We Slouch Towards Heaven Kicking Against the Goad!

Sermon for Sunday, September 2, 2007

1.  Good morning.  Let’s pray – O Lord, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing to You O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer.  Amen!

2.  Opening Comments:  “Fire!  Fire!”   These are the word inscribed in the waist coat of Blaise Pascal testifying to his personal encounter with God! 

Fire!  Fire! 

Do these words come to mind when you reflect upon your relationship with our Lord?

Have you ever heard this word screamed as people run from a burning building?  It’s scary!  Well this is what Jesus just said in our Gospel reading.  Let me read it again but this time from Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase called “The Message:”

Luke 12:49-53

  “I have come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!  Now jump to verse 51; 51 Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division.  52 From now on there will be five in one family divided against each other, three against two and two against three.  53 They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.”

Wow!  These are fighting words aren’t they?

This call for fire and division has Jesus looking like a fire and brimstone fundamentalist Baptist Tent preacher – preaching His heart out to the echoing “Amen Brother – preach on – preach on!”

This picture of Jesus is a bit troubling to some of us who think of Him merely as a gentle messiah who came to spread peace throughout the world.  Here He insists that His coming is comparable to a dramatic prophetic visitation! 

He has come to cast fire on the earth, to cause division at the very heart of our human society.  It’s not that Jesus is eager for these disturbing events in themselves to unfold.  Rather, He Himself burns with zeal for the accomplishment of His earthly mission, which, in calling for radical change, will inevitably include such consequences.  While Jesus Himself may have been a man of peace, the message that He proclaimed was clearly divisive – it required a radical turn about in the human psyche which is always terribly painful.  He made demands on people that challenged them to the very heart of their being!

But doesn’t this conflict with the announcement of the heavenly host to the shepherds on the night of His birth: “Glory to God in the highest and, on earth, peace to those who enjoy God’s favor” (Luke 2:14). 

However, even in the same infancy story of the Gospel, the old man Simeon, in the second part of his oracle, had already foretold that:

Luke 2:34-35

. . .  “This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, 35 so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your own soul too.”

Ah!  The peace that Jesus brings is not a facile thing.  A limp wrested simplistic peace!  It only becomes actual in the context of the true conversion of one’s heart. 

Jesus’ message doesn’t leave the depths of human beings untouched!  Jesus’ fire probes beneath a superficial pleasantness and acceptability and brings deep prejudice, narrowness and selfishness to the surface, where such negative qualities can be confronted and just perhaps healed!

This fire that He brings is in fact the Holy Spirit – who burns away our pretensions if we will let Him!  Oh, but what a fight we put up! 

You may remember that John the Baptist had prophesied that, whereas he himself baptized with water, the coming One would baptize “with the Holy Spirit and fire.”  (Luke 3:16).  And indeed at Pentecost the gathered disciples received the Spirit in the visible form of “tongues as if of fire.” (Acts 2:3).

Ah!  Let me read our Gospel reading once more:

Luke 12:49-53

  “I have come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! 51 Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division.  52 From now on there will be five in one family divided against each other, three against two and two against three.  53 They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.”

“I have come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!” said Jesus!

Jesus couldn’t wait for the purging fire to come.  He can’t wait for this fire to come into our lives right now!

Yes, the Holy Spirit – the fire of God – comes into our lives to burn away the dross.  The lies we’ve told ourselves.  It seeks to burn the false selves we’ve conveniently constructed! 

It comes to scour us out.  The ancient mystics referred to this process as “hollowing!”  God wants to carve the gunk out of our lives which befouls our spirits and poisons our bodies and darkens the lives of most of the people around us!

Think about it – it takes fire to bust most of us loose!  Something radical has to shake us at our foundations before we wake up as it were!

What will it take to free you and me from the addictions in our lives!  Those toxic habits – physical, psychological and even spiritual, that rob us of our God given freedom!

This is what the journey of the Christian is all about!

4.  Focusing in – God’s revelation.  Last week as I reflected upon what God wanted to say to us I heard the worlds – “Let me write your script – I have written it anyway so follow my script not the one you’ve written for yourself!”

God may be calling you to the life of a martyr – to profound suffering.  Were you to surrender to this you would find a deep settledness in your soul – Ah this is what You have called me to!

But most of us – fight against God’s plan for our lives and take over the reigns of our lives and eek out a mediocre existence which lacks any sense of ultimate meaning and sublime depth.  It’s the difference between a soap opera and a real drama!

And so we write a pathetic soap operatic drama that befoul our lives and the lives of people around us in our own toxicity and neediness!

O my friends many churches are confounded by people like this in positions of authority – O Lord, protect us from this.

Yes, the church should be a hospital but let’s not put the mental patients in charge of our ministries!  Let’s encourage them to allow the fire of Christ’s love to burn away the dross in their lives!

And this goes for me as much as it does for all of us – for Christ’s fire wants to hollow out all of us – no one is exempt. Christ Himself underwent the fire of His Crucifixion!  He gave Himself to God’s call upon His life and as a consequence we have life eternal!

5. But How do we do this?  Ah! Please turn with me to our Old Testament reading in the Book of Jeremiah chapter 23:

Jer. 23:23

“Am I only a God nearby,” declares the LORD, “and not a God far away?  24 Can anyone hide in secret places so that I cannot see him?” declares the LORD. “Do not I fill heaven and earth?” declares the LORD.

Jer. 23:29

“Is not my word like fire,” declares the LORD, “and like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces?

Ah!  God is everywhere!  So let’s find Him in all things!  Let’s expect Him to constantly be revealing Himself to us at all times in all situations.  Offering us the fruit of His infinite love for us in all situations!

O how much of our lives we waste not entertaining our Holy guest – our God and Brother and Comforter!

O how much wonder and glory are fowled in the sewerage of our minds and hearts which are constantly picking up the detritus and offal all around us and claiming that this is life and ignoring God’s constant call to “Look  up” for Him!

“Keep looking up!”  Ah!  I just listened to J.I. Packer’s CD entitled “Finishing Well.”  It was given at the occasion of his 80^th Birthday and the one thing that stuck in my mind was a simply story about the man who most influenced his life.  It was on old Christian professor who ended every conversation with the gentle exhortation “Keep looking up.”  Such a simple yet sublime challenge that should be a constant chant in the minds and hearts of every one us.   Truly God is calling us to look up for Him and stop staring in the gutters and sewers of the world around us!

6.  Paul’s wonderful encouragement.  But listen not to how the author of the Book of Hebrews would encourage us to look up!

Listen to chapter 12 beginning at verse 1:

Heb. 12:1

  Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.  2 Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.  3 Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.

Heb. 12:14

  Make every effort to live in peace with all men and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord.

Can you imagine what He’s picturing here?  There are a cloud of witnesses cheering us on – therefore let’s throw off everything that slows us down.

Now why would “a cloud of witnesses” be such an encouragement to the listeners of the writer to the Hebrews?

The writer is picturing athletes in a footrace, running for the winning post and urged on by the crowd around them.

Do you believe this – that there is a cloud of spirits who have passed through this life ahead of us who are cheering us on? 

Who are these witnesses?  We don’t know but the fact is that there are on our side and want us to run a good good race!  And so they’re cheering us on the let go of all sorts of barge that slows us down!

Have you heard the term – “It is what it is!”  Hmmmmm – Our live are what they are!  God is with us!  The cloud of witnesses are all about us – let’s stop trying to write our own script – let’s let our lives but what they are – what God has ordained them to be and stop writing our life’s script and let God but God and let Him write our script for us and let’s then fully embrace our lives while looking up – for Him – listening for the cheering and words of encouragement of the cloud of witnesses who love us so!!!

Let’s pray . . .