Worship in Spirit

I want you to think of one of your favorite places. Go there in your mind’s eye. It could be a vacation spot. It could be a place you go camping. It could be your hometown. What about the place makes it special for you? Now, think about one of your least favorite places. Why is this place so unattractive to you?

Believe it or not your favorite and least favorite places have at least one thing in common – they have the power of place. They elicit feelings and emotions from you. For example, I sat in the car of a world-class roller-coaster the other day. This coaster speeds you up to 120mph in four seconds and then goes straight up in the air. As I waited for the ride to start, my feelings of anticipation and nervousness rose. The boy sitting next to me asked me if I was scared. Places bring out different feelings in us. The controversy over the proposed mosque at the site of the World Trade Center memorial comes to mind. The place is stirring strong emotion and heated debate. There is power in “place.”

We come upon this idea as we listen to the conversation between Jesus and the Samaritan woman who is drawing water at her village’s well. The woman broaches the subject of where is the best place to worship God.

“Sir, I see that you are prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.” John 4.19-20

When the woman says “this mountain” she means Mount Gerizim. Gerizim was a place where Abraham and Jacob had made altars. In Deuteronomy it says that Gerizim is the place where the people are to go to be blessed. So for the Samaritans, who lacked most of the Old Testament outside of the first five books, anytime scripture referred to “the good mountain” they took it to mean Mount Gerizim. They had strong feelings about it. The Jews had equal or greater feelings about Jerusalem. The woman points out to Jesus, “ you (as a Jew) say Jerusalem is the right place to worship God.” It’s an interesting side note to mention that the Jews didn’t always believe this. Well, at least not all of them. There was controversy during the time of the Judges, during David’s day and the building of the Temple under his son Solomon. Some other sites, “high places”, were touted by some as the right place to worship God. But eventually the Temple in Jerusalem won out. If you were a true worshiper, at least once, you made the trek to Jerusalem to worship at the Temple.

Jesus response to the woman’s question is pretty revealing. First, he tells the woman that times are changing.

“The hour is coming when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for such the Father seeks to worship him.” John 4.23

The woman is interested in the place to worship and Jesus turns the conversation to the better way to approach God. Earlier in this Gospel John describes the scene of Jesus angrily clearing out the money changers from the Temple. The zeal of the Lord was upon Jesus as he made the point of saying you’ve made this place a flea market instead of a house of prayer. So certainly, the Temple in Jerusalem was not unimportant to Jesus. But then he refers to a new temple, the temple of himself.

“Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.” John 2.19

Not only did Jesus fulfill this promise, but the fact is his death and resurrection meant the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem as a viable religious system. “After Jesus offered the sacrifice that would put away the sins of the world, what place would there be for a temple in which the central act was the offering of the bodies of animals on the altar? When Jesus died, the temple died as the center of a religious system.” (Leon Morris) This was true not just for Jewish Christians but relatively soon for all Jews, where the sacred place of worship moved from Temple to local synagogue, each viable community having its own sacred space.

So the answer to the question of where is the right place to worship God did indeed change. It went from high places, Mount Gerizim and Jerusalem, to synagogue and, in the case of the early Christian Way, the house church. But Jesus introduces a new idea – the way you worship is more important than where you worship. The right way to worship is “in spirit and truth.”

What does this mean? It means we worship the Jesus way. Jesus is the way to the Father. So in our spirits we approach the Father not “by buildings made with human hands” but by a spirit right before God.

Psalm 24 speaks of this reality – “Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord? Who shall stand in his holy place? Those who have clean hands and pure hearts, who do not lift up their souls to what is false, and do not swear deceitfully. . .such is the company of those who seek him.” 24.3-6

Likewise in the New Testament , the one who worships the Lord is the one who presents themselves utterly and honestly before God.

“I urge you brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.” Romans 12.1

To worship in spirit is to be completely present before God. We present ourselves – this is “spiritual worship.” St. Paul continues on this theme in the first letter to the Corinthians:

“Don’t you know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.” 1 Corinthians 3.16-17

You are the temple of God. Not some high places. Not some holy mountain. Not even Jerusalem. You are the place where God’s Spirit lives. You are that temple. All this has been made possible by “the mercies of God” revealed in the person and work of Jesus Christ.


The old hymn, Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing, speaks of the experience of the believer who calls upon the presence of God in worship. It speaks of “raising an Ebenezer” which is a makeshift stone or wood altar. Where do I raise this altar? Here. Wherever I am, (I don’t even have to have stone or wood), I raise my heart as the altar of worship to a holy God. Take my heart, Lord and seal it. The believer can call upon God anywhere, anytime.
We are living temples. We are literally the moving church. It’s not that places and spaces aren’t important. It’s just that they are not as important as the way we worship God. How do we worship God rightly? How do we “ascend the hill of the Lord with clean hands and a pure heart?”

We honor God with our best in worship. So our best might start with how we get ready physically, emotionally, intellectually. Are you showing up for worship rested and ready or are you drained and dead? Some people get ready by putting on their best clothing. Some people don’t feel ready to worship unless they have a suit and tie on or their best dress. For others, being ready is being comfortable, and discomfort would stand in the way of being real before God. I say, dress the way that best readies you for worship.

Are you showing up for worship with an openness to God’s Spirit and God’s Word? Are you teachable? Is your mind quick to engage and ask questions? Do you present yourself humbly and willingly before God? Do you sing with passion even if you can’t sing? You do pray with intensity even if you don’t know how to pray?

When I asked you to imagine your favorite places, did any of you keep your eyes open because right here is one of those places? If not, I wonder, is it because of the place or is it because of us?


Let me take you back to one of my favorite places – to that rollercoaster seat. Imagine the anticipation and excitement you feel. You are nervous. You are even a little bit scared for your life. You know you are not in control. But it starts, maybe slowly for you at first. You ascend, clink, clink, clink. . .and before you know it you are up higher. You see things you didn’t see before. You are awed and amazed. And still you anticipate what comes next. Because now the ride really begins and it’s humbling and thrilling at the same time. And you feel alive. You laugh and scream and you raise your hands. Nobody tells you to do these things. They just happen naturally, from your spirit, if you will. And every twist and turn, up and down, you are fully engaged, gripping and holding on for your life. The ride comes to an end and it seems so short you are disappointed. But you are pleased and grateful and you turn to the person next you and smile and say wasn’t that amazing! Maybe you even get right back in line to do it again.

This is how worship should be. This is what it means to worship “in spirit.” For worship is a giving of yourself completely. It is putting yourself in the hands of the living God, which is always a dangerous thing to do, but also a very thrilling thing to do. When we worship in spirit, without a doubt we know that we have been in the presence of God. We leave changed by the experience. We leave awed and grateful. We leave wanting more. What would our church and community look like if we came ready to worship every week? What would we look like?

The Gift


Have you ever been given a gift you didn’t want? It’s happened to me. I’m sure it’s happened to you. What do you do with it? You can’t throw it away. Do you wait an appropriate amount of time and then regift it to someone else? My sister once received what she described as an ugly dinner plate. She had a yard sale and put the plate out for sale, cheap. And guess what happened? The friend who gave her the plate showed up at the yard sale. My sister was mortified, especially when the woman asked how much is that adorable dinner plate? My sister said, “For ten cents, it’s yours.”

Not receiving a gift with graciousness can be very offensive to the giver. In the movies you have those scenes where the intrepid traveler is in a foreign land among aboriginal peoples and the traveler is offered a banquet of roasted insects and worm sushi. He doesn’t want to eat it but knows it would be deeply offensive to the natives of he doesn’t. When you were a kid and Aunt Edna made her awful tuna noodle casserole, you didn’t want to eat but you knew you had to. All eyes were on you. What’s more, you had to say thank you Aunt Edna and sound like you meant it.

We all know about bad gifts. But is there ever a time in our lives when someone wants to give us a good gift and we refuse simply because we do not understand the value of it?

There was a man named Nicodemus, a Pharisee, a ruler, and a teacher of Israel. He was by these standards, the standards of his day and culture, simply one of the best people around. We have every reason to believe that he was a good, honest, and wise man. He certainly was respected by his community. Nicodemus comes to Jesus seeking some understanding. He begins the conversation with:

“Rabbi, we know you are teacher sent by God; no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.” John 3.2

Nicodemus was saying, look, anyone in their right mind can see that there is something special about you, that God is with you. Nicodemus is showing that he is a seeker. He wants to understand.

Jesus is good at knowing what people need and getting to the heart of the matter. He says,

“Very truly I tell you no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.”
John 3.3

Another good way to translate that last part is, “unless he is born from above.” John often uses words with multiple meanings is this is one of those times. Let’s look at “born again” first. Because this is what Nicodemus picks up on. He questions Jesus, what, I must climb back into my mother’s belly? Nicodemus is being facetious. He is learned man and teacher well acquainted to truth expressed in metaphor. But that doesn’t mean he understands what Jesus is saying to him.

“Very truly I tell you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter the kingdom of God. What is born of flesh is flesh and what is born of Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I told you you must be born again.” John 3.5-7

The language of water and flesh and even Spirit have something to do with the forgiveness of the one who believes. If we believe in Christ we will be forgiven. But Jesus is saying much more than this. This language he uses is the language of origin. If you put earth and water and an acorn together you get an oak tree. If you put human flesh together you get a human. But, what if you want the human to be more than flesh that will by its nature, like the sturdy oak, eventually die? You must birth it with something that is spiritual, eternal. It must be birthed from above.

Jesus didn’t come to start a religion in which decent people could strive to be better, or even, that bad people might become good. Jesus came so that dead people could become alive again. Jesus came so that we can have New Life!

In the movie Forrest Gump there is that scene where Forrest and Lieutenant Dan are in a bar near Times Square on New Year’s Eve. And they’re in this bar with a couple girls who are, shall we say, of low repute. But they are there watching the ball drop on television and the one girl dreamily stares at the tv and says, “Don’t you just love New Year’s. It’s a chance to start over. Everyone gets to start over.”

But the problem with that is, yes, the year might be new, but I’m still the same person starting the new year. Nothing about the calendar turning can change me. I need some outside help. Some spiritual help. Some help from above.

What if there was someone willing to give us this gift of a new start and a new life? Wouldn’t we want that? Wouldn’t that be worth unwrapping?

“From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him in this way no longer. So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! 2 Corinthians 5.16-17

This is the reality of what it means to believe and trust in God through Jesus Christ. God does something in us when we believe. The word believe is found 98 times in this Gospel, in part, to emphasize that the believing and trusting is our part, but the saving is God’s part. There is no amount of human effort that can earn or attain salvation and new life. This is God’s doing. And John has a word to describe this great thing:

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.” John 3.16
This is perhaps the best known verse in the whole Bible. Don’t let over-familiarity allow you to miss it. Did you catch it? God so loved the world that he gave. He gave the world a gift. And when He gave he didn’t hold anything back. It was the very best gift he had to give. He gave his Son.

I know many of you pray for and honor our service men and women who are serving around the world, particularly those who are in combat. With sorrow we look at names and faces in the paper and on the news of those who have fallen in the line of duty. In their deep grief, the families of those soldiers must wonder if they have given a gift that has gone unappreciated by many in this country and around the world.

The story is told of a man who during the difficult days of World War I took his boy for a walk. The small boy noticed that there were stars in the windows of some of the houses they passed.

“Dad, why are there stars in some of the windows.” His father replied that is comes from this terrible war we are in. The stars show that these people have given a son.”

The boy went on silently for awhile. Then he looked up and there was the evening star, shining brightly in the sky. The boy said, “Dad, God must have given a Son, too.”

God gave a gift. Could it be a gift that some have not receive because they don’t know what it cost and how good it is?

Can you see why Jesus was so forceful – Ýou must be born again.

This is it. This is the opportunity, Jesus is telling us. There is no one other way. Money can’t help. Power can’t help. Self-improvement won’t get it. You must receive the gift. Believe and receive. If you are in your forties or older, would you consider that you can have a new life and become the person you were meant to be? If you are young, would you consider you are meant for God’s life and that to wait any longer is to just cheat yourself out of the best gift you could ever receive? What would our church look like if we all received the gift God is offering? And what would happen in our community if we all began to live in God’s life and power today?

God gave us the great gift of new life. Who wouldn’t want that?

Beginnings

“First this, God. . .” That’s how Peterson’s The Message states the beginning of the Bible.


First, God. That’s the premise. “He is before all things and in him all things hold together,” is how Colossians puts it (1.17)

Hebrews chapter 11, that great statement on faith says:

“By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was made from things are not visible.” Hebrews 11.3


We are going to be studying the Gospel of John for the next month. John’s Gospel begins with an intentional echoing of Genesis 1:

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
John 1.1

This is a difficult statement to understand because it comes from a way of thinking that we are not used to. It comes from the ancient Greeks and a word for “word” called logos. Logos had a couple of meanings or emphases. Logos was the spoken word, the word going out from someone or written to communicate. No problem there – we get that. But there was another sense in which the Greeks understood logos – the word that was not spoken or written or uttered in any way. And yet it was there.

“It was the word that remained in the mind.”

It was something like our reason, signifying that which is rational and intelligent. You could almost say, the word that was present, or a presence. This presence is in all things and behind all things. The soul of the universe. Just as the Spirit of God was a brooding presence over the dark waters at the beginning was Creation, so the Word is present in all things, unspoken, except by the nature of things.

Norman Maclean, in his beautiful book, A River Runs Through It, touches on the mysterious relationship between the creation and words and the Word.

Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of those rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters.


That is from the soul of an artist. From the mind of science we find this expression of Logos in DNA and the sheer amount of information that sustains the natural world, the human body being a prime example. There seems to be unspoken, unseen words behind all that is visible in the world. What I am trying to say is that there seems to be a plan. Just like you don’t build a house without a plan, so there seemed to be a plan when this world came into being.

Not long ago I heard a junior high age girl remark, “That’s so random!” I like the expression. Kids use it. “That’s so random” means it’s unexpected. It’s odd. But in a good way. Different is good. Random is good. Like a house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, levels and angles that stretch the normal rules of design. It seems almost random. But it’s not. In fact, there is more design and plan involved.

When random comes along in our lives, it’s mostly good because there was an order to begin with. If everything was random then we would have serious problems.

My sister Kristin and her eleven year old daughter took a trip to China this summer with a group from their church. They went there to do mission work among the poor. When she got back I phoned her and asked how the trip went. She said it was good and how her daughter didn’t want to leave when the two weeks were up. But the one real disconcerting thing was when they arrived there and met their host, they expected to be given an itinerary of how they would be spending their time and what work they would be doing. What they got instead was their host smiling and saying, “So, what do you want to do?”

My sister thought, we traveled thousands of miles to get here and when we do, there is no plan? That was frustrating to her. Things were too unstructured, too random. I just read in Newsweek that it costs like $286,000 to raise a child to adulthood. I’m not daunted by that figure. But the money is only the half of it. How do you bring a baby into the world and see them grow safely and successfully into what they are supposed to be? What’s the plan for that? It can’t be accidental. It can’t be random. If everything were random there would be no story, no music, no building, no growing, no beauty, no truth. We would be lost. Because total randomness is Chaos. That’s what Genesis chapter one says the universe was like when God started to create.

“The Word was with God. And the Word was God.” John 1.1

The unspoken Word started to speak and there was light and order and definition. Waters were separated from land, sky from earth, light from dark. And God said this is good. This is very good.

Now the Jews had a different understanding of “the Word, than the Greeks. They identified Word with “Wisdom.” The Word was the Wisdom of God and wisdom is talked about in the scriptures like a person. Proverbs 8 is an example:

“The Lord possessed me at the beginning of his work, before his deeds of old; I was appointed from eternity, from the beginning, before the world began. . .Before the hills, I was given birth, before he made the earth or its fields or any of the dust of the world. I was there when he set the heavens in place. . .I was the craftsman at his side. I was filled with delight day after day, rejoicing always in his presence, rejoicing in his whole world and delighting in mankind.” Proverbs 8.22-31


What’s God trying to tell us. There is a plan. Not just for the Universe but specifically for you and me and us. God’s not just telling us – He is fairly shouting it at us. In fact, in Proverbs Wisdom personified “Shouts out in the streets to get people’s attention.”

We are the Lord’s special delight. We are the apple of His eye. Move over sun, moon, stars, hills and rivers – God has even better plans for us.

“I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your good and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.” Jeremiah 29.11


There a lot of people out there living lives of quiet desperation, thinking that everything is random. Thinking there is no plan. If you are in that place in your life right now the Lord wants you know that there are good things coming. There is a future. There is hope. This is God’s Word to you:

“He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. . .But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.”
John 1.10-13


If we believe we receive adoption as God’s own children. If we believe we receive power. The same Word that hung the stars and caused the rivers to flow comes to us and changes us. That’s the beginning of eternity for us, when we believe. Or, first, God.

My Father’s Business

Do you have your shoes on? I assume you do. But this question is one that gets asked a lot at my house. Before we go anywhere, we want to know if the boys are ready to go. Being boys, they don’t have to worry about having their car keys, or wallets, or driver licenses, or purses or favorite Barbie dolls – all that we ask is that you have your shoes on when we are ready to walk out the door!

There is a similar instruction in the Gospel: Gird your loins.

We don’t often say that one around our house (although this too, along with the shoes, is probably needed). But it has the same intent as the command to get your shoes on. In fact, the force of the command is stronger.

“Gird your loins and have your lamps lit.” Luke 12.35

The command to gird the loins refers to the clothing a servant might wear in those times. “The long flowing robes of the east were a hindrance to work; and when a man prepared to work he gathered up his robes under his belt to leave himself free for activity.”
(Barclay)

In other words, “Be dressed for action,” as NRSV translates it. Don’t be in your pajamas lounging around. Don’t be in impractical clothing. Be dressed in work clothes ready to work.

Why? Because the Kingdom of God is here.

“It is the Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” Luke 12.32

And what is the Kingdom? It is wherever and whomever God rules. To be ready for the kingdom is to have the knowledge and understanding as well as the experience that God is in control. So example, as Jesus teaches in the preceding passage, you don’t have to worry about your clothes and your food – our heavenly Father knows that we need these things. God is in control and he’ll take care of it. But let’s be clear – this is a not teaching to use as excuse for laziness or passivity. The citizen of the kingdom has the understanding that we don’t have to worry over these things and the acquisition of clothing and wealth is not our highest priority.

John Wesley used to teach the Methodists to earn all they can, save all they can, and give all they can. He instructed them to do this so that their lives could have maximum impact on the world around them. They could feed themselves by their hard work, and by their diligent saving they could give all they can to those in need around them.

In his book, Financial Peace, Dave Ramsey merely restates Wesley for today –
Avoid the worship of stuff, Plant Seeds by giving money away, Live substantially below your income, Sacrifice now so you can have peace later.

If you trust God and do it God’s with our finances, for example, then the child of the kingdom can freely “Sell their possessions, give to those in need and make their treasure (what they would die for) something much more valuable than money and possessions.

“For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Verse 34

“Blessed are those servants whom the master finds alert when he comes.” Verse 37

The servant cares about what the master cares about. The servant is ready. He is dressed for action. He is doing the master’s will whether the master seems close or far away.

And do hear the note of urgency? We’ve got to work while there is time to work! We are burning daylight. “It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there.” Church, we have to the good steady work of understanding and experiencing the Kingdom. But we most of all have to do the urgent work of proclaiming and demonstrating the Kingdom to an unsaved world.

This past Monday morning a few of us came to the church to do Kingdom work and discovered a dead boy right here outside our building. He took his own life because he didn’t see anything good about his life. He was hopeless. He was in a dark pit and couldn’t see anyway out. He listened to the lies.

One of your church youth remarked that it was particularly sad that this boy died within feet of a place of hope.

I have before used the phrase “people are dying without the saving grace of the kingdom.” Lord, please, no more reminders like this one. As we gathered Thursday in the parking lot, I told the group of about sixty teenagers and young adults that no one is to blame for Adam’s death. But church I’m going to say to you this morning that we are responsible. We are in some sense responsible for our community and these generations and a young man who lived across the street from our building and took his life in our parking lot. How are we responsible you may ask?

We are responsible to care and to do everything we can to bless our community with God’s love so something like this doesn’t happen again. We have to work hard to bless people near and far. As we heard last week from Matt Keiser, missionary in La Ceiba., Honduras, people are living in garbage dumps and thinking that’s what life is. We have work to do. We have to show that for the lie that it is.

As Jesus said, “I must be about my Father’s business.” Luke 2.49

Jesus is urgent about the work the Father gave him to do. Why isn’t the church of Jesus urgent about the work?
Finally, we must be ready because the part of the Kingdom that hasn’t come yet, the Judgment, is one day coming, and that very soon.

Bob Dylan has a song called “Are You Ready.” Here are a few of the lyrics:

Are you ready to meet Jesus ?
Are you where you ought to be ?
Will He know you when He sees you
Or will He say, "Depart from Me" ?


Am I ready to lay down my life for the brethren
And to take up my cross ?
Have I surrendered to the will of God
Or am I still acting like the boss ?

Am I ready, hope I'm ready.

When the destruction cometh swiftly
And there's no time to say a fare-thee-well
Have you decided whether you want to be
In heaven or in hell ?

Are you ready, are you ready ?

Have you got some unfinished business ?
Is there something holding you back ?
Are you thinking for yourself
Or are you following the pack ?

Are you ready, hope you're ready
Are you ready ?

Are you ready for the judgement ?
Are you ready for that terrible swift sword ?
Are you ready for Armageddon ?
Are you ready for the day of the Lord ?



I’m convinced that when we live in the Kingdom and seek to work diligently and urgently, God will give us opportunities to proclaim and show good news. God will give us opportunities to have tremendous impact for the Kingdom in our world – if we are ready.

So gird your loins. Get your shoes on. Dress for action. Be about our Father’s business.

Who Will Stand in the Breach?

We are going to go Old Testament today. The Old Testament, or Hebrew Scriptures, is a complex story of God’s activity chiefly through his uniquely chosen people, Israel. A short part of this history describes Israel as a glorious nation under the rule of the beloved David and his wise and wealthy son, Solomon. That’s only a small part of the history. By far a greater chunk of the history sees Israel as a small potatoes nation being tossed around by the ruling powers surrounding them – Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, and Persia all take their turns at subduing or outright conquering of Israel.

At one point the king of Assyria has overrun much of Israel and all that remains unconquered is Jerusalem, the holy city of David. But just as the Assyrian army is poised to invade lower Judah and Jerusalem, it is hit by a plague of rats and some unknown disease that severely cripples its army and forces them to call off the siege of Jerusalem. Not coincidentally, the chief prophet of Israel at that time, Isaiah, had predicted it and proclaimed that Jerusalem would never be taken by a foreign power. Most Jews believed this – they had seen it powerfully demonstrated before their city walls. Somehow the greatest army in the world at that time had to turn around and go home without a battle being fought!

Everyone in Israel believed that Jerusalem would never be conquered. The great prophet Isaiah said so. Isaiah was right about many things, but he was wrong about that. Roughly a hundred years later the Babylonian armies of Nebuchadnezzar were outside those same walls of Jerusalem, but this time no plague came to rescue Israel. The only plague they saw was the plague of Babylonian soldiers busting through and over their city walls. The walls were breached. Jerusalem fell.

What this event did to the faith and psyche of the Jewish people cannot be overstated. But what I want to focus on is what happened to them physically. Their cities were destroyed, their economy ruined, and their leading citizens were killed or deported. And that’s what became of God’s people for the next fifty years to a hundred years; until a man appears on the scene who will lead the rebuilding of the Temple and city of Jerusalem and the restoration of a nation of Israel. His name was Nehemiah. He was a Jew in exile in the royal court of the king of Persia, the country that had conquered Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylon. Nehemiah heard of how poor and destitute was the homeland of the Jews. He heard that work on the rebuilding of the city walls and temple had begun, but twelve years later it had not progressed beyond the foundations and, in fact, had stopped altogether. The people were too poor and harassed to do the work.

So Nehemiah got permission and financial backing from the king of Persia to go back to Jerusalem and take up the work. He also stopped in Babylon and gathered a small number of Jews who would return with him to their homeland. When he got there what he saw was discouraging. There was really no city there. Jerusalem was virtually uninhabitable. The Jews who had remained behind after the fall of the city were scattered mostly in the countryside and were fearful of other peoples on their borders.

The first thing Nehemiah had to do was to give the community physical security.

“So we rebuilt the wall, and all the wall was joined together to half its height; for the people had a mind to work.” Nehemiah 4.6


It took well over a hundred years to happen, but Jerusalem’s walls that were breached by foreign armies were finally being rebuilt again.


Sometimes we overlook this very fundamental truth that sometimes people can’t be moved to great spiritual faith, wisdom, and work if they don’t know where they are going to sleep at night, if it will be safe to sleep there, and what if anything they will have to eat when they wake in the morning. We the Church have to admit that sometimes we are preoccupied with what is going on inside the shelter of our buildings while outside the storm rages and the people scatter.

The other weekend I attended the annual conference of our United Methodist Church in Williamsport that was previously mentioned. It was near lunchtime and I had arranged to meet for lunch that day with a small group of pastors that I regularly meet with. I walked outside the Community Arts Center, crossed the street and waited outside the Bullfrog Brewery and watched for my friends to emerge as well. As I sat there reminiscing about those streets where I grew up (my junior prom was held at the Genetti Hotel just down on the corner) I saw a young man walking briskly up the sidewalk in my direction. He was talking loudly on his cell phone and I noticed an expression of anguish on his face. I can’t repeat exactly what he said but his end of the conversation was laced with expletives and he said, “I feel like taking a gun and shooting everyone I work with.”

I heard this and saw his face and I knew that he meant it. And then he said why he felt that way. “I just got (bleeping) fired!”

I would like to say that I followed him and talked him down from his anger and hysteria and counseled him to believe that God was in control. But I didn’t do that. I said a prayer for him that God would help him in his anguish. And I noticed a security guard who had been standing across the street and must have heard what I heard, follow the young man as well. Maybe that was part of the answer to my prayer.

Friends, as the church was meeting inside the Community Arts Center, the world was going on outside the way it often does – people are losing jobs, and fighting with their families, and feeling harassed and helpless. Obviously, I’m not saying the church shouldn’t meet. I am saying that what’s going on in the world is motivation and information for our meeting. We intercede for the world and we strive for God’s work in our community.


Here’s one of the ways that the Church intersects with and is dependent on the services of people like the Police and Fire and EMS in our community. Our First Responders are, in some sense, like the Nehemiahs of our towns and cities. They build the wall, or at the very least they stand on the wall and make sure that no enemy breaches its security. You stare down all enemies of security and safety so that the Church can fight other enemies – things like poverty, addiction, greed, ignorance, selfishness, and loneliness.

If the battle was easy or predictable, that would be one thing. But Nehemiah found out that building a wall wasn’t just about mortar and stone. He had to deal with enemies inside and outside the walls. His enemies tried to mock his project to undermine morale. When that didn’t stop the work, they incited criminal bands, the gangs of their day from among Philistines and Arabs, to make raids on the area. Nehemiah’s enemies tried to lure him from the city with the intent to kill him. When that didn’t work they actually hired a false prophet to convince him his situation was hopeless and he should run for his life. Nehemiah had enemies on all sides!

With all that adversity he might have asked himself was it worth it. He might have asked, “God, are you sure this is what I’m supposed to be doing?”

But Nehemiah continued the work. When things got real bad he divided his work force into two shifts – one shift would lay stone while the other stood guard with swords and spears.

“So in the lowest parts of the behind the walls and in the breaches, I stationed people according to their families, with their swords, their spears, and their bows. After I looked things over I stood up and said to them, ‘Do not be afraid of your enemies. Remember the Lord, who is great and awesome, and fight for your kin, your sons, your daughters, your wives, and your homes.” Nehemiah 4.13-14

At the Blair County Policemen’s Memorial Service the other evening the guest speaker told the moving story of one of the officers who died in the line of duty last year, Sgt. John Pawlosky. Pawlosky was a veteran officer in Philadelphia who got up one morning and went to work like every other workday, except that this day, unbeknownst to him, something terrible was about to happen. He was called to the scene of a disputed taxi fare. What Sgt. Pawlosky didn’t know about was the threats the criminal had already made to the taxi driver and any police who would come. Pawlusky didn’t know that this man’s violent anger and his handgun would intersect with his life that day.

Maybe somebody had thanked him earlier that day for serving. Maybe no one had. I can imagine that many of you have days when you wonder if there are only enemies around and you wonder what happened to your friends. I know there are days when you feel unappreciated and unthanked. But you continue to get up and do your job. You continue to answer the call and go to the fire. When everyone else is running away from the crisis you run to it.

I want to tell you that you are doing God’s work. You are standing in the breach of the walls of our community. You are putting yourselves out there as servants of the people and I want to tell you that serving God’s purposes in our community is the highest work.
Jesus himself put it this way:

“No one has greater love than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.”
Matthew 15.13

Who Is My Neighbor?


“The boys despised everything their elders valued. They scorned beauty and mocked goodness. They would hoot with laughter at the sight of a cripple, and if they saw a wounded animal they would stone it to death. They boasted of injuries and wore their scars with pride, and they reserved their special admiration for mutilation: a boy with a finger missing could be their king. They loved violence; they would run miles to see bloodshed; and they never missed a hanging.”
Ken Follet, The Pillars of the Earth


When you listen to that you could apply most of it to our times and say it accurately describes the attitude and character of many contemporary youth raised on Call of Duty and other violent video games. They’ve grown used to violence and cultivated a dismissive attitude and disdain for most forms of authority. We shake our heads at this generation and wistfully remember what it is was like when we were kids.

Problem is, the boys described by Follet lived in the year 1123 – they predate our own year by close to a thousand years. Those were the “old days,” although clearly not all was good about them. It as always been thus to some degree, whether we are talking about the present year, or the 1970’s or the 1940’s and ‘50’s. We create a skewed memory of a better, simpler time. But human beings are human beings. In a time closer to 2010, 1964 to be exact, New York City, a place infamous for its violent crime, was shocked by the murder of a 28 year old woman named Kitty Genovese. What was shocking about her murder was that it happened in front of her own apartment building, in the presence of multiple witnesses, none of whom cried out for help or sought to stop the violence in any way. The indifference of the bystanders came to be known as “the bystander effect” or “the Genovese Syndrome.”

A young woman was killed and people watched it out their windows, but nobody lifted a hand to help.


“A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead.”
Luke 10.30


Did anyone see it? Yes, the narrator says. . .

“By chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him, he passed on by the other side.”

Before we try to answer why the priest ignored the man in trouble, it may be helpful to consider a little of the physical context. William Barclay says that the road from Jerusalem to Jericho was a notoriously dangerous road. The road traversed the mountains around Jerusalem to the relative coastal area of Jericho in a short distance, dropping 3,600 feet in twenty miles. It was steep, narrow and rocky; full of canyons and sudden dropoffs. It was geographically forbidding. But it was dangerous in a still more deadly way. It was the hunting grounds for many criminals and outlaw bands. It was so bad it garnered the nickname “the Bloody Way” and was called that for five hundred more years. If one had to travel that way, you did it in groups for protection. No one in their right mind traveled it alone. It’s like you know you don’t walk around certain parts of a city after dark by yourself. It’s just not done. Everyone knows this.

And so as Jesus told this crime story about a traveler on the Jerusalem to Jericho road, his listeners would immediately think, “Fool.” He deserves what he gets.

Jesus knows all this of course. It’s his story. He could have picked a more righteous and sympathetic victim just as he could have picked a more popular hero. But he didn’t. Why? Remember what prompted the story in the first place. An expert on the law asks Jesus what must he do to inherit eternal life. The lawyer is testing Jesus. He wants to show his superiority over the rabbi. He wants to “justify himself.” The lawyer is not really interested in living a life that questions his selfishness. You can hear it in the follow-up question, “Who is my neighbor?” He is like many who just want to be congratulated for their right opinions.

But Jesus has other ideas. The priest in the story is obviously not excused simply because the victim had been foolish, likewise the Levite in the story. The hero of Jesus story is an anti-hero in the eyes of his Jewish audience – this not so special Samaritan, this “certain Samaritan” fulfills the great commandments of God to love God and love your neighbor as yourself. Who is my neighbor? The Samaritan demonstrates Jesus teaching that our neighbor is not just our friends, our family, or our racial tribe.

My neighbor is anyone who needs me.

So who is your neighbor? Is it just the people you like to hang around? Is it a very close and closed off social network into which you will allow no others to enter? Have we, like the lawyer questioning Jesus, separated our good beliefs from any responsibility in our neighborhood and town? Will we help only those people we think deserve our help?

Timothy Keller says that when people ask him, “How can I become a Christian?” he answers, “It takes two things and a third.” The two things are repentance and faith. The third thing is not so much a separate thing but how you live out the first two things. You can’t just think or believe in repentance and faith, it must be lived out individually and in community. Everything in the New Testament indicates that a person must confirm their individual faith decision with the public and communal acts of baptism and life in a community of faith. And the church is the community of faith living in the community of our neighborhoods and towns. The church isn’t the building. It’s the living, breathing witness of the believers in every locale. Remember the test of spiritual growth – are you loving more these days? Is your heart growing bigger? Are your arms open wider toward others, or are they wrapped around yourself? Do you have room for anyone else in your life?

This group of people we call the church is a great but underutilized asset. We can be a force in our community. Our neighbors need us. We can do great good for them. We can make our world a better place.

But as much as our neighbors need us, we need them more. As we live and serve in our community do you know who we’re going to meet? Jesus, buddy, we’re gonna meet Jesus.

Let’s start by meeting our neighbors: arrange people into neighborhood groups.

Making News in Heaven

These past weeks we have been reimagining what evangelism could be like in our lives. We have talked about how being a “witness” is simply “recommending Jesus to our friends.” We have talked about the importance of friend to friend invitation. We have noted that Jesus is our contemporary and so he speaks to us in the lives we are now living through the Holy Spirit. We have also looked at how telling our story of faith is perhaps the most effective and usual way God speaks through us.

Today I want to start by thinking about our local community and what Hicks Church is doing here. Duncansville has many fine small businesses – Best Way Pizza is a place that some of us frequent. I don’t know if it’s the best way but it’s a good way. I go to Fine Cut to get my haircut. Duncansville Pharmacy provides prescription and over the counter medications for our community. Donnelly’s Antiques provides statues and other old stuff. D.P. Oppel New York Life provides life insurance and financial services.

What does Hicks Church offer to our community? What do we offer that these other establishments don’t? We offer eternal life through Jesus Christ the Lord. He is the one mediator between God and humankind. He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. He is the only name under heaven by which we can be saved.

“For God so loved the world that He gave his only Son that whoever believes in Him will not perish but will have eternal life.” John 3.16

My question is for us today is do we believe this? Do we believe that Jesus Christ is the unique way of salvation for all peoples, regardless of race, nationality, or religion? I don’t know, to be honest, how Jesus saves people that have grown up in a Muslim country not knowing anything else. I don’t know how God-fearing Jews will finally be converted. I don’t know how Jesus will reach, in his words, “other sheep not of this fold.” But I do know he is the Cosmic Christ given for the whole world and not just for a privileged few.

Today many people subscribe to the view that all religions are equal/ all religions are the same. Well, no person who takes their religion seriously believes that. We know that to be false. G.K. Chesterton once wondered if the man who was being boiled in a pot over a fire by cannibals because of their religious beliefs thought that all religions are equal. It puts it in another light doesn’t it? It seems to me that we are wrestling more with feelings than true knowledge and the feeling we have is, “What right do I have to tell others that Jesus is the truth for them?”

The first disciples of Jesus doubted too, even after the resurrection.

“Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted.” Matt. 28.16-17

What, exactly, at this point did they doubt? That he was standing before them, alive and well, that he did rise from the dead as he said he would? No, they couldn’t doubt that. Their doubts were of a more general and vague variety- what now? What does this mean? Where do we go from here? Jesus sensed their doubt and his immediate answer was:

“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” Matt. 28.18-20

Jesus is saying, look, the Father has put me in charge. There is no other authority to appease or to consult. I’m it. Go, therefore, and be my witnesses. I have the authority, and now I am giving you authority to speak on my behalf.

The other truth we need to embrace is that there is not only such a thing as eternal life with God, but also eternal life apart from God. There is such a thing as separation from God forever – we call it Hell. And, beyond my understanding or yours, there will be some (Lord, may it be few) but some who choose that reality. Nonetheless, we are to do everything we can to call all to salvation through Jesus Christ. We are called to rescue the perishing, save the dying, and call the lost home again.

Lost people matter to God and so they matter to us. In his book Direct Hit Paul Borden writes that, “Perhaps the greatest sin of denominations and most congregations is the lack of urgency to bring the good news to lost individuals.” He goes on to say of his work as a church consultant, “as we work with dying congregations, we often tell the people that their congregation is not merely dying but also disobedient.”

If we truly believe that unbelieving people are in real danger of spending eternity apart from God then we will have a passion to reach the unchurched and unbelieving with the Good News of Jesus Christ!

God so loved the world. He is not wanting any to perish (2 Peter 3.9) He is the God of all who cares for all. “He did not sit in splendid isolation demanding that all worship and obey him. He reaches out and calls them to himself.”

“The eyes of the Lord range throughout the entire earth, to strengthen those whose heart is true to him.” 2 Chronicles 16.9

God is working overtime to see that all can know Him and be known by Him.

“He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay according to our iniquities. . .As a father has compassion for his children, so the Lord has compassion on those fear him. For he knows how we were made; he remembers that we are dust.” Psalm 103.10-14

These verses in Chronicles and the Psalms speak to the primacy and sufficiency of the right heart. We must return to the religion of the heart. And I’m not talking about feeling, or good intentions, or wishing. I mean the heart, the center of the will, that is given in complete surrender to God by the grace of Jesus Christ.

If your heart is right before God, God will find you.

This is the plan of salvation, that we who have been found by God will in turn be his witnesses to the whole world, starting in our backyards. The early church was a nobody church. They weren’t smart or rich or powerful. But they were witnesses. And by God they witnessed to amazing results by their way of working, speaking, and being.

We can have similar effect today – why wouldn’t God want to do this and more for lost people of today whom he loves? And we his church, we are his witnesses today. We’re it.

“We speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen.” John 3.11

We recommend Jesus. That is what we do as responsible believers. That’s what any responsible person does when they know something to be true. It’s your duty to share your knowledge with others.

“If you know the house is on fire, you must share your knowledge with others. If you know where the bargains are, you tell your friends. If you know how to stop global warming or cure cancer, you have a duty to share that knowledge.” Dallas Willard

Is the Good News of eternal life through Jesus Christ of less value than these?

There is a scene in the film, The Apostle, in which a holiness preacher is driving down the highway, his mother in tow, and they come upon a bad wreck. The police are already there. There is wreckage and emergency personnel everywhere. This preacher pulls over, grabs his Bible, and begins searching for the victims of the accident. He finds a car in the field beside the road. He leans into that car and finds a young man and a young girl badly hurt, barely conscious, still trapped in the vehicle. The preacher begins to pray. And he begins to talk to the young man and tells him that God loves him. The preacher asks him if the Lord takes him now will he be ready. And then the preacher invites to accept Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior and the young man says yes and thanks the preacher. A state trooper comes up and tells the preacher he has to leave but the preacher finishes what he has to say to the young man. The preacher finally walks back to his vehicle and tells his mother, “Mama, we made news in heaven this morning. We made news in heaven. . .”

I don’t know many Christians who have the salt to do that. But we are called to be salt and light. Maybe it’s time the church is turned upside down and shaken. Maybe some salt will pour out. It’s time we made news in heaven again.