An Invitation To Life.3

"Whoever hears my word and believes in the One who has sent me will find eternal life and not be condemned.  Instead, they will pass from death unto life. Do not be amazed at this; for the time is coming when even the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear his voice shall live. In their graves, the dead will recognize his voice and be raised up; those that have done good will be raised to new life, and those who have lived wrongfully will be raised to condemnation."

-- Jesus

Days after the most recent Easter celebration I was involved in a conversation on Facebook with a friend that went like this:

David: "Charlie, have you ever done a sermon or teaching on Matthew 27: 52-53 or do you know were I can find some information or commentary about those two verses?"

Me: "I can't recall if I have...but not surprising, I'm at the age where I forget that I don't remember stuff! Are you preparing a study to share with others, David, or just for your own study?"

David: "My life group class is going to do a study on what Mathew is talking about in those passages. We all hear about Jesus dying on the cross for us but I have not heard anybody talk about those two passages. Just asking and seeing if you might know of any place to look for more information about them."

Me: "What are your thoughts?"

David: "I take it literally that those other people who were resurrected when Jesus died, were brought back to testify about Jesus Christ, that He is going to come back from the dead also."

Me: "So is the question in the group about whether to take this report literally?"

David: "yes and no; and what is the purpose of Mathew reporting about this occurrence and to see why very few people will talk about this occurrence."

Me: "Here's a couple thoughts: I just read a quote from Dale Carnegie "people are not creatures of logic, people are creatures of emotion..." Think of the stirring events at the moment of his death --the earthquake, the tearing of the temple veil, dead people come alive walking out of graves-- like the fireworks that go off after a rousing team victory at a sports stadium...very moving and awe-inspiring. I think the Father put an exclamation point on the work of the cross that was undeniable by even the most indifferent of spectators, like the Roman Centurion, who said, "Surely this was the Son of God!"

Also, the resurrection of those saints surely is woven into the fabric of the faith of the church passed down through generations of believers!"

David: "I was also thinking that they were giving hope to those that were hiding and afraid of the Romans and the Jews that Jesus Christ is not dead but alive and still with us and to this day we still need that assurance."

Me: "Amen! What can better inspire courage and boldness than the knowledge and heart-felt wonder that what you believe is True?!"

David: "Still wondering why nobody will talk about those two passages."

Me: "Maybe God left it up to you, brother!!"

David: "maybe...I am praying for some answers."

Me: "I'm praying the answers you have will ring true in true hearts!"

David: "Amen"

An Invitation To Life.2

"A wealthy man planned a great banquet, and invited many guests. When the preparations were completed, he sent his servant to gather those who had been invited.

'Come,' he said, 'for all things are ready.'

But all those who had been invited began to make excuses.

The first replied: 'I have just purchased a piece of land, and I must go and look at it again. Please have me excused.'

The second said: 'I have just purchased a herd of cattle, and I must go and examine it. Please have me excused.'

A third answered: 'I have recently been married, and for this, I cannot attend.'

Finally, the servant returned and reported what had happened. Hearing the disappointing news, the master commanded:

'Go quickly into the streets of the city, and gather the poor, the lame, the ill and the blind.'

The servant hurried to do this, and soon returned, saying: 'Sir, I have done as you commanded, and still there is room at the table.'

'Go then,' the rich man replied, 'along the highways and among the fields, and urge those you meet to come in, that my table might be filled. For I say to you: none of those that were originally invited will taste of the banquet that I had prepared for them.'"

--Jesus

My Aunt just passed away. 

Hours before she did I received a distressful call from my cousin Connie.  A well meaning neighbor -- at least we can only hope she is well meaning -- suggested that, as my aunt lay taking her last breaths, Connie should consider that her mom's recent lack of church attendance should (I'm not making this up) cause grave concern about her eternal resting place....

I wept. And maybe tasted a bit of the disappointment Jesus felt when people get focused on the wrong things.  He came to proclaim the wonder-filled possibility of Oneness with the richness of His Father's splendor.  

But since most of us, and I say most of us in the sense of everyone who's never dwelt in the Eternal Glory of the Creator God, have never experienced anything quite like that in our mortal existence, we regard that news with an, um, earthy earthiness (not sure exactly what that means, but it kind of makes sense...)  Kind of like the guy who's just announced that you've won the Powerball Jackpot and you just sit there in a sort of stupor not sure how to comprehend.

But that never seems to stop some from ruining the party for others. Depending on your particular theological backdrop you could substitute any number of crucial litmus tests for passage into the Pearly Gates:
- "Did she say the penitent's prayer?"
- "Was she covered by the blood?"
- "Did she accept Jesus as her Lord AND Savior?"
- "Did she believe in the virgin birth?"
- "Did she believe in this version of the atonement?"

So my question to the self-appointed gatekeepers: If someone at some point in their life accepts His tender invitation to come to the banquet, who are you to add your own indulgences to admission?

Is it not hard enough, with all the distractions in life, to get

image from deesbbbanquet.blogspot.com

someone to commit their Will to joining God's Kingdom Party and experiencing the joy of His Perfecting Will?  They may not do it until they've been humbled by infirmity or discovered their true lost-ness wandering aimlessly through the highways and byways of life!

But our part is simply to invite and gather. Not determine their worthiness to come in...If we can't trust the Preparer of the Party to rejoice in our repentance, wrap us in His robes of righteousness and make us worthy then maybe we're at the wrong address. Serving the wrong Master!

The End Times.1

"Once, there was a landowner who planted a vineyard, and on the grounds he installed a winepress. Around the vineyard he built a tall fence, erecting even a tower. Then he rented his vineyard to vine keepers, and voyaged to a distant country. When the time of the harvest approached, the landowner sent his servants to the vine keepers to collect his profits. But the vine keepers ambushed his servants, beat one, killed another, and drove the third off with stones. 
Again, the landowner sent servants to collect his profits. This time he sent a larger group than the first, but they met with a similar fate. 
Finally the landowner sent his only son, reasoning, "At least they will respect my only son." 
When the vine keepers saw the son approaching, however, they plotted foolishly among themselves: 'Here before us is the heir to the vineyard. If we kill him, 

his inheritance will be ours.'

So plotting, they bound the son, dragged him outside the vineyard walls, and took his life. 
I ask you: when, finally, the landowner of the vineyard returns, what will be the fate of the wicked vine keepers?"

--Jesus

An uncle once violently declared to me that Jesus was a socialist!  At least violence is what I read into the protruding neck veins and bright red face stressing his passionate opinion.

I'm sure he's not alone in that opinion.  But whether this parable is an apologetic for capitalism or socialism, I'm not sure. If you, like me, prefer capitalism to socialism, you'll find plenty to support the idea that property owners can and do provide valuable products, services and jobs to others by investing in the improvement of their property.  Socialists counter that this story teaches that profit motive drives people to exploit and harm the people who work for them.

Both economic systems attempt to define the equitable distribution of property. Property disputes are as old as the garden of Eden.

The moral then:

• For the capitalist: don't hire thugs.  
• For the socialist: don't let your children grow up to be Wall Street executives!
• For Jesus: don't misinterpret my meaning!

To the King, Who's Kingdom is not of this World, the challenge of conveying His meaning through the shadowy figures of this world, continues, even today, to be daunting.  The "key", I am of the opinion, to unlocking the meaning of this story is the word inheritance. 

image from somestuffaboutmoney.com

Inheritance, in this world, is the legal-willful portioning of property.  Just the other day I met a business owner perplexed that his brother/estate executor won't share information with him about the family trust.  He's suspicious that his fifteen years of running the family business may be unceremoniously taken from him when mom passes.

Those suspicions, given the history of mankind, are certainly justified.  For the sharing of property, we know in our hearts, is the lessening of the whole.  We intrinsically feel the need for "fairness" in the distribution.

The Kingdom of God, however, is good news!  For its values and practices are in stark contrast to those of this world system.  Nothing illustrates that more than the idea of inheritance.  Drink in the words of Dante via MacDonald:


"To have a share in any earthly inheritance, is to diminish the share of the other inheritors. In the inheritance of the saints, that which each has, goes to increase the possession of the rest. Hear what Dante puts in the mouth of his guide, as they pass through Purgatory:

Because you point and fix your longing eyes

On things where sharing lessens every share,

The human bellows heave with envious sighs.

But if the loftiest love that dwelleth there

Up to the heaven of heavens your longing turn,

Then from your heart will pass this fearing care:

The oftener there the word our they discern,

The more of good doth everyone possess,

The more of love doth in that cloister burn.

Dante desires to know how it can be that a distributed good should make the receivers the richer the more of them there are; and Virgil answers-

Because thy mind doth stick

To earthly things, and on them only brood,

From the true light thou dost but darkness pick.

That same ineffable and infinite Good,

Which dwells up there, to Love doth run as fleet

As sunrays to bright things, for sisterhood.

It gives itself proportionate to the heat:

So that, wherever Love doth spread its reign,

The growing wealth of God makes that its seat.

And the more people that up thither strain,

The more there are to love, the more they love,

And like a mirror each doth give and gain."

The true share, in the heavenly kingdom throughout, is not what you have to keep, but what you have to give away." 
From The Inheritance by George MacDonald, Unspoken Sermons III 



  

AN INVITATION TO LIFE.1

"Everyone who believes in the Son will have life everlasting."
--Jesus

When I began dating my wife years ago, I learned about her mother's secret stash of sacred family videos.  Only the inner circle could even suggest they existed!  After mother's passing, the secret stash was finally revealed and I discovered something significant about the sacredness of family.  When I saw my wife as a little girl I was strangely squeamish, like I didn't belong there.  I couldn't, shouldn't, wouldn't watch them...

When I watch our own family videos a somewhat similar feeling comes over me, not that I don't belong there, I did, after all, help create this family and provide many of the experiences that have helped shape them, but a feeling of the paradox of time.  It mocks that those precious moments were so fleeting; that I didn't appreciate or savor them more. But it befriends in filtering the negative influences of impatience, impertinence and immaturity in those moments.

Time as taskmaster will soon be tamed.

I once had an experience in a college class that put time in eternal perspective.  The professor asked us to write down memories, both good and bad on 3x5 cards.  He explained that the reason we don't "forgive and forget" is because of the emotions attached to painful memories and that the healing of traumatic incidents just takes time.  He asked us to take out of our stack of bad memories a particularly difficult moment and sit quietly  before the Lord to let Him speak to us about it. The memory I selected occurred at around the age of ten. While playing a creepy game of some sort in an old house at twilight, an uncle jumped on top of me pinning me to the ground with a rubber hose squeezing my neck.  I was pretty sure I was going to die in that moment.  While recalling that memory I noted I had no real emotion attached to it.  (The professor later explained that the brain insulates itself from particularly traumatic memories.) 

As part of this exercise we were to take a favorite image of Jesus and focus on it while recalling the memory.  The image I used was the last scene in the "Matthew" video series where the actor playing Jesus turns, smiles and motions to follow him.  It is such a compelling vision of a joy-filled Savior.  However, while merging these two memories in my mind, the face of Jesus turned from confident caring to cruel mockery. It took my breath away and I wanted to stop.  But I let the

image from christianitymalasia.com

scene play out and soon discovered that the look on his face was the agony He experienced on the cross.  I realized that He was there in that moment; saw the evil I endured and let me know it was for that He died to redeem us.

It was life changing.

I believe the "judgment seat of Christ" will be a place of wonderful healing and reconciliation. Time, as servant of Death, will be swallowed up in LIFE! 

The Promise of the Spirit.6

"If you then, being of this earth, know how to provide good things for your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the breath of God to those who ask him?

When the Comforter, the Spirit of truth, whom I will send to you from the Father, has come, he will testify of me. He will teach you all things, and will remind you of all that I have told you." 

--Jesus

"My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh..." Genesis 6:3

For as long as I can remember it has been my habit to recoil at reproof.  Maybe its a strong perfectionist streak...I don't know...more likely, just plain old fear & pride.  

A high school football coach once put his arm around my slumped shoulders after an especially fierce rant. Directed at me. "Charlie," he sighed, "don't be upset when I yell at you.  Be upset when I don't...that's when I stop believing in you."

In my current occupation I am "striving" with God's Spirit.  I'm confident-most of the time-God wanted me here.  I've enjoyed relatively good success, but recently hit a difficult stretch...and I don't like it. 

 I want to move on. 
      I'm sure there is nothing more for me to learn here.

 I'm real sure I don't like it anymore.  
I know there is much more important work I could be doing. 

 I'm getting too old to work this hard.  
I don't think I can get the enthusiasm back.
                   It's a great job...if it weren't for people. 

 I'm burnt out. 

 My car is getting beat up.  
                 I'm getting beat up. 

 People are too stubborn to be wasting my important time.                        What if I just can't do this anymore.  

My company expects too much. 
                 I can't keep up with all the changes.

There you have it.  

Ironclad reasons why my will is better than God's!

I hear the sigh...

Make no mistake.  Jesus' teaching is not to give me good information or to be able to get the right answers to the heavenly pop quiz.  It's to make me a man like Him.  To realize my human potential as God had in mind when He imagined me.

Any youthful fantasy football dreams were quickly quashed by the reality that I wasn't made for professional football.  But I was made for truth, righteousness, courage, strength, wisdom, justice, mercy, love, kindness, peace, and goodness; citizenship qualities of the Kingdom of God.  
Because this world's ambitions, once realized, are quickly exposed for their temporal and futile nature, it is worth believing in a place where Kingdom qualities, not athletic prowess, political pandering, aristocratic credentials, or fashionable chic, are the currency of the culture!  More importantly, they are eternal!

Hungering and thirsting for His righteousness is the primary indicator that the Spirit is striving, working, teaching, moving us step by difficult step toward the upward call.  

While not always knowing if and how close we are getting to what we shall be like, we know Whom we have believed.  

Lord Jesus, thanks for your patience with me...sigh...I won't stop striving if you won't!

The Promise Of The Spirit.5

"He will praise me and glorify me, by revealing my glory to you. All the Father's glory is mine as well. This is why I am able to make this promise to you: 

the Spirit will reveal my divine nature to you. 

If your child asked of you bread, would you offer a stone? If your child asked fish to eat, would you offer a snake? Would you serve a scorpion to the little ones who ask for an egg?" 

--Jesus

When we last visited the Happy Kuyper family they were basking in the joy of their infant daughter, Raleigh.  Recent news suddenly appearing on their Facebook page reveals they will soon triple their joy!  Identical twins are nestling comfortably in momma's belly!  More Kuyper's to bless the world!

One of the most sobering lessons of raising children, in my humble opinion, is the realization that (be patient, this takes years to completely comprehend) 

you never stop being a parent!

A vital lesson Jesus came to teach mankind is this: God, our Father, revealed in the Son of His love, 

never stops being child-like in His devotion to us!

How often did He stop to take a child to his arms in the midst of the swirl of doubt, despair, dullness and deceit to teach this vital truth: Receive the Child, Receive Me.  Receive Me, Receive the Father!  Be sure it wasn't the most beautiful child, nor the child we'd consider most likely to succeed, He'd choose to use so that eyes & ears become channels to the heart.  It was the child who most demonstrated child-likeness.

"For when is the child the ideal child in our eyes and to our hearts? Is it not when with gentle hand he takes his father by the beard, and turns that father's face up to his brothers and sisters to kiss? When even the lovely selfishness of love-seeking has vanished, and the heart is absorbed in loving?

In this, then, is God like the child: 

that he is simply and altogether our friend, 
our father

     our more than friend, father, and mother
          our infinite love-perfect God. 

Grand and strong beyond all that human imagination can conceive of poet-thinking and kingly action, 

He is delicate beyond all that human tenderness can conceive of husband or wife, 

Homely beyond all that human heart can conceive of father or mother. 

He has not two thoughts about us. 
With him all is simplicity of purpose and meaning and effort and end—namely, 
      that we should be as he is, 
           think the same thoughts, 
               mean the same things, 
                    possess the same blessedness. 

It is so plain that any one may see it, 
    every one ought to see it, 
      every one shall see it. 

It must be so. 

He is utterly true and good to us, 
nor shall anything withstand his will."

(George MacDonald, The Child In The Midst, Unspoken Sermons I)

The Promise of the Spirit.4

"I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot understand them just now. However, when the breath of God has come, he will guide you into all truth, for he will not speak of himself; but whatever he hears, that he will speak, showing you those things that are to come." 

--Jesus

The Wizard of Oz

"Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!" 
-The Great and Powerful Oz

There is a narrative running throughout our culture that the only reality that has meaning is the virtual reality. The smart phone we carry in our pockets has less to do with its computing power than in shaping the way we see the world! A recent TV commercial sums up society: a young man tries in vain to get his girlfriend's attention as she focuses on her phone.  He looks around at every other patron in the coffee shop also deeply engrossed in their virtual worlds.  He finally realizes the only way to get her attention is to send her a text asking her to look up so that he can give her a real gift!

We're not in Kansas anymore, Toto...

How to explain our addiction to all things technological? Surely it has something to do with a great fascination in knowing "the things that are to come".  Throughout history many people have made predictions that, accurate or not, impacted society. Nostradamus. Galileo. Muhammad. Cayce. Remember waiting in breathless anticipation for the carnage predicted for Y2K?  How about the turning of the Mayan calendar marking the end of the world?  Fortunes have been made and reputations built selling a compelling vision of the future.

More chilling, however, are those who attempt to shape the way we will experience the future.  By persuading us that there are forces at work beyond our control and selling an antiseptic vision of an ordered world, they lure us away from foundational truths. Vital truths such as our God-imaged individuality and the need for moral development.  Moral development that can only come by recognizing our need for oneness with our Creator God who can account for our existence, and through faith in His Son, help us overcome the difficulties of life, leading us toward our potential for love, truth and righteousness. 

Ray Kurzweil, an American author, inventor, futurist, and a director of engineering at Google, describes these forces in his book The Singularity Is Near. "The Singularity [a future period during which the pace of technological change will be so rapid, its impact so deep, that human life will be irreversibly transformed] will allow us to transcend [the] limitations of our biological bodies and brains."

His compelling vision of the future includes:

•  We will gain power over our fates
• Our mortality will be in our own hands
• We will be able to live as long as we want (a subtly different statement from saying we will live forever.)
• We will fully understand human thinking and will vastly extend and expand its reach.
• By the end of this century, the non biological portion of our intelligence will be trillions of trillions of times more powerful than unaided human intelligence.

The lines are being drawn very clearly for followers of Jesus as more media takes up the drumbeat of ordered reality. TV shows like Almost Human, Intelligence, Person of Interest, and movies such as Minority Report and Transcendence craft a virtual reality that makes the merging of human & machine seem possible.  More subtle, however, is the message that we are the Masters of Our Fate and can explain all the mysteries of the Universe through faith in evolutionary science. Not so subtle this message: if you don't comply with the ordered reality of the Power Worshipers you will, at least, be marginalized, and at worst, destroyed. 

For woven into the crafted imagery of the new virtual reality are clear violations of conscience and conviction particularly in regard to concupiscence,  lasciviousness, licentiousness and fornication (words found in the KJV bible translation that served the church well for centuries to shine the spotlight of exposure on the awful, dark side of sin).  

"If the foundations be destroyed, 

what can the righteous do?" Psalm 11:3

Battle weary believers, who ought to shine brighter than ever as the darkness grows darker, are in danger of having lampstands removed.  Who among us does not now have to struggle with being light and salt to an ever growing number of friends, neighbors, relatives who have exchanged the truth of God's natural law (the conscience they're born with) for this worlds' new order?  Sadly, rather than growing more righteous and skilled in our response to the challenges of living in an increasingly pagan world, many rationalize with and seek scriptural justification for sin. 

For example, I recently got involved in an animated discussion on why some Christians pick on certain sins over others.  In the end, the "certain sin" they were most troubled that Christians picked on was homosexuality!  One debater simply dismissed it as even being a sin.  Another believed that the scriptures commonly used to identify it as sin are misinterpreted because of context, he thinks they are God's warning against pagan worship practices not deviant sexual behavior! Certainly others seemed to agree that identifying what is sin has as much to do with our comfort level as our interpretation of scripture!

Follower of Jesus, if you want to avoid error and understand the things Jesus still has to say to us, I have this exhortation: love the Truth, listen to the Spirit, obey what He says - comfortable or not!