C, Post-Pentecost 14 Proper 19 - 1 Timothy 1:15-16 "Jesus' Perfect Patience"

1 Timothy 1:15–16 (ESV) The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost.  But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life.

Saint Paul’s ministry was one of patience!  Jesus had to be perfectly patient with Paul as an example to those who were to believe Jesus for eternal life.

We might think the patience needed, is what was required of Paul to perform his ministry.  He definitely was taught to be patient, but this was only secondary to Jesus’ perfect patience with him. 

After his conversion on the road to Damascus, you might expect, there was preaching to do, and people to seek, now that Saul the persecutor of Christ and his church had become Paul the proselyte of this fledgeling movement centred on Jesus’ life and death, resurrection and ascension.

However, if Saint Paul’s ministry, or any ministry is to be effective in the Lord, God’s patience needs to be demonstrated with us who share the gospel, whether we are pastors, lay leaders in congregations, youth leaders, parents and grandparents praying for their prodigals to return, or young kids telling their friends about Jesus in the playground.

When God was handing out patience, I reckon I must have been away that day!  I, like so many in our society today, desire immediate results, or I get impatient.

As I get older the need to –go, go, go– is slowing, physically!  But mentally and emotionally my patience is slowing too.  Or my impatience is growing proportionally to the years I live or the hairs that are getting greyer.  The slower I go, the slower I am at being patient.  Or the quicker I run out of puff, the quicker I expect others to pick up their act and get going.

The old Adam in us, our human spirit, turns its expectation into a god.  Unfortunately, sin has rewired our brains and hearts this way.  But the Holy Spirit leads us back to Christ’s overflowing love. 

When the god of our expectations is not met, we get frustrated and impassioned with each other.  In our minds we become impatient and secretly judge, “I expected so much more from you!  Or, I didn’t expect you to do something like that!”  Our expectations can be idols in our lives that cause us to sin against others and God.

After Saint Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus, at the least, he spent fourteen years away from Jerusalem in Arabia, Syria, and Cilicia.  God was patiently preparing Paul for his ministry, and no doubt Paul too was learning patience having been shown patience.  It’s believed during these fourteen years; God was patiently preparing him as an apostle.  Saul the Pharisee who knew the Law was being patiently revealed by the Holy Spirit that Jesus Christ is the only fulfiller of the Law.

Sometime later Paul confesses to young pastor Timothy, “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost.”

What a way to start off!  Confession that he is not just a sinner but the prototype of sinners!  Only through Jesus’ perfect patience does someone learn this, and, have the willingness to confess it.

Paul prefaces his confession as the prototype sinner stating, “The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost.” (1 Timothy 1:15 ESV)

He confesses to Timothy that Jesus Christ, this Saviour of sinners, and his sinfulness, is proclaimed in faith and this deserves Timothy’s full reception.  Paul wants Timothy to perfectly understand what he is saying here! 

In naming himself a sinner, Paul does a number of things.  He’s no longer ignorant in his unbelief.  He now has faith that he’s a sinner.  His sinful being is now covered by Jesus’ death and resurrection.  His former sinful deeds are also covered by Jesus’ forgiveness.  He’s no longer a servant of his sinfulness, but rather a servant of sinners needing the same forgiveness as him.

Paul places himself under the authority of God’s word.  One might think that he was already doing this since he was a Pharisee.  However, Paul was using the Law of God to justify himself and his position.  This made him guilty of blasphemy and idolatry.   As a ruthless Pharisee he was worshipping a graven image, not made with his hands, but with his mind.  And in breathing murderous threats against the followers of Christ, he was blaspheming God the Son.  

From Pauls legal background as an Old Testament Lawyer, he knew very well that God is impartial.  And so, with sound teaching in the Law and knowledge of Jesus’ overflowing grace he knew God had to continue being patient with him because his human nature would still strive to be partial to wrongly justify or condemn those with whom God is perfectly patient. 

It was no longer about his Law or justification, but about Jesus’ fulfilment of the Law through his righteousness and our justification through his sacrificial death on the cross.  And this wasn’t done to Paul’s timeframe but in the fullness of God’s time it was finished by Jesus Christ.   This perfection continues to be finished by the power of the Holy Spirit, who seeks to bring the human spirit to the fullness of Jesus’ perfect patience.

Paul goes out of his way to embellish just who he is to Timothy, so Timothy does not place an expectation on Paul that makes Paul a god in Timothy’s eyes.  And so, Timothy does not make himself an impatient presumptuous super apostle to those to whom God calls him.

Patience goes hand in hand with forgiveness!  So too, impatience and frustration go hand in hand with unforgiveness.  Patience grows out of our judgement!  Judge one way and we forgive, judge the other way we don’t forgive.   However, Jesus’ perfect patience with Paul is an enduring lesson in love.

In his letter to the Romans Paul speaks of Jesus’ all-encompassing love.  But before he does, he speaks about the all-encompassing debased love of each human for themselves.  (Romans 1:21-32)

He says, “For there is no distinction:  for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,  and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.”  (Romans 3:22–24 ESV)

Impatience goes hand in hand with presumption.  Paul knew this too well when he acted with zealous fervour in ignorance under the Law.  He says, “Do you suppose, O man—you who judge those who practice such things and yet do them yourself—that you will escape the judgment of God?  Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?”  (Romans 2:3–4 ESV)

Paul was acutely aware of Jesus’ perfect patience of him in his ministry.  There was no presumption he was any better than those he taught regardless of them being Jew or Greek, young or old, pastor or parishioner.  They all needed Jesus’ perfect patience, as did he!

Jesus’ perfect patience not only manifested itself in love at the cross.  But also, in his sending of the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit is the helper of sinners who trust in Jesus Christ.

The writer of the letter to the Hebrews says, “we desire each one of you to show the same earnestness to have the full assurance of hope until the end,  so that you may not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.” (Hebrews 6:11–12 ESV)

The writer goes on to cite Abraham as one who inherits through patience.  Abraham was patient but the greater weight of patience was from God who not only witnessed Abraham and Sarah’s disastrous affairs with Hagar and Ishmael, but also the nation that grew out of him all the way down to Paul.

Peter says in his second Epistle, “The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.” (2 Peter 3:9 ESV)

Jesus’ perfect patience is also a perfect faithfulness too.  Not only does he send the Holy Spirit to give us faith, but he also remains faithful to us as well.  Rather than expectation, he serves with example and is patient with us.

He gives us the fullness of time as he peels back the layers of our sinfulness while bringing this sinfulness into the light of his revelation and his forgiveness of our sin. 

We’re all on different parts of God’s road to salvation.  Some are more mature in the faith.  Like Saint Paul, we are called to recognise with ever increasing clarity the weakness in which we walk.  But at the same time learn with increasing knowledge the overflowing grace that shows its perfection in Jesus’ patience. 

The fullness of time will come for us all.  Only then will we know who has believed they’re sinners and who trusted Jesus’ perfect patience.  Till then let us, in the complete knowledge and acceptance of our weakness, walk together sharing with each other the perfect patience of Jesus Christ, who walks in our midst as our forgiving Saviour God, and gathers us together in him with the Holy Spirit.

To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honour and glory forever and ever.  Amen.  (1 Timothy 1:17 ESV)

C, Post-Pentecost 13 Proper 18 - Luke 14:25-35 "Counting the Cost"

Jesus had gained a following.  A great crowd of disciples and people were following him.  To where were they following him?  But could they follow him?  Or was he really following them?

The Gospel text before us today has a threefold warning written into it.  Three times Jesus says, “If you do x, y, or z, you cannot be my disciple”.  Let’s examine the X, Y, and Z of why he says one cannot be his disciple.

The first “cannot” word Jesus says, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.” (Luke 14:26 ESV)

Luke records the harshness of Jesus’ words with the call to hate.  How can this be?  Mathew’s Gospel softens this harshness by replacing  whoever “hates” with whoever “loves (x) more than me”.  So, Jesus’ first call to discipleship is not to love one’s family and life more than Jesus. 

It seems Jesus seeks to scatter us from our relationships.  But Jesus walked towards Jerusalem to do something so much greater than this.  He needs to take us from our family heritage, our culture, and our identity.  Then he can awaken us with his life, in the Holy Spirit, in our eternal heritage with the Father, and in our adopted identity through his suffering and death.  After this he gives us back to our families, our nation, and our society as agents of his supreme love.

In our age of individualism and our regression into social tribalism, Jesus is exposing our idols of pride built on one’s identity; be it race, class, family.  Or, even today as some think we have freewill to choose what we identify ourselves as!  Also, Jesus is laying bare, the shame that comes from our fallen identity’s narrowness and individuality.

Earlier in Luke’s Gospel, just after Peter confessed Jesus as the Christ, he also spoke about taking up the cross and following him.  Jesus then says, “For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words, of him will the Son of Man be ashamed when he comes in his glory and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels”.  (Luke 9:26 ESV)

God’s intention for us is that being firstly a member of his heavenly family, like Paul, we confess to the Romans, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.” (Romans 1:16 ESV)

And as Paul says to young Timothy, “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth”.  (2 Timothy 2:15 ESV)

And the writer of Hebrews says of Jesus and us who allow him to make us holy, “For he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one source.  That is why he is not ashamed to call them brothers.” (Hebrews 2:11 ESV)

Peter in his epistle to the persecuted church says, “Yet if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God in that name.” (1 Peter 4:16 ESV)

With the weight of God’s word just heard, are you more ashamed of the gospel or your family?  Is honour before the world more important than honour before God in his church,  including those in this church our shame and pride would naturally exclude.

Like Paul who formerly prided himself, as a Hebrew of Hebrews, a Pharisee of Pharisees blameless under the law, confesses to the Philippians, that hanging onto his former identity is as shameful as keeping and showing your poo[1]. 

Jesus calls you to hate your own life like your manure or that which is cast aside as waste.  And he is not just talking about the things you consider as evil or shameful.  But also, the things in which you seek honour, and deem as good, shaming God to second place.

His call to hate others or love him the most, then flows into his second impediment statement for discipleship, “Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.” (Luke 14: 27 ESV)

Earlier in Luke’s Gospel when Jesus speaks to his disciples about those ashamed of him and his words, the Son of Man will be ashamed on his return.  Just before saying this, he invites them to take up their cross (Luke 9:23).  But here in the second of his “cannot” discipleship statements his call is not just to “take up” one’s cross but “to carry” or “bear it”. 

This is stronger language again.  The disciples knew to carry a cross was the Roman way of making one carry one’s instrument of death to the place of their crucifixion and death.  Jesus makes it clear, if you are going to walk with me, death will occur! 

Hate your family, now make a faithful stand which will lead to death!  What?

It’s here Jesus takes a break before pointing out the third reason why one cannot be his disciple, his learner, or one who truly understands, to do the will of the Father.

Jesus says, “For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it?  Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him,  saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.”  (Luke 14:28–30 ESV)

Counting the cost of loving Jesus more than anyone or anything!  Hating my life so much I would forsake it and follow Jesus to death!  It makes you wonder, “How on earth can I do this?  How can I make this work?”

The picture of building a tower and being humiliated by not being able to finish its city, immediately makes us think of the Tower of Babel.  The spirit of humanity collectively sought to work their way up to God, but God confused their language and dispersed them before they could build themselves up as a collective human god.

As the Babel event rings in our ears, know that just as Jesus says, those who cannot “finish their towers will be humiliated”, they too will be shamed like those of Babel whom God mocks.   After they built their tower “up to heaven”, God still has to “come down” to see what they were doing.  They are humiliated and dispersed!  

Surely before you or I work to love Jesus more than our family, social status, or state, before we seek to die for our sin, we might sit down and count the cost. 

Jesus then paints another picture for us saying, “what king, going out to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and deliberate whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand?  And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace.” (Luke 14:31–32 ESV)

We might regard King David as the greatest king of the Old Testament who battled and overcame hundreds of thousands in battle.  Yet before God he cries out, “Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin!  Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.” (Psalm 51:2, 7 ESV)

Here is God’s chosen King of Israel, trembling and found short before God!  Crying out for peace before God!  No sacrifice could please God, no offering could cleanse, nothing he did could recoup the cost!  And David knew it!

What is the cost of our unfinished work?  Can I pay to have peace within?  How can I have terms of peace without God?

This brings us to Jesus’ last hindrance on being his disciple.  Counting the cost and seeking terms of peace, Jesus says, “therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.”  (Luke 14:33 ESV)

The deeds, intellect, and the life one lives, will only bring shame if we try to use them as a bargaining chip at the table of life and death.

This is well and truly proven by the Israelites, who, on entering the promised land, heard Moses say, “See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil.” (Deuteronomy 30:15 ESV)  But they lost their land of milk and honey, first to the Assyrians and Babylonians, and finally to the Romans. 

God set before them life and death, living a life of good over evil under the Law.  Yet the good they lived was for themselves, and they lost their land, the paradise of God being with them in the temple in Jerusalem and received payment for their sin.  God’s wages for sin, is always death!

Jesus then says, “Salt is good, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored?  It is of no use either for the soil or for the manure pile.  It is thrown away.  He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”  (Luke 14:34–35 ESV)

If Israel’s good was not good enough, and our good, is not good enough either, if our lack of saltiness is too shameful to put on the dung heap, consider the cost, seek terms of true peace!

Those who have ears let them hear!  Taste and see it is the Lord who is good!  No one could follow Jesus to the cross, just as none of us can make salt, salty again if it loses it saltiness.  We lose favour and flavour with God, when we seek the poopy pleasures of good and evil. 

God gives our flavour back, in a cleansing bath in baptism, rejuvenating saltiness, preserved “with and in” his word.  He flavours you once again and delights in you as his own, with the work of the Holy Spirit and our risen ascended Lord Jesus Christ.  Jesus counted the cost and paid the price. He was cast out of the city like poo and nailed to the cross, clean and innocent, in the place of uncleanness and shame.

Now the shame of our sin is not confessing it and repenting.  True discipleship relies on the Holy Spirit to honour God through our confession as sinners being daily forgiven!

As King David said, “Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.  For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long.  I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity; I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to the LORD,’ and you forgave the iniquity of my sin.”  (Psalm 32:1–5 ESV)

In Jesus Christ, the guilt and shame of your sin is taken away.  By allowing the Holy Spirit to bring you daily to Jesus, in confession and repentance, making him your Messiah, is the highest form of worshipping and following God.  Amen.

___________________________________________________________

[1] Philippians 3:8 “rubbish” here in the Greek is vulgar meaning “excrement/filth”. 

C, Post-Pentecost 12 Proper 17 - Psalm 112 "Blessed"

Psalm 112:1–10 (ESV) Praise the LORD!  Blessed is the man who fears the LORD, who greatly delights in his commandments!  His offspring will be mighty in the land; the generation of the upright will be blessed.  Wealth and riches are in his house, and his righteousness endures forever.  Light dawns in the darkness for the upright; he is gracious, merciful, and righteous.  It is well with the man who deals generously and lends; who conducts his affairs with justice.  For the righteous will never be moved; he will be remembered forever.  He is not afraid of bad news; his heart is firm, trusting in the LORD.  His heart is steady; he will not be afraid, until he looks in triumph on his adversaries.  He has distributed freely; he has given to the poor; his righteousness endures forever; his horn is exalted in honour.  The wicked man sees it and is angry; he gnashes his teeth and melts away; the desire of the wicked will perish!

The readings for this Sunday all dwell on the biblical theme of blessedness; that is, to be blessed as a state of being, to be blessed by someone, or to bless.  What does it mean to bless someone, to be blessed by someone, and the state of blessedness?

To be blessed in its simplest form is to be happy or fortunate.  But if a person seeks to bless themselves or deem themselves as blessed, it’s actually one of the quickest ways to become angry with everyone around them as well as themselves.  So, to be blessed and to bless is much more than being happy, being fortunate, being pleased or pleasing someone else.

At the end of the gospel reading today, when dining in the house of a Pharisee ruler, Jesus says, “when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind,  and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. ” (Luke 14:13-14a)

Straight away in this text, we see being blessed when one gives a feast to those who cannot repay, is not about being happy.  One may be happy to do this but more is going on.

The biblical definition of “blessedness” has a much deeper function than just happiness and being fortunate.  In Psalm 112 we hear, “Blessed is the man who fears the LORD, who greatly delights in his commandments!” (Psalm 112:1 ESV)

The person who is blessed here can be happy or pleased.  But the question one must ask, “Is why can they be pleased or happy?” 

The Hebrew word for blessed has at its root the meaning to be straight or level.  When one is on the straight and narrow, they move forward with confidence, with honesty, in the right way, on a level path.  Or, if one is “on the level” they are honest and are being truthful. 

When a person is level or blessed, they are balanced.   A good way of understanding blessed as balanced is like that of a level set of scales.  Neither leaning to the left nor the right, but evenly balanced.

The straightness of being blessed also means, straight up and down too.  That is to be upright.  It is no accident therefore, in Psalm 112 that after it says, “Blessed the man who fears the Lord”, it continues in verse two, “His offspring will be mighty in the land; the generation of the upright will be blessed.  Wealth and riches are in his house, and his righteousness endures forever.  Light dawns in the darkness for the upright; he is gracious, merciful, and righteous.”  (Psalm 112:2–4 ESV)

Twice the Psalmist says “upright” in these verses.  So, one who is blessed, balanced, level or upright, can endure forever in righteousness.  This person can move forward on a level plain in the face of the ups and downs of trials and tribulations.

In these verses it says, “the generation of the upright will be blessed.”  The Hebrew literally says, “the blessed will be blessed”, when it says “the upright will be blessed.”  But these two Hebrew words have different meanings.

Whereas the first “blessed” we’ve looked at, means “upright or balanced”.  Here the second “blessed” means, “to kneel or bend oneself in adoration or to curse”.  This adoration or cursing is what one does in worship when they’re in awe of someone, or if they hate and curse them because they’re believed to be awful. 

Blessing here is about praise and its opposite; what one says about someone else.  So when it says, “The blessed will be blessed” it means, “the upright or the balanced will be bowed down to, praised and spoken well of”!

Notice these two forms of blessedness are pictures of body language.  One is straight up and down, or balanced and level, while the other is bent bowing, honouring, and saying good to others about them.  This is not surprising as the Hebrew language was originally a spoken language of oral tradition, an unwritten picture language, whereas the Greek of the New Testament is an academic written language.

In the New Testament, the most well-known verses on blessings are the Beatitudes where Jesus teaches the crowd and the disciples at the Sermon on the Mount.

The other word for bless in the New Testament is a Greek word familiar to us in English, eulogy, which means to speak good words about someone.

The readings today all deal with the theme of “blessedness”.  If one seeks to be blessed in one’s own sight and takes the seat of honour, the writer of Proverbs tells us, this can lead to being humiliated.

“Do not put yourself forward in the king’s presence or stand in the place of the great,  for it is better to be told, “Come up here,” than to be put lower in the presence of a noble.”   (Proverbs 25:6–7 ESV)

Jesus heals a man at the house of a Pharisee ruler.  His fellow diners could not answer Jesus’ logic for healing this fellow on the Sabbath.  Jesus then tells a parable about those who took the honoured positions at a wedding feast. 

Put yourselves in the place of the guest?  What happens when you take the positions of honour?  Will you bless the host, or expect to be blessed?  How level-headed or balanced are you if you take the honoured position, especially when someone of greater honour arrives?  Not only is blessedness about body language.   It’s also about one’s prominence, status, or social standing in society. 

Blessedness not only deals with body language but also reputation.  What is your reputation like with God?  Are you blessed by God?  What does that actually mean?  It means, when Jesus returns in his glory to separate the sheep from the goats, will you be one of the goats who have blessed oneself or one of the sheep blessed by God?  What type of reputation do you have with God?

Jesus says, “everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”  (Luke 14:11 ESV)

I cannot imagine a worse thought than the humiliation of being labelled by God “a goat” or a person of ill-repute on judgement day.   Do you want to be treated by the Eternal Host of heaven the same way you have hosted those God puts before you here on earth? 

What makes us good blokes, good sheilas, good people in God’s eyes?

Let Psalm 112 be the text that judges you.  It starts out with the command to “Praise the Lord!”  Do you praise God as Lord all the time or do you Lord it over others, or do you busy yourself, so others praise you?

Do you fear the Lord, do you delight in his commandments.  What makes your offspring mighty?  When others bless you does it turn people to God or away from God?  Does your wealth and riches fuel righteousness that endures… forever!  Are you gracious, merciful, and righteous?  By whose justice do you conduct your affairs?  Will you be remembered forever?  Is your heart firm in the face of death, or even as you hear these questions?  Are you considering the poor when you leave here today?  Or perhaps, this line of questioning irks you and makes you get angry?

We realise very quickly that our blessedness, when built on ourselves, makes us no better than a ruling Pharisee or his guests, angry because we’re not getting the honour, we believe we deserve.

Yet we praise the Lord!  How can that be, since God clearly shows us through Jesus’ parable, we present ourselves as honoured guests but are quickly humiliated by the Word of God? 

It’s here we’re called to see that God is the one who is inviting us to his banquet.   He invites us, his church, as the bride of the Bridegroom.  You and I are the poor, crippled, the lame, and the blind.  Now married to Jesus Christ the Head of the heavenly house, we can be compassionate to those who like us are poor, crippled, lame, and blind.  Like us who have been made friends in the wedding feast of the Lamb, we can befriend our enemies, just as Jesus has done with us.

So, praise the LORD, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Why? 

Because Jesus is the man who fears the LORD, and delights in his commandments.  We are his offspring, mighty in the land, we are the generation of the balanced, blessedly helpless forgiven sinners to whom God bows and blesses, because we confess our sin and forgive those who sin against us!  The light of God has dawned in the darkness of our hearts, showing us sin to confess. 

Why do we do this?  Because God deals generously with you.  He lends you his Son and the Holy Spirit.  He is justifying you with the justice of Jesus’ death and resurrection.  You won’t be moved while you allow the Holy Spirit to remain.  You are not afraid of bad news; you are firm, trusting in the Good News.  God has won the victory over your sinful self!  You can now distribute freely; Christ has exalted you and in him your righteousness endures forever.

Your old Adam will be angry!  But that is a good sign of your salvation too.  He is angry because he is dying, he might gnash his teeth, but he is melting away, he and all his desires are dying, leaving Jesus the Bridegroom of heaven to take you as his bride, the church.  He forgives and feeds you and me, in his eternal wedding feast! 

Praise the LORD!  Jesus has balanced your scales!  God blesses you; you are blessed!  Amen.

C, Post-Pentecost 11 Proper 16 - Isaiah 58:9b,13–14 Hebrews 12:22-25 "Pleasure"

Isaiah 58:9b,13–14 (ESV) If you take away the yoke from your midst, the pointing of the finger, and speaking wickedness.  If you turn back your foot from the Sabbath, from doing your pleasure on my holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight and the holy day of the LORD honourable; if you honour it, not going your own ways, or seeking your own pleasure, or talking idly;  then you shall take delight in the LORD, and I will make you ride on the heights of the earth; I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father, for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.”

Tina Arena wrote and released a song called, It’s time to go to church, on  April 30, 2021[1].  In it she sings, “I forgive you for everything.  For all the nights I couldn't sleep.  I forgive you for surfacing.  When I was looking for what I need.  Now I tell you everything.  Now I know my worth.  It's time to go to church.  It's time to go to church.”

Being a listener of her music, I must say I was surprised by her song when it came out.  After all, she sings, it’s time to go to church.  And being a pastor in a church, thought, “Okay!  That’s a pretty good thing to sing!”  I was tempted to justify it as a wholesome song.  But the lyrics are vague and unclear.  Who is she addressing in the lines of the song, and what is the church to which she believes it’s time to go?

Don’t get me wrong, I like the song very much.  But because I do, there’s a strong desire within me seeking to justify the ambiguity, as I like both the song and the artist.

She sings on, “Love forgive me for not listening.  To myself and to my truth.  I forgive you for questioning.  I'm still breathing, that's my proof.  Now I tell you everything.  Now I know my worth.  It's time to go to church.  It's time to go to church.”

The “you” she addresses in this verse reveals itself as “love”.  She asks love to forgives her for everything.  Tina forgives love for the nights she couldn’t sleep, for surfacing, for questioning, and now tells love everything.  Because of love she now sings, “I know my worth.  It’s time to go to church.”

What is one’s church?  If you are thinking of a building or a denomination, yes, these are what you could consider as a church!  However, I invite you to think broader of what church can be in one’s experience as well as what kind of church God is seeking to bring you into.

In Tina Arena’s song, she addresses love.  Love here is still ambiguous, and I believe it is most likely unclear for a deliberate reason.  To make it pleasing to the ear, love is vague so the listener can make love anything they want.  Love could be a person, an object, an animal, or even the self.

Love in our age is left unclear so we can love whatever or wherever we find pleasure.  One can go to a church, a creation within, for worship of what one loves.  Or, what pleases the person.

On any given Sunday one can drive around and see people attending to activities of pleasure.  These activities of love don’t just happen on a Sunday, but over the years have invaded our lives.  Sundays have become increasingly busy, diverting people from coming to rest in God’s presence, in his church.

All people find time to go to church!  However, the church most seek, and most attend is the place of their pleasures.  This actively involves turning one’s back on God because it requires one’s pleasure to be above God.

One could say they, “find church in themselves”.  They stimulate their feelings of pleasure by gathering around themselves things that give them pleasure.  

The problem is these things kill.  Whereas, trusting God, letting him serve you and bind himself to you, gives life.  All other pleasures in which we put our trust become yokes, burdening, and binding us to unhappiness and uncertainty.  They make us anxious and eventually they lead to death.  

Look what happens in humanity’s first worship event without God, when they seek not to rest with him, in his pleasure. 

“…when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.  Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked.  And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.”  (Genesis 3:6–7 ESV)

In these two verses from Genesis three, we see the extremes of desire and shame.  Knowledge of good and evil in the one event!  What appeared to be good was also evil!

Eve sees the fruit is good, it delights her, and the promise of wisdom also stimulates desire.  Did it taste good?  We’re not told!  However, immediately there is knowledge, and a wisdom that leads to shame of their nakedness. 

Over the years humans have continued to worship without God.  In these times our worship of the self, plays out in the same theatre of good and evil.  This is not without effect on our conscience as conscience literally means, “with knowledge” or “knowing within”.

Like Eve, we look and delight in what we see.  A feel-good chemical is released, and we want more.  Ironically one of the devices used to get the feel-good release is called an apple device.  But it’s not smart phones that are the issue.  No, it’s the yoked and bound individual who can’t let go of the electronic apple.  Why?  Because it gives the feel-good hormone, leading one on the path of least resistance to pleasure.

It’s not just the phone that yokes us in addiction to pleasure.  We get something new – we get the feel-good kick.  We eat chocolate or something else we like – we get the feel-good kick.  Receive a phone or snap chat notification – there’s the feel-good kick.  Coveting in the catalogue – O, it feels so good.  Look at porn or lust after someone you’ve seen in the street – and there’s an injection of feel-good hormone that gives pleasure.

Tina Arena sings, “Something within places I've been.  Blood running thin, I'm sorry.  Somewhere between Heaven and sin.”

So, the chocolate becomes guilty weight.  The pleasure of porn turns to shame and hatred of self.  The joy of the app, computer game success, the social media message, a Facebook like, or a product purchase; they don’t last, they don’t give the pleasure we sort from them.  To get that feel-good buzz.  You want more, more, more! 

These things all act like drugs because they produce a natural drug within you, called the dopamine hormone.   Eventually you’re yoked and addicted to the feeling this pleasure hormone gives, becoming no longer an isolated want, but a need you can’t do without.  Your worth is now reliant on the thing you love, and one must worship what they love, even when one hates it and dislikes what it’s doing.

The Israelites were God’s chosen people and yet they, like Adam and Eve, and us, were always being drawn away from God to other pleasures, and Isaiah was sent to proclaim God’s word to them.

He says, “If you take away the yoke from your midst, the pointing of the finger, and speaking wickedness.  If you turn back your foot from the Sabbath, from doing your pleasure on my holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight and the holy day of the LORD honourable; if you honour it, not going your own ways, or seeking your own pleasure, or talking idly;  then you shall take delight in the LORD, and I will make you ride on the heights of the earth; I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father, for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.” ( Isaiah 58:9b,13–14 ESV)

We live in a time when the pleasures of this age have drawn our children away from God’s church.  Also, many who are brought into God’s church, resist, because they’re under the bondage of the pleasures to which they are yoked for the other six days and eleven hours of the week. 

How am I to break freed from this bondage?  How can my children be freed too?  How can we look on God once again as the one and only true God?

We need to let our brains and our bodies rest with God from busying ourselves from the pleasures we’ve become addicted to.  We need put aside our pride and no longer be the rulers of our synagogues of sin, the creators of our own churches, and let the Holy Spirit and Jesus Christ deliver us into the holiness of God’s Church.  This only happens when the Holy Spirit can lead you to the stillness of Jesus on the cross.

There is hope only in your Lord Jesus Christ.  It was his pleasure to endure the cross for your victory.  There too is forgiveness, when you have perverted God’s church into a church of selfish pleasure as did the ruler of the synagogue. 

If Jesus can heal a woman bound by Satan for eighteen years, Jesus can make you straight by the power of the Holy Spirit and through the support of others whom he is healing too.

Are you coming to church but not allowing the church of God to come to you.  Are the things you worship so powerful they are rewiring your brain, away from resting in God, being busied pursuing pleasure and its deadly trap?

You have a pastor that struggles to rest in God too.  He along with all of us are products of the fallen world in which we live.  He will not condemn you in your struggle or confession.  But, in love for the Lord and you, he will name God’s forgiveness in your confession and assist you to keep your eyes on Jesus and what the Holy Spirit brings you into when you come to God’s church.

“…you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering,  and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect,  and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.  See that you do not refuse him who is speaking.  For if they did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, much less will we escape if we reject him who warns from heaven.  (Hebrews 12:22–25 ESV)

Amen.

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[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJ9Y7jif1C8