Denn's Sermons

4 The Puzzle of Childing

2012-01-29T03:46:00.000-08:00

Do you remember TV families when you were a kid? There seemed to be more extended ones then there are now, you know more families with several generations living under one roof. The Waltons had their Grand Parents living with them, the Beverly Hillbillies had Granny, the Munsters had Grand Pa and the Adams family had Uncle Fester and Cousin It. And if the grand parents weren’t living with the family they at least dropped in for a while like Endora in Bewitched.

My father grew up with his grandfather living with the family and as children he would often tell us stories of what it was like with Grampy Guptill in the home. My mother lived next door to her grandparents and spent as much time with them as she did in her own home.

And yet with the changes in society we see less and less of that, and on television we only see the parents of adults as serious disturbed individuals who are the reason their children are the way they are. Seriously next time you are watching television check out how the parents are portrayed.

On a more positive note the other day I commented to Angela on the number of multi-generational families we have attending Cornerstone, Parents, Grand Parents and Children.

We started this series the first week looking at the Puzzles of Family and then we looked at the Puzzle of Marriage and then last week it was the Puzzle of Parenting. And while week one was kind of broad and sweeping and covered everyone the past two weeks have been a little more focused and I’m sure that there were folks in weeks two and three that might have felt there wasn’t anything there for them because they either weren’t married or weren’t parents.

I would suspect that this one has something for everyone.

This week my message is called “The Puzzle of Childing” and I know that’s not a word but I couldn’t think of anything else. And I would suspect that it has a broader appeal because we are all someone’s child. Anyone here who never had parents of some kind? Anyone found in a turnip patch? That’s where my folks said they found me, as my sister was fond of reminding me.

The more astute amongst us will have clued in to the fact that this week’s scripture reading is the same as last week’s. Last week I focused on the last part of this scripture, the part about adults not provoking their children to anger, not exasperating them and I had a couple of parents ask me if their kids had been talking to me. And I may have noticed a smirk or two on the faces of some of our younger folks. But there has to be a balance here. And that is the first part of Ephesians 6 where Paul writes Ephesians 6:1-2 Children, obey your parents because you belong to the Lord, for this is the right thing to do. “Honour your father and mother.”

And that is a direct reference to the fifth commandment of the “Ten Commandments” which of course are found in both Exodus and Deuteronomy. In Exodus we are told Exodus 20:12 “Honor your father and mother. Then you will live a long, full life in the land the LORD your God is giving you.”

It’s interesting that the child parent relationship is the only relationship that makes it into the Ten Commandments. We don’t see any reference on how to treat our spouse, other than the obvious “do not commit adultery” in the seventh command, or how to treat our siblings, other than the obvious “do not kill” in the sixth commandment, but we are told here that we must honour our parents.

But what does it mean to honour your parents? Not sure in 2012 that is even on the radar and if it is if we give much thought to the concept of honour. I was talking to someone last week and we spoke about being afraid of our folks. And not a fear because of physical punishment but a fear never the less. We were afraid of disappointing them, afraid of letting them down and certainly afraid of disobeying them. That doesn’t mean we didn’t disappoint them, let them down or disobey them but we certainly thought twice about doing it.

Now I realize that there are probably some of you here who are all knotted up inside, the stomach acid is boiling and you’re thinking, “Like that’s ever going to happen, after the way they treated me.” And unfortunately that is the reality of today that whenever you speak about parents there is someone in the group who was abused, physically, emotionally or sexually while they were growing up. Some of you may have grown up in the homes of alcoholics or workaholics, abusive or neglectful parents. Perhaps you had parents who were distant or cold and uncaring. And you want to cry out “How can I honour people who are un-honourable?” “How do I honour someone who never once honoured me?”

What is God asking of you this morning? Is God asking you to put on a mask and pretend it never happened? Is God demanding that you push your feelings out of sight and go about the duty of honouring these people who have betrayed you and hurt you severely? Will God settle for pretend honouring? Nope, he does not want make believe honouring and I don’t want to minimize the hurt that you’ve felt or negate it in any way and before I’m done this morning we are going to deal with that issue. So please bear with me.

Obviously the command to honour our parents means different things at different points in our lives. We often think that our relationship as children and parents takes a parrael path through life. But often times it looks more like this, when we are young we are dependent on our parents and it is their responsibility to take care of us, when we become adults that relationship changes and comes closer together as we are more like peers, never quite peers but more like peers and then many times as our parents age their children take more of a role in the caretaking department. Assuming responsibilities and making decisions. And that isn’t easy for that transition to happen. For either party. Sometime children don’t want that responsibility and sometimes parents are eager to give it up. And as more couples are putting off their decision to have children until they are older the consequence is that often times they end up dealing with children on one end of the spectrum and aged parents on the other end. Another one of those perks of having your kids in your twenties.

And so to honour our parents means different things at different times in our lives.

As children to honour your parents’ means to Obey Our Parents, just do what they say. That’s what’s behind this commandment when we are young. That’s why Paul wrote Ephesians 6:1 Children, obey your parents because you belong to the Lord, for this is the right thing to do.

Regardless of what the pop psychology of today says obedience is still something that we need to expect of our children. God knows that there is a rebel streak inside the heart of every little kid, and God knows that parents are going to have to carefully and consistently confront that destructive force or they will eventually lose their children to spiritual shipwreck. Throughout the scriptures God gives guidelines for parents on how to establish boundaries for their children and how to discipline their children and how to nurture them and love them.

We have swung from the extremes of two or three generations ago when parents, (especially fathers) were unreasonable tyrants or the place today where parents, (especially fathers) have abdicated their place of authority in the home. The pattern of authority is all one piece and you cannot expect to break it in one spot, i.e. the home and then expect it to work in the rest of society. So if children don’t obey their parents then there’s a pretty good chance they won’t obey their teachers and ultimately will find it hard to obey the civil authorities. And so God says to the children, Children at this point in your life you honour your parents by obeying them.

As children become teens and Young Adults they begin to exercise more independence and make more and more decisions on their own. It’s at this point in our lives to honour our parents’ means that we need to Respect Your Parents and cooperate with them. During this phase in their lives young adults don’t need constant supervision and long lists of do’s and don’ts in their lives. Those teen years are the time when they begin to make some of their own decisions and well they should, it’s a part of growing up. In saying that let me add this warning to the teens out there, some of the decisions that you make now, that seem right for today will have ramifications on your entire life. And as much as we as parents wish we could make those choices for you we can’t. And in this period of your life the carrying out of the fifth commandment would be “Stay respectful, stay cooperative with your parents.”

Adolescence is the only time in your life when a person believes that they know it all. It’s at that point that they become convinced that all adults have suffered irreparable brain damage, and at that particular point in life nobody knows as much as a teenager, and if you don’t believe that just ask one of them. They know all the answers. When I was a teen I had answers to questions that weren’t even being asked.

When we were in Australia a friend put a sign on his son’s door that read: “TEENAGERS! Tired of being harassed by your parents? ACT NOW!! Move out, get a job, pay your own way while you still know everything!”

By the way, that isn’t anything new, listen to what Mark Twain wrote well over a hundred years ago “When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned.”

And God says to adolescents, “Even during this troublesome turbulent time: Honour your parents.” Yes, children during this time are supposed to begin to differ and disagree with their parents, that’s a part of separation process, often times it is simply them saying “I am my own person with my own opinions.” I was brought up by a Ford driving, Tory voting, Leaf’s cheering father. By the time I was 18 I was voting liberal driving a GM and cheering for the Habs. But all through this agonizing era teens are called to be respectful and cooperative toward their parents so these changes can be negotiated within the context of the family community and not isolation.

But most of us aren’t children anymore, nor are we teens or even young adults. We have moved on in life to being adults ourselves and with that come a whole new series of challenges. It’s at this point in our lives that we’ve established our own families and households and careers but our parents are still alive and a part of our lives.

For most Boomers their parents are at least in their early seventies and most are older than that, what is our responsibilities to our parents in this stage of our lives?

And so this commandment does not stop when we leave the home, the fifth commandment is binding on all us until both of our parents have passed away. And for adults the way you honour your aging parents is very simply to Treasure Your Parents. How do we Treasure our parents?

Once we have come through that turbulent period of our lives called adolescents, once we have got out on our own and had a family of our own, we start to realize that our parent’s brain death was only temporary, if it happened at all, and then we start raising kids of our own and we begin to realize how much service and sacrifice went into raising us. How much love time and energy went into raising you as a child. And your heart begins to soften toward your parents, and you have those golden years to treasure your parents and to be there for them.

If I was to ask you to name the most important things in your life what would your list look like? Children, Parents, Spouse, Friends, Career, Home, Hobbies, Sports.

So what would happen if say you no longer had your Career? If your friends were dying, your parents were gone; you were unable to play your sports or enjoy your hobbies and had to move out of your own home. It would sure shorten the list up, wouldn’t it? That’s why as parents get older their children become more important to them. Often it is all they have left out of all that was important to them.

Because the older our parents get the less love and respect and esteem they receive from the world they live in. For many of our parents the brightest spot, the flame that burns closest to their heart is their children, for many of them that is the most important part of their lives. But their children are in the busy years of their lives, having children and raising them, climbing ladders and you know what I mean

And sometimes we need to just slow down and say “thank you” to our folks and give back to them some of what they’ve given to us. And if we don’t show that we appreciated what they did for us how will they know? And that cuts, that’s why in King Lear that the Bard wrote How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is To have a thankless child

Many of you people have taken time to send cards, share holidays and include your parents in the special times in your life, call them and send gifts letting them know that they are treasured. And every time you do that type of thing you are honouring your parents.

And all of this goes beyond the bumper sticker that said “Honour your parents: they haven’t written their will yet”. As our parents become older we may find them more and more reliant on us. And society tells us to shuffle them off somewhere where they won’t be an inconvenience, where they won’t cause us undue hardship. And there are times and circumstances where that is the only viable option, but not always. And that is no excuse for children to ignore their parents during their time of need.

I don’t think we need to return to the concept of the extended family home with three or four generations living under one roof but I do believe that we as adults that we need to make sure that our parent do not lack for the necessities of life and that they aren’t left in need or loneliness.

And as the demands on us becomes greater we need to realize that if we are to honour our parents it will necessitate some sacrifices on our behalf. In the New Testament the early believers were instructed to take care of the older widows in their fellowship and then Paul qualifies the instructions with these words: 1 Timothy 5:4 But if she has children or grandchildren, their first responsibility is to show godliness at home and repay their parents by taking care of them. This is something that pleases God.

And many of those sacrifices are the same ones that our parents made for us when we were growing up. How many times did they put their plans on hold to drive us somewhere? How often did they clean up after us, or run errands for us. How often did their lives, their wants and their needs take second place to ours. You say sure but they are our parents. . .exactly.

Christ himself gives the example. When he hung on the cross, and those of you who know Christ personally can imagine what was on his mind as he hung on that cross between heaven and earth, he’s there paying the price for your sins and mine. He’s taken on the totality of sin and he’s in agony, dying an excruciating death on the cross and there are only seven things recorded that Christ said on the cross and one of them was when he looked down and saw his mother and used a little bit of the strength he had left to ask His friend John to take care of his mother. Is it any wonder the command to honour our parents ended up in the top five.

Giving up precious time to visit or serve or minister to our elderly, or ill or dying parents needs to be seen as a potential blessing and not an imposition.

A very practical part of this is the entire concept of reaping what you sow. You realize of course that the example that you set in how you relate and deal with your parents will be the one followed by your children. We cut a groove in our children by the way we treat our parents. It was the philosopher John Locke who wrote “Parents wonder why the streams are bitter when they themselves poisoned the fountain.” Or what goes around comes around. The Greek philosopher Euripides (er-rip-e-dees) observed “Unblessed is the son who does not honour his parents; but if reverent and obedient to them, he will receive the same from his own children”

If you’re wondering about how confused your parents can get, well maybe Sam Levenson had the answer when he said, “Insanity is hereditary. You can get it from your children.”

And so God is saying if you honour your parents I will honour you. How are you doing in honouring your parents today? Is this something you need to pray silently about right now or make some amends?

Let me take a few moments right now to speak to those ones who are at a complete loss over how to honour parents who have dishonoured, abused and in some cases almost destroyed them as children. What does God expect you to do? And right off I want to assure you that God is not asking you to ignore the pain you feel, God is not asking anyone here to deny the pain their parents caused, and God is not asking anyone here to gloss it, to pass over it lightly or to forget it.

To one degree or another we have all been failed or hurt or disappointed by our parents, some very minimally, by God’s grace I fall in that category, very minimally disappointed by my parents, almost not at all. I have really great parents, and I don’t have bad memories of them nor am I disappointed in how they raised me. But others have been devastated by their parents and God is not asking you to block that out, he’s asking you to identify it and own it and grieve over it. And if you are going to come out of the other end you are going to have to deal with it and ultimately you are going to have to discuss it with your parents. And that isn’t going to be easy. But you do need to clear the air about your grief and your disappointments with them.

How long can we carry the anger and place the blame? How long can we define ourselves as an “Adult child of a . . .whatever” It probably was wrong, and you probably were hurt, but some people are as angry as if yesterday was today. You cannot continue to allow what they did to determine who you are, and if they can make you stoop to their level then they win.

Nowhere in the Bible are we specifically commanded to love our parents, we are told to love our spouse, to love our God, to love our neighbours but nowhere are we told to love our parents. The interpersonal dynamics between children and parents are just too intense. Some of us come out of it intact and some just barely escape. Sometimes too much has transpired for the child to love the parent. God, strangers and neighbours don’t put the same demands on us that our parents do, and so we aren’t commanded to necessarily love them but we are commanded to honour them. And sometimes that means we need to forgive them and get on with making the life that God wants us to have. You say, “Denn, I’ll never be able to forgive them.” Then they win! Because the New Testament teaches us that we will be forgiven in the same way that we forgive.

My mother grew up with a very abusive mother. How mom raised the kids she did is a credit to her not to her mother. And I did not know the extent of that abuse until I was an adult, my mother did not poison how I viewed my grandmother as a child.

In the late eighties my grandmother began to suffer from Alzheimer’s and could no longer live alone. My mom moved her to Saint John, not to our home but to a senior’s complex nearby. And for the last three years of my Grandmother’s life my mother honoured her by visiting and taking her out to lunch and bringing her home for special family times and attending to her personal needs. Dr. Laura Schlessinger made these comments “It is possible to maintain cordial contact, assist a bad parent with such basic needs as food or housing and medicine, and not spend a lot of time marinating in negativity in front of them or behind their back. It may not be ideal, and it may not salve your feeling, but that small something you do ennobles your soul anyway.”

So, where are you at?

Thanks to Bill Hybels for many of the ideas in this message

The Puzzle of Parenting

2012-01-22T03:35:00.000-08:00

My oldest niece has a philosophy, actually she has many philosophies but I’m only going to share one with you today. Her philosophy on parenting is this: The government should put birth control in the water and people would have to pass a parenting test in order to get bottled water.

Makes sense to me, we make people takes tests to drive a car, fly a plane and pilot a boat. We even make people take a test to babysit but. . . any idiot can have a baby and many do. 400 years ago Samuel Butler wrote “Parents are the last people on earth who ought to have children.”

Two weeks ago I spoke about the Puzzle of Family and last week it was the Puzzle of Marriage, this week we are going to look at parenting. Because really those of us who have children want to be good parents, and now as a grandparent I hope my children will be good parents.

And it’s probably unfair but from my view as a grandparent I probably expect my kids to be a better parent then I was. And the reality is that I am probably harder on myself in regards to the type of parent I was then Stephen and Deborah are.

There isn’t a lot of advice on parenting in the scripture but there is some. A lot of times what we have are stories, stories of good families and stories of bad families. But the scripture that was read this morning has some helpful advice for those of us who have chosen parenthood or have had parenthood thrust upon us.

As parents we rather enjoy the first part of the scripture, the part about children obeying their parents and honouring their mothers and fathers. We want that to be their life verse, and it is a good verse, but it’s not what we are talking about this week, this week we are talking about the last part of that scripture, that part that says in Ephesians 6:4 Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger by the way you treat them. Rather, bring them up with the discipline and instruction that comes from the Lord.

Interesting choice of words here; do not provoke your children to anger. In the New King James Version it says Ephesians 6:4 And you, fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord.

And the New International Version reads this way Ephesians 6:4 Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.

And if you can remember being a child you can remember being exasperated with your parents and there were probably times that you were angry with your parents. It was Bette Davis who said “If you have never been hated by your child, you have never been a parent.” And sometimes it’s not a bad thing for your kids to be angry with you; you did the parent thing and put your foot down. You were right and you did it for the right reason and they were angry with you and they probably didn’t understand and if they did understand they would still be angry and that’s just the way it is. I think the technical term for that is “tough” and sometimes the answer to “Why” is “Because I am your parent.” End of discussion. And sometimes it has nothing to do with being fair and it has nothing to do with being their friend, because your first priority is not to be your child’s friend it is to be your child’s parent. Because friends don’t always have your kid’s best interest at heart. I bought my son a T-shirt years ago that sums it up and it says “Actually friends let friends do lots of stupid things.”

But then there is the other side of the coin where we drive our kids nuts. The side where we exasperate our kids by our behaviour. And we have a responsibility to do right by our kids. And that is an incredible responsibility.

So what is it we do that will exasperate our kids?

We Exasperate Them With Our Inconsistencies Our kids are an audience that is always there. They hear what we say but more important they see what we do, and they may not mention the inconsistencies that they see, but you can be sure they are storing them away for future reference. And so when we tell them to do something and then we don’t it, that is exasperating and when we tell them not to do something and then we do it, you got it.

There is nobody else in our lives that will see us at our best and our worst the way our kids do. And I know that it’s tough because they see us when we are tired, they see us when we are frustrated and they see us when we aren’t wearing the masks that we wear in public.

But our kids are always watching and they are always learning, Paul reminds Titus in Titus 2:7And you yourself must be an example to them by doing good works of every kind. Let everything you do reflect the integrity and seriousness of your teaching.

And for kids one of the biggest inconsistencies is when we tell them “Do as I say, not as I do.”

I’ve told you the story before about the most difficult one of all, one day a little boy’s mom caught him tell a fib. “Do you know” she warned “what happens to little boys who tell lies?” “No what, Mommy?” he asked. “Well,” she said, “there is a man up in the moon, a little green man with just one eye, who sweeps down in the middle of the night and flies away to the moon with little boys who tell lies and makes them pick up sticks all the rest of their lives. Now you won’t tell lies any more will you for it’s awfully, awfully naughty.”

American author James Baldwin nailed it when he said “Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.” And then we punish them for doing what we modeled. I wonder how many kids get punished for swearing by swearing parents? And then the parents say “I don’t know where you learned those words.” And the kids thinking “sure you do.” Or when kids are punished for drinking when their parents have booze in the house.

Nowhere is it truer than at home that more is caught then taught. Now you may be able to rationalise to your satisfaction why you can do something and they can’t by using the standard, “because I’m an adult” but that doesn’t always cut it with a child or a teen. “Do as I say not as I do” is no longer a valid child raising technique.

There is no place that the consistency of your Christian walk will be examined more closely or more minutely then at home by your children. How you model being a Christian, I have discovered through the years that parents who support the church financially and talk about it when they kids start working in High School they will tithe what they make. Kids who watch their parents read the bible and pray, same thing. For better or for worse your kids will probably grow up just like you, and ain’t that a thrilling thought.

We need to be a pattern that our children can follow. Every year I see more and more of Captain Burton Guptill creeping into me. And some of those things I like and others I don’t like and some I’m not sure of. And if I’m not real careful my kids will be a lot like Rev. Denn Guptill, the good, the bad and the indifferent. I may not be responsible for everything that Stephen and Deborah do and are, but I will always be responsible for the areas where they followed my example.

We Exasperate Them With Our Insincerities Inconsistencies deal with our behaviour, insincerities deal with our relationships.

Again you are like a television that is always on. So when you tell your children that they need to respect those in authority and then you talk about what jerk your boss is, what is the lesson you are teaching? What are we teaching our children about our elected officials, or their teachers or the police?

What are we teaching our children about how to treat their future spouse? Probably one of the most serious repercussions of the do as I say not as I do mentality will be in the stability of the family unit as we see more and more children following the pattern that their parents set for them. Do you want your child to speak to their spouse the way you speak to yours?

It must be traumatic for a child when they are told by their parents “We don’t love each other anymore but we will always love you.” That’s reassuring, not! Because they had probably heard their parents profess their love for each other at some point as well. And they know how that ended.

So then we have children whose main model of marriage is one which ended in divorce and then people get upset when their kid’s marriages follow the same path as theirs.

We Exasperate Them with Our Irrelevance

There is a great description of King David in the book of Acts it says: Acts 13:36 For after David had done the will of God in his own generation, he died and was buried with his ancestors, and his body decayed. Very simply David did what he had to do when he had to do it and then he died. He didn’t do the will of God in his father’s generation or in his grandfather’s generation but in his own generation. This is 2012 it’s not 1972 or 1982 or even 2002 it’s 2012. And our children are living their lives in their days not yours and not mine. Like David they will have to serve God in their own generation.

Now I know that things are different now than when you were a kid. And that things weren’t as easy then as they were now. Am I right? The only thing I don’t know is the story that you string to your kids about what it was like when you were growing up. But I can guess. I’m sure that you tell them how you loved school, and always got straight A’s and never talked back to your parents or teachers and how you delivered all of the newspapers in your town no matter what the weather and never complained about anything.

Have you told them yet how you had to get up at four in the morning and break the ice out of the basin to wash and then before dawn you had to milk the 200 cows and split 10 cord of wood before walking 17 miles to school mostly in snow storms, and back then we really had snow. And then when you got home you had to do your chores all over again and study by candlelight and be in bed by six. Am I close?

Hey I understand I’m fifty one and every year the winters get colder, the snow gets deeper, the walk to school gets longer, my grades get better, the herd of cows gets larger, and that pile of fire wood gets higher and higher. Son when I was your age.

And the worst part is that I was never an A student, I caught a bus or drove 11 out of 12 of my years in school. We had electric heat so we didn’t burn wood, and never owned a cow. In fact I’m working on a new story to tell the kids. “Son when I was your age we didn’t have Wii or X-box all we had was electronic pong, remember that? We didn’t have computers we only had calculators and they only added, subtracted, multiplied and divided. And when I did get a computer it had 2 k of memory and I bought the expansion pack that added another 14 K. And when I was your age we only got two channels on our black and white TV and you had to get up to change those channels.” Doesn’t sound as good does it? Maybe I’ll go back to the cows.

Today is 2012, it’s been almost 40 years since I was a teenager and it’s a whole new world out there, and things are a lot different. Our kids have been through a couple of recessions,; they will inherit a monstrous national debt that will be our legacy to them. They have to cope with wonderful travesties of nature like aids and HIV. Beer is no longer the biggest thrill in town and neither is grass. Coke and crack are freely available and more is on its way. These aren’t the simpler times that we grew up in, so let’s not try to convince our kids that they are.

Elinor Moraunt was an British writer who lived about a hundred years ago. She tells how once she stopped her daughter from doing something by saying: “I was never allowed to do that when I was your age.” To which her daughter responded “But you must remember, mother, that you were then, and I'm now.”

And I know in your mind the kids aren’t the way they were back then either, as one writer stated, “Our youth love luxury, they have bad manners, contempt for authority, they show disrespect for their elders and would rather talk then exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of the households. They no longer rise when their elders enter the room; they contradict their parents, talk in front of company, gobble their food and terrorize their teachers.” Of course that was written twenty three hundred years ago by Socrates.

We Exasperate Them With Our Insulation Part of our job is to protect our children. And that is a serious responsibility. Especially when they are little. But we can’t wrap them in bubble wrap forever.

That’s a toughie isn’t’ it? Most of us have spent the majority of our adult lives protecting our kids, maybe protecting them too much. Some lesson will only be learned when we have to pay for them and if mommy and daddy are always there to pick up the pieces and pay the bill those lessons will never be learned.

Deborah was forever putting her hand up on the stove when we lived in Truro. And we warned her about it and confession time probably slapped her hand and told her no and explained about pain. And it wasn’t until she was about two and a half and she reached up and laid her hand on a burner that had just been turned off that she learned her lesson. And do you know she never put her hand on that stove again. Because sometimes you have to touch a hot stove to discover how hot it really is.

I mentioned before that when I was growing up Dad always told me “If you are going to dance you got to pay the fiddler.” Maybe it’s time that we introduced our kids to the fiddler.

So if we aren’t supposed to provoke our children to anger or exasperate them what are we supposed to do? Let’s go back to the scripture Ephesians 6:4 Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger by the way you treat them. Rather, bring them up with the discipline and instruction that comes from the Lord.

So instead of provoking them we need to bring them up with the discipline of the Lord and instruct them but what does that mean? For some folks it goes back to “Spare the rod and spoil the child” and that is using the discipline as a verb, but in this case it is a noun and the word that is used in the original language literally meant calling attention to something or a mild rebuke or warning. Which goes along with the definition from dictionary.com where it is spelled out this way: dis·ci·pline [dis-uh-plin] 1. training to act in accordance with rules.

So this means that parents are to be the first line of instruction into God’s word for their children. That’s why Solomon reminds us in Proverbs 22:6 Direct your children onto the right path, and when they are older, they will not leave it.

And the only way you are going to be able to show them the right path is if you know it yourself. So commit yourself to doing the right things for your kid’s spiritual education. Bring them early and consistently to church, they are going to take their cues from you about how important church attendance is. And if you tell them that it is a priority but it takes third or fourth place on the list for things you do on Sunday, church is really, really, really important except when there are sports that get in the way or the weather is too nice or the weather is too not nice, or there is company coming, or company is here or the company just left or we are going somewhere to be company what is that really saying to them?

We have a great kids program here and we have a great youth program, but they will only be of benefit to your kids if they are in them.

And that means exposing your children to Christian books and Christian music and sending them to Christian camps and youth rallies. Because if you want your child to be a good hockey player then you make the effort, and if you want your child to be a good musician you make the effort and if you want your child to be a good student you make the effort. So if you want your child to be a good Christ follower then you have to make the . . . effort.

Two things to finish up I’ve said it before and it bears repeating again and again. 1) If you have children who are grown up and you have never had any real problems with them and they are serving God then I would suggest that instead of patting yourself on the back that you would be far better to get down on your knees and thank God, because as my daddy used to say “I would expect it is more good luck then good management.” He also said “There’s only 18 inches between a pat on the back and a kick in the pants.” But that’s a different story. And 2) is just as important. If your kids haven't turned out the way you think they should have and if you feel a little disappointed and even a mite embarrassed sometimes then I have a deep and profound thought for you, write it down and carry it in your wallet, engrave it on your mind cause here it is, “Always remember that God has trouble with his kids too.”

The Puzzle of Marriage

2012-01-15T03:27:00.000-08:00

It is said that Socrates was asked by a young man whether or not he would recommend marriage, Socrates replied by saying “By all means marry. If you get a good wife, you will become happy; and if you get a bad one, you will become a philosopher and the world needs more philosophers.”

Last week I finished my message on family by stating: If there is one word that sums up successful families it is commitment. And so let’s begin this week by stating the one word that sums up a successful marriage is commitment.

If a family is going to succeed there needs to be a commitment. And that is why marriage has been so important throughout human history because it is a couple publically saying “We are committed to each other, forever.” Whether it was an elaborate ceremony or a simple ceremony marriage is public statement of intent. That is why a segment of the gay community was so adamant in their desire to have the right to marry. It wasn’t to undermine marriage for the rest of us, it wasn’t because they wanted to make a mockery of the institution it was because they recognized the importance of making that “Lifelong commitment” they wanted to be able to say to their friends and family and the world at large “we are committed to one another.” For right or for wrong.

(Video of weddings)

What do they have in common? Not a lot, although the Princess Bride is my favourite wedding movie scene of all time. But if you watch in each case it was a public statement saying: We are committed to each other. Whether vows recited in a grand cathedral, jumping the broom in a slave compound or posting your vows on the door of the staff room, legally I don’t recommend the last one. Whether that is actually the case or not will be revealed in time but for that moment in time that is their desire and intent. Do you remember your wedding vows? When you recited these words or words very similar. I take you to be my wedded husband or wife, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do us part, according to God’s holy law and thereto I pledge you my faith. And we meant it. Not one of us went through that ceremony thinking, “I’m going to do this again in 5 years or 15 years or if you are a Hollywood celebrity in 6 months”

Which is why Princess Diana said “I think like any marriage, especially when you’ve had divorced parents like myself, you’d want to try even harder to make it work.”

And in most cases that is what is missing when a couple is simply living together, they have not publically stated “this is forever” and everyone knows that it could end tomorrow if one or the other just walks away. And don’t let anyone tell you that living common-law after a certain length of time is the same as being married legally. If you live together for thirty years and tomorrow you decide it’s over, it’s over. You might have to divide some assets but it is how do you say “tout fini”.

Sometimes I will talk to a couple who are living together and their rationale is “We want to see if it will work before we get married.”

The best of intentions perhaps but to quote my favourite philosopher, Yogi Berra “In theory there is no difference between theory and practice but in practice there is.”

Read this interesting article online at www.nytimes.com “Couples who lived together before marrying have nearly an 80 percent higher divorce rate than those who did not and they seem to have less regard for the institution, according to a study of Swedish women by the National Bureau of Economic Research here.” One of the authors who was involved in the study stated “Swedes were chosen because they tend to precede American social trends by 10 to 15 years.”

So what is this marriage of which I speak? And why is it so important?

Socially: Marriage Protects the Family Let’s start here with some secular definitions The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language mar·riage (mărʹĭj) noun
1. The legal union of a man and woman as husband and wife.

www.dictionary.com agrees because their definition is

1. The social institution under which a man and woman establish their decision to live as husband and wife by legal commitments, religious ceremonies, etc.

Obviously not Canadian definitions.

The reason that cultures throughout history have tended to lean toward a monogamous form of marriage was to strengthen society through stable family units. Without some type of formal agreement, there was nothing to hold family units and thus society together.

We are starting to rediscover that with men who are paying child support to children from one or two failed relationships, while not really being fathers.

Moms who are left raising children by themselves or ending up in blended relationships where parents can’t really function as parents. Is it any wonder that the concept of “till death do we part” was an integral part of society up until the last forty years. Reproduction doesn’t make you a parent it just proves that the plumbing works.

Whether it is a full blown wedding that cost tens of thousands of dollars or simply jumping the broom, marriage is simply a couple affirming their desire to spend the rest of their life with each other and to raise a family.

Religiously: Marriage was ordained by God. It’s interesting to note that in a society that is as non-church going and pagan as ours is, church weddings are still the way to go for the majority of Canadians. They are looking for the scripture reading, the prayers and the god talk. I’m not sure if it’s seeking to reclaim a little bit of religious heritage, if it’s just considered the right thing to do or if they are just covering all their bases. Something borrowed something new something religious something blue.

And indeed the concept of marriage is the very first human institution. In the account of creation, after Eve is created Adam says in Genesis 2:23-24 “At last!” the man exclaimed. “This one is bone from my bone, and flesh from my flesh! She will be called ‘woman,’ because she was taken from ‘man.’ “Actually what he said was “Hubba hubba.” The scripture continues by saying This explains why a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one. 1126 words into the bible, as soon as we have man and woman the concept of marriage is defined. You have two and they come together and you have one. And that oneness was defined by God. It happens emotionally, it happens spiritual and in the act of lovemaking the couple becomes one physically. And that is why within the scripture the act of sex is set apart for husband and wife. Otherwise how can you become one with this person and that person and another person without giving up a little bit of yourself each time?

And so within the religious sense when God created man and woman he created marriage. In verse 25 it says Genesis 2:25 Now the man and his wife were both naked, but they felt no shame. It doesn’t say Adam and the woman, or Adam and his girlfriend; it says Adam and his wife. And the same as the social reason it was for the good of the couple, the good of the individuals and the good of the resulting family.

But how long has the church been involved in the actual marriage ceremony? Probably not as long as you would think. The act of getting married has always involved something even if it was as simple as the couple stating that they were married, you say that sounds like they were simply living together. No, they had made a commitment to each other and to their family and to their community as being married, it was not a temporary thing it was a commitment. As society progressed the commitment would often be accompanied by a celebration, remember in John 2:1-2 The next day there was a wedding celebration in the village of Cana in Galilee. Jesus’ mother was there, and Jesus and his disciples were also invited to the celebration. The scriptures don’t tell us about the wedding ceremony simply the wedding celebrations. As a matter of fact if you read through the bible you will see all kinds of references to wedding feasts and wedding celebrations but not to wedding ceremonies.

Up until the ninth century the church was not involved in the mechanics of people becoming married at all, then prayers and blessings were added to the celebration, some by the priest and some by the couple. Around the twelfth century it became customary to ask the parish priest to take part and he would question the couple concerning their intentions but the church still didn’t take an official part.

It really wasn’t until 1563 that the Council of Trent required that Catholic marriages be celebrated at a Catholic church by a priest and before two witnesses. By the eighteenth century marriage had become a religious event throughout Europe.

Spiritually: Marriage is an Analogy of God’s love for us. In the Old Testament Israel is called God’s bride. Isaiah 62:4-5 Never again will you be called “The Forsaken City” or “The Desolate Land.” Your new name will be “The City of God’s Delight” and “The Bride of God,” for the Lord delights in you and will claim you as his bride. Your children will commit themselves to you, O Jerusalem, just as a young man commits himself to his bride. Then God will rejoice over you as a bridegroom rejoices over his bride.

Throughout the New Testament the relationship between Christ and His church relies on the analogy of a marriage. In 2 Corinthians 11:2 The Bible says For I am jealous for you with the jealousy of God himself. I promised you as a pure bride to one husband—Christ. In Ephesians 5:25-26 For husbands, this means love your wives, just as Christ loved the church. He gave up his life for her to make her holy and clean, washed by the cleansing of God’s word. And several times in the Revelation the church is called the Bride of Christ.

When the prophet Isaiah was looking for a way to describe the salvation of God listen to the words he chooses Isaiah 61:10 I am overwhelmed with joy in the Lord my God! For he has dressed me with the clothing of salvation and draped me in a robe of righteousness. I am like a bridegroom in his wedding suit or a bride with her jewels.

So if Marriage is important how do we make it work? And that’s a good question because marriage doesn’t have a great success rate, although it getting better. Back in 1987, it was expected that 50.6% of all marriages in Canada would end before the 30th wedding anniversary. That’s where we get the stat that half of all marriages will fail. Statistically it is now expected that only 37.7% of all Canadian marriages will end in a divorce before the 30th anniversary.

There aren’t many things that cost as much and require the commitment of a marriage that we would enter into if we knew there was a 38 % chance it wouldn’t work. Couple of questions then. Would you let a Dr. perform surgery if he lost 37.7 % of his patients on the operating table? Would you hire a lawyer who lost 37.7 % of his cases? Would you consider your car safe if the brakes worked 63.3 % of the time? Of course you wouldn’t you’d have to be a complete idiot. Brad Paisley summed it up in his song “If Love Was a Plane”. (Play clip)

So are there some things we should be aware of that will help raise the percentage? Some people say that it’s pre-marital counselling, but I’m not sure.

Over the past thirty years of ministry I have done pre-marriage counselling with literally dozens of couples and I have come to one inescapable conclusion. Most of those people were not in their right mind. It didn’t matter how poor, broke or destitute they were, they behaved like they had the world by the tail. If you tried to talk budgets with them and explained that finances are the primary reason for marriage break ups why they’d look at you like you were crazy. “Why pastor, money might come between other couples but it would never come between us.”

If one or the other has a family that makes the Adams family look well-adjusted they say, “So what, we’ll just love them anyways.”

If you try to talk to them about possible sexual issues in their marriage they look at you as if you have come from another world and have a third eye in the middle of your forehead, “what, us have sexual issues in our marriage, I don’t think so pastor.” I must marry a select group of people because when I explain to them that four out of ten marriages end in the divorce courts they always assure me that they are in the six out of ten group that doesn’t.

Sometimes I wonder why I even bother to waste my time in premarital counselling anyway. They cuddle up close, hold hands, make puppy dog eyes at one another give me all the answers that they think I might want to hear. When couples are dating and engaged they are blind to one another’s faults. You’ve heard it said that love is blind, sure is I’m convinced of that. Love is blind and deaf and stupid.

I am sure of the fact that one of the main reasons why marriages fail is because people don’t know what they are getting themselves in for. If we could show them where their life will be in five or ten or fifteen years we could cut the divorce rate dramatically, of course that would be because fewer people would actually get married.

Now at this point I should be able to tell you the things that will make your marriage a success and guarantee that you will be one of the couples who will stay together forever. . .

If I could do that than I would have already written the book that would make me rich and I would never have to worry about those couples that I have married or provided marriage counselling to. Sorry, I would suspect that my batting average is the same as the national average. Over a hundred years ago Friedrich Nietzsche, the German philosopher, wrote “It is obvious that all sense has gone out of modern marriage; which is, however, no objection to marriage but to modernity.”

No secrets but here are some things I have learned over the past thirty years of marriage and ministry.

There is nothing deep here people. It Will Take Two to Make it Work. One person cannot make a marriage work and one person cannot save a marriage. That may sound fatalistic but that is the reality of the situation. You say “Come on Denn, nothing is impossible.” You ever try to dribble a football? In this day and age if one person wants the marriage to end the marriage will end, you may drag it out but it will make two to make it work.

A Wedding is a Point in Time, A Marriage is a Line of Time Randolph Ray said “Marriage is never finished, the lesson is never learned, and the effort is never at an end. Marriage like life is a matter of solving the little things, the big things generally take care of themselves.”

Men And Women Are Not The Same. I think this may be the most important thing you will hear today. Too many people think men and women are the same except the fiddly bits. But we are different. I know that I’m making a generalization and all generalizations are wrong, but in most cases men and women are different. We think different and we react different. In Australia they would say “We are as different as chalk and cheese.”

Stephen Hawking is considered by many to be one of the smartest man in the world today, and last week on his seventieth birthday he was asked about his successes and failure as well as regrets he has and then he was asked what he spent a lot of time pondering and his reply was “Women. They are a complete mystery.”

A great book on this subject is “Men are like Waffles Women are like spaghetti” by Bill and Pam Farrel. The premise of the book, and again it is a generalization, is that with men we put all of our life in boxes with walls around them. And while it seems we get better at multi-tasking as we get older, we are just getting faster at jumping between boxes. Women on the other hand everything connects and one noodle touches every other noodle on the plate and where this really comes into play is in communication so I’m going to let Pam and Bill explain. (Video clip)

There is another difference between men and women and it is defined by the most unusual source. Albert Einstein is best known for his theory of relativity but this is a lot more practical for us today. “Men marry women with the hope they won’t be changed, while women marry men with the hope that they will. Invariably, they both end up disappointed.”

And finally here is the secret, If You Are Both Committed to Making it Work It Should. Notice I didn’t say it will, only that it should. A few years ago I was called upon to perform my cousin’s wedding, I almost said marry my cousin but that is just too close to home. And here was the essence of what I told the couple “at some point you are not going to want to be married to your spouse, and at that point you will have to decide if you are willing to work at it or if you are going to call it quits.” Often times the problems that people see as insurmountable are only temporary and often divorce is a long term solution to a short term problem. If we are committed and determined to make it work, it probably will. Now let me pray for all of the marriages here at Cornerstone.

The Puzzle of Family

2012-01-08T03:27:00.001-08:00

It was Tolstoy who said “All happy families resemble one another; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

Have you ever stopped to think that both the Old Testament and the New Testament start with the story of a family? And the bible itself is a collection of family stories. There are happy families in the bible and there are unhappy families in the bible but there are no perfect families in the bible. Why? Because they are the stories of real families struggling with the same issues that families have always struggled with and will always struggle with. Over the next few weeks we are looking at “Families: finding your place in the Puzzle” Because the secret is not knowing what your husband should do, or what your wife should do or what your kids or parents should do, the secret is to know what your role is.

We all play different roles in the family and even the same role will change as time moves on and the family changes. Spouses have different responsibilities before and after children, parents have different responsibilities as they kids grow up and children have different responsibilities at different times in their lives. And over the next few weeks we are going to look at how those pieces are supposed to fit, and notice I said “Supposed to”.

The secret of a really good puzzle is that there are no identical pieces. In a jigsaw puzzle you might try to force a piece to fit, but that’s not what you are supposed to do. And it’s the same way with crossword puzzles there may be other words that will fit the squares but they don’t fit the clue, or a word that fits the clue but not the square. And you might try to fudge the spelling or the definition but that’s not the way it is supposed to work.

Today I think most of us define family by the media, whether it be the Waltons and Little House on the Prairie, Leave it to Beaver or Rob and Laura Petrie. The Huxtables or Dan and Roseanne, the Simpsons or Family Guy we are barraged with what family is and what family isn’t.

But every family is different in its own way but I think Tolstoy was right “All happy families resemble one another; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

This morning we are going to try to figure out what those happy families have in common.

What is a family? Our definition of Family would probably be different than it was a generation ago. I know I’m old but when I was a kid I knew exactly one child who had a different last name than his mother’s husband. And probably there were more than that out there but within my limited understanding they were the only divorced people that I knew. And the concept of people living together who weren’t married, I knew it happened because the family whispered about one of my father’s uncles and the lady he lived with, but it was a scandal.

Back then a family was a mother and a father, and their 2.3 children. And when the media wanted to blend a family it happened because of death not divorce. So Mike Brady was a widower and they never mentioned what happened to Carol’s husband.

They weren’t sure what to do with the Mary Tyler Moore, the show’s producers originally wanted Mary Richards to be divorced but were afraid of the back lash from the public and that people would think that she had divorced Rob Petrie. Do you remember when the television character Murphy Brown was pregnant and not married? Even the White House stepped in and expressed an opinion. then Vice President Dan Quayle said “It doesn't help matters when primetime TV has Murphy Brown -- a character who supposedly epitomizes today's intelligent, highly paid, professional woman -- mocking the importance of fathers, by bearing a child alone, and calling it just another ‘lifestyle choice,’”

But that has changed, at least in popular culture. We are told that marriage can no longer be defined the way it had been defined in the past. So now kids grow up in homes with only one biological parent, maybe. People talk about starter marriages like they used to talk about starter homes. And while you might be able to have 1 mom and no dad or 1 dad and no mom or 2 moms or 2 dads or 2 moms and 2 dads apparently the last taboo is that you can’t have 1 dad and 5 moms. At least for now.

So what is family? The dictionary I keep on my desk, a dictionary is a book with lots of pages that is arranged alphabetically, is the Collins Pocket English Dictionary from 1981 and it defines family this way. fam•i•ly [fam-uh-lee, fam-lee] noun, plural -lies, adjective 1) a) a social unit consisting of parents and their children. b) the children of the same parents. I went on line to dictionary.com and it defined family this way 1. a. a basic social unit consisting of parents and their children, considered as a group, whether dwelling together or not: the traditional family. b. a social unit consisting of one or more adults together with the children they care for: a single-parent family.

And I suppose there are as many definitions of family as there are people defining family, it was Ogden Nash who stated “A family is a unit composed not only of children but of men, women, an occasional animal, and the common cold.”

Without reading too much into it Abraham Lincoln said “How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg.”

If the old adage is true “It takes a village to raise a child.” Why do we need families? Why can’t we be content with villages? Well apparently families have always been a part of the plan. I mentioned earlier that both the Old Testament and the New Testament begin with stories of families. The Book of Genesis begins with the story of Adam and Eve and their children. The first family. And the New Testament begins in the book of Matthew with the story of Mary and Joseph and their first born son, Jesus.

I suppose I could have started with Adam and Eve but I’m not sure there is a lot of good to be said about that family. They were disobedient to God, they got turfed out of the Garden and I’m sure that there were a lot of bitter angry words spoken in that family. Recriminations over whose fault it was that they had eaten the forbidden fruit. Their story culminates with their first born killing his brother is a fit of jealous rage. Maybe my father was right when he said “Everybody is good for something, even if it’s only being a bad example.”

But then I thought, hey we are still close to Christmas and tonite we are showing “The Nativity Story” in our study so let’s start this series off by discovering what Mary and Joseph can tell us about a successful family.

It was Charles Caleb Colton who wrote “The family is the most basic unit of government. As the first community to which a person is attached and the first authority under which a person learns to live, the family establishes society's most basic values.” Our society will be shaped by our families and so we need to be very careful with our families 2500 years ago Confucius said “The strength of a nation derives from the integrity of the home.”

So what should our families look like? What should they act like? Perhaps if we look at the family that Jesus was raised in we can find some answers. Because Jesus wasn’t raised in a bubble, he may have been the Son of God but he was raised in an ordinary home, with ordinary parents and ordinary siblings.

I think one of the things that I marvel at here was the trust that was displayed in this family This was a Trusting Family. You know the story I preached on it all though December, you heard it sung about in the malls and on the radio and you read about it in Christmas cards. The story is summed up in Matthew 1:18 This is how Jesus the Messiah was born. His mother, Mary, was engaged to be married to Joseph. But before the marriage took place, while she was still a virgin, she became pregnant through the power of the Holy Spirit. And here we are two thousand years down the road going; yep that’s how it happened. But that’s not how it happens, virgins don’t become pregnant without help. Mary knew that and Joseph knew that and yet if their marriage was going to work, if their family was going to be the family that God intended his son to be raised in then there would have to be trust. Mary trusted God and ultimately Joseph had to trust Mary.

And really Mary got the easy part. God said that he would become pregnant, Mary declared that was impossible because she had never been with a man and the angel told her not to worry that with God nothing was impossible. So for Mary, as long as she knew what she had done and what she hadn’t done if she ended up pregnant there was only one answer, and that was that God had done the impossible. But Joseph had to take Mary’s word for it. I know that there was the entire angel thing going on as well but ultimately Joseph had to take the high ground and believe that his fiancé did not and would not betray him. The bible tells us Matthew 1:24-25 When Joseph woke up, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded and took Mary as his wife. But he did not have sexual relations with her until her son was born. And Joseph named him Jesus.

A family will never be successful and happy without an element of trust. And that means we take the high road and until we are proved wrong that we always think the best of our family members and that we always trust them to do what is right.

I love the quote by Elsa Einstein, Albert Einstein’s wife who said “No, I don't understand my husband's theory of relativity, but I know my husband, and I know he can be trusted.” And you know that if Elsa trusted her husband with the key to the universe that she trusted him with the little things as well.

And if trust is broken it can be rebuilt but it takes time and evidence. I have sat across from a man who was unfaithful in his marriage and he looked at me and said “My wife doesn’t trust me.” And I felt like saying “Why should she?” but I didn’t instead I spoke about time being a healer and how he would have to earn back her trust.

And here is the secret if it is going to work, even if you have been disappointed you will eventually have to trust that person again or your life and relationship will be miserable. That is what Jesus was talking about concerning forgiveness. If the pattern continues then they have proved themselves to untrustworthy and that is a different issue.

I think we should trust our spouse and I think that we should trust our kids and I think that kids should trust their parents. And yes perhaps you will be disappointed but I would like to think that your trust will prove itself.

This Was a Godly Family We don’t read a lot about the time while Jesus was a child but there are two statements that reveal a lot. In Luke’s account we read: Luke 2:39 When Jesus’ parents had fulfilled all the requirements of the law of the Lord, they returned home to Nazareth in Galilee. What were the requirements of the law of the Lord that Luke talked about? It was basically when Mary and Joseph had Jesus dedicated. That wasn’t what it was called but that’s what it was. They presented their child to God, gave thanks for him and committed themselves to raising their child in a godly home.

And that commitment was shown later in the story. In the scripture that was read earlier we discovered this: Luke 2:41 Every year Jesus’ parents went to Jerusalem for the Passover festival. We’ve mentioned before how important it was and still is for those of the Jewish faith to celebrate the Passover in Jerusalem. And I would suspect that for many it was just a dream or a “if only” thing. You know if only we had the money, if only we had the time, if only Jerusalem was closer. But the scriptures said that every year Jesus parents went to Jerusalem for the Passover. And it wasn’t a short journey they tell us that it is about 65 miles or a little over 100 kms as the crow flies but they weren’t travelling by crow they were travelling by foot so it was probably a four day trip. But it was a priority for them, there were probably other things they could have done with their time and with their money but it was a priority for them to do the right thing and to expose their children to the things of God. And every family here will have to decide what will be a priority for them. Is it God and the church and if so how does that work out in everyday life?

Do you remember the last part of the scripture that was read this morning? Sure you do, Mary and Joseph find Jesus in the temple listening to the teachers and asking questions and then it says in Luke 2:47 All who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. Time and time again it the scriptures tell us that people were amazed at his teaching. But that didn’t just happen, that was the result of being raised in a home where God’s word was taught and respected. And that’s where Proverbs 22:6 comes in Direct your children onto the right path, and when they are older, they will not leave it. We all know the truth of “More is caught then taught”, so the question is when it comes to God what is being caught in your home?

This was a Protecting Family. Families are supposed to be a safe place to go. In the news lately we’ve been hearing about children being killed by their parents but that’s not what a family is supposed to be like. Families are where we are to be protected, there is not a lot written about Jesus childhood but it is very telling what is written, we are told in Luke 2:40 There the child grew up healthy and strong. He was filled with wisdom, and God’s favour was on him.

He grew up healthy and strong, so his physical needs were being met, he was filled with wisdom so his educational and emotional needs were being met and God’s favour was on him, so his spiritual needs were being met.

In our scripture reading this morning we ended with Joseph and Mary finding Jesus, but listen to the next verse Luke 2:48. “Son,” his mother said to him, “why have you done this to us? Your father and I have been frantic, searching for you everywhere.” That’s what families do they worry over one another and do what it takes to protect each other. And realize that we don’t always get it right, we can’t protect our kids and our family from everything. Think about it, Mary and Joseph lost Jesus. They lost the Son of God, how do you explain that? Have you ever lost or broke something that was loaned to you?

But they did everything they could to find him.

There should be no abuse or harm in a family, not physically and not emotionally. As part of a family you should be safe from physical harm, and from emotional harm. And not to minimize physical abuse but sometimes the most hurtful things that are done in a family are done with the tongue and not with the fists.

And we will always try to protect our kids, sometimes it’s frustrating as kids grow up and parents keep trying to protect them but that’s all part of it. I was talking to my dad awhile back about a decision I had to make and he started in as if I was 15 years old ago, have you thought about this have you thought about that? Hey Dad I’m 51 not 15. But he was just concerned and that is because children grow out of childhood but parents never grow out of parenthood.

It Wasn’t a Perfect Family Maybe you’ve heard the old adage “If you find the perfect church don’t go, you’ll ruin it.” And if you find a perfect family stay away so you don’t ruin it. As long as families are made up of people there will be issues. Can’t get around that. Every one of us has the potential to ruin the perfect family. I remember years ago spending the night at a couple who were about the same age as us and their public persona was that of the perfect family, with perfect kids and nothing ever went wrong they had it all under control. That morning they couldn’t find the keys to the car, someone had misplaced them and the facade began to crack. It was mildly amusing from my perspective, probably less so from theirs. Someone said “Families are like fudge, mostly sweet with some nuts.”

I mentioned earlier that Mary and Joseph lost Jesus. But there had to be some responsibility there from Jesus. Even if he wasn’t functioning in God mode he must have known that it wasn’t a good idea to just disappear like that, that maybe just maybe his parents would be upset. I wonder if he got grounded? I hope so.

There is a very telling part of our story in Mark’s gospel, Mark 3:20-21 One time Jesus entered a house, and the crowds began to gather again. Soon he and his disciples couldn’t even find time to eat. When his family heard what was happening, they tried to take him away. “He’s out of his mind,” they said. Jesus family didn’t get it, his siblings thought he had lost it. But ultimately they came around.

If there is one word that sums up successful families it is commitment. They are committed to one another for the long haul. And that is what marriage is about, and we are going to cover that more next week as we look at “The Puzzle of Marriage”.

If you are old enough to have seen the Mini-series “Roots” back in the last century you might recall a scene were a couple jumped the broom. It was a ritual to signify that they were starting a new life together. And in most cases that is what is missing when a couple is simply living together, they have not publically stated “this is forever” and everyone knows that it could end tomorrow if one or the other just walks away.

And simply reproducing together does not make you a family. It simply means all the plumbing works.

I think it’s interesting that the family we talked about wouldn’t have fallen into the first definition of family, you remember the one from 1) a) a social unit consisting of parents and their children. b) the children of the same parents. Because Jesus’ mother was Mary but his father wasn’t Joseph and they made it work because they were committed to making it work. And if we are going to figure out the puzzle of our families it will only be when we are committed to making it happen.

Brand New Year Same Old Vision

2012-01-01T05:46:00.001-08:00

Well here we are about 2000 years down the road from that first church. I’m sure if Peter and John had of ever discussed the future of the Christian church that they could not have envisioned what it would be like 2000 years later. I mean 2000 years! The Jewish religion wasn’t even 2000 years old at that point.

Close your eyes, come on work with me people. For just a moment try to envision January 1st in the year 4012. It’s twelve years after the Y4K crisis.

So, the year is 4012, imagine what your work will be like, or your home maybe we will finally have the flying cars they promised when I was a kid. Imagine what church in the year 4012 could be like. Almost incomprehensible isn’t it? I know that you’re thinking the church won’t be here in 2000 years, “Denn the world won’t even be here in 2000 years.”

I can almost hear an echo, “Come on Pete” Paul said, “the Church won’t be here in 2000 years, and the world won’t even be here in 2000 years.” Well it’s been 2000 years, and a lot of water under the bridge. It started with eleven apostles and a handful of followers. Fifty days after the resurrection there were 120 of them gathered together in an upstairs room in Jerusalem when the Holy Spirit came just as Jesus promised. And what were the immediate ramifications? Listen to the description of that day we read this Acts 2:41 Those who believed what Peter said were baptized and added to the church that day—about 3,000 in all.

Three thousand people, not a bad altar call. If we added three thousand people to the group we have now we would have to have a Saturday Evening service, 3 Sunday Morning Services and a Sunday Evening Service. In the new 700 seat worship centre we would have to build.

But it didn’t stop there, listen to what Luke records in Acts 2:46-47 They worshiped together at the Temple each day, met in homes for the Lord’s Supper, and shared their meals with great joy and generosity— all the while praising God and enjoying the goodwill of all the people. And each day the Lord added to their fellowship those who were being saved.

Did you catch it? It wasn’t just on Sundays that people’s lives were turned around and it wasn’t just at church where it happened it was each and every day and everywhere. And it wasn’t that long before it was reported in Acts 4:4 But many of the people who heard their message believed it, so the number of believers now totaled about 5,000 men, not counting women and children.

Five thousand men, not counting woman and children. And you know if there were five thousand men there would have been eight thousand women. We are talking about a period of time spanning months perhaps weeks. And even then, with that type of growth and that type of expansion, the early believers had no concept of what would happen. They really were winging it, flying by the seat of their pants at that point.

They had no idea that in just thirty years that persecution would break out under Emperor Nero and tens of thousands of believers would die martyr’s deaths over the next 250 years, or that Christianity would become the religion of the empire under Constantine in 313. They couldn’t have known about the split which separated the church into Eastern and Western factions. Or the Reformation started under Martin Luther in 1521, or the Methodist Revivals of the 1700s led by John Wesley, or the Holiness Movement of the 1800’s or that late in the 20^th century a new church called Cornerstone would begin.

They couldn’t see that far, they couldn’t believe that far, all they knew was that God was working in their lives, and in the lives of their families and neighbours. Let me say this, it doesn’t matter if the church lasts another 2000 years or another 2 days the same God who worked in the lives of believers 2000 years ago is still working in the lives of believers today.

So what can we learn on January 1^st 2012from that early church?

1) We Need to Learn From The Past The early church wasn’t very old and yet they still reached back to their beginnings. The apostles were the more primary leaders in the church and whenever they were called upon to talk about the church or to defend the church they took their listeners back to the events that had happened with Jesus.

They spoke of his miracles, of his crucifixion and his resurrection. Now to us that’s theology, or doctrine. To them it was their history; it was where they had come from. It was who they were, and why they were. And 2000 years later we can’t simply relegate the past to the archives to be forgotten.

To many of you Cornerstone has always been here, or to others we’ve only been around since the building was constructed in 2005. This is the seventh New Year’s message I have preached in this building. But it is the seventeenth New Year’s message I have preached at Cornerstone.

We have a past, a history, and a story of who we are and why we are here. And we are who we are because of that story. And we need to learn lessons from our past. We need to learn from our successes and we need to learn from our failures. When we look at our past it goes back to August of 1994 when the Guptills arrived in Bedford after four years in Australia and our mandate, or mission or dream was to start a new Wesleyan Church in Bedford. A church that would be non-traditional and that would appeal to a whole generation of people who were disenchanted with the church they grew up in.

We often joke that we started with Angela and I, Stephen and Deborah, the cat and the hamster and then the hamster died. Four months later we had been joined by Ian and Sylvia Richardson and Stan and Karen Wickwire and their family. In April of 95 we began worshipping as Bedford Community Church, we went into that first service with a firm commitment, to be a part of our church, from 13 people. 4 of them were under the age of 10. By the end of the first month we had a group of about 40 men, women and children. Not quite the 3000 from the day of Pentecost

For the first year and half we worshipped together in the Lion’s Den Community Centre at the Lebrun centre in Bedford and then we moved to the Empire theatre in Bedford in September of 96, yep there used to be an empire in Bedford it was where the Lawntons is now in Mill Cove and we stayed there for over five years returning to the Lion’s Den in January of 2002 where we stayed until the new building was constructed in 2005.

And we were all beginners, this church planting stuff was a new adventure for everyone involved and we did some things right, and we did some things wrong and we need to learn from all of that. With caution. After all there were things that we did in those first couple of years that didn’t work because we didn’t have the right people or the maturity to pull it off. And we need to be wise enough not to discard those things just because they didn’t work the first time. We’ve also discovered that nothing we do is now engraved in stone. When we try something new you’ll often hear the words “This is an experiment” that’s because I got tired of having to backtrack after a mistake and apologize.

There are things that we’ve done that have worked and we’ve learned that we need to keep doing those things, as long as they continue to work. But only as long as they continue to work. You see we are not in the business of breeding Sacred Cows.

The nice thing about starting a church from scratch was that I didn’t have to listen to what I refer to as the seven last words of the dying church: “We have always done it that way.” So, who cares? If it works great, and I don’t just mean that it’s not a failure, I mean is it working to help achieve our goal which is to “depopulate hell.” If it’s not working to achieve that purpose then it’s not working. And if we are only doing things because we’ve always done them then we are breeding Sacred Cows, and my philosophy with sacred cows is that they make the best burgers.

Dakota tribal wisdom passed from generation to generation tells us, “If you find yourself riding a dead horse, get off.” It won’t do any good to reflect on all the great times you had riding the horse when it was still alive, if the horse is dead we need to get off.

It was George Santayana who wrote “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” As we march into a New Year our goal is not to replicate the past, but to learn from it. We don’t want to be the church that we were in 1995 or 2005 or 2011.

2) We Need To Look To The Future In many ways the focus of the early Church was tomorrow, because they were looking forward to the return of Christ. Time and time again they were encouraged about the “Day of the Lord”, and his second coming. For them it was something that could happen at any time, and to a certain degree we have lost that sense of anticipation. But even though we need to anticipate the return of Christ, we can’t lose sight of the future as far as planning goes. I know he’s coming back, but I don’t know when. And neither do you or anyone else, regardless of what they say. And so we need to live as if He was going to return tomorrow, and plan as if we have another 2000 years before he comes back.

I did not come back from Australia to start a church that would average 41 in the morning service, which was what we averaged our first year, nor did I come back to start a church that would average 241 in the morning worship, which is what we averaged last year or the 265 we are averaging now. I would have been better off staying in Brisbane, growing a church there and enjoying the beaches, and they have some incredible beaches. I came back to Nova Scotia with a dream of starting a church that would have a major impact in this area and this city. A church that would not only impact individuals but would impact other churches, and that dream is every bit as fresh today as it was seventeen years ago.

But the reality is that it wasn’t always that fresh. There were times that I doubted the vision that God had given me, there were times that I would have been happy to walk away from it. By 2003 and I tired, we had been worshipping together for 8 years and I had been working an outside job for half of that time to keep things afloat. We had been to 70 in our average morning attendance four different years and then for a variety of reasons we would drop back to the mid-forties again.

In 2003 we were averaging 51 and I didn’t want to do it anymore. My home church in Saint John was in the middle of a pastoral search so I asked the district Superintendent to let them know I would be available. And he tossed my name in the ring and then we met for breakfast and he told me “Denn, past performance often dictates future potential and you don’t have a lot going for you right now.” I was a little put out. I told him, “If I had of taken a church of 50 and eight years later it was a church of over a hundred and the offering had increased by $70,000.00 I would be a success but I started with nothing and now we have a church of 50 with a budget of $70,000.00 so I’m a failure?”

And then he told me that Saint John was going to have an interim pastor for two years and if I could turn things around I might be considered then. My response was that if I could turn Bedford around, I wouldn’t be going anywhere, and here we are.

In the first year that we were worshipping together I had two people tell me that they had dreams of Cornerstone at some point in the future with hundreds of people streaming in to be seated in the worship centre. And there were a number of years that I doubted those dreams but to stand here on Christmas Eve and see hundreds of people streaming in to be seated in the worship centre it’s hard not to believe.

But we aren’t there yet, I dream of a church that will not only have an impact on individuals but of a church that will have an impact on other churches.

And part of what our staff does it to encourage pastors from other churches. We share our resources, we coach, we encourage. That’s part of the plan.

I love the words that Thomas Jefferson, wrote in a letter to John Adams "I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past."

Cornerstone Wesleyan Church won’t always be a mid-sized church; to steal from Martin Luther King Jr. “I have a dream, a dream of a day when Cornerstone Wesleyan Church will be a driving force in this community, a day when the most disinterested person in the Halifax Regional Municipality won’t be able to ignore what God is doing in this church, a day when literally thousands of souls have been rescued from hell, by God working through the people of Cornerstone”

Can you see it? Because if you can’t see it in your heart you’ll never see it with your eyes. Do I ever get discouraged? Yep, sure do, do I ever stop believing, nope, it may not happen in this year but it will happen. Six years ago we were averaging 42 in our morning worship and if you had of asked people if they could believe that in just six years we would be averaging over 250 and would have 643 out to our Christmas Eve service they would have said “That’s impossible”

But I still believe what the Angel Gabriel told Mary in Luke 1:37 For nothing is impossible with God.” What’s impossible for God? Nothing was impossible for God 2000 years ago, and nothing is impossible for God today.

In saying that we need to Learn from the Past and Look to the future, the most important thing is that we need to Live for the Present. The past is wonderful and as the Russian Author Tatyana Tolstaya said about the Russian people; “For us, the best time is always yesterday.” I think maybe that’s true of all of us. But regardless of how great yesterday was, the key word is was, it’s gone and we cannot recapture it.

And as rosy as the future may be, its’ not here yet, all we have is the present. And this needs to be where we are living. And so what does the present, the next 12 months, the year 2012, that still sounds weird, hold for Cornerstone Wesleyan Church? Good question.

More Folks Involved in Ministry Small Groups, youth Group, creative team, children’s ministry. Wouldn’t you like to be part of the team that shapes who we are? Not negating all the volunteer opportunities at Cornerstone hands but this is front line stuff, where the rubber meets the road.

And that’s not easy for me, I want to do it but as we grow and expand and continue to reach more people the reality is that I can’t do it all, and we will never be able to afford a staff that does it all.

And here is the reality: not only do we need you to be involved in ministry but you need you to be involved in ministry. Because you will learn a lot more and go a lot further in your spiritual life as you prepare to teach others than you ever will simply being taught. And that works from Children’s ministry on up. When you develop and prepare curriculum you will have eureka moments that you will never get simply setting in a chair on Sunday morning.

So the question shouldn’t be “Is there a ministry I can be a part of” the question should be “Is there a ministry that I can lead?”

Strategic Planning For The Future What are we going to do when these two services are filled? The time to be thinking about that is now, not then. Are there more services in our future? Are there satellite services in our future? Church Plants? Because I refuse to be content with what we have. Do I want to be the biggest church in Halifax? By no means, I don’t even need or want to be the biggest Wesleyan church in Halifax.

I get so excited when I talk to AJ Thomas at Deep Water Church in the city and hear what they are doing in the centre of the city with a congregation that for the most part is under 35. Or to talk to the ministry team at Hillside who are talking about a satellite location to reach people that they aren’t able to reach in their present location.

And Ultimately It All Needs To Be Covered In Prayer. We can’t do it ourselves, Gabriel said “With God nothing is impossible” he didn’t say “With Denn nothing is impossible or with Cornerstone nothing is impossible” but “With God nothing is impossible”

I hope that your pray for Cornerstone and the staff on a regular basis. That you ask God to give us the direction we need, to protect us and to use us. This is God’s business and he wants us to succeed in it.

I truly believe that God’s will is to reach as many people as possible with the good news of his salvation and Grace. I don’t think we are being presumption to say God wants this church to succeed and for every church to succeed.

A few years ago another pastor asked me asked me if we should focus on being in God's will or on church growth? I was a little confused and I looked at him and said “I didn’t know I had to pick one, I hadn't realized that they were mutually exclusive.” Personally I'm kind of partial to the theory that the purpose of the church is to grow, that it is God's will. After all that’s what the church did in the book of Acts and throughout the New Testament. Why do people think they have to compromise their relationship with God in order to grow a church?

So I’m looking forward to a brand New Year of doing what God called me to do in 1994.

A Reflection of Tomorrow

2011-12-25T04:55:00.001-08:00

A Reflection of Tomorrow

So here is the question: When do your put Christmas away? We usually do it on New Year’s Day. You know; take down the tree and Christmas cards, remove the lights from outside the house, pack up the nativity scene. And before the first day of the new year is finished so is Christmas, at least for another year. And I would suspect that in a less tangible way that for most folks they will put Christmas away early tomorrow morning. I don’t mean the trappings of Christmas, I mean the essence of Christmas. You know, what Christmas is all about.

For the past month the talk has been about Jesus and his birth, about Angels and Magi, Shepherds and mangers. But that will be done today when the sun goes down. For many people, and unfortunately many who identify themselves in some way with Christ and his church the baby Jesus will be packed up with the manger scene and tucked away until Easter.

Yesterday our total attendance in all of our services was a little over 640 and on Easter Sunday we normally have in excess of 350 in attendance. And I’m not complaining, I love Christmas Eve and consider it one of our primary outreach events. And for the non-churched, non-aligned, non-committed I think it’s great that we have the opportunity to present the gospel to them in such a positive way.

But there are people who we saw last night, who we won’t see again until Easter Sunday who if you asked them would tell you that they were Christians, that they follow Jesus. And yet they seem quite content to leave Jesus either in the cradle or on the cross.

And that certainly isn’t a new phenomenon, 2000 years ago at the first Christmas and then 33 years later when Christ was murdered there were those who were participants in the event and yet it had no impact on their lives whatsoever. It was merely an incident that happened and they moved on and never looked back.

The Inn Keeper and Soldiers Were There How could they know that by simply doing their jobs they were assured a place in history. Granted we don’t know their names but out of all the Inn Keepers since the beginning of time this is the one whose story stands out, simply because he said “We have no room”. And of the uncountable number of Roman Soldiers who served during the reign of the Roman Empire these men who mocked and tortured Jesus are the one who have been immortalized in books and paintings and movies.

The inn keeper’s story is recorded in Luke 2:7 She gave birth to her first child, a son. She wrapped him snugly in strips of cloth and laid him in a manger, because there was no lodging available for them.

The innkeeper wasn’t being malicious, he didn’t have anything personal against Mary and Joseph he just didn’t care. The inn had been packed for days with the census going on and his inn was packed. Maybe. I don’t know if the inn was actually full or if we need to take a closer look at the phrase, there was no lodging available for them.

You see Luke didn’t say that there was no room in the inn, what he said was there was no room for THEM in the inn. I wonder if demand had outstripped supply and prices had soared beyond the reach of the ordinary person. I wonder if there would have been room in the inn if Joseph had of been Herod’s carpenter?

The soldiers get more than a verse but it’s all part of the same story John 19:2-3 The soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on his head. They clothed him in a purple robe and went up to him again and again, saying, "Hail, king of the Jews!" And they struck him in the face. But it wasn’t anything personal. They would have done the same if it had been Barabbas or any other criminal. It was just a way to break up their day and their cruelty was an impersonal cruelty.

The mocked him because they could, they were in power and he wasn’t, they considered themselves to be right and him to be wrong and saw it as their right. But at the end of the day they had forgotten the one whom some called King of the Jews.

The innkeeper and the soldiers are symbolic of the vast majority of people on that Christmas day. The innkeeper didn’t know that it was the son of God he had turned away and the soldiers didn’t know it was the son of God they had nailed to a cross, it was just business.

Isn’t that the way it is today? People rush about their business, they go here, and they go there. There are trees to find and trim, Christmas lights to put up, presents to buy and wrap, a turkey to stuff and cook. The entire season has become a cult in itself.

And there are a lot of people out there who are not antagonistic about the real meaning of Christmas, they just don’t care. They really don’t care that Christ was born, they don’t care that he lived for 33 years, they don’t care that he died on a cross for them, and they don’t care that after the third day he rose from the dead. For them there was no Christmas Eve service, no Christmas day service, no Christmas story or Sunday School pageants. They’ll get a few paid days off work, a turkey dinner and presents, it’s like the old Toyota ad said “Who could ask for anything more?”

There was a more antagonistic presence at both the first Christmas and the first Easter and they were a father and son. You see Herod and Herod Were There. You will recall in the Christmas story the wise men from the east first came to Jerusalem to ask directions to the Bethlehem and the new born king. Herod asked the Magi to come back and let him know where he could go to worship this child but his motives were less than pure.

You see Herod was evil and extremely suspicious that others were trying to take his power; he murdered his wife and mother in law as well as three of his sons. We are told that Augustus, the Roman Emperor, had said “It is safer to be Herod's pig than Herod's son” Which was a lot more poetic in the Greek where the word for Pig was Hus and for Son was Huios

Some people wonder why genocide like this wouldn’t be mentioned in history. Well, remember that at the time Bethlehem probably had a population of no more than 2000, less than half the population of Kingswood. So we are probably talking the death of 25 or 30 children tops. In a time when murder and unrighteousness was so wide spread the only people who would have been outraged at this tragedy would have been the parents.

33 years later Jesus was introduced to another Herod, this one was Herod Antipas, the son of the man who slaughtered the innocents in Bethlehem. And this Herod had blood on his hands as well. The account is given in Luke 23:7 When Pilate learned that Jesus was under Herod's jurisdiction, he sent him to Herod, who was also in Jerusalem at that time. So you understand the time sequence, Jesus has been arrested by the high priests who don’t actually have any authority to do anything to Jesus, so they off load him onto Pilate demanding Jesus execution. Pilate can find no legal or moral reason to execute Jesus so he figures that he can get rid of the problem by delegating it to Herod, the Puppet king of the area.

Luke tells us that Herod had heard about Jesus and was delighted at the opportunity to actually meet this teacher that everyone was talking about, but this wasn’t the Jesus Herod was expecting. Herod demanded answers, Jesus remained silent, Herod demanded that Jesus perform miracles, and Jesus remained silent. So Herod had him beaten and sent back to Pilate, even though he knew it was the wrong thing to do.

You understand that Pilate was looking for a way to spare Jesus’ life, even if he was too cowardly to do it himself. Herod had the opportunity to shine, to be more of a man than his father was and to do the right thing. But he didn’t. The scriptures say that Herod mocked and ridiculed Jesus. I wonder if Herod knew what his Father had done 33 years before. If so could he connect the dots? Probably not something you bragged about. Unless you were a Herod.

And I would suspect that neither Herod the Great nor his son really gave their actions another thought. They were not only ambivalent toward what was happening at that first Christmas and Easter they were downright antagonistic.

Herod was definitely hostile to the true meaning of Christmas. Sociologist Robert Lynd said “There are some people who want to throw their arms round you simply because it is Christmas; there are other people who want to strangle you simply because it is Christmas.” Herod would fall into the second category of people.

It’s not Christmas that people like Herod really resent; it is the religious nature of Christmas. They are kind of like the two ladies who spotted a cross in a store window at Easter, and one commented, “Some people will try to put religion into everything.”

People like that like Christmas, but they’d prefer to keep Christ out of it. They would have us trade the manger for a toy store, they would have us swap Jesus for Santa and exchange the cross for a Christmas tree. And there’s nothing wrong with any of those things, unless they replace what Christmas is really about. My kids used to light up around Santa, but the fat man in the red suit had to take a back seat to Jesus Christ.

There were other’s there as well and I’m a little disappointed in their stories, you see The Shepherds and the Roman Centurion Were There. Luke 2:8 & 16 That night there were shepherds staying in the fields nearby, guarding their flocks of sheep. . . They hurried to the village and found Mary and Joseph. And there was the baby, lying in the manger.

I hate to malign the shepherds but I tend to think of them as flash in the pan Christians. Like who wouldn’t be impressed, talk about an engraved invitation. They had this great choir of angels who told them about the Christ child, and that moved them to action. Listen to Luke 2:17 After seeing him, the shepherds told everyone what had happened and what the angel had said to them about this child.

But that’s all she wrote, we don’t hear any more about the shepherds, no aged shepherd making his way to the cross to weep at the feet of Christ, as he saw the fulfilment of the promise. None of the disciples were shepherds; there were no surprise witnesses at the trial of Jesus. No they stayed in Bethlehem, for them it was too far to travel to get to Calvary. When the chills and thrills stopped they were assimilated into everyday life.

At the cross there is an Eureka moment on behalf of one of the men who took part in the crucifixion. Luke 23:47 When the Roman officer overseeing the execution saw what had happened, he worshiped God and said, “Surely this man was innocent.” In the NIV it reads Luke 23:47 The centurion, seeing what had happened, praised God and said, "Surely this was a righteous man." But again there is no mention of the centurion again. Doesn’t show up in the upper room with the disciples, don’t read about him being a witness to other Roman soldiers, tradition is silent on his fate, and very seldom is tradition silent if there is even a whisper of a story.

Do you remember the first miracle that’s recorded in John’s Gospel? It was when Jesus was at the Wedding in Cana and he turned the water into wine. Listen to what the Bible says right after that, John 2:23 Because of the miraculous signs Jesus did in Jerusalem at the Passover celebration, many began to trust in him.

And why not, it’s easy to believe when someone feeds 5000 people with a few loaves of bread and a couple of fish, it’s easy when someone turns 180 gallons of water into wine, it’s easy to believe when a multitude of the heavenly host proclaim the truth from a celestial choir loft.

It’s not always as easy to maintain that belief when you’re sick, the kids are crying, the washing machine is overflowing and the car won’t start. Or when you get laid off work, your spouse leaves you and your parents are dying. All of a sudden belief isn’t nearly as easy, but hey that’s life. We can’t live forever in the manger at Bethlehem. The reason the Christian faith and the Christian Church has survived and flourished over the past 2000 years is that there have been some who after the angels have gone, and the heavens are still, and life is life, they still believe.

There are those who profess to keep Christ in Christmas and they do, the problem is not only do they keep Christ in Christmas they leave him there on Boxing day. The shepherds were an integral part of Christmas, but I really wish that we saw them again somewhere outside of Bethlehem.

Mary and the Angels were There The only common denominators that we see in Jesus birth and death, besides Jesus were the angels who announced his birth and resurrection and his mother. The angels, that was in their job description and Mary was there because Jesus was her son. But there was more to it than that, her life was changed forever by the child that she had that day. Every moment of every day would be changed from that point on. You see Mary’s was not a half-hearted experience, or a part-time commitment. She was 100% committed to the child she called Jesus. She was there at the cross when her son died and when Luke lists the beginning of the church in the book of acts he writes Acts 1:14 They all joined together constantly in prayer, along with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers.

And that is what He is looking for today. He wants us to come to the manger with the same attitude as Mary when she said “I am the Lord’s servant.”

A Reflection of the Cradle and Grave

2011-12-25T04:54:00.001-08:00

Transitions, in all of our lives there are transitions. Times when our lives change and the lives of those around us change. You know what I’m talking about because there are events that you are thinking about even as I speak. Births, deaths, graduations, weddings, baptisms.

Transitions, times when our lives change. And we have this innate desire to make those events special, to do the very best that we can. That’s why newborns often come home dressed in brand new finery to a newly decorated nursery filled with all kinds of “Stuff” they can’t really appreciate. If we were simply doing it for them it would be a waste because they don’t know and they don’t care.

At the other end of the spectrum is death, and for some reason we often feel that we need to send off the dearly departed in style, spending money we really can’t afford to spend to impress who? Obviously not the dearly departed, they are beyond impressing, perhaps it’s to let people know how much we loved our father, mother, husband, wife or child although I would think that if our love was that important that it would be testified to in our lives.

Most of you have seen my smart car, so do you really think I’d be impressed to be buried in a $10,000.00 coffin? My desire is to be cremated and have my ashes spread in the cove on Grand Manan where I played growing up. We used to have four litre ice cream container set aside for my urn, with “Denn’s Ashe’s” written on it in magic marker but then it got used for dog food.

Regardless we try to do the transitions up right.

Over the past couple of weeks we have been preparing to recognize a transition that affected the entire world. The birth of a child, and not just any child, a child who was the Son of God, a child who was God himself.

And in three months or so we will mark another transition, Easter. And we will be pausing to reflect on the death of the one whose birth we are celebrating tonight.

And it’s in ironic that both the birth and death of the most important person to ever walk this earth were not marked by splendour but by simplicity.

He began his earthy life in a borrowed cradle and finished it, thirty three years later, in a borrowed grave.

As we look at Reflections of Christmas we see the reflection of the grave of Jesus in the cradle of Jesus and we wonder: “How far could from a borrowed cradle to a borrowed grave?

If you were to ask a tour guide the answer might surprise you

because “Geographically, it’s closer than you might think. If we could pull down a map and take a look we would discover that you only have to walk down the road about a kilometre and a half, and then take a left and it would only be eight kilometres to the city gates of Jerusalem.”

Think about it, it is just a two-hour walk from the sleepy little town of Bethlehem where Christ was born, to the bustling streets of Jerusalem where Christ was crucified.

You know it’s not far at all and there’s a lot of history on this road. Why it was in Bethlehem that Rachel was buried, and it was to Bethlehem that Naomi and Ruth came, and Bethlehem was where Ruth married Boaze.

King David was born and raised in Bethlehem and the prophet Micah wrote in Micah 5:2 But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, are only a small village among all the people of Judah. Yet a ruler of Israel will come from you, one whose origins are from the distant past.

It was to this little town that the carpenter Joseph came from Nazareth with his young, pregnant wife to be counted in the census ordered by the Roman Emperor Caesar Augustus. No it’s not very far at all from Bethlehem to Calvary, geographically speaking.

And Historically there wasn’t a lot of time between the cradle and the grave. Compared to the Millenniums that have come and gone since God spoke the world into being, thirty-three years is a relatively short period of time. It really isn’t that far from the starlit eastern sky of Bethlehem to the darkened midday sky of Jerusalem. There is only a short lifetime between singing angels and tears of joy, to cursing soldiers and tears of grief.

Just a few short years from swaddling clothes to a crown of thorns, from dimples and stubby fingers to blood stained cheeks and nail pierced hands. And yet as close as it might be, it is a sad fact of life that not many have made that thirty-three year journey from the cradle in Bethlehem to the grave at Calvary.

It is much more comfortable to talk about a cooing baby than a bleeding corpse. The journey should be a short one but too many people prefer the cradle to the cross.

It seems much less offensive to read to our children the words Luke 2:10-11 “I bring you good news that will bring great joy to all people. The Savior—yes, the Messiah, the Lord—has been born today in Bethlehem, the city of David!

Rather than to read Luke 23:33 When they came to a place called The Skull, they nailed him to the cross.

And yet it was the same author who recorded the events in Luke 2 and Luke 23. The two passages both speak of the same person, Jesus of Nazareth, and yet many still prefer Christmas trees to Easter lilies and they try and separate the one from the other.

Everyone loves Christmas with its bright lights, upbeat music and gifts in pretty paper. People who may give very little attention to God and the Church pay a great deal of attention at Christmas time, even if it is unintentional. And even though we whine about the commercialization and secularization of Christmas we need to realize that whether society wants to admit it or not, they are joining in the celebration of Christ’s birth.

Every advertisement for Christmas keeps the name of the Messiah in front of people. And while Zellers may not play “Victory in Jesus” or “For a thousand tongues to Sing” they proclaim the birth of Christ to everyone in the store with “Silent Night” and “O Little Town of Bethlehem” being played over their PA.

But Easter is different, even though there have been attempts to capitalize on it as a holiday it runs a distant second to Christmas. People prefer to talk about births and babies rather than crucifixions and corpses, but whether we want to admit it or not there is but a short distance between the borrowed cradle and the borrowed grave.

And it’s not simply a matter of history of time, of celebrations. You see Theologically too many people are content to leave Christ in the cradle.

Video (Christmas Connection)

A Christ child is a safe Christ because he makes no demands on our life. However the birth of the child in Bethlehem would be of little consequence without the death of the man on Calvary.

We may not be as blatant with the question of “Whatever happened to the baby Jesus?” But I think it is relatively easy to leave Jesus in the manger.

Christ didn’t remain a child, he isn’t forever an infant. Listen to what Luke wrote in Luke 2:52 Jesus grew in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and all the people.

So what was Luke saying? Simple, Jesus grew up. The child grew and matured; he became a toddler, a pre-schooler, school aged, teenager and an adult. And then as an adult he was crucified on a cross at Calvary for you.

You see theologically without Calvary, Bethlehem was in vain. Christ could have been born of a virgin, lived a sinless life, taught and healed and performed miracles and then died an old man and all we would have had is a wonderful example to follow.

It took the sacrificial death of Christ to take away the sin of the world. The converse is also true. Calvary would not have been the redeeming event it was if God had not chosen to enter this world as a child and to live as a man. It was not a man who was born in a cattle stall, neither was it a god. And it was not a man who died on Calvary’s cross, nor was it a god. It was Jesus Christ, God incarnate. 100% God and at the same time 100% man. And it is here that the paradox of the incarnation leaps out at us.

No one here can fully explain how Christ was conceived in the womb of a virgin, his father being the Holy Spirit. But that doesn’t in any way alter the fact that he was conceived in the womb of a virgin and his Father was in fact the Holy Spirit. In the same way none of us could ever adequately explain how Christ, dying on a cross could cleanse my soul from its sin, 2000 years later. But it did.

Theologically it is just a short distance from Bethlehem to Calvary. So why don’t we make the trip? Why are we content to stay in Bethlehem when there is so much waiting for us just 8 kilometres down the road? After all Bethlehem holds the promise of eternal life but it’s Calvary that holds the gift of eternal life. And without believing the theology of the birth of Christ and his death and resurrection we can’t really believe in Jesus.

Came across this story and quote this week. Christopher Hitchens is an atheist, actually he was an atheist he died just a few days ago and while it is easy to say you don’t believe in God on this side of eternity it will be impossible to ignore God on the other side of eternity.

And Hitchens wasn’t just the run of the mill, “I’m too cool to believe atheist” he was a militant atheist, an: everyone else should be an atheist type of atheist. He is the type of atheist that George Orwell described in Animal Farm when he wrote “He was an embittered atheist (the sort of atheist who does not so much disbelieve in God as personally dislike Him).”

Hitchens wrote the book “God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything” And last week I read an interview of Christopher Hitchens by Unitarian minister Marilyn Sewell.

And Sewell felt that the book’s criticisms were mostly directed at conservative Christianity, which she freely admits that she is not a part of. She claims she doesn’t believe in the virgin birth, the atoning power of Jesus’ death or his bodily resurrection, maybe you know of pastors like that. And so she asked the author, “Do you make a distinction between fundamentalist faith and liberal religion?”

And here was the response that Christopher Hitchens the militant non-apologetic atheist made. And I quote “I would say that if you don’t believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ and Messiah, and that he rose again from the dead and by his sacrifice our sins are forgiven, you’re really not in any meaningful sense a Christian.”

What makes you a Christ follower is that you follow the Christ who was born of a virgin in a borrowed cradle and you follow a Christ who rose from the dead leaving behind an empty borrowed grave.

A Reflection of Trust

2011-12-18T03:32:00.000-08:00

She was a critical piece of the puzzle. And she truly is what makes Christmas Christmas. She was the original Madonna and she put the word “Virgin” in songs two thousand years before “Like a Virgin” became a hit. Through the years she’s been called The Holy Mary, Saint Mary, The Blessed Mother, The Mother of God and on and on and on. But in the Bible she is simply called Mary.

Max Lucado has twenty-five questions that he wants to ask Mary the mother of Jesus; here are a few of my favourites.

What was it like watching him pray?
When he saw a rainbow did he ever mention a flood?
Did you ever feel awkward teaching him how he created the world?
When he saw a lamb being led to the slaughter did he act differently?
Did you ever try to count the stars with him . . . and succeed?
Did he ever come home with a black eye?
Did he have any friends by the name of Judas?
Did the thought ever occur to you that the God to whom you were praying was asleep under your own roof
Did you ever accidentally call him father?
What did he and his cousin John talk about as kids?
Did you ever think, That’s God eating my soup?

Mary is my hero. She was the one chosen to change the diapers of God. But before that she was just a young lady, with all the dreams and aspirations that young ladies 2000 years ago had. She was going to get married and she was going to raise a family. Nothing complicated. And the first part of the plan was already coming together in the scripture that was read earlier it says Matthew 1:18 This is how Jesus the Messiah was born. His mother, Mary, was engaged to be married to Joseph. The plan became derailed however with the next line in that passage, But before the marriage took place, while she was still a virgin, she became pregnant through the power of the Holy Spirit.

And I know that there are folks out there who poo poo the entire idea of the virgin birth, and even some pastors and churches who say that it’s not possible for a virgin to conceive and then they assure their people that it’s not really necessary to believe in the Virgin birth. They would tell you that Matthew simply meant that Mary was a young woman, or perhaps a young unmarried woman.

If you’ve ever been to Greece then you might have had the opportunity to visit the “Parthenon” in Athens. This is considered to be the most important surviving example of Classical Greek architecture. It was built around 400 years before the birth of Christ and it was dedicated to the Greek Goddess Athena, here is a stature of her which is called Athena Parthenos, or literally Athena the Virgin. Parthenon the building literally meant the Virgin’s Room. Why is that important? Because the Greek word Parthenos is the word that is used time and time again to describe Mary.

And really there are only two options, either Mary was a Virgin or someone other than Joseph got her pregnant before the wedding.

Entire sermons have been preached on the Virgin birth, as a matter of fact I have preached entire sermons on the virgin birth, but the bottom line is you either believe it or you don’t believe it, the choice is yours. I believe it.

It was Mary who was there when Jesus was conceived, it was Mary who was there when Jesus was born, it was Mary who was there when Jesus was murdered.

Two weeks ago I spoke about Mary’s husband Joseph and the part he played in the beginning of Jesus’ life and then we looked at another Joseph. Joseph of Arimathea who was there when Jesus died and who gave up his own tomb for Jesus’ body to be laid in. The title of that message was “A Reflection of Sacrifice.”

Today’s message is entitled “A Reflection of Trust” and Mary the Mother of Jesus is not the only Mary who plays an integral part in the story of Jesus.

There was another Mary and we find her at the end of the story. She has been vilified and deified. Her name is Mary Magdalene and through the years she has been surrounded with myth and legend. With the exception of Mary the mother of Jesus there is no other woman from the bible who has been the subject of so much discussion and speculation as has Mary.

In the year 591, Pope Gregory the Great in a sermon preached to a gathering of Bishops declared that the Mary of Luke 8 was indeed the sinful woman mentioned in Luke 7 and was actually a prostitute. If I had done that people would say; “interesting theory Denn has”, but when you’re Pope and considered infallible when you say someone’s a prostitute then they are a prostitute.

It wasn’t that Gregory had anything against Mary; he was simply using her for an illustration of how Jesus can change your life. I’m not sure the sermon had the effect Gregory was hoping for because we are told a Magdalene cult spread throughout Europe.

The French were so taken with Mary that they made her French. Around 1260, a Dominican monk published the Golden Legend, which claimed that after Jesus’ death Mary had fled Jerusalem and ended up in southern Gaul. Her spirit, the story said, protected the French, although she must have been on vacation between 1914 and 1945.

Later the Catholic Church apologized and in 1969, declared that, for the first time in 1400 years Mary should not be thought of as the sinful woman of Luke. I guess you’re only infallible while you’re still alive. And then in 1988, Pope John Paul II called Mary Magdalene “apostle to the apostles” in an official church document and noted that in Christians’ “most arduous test of faith and fidelity,” the Crucifixion, “the women proved stronger than the Apostles.”

At different times in history Mary of Magdalene has been identified as Lazarus’s sister, the “sinful” woman mentioned in Luke 7:32 and the woman caught in adultery in John 8 that would be the entire “Cast the first stone” story, but there is no evidence for any of those theories.

Mary came back to the lime light in Dan Brown’s novel that swept to the top of the best sellers list at turn of the century. In the Da Vinci Code Mary has been lifted to a new level for millions of readers and movie goers. If you haven’t read the book or seen the movie the hypostasis is that Mary Magdalene and not Peter was the head apostle, that it was Mary whom Christ had entrusted his church with and Mary who was supposed to lead it. That she was removed from her position by Peter and the other apostles because they resented her leadership and that she had to flee to France in order to save her life. And it is in France that her descendants still live.

The book and movie also tell us that not only was Mary an important disciple of Christ’s but that she was also his wife and was pregnant with his child, a daughter named Sarah when he was crucified. And that is the secret that is hid in the paintings of Leonardo Da Vinci.
The major part of the book’s theory lays in the interpretation of Da Vinci’s painting the Last Supper. We are all familiar with it, if not here is a picture of the painting.
Now the Bible tells us that the Last Supper was attended by Jesus and his 12 apostles. But in the Da Vinci Code we are told that this person here is not actually John but instead is Mary Magdalene.
What do they base that on? First of all it’s based on how girly John looks, but really what does that tell us, look at Phillip, he’s not as pretty but he could be a handsome woman. Artists of that era and Leonardo in particular tended to paint young men in a feminine manner, here is Da Vinci’s painting of John the Baptist. Then the book tells us that everyone knows the V is the feminine sign, I didn’t, but presumably everyone else does. And here we see the V.

Here is a secret they don’t tell you in the Da Vinci Code, Leonardo Da Vinci painted the last supper 1000 400 years after Christ and his Apostles celebrated the Last Supper, and he wasn’t working from a photo. Here’s a painting of the last supper where all the Apostles are black, and here is one with all the Characters from Star Wars, Da Vinci could have painted them all Smurfs and wouldn’t doesn’t mean anything.

All we really know about Mary Magdalene is what the Bible tells us. If you were to look in the Bible for Mary Magdalene you would find twelve instances recorded, all in the four Gospels. We know that she was from the community of Magdala, from her name, which if we pull down our trusty map of Israel we see here is the Dead Sea, the Sea of Galilee and Jerusalem. And right here on the Sea of Galilee we discover the community of Magdala, here is a picture. I know, not much of a village, it’s actually no longer there.

In Luke 8:1-2 we read He took his twelve disciples with him along with some women he had healed and from whom he had cast out evil spirits. Among them were Mary Magdalene, from whom he had cast out seven demons . . . So from that one passage we know that Mary followed Christ as a disciple, that Christ had delivered her from seven demons, we don’t know what those demons were and if anyone tells you what they were they are simply speculating, read my lips we don’t know. What we do know is that it was a life changing experience for Mary.

The next time we see Mary is at the cross Mark 15:39-40 When the Roman officer who stood facing him saw how he had died, he exclaimed, “Truly, this was the Son of God!” Some women were there, watching from a distance, including Mary Magdalene . . .

But her devotion didn’t stop at the death of Jesus, we read in Mark 16:1 The next evening, when the Sabbath ended, Mary Magdalene and Salome and Mary the mother of James went out and purchased burial spices to put on Jesus’ body.
And in John 20:11- 18 we are told that she was the first person to see Jesus after the resurrection, John 20:18 Mary Magdalene found the disciples and told them, “I have seen the Lord!” Then she gave them his message. And that is all we know about Mary. We know that Jesus changed her life and she in turn committed her life to him.

Two Mary’s one story. But what do they share, besides their name?

Jesus Changed Their Lives Two lives changed by the introduction of Jesus. Jesus Literally made all the difference in their lives, there can be no debating this. It wasn’t as if they met Jesus and life continued with very little change other than what they did on Sunday morning. Their lives were turned upside down and inside out, nothing would ever be the same. For them Paul’s words in 2 Corinthians were a reality 2 Corinthians 5:17 This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!

In his mother’s case it may not have been for the better, at least not in the practical sense. We kind of get the highlights, Mary was engaged to Joseph, she became pregnant by the Holy spirit, she travelled to Bethlehem with Jospeh, Jesus was born, they got married and they all lived happily ever after. The end.

But do we stop and think about the upheaval in her life. Her plan, I’m sure, was to get married and then get pregnant, not the other way around. Her plan never included the scorn of people in her community, the distrust, if only for a while of her fiancé and ultimately the stress of raising the Son of God.

Think about it. We all worry about messing our kids up but what if you had the added pressure and responsibility of that child being the child of God?

Mary Magdalene’s life was radically changed as well. We don’t know all the details of what the Bible meant when it tells us that Jesus cast 7 demons out of Mary. Most of us are so far removed from that part of the spiritual realm that it is like something from fiction. In a church service in Ghana I had my first encounter with someone controlled by a demon and it wasn’t pretty and I didn’t understand all that was happening but that doesn’t mean it was fiction.

We have to assume that those demons manifested themselves in a way that would have limited what Mary could do and had a negative effect on Mary’s life, because from the point of her deliverance on she is identified with Jesus and his apostles. No more would her life be directed by forces beyond her control, she had choice a new path and a new direction.

Jesus did not come so we could have the same old same old, if you have chosen to follow Jesus your life should be different, because you have chosen a different path than the majority.

In both cases their lives changed for one reason and that was because They Trusted God So we know the story. An angel appears to Mary and tells her that she is going to have a child, when she objects that this is impossible because she is a virgin. Because regardless of how you want to play around with the original Greek it is summed up in Mary’s statement in Luke 1:34 Mary asked the angel, “But how can this happen? I am a virgin.” Because Mary doesn’t actually use the word virgin here instead what she is saying is “I have never been with a man.” And the angel’s response is one of my favorite verses in the bible because it is here that the angel tells Mary, Luke 1:37 “For nothing is impossible with God.” Nothing, No-Thing is impossible with God. We often quote this when we want to do the impossible but what it tells us it that when God wants to do something nothing will stop him.

But the most awesome part of the story is the very next verse where it says Luke 1:38 Mary responded, “I am the Lord’s servant. May everything you have said about me come true.”

That’s the tough one isn’t it, it’s all well and good to say you believe that God has your very best at heart, it’s easy to say that you believe that God can do anything. But Mary was basically saying not only do I believe it here, in my heart, but I’m allowing you to work it out in my life. I may not understand it, I might not even agree with what you are proposing but you are God so bring it on.

She willing gave up her reputation and her plans for the future in order to be obedient to God.

When Jesus delivered Mary Magdalene from the seven demons she never looked back. We are told that she became one of those who followed Jesus. There is an interesting note in the scripture that we read earlier remember Luke 8 where Mary was counted with those who followed Jesus, at the end of that passage about who was in the group it says Luke 8:3 . . . and many others who were contributing their own resources to support Jesus and his disciples.

You see Mary was one of those who not only gave of herself and her life and her time she gave of her finances, she trusted that what she gave to Jesus would last forever and that she would have what she needed. But her trust went deeper than that because we are told that when the majority of Jesus disciples had deserted him Mary was at the cross. Still trusting that God was in control she did was she knew was right. And when it appeared that for all intents and purposes that Jesus had lost, when his dead and broken body was taken from the cross, Mary was there. And when it would appear that Jesus’ enemies had won and his cold dead body was laid in the tomb, Mary was there. And the next day when the disciples had scattered, in the cold dawn of the early morning we are told that Mary had already gone purchased the things that would be necessary to embalm her friend.

And it was because of that trust and commitment that it was to Mary that Jesus first appeared after his resurrection.

Mary his mother may have been the first there at his conception and birth but it was Mary Magdalene who was the first to witness his victory over death, the first to realize that Jesus wouldn’t be kept in the cradle and couldn’t be kept in the grave.

And as we close my prayer for you this Christmas season is the same as Paul’s prayer for the church in Rome 2000 years ago

Romans 15:13 I pray that God, the source of hope, will fill you completely with joy and peace because you trust in him. Then you will overflow with confident hope through the power of the Holy Spirit.

A Reflection of Sacrifice

2011-12-04T03:12:00.000-08:00

He’s always the forgotten one at Christmas. Oh we remember the Christ child, how could we forget him, even in the shopping malls they sing about the birth of Christ and his name is even included in the very word Christmas. Without Christ there would be no Christmas and so he’s remembered. And his mother, you remember “Round yon Virgin.” After all the virgin birth was pretty spectacular, wasn’t an everyday occurrence. And we are still talking about it. And to give Mary her due it took a lot of faith to trust God for the miracle that he had promised. We even remember the bit players in the drama, we talk about the shepherds and the Wiseman, we cast them in the Christmas pageants and talk about how lucky they were to be a part of the first advent. The innkeeper even gets a speaking role and he’s basically the villain of the piece. Who’s forgotten? Joseph, you know Mary’s husband, the man who would raise Jesus the Son of God as Jesus the Son of Joseph.

We don’t know a whole lot about Joseph; we know that he was a carpenter, that he lived in Nazareth and that his family was originally from Bethlehem. We know that his father’s name was Jacob, that he was a descendant of David. We know that it was Joseph that the Angels came to in a dream to warn about King Herod looking for Jesus, and he took his family to Egypt. We know that when Jesus was 12 years old that Joseph took him to Jerusalem for the Passover feast and we know that Joseph taught Jesus his trade. But then we don’t hear any more from or about Joseph after that. We presume that because at his crucifixion Jesus asked John to care for his mother that Joseph died before Christ was crucified. In Mark 6:3 he is identified as Mary’s son and his brothers are named but there is no mention of Joseph so it’s not that much of a stretch to presume that Joseph died before Christ began his ministry. And we know that Joseph was considered to be the Father of Christ.

You know the story; Joseph was engaged to a young girl from Nazareth named Mary. Historically and culturally we can almost assume that they had been engaged from Childhood, although we don’t know that, and you know what happens when you assume right, yeah sometimes you’re wrong. And so we don’t know how long they had been engaged but we do know that they had entered into the last stage of their engagement, which was known as the Betrothal. Now Betrothal was much more serious than our engagement. It lasted for about a year and was a legally binding contract, which could only be broken by death or by divorce.

I’m sure that the couple was doing all the things that couples do to get ready for weddings. You know the bride is rushing hither thither and yon, and she keeps asking the groom, so what do you think honey, is this right, should we do that, what about flowers, and the reception. And Joseph being the good groom is nodding and smiling and saying “whatever you think dear.” And I don’t know exactly how she broke the news to him, but at some point in all of the wedding arrangements she must have done a “I’m so excited about this, and what with Rachel coming for the wedding, and Martha, and Elizabeth, did I tell you that Elizabeth was pregnant? I did, that is such a neat thing, you know I’m pregnant too, maybe the boys will play together when they grow up, do you think we ought to have fish at the reception as well as the beef?”

And Joseph does a “whoa, what did you say?” and Mary would respond and say “Do you think we ought to have fish at the reception as well as beef, you know in case there are vegetarians there?” “No not that, the other part.”

“Oh, you mean about Rachel coming down, didn’t I tell you?” Seriously I don’t know how Mary did it, how do you tell you fiancé that you’re pregnant and it had nothing to do with him. Maybe she read him the Christmas story out of Luke. However she did it though it must have left him completely stunned, how could she possibly have betrayed him, and then expected him to believe that entire line about her still being a virgin. The father was the Holy Spirit, right, like what turnip wagon did she think he fell off of?

And the conversation must have ended with Joseph feeling betrayed and Mary feeling hurt because he didn’t believe her and he doubted her integrity. But what could he do, he had trusted her, he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her, but for her to go and . . . it just wasn’t right. So what was he to do? Well there were a couple of options, he could have her stoned to death, according to the law that was the punishment for Adultery and during the betrothal period it would be considered adultery. The other option of course was to simply break off the engagement, but remember that by this time it could only be done with a formal divorce.

The Bible tells us that Joseph was a just man, and so he decided to simply go through with a quiet divorce so Mary wouldn’t be disgraced publicly and get on with his life. But life is never that simple is it? That night as he tumbled into a trouble sleep, something remarkable happened. An Angel appeared to Joseph, I wonder if Joe’s first thought was “I knew I should have skipped the chilli and ice cream before I went to bed.” Well the angel had a message and it was “trust her, Joseph, trust her.” The angel explained how the child that Mary was carrying was indeed the Son of God and that Joseph needed to go ahead with the wedding.

It’s kind of interesting what happened here. Perhaps you’ve never noticed it, or if you have then perhaps it didn’t bother you. In the scripture that was read this morning it says Matthew 1:24 When Joseph woke up, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded and took Mary as his wife.

You say, “Ok, what’s the problem?” Well no problem really but In Luke Chapter 2 we are told how Joseph had to go to Bethlehem to take part in the Census listen to what it says in Luke 2:5 He took with him Mary, his fiancée, who was now obviously pregnant.

Kind of beat that one around for a while, Matthew says Joseph took Mary home as his wife, but Luke calls Mary, Joseph’s fiancée. I wonder, and I realize that I’m speculating but I wonder if Mary had to live with Joseph and his family until the wedding because her parents wouldn’t let her stay when they found out she was pregnant?

I wonder if the wedding was perceived to be a shotgun wedding? What type of wedding would it have been? After all they didn’t have shotguns back then. I remember a friend calling me and telling me that he and his girlfriend were getting married and it was going to be a formal wedding, that her father had painted the shotgun white. We really don’t know much other than they were married and the scriptures tell us that she remained a virgin until Jesus was born. The children she had after Jesus belonged to Joseph. If you know the Christmas story you know that the Roman Authorities called for a census and that everyone had to return to the town of origin and for Joseph that meant taking his pregnant wife, probably by donkey from Nazareth here in the south, 75 miles to Bethlehem where the child would be born. Not the type of trip recommended for someone who was 9 months pregnant. When Angela was 8 1/2 months pregnant we moved back from New York, but she got to drive a brand new Plymouth, my dad would say she would have better off with a donkey but he’s a Ford man.

33 years down the road another Joseph appears in the story of Jesus. This one is more obscure, if that’s possible than Mary’s husband was and instead of being at the beginning of the story we find him at the end of the story.

It is after Jesus has been betrayed by Judas, after Jesus has been arrested by the Romans, after Jesus has been tried by Pilate, after Jesus has been beaten and crucified, after Jesus had died. You ever wonder what was going through Mary’s mind at the point? It wasn’t enough that she had to watch the torture and death of her first born son, the child who had been conceived in such a miraculous way but I’m sure the practical implications were weighing heavy on her mind. She was far from home, it was the beginning of the holiday weekend, what was she going to do with the body of her son?

Maybe the practical questions hadn’t even started being asked yet, perhaps they hadn’t even crossed her mind with all she was going through, and really who would blame her if she hadn’t thought that far ahead? But it had crossed the mind of someone because we read in Matthew 27:57-58 As evening approached, Joseph, a rich man from Arimathea who had become a follower of Jesus, went to Pilate and asked for Jesus’ body. And Pilate issued an order to release it to him.

We don’t know a lot about this man called Joseph. We know from this account that he was from the town of Arimathea, which was a suburb North West of Jerusalem. We know that he was wealthy, and from reading Mark 15:43 . . ,Joseph was an honored member of the high council, and he was waiting for the Kingdom of God to come. We know that he was part of the Sanhedrin and he that was Kingdom minded. Luke tells us in Luke 23:50-51 Now there was a good and righteous man named Joseph. He was a member of the Jewish high council, but he had not agreed with the decision and actions of the other religious leaders. And from John 19:38 we discover Afterward Joseph of Arimathea, who had been a secret disciple of Jesus (because he feared the Jewish leaders), asked Pilate for permission to take down Jesus’ body. And from that tradition and legend has added some details.

Tradition tells us that Joseph was Mary’s uncle and that he was a tin merchant. Because of his business legend says that had travelled to the mining community of Cornwall England which was renowned for its tin. As a matter of fact some legends even say that he took his Great Nephew Jesus to Cornwall when he was still a child. And that’s why William Blake’s poem says: And did those feet in ancient time, Walk upon England’s mountains green: And was the holy Lamb of God, On England’s pleasant pastures seen!

Legend continues to say that because of that connection and history that Joseph was later recruited by the apostles to take the gospel to England and that on the journey he took the cup that Jesus had used at the last supper, which of course began the legend of the Holy Grail. But all of that is just legend. But what is it that we actually learn from this story?

Two Josephs one at the beginning of Jesus’ life and one at the end, linked together by the love they had for Jesus, but did they share more in common than their names?

They Saw a Need. There were two things that were very apparent at each point in the story, in the beginning Jesus needed a father and at the end Jesus needed a grave. It was as simple as that. Recent statistics are telling us that more and more children are being born out of wedlock and to single moms, either by choice or by oops. And it really isn’t that big of a deal in today’s society. Although it still presents all kinds of challenges. But there is certainly less stigma than it was a generation ago, that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen a generation but there was more stigma attached to it.

If we could step back in time 2000 years we would discover that regardless of the circumstances surrounding the conception of Jesus his life would have been exponentially more difficult had Mary not had a husband. She would have no income, no support system. Instead of being Jesus the son of the Carpenter he would have been Jesus the son of that woman. Life would have been hard for Mary and hard for Jesus without a Joseph in the picture.

It was Gloria Steinem who famously said “A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.” Maybe in Gloria’s world but certainly not in Mary’s world. God knew that there would need to be a father in Jesus’ life and a husband in Mary’s life, and it was Joseph who was asked to fill those roles.

So when Jesus was born he needed a father, and thirty three years later Jesus needed something that was a little more practical, and that was a grave. Jerusalem was 70 km as the crow flies from Jesus’ home town of Nazareth, I’m not sure how far it would be if the crow had to walk and carry a body. You see there were no hearses to take a body from point “a” to point “b” and so there was a very practical question about what would happen to the body of Jesus when he was removed from the cross.

Historians tell us the drama of Jesus death could have ended three ways. Three things could have happened. 1) The Romans were notorious for simply leaving the body of executed criminals on the cross as an example for others. Birds of prey would feed upon them and eventually they would decay and fall off the cross to be picked at by animals. Some scholars have speculated that the reason Golgotha was called the Place of the Skull had nothing to do with the shape of the hill and everything to do with the skeletal remains left lying about. 2) That didn’t apply if the person who was executed was Jewish. We read in Deuteronomy 21:22-23 “If someone has committed a crime worthy of death and is executed and hung on a tree, the body must not remain hanging from the tree overnight. You must bury the body that same day, for anyone who is hung is cursed in the sight of God. In this way, you will prevent the defilement of the land the Lord your God is giving you as your special possession. The Jewish authorities felt that applied as well to those crucified and so the bodies had to be taken down before sunset. That is why the thieves on either side of Jesus had their legs broken, to speed up their deaths. But it was already determined that Jesus was already dead. But if there was nobody to claim the body than it was simply disposed of in the garbage dump. 3) A relative or family member could claim the body.

So from a practical point of view something had to be done for Jesus burial, his body wasn’t just going to bury itself.

They Made a Decision God didn’t force either of the Josephs to do something to meet the need that was presented. God doesn’t force us to do things in this life, that wouldn’t really be fair would it? I mean after all, Him being God and us not being God that would kind of put us at a disadvantage.

In the case of Mary’s husband, nobody else knew about the need except Mary. It wasn’t posted on Craig’s list or Kijjie, “Needed someone to stand if for father for child of the Holy Spirit.”

We don’t know how Mary told he fiancé that she was expecting but we do know what his immediate response was Matthew 1:19 Joseph, her fiancé, was a good man and did not want to disgrace her publicly, so he decided to break the engagement quietly.

And really who could blame him?

You might be thinking “Well didn’t Joseph trust her?” It wasn’t a matter of trust it was a matter of common sense. Mary was pregnant, as far as Joseph knew there was only one way for Mary to get pregnant and he knew that he hadn’t been a part of that equation. It wasn’t simply that she was pregnant but she had broken his trust she had cheated on him, and there was another man involved somewhere somehow. There were a pile of things that Joseph could have done other than break off the engagement that would have publically shamed Mary and humiliated her instead he decided to simply break off their engagement. And that wasn’t even a rash decision. Matthew 1:20 As he considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream. “Joseph, son of David,” the angel said, “do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife. For the child within her was conceived by the Holy Spirit.”

And the angel talked about prophecies and trust and responsibilities and at the end of the encounter we read Matthew 1:24 When Joseph woke up, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded and took Mary as his wife. And maybe you might be thinking, “It wasn’t his choice, God commanded him to do it.” And I’m sure that you’ve always done what God wants you to do right? And that includes not lying. God commanded Joseph but it was still his choice, at the end of the day Joseph could have said no and walked away. Or he could have said “yes” and resented it, making life unbearable for Mary and her child. But as far as we can tell he was the husband that Mary needed and the father that Jesus needed.

As private as the Jesus’ first need was, the need to have a father, his last need the need to have a grave, was just that public. Perhaps people hadn’t connected the dots that Jesus would have to be buried but the need was there. And Joseph met that need.

Matthew 27:57-58 As evening approached, Joseph, a rich man from Arimathea who had become a follower of Jesus, went to Pilate and asked for Jesus’ body. And Pilate issued an order to release it to him. I don’t know how many people were there that day who could have done something, but Joseph didn’t wait for them to do something he did it. He went to Pilate and asked for Jesus body. He didn’t hope that someone else would do it, he didn’t assume one of the apostles or Jesus family would take care of it, he did what had to be done.

In too many cases “Everyone thought someone would do it and in the end no one ending up doing it.”

But Jesus didn’t just need a tomb to be buried in, he needed a tomb to rise from. Because the Romans and the Jews knew where Jesus was buried and because it was a tomb carved from rock with a rock that sealed it, because it was in a location that the Romans could post the guards the Jewish religious leaders had demanded, there could be no arguing with the resurrection.

And in each case They Paid a Price. Sometimes we think of paying a price as a financial statement, and that is part of the equation. In the case of Mary’s husband when he choose to accept Mary as his wife and Jesus as his son he was saying that he was prepared to pay the cost associated with that decision. He would house the Son of God, he would feed him and clothe him and pay for school field trips. Every parent knows that there is a tangible, financial price that has to be paid for our children.

And Joseph of Arimathea gave up his tomb, a tomb that the bible tells us had never been used. So you understand that this wasn’t just a loan this was a gift. It wasn’t like giving someone a book to read and then getting it back, or letting someone use your car for the afternoon. When Joseph put Jesus body in the tomb he no longer had the tomb. He was going to have to go out and buy himself another tomb. Don’t know what the tomb had cost, but it had cost something and people weren’t lining up offering their tomb.

But the price went beyond dollars and cents. One of the descriptions that was given of Joseph, the husband of Mary, was that he was a righteous man. So you probably understand what the scandal would have cost Joseph in the matter of his pride. 2000 years ago people could count the same as they can today. I remember hearing my father say “The First one can come at any time the next one takes nine months.” But we all know that for the most part they all take nine months. And Joseph’s family knew that and Joseph’s friends knew that and Nazareth was a small town so he would have had to put up with the snickers and sideways glances and the damage that happened to his reputation because for some people all they would remember would be that Joseph and Mary had to get married.

But Mary’s husband wasn’t the only Joe who would sacrifice his pride for Jesus. The scripture don’t tell us a lot about Joseph of Arimathea, but they do tell us that he was a rich man and that he was a member of the religious aristocracy.

The bible doesn’t just tell us that Joseph gave up his grave, he also gave up his pride. He went to Pilate and asked for Jesus body, that involved acknowledging that Jesus meant something to him, even if it was costly to be associated with someone who had just been crucified as a criminal. But the story doesn’t stop there. We are told that this rich religious leader took Jesus’s bloody, broken body down from the cross, that it was Joseph who prepared Jesus’ body for burial and it was Joseph who personally laid the body of Jesus in the tomb.

Not sure those things fell in the job description of “Rich Religious Leader” but they had to be done and Joseph was willing to do it.

But theirs weren’t the only sacrifices made listen to the words of Paul in Philippians 2:5-8 You must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had. Though he was God, he did not think of equality with God as something to cling to. Instead, he gave up his divine privileges; he took the humble position of a slave and was born as a human being. When he appeared in human form, he humbled himself in obedience to God and died a criminal’s death on a cross.

So this Christmas take time to think of the sacrifices that were made 2000 years ago and don’t let the next three weeks rush by without at least acknowledging that they were made for you.

Discover Anger

2011-11-27T03:24:00.000-08:00

Not what we would expect at all. We are closing in on the final act of the gospels and Jesus has come to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover, the greatest of all the Jewish feasts. On Sunday he arrived in Bethany and from there he rode a donkey into Jerusalem fulfilling the prophecy of Zechariah. The crowds had flocked out to see him and waving palm branches, laying their coats before the donkey and singing his praises. It was a great day. That evening we are told that after he had visited the temple that he returns to Bethany, which is just outside of the city and then on Monday he makes his way back to the city and back to the temple.

And it is there he freaks out. There are merchants in the temple courts selling animals for sacrifices and exchanging money so people from away will have the right currency to pay their temple tax. It is a carnival atmosphere. And it is like Jesus snaps. He was like a madman, tipping over tables, chasing animals, speaking in harsh tones. Jesus was angry, angry! And maybe some of you are thinking, “well maybe he was a little upset but I don’t think he was angry.”

Nope, a little upset doesn’t tip over tables and chase animals, he was angry.

It is so out of character. Or at least out of the character that we hold so near and dear. This isn’t the picture that comes to mind when most people think of Jesus. They see him holding a lamb or holding a child, feeding the hungry or healing the sick. They see his hands as gentle and caring. I’m sure that in most people’s minds they would expect the hands of Jesus to be soft and tender and not the hands of a carpenter, who worked without the benefit of power tools.

And while that has to be a part of the picture of Jesus is it the entire picture? Most of us have a home page for our internet browsers mine is Canoe.ca Goes way back to when most of the news sites were American and Canoe came along and they had bill boards up that said “Don’t surf the net canoe it.” But that is a different story for a different time. Part of the canoe site is a photo of the day and it shows a snippet of a photo in a box and it is remarkable sometimes when you click on the photo and it expands and it isn’t anything like you thought it would be.

It is the same picture but you aren’t seeing the entire picture. And sometimes we are guilty of doing that with God and Jesus. We are only seeing a part of his character and are basing our assumptions about him on that one part of the picture.

And so for some people Jesus is only gentle and caring, he never raises his voice and never gets angry. True, they see him as the good shepherd but a shepherd who only cuddles and coddles his sheep and never disciplines them and never corrects them and would never ever raise his voice in dealing with them. He is a non-judging, non-demanding, non-condemning and he lets the sheep do whatever it is the sheep want to do, and never says “You are a bad sheep”.

He is a Jesus who was always understanding, always accommodating and never correcting and certainly never condemning. And so while we can see this Jesus as opening up a dialogue with those in the temple who were selling animals and changing money and perhaps coming to a meeting of the minds we find it really difficult to get our heads around this scene that is described in detail in all four of the gospels.

It is the day after the triumphant entry, the day after Palm Sunday and it is only four days away from Jesus eventual arrest, trial and crucifixion. After his grand entrance the day before we are told that Jesus had returned to Bethany, where he spent the night. Now Jesus has returned to Jerusalem and makes a bee line for the temple which is where our story picks up.

But before we look at the story let’s look at the back story.

The temple that is spoken of is Solomon’s Temple; it had been an integral of Jerusalem for more than five hundred years since it was built by King Solomon, David’s son until it was destroyed by the Romans in AD 70. Understand that we don’t have anything in Canada that was built 500 years old.

The temple occupied the top of the top of Mount Zion; it covered an area of almost 30 acres and contained several distinct areas. Let’s pull up some pictures. Here is where the temple sat in relation to the city of Jerusalem during Jesus ministry, as you can see it dominates the entire city, that site is now occupied by the Dome of the Rock Mosque. Here is what it would look like if it was built out of lego and here is a replica that you can see in Norfolk Virginia, It was constructed over a thirty year period by Alec Garrard, which was 23 years longer than it took to build the original.

This large outer court was called the court of Gentiles and anyone could come into the court of the Gentiles. We are told that at the inner edge of the Court of the Gentiles was a low wall with tablets set into it and in theory if a Gentile, that is someone who was not a Jew passed that point the penalty was death. The next area was called the Court of Women and that was as far as a woman was allowed to go unless they had actually come to offer a sacrifice. Next was the Court of the Israelites, here was where the big celebrations were held and it was here that the sacrifices were given to the Priests to be made. And that was the next area the Court of the Priests and within that was the Holy of Holys where we are told the High Priest went to commune with God.

And it was here in the Court of Gentiles that this entire drama took place. Historically we are told that the businesses that set up in the court of the Gentiles were businesses of opportunity, especially at Passover. This was the celebration that the faithful tried to be in Jerusalem; as a matter of fact we are told that even today the Passover celebration finishes with the words: Next Year in Jerusalem. And so the city was filled with pilgrims and the temple was alive with different dialects and accents. And while it was really neat that people would travel from far off places to celebrate it was problematic in a couple of ways. First of all if they were coming to the Temple for the Passover they would have to offer a sacrifice of a dove and secondly they would have to pay the temple tax of a half a shekel paid using a specific currency. Not a problem if you lived in Jerusalem but if you were travelling any distance it would be difficult to bring a dove suitable for the sacrifice with you and the coin that was to be used to pay the temple tax was fairly specific to that area and so often times travellers would have to get their money changed. That’s the short part of the story. So stalls were set up where you could buy doves and where you could get your money changed, but if you’ve ever been in a market you understand that people are raising their voices and cajoling customers to buy their doves instead of their neighbors and people are jostling and laughing, haggling over prices and cursing what they had to pay. People are now using the temple courts as short cuts to get to various parts of Jerusalem and the reverence has been replaced with convenience.

And it is into this scene that Jesus stepped the day after his triumphant entry and just four days before he would be arrested, tried in the mockery of a trial and crucified. So let’s pick up the story in Mark 11:15-16 When they arrived back in Jerusalem, Jesus entered the Temple and began to drive out the people buying and selling animals for sacrifices. He knocked over the tables of the money changers and the chairs of those selling doves, and he stopped everyone from using the Temple as a marketplace.

Listen to the verbs here: Drive out, Knocked over, Stopped everyone. Sounds like he was a little ticked off, a little put out, maybe a little angry with what was happening. And that doesn’t sound like the Jesus that we are taught about. The gentle, compassionate, never angry, never condemning Jesus. And that is confusing, because we are told that we shouldn’t get angry, and that anger is wrong.

Buddha said “Anger will never disappear so long as thoughts of resentment are cherished in the mind. Anger will disappear just as soon as thoughts of resentment are forgotten.”

While Madeleine Brent wrote “Anger and worry are the enemies of clear thought.” And Ralph Waldo Emerson offered us excellent advice when he wrote “For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness.” And here are words of great wisdom from Ambrose Bierce, “Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret.” I’ve given those speeches.

The bible even weighs in on the subject when Solomon wrote in Proverbs 22:24-25 Don’t befriend angry people or associate with hot-tempered people, or you will learn to be like them and endanger your soul. And again in Proverbs 29:22 An angry person starts fights; a hot-tempered person commits all kinds of sin.

And most of us think of anger as a “Sin”. “Forgive me because I got angry” we pray or we tell the person on the other end of our anger “I’m sorry I was angry.” And so now we have this dichotomy to deal with. We perceive anger to always be wrong and to be sinful behaviour and yet we see Jesus acting in a way that seems to be angry. And there are multiple instances in the scriptures with God being angry, and that is the word that is used “angry” not a little put out or mildly annoyed but angry.

Passages like Psalm 7:11 God is an honest judge. He is angry with the wicked every day. Or in the New Testament John 3:36 And anyone who believes in God’s Son has eternal life. Anyone who doesn’t obey the Son will never experience eternal life but remains under God’s angry judgment.”

Perhaps the truth lies in the words of Aristotle who said “Anyone can become angry -- that is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way -- this is not easy.”

So here are some questions we can ask ourselves about Anger and perhaps we can find some answers in this story.

What makes you Angry? And probably I could get a whole range of answers here. Some would be appropriate and some would be wildly inappropriate. I read a news story the other day about a guy who was in court in Ontario charged with Road Rage, actually he was charged with a whole range of things but bottom line it was road rage.

Someone had cut him off in traffic, I don’t know if it was intentional or not, and buddy forces him off the road with his truck, rams the offending vehicle a couple of times and then grabs a chain saw and threatens the other driver with it.

Do you get angry in traffic? In the Parking lot? In the supermarket when someone cuts you off with their cart? Do you get angry because of the way people treat you? Because of some slight, either real or imaginary?

Why was Jesus angry here? I think there are a couple of reasons, the most obvious is found in Mark 11:17 He said to them, “The Scriptures declare, ‘My Temple will be called a house of prayer for all nations,’ but you have turned it into a den of thieves.”

He was angry because people were disrespecting God’s temple and making a mockery of God’s rules. What was supposed to be a Holy place had become an everyday place, what had been set aside as a place to worship God had become a place to worship money. And because of that people’s relationship with God were in jeopardy. And that made Jesus angry.

That was why Jesus was upset with the Pharisee, they were putting religion ahead of people and putting roadblocks between people and God. Once when Jesus was teaching some parents tried to bring their children to him to be blessed and his disciples scolded them for interrupting Jesus while he was teaching and then we read in Mark 10:14 When Jesus saw what was happening, he was angry with his disciples. He said to them, “Let the children come to me. Don’t stop them! For the Kingdom of God belongs to those who are like these children.”

When people and churches stand between others and God that should make us angry in the same way it made Jesus angry. When people are more concerned with their preferences and their comfort rather than reaching out to those who need Jesus, that is a reason to become cranky and when people and churches that call themselves “Christians” do a disservice to Jesus’ name and nature by being rude and bitter, that should make us angry.

But there was a second reason that isn’t as obvious but just as valid, and I understand that this is speculation but I think Jesus was upset over the fact that those who were supposed to be leading people to God were taking advantage of them.

These were pilgrims who had travelled a long way to be able to worship God in the temple and they were being ripped off. Historians tells us that the same dove that was being sold in the temple court yard could be purchased outside the temple for a fraction of the price, but coincidently the same people who benefitted from the sale of the doves inside the temple were the ones who had to inspect the ones from outside to make sure they would be suitable. Can you say “conflict of interest”?

And the temple tax had to be paid in a certain currency, the principle had been laid down that the tax was paid for the upkeep of the temple, and that was a good principle the temple needed to be maintained and that needed to be paid for by those who used it. But then the principle was distorted and became a burden. Because now it wasn’t enough that the right amount be paid but it had to be paid in the right currency. So while other currency was used outside the temple the priests insisted on a certain type of currency. When the pilgrims came they had to get their money changed. And if it was a straight exchange then the rate was about 20% but if you needed change back the rate doubled. And so Jesus was angry because people were being taken advantage of.

What was happening was legal, but was it right? Personally I think Jesus would be a little cranky over what happens in the name of business and commerce in our society today. When companies ask the rank and file to make wage concessions and give up benefits and then give their executives million dollar bonuses, I can understand the anger there. And I don’t think it would be billion dollar bailouts that he would have had in mind for the big banks and wall street, just saying.

But here is a rule of thumb, If you are getting angry over your feelings or over your stuff, you are probably getting angry over the wrong things.

Understand that Jesus didn’t lose his temper, he got angry. Which leads us to the next question.

How Do You respond In Your Anger? This is a matter of time and degree. Sometimes people get angry and their response is way over the top. If you lash right out you have probably reacted the wrong way. Which is why Thomas Jefferson cautioned people “When angry, count to ten before you speak. If very angry, count to one hundred.”

There was something in this account that I just picked up last week. At the end of the scripture that I spoke on last week was this line: Mark 11:11 So Jesus came to Jerusalem and went into the Temple. After looking around carefully at everything, he left because it was late in the afternoon. Then he returned to Bethany with the twelve disciples. And then we pick up the story the next day Mark 11:15 When they arrived back in Jerusalem, Jesus entered the Temple and began to drive out the people buying and selling animals for sacrifices. Wow, he must have seen what was happening, left and figured out what his response should be and then came back.

John’s account of Jesus in the temple comes at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, and there has been debate over whether it was the same incident or a separate incident, and I can say categorically it could have been the same incident or a separate incident. But there is a neat line there in John’s account. John 2:15 Jesus made a whip from some ropes and chased them all out of the Temple. He drove out the sheep and cattle, scattered the money changers’ coins over the floor, and turned over their tables. I wonder in that account if the taking the time to braid the rope together was his way of counting to ten.

If you find yourself reacting immediately in anger, you are probably in the wrong. You are letting your anger control you instead of controlling your anger, which is why the bible tells us in Ephesians 4:26-27 And “don’t sin by letting anger control you.” Don’t let the sun go down while you are still angry, for anger gives a foothold to the devil.

Ephesians 4:26-27 NIV “In your anger do not sin”: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold.

It was Phyllis Diller who said “Never go to bed angry, stay up and fight.” I’m not sure that is what the Bible had in mind. Because if you aren’t controlling your anger then your anger is controlling you.

And then find out how you deal with what makes you angry. Remember when the disciples wouldn’t let the children come to Jesus and he got angry? What did he do? He taught the disciples what their correct response should be and then he blessed the children.

What can you do about what makes you angry? How do you correct it, how do you deal with it? Can you be part of the solution?

The other thing to note is that there was no personal violence in Jesus’ response, granted he set animals free and scattered coins but there is nothing to indicate that he struck anyone, that he hurt anyone.

Martin Luther King Jr. was angry, Mahatma Ghandi was angry, Timothy McVeigh was angry and Osama Bin Laden was angry. Two will go down in history as heroes two will always be villains.

The scriptures don’t tell us not to be angry but they do warn us in Ephesians 4:26-27 NIV “In your anger do not sin”

Do You Understand The Price Of Your Anger? There is an old saying that there is only one letter difference between “anger” and “danger”. The guy in Ontario who responded in anger to being cut off in traffic, you remember the guy with the chain saw? He’s going to jail.

I can’t count the marriages that I have watched dissolve because of an angry spouse. Sometimes situations where there was abuse but often just times where the other partner just got tired of the anger and venom that was being spewed.

Jesus got angry over what was happening in the temple, and he responded after thinking about it and without violence. And the result? A lesson was taught, not just for that specific point in time but for the next two thousand years. The temple courts were cleared at least temporarily and I’m sure that some of those who were chased out examined their motives. But what else happened? Mark 11:18 The chief priests and the teachers of the law heard this and began looking for a way to kill him, for they feared him, because the whole crowd was amazed at his teaching.

This was the tipping point in Jesus ministry. The lives of African American’s was changed irrevocably for the better because of the anger of Martin Luther King Jr. India’s future was changed because of the anger of Ghandi and they paid the price with their lives.

You get angry over abortion, or poverty or social injustice, or people disrespecting God and his name and voice your anger and there will be a price to be paid. Chances are that you won’t be killed, but it might be the way people view you, or it might be a promotion or it might be contempt.

But that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t get angry about those things, it just means that you need to be aware that there is often a price to be paid. Remember the words of Edmund Burke who wrote “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

Anger has been the catalyst that has changed our world for the better. Agree with them or not it might be the anger of the “occupy movement” that causes people to take a closer look at corporate greed and what big corporations are willing to do in the name of profits. After all the founder of the Methodist movement, John Wesley got angry over child labour and the founders of the Wesleyan Church go angry over Slavery. But it can’t be repeated enough: Ephesians 4:26-27 NIV “In your anger do not sin”

Discover the Name

2011-11-20T03:23:00.000-08:00

Do you like your name? And if you do now did you always like your name? As a teenager how did you feel about it? I heard two Jr. High girls talking in a mall once and one asked “Do you like your name?” To which the other replied, “No I hate my name” and the first girl said, “Yeah I hate mine too.” I think it's a fact of life that most of us hate our name at some point in our lives, probably because of the way our parents abuse it, “Dennison Vance you get in here right now you have some explaining to do”

Yep my first name is indeed Dennison, I was named after my father’s uncle. But I have never gone by Dennison and other than times when we had a supply teacher in class or when my parents thought I had misbehaved I have never been called Dennison. That’s not a hundred percent true, Austin White called me Dennison when he was little.

Had I been born 32 days later my name probably would have been Stephen because a month and a day after I was born my Grandfather Stephen was killed in an industrial accident.

But my name hasn’t been static, for the first 18 years of my life I went by Denny, when I went away to college I thought it was time to grow up so I started going by Den. D.e.n. just one “n”.

I had an interesting conversation with a person in Australia just before we moved home in 1994, they asked what Den was short for and I told them, they asked me how Dennison was spelled and I told them. And then they asked “well shouldn’t Den have two ‘Ns’?” To be truthful I had never thought about it before. So when we arrived in Bedford to start Cornerstone in August of 1994 I became Denn with 2 “ns”.

When I went to work at my first church in 1981 I discovered for some people my name was simply “Pastor” in 1984 we added an addition to our home and the name he called me was “daddy” a year and a half ago I got a new name and it was “grampy” as opposed to the times Angela simply refers to me as “grumpy”. A pastor friend of mine was asked if he ever woke up grumpy and he replied “sometimes and sometimes I let her sleep in.” But that is a different story.

But I am really not defined by my name, I like it now, it’s different, kind of like me. But I think that the Bard was right when he said William Shakespeare “What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” Which might be why Gertrude Stein wrote “A rose is a rose is a rose.”

Some people are very proud of their names, in particular their surname, I have a friend in Truro by the last name of Wallace who lays claim to a relationship with William Wallace of Brave Heart fame. But that is really outside of our control isn’t it. It was the Czech author Milan Kundera who wrote “We don't know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don't understand our name at all, we don't know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.”

And that was all said to lead into our message this morning. Our scripture begins with an interesting story. Jesus and his apostles have come to Capernaum and Jesus is teaching them a lesson about the Kingdom when John suddenly bursts into the room let’s pick up the story there. Mark 9:38 John said to Jesus, “Teacher, we saw someone using your name to cast out demons, but we told him to stop because he wasn’t in our group.” Remember a couple of weeks ago I spoke about the 12 Apostles and mentioned how Jesus had nicknamed John and his brother James “The Sons of Thunder”? It was John who wanted to call down fire from heaven to burn up a village in Samaria that didn’t welcome Jesus and his followers and now he is forbidding someone from doing good in Jesus name.

And we really don’t know what the issue was. Maybe John thought he was doing the right thing, he might very well of thought that the guy was out of line, he didn’t know him so he assumed that Jesus didn’t know him and that he didn’t know Jesus. John may have thought that when Jesus said “Follow me” that he was only talking in the physical sense, that you could only follow Jesus if you could see him and be with him in the here and now. If that was the case then Jesus’ followers would never have been able to expand past that a few hundred people isolated in a particular point in history.

And really we don’t know who the guy was. Some have suggested that he might have been one of John the Baptist’s followers who heard John talk about Jesus and call him the “Lamb of God” and took John’s words to heart. Others have speculated that he may have been one of the seventy-two that Jesus sent out in Luke 10:1 The Lord now chose seventy-two other disciples and sent them ahead in pairs to all the towns and places he planned to visit. Because apparently the Demon thing fell in the job description because when they came and reported back to Jesus we read Luke 10:17 When the seventy-two disciples returned, they joyfully reported to him, “Lord, even the demons obey us when we use your name!” So maybe John just didn’t recognize the guy, or maybe he was just some fellow who had heard Jesus speak bought into his message and laid claim to it.

Or maybe there was a darker side to John’s comments because it was only a couple of dozen verses before that we read Mark 9:17-18 One of the men in the crowd spoke up and said, “Teacher, I brought my son so you could heal him. He is possessed by an evil spirit that won’t let him talk. And whenever this spirit seizes him, it throws him violently to the ground. Then he foams at the mouth and grinds his teeth and becomes rigid. So I asked your disciples to cast out the evil spirit, but they couldn’t do it.”

So maybe John was stinging a bit, that this guy was doing what he hadn’t been able to do. Just saying. Or maybe John was like a some churches today, he had drawn a circle around his group and assumed that anyone outside the circle was wrong.

We don’t do that do we? I hope not, I hope our circle is big enough without being too big. It was Edwin Markham who wrote “He drew a circle that shut me out-- Rebel, heretic, thing to flout. But love and I had the wit to win-- We drew a circle that took him in.” And if you are older than dirt you might remember the song called “Circles” by the Captain and Tennille which had the opening line “He drew a circle that shut me out He was afraid of what life was all about.” Toni Tennille said the song was inspired by Markham’s poem. There don’t say you didn’t learn anything today.

So maybe whoever the stranger was he was outside the circle that John had drawn.

Now if anyone had the right to be cranky that someone had been using his name it should have been Jesus. But listen to his reply in Mark 9:39-40 “Don’t stop him!” Jesus said. “No one who performs a miracle in my name will soon be able to speak evil of me. Anyone who is not against us is for us.

And if we just had that one scripture we would have to understand it to mean that anyone, that is anyone who lays claim or has ever laid claim to the name of Jesus should be considered a Christian or a Christian church.

Recently in the news in the US a prominent Pastor made a statement that caused an absolute furor in the media, he said that the Mormon Church, or Latter Day Saints as they prefer to be called weren’t Christian. The secular media was aghast, how could that be, the Latter Day Saints profess to follow Jesus so how could another Christian say they were a cult.

Actually the context of why the discussion was even happening was outside the scope of Canadian thinking, it was in relation to Mitt Romney possibly running as President and whether or not Americans would vote for a Mormon. I can’t even imagine that would be a consideration about who would be President. Oh well, different strokes for different folks I guess.

But there were a lot of people who condemned the Pastor who said the Mormons weren’t Christians. And I’m sure that at least a few of those were thinking of this passage.

But like any other scripture it can’t be taken in isolation. Because there are other scriptures that come into play as well, like when Jesus warned people in Matthew 7:22-23 On judgment day many will say to me, ‘Lord! Lord! We prophesied in your name and cast out demons in your name and performed many miracles in your name.’ But I will reply, ‘I never knew you. Get away from me, you who break God’s laws.’

Or his warning in Mark 13:6 for many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am the Messiah.’ They will deceive many.

So it appears that on one hand you have Jesus saying “if they use my name they are one of mine.” And on the other hand he is saying “Be careful not everyone who uses my name is one of mine.”

So how do we balance this dichotomy?

We Need to Realize that His Name is Descriptive Shakespeare said that if you called a rose by a different name it didn’t make it a different thing. But by the same token calling something a rose will not make it a rose.

When the Gospel Writers talk about the name of Jesus they were talking about a very specific Jesus. Jesus who always was and always is. Jesus who is not only the son of God but is God. Jesus who was born of a virgin, Jesus who lived a sinless life, Jesus who died on the cross, Jesus was raised from the dead and Jesus who will someday return. That is the Jesus that is named in the Bible. And churches around the world embrace that Jesus.

If someone handed you a tulip and said it was a rose, you would know right away it was not a rose. But only if you knew what a rose looked like. However if you had never seen a rose it is conceivable you would think the flower you had been handed was indeed a rose and you might even tell other people it was a rose.

But would that make it a rose?

And so we have churches and those who are part of those churches who say “Here is Jesus, but he’s not the Jesus who was born of a virgin, because we don’t believe that. And he’s not the Jesus who was the Son of God because we don’t believe that. And he’s not the Jesus who was raised from the dead or who will return again.” Then I would tell you that you are looking at a tulip and not a rose.

And so when Robert Jeffress, senior pastor of First Baptist Church of Dallas, called Mormonism a “theological cult” he was correct. Because the Jesus of the Latter Day Saints is not the Jesus of the Bible. On the other hand I think Jeffress was over the line when he went on to declare “Evangelicals ought to give preference to a Christian instead of someone who doesn’t embrace historical Christianity.”

I think history has shown that you just because you are a good Christian doesn’t mean that you will make a good national leader. And vice versa.

Lifeway Research a Christian research firm in the states did a survey and found that among Protestant pastors 75 % disagreed with the statement that Mormons were Christians. But hopefully most of us would agree with the president of Lifeway Ed Stezer who stated “Though pastors believe overwhelmingly that Mormonism is not Christianity, their opinions should not be confused with personal scorn for Mormons, A person can respect a religious group and even appreciate their commitment to traditional moral values without equating their beliefs with Christian orthodoxy.”

But understand that it’s not enough to claim the name of Jesus without claiming the Jesus of the name.

His Name Is Holy This goes back to what we believe about Jesus, if we truly believe that he is God then his name deserves the same respect as the name of God. And that takes us back to Exodus 20:7 "Do not misuse the name of the LORD your God. The LORD will not let you go unpunished if you misuse his name. and we’ve talked about this before. To misuse God’s name is to use it in a frivolous manner, to misuse Jesus’ name is to use it in a frivolous manner. It’s not an exclamation, or a statement of surprise or anger. It is a holy name and deserves to be treated as such.

It’s not just a command about the way we speak, it’s also a commandment concerning the way we live. When you call yourself a Christian then you are calling yourself a follower of Christ, you are in effect taking his name his name and attaching it to yourself and to your behaviour. And when your life does not reflect your commitment as a Christian then you are misusing his name. So, when you call yourself a Christian then live like the devil what does that say? What are you doing to the name of Christ with the way you are living?

Not only is his name descriptive his name is holy, but more than that:

His Name Is Powerful If you read through the book of Acts you discover that the early church depended on the name of Jesus. It was in the name of Jesus that the message of the Gospel was preached, it was in the name of Jesus that people were healed, it was in the name of Jesus that tyrants were rebuked and it was in the name of Jesus that people found the strength to be martyred for their faith.

And there are great scriptures that we claim and hold unto to, scriptures like John 14:14 You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it. How often have we heard that promise, and how often have we claimed that promise? You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it. Wow! But did Jesus actually mean that you could ask for anything in his name and it would be yours? That you and yours would never be in want, that you would never be sick that you could ask for anything in Jesus’ name and it would be yours?

That’s how it is preached sometimes and that is a heresy and a mockery of the words of Jesus. Seriously you can’t just cherry pick verses like this and let them stand on their own. You can’t just take a sentence out of the bible and look at it in isolation. The very least that you can do is look at the verses that immediately surround that verse. In this case we need to look at John 14:12-13 I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father. What is it talking about here? It is talking about doing what Jesus did. That your prayers and your life would bring glory to God. And you are thinking “Well sure Denn, but if I won the lottery that would bring glory to God.” Do you really believe that?

This goes back to the line in the Lord’s prayer that says “your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” There is power in Jesus name and that power is living in Jesus name and means that we live in such a way that our requests are requests that Jesus would honour. John 15:16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit--fruit that will last. Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. We like the last part. Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. But you can’t isolate that from the first part of Jesus statement and that is that you will bear fruit that will last, because that is what your requests are supposed to lead to. When you pray for the power and desire to live the life that Jesus would have you to live, that power is there. When you pray for the strength to resist temptation, that strength is there. When you pray that you will be better able to bear the name of Jesus and that your life will produce the fruit that Jesus wants you to produce, that request will be answered.

As a young Pastor I thought that praying “Your will be done” was a cop out, that if we were truly to pray in faith, believing that whatever we asked for in Jesus name would happen that we were just given ourselves an out by praying “your will be done” because if our prayers weren’t answered then we could just say “well I guess that it wasn’t in God’s will”

But what if we truly believed that God is smarter than us, and ultimately that God wants the very best for our lives, even if at this point in our lives it doesn’t seem that way?

Sometimes we are like children who feel that we need every shiny new toy that captures our imagination and every cone of ice cream or candy bar that tickles our fancy and that doesn’t bring glory to God.

But have you ever wondered what would happen if every prayer you ever uttered had been answered in just the way you wanted it to be answered?

The power that is in the name of Jesus is the power to live as a new creation, the power to be a witness to his name, the power to bear the fruit that he would have us to bear.

Paul wrote these words to the believers in the Colossian church, Colossians 3:17 And whatever you do or say, let it be as a representative of the Lord Jesus, all the while giving thanks through him to God the Father. Now listen to how it is said in the New International Version, NIV Colossians 3:17 And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.