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Week Of: March 1, 2009
Title: This Day is Holy. Be Glad!
Series: Study of Spiritual Formations - Part 25
Scripture: Nehemiah 8:5-12 :)
1. In 1 John 4:16, scripture tells us that “God is love.” And that “whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him.”
2. In my opinion, the two greatest characteristics of God are love and holiness.
3. However when love abounds there is a sister emotion that’s not too far behind. Does anyone know what that emotion is? Joy!! What is joy?
4. What are some of the most joyful experience you’ve ever had? Mine has to be the birth of Kara. God had blessed us with a boy, Eric, and with Sharon’s second pregnancy we were hoping for a girl. All of Sharon’s birthing experiences were done as Lamaze births. So I was there… and I was coach and encourager Moore… Anyway, when Kara was born a wave of sheer joy came over me…like I’ve never experience before or since. It just lasted seconds…but it was wonderful.
5. Another experience that was close to this had to be in connection with my call to be a Pastor. It was my last year of seminary and we had only one church that had been interested in me…I did poorly at the sermon trial with the pulpit committee. In fact, I was so nervous that I sweat-soaked though a three piece suit. A couple weeks later as graduation got closer and no church was available, I was pacing the floor and began praying, “Lord give me a sign of what you want me to do, I don’t have any experience, don’t have a lot of opportunities. Whatever you want me to do please give me a sign.” Just as I was saying that prayer, the phone rang and a man by the name of Jim Roberts, the head of the pulpit committee from Wildwood Baptist Church, was on the phone telling me that his pulpit committee had unanimously called me to try out as the Pastor of Wildwood Baptist Church.
6. I was elated; I jumped up and down shouting for joy. God had heard my prayer, and there was no doubt in my mind he had called me to be the next Pastor of a church ten minutes from my home town.
7. God had answered my prayer with something that was oh so important to me…I had found God’s will for my life…
8. Finding and accepting God’s will for our lives can cause us to shout for joy…
9. But joy is more than just finding God’s will, it is also finding God wherever we may be.
10. Someone wrote: “Joy is not the absence of pain. Joy is the awareness of God’s loving presence within [and around] you” (John Catoir).
11. Joy is the appreciation of God’s presence and love in your life. Joy is a true and heartfelt appreciation of God’s wonderful blessings given to each of us so liberally.
12. So you might say that an absence of joy in our lives is a sign of the absence of God and of our own spiritual poverty. One of the greatest failures of the church is the amount of damage sour and joyless Christians have done to the cause of Christ. And I’ve been there done that! How often have people misunderstood God because they attribute to him the grim, judgmental, defensive, sour, and joyless spiritual life that many Church goers portray?
13. As someone once said, “There is a being in this universe who wants you to live in sorrow, but it is not God.” Francis de Sales once wrote, “The evil one is pleased with sadness and melancholy because he himself is sad and melancholy, and will be so for all eternity. Hence he desires that everyone should be like himself.” (The Life You’ve Always wanted to Live: Spiritual disciplines for ordinary People by John Ortberg, page 64)
14. You might say that God is the happiest being in the Universe. However, God does know sorrow and even anger, because the world he has created is a fallen creation. He knows sorrow because we sin, and mankind suffers. But someday sorrow will be banished forever from His heart because the world will be set free from the influences of the evil one. Joy and love are God’s basic character. Joy and love are His and our eternal destiny. God is the most joyful being in the Universe and when we are genuine and sincerely joyful and loving we are most like Him.
15. Now if this is true, and I believe it to be so, when are we at our best? When are we the most confident? When are we the greatest witness for Christ? When are we the strongest?
16. When joy abounds in our life!!! Look at our scripture this morning. The people of God have gathered around to worship. Ezra the scribe has brought out the book of Moses, the Law, and begins to read it.
17. Notice several things about this reading in relationship to worship. In verse 6 as Ezra opens up the law and reads the word of God—the people did what? They stood up in respect!!
18. As Ezra read the scriptures he evidently got excited and praised the Lord, the great God, and all the people “lifted their hands and responded, ‘Amen! Amen!’” Does anyone know what Amen means? May it be so!!!
19. Then they bowed down and worshiped the Lord with their faces to the ground. Does anyone know what denotes worship in this context? Prayer!
20. After this the Levites, in verses 7 & 8, came and “instructed the people in the Law while the people were standing there…they read from the Book of the Law of God, making it clear and giving the meaning so that the people could understand what was being read.”
21. Verse 9 says, that once they heard and understood what the word said they began weeping. I believe they were weeping for joy because they had begun to understand what God wanted from them. In chapter 9, they were weeping because of sin and the confession of sin. Here I believe it was because they finally understood some things of God.
22. Then look at what Nehemiah says: “Go and enjoy choice food and sweet drinks, and send some to those who have nothing prepared. This day is sacred to our Lord. Do not grieve, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.”
23. Sorrow and confession of your sins cleanses your soul, but the joy of the Lord is your strength. Sorrow is needed, confession of sin is a must, but the joy of the Lord is the source of your strength and determination not to sin.
24. I really truly believe that some people have nothing to do better in life than to sin… Because of the way they live their lives, because of the way they arrange their time, because of the loneliness and unhappiness of their existence, there literally is nothing better, nor more satisfying for them to do, but sin.
25. You might say that idle hands, lonely hearts, and empty minds are the devil’s workshop. But really what I am trying to say is that a joyless life is the closest thing to a source of temptation that a Christian can endure. Why? Because the joy of the Lord is our strength.
Say it with me please! The joy of the Lord is our strength!
26. I think the time is coming for us to take joy seriously!!!
27. We all can become more joyful… If it were not so, God’s word wouldn’t have commanded it.
28. Happiness and joy can be a learned response!!! You don’t have to be sad or melancholy! Sure, for some people, it is just easier to be happy. But with God’s help and your determination, great things can be done.
Amen!
Week Of: March 8, 2009
Title: The Laughter of God
Series: Spiritual Formation - Part 25 Scripture: 1 Kings 18:40-46; Exodus 32:22-25
1. If you tuned in last week, you’ll remember that I said the two characteristics of God are love and holiness.
2. An expression of love is joy. In Nehemiah 8:10, Nehemiah reminds his people: “Do not grieve, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.” Say with me, please: “The joy of the Lord is our strength.”
3. With great joy there has to be a wonderful sense of humor!!! Someone once wrote: “Laughter is fundamentally an act of celebrating existence. Laughter is an expression of enjoyment and thanksgiving.” (And God Created Laughter: The Bible as Divine Comedy by Conrad Hyers, page 14)
4. Do you think that God has a sense of humor? Well, He has to or he wouldn’t have created us, would He?
And then with great love, there has to be great joy and with great joy, great laughter. I just don’t see how anyone or anything can experience love without joy and laughter. Do you?
5. Furthermore, how could someone who criticized the Pharisees for fasting with sour faces, go around with a doom and gloom attitude in life? Turn to Matthew 6:16, “And whenever you do fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites for they disfigure their faces so as to show others that they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward.”
6. Let me ask you another question, who inspired the Bible? God. Well, let’s look at some scripture to see if we can see some divine humor in it that might reflect on it author’s sense of humor.
7. First off, what makes something funny? One thing is exaggeration. Have you ever had someone draw a caricature of you? What was drawn oversized? Ears, nose, head, eyes, mouth? What is the oversized feature on Jay Leno’s head? Chin! And when we see it we laugh, even at ourselves.
8. Comedians and writers draw pictures with their words, and the funnier something becomes, the more exaggerated it usually is with just enough of truth in it.
9. Have you ever had a lazy brother in law? A lazy member of the family or a friend for that matter? What do they do a lot of? Lay around, right? Turn to Proverbs 26:14, 15 and read it.
10. Even Jesus used exaggeration and humor. Look at Matthew 7:3-5, the NIV says: “Who do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?” KJV says “mote” and “plank,” other translations say “straw” and “beam”, and still others say “speck of dust,” and “timber or log.” It is exaggeration, and for someone who has not read it or heard of it before, it would be funny to imagine someone walking around with big log in their eye, concerned with getting a little speck of dirt out of someone else’s eye. But yet that is how it is when we are so concerned about other people’s wrong doing when we ignore our own.
11. Look at Matthew 19:23-24. Jesus uses another humorous exaggeration to make a point. “…Again, I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the Kingdom of God.” A needle!!!
12. I don’t think Jesus was ever beyond tasteful humor and good exaggeration to make His point. In other words, he tried to make His point anyway He could.
13. Now I am not a comedian, and I cannot tell a good joke, but people who can say that the most crucial ingredient to humor is surprise. Simply put, without a surprise there is no humor. For example, before someone tells you a joke they’ll ask you if you’ve heard the one about…? Surprise, comes from expectations being overturned, and comes from having the rug pulled out from under you. The Bible is full of surprises that pull the rug out from under us. Sometimes they are funny and sometimes they are not.
14. Does anyone know who the biggest joke of all has been played on in the Bible? Satan! What does it involve? Easter. When Jesus was crucified, the bad guys thought that they had won…but they didn’t. Early church fathers often amused that God played a great practical joke on the devil by raising Jesus from the grave, victorious over sin and death.
15. The best humor is about people you know!!!! If someone walked into today’s services and put a banana cream pie in a complete stranger’s face, we might be shocked or embarrassed. But if they put a pie in my face, you’d think that was hilarious, wouldn’t you? Comedians and writers always pick on people that everyone knows.
16. The Bible does that, the Bible pokes fun at its children. Look at the 1 Kings 18 scripture. Do you see anything amusing about this particular scene? Verse 46: “…But the hand of the Lord was on Elijah; he girded up his loins and ran in front of Ahab to the entrance of Jesreel.” Picture this, a white-haired prophet hiking up his skirt and outrunning a chariot all the way home?
17. Why all of this humor in the Bible? Because humor is a wonderful way to get your point across. Jesus and the Biblical authors weren’t beyond making fun of those to who they want to get their attention.
18. Two, humor helps us not to take ourselves too seriously. Satan takes himself way too seriously and simply cannot laugh at himself. Humor keeps us humble and teaches us to laugh at ourselves.
19. Humor also shows how silly and self-absorbed we really are. The silliest person, who makes the silliest excuse I’ve ever heard in the Bible, is in our second scripture that Blake read.
20. Turn to Exodus 32:22-25 and let’s read it again. Why is this funny or is it? Because if we are honest, we make silly and stupid excuses all the time for our mistakes and sins.
21. Now what happens after a while when someone does something dumb and we see ourselves in it? We say: “At first that was funny…but you know this is getting kind of old. I am going to put a stop to it.” Even with the best sense of humor gets old after a while, doesn’t it?
22. Do you think our stupid and silly sins get old after a while? Probably, but aren’t you glad that God has a wonderful sense of humor, and that He loves to laugh?
Week Of: March 15, 2009
Pastor on vacation. Guest speaker/no notes.
Week Of: March 22, 2009 Title: A Holy Place: Where Heaven and Earth Meet!
Series: Ministry of Worship - Part 2
Scripture: Exodus 25:8-22
1. I’d like to call us into a special called “business” meeting. The business I would like to discuss is the relocation of our church to the four-lane in Castlewood.
2. What if I told you there was an anonymous donor who was prepared to donate 2 million dollars and the land for us to locate behind Ma’s and Pa’s?
3. Unfortunately, we have to vote to accept it today?
4. Do I hear a motion that we do so? A second!
5. Everyone take a deep breath. What is wrong with this picture?
6. One, it is an illegal called “business meeting” because our church by-laws state that we have to give a week’s notice to any special called business meeting.
7. Two, there is no one who is willing to give us land, let alone two million dollars. I said “what if I told you…”
8. Three, we are not using all the available space we’ve got in our old church let alone building new space or more space in a new church.
9. Four, why should we move? We love our church pretty much as it is….it could use some improvements…but it is a beautiful sanctuary in which we’ve had some wonderful worship experiences down through the years. Do this sometime, come to this sanctuary by yourself and just sit in silence for a while soaking up the warmth and the spirit of this place. The Spirit of God has been, and is, in this place, and to me it is special.
10. Over the next few months, I am planning a series of sermons on worshiping God. It is my opinion that, like so many things we do in the church, we don’t know as much about worship as we should.
11. And even though worship is a natural God given ability that most people know at least something about, worship is also something we need to study and practice often in order to get the most we possibly can out of it.
12. First of all let me say this, the great concern of people in the ancient world was where the presence of their god could be found. Certain localities came to be identified as the dwelling-places of gods, and their altars were erected and patterns of worship were established. The God of the Patriarchs of Israel was not so different.
13. Turn in your Bibles to Genesis 28: 10-18 and follow as I read. Notice Jacob has a dream, a special dream, in which angels are ascending and descending from heaven with God standing above and looking down. In the dream God speaks to him and tells him that “I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.”
14. Jacob wakes up from his dream, and declares: “Wow, surely God is in this place,… How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of heaven.”
15. He calls this place Bethel, meaning the house of God, and sets up an altar on the very place with the very stone he laid his head upon.
16. In the Bible, a Holy place is where you meet God. It is where heaven and earth touch and make contact that creates a Holy place. It is a meeting place of God and man!
17. Our sanctuary is a Holy place because in it to one degree or the other or various days or times we have met God.
18. But in the case of Israel, what’s a group of people to do when they have to move? When they have to travel to a promise land, for example? You take the meeting place of God with you! Look at your handout of The Tabernacle. The Tabernacle is nothing but a moveable temple; a moveable place where heaven and earth meet. Look at Exodus 25: 8 & 9: “Then have them make a sanctuary for me, and I will dwell among them. Make this tabernacle and all its furnishings exactly like the pattern I will show you.”
19. In Exodus chapters 25-40, God gives instructions for this tabernacle and everything in it. In our scripture, God gives specific instructions—notice verse 10 and following… begin with number 12, The Most Holy Place; Ark of Covenant; Mercy Seat; then Cloud and Pillar of Fire, Exodus 40:34-38; read also Exodus 25:22.
20. Such a place was as the NIV says, “God and Moses’ meeting place.” But what does all of this have to do with us?
21. First of all, just like ancient times, anywhere we can have an encounter with God is a special place. Whenever God’s presence is real in your life that is a holy moment in a Holy Place.
22. However, that’s not the only thing I want you to see. Turn in your Bibles to John 1:14. When you talk about worship in the Old Testament, you’re talking about meeting God in the Temple, Tabernacle, or in some place of God’s choosing. However, in the New Testament, it is a totally different situation for our worship is not tied to a place, but to a person.
23. Look at verse 14: “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.”
24. The phrase “made his dwelling among us” literally means “He tabernacled among us”. Jesus was the walking, talking, loving presence of God moving among us. In Jesus who was fully human and fully divine there was a Holy of holies, in a holy person. It was someone in which heaven and earth came together.
Week Of: March 29, 2009
Title: Exalted at the Right Hand of the Father
Series: Ministry of Worship - Part 3
Scripture: Acts 2:25-36
1. The Jews worshiped God in the Temple at Jerusalem during Jesus’ day and time. The Jews believed that in the Temple at the Holy of Holies, above the Mercy Seat, God dwelled. It was, as we said last week, the place where heaven and earth met.
2. Even Jesus went to the Temple to worship…. Mark 11:11 says, “Jesus entered Jerusalem and went to the temple.” Matthew 26:55 states: “…Every day I sat in the temple courts teaching…” Luke 21:37-38 states as well: “Each day Jesus was teaching at the temple, and each evening he went out to spend the night on the hill called the Mount of Olives, and all the people came early in the morning to hear him at the temple.”
3. Yet after Jesus was crucified and resurrected, John would write in his Gospel (1:14), that “the Word became flesh and (literally) dwelt (or tabernacled) among us.” We said last week that Jesus was literally a walking tabernacle, a walking mercy seat of God. Actually he was more, but that’s a good place to begin with to conceptualize who Jesus was.
4. It is very natural for Jesus, who was a walking talking Holy of Holies (God actually living among us), to be attracted to the Temple of God where God the Father was thought to dwell.
5. So as often as he could He was at the temple. However, does anyone know what happen in 70 A.D.? The Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans and never built back.
6. As to the other Holy of Holies, turn to John 2:19-22 and read with me: “Jesus answered them, ‘Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.’ The Jews replied, ‘It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days.’ After he was raised from the dead his disciples recalled what He had said. Then they believed the Scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken.”
7. One Temple of stone in Jerusalem was destroyed in 70 A.D. never to be rebuilt again, and the flesh and blood temple called Jesus Christ was killed only to be raised three days later as Jesus Himself predicted.
8. One way of worshiping was coming to an end. Another way of worshiping was just beginning. It began with the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and really no one but Jesus understood what was going on. As you know, the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is the single most important event in the existence of Jesus and in our own existence as well.
9. But there is another important event in the existence of our Lord and Savior; does anyone know what that is? The Ascension! Look at Acts 1:6-9, “So when they met together, they asked him, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel? He said to them: ‘It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by His own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.’ After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight.”
10. This is what we call the Ascension. Jesus literally lifted up out of the sight of the Disciples to Heaven. What was to happen once He got to Heaven?
11. Peter’s scripture this morning gives us Peter’s, and the early church’s, take on that in Acts. Let’s back up a few verses to verse 22 and read. “Men of Israel, listen to this: Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs, which God among you through Him, as you yourselves know….” (read on).
12. This is where early Christian worship started!!!! Worshiping the Risen Savior…as He sits at the right hand of the Father. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Each doing what should be done.
13. Notice that it is Jesus who is sending the Holy Spirit. What was the job of the Father to send the Holy Spirit on the Old Testament prophets, is now what Jesus is doing sitting on the right hand of the Father. He is sending the Holy Spirit to his people, which explains the speaking of unknown tongues of prophecy.
14. Well, where is the new holy place of God now? If the temple has been destroyed and Jesus is now sitting at the right hand of the Father where is the new Holy of Holies?
15. It is where God’s people are!!!! Look at Matthew 18:19-20 “Again, I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything you ask for, it will be done for you by my Father in Heaven. For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them.”
16. Where two or more come together to exalt the name of Christ, to give glory to Jesus who sits at the right hand of the Father, there Christ will be. And where Christ will be, there will be His Spirit and our Holy of Holies—in which worship the living God.
17. The Holy of Holies so to speak for the New Testament church is where the church has gathered, and where the Spirit of God is abiding. “Come, Holy Spirit, come” should always be our cry to worship.
18. Now don’t get me wrong. The Holy Spirit abides in every Christian’s heart no matter when and where they are, but we also want the presence of God to be here as only it can when we believe and claim Jesus’ words, that “where two or three are gathered so will he be there.”
19. So as the worshiping people of God, we look to the risen exalted Jesus Christ sitting at the right hand of the Father, and pray “Come, Holy Spirit.” That is where our worship begins.