The Kingdom is like a Treasure

It is a serendipitous story, which is a story about serendipity. Serendipity, isn't that a great word? It is probably one of my favourite words. You know what serendipity means right? Serendipity means an unexpected discovery. You know when you are looking for something and you find something else. You know you drop the remote between the cushions on the coach and when you are digging around looking for them you discover a twenty dollar bill instead. Whoa, that is serendipity. If you find an old pizza crust that isn't serendipity it simply means you have kids.

It sometimes happens to me when I am reading; I will be enjoying a novel, kind of zoned out, I read fiction for the same reason we watch TV, for entertainment not enlightenment. And then all of a sudden I will come across the most incredible phrase or an idea for a message. And that wasn't what I was looking for. It is serendipity.

And this is a serendipitous story. The hero of the story is working in a field that he does not own, we don't know if he was hired to do whatever he was doing or if he was helping someone out as a favour. All we know is that in the process of doing something he unexpectedly found something and the something that he found was of greater value than the something he was doing or even of the field he was doing something in.

We are told that he immediately covered the treasure up, went and liquidated all of his assets and bought the field, and presumably the treasure as well. I don't know how he explained his sudden affinity for the field to the previous owner but it is just a story.

This is one of the eight times in the New Testament that Jesus begins a parable with the words "The Kingdom of Heaven" or "The Kingdom of God" is like a . . . A parable is simply a story with a meaning. Kind of like a fable but parable sounds more spiritual. Aesop told fables, Jesus told parables. They could also be called allegories, but they aren't they are called parables.

If you weren't here last week, shame on you, but I will bring you up to speed. Our summer preaching series is: "The Kingdom of Heaven is like. . ." and we are tying it around the concept of the Inukshuk. The Inukshuk of course is one or several stones placed in a specific place for a specific purpose, traditionally by the Inuit people. Which when you think about it is kind of redundant because Inuit means: The People.

In Inuktitut Inukshuk means "likeness of a person" Inuk meaning person and shuk meaning similar. Most of us are familiar with the Heritage Canada Commercials where the Inuit family explains the Inukshuk to the Mountie by saying "Now the people will know we were here" but the reality is that the inukshuk was used for a variety of reasons, to provide landmarks in a barren land, to act as direction markers and to warn of danger. Many of the same reasons that Christ left the church here, so that people would know that he was here, to provide landmarks in a morally barren land, to act as direction markers and to warn of danger.

And now we begin our journey to discover what the Kingdom of Heaven is like. And so Jesus begins to draw a variety of pictures which describe his Kingdom. Matthew 13:44 "The Kingdom of Heaven is like a treasure that a man discovered hidden in a field. In his excitement, he hid it again and sold everything he owned to get enough money to buy the field.

And you might be smarter than me, and this might make perfect sense to you but these thirty six words make me ask a whole pile of questions. What was the man doing in the field? How did he find the treasure? What type of treasure was it? Was what he did entirely on the up and up? What is actually buried on Oak Island? Well the last question didn't come out of the scripture but it had to do with treasure and the scripture made me think of the Oak Island Treasure. I personally am torn between it being Captain Kidd's treasure and the lost treasure of the Knights Templar. But I regress.

The answer to most of those questions, including the Oak Island one is that we don't know. And it obviously wasn't important or Christ would have told us, it's just a parable. The important part of the story is that the man found something he wasn't necessarily looking for and was willing to give all he had in order to obtain it.

Upon first reading and without putting it in a historical context it is easy to question the ethics of the man in the story. He finds this treasure that doesn't belong to him and he doesn't tell the owner of the land about it, instead he reburies the treasure and negotiates the purchase of the land, which apparently would have been worth more if the treasure had of been figured into it.

So here is the question, who owned the treasure? The simplest answer would be: Whoever hid the treasure in first place. But apparently they were no longer in the equation, it couldn't have been the land owner because he was willing to sell the land with the treasure still buried, so it can be assumed that he didn't even know the treasure was there.

So if the original owner was no longer present than the short answer is: whoever owned the land owned the treasure. But here is the caveat, only if he knew about it.

Let's put it in a modern setting. Next Saturday as you are driving out of whatever estate you live in you notice a yard sale and so you stop and as you go through the treasures that the home owner is selling you come across a really ugly painting that has $8.00 marked on it, you ask the person if that is the best they will do and they agree to drop their price to $5.00 and you purchase the painting. Now if the painting had been done by Bob Smith it would be worth $5.00 and the seller would have received what he wanted and all would be well with the universe. But what if the painting was a Jackson Pollock and was worth $50,000,000.00? The seller still got the $5.00 he wanted from the painting.

But, shouldn't he get some of the $50,000,000.00? What about the person he got the painting from? And perhaps the person that person got the painting from? And what if it was a painting that Jackson Pollock had sold in 1948 for $5.00 because he wasn't famous yet and sold it for the price of the canvas. If you knew it was a Pollock would you have a moral obligation to tell the seller what you knew? Or would you be within your rights to simple give him what he wanted for the painting.

Sources tell us that 2000 years ago it was very common for people to bury items of value. There were no banks or investments companies as we know them, no safety deposit boxes and the area was constantly being conquered and re-conquered. There had been the Assyrians, and the Babylonians, and the Greeks and now the Romans. And so if it appeared that the occupiers were going to take your valuables you might bury them, or if you were going on a trip and wanted to make sure that your valuables were safe while you were gone you would bury them.

Remember the story of the man who gave the money to his servants to invest, two of them did exactly that and saw the money increase but do you remember what the remaining servant did with the money he was given?

Sure you do,
Matthew 25:18 But the servant who received the one bag of silver dug a hole in the ground and hid the master's money.

The downside of course was if something happened to you and nobody else knew where you hid your money, oh well.

In the Daily Study Bible William Barclay tells us "Jewish Rabbinic law was quite clear: "What finds belong to the finder, and what finds must one cause to be proclaimed? These finds belong to the finder--if a man finds scattered fruit, scattered money...these belong to the finder." In point of fact this man had a prior right to what he had found." Or roughly translated "Finders Keepers."

So if the man was ploughing or digging or whatever he was doing and found the treasure and the owner of the land did not know it was there than it belonged to the person who found it, that was the common law at the time, and we wouldn't even have been having this discussion because everyone would have understood the concept. When people heard the story their reaction would have been "dude that is so cool, wish I found a treasure."

I think it's interesting that instead of just taking the treasure, which apparently he was entitled to do that instead he purchased the land before he claimed the treasure.

And so as I worked on this message I was thinking about what the treasure was. Was it God's love? Was it God's Grace? Was it Salvation? The answer is: Yes. Because the treasure is: The Kingdom of Heaven. The question that Jesus is answering here is not: what is the treasure? That is the answer not the question. The question is: what is the Kingdom of Heaven? And the answer is Matthew 13:44 "The Kingdom of Heaven is like a treasure that a man discovered hidden in a field. In his excitement, he hid it again and sold everything he owned to get enough money to buy the field. And we all know what a treasure is right? It's a treasure. It's not ordinary and every day, it's special and it's valuable. In this case it was worth more than everything else the man owned.

The Treasure Was There For Whoever Found it the scripture doesn't say that he was a special man, just that he was a man. He didn't find the treasure because he was special, he was special because he found the treasure.

I think it's interesting that the man wasn't even looking for treasure, he was just going about his life. We talk about those who are on a spiritual quest, looking for answers and seeking a higher meaning. And that is wonderful because the word of God promises us in Hebrews 11:6 And it is impossible to please God without faith. Anyone who wants to come to him must believe that God exists and that he rewards those who sincerely seek him.

But it's not always like that, most times God simply interrupts our lives, but too often we ignore him.

The night I met God, that wasn't the plan, it wasn't on my agenda, my day planer didn't say: get up, putter around the house, go for a long drive with the roof down, have supper, go to church as a favour to a friend, become a Christ Follower and feel called to the ministry."

I was just a fisherman home from the Gaspe for a few days; I wasn't on a spiritual journey or on a quest, certainly wasn't looking for a treasure. And yet I found it, or maybe it found me. In this story the Kingdom of God was hidden but it could be found, and it could be found by whoever was open to finding it. We don't know if others had come close or perhaps it had even been stumbled on before but those who found it either hadn't recognized it for the treasure it was, or perhaps they didn't know what it was they had found.

What I love most about the Gospels is the calling of the individual apostles. Some like Andrew came looking for Jesus, but for many of them they were just ordinary people going about their ordinary lives when they discovered the Kingdom of Heaven. They were fisherman and government employees and accountants and people trying to over throw the government, in other words they were just people.

Some of you already know the story but a week and a half ago I received an envelope that had for a return address "The Protocol Office" It was an invitation to a reception being held in the presence of Queen Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh, this coming Tuesday. Probably me and 10,0000 other people, but that is beside the point. It was a very classy invitation. I later discovered that I was put on the list because I am considered to be a community leader. Cool. But that isn't what I was trying for, I am just doing my job.

There is a great statement that closes the Bible, in Revelation 22:17 we read "Come." Let anyone who hears this say, "Come." Let anyone who is thirsty come. Let anyone who desires drink freely from the water of life. In the King James Version it says "whosoever will". The Kingdom of Heaven is not limited by our nationality, or our skin colour, or our gender, it is open to whosoever will. The invitation 2000 years ago was Let anyone who is thirsty come. Let anyone who desires drink freely from the water of life. And the invitation is there for you today, maybe not the invitation to the reception for the Queen of England, but the opportunity to meet the King of the Universe, and that trumps the House of Windsor.

The Treasure was Free: It was not Cheap We understand that the Grace of God is free and it is there for whosoever will, but it is not cheap. Several times in the Gospels Jesus is asked by people what they needed to do to follow him, or to have eternal life and his answer was "Go sell all you have and give it away." But that wasn't a requirement of everyone. How come? Because it wasn't about what they possessed it was about what possessed them. And the fact that Jesus didn't require it from everyone only brings comfort to those he would require it from.

But it's not our possessions Jesus wants, it's our loyalty. He wants to be number 1 in our lives, not number 37 or 25 or 4 or even 2 he wants to be number 1. He wants to be the priority. Luke 16:13 "No one can serve two masters. For you will hate one and love the other; you will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money." You may think you can serve two masters but there will come a time in your life that you will have to decide: where do my loyalties lie? What is my priority in this situation? Where will I give my time? Where will I give my money? One of the stories that I was talking about is found in Matthew 19:20-22 "I've obeyed all these commandments," the young man replied. "What else must I do?" Jesus told him, "If you want to be perfect, go and sell all your possessions and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me." But when the young man heard this, he went away very sad, for he had many possessions.

He discovered what he owned and what owned him.

Jim Elliot was a missionary who was working with Wycliffe Bible Translators to bring the gospel to a remote South American tribe in the late 50s, and he was killed in the process. And just days before he was killed he wrote in his journal, "He is no fool - who gives up what he cannot keep, to gain what he cannot lose." In a very real way the hero of our story gave up what he could not keep to gain that which he could not lose.

Whatever the treasure was that the man discovered, it was worth everything the man had. And that is the lesson that Jesus is teaching. The Kingdom of Heaven is worth everything we have. We might think we have it "all", but "all" will pale in comparison to what God has to offer. The offer of a past that is forgiven, and of a future that is assured.

Because the secret of the Kingdom is that in giving up you get more. You say "But Denn, my family has to come first" or "My career is a priority" or or or. But remember the words of Jesus when he said Matthew 6:33 Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need. When the Kingdom is your priority and you live the way that Jesus wants you to live then you become a better parent and you become a better spouse and you become a better employee and you become a better employer and you become a better person and ultimately you gain what you were seeking all along.

And if there is a conflict between the Kingdom and what you want, it may appear that in the short term your way is the most advantageous but it won't prove that way in the long term.

You probably all remember the WWJD phase that the church went through. What would Jesus do? But that isn't the question, because we aren't Jesus. The question is WWJHMD "What would Jesus Have Me Do?" And it's only when we are focused on his Kingdom that we are able to ask that and answer it.

Jesus reminds us in Matthew 6:21 Wherever your treasure is, there the desires of your heart will also be. So if you have determined in your life that your treasure is the Kingdom of Heaven then our hearts follow. But don't expect everyone to see the value of the Kingdom, it was Wesley who said "The kingdom of God within us is a treasure indeed, but a treasure hid from the world" and Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 1:18 The message of the cross is foolish to those who are headed for destruction! But we who are being saved know it is the very power of God.

Here is the confusing thing: Even though the man found the treasure The Treasure is Still There. It wasn't that the man didn't find all the treasure, it is the mystery of faith that the same treasure that was found by Peter and James and Paul, the same treasure found by Augustine and Wesley and Calvin, the same treasure found by Mother Theresa and Billy Graham is still there for us today. The Bible promises us in Hebrews 13:8 Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

And the Kingdom of Heaven is still waiting to be discovered by you.

 

 

The Kingdom of Heaven is Like an Inukshuk

You see them everywhere now, along the road, in people's gardens, as jewellery, they are everywhere. Correct me if I'm wrong but most of us never knew what an inukshuk was before the Canadian Heritage commercials. But now most of us know at least "now the people will know we were here", even if we don't know what it is called.

 

And for those who missed out on that entire series of commercials the Winter Olympics probably brought the concept of the inukshuk to the world at large. But, you might be asking, what do they have to with church in general and the Kingdom of God in particular? Glad you asked.

 

A year ago when I was preaching my series on the Traveller's Gift I came upon the statement that "The Kingdom of Heaven is Like. . ." was used 9 times in the New Testament, and I decided that would be a good series of messages. In particular I thought it would be a good series of messages for this coming summer.

 

Well, sermons are like sausages, in most cases you are probably better off not knowing how they are created, but we will open that door a crack for you today.

 

When I prepare to preach a series of sermons I usually file away random thoughts, quotes and scriptures for weeks and sometimes months before I actually start writing. Some I use and some I throw away. Then a month or two before we get to the series start date Jason and I usually lock ourselves in his office and brainstorm through the series, where do we want it to go? What do we want you to learn? What are the themes or big ideas and how will the messages fit together?

 

We talk about possible video items or dramas and what music might work or not work. And then we start playing with graphic ideas. Will we use banners? What will the bulletins look like? What about PowerPoint backgrounds? And then eventually I start production of the actual messages, and each one will take me about twenty hours to produce. Because you understand that every year I produce the equivalent of a 350 page book. You didn't have a clue did you? Truthfully, you thought this was the only day I worked and I just stood up and talked for twenty minutes making it up as I went along. Be truthful.

 

See I told you it was kind of like making sausages.

 

Well this time when Jason and I were in the process of what this series would look like we determined that each sermon was kind of like a rock that you would add to one another to build something, but what would that something be? A wall, a fence, an altar? And then I had a flash and said "You know those silly things you see along the side of the road", because if nothing else I am culturally sensitive. And he said "you mean an inukshuk." To which I replied, "Yeah whatever."

 

And it kind of progressed from there, usually at that point we start having fun and think up all kinds of neat ideas including ones that we would do if money was no object and kind of winnow them down from there. Sometimes in the process you will be so close to it that you don't see the entire picture and you embrace some ideas and concepts that are really dumb, so after we played around with the Inukshuk idea and what we could do with it Jason suggested we talk to a few people to see if the idea was viable or if it was just way to abstract. And in most cases people would nod and say "Yeah, that would work." So here we are; "The Kingdom of Heaven is like an Inukshuk."

 

Because really Jesus would have said that if he had of been teaching in Nunavut instead of Palestine. You see, Jesus was a master of taking whatever was at hand and using it for an illustration in his teaching. He was incredibly relevant to his listeners. And so he said, "the Kingdom of Heaven is like . . ." And he looked around and what did he see, a fisherman casting his net into the sea of Galilee, a bird landing on a mustard plant, a farmer sowing his seeds, workers harvesting grapes.

 

So I would suspect, that had Jesus been teaching in the Arctic he would have made statements like, "the kingdom of heaven is like a man who was hunting seals", or "the Kingdom of heaven is like an arctic tern" then perhaps as he cast his eyes across the bleak horizon "The kingdom of Heaven is like an Inukshuk."

 

So with that in mind, join me on the journey. And if your knowledge of inuksuit, which is the plural of inukshuk, is limited to the Canadian Heritage commercial or the gnome and toadstool section of Canadian Tire or Wal-Mart, let me enlighten you a bit.

 

From my studies I have discovered that Inukshuk does not mean "now the people will know that we were here." That may have been the purpose of the inukshuk but in Inuktitut (the Inuit language) Inukshuk means "likeness of a person" or in the larger definition "something which acts for or performs the function of a person." Inuk meaning person and shuk meaning similar.

 

The most distant inukshuk from Canada would be one that was placed in Brisbane Australia in 1988 for the world expo; in order to go further than that you would have to put one on the moon.

 

We kind of think that the Inuit are the only people who built Inuksuit and that the only place there were built was the north, but the reality is that similar stone figures were made all over the world in ancient times, but the Arctic is one of the few places where they still stand. Mainly because there hasn't been a lot of people or development to knock them down. And throughout history they have been called various names in various places but they all do the same thing.

 

The Old Testament tells a number of stories of stones being placed in piles for various reasons, the first time is in Genesis 31. The back story is that Jacob, Abraham's grandson, had lived in the land of his in-laws for years and now the time had come to return back to Canaan, and as a part of that process Jacob sat down with his father-in-law to reach an agreement on his leaving, what he could take and what he would leave.

 

You know just like when your kids are going to college and think the family computer and flat screen would look better in their dorm room then the family living room. And we pick up the story in Genesis 31:44 - 47 So come, let's make a covenant, you and I, and it will be a witness to our commitment." So Jacob took a stone and set it up as a monument. Then he told his family members, "Gather some stones." So they gathered stones and piled them in a heap. Then Jacob and Laban sat down beside the pile of stones to eat a covenant meal. To commemorate the event, Laban called the place Jegar-sahadutha (which means "witness pile" in Aramaic), and Jacob called it Galeed (which means "witness pile" in Hebrew). If they had of been on Baffin island they would have called it an inukshuk.

 

The next time we see this in the Bible is when the people of Israel finally cross into the Promised Land after wandering in the desert for forty years and we read in Joshua 4:1-3 When all the people had crossed the Jordan, the Lord said to Joshua, "Now choose twelve men, one from each tribe. Tell them, 'Take twelve stones from the very place where the priests are standing in the middle of the Jordan. Carry them out and pile them up at the place where you will camp tonight.'"

And then a little later in the passage we read Joshua 4:6-7 We will use these stones to build a memorial. In the future your children will ask you, 'What do these stones mean?' Then you can tell them, 'They remind us that the Jordan River stopped flowing when the Ark of the Lord's Covenant went across.' These stones will stand as a memorial among the people of Israel forever." What was he saying? "Now the people will know that we were here."

And then in the book of 1 Samuel we read the story of how the Philistines had captured the Ark of the Covenant, which some of you will recall was the sacred container that was used to carry the Ten Commandments, and others of you will recall was the focal point of the first Indiana Jones movie.

Regardless, the Philistines had captured the Ark of the Covenant and under the direction of the Prophet Samuel the people of Israel were able to rescue the Ark, and it was at that point that we read 1 Samuel 7:12 Samuel then took a large stone and placed it between the towns of Mizpah and Jeshanah. He named it Ebenezer (which means "the stone of help"), for he said, "Up to this point the Lord has helped us!" And we are going to reference that in our last song, be looking for it.

And now we come to the "So what?" in the message. Well that leads us to a statement that Peter made to the early Christ Followers in his letter 1 Peter 2:5 And you are living stones that God is building into his spiritual temple.

You see if Christ had of simply come and lived for thirty three years, died on a cross and rose from the dead it would have meant nothing and would have been remembered by nobody, but he left behind an inukshuk, and that is us. We are the living stones that build the Kingdom of God and Jesus looks down at his church and the people who make it up and he nods and says "Now the people will know I was there."

 

But the analogy only works if we can see the characteristics of the inukshuk in believers.

Titus 2:7 And 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. The Inukshuk Was Used as a Landmark Anyone here ever been to the Arctic? Between my second and third year in bible college I had a summer job on a salvage tug that took me to Little Cornwallis Island, which if we bring up a map is located right here.

And the one thing that you realize in the North is that there is a lot of nothing. And so in many cases the Inuit couldn't say "walk three miles until you come to the big oak tree and take a left" You might be able to say, "walk three miles until you come to a polar bear, then run for your life." But that would only work if the bear was still there and hadn't eaten you the first time you saw it.

And so in a terrain devoid of features the inukshuk became the features, because they were different and they stood out. And so they became landmarks, "walk until you come to the inukshuk made of eight rocks then and turn east."

2000 years ago Christians lived in a world that was radically different than the values that they embraced. It was a world of immorality and excess, and those believers were called upon to be examples, to be land marks in a world that was devoid of moral bearings.

Kind of like today, Christ Followers are called to be landmarks of morality and right teaching, we are called to be different, to stand out. Not in a bad way, you know some Christians think that by dressing and behaving strangely they accomplish that but we were called to be different in our behaviour. And the question would have to be: are we? Can people tell who we are and who we worship by what we do and don't do? By the way we treat people and respect God? Are we moral landmarks in a culture devoid of moral landmarks? Because to quote Benjamin Franklin "Well done, is better than well said."

Matthew 5:14 "You are the light of the world—like a city on a hilltop that cannot be hidden. The Inukshuk Was Used to Point the Way Another purpose of the Inukshuk fit with the first, "When you come to the inukshuk made of eight stones you must follow in the direction of the short arm until you come to the inukshuk made of four flat stones."

And so we are told that the Inuit people relied on inuksuit to provide direction in their travels. They followed in the steps of those who had gone before. I read somewhere "To Know the Road ahead ask those coming back." Well when it comes to eternity we can't ask those coming back but we have been given direction in God's word. Part of our responsibility as Christians is to point people to heaven, if we truly believe that there is a heaven to be gained and a hell to be shunned then we should be at least somewhat passionate in telling people how to get to one and avoid the other.

"Follow the short arm until you come to the inukshuk made of four flat stones." Jesus gave us direction in John 14:6 Jesus told him, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me. Jesus didn't say he was one way he said he was the only way, he didn't say that there were many paths to God he said he was the only path to God, and if we believe that then we have a responsibility to tell people, that is part of why we were left behind. The last instructions that Jesus gave to his disciples are spelled out in Matthew 28:19-20 Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age."

He was telling them directly and us indirectly to point the way. Because if the church and the people who make it up are not pointing the way to heaven we are not fulfilling the instructions given to us by Christ.

Seriously, if there is no afterlife than the church is irrelevant, but if there is an afterlife and we aren't telling people how they can get there then the church is irresponsible. It was D. T. Niles who said "Evangelism is just one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread." If we know the way to God than don't we have a responsibility to point others in that direction?

One source told me that when a inukshuk has a hole, that if you looked through that hole you would be able to see the next one. Which immediately reminded me of the old story of the mother and son who were sitting in church one day and the little boy was gazing in wonder at all the stained glass windows, and finally he asked his mother "Who are all those people?" to which his mother replied "Those are the saints." As he continued to look at the windows his mother sensed a teaching moment and asked him "Do you know what saints are?" and the little boy said "Yep, they are people the light shines through."

Good answer, is the light shining through you? When people look through your life can they see the Kingdom of Heaven?

So an Inukshuk is a land mark and it points the way, but there is still more to it, Hebrews 3:13 You must warn each other every day, while it is still "today," so that none of you will be deceived by sin and hardened against God. The Inukshuk Was Used to Warn of Danger Perhaps at that particular point the ice wasn't safe or maybe it was a place that polar bears frequented.

Years ago before you could be annoyed with a hundred bogus warnings a day in your email inbox warnings about dangers had to be conveyed in other means. There has been a story has been told for years in our family and I have no idea if it's true or not but it's a great story, it seems that my father's great grandfather was fishing in the Bay of Fundy when he came across a member of the Passamaquoddy tribe far from land in his canoe. Wanting to be helpful my great-great-grandfather offered the man a lift to the main land and so other man asked his name, when he heard the name he said, and again I cannot guarantee this is true but it is a great story, "no, Guptill steal canoe." I don't know if that gentlemen had personal experience with canoe thieves or if he had been warned by others.

And inside of all of us there seems to be an inclination to warn others. We might not have unsafe ice and polar bears today and may not build an inukshuk but we do it through misguided emails, flashing your lights after going by a speed trap, or simply telling others about a craftsman who has done shoddy work.

Part of why Jesus left the church here has been to tell people the good news but there is also the other side and that is to warn people of danger. In a real way there is the danger of judgment, if we believe in the reality of hell, the reality of an eternal separation from God and from all that is good and all that is lovely then we need to warn people. That is the reason Cornerstone is here, to help depopulate hell.

But there is also a need for the church to warn people about the consequences of sin. I've mentioned before that people look at the rules set down in the bible and that have been preached by the church and think that God is simply a spoil sport, out to make sure we don't have fun. But the reality is that God has put them in place for our benefit. To warn us away from actions that could harm us, physically, emotionally or spiritually.

Sometimes the problem is that we've added to the list with more lists and more warnings until it is hard to take serious the ones that are really dangerous.

Bjorn Bayley is the president of Ikea American and he said "In the US we find the label requirements are crazy. It is almost as if we had to label a bookcase with the warning 'do not eat this bookcase -- it can be harmful to your health'." And for years that was the side the church swung to, don't do this, don't do that, this is wrong and so is this and don't forget about that. And we warned people about dancing and playing cards and going to the movies, not that there wasn't validity in some of those warnings, but in all of that the warning about things that were peripheral it got to the place that people no longer listened to the church about the things that were important. And we became like the little boy who cried wolf.

And it has made our job harder, but we are still required to do it because those warnings are important, both for the here and now and for the there and then.

And finally two quick thoughts to end on. We read in Romans 12:4-5 Just as our bodies have many parts and each part has a special function, so it is with Christ's body. We are many parts of one body, and we all belong to each other. Inuksuit are All Different But They are All The Same. If you google Inukshuk and look at the images you notice that while they are similar they are not identical. An inukshuk can be small or large, a single rock, several rocks balanced on each other, round boulders or flat.

They were each created unique by their creator. And we need to be reminded that within the church we are all called to follow Christ and be Christ like but we are still individuals. And we are all wonderful, beautiful creations of a loving and caring God. And if you ever find yourself in a church that dictates that everyone has to think the same, and dress the same, and worship the same and there is no room for individuality then, really it's probably not a church you should be in.

And finally in Psalm 105:15 "Do not touch my chosen people, and do not hurt my prophets."

Inuit Tradition Forbids The Destruction Of Inuksuit. As a church we cannot dictate how we will be treated by the world but we can be very careful about how we treat one another.

So be mindful of how you treat other believers, be careful you don't hurt them and that you don't hurt their reputations. We are family and families need to care for one another and protect one another. Does that mean we ignore people's sinful behaviour? Not at all, when someone falls you don't pretend they didn't fall you help them back up and deal with the consequences of their fall.

And just as important be careful of your own inukshuk, that is be careful in how you behave that you don't destroy your own reputation and in so doing the reputation of your saviour. Because sometimes we are our own worst enemies.

 

 

 

The Nature of Love

And that is the sum of the New Testament teaching, All you need is love. Paul wrote exactly the same thing in Romans 13:8 without the catchy tune, Romans 13:8 Owe nothing to anyone—except for your obligation to love one another. If you love your neighbour, you will fulfill the requirements of God's law. That's what it boils down to. If you love your neighbour, you will fulfill the requirements of God's law.

How simple is that? Should be able to stop right there. Am I right? Here endeth the lesson. We could close our bibles and go home. As a matter of fact if we wrote that on a piece of paper and stuck it to our mirrors where we'd see it every morning and if we committed to live by that principle we'd never need another sermon.

And it wasn't just Paul who said it. . . it was Ringo and George and John as well.

And from a Biblical perspective it wasn't just the apostle Paul, the first time we hear the command comes from the top in Leviticus 19:18 "Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against a fellow Israelite, but love your neighbour as yourself. I am the Lord." And in case someone misses it, Jesus reiterates it over and over again in the Gospels, for example in Mark 12:30-31 And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.' The second is equally important: 'Love your neighbour as yourself.' No other commandment is greater than these." And listen to how James refers to it in James 2:8 Yes indeed, it is good when you obey the royal law as found in the Scriptures: "Love your neighbour as yourself."

By the way and this is a comment without commentary: the principle of loving your neighbour is found throughout the bible, in both the Old and New Testament, but is absent in the Quran. Just saying.

So if it is so simple why is it so tough? One of the reasons is how we define love, for most of us when we think of love we think of a romantic love kind of like Wood Allen who said "I was nauseous and tingly all over. I was either in love or I had smallpox." And so for most of us love is a feeling, an emotion and it's hard to control or harness our emotions. And so if we don't have an emotional bond with someone than we don't feel that we can love them.

We've spoken before about how the New Testament was written in Greek and how that language tended to use more words to reflect the meaning of a thought then we do in English. When you think about it the English language is a really lazy language. For example the word fast, you ever think about what fast means. It can mean that you are quick, or it can mean that colours don't run, or it can mean to tie something up, or it can mean that someone is morally loose, or it can mean to not eat, or it can mean that your watch has gained time or it can mean that you are loyal or it can mean that you are sleeping soundly, or it can mean that you are close to something. Kind of like I read the red book.

 

Another word like that is love. We throw the word love around to mean almost anything. I love my wife, I love ""Big Bang Theory", the TV show not the concept, I love my little red car, I love flying, I love pizza, I love my kids, I love my parents, and I love all of you. But I love each of those things in different ways, but I describe my feelings with one word.

 

The Greek language however has several different words that are used to convey love for different things. First there is Eros, which is a sensual love, a passionate love that would be what Woody Allen was speaking of.
Eros isn't actually used in the Bible. The next form of love was Philio and this is the warm fuzzy feeling we have for those nearest and dearest to us. This is friendship. Have you ever wondered why Philadelphia is called the city of brotherly love? Then there is Storge, and this is affection, what you feel for your parents or children. My sister gave my mother a plaque that says "I love you more then you love me, because you have only loved me for part of your life and I have loved you for all of mine." Cute.

 

But Paul doesn't use any of those words for love instead he uses the word Agape. And agape is less a feeling of the heart and more a feeling of the mind. It is as much an act of the will as an act of the emotions. It is a choice we make. It is why Jesus can tell us to love our enemies. It is a conscious action, something that you decide to do and something that you cannot do without the power of the Holy Spirit in your life.

 

Remember the sum of Jesus teaching is to Love God and to Love Others. Which is why when there is a disaster, on the other side of the world, happening to people we don't know and might not like if we did know them Christian relief organizations are there firstest with the mostest. And you have to wonder what would happen if everyone lived by those principles?

 

It was Napoleon Bonaparte who wrote "Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, and myself founded empires; but what foundation did we rest the creations of our genius? Upon force. Jesus Christ founded an empire upon love; and at this hour millions of men would die for Him." And the foundation of Jesus' teaching? Love for God and Love for People.

So it goes back to: what is love? And I think we all know what love is supposed to be but that seems way too hard so we try to define what love is and what love isn't. Do you remember the story of the Good Samaritan? Do you remember how it started? A man came to Jesus and asked the question
Luke 10:25 One day an expert in religious law stood up to test Jesus by asking him this question: "Teacher, what should I do to inherit eternal life?" And so Jesus said you know what you are supposed to do, what is it the Law says? And the man replied by saying
Luke 10:27 The man answered, "'You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, and all your mind.' And, 'Love your neighbour as yourself.'"

Simple enough right? That must be what Jesus thought because he replies by saying Luke 10:28 "Right!" Jesus told him. "Do this and you will live!" Simple, right? Apparently not because in the next verse we read Luke 10:29 The man wanted to justify his actions, so he asked Jesus, "And who is my neighbour?" And that's when Jesus told the story of the Good Samaritan ending with the question Luke 10:36-37 "Now which of these three would you say was a neighbour to the man who was attacked by bandits?" Jesus asked. The man replied, "The one who showed him mercy." Then Jesus said, "Yes, now go and do the same." Simple right? Obviously not as simple as one would think because throughout the New Testament love is constantly being defined, spelled out and clarified.

Paul tells us in Romans 13:10 Love does no wrong to others, so love fulfills the requirements of God's law.
And so Love is Defined by How You Don't Behave This is probably the easiest way to define love and the easiest way to display love. Love does no wrong to others.

We have all heard about the Hippocratic Oath, even if we don't know what all is in the Hippocratic Oath, and what we do know is delivered through television and is wrong. We hear TV Doctors say "remember what it says in the Hippocratic Oath "First do no harm"" but that isn't in the Hippocratic Oath, that is just an old Latin saying.

The Hippocratic Oath is the Oath Historically taken by Doctors and it was written by a Greek Doctor named Hippocrates 400 years before the birth of Christ. And the first part of the oath states: I will prescribe regimens for the good of my patients according to my ability and my judgment and never do harm to anyone.

So really if we took a similar oath to never harm anyone we would be well on the way. It is interesting that for over two thousand years that statement was part of the oath but it's no longer there, possible because there is another portion that is now missing and that is the portion that says: I will not give a lethal drug to anyone if I am asked, nor will I advise such a plan; and similarly I will not give a woman a potion to cause an abortion.

Interesting. Paul had just spelled out this concept of Love in the verse before this one. He has reached back into the Ten Commandments and pulled out four of the last five commandments Romans 13:9 For the commandments say, "You must not commit adultery. You must not murder. You must not steal. You must not covet." These—and other such commandments—are summed up in this one commandment: "Love your neighbour as yourself." So from this reference anyway love seems pretty simple. You demonstrate your love to your spouse by not sleeping around on them. You show you love to your annoying neighbour by not choking them to death while they sleep or poisoning their strawberries. You show your love to the rich man down the street by not stealing his shiny new car. And you do this by not coveting what doesn't belong to you, not his wife, not his life and not his possessions.

This is the type of love that is demonstrated in the Ten Commandments, You do remember the Ten Commandments don't you? Pop quiz, in your minds or on a piece of paper how many of the 10 Commandments can you remember?

1) Do not worship other gods.

2) Do not make idols.

3) Do not misuse God's name.

4) Remember that the Sabbath Day belongs to God.

5) Respect your father and your mother.

6) Do not murder.

7) Do not commit adultery.

8) Do not steal.

9) Do not tell lies about others.

10) Do not want anything that belongs to someone else.

If we were to take a closer look at the Ten Commandments we would discover first of all that the first four deal with our relationship to God, they are vertical commandments, then we would discover that the next six deal with our relationship to our fellow man, they are horizontal commandments. And with the exception of honouring our parents they tell us what not to do.

But when you stop and think about it, if that is all there is to loving someone all you would have to do is avoid them. If you have no contact with people then you will not steal from them, lie to them, murder them etc. etc.

By that definition of love the first two men who came upon the traveller in the story of the Good Samaritan loved the man, because they did not kill him, they did not steal from him or lie to him or rush home to sleep with his wife.

So the most loving people in the world would be the hermits who retreat from society, and maybe that's why they do it's just easier to be nice to people when there are no people around.

But for most of us that's not an option.

So in the real world our love is not only defined by how you don't behave, more importantly it is Defined by How You Do Behave Probably the greatest definition of love written is in 1 Corinthians 13 and this is what Paul writes 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged.
It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.

This is how we show love in the everyday, nitty-gritty world we live in. This is how we display the love we show to our family our friends and the strangers we come in contact with every day. Maybe it could simply be redefined as respect.

It is more about what you do do than what you don't do. In this case love becomes work. It goes beyond avoiding a problem and it corrects the problem.

It is love that forgives, it is love that goes the extra mile, it is love that prepares meals for Ronald McDonald House, and love that puts on work clothes and helps clean up the back yard at Phoenix house.

And it's the little things, holding the door for someone when you go into a store, from my vantage point at Tim's I am amazed at how few people exhibit even that basic common courtesy. Giving someone a break in traffic, giving the homeless guy a buck and not lecturing him on his behaviour, how about giving someone a smile. Carol Burnett said that her philosophy in life came from Beverly Sills who said "I'm not always happy, but I always try to be cheerful."

It's easy to love those who love us, Jesus tells us that in Luke 6:32 "If you love only those who love you, why should you get credit for that? Even sinners love those who love them! Hitler probably loved his mother.

But this isn't about loving Osama Bin Laden, or Paul Bernardo, or the crazy pig farmer from BC, well it is kind of but that is pretty abstract.

This is about demonstrating the love of Christ to those we come into contact with every day, the staff at Tim Horton's, the homeless guy on the street, the person you work with, your spouse and your kids.

How about the parent who abused you? The boss that passed you over for promotion? The bully who picks on you? What about the jerk that cuts you off in traffic and decapitates your inukshuk?

Luke 6:33-35 And if you do good only to those who do good to you, why should you get credit? Even sinners do that much! And if you lend money only to those who can repay you, why should you get credit? Even sinners will lend to other sinners for a full return. "Love your enemies! Do good to them. Lend to them without expecting to be repaid. Then your reward from heaven will be very great, and you will truly be acting as children of the Most High, for he is kind to those who are unthankful and wicked. Not just avoid doing them harm but do good to them.

That's tough, and it will be a choice that you make, you will either do it or you won't do it.

2000 years ago Jesus told his disciples in John 13:35 "Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples."

So ultimately we not only define love by what we do and don't do We Are Defined by the Way we Love by what we do and don't do.

Jesus told us that when people see our love they will know that we belong to him. Do they? And John writes in 1 John 3:14 If we love our Christian brothers and sisters, it proves that we have passed from death to life. But a person who has no love is still dead. And Peter wrote in 1 Peter 4:8 Most important of all, continue to show deep love for each other, for love covers a multitude of sins.

And I know as Christians that we blow it from time to time and there are always people around to point a finger and say "and you call yourself a Christian". And that's good because we need to be reminded occasionally that we do call ourselves Christians and with that comes responsibilities. And the greatest responsibility that we have as a Christ follower is to love. Because ultimately Jesus said that people would know that we follow him, not by our wealth, and not by our theology, or by the translation of the Bible we read, or the church we attend but by the way we love.

So the bottom line is this "If people had to guess who you were following by your life and your behaviour what would their first guess be.

And then Paul closes by reminding us in Romans 13:11 This is all the more urgent, for you know how late it is; time is running out. Wake up, for our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed.

Every one of us is older today then we were yesterday, and yesterday is gone, you can't change how you loved people yesterday but you can decide how you are going to love them today and tomorrow.

And so I close with the words of Anne Morrow Lindbergh "Love is a force that enables you to give other things. It is the motivating power. It enables you to give strength, freedom and peace. It is not a result; it is a cause. It is not a product, it produces. It is a power, like steam or electricity. It is valueless unless you can give something else by means of it."

 

 

The Nature of Holiness

If there is one concept in the bible that seems to be foreign to us in 2010, almost to the point of incomprehensible is the concept of sacrifice.

Not the concept of making sacrifices for something or someone, we all do that on a fairly regular basis. As parents we make sacrifices for our children, we give up things that we could have for ourselves in order to provide them for our kids. Whether that be in the form of material sacrifice, what do you give up so they can have . . . whatever, or in the form of giving up our time for our children. You might make sacrifices for your career, or for your education there are those here today who are pursuing a degree or upgrading and in order to do that they are making sacrifices, both financially and personally.

We all make sacrifices, a priority for Angela and I is our annual winter vacation south and so we sacrifice things like birthday gifts and Christmas gifts so we can make that trip each year.

So we all know what it is to make sacrifices after all we make them on a daily basis in our lives. The concept that seems foreign to us is the concept of offering something to a deity as a sacrifice. From movies and novels we've heard of human sacrifices, virgins being thrown into volcanoes or people being buried alive to appease their gods, but that was then and this is now unless of course . . . Clip from Joe vs the Volcano

In the Old Testament we read about animals and birds being sacrificed in the temple as a form of worship, and we can't even get our head around it, it seems so wrong. And part of that is we are looking at it from a 2010 perspective and of course it's wrong today, but 3000 years ago . . . maybe not so much.

But it's because we can't understand the concept of sacrifices being made to God in such an extreme way that we have a hard time with the concept of offering ourselves as a sacrifice. In our world a sacrifice is something that we voluntarily give but more importantly today a sacrifice is something we can take back, if we decide that we don't want to keep making that sacrifice anymore.

But in the biblical sense the incense was burnt, the animal was killed, the blood was shed and the sacrifice was made and it was done and it was irretrievable there were no give mes or do-overs or take backs or mulligans.

But that exactly what Paul was calling the early Christ followers to become when he wrote Romans 12:1 And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you. And just in case they didn't get what he was saying he adds: Let them be a living and holy sacrifice—the kind he will find acceptable. And so the first thing we need to look at is: The What What was it that Paul was asking these folks to do? Well the short answer was to become a sacrifice.

But what does that mean or more importantly because the letter wasn't written to us originally what did it mean to the people it was being written to 2000 years ago? When this letter was read aloud to the Christians in the city of Rome, what came to their minds when they heard this phrase? Historically we are told that there were a plethora of Roman gods and each one required specific sacrifices. Add to that the fact that each year Roman Citizens had to make a sacrifice to Caesar and declare their loyalty by stating Caesar is lord and I'm sure those reading this letter knew exactly what Paul was trying to convey.

And so it is interesting that Paul doesn't tell those who worshipped in Rome what to do, he doesn't command them to make themselves living sacrifices instead he writes "I plead with you", interesting. But Paul knew that unless it was done willing it wasn't a sacrifice, that when you are forced to give a gift it's not really a gift.

It was Ghandi who said "The mice which helplessly find themselves between the cats teeth acquire no merit from their enforced sacrifice."

 

You know what I'm talking about, there have been times in your life that for whatever reason you were compelled to give a gift. It wasn't that you wanted to it was that you had to, for whatever reason you didn't have a choice. It may have been a reality or it may simply have been a perception that you had but you were giving the gift out of a sense of obligation.

And what was Paul pleading with these folks to do? Well he said Romans 12:1 And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you.

Give your bodies! That is worthy of note because Grecian thought and philosophy had permeated this area for over four hundreds of years since Alexander the Great had claimed it as part of his empire. And for the Greeks in general and the Gnostics in particular the body was evil and only the spirit was good. At its very best the body was seen as a corrupt vessel that held our spirits.

And because they drew such a clear line of delineation they could separate their physical behaviour and activity from the spiritual side of things. This is the body and this is the spirit and they really don't concern each other because ultimately the body will be gone so how can it effect what will live on.

But for the Christian the body is a part of the total package, after all if God created our bodies how could it be evil? Remember back in Psalm 139:13 You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother's womb. Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvellous—how well I know it. These fragile shells were given to us by God himself crafted by him with love and care.

Not only that but if God himself, creator of the universe could take on a human body how could it be evil? And then we are told in 1 Corinthians 6:19 Don't you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God?

2 Corinthians 7:1 Because we have these promises, dear friends, let us cleanse ourselves from everything that can defile our body or spirit. And let us work toward complete holiness because we fear God.

The people that Paul was writing to had already committed their spirits to God, they had done the spiritual thing but they were still struggling with the physical side of the relationship. But God doesn't just want a part of you and a part of your life he wants all of you and all of your life. The inside and the outside. The temporal as well as the eternal.

And so Paul is telling those early believers: I beg of you, do not use that which God has gifted you with for evil, instead present it to God as a whole, and make your entire self a sacrifice. A living sacrifice, but we all know the problem with living sacrifices right? Yeah, they keep crawling off the altar.

And Paul continues: Romans 12:1 And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice—the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship him. So here we have The Why I mean it's all well and good that we be asked to do something but deep down inside we are really like kids in our relationship with God. And what do kids ask when we ask them to do something? Why? How come? And the Romans must have been the questioning type because throughout the letter we find Paul answering questions even before they are asked. So let's look a that verse again Romans 12:1 And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God (and before they can ask why he tells them) because of all he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice—the kind he will find acceptable. (and again he jumps into to answer the why) This is truly the way to worship him.

So the question has two answers. The first one is an expanded "because". Really as parents isn't that our favourite response when we are asked "Why?" "Because" or if we are feeling particularly wordy and feel that our children deserve more of an explanation we sometimes expand it and say: "because I said so."

So Paul tells them: Think about it, after all God has done for you, including but not limited to the death of his Son as a sacrifice for you, isn't this the least you can do for him? Paul could have been a travel agent, specializing in guilt trips. But guilt trip or not it is reality. Without God where would we be? Without even getting into grace and our salvation, look around at all God has done for you as an individual, your home, your family, your health and a great country to live in. And before you start with the yeah buts you know that whatever your circumstances you could have it worse.

But it's not just a matter of obligation because Paul continues and tells his readers Romans 12:1 And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice—the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship him. Our commitment to anyone or anything is ultimately not measured by what we say but by what we do. We can talk the game but unless we are actually in the game what difference will it really make? Because it's not what you say and it's not what you say you'll do it's what you do that counts. The New King James Version says it this way Romans 12:1 I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. Which is your reasonable service, I love that because he is saying "It's the least you can do."

What is worship? What is your reasonable service? Jesus tells us very simply that it is obedience. John 14:15 "If you love me, obey my commandments.

So we have the "what" Give yourself wholly to God. And we have the "why" Because. Let's keep reading: Romans 12:2 Don't copy the behaviour and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think.

So here we have The How If you have been with us through this series you know that I am going to tell you that it is a choice you have to make. It seems to be a recurring theme, but not a theme that is real popular in 2010. And that is the fact that we are all responsible for the choices that we make and that our lives are a result of the choices we made. Today we want to be able to abdicate our responsibility for where we are in life and who we are in life. Well not entirely we like to take responsibility for being successful, for being good parents and doing well in school.

But the other stuff, the part where we blow it and the part where we hurt those we love and don't measure up, those aren't our fault. It is the fault of our parents who did a rotten job parenting us, or of the school system that did a rotten job educating us, or of our friends who led us astray or society, or the the economic downturn or global warming. You get the picture.

But the reality is this: we are the product of choices we make. You chose whether you'd apply yourself in school when you were a kid, you chose what you'd do after high school, what you would do for a living and who you would marry. And you will choose how passionately you will serve God.

And the great thing about that is that once you acknowledge that you are responsible for the decisions you made yesterday, whether they were good bad or indifferent than you realize that you are responsible for the decisions you will make tomorrow and do you know what that means?

It means that you are in control, that you will determine your future and your destiny.

When I was growing up I remember one of my Dad's favourite poems was Invictus by Ernest Henley and in the last verse Henley writes "It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul."

I don't want to get into all the theological implications of that statement but I do know that too often we abdicate responsibility for our life and our decisions to others.

And so here is the decision that Paul tells us that we have to make:

Romans 12:2 Don't copy the behaviour and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think.

By now you should know 2 Corinthians 5:17
by heart, but just in case you don't here it is: 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!

Paul is telling us that "the how" is radical, it's not just a minor course adjustment this is a dramatic change in direction, he is telling us that we can't just change our behaviour a little bit instead this is major change, a whole new beginning a whole new direction.

The New King James says it this way Romans 12:2 And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, Do you see the difference, conformed is passive, it's something that happens to you, while transformed is something you do, a choice you make.

You can be squeezed into conformity or you can choice to be transformed.

Let's go into the original language here for just a minute, the Greek word that Paul uses here to be conformed is συσχηματίζω suschematizesthai (soos-khay-mat-id'-zo) but I'm sure you knew that, but what you might not know it that it's root word was σχῆμα schema. Which roughly translated means fashion, something that changes. So Barclay tells us "A man's schema is not the same when he is seventeen as it is when he is seventy; it is not the same when he goes out to work as when he is dressed for dinner. It is continuously altering."

But the word used for transformed is the Greek word is μεταμορφόω metamorphousthai (met-am-or-fo'-o) and it means ones being, not what they are on the outside but who they are on the inside. And it comes from the root μορφή Morphe, which means the essential unchanging element of something. And so again we turn to Barclay who tells us "A man has not the same schema at seventeen and seventy, but he has the same morphe; a man in dungarees has not the same schema as a man in evening dress, but he has the same morphe his outward form changes, but inwardly he is the same person."

And ultimately what is this called? This, being transformed by the renewing of your mind, this embracing the things of God instead of the things of the world? It is called holiness and it is embracing the things of God instead of embracing the things of the world. The author of the book of Hebrews writes Hebrews 12:14 Work at living in peace with everyone, and work at living a holy life, for those who are not holy will not see the Lord.

John Wesley defined holiness this way "Holiness is having the mind that was in Christ and walking as Christ walked." And only happens when we've been transformed when we become different.

Which of course leads us to the last part of verse two Romans 12:2 Don't copy the behaviour and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God's will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.

The Result It was Mother Theresa who said "Holiness is the complete acceptance of the will of God."

Bottom line is this, you need to sell out to God. You take everything you have, ambition, work, hobbies, house, car, family, pride and everything you are and you pile it up before God and when you get everything on the pile you find a ladder and you climb on top of the pile and you say "Ok Lord, I'm yours."

 

Have you done that? Have you chosen? Chosen to be transformed into a new person changing the way you think? Today is the day

The Nature of God’s Love

As we read through the book of Romans there seems to be some common themes that we see over and over again. The common topics are: The Law, Sin and Grace. And in case you are thinking those are probably common themes throughout the Bible, or the New Testament or even Paul's letters, they are, but we see this combination more in the book of Romans than anywhere else in the bible.

The topic of the Law is broached 250 times in the 27 books of the New Testament 50 of those incidents are found in the book of Romans. Grace is mentioned 13 times in the book of Romans as compared to 70 times in all the other New Testament books combined. And in the New Testament every third time the word sin is used we find it in the book of Romans. What does it tell us, other than Denn spends way too much time counting words in the Bible?

It tells us that Paul was trying address a couple of problems in this book that appeared to be at opposite ends of the spectrum. On one hand it seems that there were some in the Church in Rome who were struggling with legalism. The law was supreme to them, they were still trying to dot every "I" and cross every "T". And I would suspect because people are people are people and there really has been very little change in people over the past 2000 years, that not only did they expect themselves to follow the Old Testament law but they expected everybody else to as well.

And there are all kinds of issues that arise when we condense our relationship with God down to simply following a set of rules. For one thing it removes it from the area of a relationship and turns it into a contract and it becomes something we earn not something we are given.

Then at the other end of the spectrum from Legalism was Liberty, in this case liberty to sin, it would appear that as often happens it takes a while for the pendulum to find the centre and as it swings away from one extreme it misses the middle and ends up on the other side ( video or PowerPoint)

And so on one hand you had those who were in bondage to the law, and you don't have to investigate very far to find that the law of the Jews really was bondage; it dictated what you could do, when you could do it and who you could do it with.

And that wasn't the intent of the law. The law was put into place to protect us and to protect others. It was there to hold together the fragile ties of society and relationships but leave it to people to mess it up. And so the commandment to respect the Sabbath and avoid work on the seventh day became a complex series of regulations defining what work was and what work wasn't. How far could you walk, how much could you carry and on and on it went. And so much time was spent on the minutia of the law of God that they never got to know the God of the Law.

And so there were still those who thought that if they were going to please God it wasn't dependant on the relationship they had with him, instead it was dependant on how good they were and that at the end of the day it was going to come down to a tally sheet and they would need to have more in the plus column then in the negative column. And it was to them that Paul wrote Romans 3:27-28 Can we boast, then, that we have done anything to be accepted by God? No, because our acquittal is not based on obeying the law. It is based on faith. So we are made right with God through faith and not by obeying the law.

And on the other hand you had those who felt there was no need to follow the law at all, not only had they thrown out all of the excess of the law they had thrown out the law as well. And so they used grace as an excuse to do what they wanted to, they used the gift of heaven to justify living like hell. The thought was that if the sacrificial death of Christ was able to grant us forgiveness from the sins of yesterday the same sacrificial death of Christ would be able to grant us forgiveness from the sins of tomorrow.

And as a result for some it was like it had been written in Judges 21:25 . . . all the people did whatever seemed right in their own eyes. And it was this error that Paul addressed in Romans 6:1-2 Well then, should we keep on sinning so that God can show us more and more of his wonderful grace? Of course not! Since we have died to sin, how can we continue to live in it?

And so the analogy that Paul uses is slavery, some were slaves to the law and others were slaves to sin, but they were all slaves to something and time and time again he comes back to grace, the grace of God that frees us not only from the bondage to the law but can free us from the bondage of our sinful nature that compels us to rebel against God.

And so it bring us to the last nine verses of Romans Chapter 8. Which begin with that words: Romans 8:31 What shall we say about such wonderful things as these? For 30 verses Paul has been talking about the grace of God, the strength that the Spirit gives us, that fact that we are not slaves to sin but the children of God and all that implies, that we are his heirs and that we are destined for glory. And so Paul writes Romans 8:31 What shall we say about such wonderful things as these? If God is for us, who can ever be against us? So it starts with a Premise. The Premise
of God's Love: The premise is that we win because God is in our corner. Does it mean we will always get the better job, that our marriage will be perfect, our kids will never rebel? Does it mean that we will never be sick, never be down, never be poor?

No, but it does mean that as we move through the arena of life that we won't have to do it alone, that our comforter, our coach our encourager will be none other than the Creator of the Universe, the master of all things. That when we stumble and fall he is there to pick us up, to brush us off and to assure us that we are loved and that he still believes in us.

As much as we love our kids we can't put them in a bubble and protect them from everything, as much as we might want to. If legislation keeps going the way it is it won't be long before bubbles are mandated for all children under the age of 18. And as much as we want to we can't protect our kids from every bad thing or bad person who comes their way, but does that mean we love them less. And we can't protect them from bad choices they make, but does that mean we love them less? But we can be in their corner, and we can cheer them on and that is what God does for us.

How disappointing when someone you think is special and cares for you doesn't defend you or stick up for you. Even when you know you were wrong you still want someone in your corner. You need the "atta boys" before the "you jerks".

So how do we know that God is in our Corner? What assurance is there that God is for us? Paul continues to write in Romans 8:32 Since he did not spare even his own Son but gave him up for us all, won't he also give us everything else? So here we have The Proof
of God's Love: How do we truly know that we are loved? By what is given up for us. Right, what sacrifices are made for us. Children know their parents love them by the sacrifices that are made for them.

You understand that don't you kids? Your parents do what they do for you not because they have to but because they love you. Whether it is paying for your hockey or your music lessons or
summer camp, all of those things require sacrifice and they do it because they love you. I'm sure there are all kinds of other places they could spend their money not to mention the time sacrifices that are made to attend hockey games, school concerts and to help with your homework, the countless miles that are driven getting you to and from places that is love. Ordering pizza with just pepperoni because you don't like the works, that's love.

And we do it in relationships in a hundred different ways when we sacrifice what we'd prefer for our husband or wife. Wives you don't seriously think your husband enjoys chick flicks do you? Conditional love or love that says "I'll love you as long it doesn't cost too much" is a little suspicious. Kind of like the guy who wrote the not to his girlfriend that said "For you I'd climb the highest mountains, I'd cross the hottest desert, I'd swim the deepest ocean. PS if it's raining Saturday I won't be over."

And so Paul says "How do I know God loves me? Romans 8:32 Since he did not spare even his own Son but gave him up for us all, won't he also give us everything else?

What greater sacrifice could there be than this. If you stopped and thought about it there are probably some people in your life out there that you'd be willing to sacrifice yourself for. Perhaps even someone who would sacrifice themselves for me.

But I would suspect that not one of you here would be willing to sacrifice one of their children for me. If someone offered you the choice: If you aren't willing to sacrifice your child then Denn will have to die. You might apologize but I am sure it would be Hasta la vista Denn, adios, Auf Wiedersehen

And I wouldn't blame you. To be truthful if I had to make that choice the only way you could survive is if I allowed Stephen or Deborah to die you wouldn't stand a chance. Sorry, that's just the way it is. But the scriptures tell us that is how much we are loved by God, John 3:16 "For God loved the world so much that he gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. And Romans 5:8 But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.

The bible comes back to this time and time again, God loves you so much, you, you dirty rotten scoundrel, God loves you so much that he willing surrendered his only son, for you. That's how I know that God is in your corner.

And so we have the premise, God is in your corner, if God be for you who can be against you? And we have the proof of that, God loves you so much that he willing gave up his Son for you. But what does that mean? What is the "So What"

After all we've all seen undying love that went south, that didn't last until the signatures on the marriage licence were dry. So listen to what Paul tells us: Romans 8:35-37 Can anything ever separate us from Christ's love? Does it mean he no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted, or hungry, or destitute, or in danger, or threatened with death? (As the Scriptures say, "For your sake we are killed every day; we are being slaughtered like sheep.") No, despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ, who loved us.

The Promise of God's Love: It's easy to look around when life is rough and think "Where is God now? What have I done to deserve this?" Those were the same questions that were asked of Job. You remember Job don't you? There is an entire book written about him in the Old Testament, how the Devil was able to test him and torment him. How he lost his wealth and his family and his health, all that he was left with was a nagging wife and three friends who tried to convince him that all of his problems were his fault, but they weren't. Through it all Job lost what he had, but he never lost who he was or who's he was.

We have succumbed to that same heresy today, that only bad people have troubles and if you have enough faith and love God enough and, and, and that you will never have any problems or worries or concerns. And that is a lie. Two thousand years ago Paul asks that very same question. Does it mean he (God) no longer loves us when things go wrong, when life isn't fair, when we are sick and people are picking on us? And then he answers his own question Romans 8:37 No, despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ, who loved us.

Life for the early Christ followers wasn't easy, they were persecuted, they were tortured some of them were killed for their faith, and Paul is saying, I know how the story ends; We win. All too often all we can see in life is what is happening right now, and sometimes right now isn't pretty but Paul is saying in the big picture we win.

And as an aside, it is when we focus on the right now that we become tempted to quit, because it's all we see right now and we can't see beyond the present reality to the preferred future, and so because our marriage isn't great, right now we quit. And because our job isn't satisfying right now, we quit. And we try to solve short term problems with long term solutions. That was free.

And now we come to the great passage that ties this all together, we have seen that God promises to be with us, we have seen how that is proved by the fact that he sacrificed his only son for us, we have discovered that his love is not revealed through our circumstances and we arrive at Romans 8:38-39 And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God's love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God's love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.

This is for you folks, this is The Protection of God's Love. This is one of those great scriptures that we as Christians hang our faith on and this is where Paul has been heading. We have the promise of this great love but what if we somehow lose it or it is taken away from us? But that's not going to happen. The first line says it all, everything after that is just window dressing. Romans 8:38 And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God's love. And he could have stopped there. But he is ready to answer the questions that people were waiting to ask. Hey Paul what about angels and demons, do they have the power to separate us from God's love? Nope! And about when we die are we separated from God's love then? Nope! What about when life dumps all over us, what about then? Nope. And the power of hell can't do it, and whatever is in the sky can't do it and whatever lurks in the abyss can't do it, nothing, nothing, nothing can separate us from the Love of God.

But there is one thing conspicuous by its absence. One thing that Paul leaves out, one wild card that is able to do what the powers of hell can't do. And you know what it is don't you? Deep in your heart you know the one power in all of creation that is capable of separating you from the love of God.

Jesus tells a story in the book of Luke about a young man who asks for all of his inheritance from his father. Do you remember the story? We refer to it as the Story of the Prodigal Son. Often time we use prodigal as someone who turns from God and then returns. Nope that isn't what prodigal means, prodigal describes his behaviour when he spent all his wealth on partying. The New Living translation says he wasted all his money on wild living, the King James calls it riotous living, but you get the picture. And you know the story, how when his money ran out so did his friends, and how even though he was the son of a wealthy man he ended up working in a pig farm and barely surviving. It was then that he swallowed his pride and returned to his father who had been waiting for him to return. We all know the story.

You see the Father's love hadn't changed, even though his son had rejected him and all he stood for he still loved his son. But the son had separated himself from his father's love, he did what no outside force could do. Oh his father still loved him but he had chosen to not avail himself of that love.

You see what angels and demons, the heights of the sky and the depths of hell can't do, you can and that is separate yourself from God's love. Has God's love changed, nope not at all, he still loves you and he wants to extend his love and grace to you, and like the prodigal's father God is standing waiting to see you

The promise is not that you can't walk away; the promise is that the Father will be there with his arms wide open waiting for you to return.

The Nature of our Nature

Wow that was depressing. I would have expected more from Paul, but this just sounds like whining. I half expected him to check himself into a rehab centre by the time I got to the end of this section.

But at some time in our Christian life most of us could probably identify with what Paul is saying, we want to do good things and we don't want to do bad things, but that isn't the way it always ends up. It seems like it is a constant struggle and we end up berating ourselves for blowing it yet again.

Really, wouldn't it be great if it was as easy to do the right thing as it was to know the right thing to do? And wouldn't it be great if it was as easy to the do the right thing as it was to resolve to do the right thing?

I'm not going to ask for a show of hands but how many of you have experienced this struggle in your Christian life? You do something, and then you hate yourself because you did it? Kind of feel like that old Roger Miller song that said "Dang me, dang me they oughta take a rope and hang me." In each verse of the song he talks about the rotten things he does and in the chorus he talks about how sorry he is for what he did, but he keeps on doing them in the next verse.

Different people take different views of this scripture, some take the view that Paul was writing about his present situation and that he is describing a flawed Christian experience, something that he struggled with on a daily basis. I don't take that view.

Instead I like what Adam Clarke wrote about this passage of scripture almost 200 years ago. "It is difficult to conceive how the opinion could have crept into the Church, or prevailed there, that "the apostle speaks here of his regenerate state; and that what was, in such a state, true of himself, must be true of all others in the same state." This opinion has, most pitifully and most shamefully, not only lowered the standard of Christianity, but destroyed its influence and disgraced its character."

Others like Clark challenge that assumption, saying that Chapter 7 finishes with the distress of the sinner and that chapter 8 begins with the joy of the saved. That Paul was talking about the past, what he had been like before meeting Jesus or early in his Christian walk.

That it is not just the turning of a page but the turning of a life. It is the description of a man struggling to live under the law of Moses and then the victory of the man who has discovered the grace of God described throughout the first part of this letter. And that of course would be reflected in what Paul wrote to the church in Corinth: 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!

And so to properly understand the struggle that Paul describes in these verses we need to understand that Paul's thought line does not end at the conclusion of Chapter 7. Chapters and verses are arbitrary division put in by men to make it easier to find specific points in the scripture.

So instead of drawing our conclusions at the end of chapter 7, we need to read on into Romans 8:1-2 So now there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus. And because you belong to him, the power of the life-giving Spirit has freed you from the power of sin that leads to death. In other words, that is what was and this is what is, that was old this is new. Paul has spent the previous chapter talking about sin having control over his life and over the decision he makes and then he dismisses the entire previous 25 verses by stating "the power of the life-giving Spirit has freed you from the power of sin that leads to death." I wish he had added though, "If you choose to let it."

Reminds me of a story of two older men who were talking about this very subject, doing the right things or doing the wrong things. And one of them says "It's like there are two horses pulling on me, and one is pulling me to do good and the other one is pulling me to do evil"

His friend asked: "and which one wins?" to which the first one replied "Whichever one I say giddy up to."

And you know that you've been there yourself and you've had to decide: which one do I want to win? Which horse do I encourage? And that problem is at that stage is we make two mistakes.

1) We over estimate our own power and ability We think we are in control when we give into temptation.

2) We underestimate the power of sin We forget how strong the pull of sin is.

And so we try to be good people, we try to live a good life we try to do the right thing and when we fail we say "I just couldn't help myself" and you are right. You can't help yourself. Paul couldn't help himself either which is why he wrote in Romans 7:18-20 And I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. I want to do what is right, but I can't. I want to do what is good, but I don't. I don't want to do what is wrong, but I do it anyway. But if I do what I don't want to do, I am not really the one doing wrong; it is sin living in me that does it.

And we think, "Well then, that is it, there is no hope I will just continue to live the way I have been living, doing the wrong I don't want to do and hope for the best." And that would be your choice, but I would counsel against that course of action because the same Paul who wrote that scripture also wrote Romans 6:16 Don't you realize that you become the slave of whatever you choose to obey? You can be a slave to sin, which leads to death, or you can choose to obey God, which leads to righteous living.

Paul is not talking about the victorious Christian life in chapter 7 he is talking about the defeated Christian life but in chapter 8 we read about the victorious Christian life and we get to choose: do we want to be a winner or do we want to be a loser?

And do not be deceived it will be your choice. And before you decide to take a gamble and throw the dice in favour of trying to limp along as a defeated Christian listen to this caution: Romans 8:7-9 For the sinful nature is always hostile to God. It never did obey God's laws, and it never will. That's why those who are still under the control of their sinful nature can never please God. But you are not controlled by your sinful nature. You are controlled by the Spirit if you have the Spirit of God living in you. (And remember that those who do not have the Spirit of Christ living in them do not belong to him at all.) Not to mention Romans 8:12-13 Therefore, dear brothers and sisters, you have no obligation to do what your sinful nature urges you to do. For if you live by its dictates, you will die. But if through the power of the Spirit you put to death the deeds of your sinful nature, you will live.

Let's go back to the previous chapter where Paul writes Romans 6:19 Because of the weakness of your human nature, I am using the illustration of slavery to help you understand all this. Previously, you let yourselves be slaves to impurity and lawlessness, which led ever deeper into sin. Now you must give yourselves to be slaves to righteous living so that you will become holy.

We sometimes see slavery as an isolated part of human history. We talk about slavery and our thoughts immediately go to the American South prior to the civil war, almost as if slavery had been invented by plantation owners. But you'll remember from my message last week that way back in the book of Genesis that Joseph was sold into slavery by his brothers. If you know you African history then you'll know that long before white folks began buying slaves slavery existed throughout the continent, when tribes fought the victors took slaves. And even in North America before Europeans got here slavery was common among the first nation people, those of us who were educated in New Brunswick know the name of John Gyles and his ordeal. And even today, although most of us ignore it slavery exists around the world, the experts estimate that there are 27 million slaves worldwide, more than at any other time in human history. Check out www.freetheslaves.net. And that's why the Wesleyan Church is still involved in stopping human trafficking and why Isaac McWhinnie has a web site at http://web.me.com/somesweetday/Free_the_slaves_2009_10/Welcome.html and sells his art to raise funds for www.freetheslaves.net Way to go Isaac.

But that was what is technically referred to in preaching as a rabbit trail.

And so Paul looks around society as he knew it searching for an analogy that would reveal an existence devoid of any sense of control. An existence where you do what you do not because you want to but because you have to, because you are compelled to. And in the same way an existence where you don't have the opportunity to do what you would want to do, that isn't even an option. And he settles on the institution of slavery.

An institution that Paul's readers wouldn't have studied about in history books but instead was a part of their everyday lives. And in that day and age there would have been good slave owners and bad slave owners but at the end of the day there were still in control of the lives of their slaves.

So with that being said, let's look at slavery.

How Did We Become Slaves? There are a couple of different ways that slaves became slaves A)
You were acquired as a slave And so if you fall into this category you could be captured or purchased. Or sometimes both, you might be captured by your first master and then sold to your next master. In that scenario you had once been free. Remember the story we told last week of Joseph and how he was sold into slavery by his brothers. The second way is that you were Born a Slavery, by the time of the War Between the States most of the slaves in the US had been born into slavery. Their parents had been slaves and maybe even their grandparents. For those who are born into slavery they have never known what freedom is, they may have heard about it from others, they may have seen it but they had never experienced it.

From the bible we discover that we are born as slaves to our sinful nature. The other day I watched as a parent carried their screeching child from a store and as they tried to soothe the little monster, I mean child, the kid was screaming and hitting them. Pummelling them with their little fists, obviously not doing any damage but not for lack of trying.

And you know and I know that at two years old nobody had taught the child that behaviour, they hadn't been playing violent video games, hadn't been subjected to the mindless brutally of prime time television. They hadn't been taught to do that, they simply hadn't been taught not to do it. Might have damaged their self-esteem or sense of self-expression if someone had of actually corrected them. If you missed it that was what is technically called sarcasm.

And so our birthright is original sin, it is our nature, we are born as slaves to our sinful nature. The question is asked "Is a dog a dog because he barks or does he bark because he is a dog?" And the follow up question then is "Are we sinners because we sin or do we sin because we are sinners?"

And so, if we have been born into slaver to sin 2) How Do We Escape Slavery. The first way would be to simply escape, to attempt to run away and take control over our lives. And that is the struggle that Paul talks about, we try to combat our sinful nature ourselves, we are trying to escape, but it just doesn't seem to work, we don't have the resources or the strength or perhaps ultimately we don't have the desire to escape. It was Aristotle who said "The worst thing about slavery is that the slaves eventually get to like it." Perhaps not like it but to accept it as their fate, not knowing any better they prefer what they know to what they don't know.

Which would explain what Peter Marshall meant when he wrote: "We are too Christian really to enjoy sinning, and too fond of sinning really to enjoy Christianity. Most of us know perfectly well what we ought to do; our trouble is that we do not want to do it."

And if you have tried on your own to break free of the sinful nature you know how hard it is, even when you put on the veneer of freedom you know deep inside that your nature is what it is.

Over a hundred years ago John Ruskin wrote "The distinguishing sign of slavery is to have a price, and to be bought for it." The other way that you can escape slavery is to be bought and given your freedom, and we are told in 1 Corinthians 6:20 for God bought you with a high price. And again in Ephesians 1:6-7 So we praise God for the glorious grace he has poured out on us who belong to his dear Son. He is so rich in kindness and grace that he purchased our freedom with the blood of his Son and forgave our sins.

The interesting thing in this context is you have to choose to be purchased. You can choose to remain a slave of sin or you can choose the freedom that God gives. But you have to choose, nobody else can choose for you. Mahatma Gandhi wrote "The moment the slave resolves that he will no longer be a slave. His fetters fall... freedom and slavery are mental states."

The difficult thing for some people is that with that choice you need to align yourself with a new master. Here is something to think about: (Play: You Gotta Serve Somebody)

The question is who are you gonna serve, because you gotta serve somebody, two thousand years ago Jesus said something very similar when he stated Luke 16:13 Jesus said "No one can serve two masters. For you will hate one and love the other; you will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money."

You will serve God or you will serve something else, where does your loyalty lie? Do you ask yourself "Will this please God, yes or no?" It's a simple question. And the answer becomes easier when we realize that God's requirements are not to spoil our fun but to protect us and protect others. If we live our lives choosing to do what God would have us to do in the end we will be better people.

Remember Romans 6:16 Don't you realize that you become the slave of whatever you choose to obey? You can be a slave to sin, which leads to death, or you can choose to obey God, which leads to righteous living.

You say "Well I just want to serve myself." America playwright Natalie Clifford Barney wrote: "To be one's own master is to be the slave of self. You say, 'Well I'm my own master.' In which case you are also your own slave."

Do you want to be free today? Free from your sinful nature, free to choose to do the good and not the bad? Then you need to discover the same thing that Paul did Romans 8:1-2 So now there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus. And because you belong to him, the power of the life-giving Spirit has freed you from the power of sin that leads to death.

So here is your promise for today, May 23^rd 2010. John 8:34-36 Jesus replied, "I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave of sin. A slave is not a permanent member of the family, but a son is part of the family forever. So if the Son sets you free, you are truly free.