God by our own moral goodness. We can't restore our relationship with him through our own guilt, promises to reform our ways, or our good deeds. A restored relationship with God only happens because of God's grace, manifested by faith in his Son Jesus Christ.

RETURN TO GOD

Finally, we must return to God. The goal of our return is God himself, and a renewed and restored relationship with him. He's not taking us back to some over-idealized version of the past. It's not that we're going back to a time before we had all the baggage we do now, it's that we're finally moving forward with all of our baggage in tow, but now God himself is with us to carry it, redeem it, and use it for good.

This is how we return to God. And he is always ready and excited for us to return. As he says at the end of this passage, "If you will return, then return to me."

Sermon Recap: Broken Cisterns

This past Sunday at Ember we continued our sermon series through Jeremiah with a sermon called Broken Cisterns. The text we looked at was Jeremiah 2:1-3:5. The sermon audio has been posted to the sermon player on this blog, which is where you'll be able to find all of our sermons until we get our podcast up and running.

The point of the message was this: Where you go when you're in trouble (or distress, or depressed, etc.) is the clearest indication of who you're trusting for salvation. The god of your heart is to whom you cry out in distress, "Save me!" The trials of our lives reveal the idols of our hearts.

TROUBLE REVEALS TRUST

Our idols are the things that we cherish and desire more than God. Tim Keller absolutely nailed it when he said:

[An idol] is anything more important to you than God, anything that absorbs your heart and imagination more than God, anything you seek to give you what only God can give.…An idol is whatever you look at and say, in your heart of hearts, ‘If I have that, then I’ll feel my life has meaning, then I’ll know I have value, then I’ll feel significant and secure.’…If anything becomes more fundamental than God to your happiness, meaning in life, and identity, then it is an idol.

When trouble comes, we react to our circumstances based on what is in our hearts. If our hearts love money, sex, power, or any other false god, more than God himself, then that's where we'll look for rescue when we are in distress. Trouble reveals trust.

The only hope we have is that Jesus Christ would transform the desires of our hearts through the power of the gospel. All of our idols are broken cisterns--there is no life in them. But we have access to God, the spring of living water, through faith in his son Jesus Christ. And it is through faith in Jesus that we learn to desire the ever-present spring more than the empty and broken cisterns.

Sermon Recap: The Divine Interruption

So maybe you've heard that we had our first Ember Church service this past Sunday. The sermon was on Jeremiah 1, which is the calling of Jeremiah to be a "prophet to the nations". (You can listen to the sermon in the Ember Church Sermon Player, located conveniently to the right of this post.) Jeremiah was terrified of being a prophet because of the horrible fate that most prophets suffered at the hands of the rulers and the people. But God reassured him: "Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you and I will rescue you."

The point of the message was to say simply this: God is with those he calls. Whatever task to which God has called you, he will be with you through it. I find this reality playing out in several ways in my life right now.

GOD IS WITH THOSE HE CALLS

First of all, I'm a husband and a father. This is the primary task to which God has called me. Breena's husband. Father of Cyrus, Eisley, Ezekiel, and Bexley (coming soon). As any husband and father can attest, this isn't always easy. Communication breaks down between Breena and me. The kids hurt each other or disobey us, or refuse to eat their dinner, or constantly ask "why? why? why?", or...this list goes on forever. All that to say, in order to be a godly husband and father (what God has called me to be), I desperately need God's presence and strength to be with me and to rescue me in difficult times. And he is there, living within me in the person of the Holy Spirit, waiting to fill me with the patience, courage, and wisdom I need.

Secondly, I'm the pastor of a new church, called by God to lead a congregation of people in following Jesus. I'm new to this calling, so I don't know exactly what I'm doing yet. But I can already see how much I'm going to need God's presence and strength to lead well, to preach well, and to pastor well.

If God isn't with me, I'm sunk. This life I'm trying to live, the person I'm trying to be and become, all falls apart without God's presence and strength. Like I said in the sermon, if you're succeeding in life based on your own skills and abilities, then you're not living God's life for you, you're not dreaming his dream for you, and you're not answering his call. To live the life God has called you to, you need him to be with you. And he is. God is with those he calls.

New Sermon

I preached a sermon at dia•spora last Sunday night. It's a reflection of a lot of what I've been thinking about church leadership and Ephesians 4:11-16. You can find it at the top of the sermon player on the right side.

Good Friday: The Confessing Thief

This darkness is, indeed, strong, for it has sucked into its vortex of betrayal and violence this innocent man lifted up on the cross between these two thieves. They were spreaders of the darkness. They were willing participants with the darkness. But Jesus? No. He was pure light.

What is he doing on a cross? Crosses are for those who create and spread darkness. How can he be here, nailed between two thieves, two criminals? How can the darkness snuff out the light? Isn’t it supposed to work the other way around?

Maybe that’s why the mocking criminal was so cynical. If you are the King of the Jews, if you are God’s Messiah, then prove it by saving yourself. Pull the nails out of your hands and feet. Get down from that cross. Call on the angels of God to rescue you. And oh by the way, save me too. It’s all too easy to become cynical in the midst of such overwhelming darkness.

What do you expect, says the thief who makes the good confession. What do you expect when you choose to spread the darkness by breaking God’s commands? Did you think there would be no consequences? Did you think that his light would shine unhindered by all that darkness you’re throwing around? What did you think would happen when you sinned? How can you blame God for this darkness? He has not forgotten us. We have forgotten him.

Don’t you fear God? This man Jesus has done nothing wrong, and yet he’s in the same position as you and I. We deserve this cross because we have thrown darkness over the light. But he is the light! What’s happening to us is the work of justice. What’s happening to him is either a tremendous mistake or the most horrible evil that has ever been committed on the face of the earth.

We complain about the darkness that overwhelms us, but, even if in some small way, we all contribute to that darkness. We all sin. We all do wrong to each other. But Jesus? He never sinned. He never did any one any wrong. And yet the darkness consumed him. He was pure light, but still the darkness covered him as he died there, suffocating on a roman cross.

We push all of the blame onto God, as though he were some cosmic, supernatural janitor we hired to clean up all of our metaphysical messes. We complain that he has forgotten his duty of wiping our noses and cleaning up all the filth we have spread throughout the house. This darkness is his fault, we say bitterly, and what has he done about it? What, indeed?

Has God forgotten? Has he turned his back? Has he abandoned us? Does he not remember? Where have you gone, God? Where are you, God, when even your most innocent of servants succumbs to the power of the darkness and is tortured to death on a cross? Could you not even save your Chosen One? Where have you gone, O God?

I am here. Next to you, on this cross, this ancient gallows. Do you think that I have forgotten you? How can I forget you when I am being crucified right next to you? I suffer with you. I suffer for you. You bear the burden placed upon you by justice. I bear the burden placed upon me by mercy.

I have come, not to succumb to the darkness, but to subdue it, and break it, once and for all. Oh you may not understand now, but it’s only Friday. It’s only Friday, and Sunday is just a day away.

So we say, yes, be angry, but know that there is a place for your anger, and that place is here, at the cross. If you want to shout at God because of all this darkness, go ahead. But know that the one to whom you raise your voice is the one who is raised up on the cross and killed. You are not shouting into the air. You are shouting at a man, bloodied and beaten, mocked and betrayed, pierced and tortured, nailed to the Roman instrument of capital punishment. Know that your God knows, intimately, this darkness that plagues us all.

No, God has not forgotten. We commemorate tonight his very act of remembering the messes of darkness we have got ourselves into. He has remembered us.

And so the confessing thief turns to Jesus and says, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” Remember me. Remember me, Jesus. When you finally become king, Jesus, remember me. What an interesting thing to say to a man on a cross.

Our cry is the same as that of the poor, dying criminal. Remember me, Jesus! When darkness has surrounded me, O Jesus, remember me! Don’t forget about me. Don’t look past me. I’m still here. I’m still hanging on. When you come into your kingdom, remember me.

God has not forgotten you. We remember the cross tonight, that horrible place of death where God remembered you. He has not forgotten. He has not turned away. Jesus remembers you.

dia•spora Sermon: Humility

Take a listen to my sermon on humility. I preached this at our young adult service this past Sunday. You may have also noticed in the right hand column at the top is a new Sermon Player. I intend to upload as many sermons and classes of mine that I can. Check back for future updates.

The Riverbed

Last night I preached a sermon on humility at dia•spora, our service of mostly young adults and young families. Humility is one of those topics that doesn't get covered a lot, probably because most preachers and teachers deem themselves unqualified to speak authoritatively on the subject. (I mean, can you really be an expert on humility? A bit of an oxymoron, isn't it?) But I happen to believe that humility is the most important thing in the world. So, despite my shortcomings, I wanted to address it.

The Bible tells us, on several occasions, that God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. (Proverbs 3:34, 1 Peter 5:5) In other words, humility is the channel through which God's grace flows to us. It's the riverbed of the River of Life. The deeper the riverbed of humility the greater volume of God's grace flows into your heart.

Of course God's heart is to give us as much grace as we can bear. That's why, I believe, everything that happens to you is an opportunity to humble yourself. God has so ordered creation that it might humble the greatest of creatures--men and women. Life is humbling, and every experience is an opportunity to grow. Every difficult time is an opportunity to learn. We dig the riverbed deeper when we humble ourselves and learn the lessons that God is trying to teach us.

Whatever God is doing in your life, I assure you that part of it is trying to build humility into your soul. God wants that riverbed to be as deep as it can because his reservoir of grace is infinite. Think about the circumstances of your life--the good, the bad and the ugly. Ask God what he's trying to teach you, and specifically how he's trying to teach you humility. Dig the riverbed deeper by humbly obeying him, and enjoy the rush of grace that flows into your heart.

Ash Wednesday Sermon

This is the sermon I preached at our Ash Wednesday service this year. Actually, I think it's pretty much the whole service.

They Like Jesus...

This is the sermon I preached the weekend Ezekiel was born. It's called "They Like Jesus but not the Church". With apologies to Dan Kimball...

Sermon Manuscript: Jesus Rules

Jesus Rules

If you could believe any religion, which one would you choose? That’s kind of a stupid question, isn’t it? I mean, we’re all here at Heritage CHRISTIAN Church. Most, if not all of you, have already made your decision. You are a Christian.

But why? Why do you choose to be a Christian? It’s not exactly the most popular religion available to you. It doesn’t get good press, particularly the evangelical brand of Christianity.

If religions were nightclubs, Christianity would be where all the awkward people who can’t dance go. The cool people tend to stay away. So if you’re trying to get ahead in this world, if you’re trying to make a name for yourself, you may want to find a new place to dance.

But you know, deep inside, that there’s something different here. It may be awkward and weird at times, filled with people you wouldn’t want to be seen with, but it’s got something that no place else has, something that you would hate to leave behind.

Sometimes this thing that makes Christianity so different gets lost in the noise and clang of politics. Sometimes it’s discarded altogether and replaced with something inferior. Sometimes the very core of our belief gets trampled or trivialized. It gets glossed over. It gets forgotten. We close our eyes to it, or we roll our eyes at the sound of it. We cling to something more popular. We champion something that makes us look better. We raise the banners that play to the cameras and we turn our backs on that which makes us truly Christian.

But it’s the gospel that tells us who we are. It’s the gospel that makes us Christian. No one else has this. No one else believes it. You can’t find it anywhere else on earth but in this funny little dance hall with the awkward people that you’re embarrassed to introduce to your cool friends.

And it’s this funny little message that doesn’t make any sense on earth, but you’ve bought into it along with all the weirdos and crazies and human embarrassments. And you come to this funny little dance hall with all these people you’d never call friend but you call them brother and sister, and you dance and you sing because it’s the gospel that ties you together. It’s this funny little message that changed your big important life and now you see that it was never you who was big and important, but it was Jesus who was big and important all along. And it’s his gospel, and it’s his funny little dance hall, and it’s his people that come here to sing and to dance for his glory instead of for the cameras, and the pub, and the status, and the hollow hand-clapping of human admirers.

The gospel itself is easily mistaken for an imposter. After all, there are lots of “good newses” in the world. You’ve just won the lottery! Hey, that’s good news. I’m pregnant! That’s good news, most of the time. The Buckeyes are going back to the National Championship game! Well, I don’t know if I can handle that again.

The true gospel, the truly good news that defines Christianity, hasn’t changed since it was first preached. It’s a message that’s even older than the writing of the New Testament. It has stood the test of time. It has withstood countless attempts to change it, twist it, reshape it, repackage it, and outright deny it. It is the rock upon which men and women have broken for twenty centuries. It has offended and comforted, angered and pacified. It has been laughed at, made mockery of, and derided by kings and critics. And millions who believe it have willingly given their lives for it, refusing to deny it despite the fire, the blade, or the beasts. It is the gospel of God, and on it I take my stand, in it I find refuge, and through it I find salvation.

Listen to what Paul writes in I Corinthians 15.

1Now, brothers, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. 2By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain.

3For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.

This is the message that makes Christianity unique among all the religions of the world. Jesus died for our sins. He was buried. And he was raised again on the third day. That’s something that you don’t find anywhere else. Nobody else died as an atoning sacrifice for your sins. Nobody else was raised from the dead. The gospel is our message. If you believe it, you’re a Christian, no matter your background. If you don’t, you’re not, regardless of how often you go to church.

The formula that I had always heard for the gospel, and the one that is probably the most popular among evangelicals, goes something like this: Jesus died for your sins so that you can go to Heaven when you die. Or, Jesus died for your sins so that you can have a relationship with God.

Now, that’s good news, right? But is it the good news? Is that the gospel as it came to Paul? It’s not, is it? Going to Heaven and having a personal relationship with God are true and good, but they are theological addendums to the gospel. They are the result of the gospel. Those things are possible because the gospel is true.

The gospel itself is news. In other words, it’s a report of the facts of what happened to Jesus of Nazareth on the days we now call Good Friday and Easter Sunday. And it is verified by the prophecies of the Old Testament, as well as by the eyewitness accounts of more than 500 people.

Jesus died. “Oh, that’s too bad.” He was buried. “I heard that.” He rose from the dead. “Wha?!?!” Let’s look at this a little more closely, and then I want to talk about what it means. Let’s look at the scripture again.

3For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.

First, Jesus died for our sins. I’m not sure if you’re aware of this or not, but there is a lot of evil in the world. To put it simply, evil is what God calls sin. Most of us agree that there is a lot of sin out there somewhere, but not necessarily in our own lives. But, the Bible tells us that we’re all born into sin, and we’re all sinners from day one.

This wouldn’t be a problem for us if God were just cool with sin. Unfortunately for us, he’s not. God’s not okay with sin because he has never sinned. He is perfectly good, holy, righteous, and just. And because he is who he is, he has to judge us for our sins. We must be punished, and that punishment is death, and even eternal death in hell.

There is so much more to say about this, but I want to get to the good news. Jesus stepped between us and the judgment of God. That’s what his death on the cross was all about. Because he is the Son of God, and never sinned in any way, in his death he took all of God’s punishment against all of our sins, for all of us.

The second part of the gospel is this: Jesus was buried. In other words, he really died. He wasn’t mostly dead, he was all dead. He was dead, embalmed, and buried in a tomb with a heavy stone rolled over it. He was dead.

So far the gospel is good news for us, but bad news for Jesus. Our sins are forgiven, but he’s dead. But really the last part is the best part: On the third day Jesus rose from the dead. He died, but he was too strong for death to hold him down any longer.

The resurrection of Jesus is the victory that gives all of us hope that death does not have the last laugh. In Jesus, death died, and it doesn’t haunt us anymore because we can stare it in the face and smile, knowing that as Jesus rose again, we too will rise again.

This is the gospel. Jesus Christ died for our sins. Jesus Christ was buried. Jesus Christ rose from the dead on the third day. Receive this. Believe this. Take your stand on this. Be saved by this.

But what does it all mean? What has changed in the world because Jesus died for our sins and rose again? How does the gospel change everything for everyone? Most importantly, what do these facts tell us about Jesus? If the gospel is the story of what happened to Jesus on Good Friday and Easter Sunday, then what does that story tell us about Jesus?

I think the gospel tells us three things about Jesus. I’m certain that there are more, but for our purposes, I want to look at the following three things: 1. Jesus rules. 2. Jesus rules. 3. Jesus rules. It sounds complicated, I know, but let’s just start with the point about how Jesus rules. Flip back a book to Romans 9, and we’ll look at verses 1-5.

1I speak the truth in Christ—I am not lying, my conscience confirms it in the Holy Spirit— 2I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. 3For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, those of my own race, 4the people of Israel. Theirs is the adoption as sons; theirs the divine glory, the covenants, the receiving of the law, the temple worship and the promises. 5Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them is traced the human ancestry of Christ, who is God over all, forever praised! Amen.

Jesus is God over all. Did you see how Paul just kind of slipped that in there? He was going on and on about Israel, then he mentions the name of Christ, and, oh yeah, he is God over all, forever praised! It doesn’t get any bigger than that.

Jesus rules. He is God over all. He is forever praised. He is the King of creation. No power can prevail against him. No plan can prosper against him. His reign is universal. There is nowhere you can go where Jesus is not king. Now there are plenty of places you can go where he is not recognized as king, but there is nowhere that he does not reign as God over all, right now.

Are you allowing Jesus to rule in every area of your life? Have you handed everything over to him, or are there things that you’re holding back? Is there anything that you’re unwilling to let Jesus change about you?

Being a nerd, I didn’t date much all my life. But I always seemed to have a crush on some girl. I always wanted to be in a relationship, but it just didn’t happen for me very often. So I started to wonder if I had “the gift.” Have you heard of “the gift?” The gift of singleness? That thought scared the heck out of me. I didn’t want the gift. I don’t like the gift. I’ll give the gift back. I’ll regift the gift.

But I came to a point where I had to say to Jesus, “If you want me to be single for the rest of my life, I’ll do that.” Thankfully, five years after that I got married. But I had to surrender that to the rule and reign of Jesus, just like I have to surrender everything else to him.

Maybe it would be helpful for you to sit down sometime and write out where Jesus does and does not rule in your life. I’m sure there are plenty of places where you have submitted to him. But if you’re human, that means you’re inconsistent, so there are plenty of areas that are not submitted to the rule of Jesus.

Once they’re down on paper then you can be reminded to submit those things to Jesus. You can look at your list and say, “Jesus, I have surrendered my television watching to you, but I haven’t surrendered my spending. I surrender my money to you Jesus.”

Jesus rules. He is God over all. He is God over all of you [plural], and he is God over all of you [singular]. You must acknowledge his rule in every aspect of your life. You must submit everything to him. You are not God. He is God. Jesus rules.

Now, on to my second point. Jesus rules. Let’s slide over a chapter to Romans 10:9.

9That if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

In the Roman Empire there was only one Lord, and that was Caesar. Caesar was the emperor. He was sovereign. There was no other ruler. He was it. He was the only Lord, and to claim otherwise was an act of treason. To publicly claim that somebody else is Lord could very well get you killed, or at least thrown in prison.

So that’s how you have to approach Romans 10:9. We can’t understand this verse until we understand the price you could pay for saying something as dangerous as “Jesus is Lord.” That statement doesn’t put us in any danger. But for our 100th-great grandfathers and mothers of the faith, believing this and confessing this, was likely to get them killed.

The Christians claimed that Caesar is not Lord, and that, in fact, a Galilean crucified outside of Jerusalem is Lord. Caesar is not Lord, Jesus is Lord. And there can be only one Lord, because Caesar wouldn’t share his throne with anyone, and neither will Jesus.

Jesus rules, and nobody else. There is no other Lord but Jesus Christ. Nobody else died for your sins. Nobody else rose from the dead. No other savior lives and reigns today. He alone is Lord.

Have you ever heard of syncretism? Do you know what that means? According to the Encarta World English Dictionary, syncretism is “the attempted combination of different systems of philosophical or religious belief or practice.”

When I was in college they started making this music called rap-rock. Have you heard of it? It’s rap and rock combined. Syncretism is like rap-rock for religions. You take two or more things that seem like they wouldn’t go together and you mash them up into one new thing.

Do you know who the premiere rap-rock religion artist is of our time? Oprah. Yeah, she rap-rocks, religiously speaking, of course. The religion you find on Oprah’s show is part New Age and part Christianity. It’s syncretism. She mixes spiritism, meditation, poisitivism, reincarnation, and all the palatable things of Christianity, and she offers it to millions of women every day. And it’s infectious. It sells. But it’s not Christian.

This sort of syncretistic Christianity is the religion of the day in the West. It’s palatable. It’s fluffy. It urges you to go out and do good things. It tells you to be positive. It teaches tolerance and acceptance. It teaches anti-judgmentalism. It’s easy to embrace and doesn’t demand anything from you.

It sounds great, except that it’s completely hollow. It makes no account for human sin. It rejects God. It tells you that you don’t need Jesus. It rewrites Scripture. It tells us that Jesus was a great teacher whose example we should follow every day, not the crucified and risen Lord before whom we should bow and to whom we must give an account for every careless word and deed.

Your Christianity is not Christian unless Jesus is your only Lord. Beware of the teachings of Oprah and others like her. She may do good deeds, but she does not recognize that Jesus is Lord. Before God all our righteousness is as filthy rags. You can’t do enough good to get rid of the evil inside you. You can’t out-righteous your sin.

Jesus alone is Lord. If you have invited someone else to share the throne of your heart, it’s time to give them the boot. Jesus rules, by himself. He does not share power with Caesar. And Caesar can be anyone or anything. It could be a celebrity, or a politician, or a cause, a philosophy, a desire, money. Caesar can be anything. But Jesus will not share power with Caesar. Caesar has got to go. Jesus rules.

Now, on to my final point. Jesus rules! Let’s look at Romans 11:33-36.

33Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!
          How unsearchable his judgments,
          and his paths beyond tracing out!
34"Who has known the mind of the Lord?
          Or who has been his counselor?"
35"Who has ever given to God,
          that God should repay him?"
36For from him and through him and to him are all things.
          To him be the glory forever! Amen.

Jesus rules! He is amazing! He is awesome! He is worthy of praise. Few things in this world are truly praiseworthy, but Jesus surpasses them all. He is great and glorious. He rules!

There is nobody like him.

He is holy.
He is merciful.
He is just.
He is righteous.
He is loving.
He is kind.
He is strong.
He is glorious.
He is understanding.
He is untamable.
He is unconquerable.
He is unassailable.
He is uncompromising.
He is unchanging.
He is all-powerful.
He is all-knowing.
He is all-forgiving.
He is all-encompassing.
He is all-surpassing.
He is all-seeing.
He is all-hearing.
He is all-being.
He is all-doing.
He is all places.
He sees all faces.
He knows all hearts.
He heals all wounds.
He answers all prayers.
He is with the lonely.
He is with the downcast.
He is with the rejected.
He is with the outcast.
He is with the prisoner.
He is with the sinner.
He is with the slave.
He is with the weak.
He is with the rejected.
He is with the broken.
He is with the weeping.
He is with the mourning.
He gives strength to the weak.
He gives hope to the hopeless.
He gives faith to the faithless.
He gives love to the unloved.
He chases the runaway.
He runs to the prodigal.
He protects the orphan.
He provides for the widow.
He houses the alien.
He clothes the naked.
He feeds the hungry.
He shelters the homeless.
He heals the diseased.
He hates cancer.
He hates AIDS.
He hates malaria.
He hates the sex trade.
He hates the slave trade.
He hates the drug trade.
He hates drunkenness.
He hates adultery.
He hates divorce.
He hates pornography.
He hates addiction.
He hates deception.
He loves truth.
He loves grace.
He loves mercy.
He loves healing.
He loves patience.
He loves kindness.
He loves gentleness.
He loves faithfulness.
He loves reconciliation.
He loves humility.
He loves redemption.
He loves sacrifice.
He loves obedience.
He loves trust.
He loves longsuffering.
He loves honesty.
He loves charity.
He loves love.
He loves me.
He loves you.
He loves us.
He died.
He rose again.
He rules.

Let’s pray.

How to Destroy God's Temple (Not that You Would Want To)

This is my really long manuscript for the sermon on community I'll be preaching on the 26th.

How to Destroy God’s Temple (Not that You Would Want To)

If you’re at all interested in history, archeology, world religions, or even architecture, then you probably get fascinated by temples. Even if you’re not interested in those things, or in other words, if you have a life, temples can still be intriguing places.

Some temples are beautiful structures, or located in peaceful environments. Even if you don’t follow this specific religion, you would probably still want to visit these places. There are other temples, however, that you would never want to visit. Like, for example, this guy’s. 

Any temple where the chief priest is holding a flaming, beating human heart in his hand is not a temple I want to be in. But, to each his own, I suppose.

The idea of a temple is pretty simple, really. It’s a god’s house. In biblical times, the architecture would often be modeled after the king’s palace, or vice versa. For the nations that did not worship Yahweh, as Israel did, their temples would house the idols of their gods.

Israel’s temple is often described as the house of Yahweh. And yet they instinctively knew that God did not dwell in houses made by human hands. So there was a tension there, that this temple is our God’s house, and yet he doesn’t live here. He is too vast and great to be confined to one small building on earth. Heaven is his throne and the earth his footstool. His house cannot house him.

But that didn’t make the temple obsolete or inconsequential. Instead, it was one of the three great symbols of Israel’s national identity, along with Torah and the land. It was the hub of her religious practice and worship.

So when it was destroyed by the Babylonians, it was a calamity of calamities. Along with being carted off into exile, it was the worst thing that could have possibly happened to Israel, and therefore to the whole world. Torah, temple, and lend were all that Israel had, and in 587 the Babylonians took their temple and their land. It was catastrophic.

After the exile a second temple was built. But it was never quite like the first one. Even though Herod the Great made all kinds of improvements to it, and made it a truly remarkable temple, it just wasn’t the same. There was a lot of ambivalence about whether or not this was the true temple.

Paul, who, as an ex-Pharisee, was a former temple advocate, declares emphatically that this temple is not the true temple. Something has caused him to change his mind. Let’s look at I Corinthians 3:16-17 together.

16Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's Spirit lives in you? 17If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy him; for God's temple is sacred, and you are that temple.

One quick note on the language here. These yous are not singular yous, they are plural. That’s why the NIV translates it “you yourselves [plural] are God’s temple [singular].”

The new temple of God is the people of God. The Christian community is the temple. The temple is no longer a building, it’s no longer isolated in Jerusalem. The temple is God’s people. Wherever they gather, that’s the temple.

This is a radical reinterpretation of the temple, obviously. It affirms the ancient notion that God does not dwell in houses built by human hands, and it also fulfills the ancient prophecy that God will live with his people. Immanuel, God with us. All who call on the name of Jesus Christ are part of God’s new temple on earth.

The community of God is the temple of God. This gathering here tonight is a temple. It’s a house of God. Your community is a house of God. The Nehemiah Project, when you all gather, is a house of God.

And the difference between the new temple and the old is that God actually lives in this one. The Holy Spirit lives in you. God does not dwell in houses built by human hands, but he does dwell in communities built by his common act of grace--Jesus Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection from the dead. God has built himself a house, but instead of brick and mortar, he has used flesh and blood.

After I graduated from Ohio State in 2001 I moved back to Toledo to help support the struggling college ministry, which was called Unbound, of the church I grew up in. The first night that I was there we were supposed to have a service, but there was nobody to speak, nobody to do music, and we were locked out of the building. So the eight of us that were there decided to go play miniature golf. That was my first night of full-time ministry.

Over the next two years God built himself a temple. He brought some great people into the community of Unbound, and he raised up a whole lot of people from within it. We saw people get saved, and the community grew to about 75 people, with attendance over 100 several times, which is pretty remarkable considering the church itself didn’t average 300 in attendance.

God was so faithful during that time. He really was building himself a temple called Unbound. And he does some really cool things sometimes.

At one service in 2003, right in the middle of the sermon, about 10 or 12 people walked into the gathering and sat right up front. Now I wasn’t speaking at that service, so I was sitting in my seat, “Who the heck are these people? Pretty stinking late is what they are.” And then the sermon ended, and the worship music started, and then I realized why they were there. These folks who had never come before and never came again brought such an energy, as the congregation, into our worship, and our whole group was brought into the presence of God. They even impacted that band. It was amazing.

It was as though God was saying, “Unbound is not my only temple on earth. Here are some folks from a different temple, a different community. See how beautiful it is when you come together.”

I actually have a couple of minutes of video that I’d like to show you from that night. I know it’s self-indulgent, but forgive me. I sacrificed my own worship experience to grab my video camera and record it, so I think I deserve it. Here, watch this.

[I'm going to show the "We Are Hungry" portion of the video from this entry.]

Maybe for some of you that would be considered an off-night. But for us, for the congregation to be louder than the band, for that many college kids to be raising their hands at a regular worship service, that was a big deal. That was an act of God. That was a moment of temple for our community. It was a night after which we all said, “That’s why we do what we do.”

You are a sacred people. This is a sacred assembly. This community is holy to God. But it’s not because you were holy to begin with, or because you do sacred things. You are God’s temple by his choice, not by your own righteousness. You are not a sacred assembly because you do sacred things, you do sacred things because God has made you a sacred people.

God’s Spirit lives in you personally, and he lives in you corporately. The presence of the Spirit of God is what makes Christian community distinctive from every other gathering on earth. God has chosen to dwell by his Spirit among his people, and he has declared that his people are his temple. It is his Spirit that makes this community holy. It is his Spirit that makes you, as individuals and as a group, holy. He has set you apart as a people that he might make of you a temple worthy of the presence of his very own Spirit.

That’s the high calling of Christian community. That’s the glory of the Church--to be the living temple of the living God. And that’s why Satan is so anxious to steal, kill, and destroy any and every Christian community.

But we can be wise to his plans. I promise you that Satan will attempt to destroy this community this summer. He will also attempt to destroy the h2o church plant team. He will try to destroy OCF. He hates God so much that anywhere he finds a temple of God, a community of God’s people, he will try to tear it to the ground.

So, let me tell you How to Destroy God’s Temple (Not that You Would Want To). I know, it took me a long time just to tell you the title of my sermon. But I see in the first six chapters of I Corinthians six ways that Satan, or you, or I can destroy God’s temple.

The first way to destroy God’s temple is to Form Factions. Look at 1:10-12.

10I appeal to you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another so that there may be no divisions among you and that you may be perfectly united in mind and thought. 11My brothers, some from Chloe's household have informed me that there are quarrels among you. 12What I mean is this: One of you says, "I follow Paul"; another, "I follow Apollos"; another, "I follow Cephas"; still another, "I follow Christ."

Imagine an old temple building that has been divided into a hundred tiny rooms with makeshift walls. Is it even a temple anymore? It probably looks more like a prison with a hundred tiny cells where each little group tries to worship the same God in their own way. What is so sacred about that? Forming Factions is one of the surest ways to destroy a temple.

Factions and divisions are abominations for the Church because Jesus Christ died for our sins, and on his cross was crucified every dividing wall and every hostile attitude in all the world. Let’s look quickly at Ephesians 2:14-22.

14For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, 15by abolishing in his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace, 16and in this one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. 17He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. 18For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.

19Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household, 20built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. 21In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. 22And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.

God combats factions with the cross of his Son. In the death of Jesus enemies become friends, rivals become family, the fractured become united. God loves unity. It’s who he is--the tri-unity. Factions and divisions come from Satan, but God comes against these with the very cross of Jesus Christ.

You can participate with God in his war against factions by being humble toward your brothers and sisters. You don’t have to be right all the time. You can be the first one to apologize. You can be the one to cross the barrier and say, “Please forgive me.” You can be the one to listen twice as much as you talk. You can be the one to initiate reconciliation. You can be the peacemaker. You can die to yourself. You can bite your tongue. You can give a gentle response. You can speak words that heal.

The Church is in short supply of unity these days, but it’s on God’s heart. When you stand before God face-to-face, with the light of his glory radiating over you, won’t all of your differences seem so petty? Won’t all of the arguments seem so inane? Won’t you weep over the small things that kept you apart? I follow Paul, I follow Apollos, I follow Cephas, I follow Luther, I follow Calvin, I follow Rob Bell, I follow Mark Driscoll, I follow Erwin McManus--it's all so petty. Besides, those guys would slap you if they heard you talk like that.

The first way to destroy God’s temple is to form factions. The second way is to be ashamed of the gospel. Look at 1:18.

18For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

Being ashamed of the gospel is like being unsaved. It’s the same as not believing it. Jesus died for our sins, rose from the dead, and now he’s the king of all creation. This is what makes us who we are.

Yes, some people will not believe it, and they will go to hell. If that makes you intolerant, close-minded, uncool, or whatever, so be it. You can’t change the gospel without making it unchristian. You can only make it more palatable by removing the key ingredients. It can only become universally acceptable if you remove the parts about sin, resurrection, and Jesus’ kingship. And then it ceases to be the gospel.

Paul says, “I’m not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes.” The gospel is power. It defines the temple. It defines our community. If you change the gospel you destroy the temple. Don’t let the haughty skepticism of Starbucks atheists and dime-a-dozen would-be philosophers shame you into compromising the truth by which you are saved.

The second way to destroy God’s temple is to be ashamed of the gospel. The third way is it’s cousin--the desire for worldly wisdom and acceptance. Look at 3:18-19.

18Do not deceive yourselves. If any one of you thinks he is wise by the standards of this age, he should become a "fool" so that he may become wise. 19For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God's sight.

Jesus is going to make you look stupid in the eyes of the world. Are you prepared to deal with that? Can you live with that kind of scorn?

Because let me tell you, you can fall over yourself apologizing to the world for how the Church did this and Christians did that, but they will never accept you until they believe. You can distance yourself from these Christians and those believers and even the Church in general, but they will not accept you until you become like them in their unbelief.

God’s way is the way of humiliation. It is the way of foolishness. It is the way of a Crucified King, a Risen Lord, and a Living God. The acceptance you so desperately want from the world cannot happen unless you compromise the God who has already accepted you, who has already embraced you, who has loved you from the very beginning!

God accepts you! Who needs the world? God has loved you from the beginning of creation! Who needs the coffee shop when you have the church? Who needs the bar when you have the temple? God accepts you. Don’t be afraid to be a fool for him.

The fourth way to destroy God’s temple is to harbor sin. Look at 5:1-2.

1It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that does not occur even among pagans: A man has his father's wife. 2And you are proud! Shouldn't you rather have been filled with grief and have put out of your fellowship the man who did this?

I mean, sometimes you’ve just got to kick somebody to the curb. Dude, if you’re sleeping with your mom, or your step-mom, or doing something that even the worst sinners would be like, “Dude,” then you’ve got to go.

In verse 11 Paul says, 11But now I am writing you that you must not associate with anyone who calls himself a brother but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or a slanderer, a drunkard or a swindler. With such a man do not even eat.

12What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? 13God will judge those outside. "Expel the wicked man from among you."

Should Christians be judgmental? Yes. Of other Christians. God’s temple is a sanctuary for sinners, not for sin. I know that excommunication has a bad reputation, but it’s biblical, as long as the intent is for future restoration.

Harboring sin in God’s temple destroys the sacredness of that place. Sin is contagious. It will infect the rest of you if you let it go unchecked in the community. Harboring sin will destroy God’s temple, and it will get ugly.

The fifth way to destroy God’s temple is to publicly dispute with one another. Look at 6:4-8.

4Therefore, if you have disputes about such matters, appoint as judges even men of little account in the church! 5I say this to shame you. Is it possible that there is nobody among you wise enough to judge a dispute between believers? 6But instead, one brother goes to law against another—and this in front of unbelievers!

7The very fact that you have lawsuits among you means you have been completely defeated already. Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be cheated? 8Instead, you yourselves cheat and do wrong, and you do this to your brothers.

Suing is not the answer for Christians, especially when it comes to disputing with each other. Taking it to the press, taking it to your friends, is not the way to handle a dispute. Find an arbiter within the church. Find someone who can be a peacemaker between the two parties. Boy do we look bad when we tear each other down in front of unbelievers.

The final way to destroy God’s temple is to be sexually immoral. Look at 6:18-20.

18Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body. 19Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; 20you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.

Not only are you, collectively, the temple of God, but your bodies, individually, are temples of the Holy Spirit. What you do with your body matters. What you eat and drink, and especially who you have sex with, matters to God.

In fact, your body doesn’t belong to you anymore. If you’re single, your body belongs to God. If you’re married, your body belongs to God and to your spouse. You were bought at a price, therefore honor God with your body.

The biblical standard is clear, don’t have sex with anyone except for your spouse. How many more churches have to be torn apart by adultery, and how many more fellowships of people your age have to be ripped to shreds by premarital sexual relationships, before we finally get this?

Sexual immorality will destroy God’s temple that is the Christian community, and it will desecrate God’s temple that is your body. Flee from it. Just run. You don’t have to fight it. Turn and run away. You can even flail your arms like a schoolgirl if it will help, just get the heck out of there.

Six certain ways to destroy God’s temple: Forming Factions, Being Ashamed of the Gospel, Desiring Worldly Wisdom and Acceptance, Harboring Sin, Publicly Disputing with One Another, and Being Sexually Immoral.

All of these things and more were happening in the church in Corinth. They were a messed up temple. The whole thing was falling apart.

Now what about you? Have you been destroying God’s temple in any of these ways? Have you been a faction former? Have you been gossiping about and slandering your leaders? Have you been compromising the gospel? Have you been harboring or hiding sin? Have you been publicly disputing with a brother or sister? Have you been sexually immoral?

Now is as good a time as any to repent. Now is as good a time as any to bring what has been committed in darkness into the light. Find someone you trust and talk to them. Confess your sins, because God is faithful to forgive them. Heaven is waiting to pour out healing and reconciliation. But there can be no healing in the darkness. There can be no redemption for what is not confessed.

You are the temple of God. God’s Spirit lives in you and among you. You are a sacred community. Will you keep it sacred?

Let’s pray.

Punching the Lion

Tonight I will be preaching at Otterbein Christian Fellowship. They've asked me to speak about summer break and its various spiritual pitfalls. So I tried my best. This is a bit of a different take on the subject, and it relates more to spiritual loneliness, which I think is the core problem that students deal with over summer break. Here's the manuscript.

Punching the Lion

So summer break is right around the corner. Must be nice. Back in my day we didn’t have summer vacation. Heck, we didn’t even have summer. That’s right, when I was in college, it snowed year round. And we had to walk to class, uphill both ways. That’s right, the earth wasn’t fully formed back then, so you never knew what you had to walk through to get home. It was terrible! But now you kids with your seasons, and your sunshine, and your breaks from school. Ridiculous.

So my name is Andy Holt, and I’m a crotchety old man. I turned 29 this month, so I won’t be in a very good mood for the rest of my life. I work at Heritage Christian Church, and I graduated from Ohio State back when we used to lose to Michigan every year. So that was a long time ago.

Summer break is a weird concept, isn’t it? I mean, it’s completely counterproductive to your education. You go to school for nine months, and then you’re off for three months, and you completely forget everything you learned in the past year. Summer break is a total academic regression. It’s amazing how much time it takes us to get smart, and then how little time it takes for us to get stupid again.

But we don’t just regress academically; we can also regress spiritually. We go back to old situations and act like the person we used to be. We find ourselves more susceptible to old temptations, old habits, and old patterns of thinking. The new thing that God has been doing gets undermined because we go back to the way things used to be. We’re not with the new friends we have now. We’re not n the same Christian community. We regress spiritually because we are spiritually alone. So with the ideas of spiritual regression and spiritual loneliness in mind, I’ve titled this sermon, Punching the Lion.

I’ll explain what I mean by “punching the lion” in a bit; but I hope that I can bring a new perspective on spiritual loneliness tonight. There are a lot of ways that I could talk about this subject. I could give you five ways to not be spiritually lonely. Or I could tell you about how God is close to the lonely, the downcast, and the brokenhearted. But that’s not on my heart tonight. What is on my heart is the response of the Christian community to spiritual loneliness.

You see, I believe that God speaks, primarily, through the Bible. I also believe that God acts, primarily, through the Church. To be more specific, in this setting, God acts through OCF. He does stuff when you all do his stuff.

So I believe that God overcomes spiritual loneliness through the actions of the Christian community. In other words, God doesn’t lay the guilt trip on the lonely person to go make himself unlonely. Instead, he calls the community of believers, and the individuals within that community, to surround that person with the love of Christ. God remedies our spiritual loneliness with spiritual friendship, and the act of spiritual friendship is like punching the lion in the face for the sake of our friends.

Each one of us will go through a time, or many times, in our life when we will be or feel spiritually alone. I am certainly no stranger to being and feeling spiritually alone.

After my freshmen year, back in the Ice Age, I spent my summer break on a Crusade-like project in Myrtle Beach. It wasn’t with Crusade, but an organization like it. It was a really great summer for me. I grew a ton spiritually. I lived in a beach house with ten guys. It was great.

But between the end of the project and the start of school, I was at home for a month. Now, I have a great Christian family, and I went to a great church, but there was no one there that I could relate with, spiritually. I had changed and grown a lot in the past year, but it had all been somewhere else, with other people. What had happened to me during the past year of growth and change hadn’t happened to or with the people I had grown up with. This made me feel very lonely. I was spiritually alone for a month.

This was a very dark month for me. I fell into some of my old habits, and some of my old ways of thinking. One night, I even had a physical sensation like the Holy Spirit was decreasing in me. I don’t know the theology behind that experience, and I’m probably not interpreting it correctly. All I can say is that I had a physical sensation of spiritual regression.

I was spiritually alone. I was separated from the community in which I had grown and matured so much. This is a dangerous place to be. When we are alone, we are more vulnerable to attacks from the devil. We’re like a zebra out by itself on the African plain. The lions are on the hunt, and that zebra is about to become dinner.

If I were watching a nature show, and I saw a zebra on the plain by itself, my first thought would be, “Stupid zebra. Don’t you know there are lions everywhere?”

And I wonder if too many of us, myself included, don’t respond the same way to lonely Christians. “Stupid Christian. Don’t you know the devil is out to get you? Get to church, dummy.” But that’s not very helpful, is it? “Go to church, stupid.” “Oh, okay.” It would be more helpful if we, the Christian community--the Church--went to them, and we punched the lion who is hunting them right in the face.

Let’s take a look at some Scripture. Turn to 1 Peter 5:8-9.

Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that your brothers throughout the world are undergoing the same kind of sufferings.

Now, according to Wikipedia...by the way, have you heard of Wikipedia? “Wikipedia is the best thing ever. Anyone in the world can write anything they want about any subject. So you know you are getting the best possible information.” (Michael Scott) Anyway, according to Wikipedia, lions are opportunistic hunters. They take the closest prey, regardless of health. Whichever buffalo or zebra is closest, that’s the one they’re going after.

I’m not sure how much Peter knew about lions, so I really don’t know how far to stretch this metaphor. But I think the point is simply this: the devil is dangerous, so don’t put yourself in harm’s way.

When we are alone for an extended period of time, when we are spiritually alone, we are in harm’s way. We are more vulnerable when we are outside of Christian community.

I used to think that my faith was not genuine unless I could live apart from my Christian friends and still grow spiritually. But that’s just foolish. It’s the lone wolf mentality, and you may as well call it the used-to-be-a-Christian mentality, because that’s where you’re going to wind up if you try to do this on your own. I used to be a Christian, but then I tried to be a Christian all by myself, and I stopped being a Christian. The lion prowls around looking for someONE to devour. Lonely zebra! Bang! Dinner.

We need each other to survive. We are communal beings. Even lions hunt in packs. Christians need Christians in order to stay Christians. That’s just the way God designed us. The individual needs the group, and the group needs to look out for the individual. Punching the lion simply means that we’re looking out for each other, and that we’re willing to fight for each other.

The devil is out there, and he is a patient and cunning hunter. He doesn’t want to pick a fight with the whole church. He’d much rather take us out one by one. He will wait until you’re alone, and then he will pounce.

So if you see someone who is spiritually alone, reach out to them. Understand that they’re in a vulnerable position. It doesn’t really matter why they’re alone, maybe they even do it to themselves. But just because someone is foolish and arrogant doesn’t mean they ought not be loved. Reaching out to the spiritually alone is an act of love, and it is an act that God himself does through you.

You see, if the devil’s going to get one of you, the rest of you ought to make him earn it. This verse tells us to resist the devil by standing firm in the faith. This is something that we can all live out together. If the devil is going to come after one of us, then make him get through all of us. Let us all resist the devil, together, for the sake of the one. We should be telling the devil, as a community, “If you want to get to her, you’re going to have to go through us!”

If he wants to pick a fight, fine, then let him pick a fight. But let’s make sure the fight is with all of God’s people in the community, not just the one poor soul who wound up alone. The community ought to be looking after the individual. We ought to be resisting the devil together, and coming to the rescue of the one who is suffering.

Sometimes I wonder if we haven’t gotten this whole spiritual warfare thing backwards. Why do we always have to be the victims? Shouldn’t Satan be the one complaining, “I’m under spiritual attack!”? Shouldn’t the church be advancing against the gates of hell? Shouldn’t we be punching the lion in the face and pulling our brothers and sisters from its jaws?

Are we just going to stand by while our friends disappear from the fellowship, one by one? Are we going to be passive in the presence of the roaring lion? Or are we going to pick up the phone and call each other this summer? Are you going to send texts and emails to your friends, to see how they’re doing? Are you going to keep an eye on their facebook status, or look at what kind of pictures they’re posting? Are you going to speak up? Ask the hard questions? Fight for them, even at the risk of offending them? If your friend was being dragged off by a lion, wouldn’t you at least punch it?

In groups just like this there are almost always more freshmen than seniors. Why is that? How many people who were here three years ago aren’t here now because they got picked off by the lion? They got separated from the group because they were angry, or hurt, or discouraged, or busy, or shunned, or whatever. They got separated from the fellowship and then they got picked off by the lion. They went home for the summer, fell into old habits, and never reconnected with the group. That’s how it happens. It’s subtle. It’s slow. And it’s deadly effective.

The truth is that some of you who are here now may not be here in the fall, and not because you transferred or graduated. But if we stay connected to each other as the people of God, then we can fight the lions off together.

When you say your goodbyes, don’t say, “I’ll see you in the fall.” Say, “I’ll call you next week.” Or, “I’ll send you a text or e-mail to see if you got home alright.” Or, “I’ll give you a call in a couple of weeks to find out what kind of church you’re going to now.” Or, “Make sure you write on my wall.” Or whatever. Don’t say “I’ll see you in the fall.” The fall is too far away. A lot can happen between now and September.

I want to show you a video now. It’s from youtube, and most of you have probably already seen it. It’s kind of long, about eight minutes. But I think it’s a wonderful parable for how the church ought to respond when the lions come after one of its own. Let’s watch this together, and then I’ll get up and pray when it’s done.



Let’s pray.