Matthew 7:15-8:27 #eebc2018

This passage wraps up the Sermon on the Mount and includes verses that belong with Matthew 7:1. 7:1 is the well-known "Judge not, lest ye be judged" passage, but didn't say that in a vacuum. He also didn't just drop it as a one-liner. Instead, He preached that as part of a sermon that also includes Matthew 7:19-20 which tells us that we will know people by their fruit.

The difference? Fruit is clear and evident, it's not a judgment based on fleck of dust but on repetitive evidence seen in actions. If you are 'evaluating' someone based on what you think it means that they wore that kind of clothing, you're in the wrong. If you are judging someone as sinful because they are an abusive spouse, then you're probably judging the fruit rightly: it's bad fruit. They are in need of repentance.

Jesus concludes the Sermon on the Mount by highlighting the importance of putting what He has said into practice. If we do not follow-through and actually do something, it really hasn't helped, has it? And we can say we believe, but belief leads to action.

After the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew records three definite healings and then comments that many others took place. The three are a leper, a Roman centurion's servant, and Peter's mother-in-law. Now, there is a joke in there about how all three are socially unloved people: lepers, Romans, and in-laws, but we'll let it pass for now. Instead, focus on the methods of healing: the leper is healed when Jesus touches him and speaks, the Roman at the word of Christ from a distance, and Peter's mother-in-law at a touch.

The differences highlight that the power is Jesus, not a specific action or person involved. Only the Savior can heal like this, which Matthew brings up from Isaiah 53:4.

But after the crowd builds, Jesus chases some of them away. Why? Because being a disciple is not for those who just want to hang about and have miracles. It's for those who will recognize the cost, those who will face the storms and trust Christ through them.

The miracles may get you started, but you need to have your faith grow beyond only what you've seen. You have to grow into trusting what God has said.

Genesis 45:1-46:7 #eebc2018

Joseph reveals himself to his brothers in this passage, and then sends for his father to come to Egypt. He provides for the practical needs of the elderly and smaller children to travel and works to reunite his family.

Jacob is, naturally, a bit unsettled by all of this. After all, he has believed Joseph is dead for two decades. He determines that he will go down and see Joseph before his death.

But on the way, he makes an important stop. At Beer-sheba, he makes sacrifices to the God of his father Isaac. This is the first time in a while we have seen Jacob offer sacrifices. One might think Joseph's apparent death had put a hold on Jacob's relationship with God. (It is impossible to be certain, as we don't have all the details of the last 20 years.)

Here, though, he takes the step back. In this incident, it is Jacob's actions that bring him back into a relationship with God. He offers sacrifices and then God speaks to him. God gives him permission to go on down to Egypt and a promise that he will come back from Egypt. Now, when you read on, you'll see that he came back to be buried, but still, he came back.

Let's take this to heart. Jacob already knew God, had already experienced God's presence and His grace. This is not the first time Jacob has spoken with the Lord God.

But, like so many of us, he appears to have drifted over the years. Nowhere in their response to the famine does it appear the family seeks God. Nowhere do they ask God about buying grain from Egypt. Instead, they have just done what made sense to them at the time.

When our life gets aimed in that direction, we have to make the adjustment. The Christian life is not about waiting for God to do all the work--that is not what grace is about. (See Dan Phillips' wonderful The World-Tilting Gospel about "Gutless Gracers.")

Instead, we have to take a step in the direction of repentance. God will not take that step for us--He took the step to the cross. He took the step of saving us. He has the right to require us to take steps of repentance after our salvation.

Now, keep in mind that this is between you and God, not you and some other person. God sets the parameters of repentance, not mankind. You belong to Him, though after you have worked through the issues between you and the Lord there may be steps of relationship mending between you and other people.

The question at stake, then, is do you need to take a step of repentance? Has it been a while since you have heard from the Lord God?

We have the advantage over Jacob, because our hearing from God is as simple as opening the Word of God and seeing what He said. It's often the same action that shows our repentance: blow the dust off the Bible and read it! God speaks.

Let us not neglect that opportunity, but instead rise to it. Let us take up the Word and see what God promises, see what our walk of obedience entails and then go do it.

Genesis 43:16-44:34 #eebc2018

Joseph now has his brothers in his power. Consider the opportunity for revenge. Consider the opportunity to take everything they have ever done wrong and jam it right back down their throats.

Is that not a temptation for us sometimes as well? When we're right and we know we are right? It may have been years--after all, for Joseph it has been at least 2 years, and likely many more. Genesis 37:2 has Joseph at 17 years old and he enters Pharaoh's service at 30 (Genesis 41:46). Given that specific ages are usually mentioned to highlight when the events around them happen, that would suggest a gap of 20 years or more for Joseph, since the famine comes along seven years after he starts working for the Egyptian government.

Twenty years have passed, and now Joseph has all the power. It's like the dream of every kid who was an outcast of some kind in high school: at the reunion, nobody will pick on me anymore! They'll see I was right and they were wrong! Joseph could have slapped all of his brothers into prison, sent food back for his father with Benjamin and included a note that said "DAD! I'm alive!!"

Instead, in the midst of a time of trouble and famine, he orders a feast for his brothers. He brings them into his home, provides for their comfort--not just their needs--and pours out the wealth he has control over for their needs. They eat, they drink, and they drink to excess--it's not just a meal. It is a feast.

Then, there is one more test. Joseph has shown grace to his brothers, but he still wants to find out about their character. He has no way of knowing if Benjamin is safe with them or not, so he sets a trap to force the men to hand Benjamin over to him. For all the brothers know, Benjamin is going to be imprisoned, but Joseph may be seeking to protect his full-brother. If he can separate Benjamin, he can make sure that there are no pits for him in the years to come with his brothers.

His brothers, though, demonstrate their changed life. Judah offers himself in Benjamin's place, and Joseph sees that twenty years have changed his brothers as they have changed him.

What do we learn?

First, without a doubt, we see the extravagance of grace. Grace forgives and restores, grace throws a feast in the midst of a famine, and does not hold back even in the face of cultural opposition. (See that Joseph dines by himself, because he's the boss, but by Genesis 43:34, the brothers are 'with' Joseph. Intoxicated, but with nonetheless.)

Do we show that type of grace? Are we willing to embrace that God is that forgiving toward us and that we can, and should, be that forgiving toward others?

Second, though, we should also see our responsibility for the welfare of others. When we have seen a pattern of destruction by some, we must extend grace while still defending the next potential victim. This is the important partner lesson here: Joseph was, it appears, working to help protect his youngest brother from his other brothers.

Do we do that? Do we understand that it is not graceful to leave someone in the midst of abuse or danger? We have to understand this. Grace is bought by the blood of Christ, and so should not be paid for again by the blood of victims.

Third, we need to acknowledge that people change over the course of time. I look back at my own life and see this. I've been working for churches for more than 2 decades at this point. In many ways, I don't know that 18 year-old youth minister Doug would recognize 41 year-old Pastor Doug. I'm not even sure the 2 would get along that well. Time changes us, hopefully for the better. Or at least makes a bit more mature.

Be careful evaluating someone because of who they were. Even as adults, we change, we grow, we learn from our mistakes. That does not exempt us from certain consequences, especially if we evaded them in our younger years, but it does show how some folks can persuade you now that they are wonderful when they were troublesome in the past.

Show grace, watch out for others, and allow for time to work in your life and other people's lives. In essence, realize that people are best known through relationships and not spreadsheets.

Genesis 42:29-43:15 #eebc2018

We pick up the Joseph narrative with his brothers on their way out of Egypt. Well, all of them but Simeon are on the way out of Egypt. Simeon is imprisoned in Egypt as a hostage to ensure the rest of the family are not spies. On the way home, the brothers have discovered that the money they paid for grain has been returned to their sacks. In other words, they really only end up trading a brother for food.

Which may have been a good trade...

However, they get home and Jacob is not pleased with the results. He questions his sons about why they gave Joseph so much information, why they have brought him so much trouble. Part of this is because none of them recognized Joseph.

Had the famine been shorter, they would have had a different problem. At some point, Simeon needs to get out of prison. That might have been simpler for them, but it still would have required a return to Egypt. Joseph successfully put his brothers in a bind where they will have to revisit him, where he will have another opportunity to address their wrongs.

The famine, though, continues. And the family of Jacob runs short on food again. Obviously, they are not completely out of food options before the brothers set out for Egypt, because that would have been poor planning. Everyone left behind would have starved before they got back! It takes some effort to persuade Jacob that the only choice they have is to go and take Benjamin with them.

Jacob accepts this, but does so with a bit of fatalism: "If I am deprived of my sons, then I am deprived," is not exactly a hopeful viewpoint.

Here we see where sometimes, the faithful falter. Seen from the end of the story, Jacob should have had a greater trust that God would take care of him. After all, God had seen him through many other troubles until now. Did he expect that God would allow him and the whole family of promise to starve? Or be imprisoned in Egypt and die there?

Yet we have so much more in common with Jacob in the middle of the story than we like to admit. God has a purpose for our lives, a will to use us for His honor and His glory. Sometimes, that involves suffering and difficulty.

And we lose heart. Because in the middle of the story, the lights are dimmer than we like them to be. Sometimes, the only choice to be made seems desperate and dreadful, like Jacob's choice to send the boys back to Egypt.

God, though, has not forgotten you. And He has not abandoned you. He will work in your life. You may not like the way He does--you could be Simeon, after all, or Jacob, waiting to see what happens with no certainty of results.

But you are not alone. God is with you. And His work in your life is driven by the Cross of Jesus and carries forward into eternity.

So hold on, make the choices you have to make, and do the next thing in front of you. It may seem desperate, but obedient faithfulness will always be the right choice.

Matthew 6:25-7:14 #eebc2018

The Sermon on the Mount continues. Matthew records Jesus preaching about anxiety and worry. He also speaks of judgment, hypocrisy, and seeking.

It is the connection of these three things that I would recommend you consider today. It is important that we not take the whole teaching of the Messiah and treat it like a collection of fortune cookie sayings. None of Scripture should be chopped up into one-liners. We do not do Proverbs justice when we do that, and it's even worse with the Sermon on the Mount.

So don't look at this as separate areas. Rather, see the way in which the Master connects these ideas. Each of them are valid on their own, of course, but they were not delivered stand alone.

How do they relate?

First, Jesus commands us not to worry. That's right, read it again in Matthew 6:25. It's a command. When Jesus says "Do not worry," He is not giving you sage advice. He's giving you a command to obey. He then goes on to give you some reasons and supports for obeying this command. Is God not capable of taking care of you? After all, see how God cares for everything!

Second, He moves from worry and anxiety into not judging others. How do these relate? Tear up your twenty-first century notions of "judging" as a starting place. Then, consider this: judgment here has to do with determining whether or not someone deserves what they have, be it happiness or wealth or illness or misfortune. There's a connection between making that judgment and trying to enforce the results.

It is not about deciding if a person's actions are right or wrong. Especially if you are in matters which are clear in Scripture, clear with a reasonable ethic. For example, if I abandon my child to starve to death, that's wrong. It's not wrongly "judgmental" for you to tell me it's wrong, either. If I am a serial adulterer who lies about it, that's wrong. It's not inappropriate to declare that behavior, and the heart that embraces it, as wrong. That's truth. Now, where we need to acknowledge Christian liberty is on the less-clear things: I let my children watch TV, but some do not. I have let my children read questionable books (email me for a list if you dare!) while others are much more reserved about what pages turn. (Obviously, some things are still wrong here but there are bright lines. And some things are out for being lousy literature, whatever the content.)

There was a long parenthetical there, but let's get back on track: anxiety and judgment? The connection is that anxiety frequently raises its ugly head as we judge our life against the lives of others. Why did he get a good thing that I didn't? Why did that bad thing happen there?

And then it builds, internally, as we run through those questions of judgment: what if I'm not good enough? What if this person gets in the way? What if something goes wrong? Will God still be there for someone like me when I screw it up?

So we loop on those thoughts, rather than moving ahead to where Jesus speaks of asking, seeking, knocking in our search.  One of our key misunderstandings here is that God should be giving us stuff, but that is why Jesus expounds on the ask-receive concept and talks about bread and fish. An earthly father knows not to give his son a snake--whether his son asks for a snake or a fish. Your Heavenly Father knows if what you are asking for is really a snake or a fish, and knows what to give you.

Just like He knows what your neighbor asked for and really needed--or didn't!--and judged more rightly than you would what they deserved.

You see, if we will work though all three of these paragraphs together, we will grasp what is being said. Start with knowing that you should ask God for that which you need and trust Him to know how to answer. Then, keep your focus where it belongs: walking with Jesus and trusting God. And you will find much of your anxiety will disappear without any direct effort.

It's like recognizing that you can mop up the water that leaks out every time you run the dishwasher or you can find the leak source and cut if off. We often fight anxiety, but that's like mopping every leaked dropped. You'll be exhausted and eventually ineffective. But if you track down the source, hone in on trusting God with yourself, then there are far fewer leaks.

Sermon Recap for March 25

Well, we had a technology blunder for the morning sermon. We had made some adjustments to the audio setup in the sanctuary, and while that explains the lack of audio recording, apparently the gremlins got the video, too.

I’m not sure why. I didn’t push that button, Jim didn’t push that button…So, for lack of a recording (you could watch the AM sermon, but unless you are a great lip-reader, you won’t learn much. It’s very quiet), morning is gone. Here is the evening:

Matthew 5:13-6:24 #eebc2018

Here we are in the midst of the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus is teaching His disciples, a message which opened with the Beatitudes and now goes on to talk about the disciples and their relationship with the world. The Sermon on the Mount deals with that subject at length, as well as the matter of the disciples' relationship with God.

It is these two areas that we often think are in conflict, but Jesus makes clear that they are not. In fact, your relationship with God is interdependent with your relationship with the people around you. That is not to say that people should be your boss--only God is your God, not anyone else. But if the Beatitudes of Matthew 5:3-12 started you thinking that your relationship with God would be better if you just ducked away and never interacted, that thought should be cut off by the next two paragraphs. We are to be salt and light, clear to the world and affecting the world around us.

After all, salt doesn't do much if it is not with other items. And a light that cannot be seen is just wasting itself. The next several sections build on this idea. First, Jesus highlights that He is the fulfillment of the Law, not someone who will cancel it. The Law was based in the holiness of God, and that holiness will never change. How we live still matters, because otherwise we are destroying others. The Law, though, was not enough because adultery and murder are outside actions but righteousness requires that we stop at the inner thoughts which spark those actions.

And note that Jesus brings forward conflict with your fellow worshippers as a danger in the same realm as murder. Here is where we find that fixing a relationship is as important as bringing a sacrifice to the altar. Then we see that adultery begins as lust, and lust is worth removing body parts to fix. Now, should be actually go cutting off hands and gouging out eyes?

No. Why do we not take this literally? Because we read the text in context, understanding what is being said. Jesus points out that adultery begins as a heart problem. You cannot cut off your hand to fix your heart. He is driving to the real problem: your hearts are not just restless until we find God. Our hearts are dead without the Spirit of God. And we'll be far better off to let Him take that old heart straight out.

Going through the rest of the passage, we have instructions about fasting, giving, and prayer. There is a continued emphasis that our hearts must be right before God and our lives must be lived to draw others to Him.

There are whole books written on just portions of the Sermon on the Mount, so we cannot possibly cover it all here. Take up and read, and let God change you through His word. What should come through this is that our lives will not be the same with Jesus as they would have been without Him. If we are not different in our living, if our lives cannot be easily seen as lives committed to Christ, then we should reconsider and reread.