Thy Kingdom Come

Stan Moody, Ph.D.

Haggai 2:1-9
Luke 19:37-46

Down through the history of Christianity, there has been no greater error than the neglect of the doctrine of the presence of the Kingdom of God. The most dangerous practice of the Church of Jesus Christ, in my estimation, has been either to render the Kingdom of God to a government on earth or to render it so spiritual as to be out of our reach – away. In the one case, the visible, physical church becomes the Kingdom of God. In the other, Christians are standing, gazing up into the heavens, stuck between the two Advents – the First Coming of Jesus and His anticipated Second Coming.

We pray every Sunday morning, “Thy kingdom come; thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” As you think about those words, you cannot declare the Kingdom of God as either wholly present in the church or wholly future in the so-called End Times. “Thy Kingdom come” has to be interpreted to mean that the Kingdom of God is either not yet fully here or is wholly future. “…thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” can only mean that God’s redemptive plan is unfolding both in heaven and on earth – that they are evolving together through time. We can think of God’s redemptive plan as the earth providing the raw material for His will in heaven.


From Isaiah’s prophecy of the Highway of the Redeemed (Isaiah 35), we have used the metaphor of a conveyer belt assembly line as the Kingdom of God on earth. The redeemed of the Lord are there, enough above the earth so that they can act and react with it but enough removed so that they are distinct and separate. On that highway are those saints who have gone before and those who are living today. The task before the saints of God – both the living and the dead – is to advance the Kingdom by bringing God’s people in one at a time. We are told in Scripture that the end will come when the last of the elect has been brought in and not until.

As God’s elect – both the living and the dead – look down on the earth from the safety of the Kingdom, they see many people preoccupied with what they are doing, where they are living, how much money they are making and their contribution to mankind, etc. – all those things that are forever making their way into the obituary columns. Here and there, however, there are upraised hands, stretched out seeking rescue. It becomes the task of the elect of God to reach down to those upraised hands, grab hold and offer a lift into the Kingdom. That is our task.

Every generation of Christians, however, has shied away from this task in preference either to creating God’s Kingdom here on earth or to send it away and do a rain dance to bring it back. This comes from a belief that each generation of Christians is more blessed, more righteous and more oppressed than previous generations. It degenerates even further into racism, classism and nationalism.

At the time of Jesus, the Jews considered themselves to be the elect of God. In fact, they were right. Where they were wrong was extending that into a perpetual insurance policy against annihilation. God would rescue the Jews because they were His chosen people. That fell apart during the exile, when Babylon – modern Iraq – carried the tribes of Judah and Benjamin into captivity, destroyed Solomon’s temple and leveled Jerusalem. The insurance policy paid off with the return from exile and the building of the second temple around 500 BCE. The insurance policy against annihilation of Israel had expired, however, by the time 1M Jewish zealots had died in the Roman siege and the burning rubble of the Second Temple in AD 70. It failed to pay off against annihilation as 900 Jews held out on the mountain of Masada and some 4,000 Jews held out on Gamala, nearly all opting for suicide over capture.

The problem the Jews had was that, instead of remaining faithful to the spiritual Kingdom of God, they set out to create God’s Kingdom here on earth. The First Century Church, on the other hand, spiritualized the Kingdom so much that it fell victim to Gnosticism, by which its members considered themselves privileged spiritual beings incapable of sin. As a result, they engaged in all kinds of sinful practices with the rationalization that they had become sinless and were therefore immune from God’s judgment.

As the Roman Empire was winding down, Emperor Constantine recognized an opportunity to merge the Church of Jesus Christ with a pagan empire. It is possible that he saw this as the only way to save the Empire. When that was done, the Christian world breathed a collective sigh of relief. Persecution ended, and the Holy Roman Catholic Church was built as the Kingdom of God come to earth. Once the persecution ended, so also did the witness of the Church until the defender of the church became the oppressor.

We have a history of lurching from an earthly kingdom to a heavenly kingdom, when in fact the Kingdom of God is both earthly and heavenly. The Kingdom is the vehicle through which God exercises His will on earth in order to fulfill His will in Heaven. The Kingdom of God is the focus of the Lord’s Prayer. To say, “Thy Kingdom come” is to acknowledge that the Kingdom has not yet been completed. It has not yet fully come. To say, “…thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” is to acknowledge that because God’s will is the fulfillment of the Kingdom, its fulfillment is an ongoing process. The Kingdom of God, therefore, is both present and future – both a present reality and a future hope.

As believers, we are citizens of that Kingdom that is both on earth and in heaven – a present reality and a future hope. You can think of it as God’s building project. Its present citizens are the saints who have gone before us and those who are presently living – you and me. Its future citizens are those who will take that leap of faith onto Isaiah’s Highway of the Redeemed. In the event that there are more citizens now than are left for the future, we can come to no other conclusion than that the Kingdom is gaining strength day-by-day. In the event that there are fewer citizens now than are left for the future, we must come to the same conclusion. Either way, God’s will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.

Since the End Time and appearance of the resurrected and risen Lord is considered to be the moment of the completion of the Kingdom building project, you can see what a futile and selfish exercise it is to try and project when that will happen or where it will happen. The End Time is simply the point at which God’s will has been done on earth as it is in heaven. There is too much work of Kingdom building to be done in the meantime to be struggling over the time and nature of the appearance of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is sufficient to know that seeking after the Kingdom of God and His righteousness is all that is required of us. Yet, it is the expectation of an imminent Second Coming of Christ that has left the Church of Jesus Christ in America shallow and apostate.

One of the great surprises I encountered when going down to the prison as chaplain was that the Second Coming is driving the theology of the Christian church there. Inmates are good at memorizing Scripture verses – they have a lot of time to do so. They are very good at deciding what God is going to do in the near future. They are very bad, however, at living the cross-bearing life day-to-day. Because God is expected to take them out of prison very shortly, who needs to study the Word of God? The words of God, taken in cafeteria style, are sufficient. They know the words, but they do not know the Word.

At the root of all this is a desire on the part of Christians to escape persecution and suffering. We have a church in America today that is paranoid of suffering. Like the ancient Jews and the Roman Catholic Church before it, we have created a kingdom on earth in order to use our political muscle to avoid suffering and persecution. The intensity with which this heresy has crept into the prison culture is startling and reflective of an American perspective.

By contrast, listen to the teaching on the Kingdom of God by Watchman Nee who was, until his death, imprisoned in China for the cause of Christ:

Regrettably, the gospel preached in Christianity today rarely mentions the kingdom of God. When it does mention the kingdom of God, it mentions only the name without explaining what the kingdom of God actually is. For this reason many people know the kingdom of God in name but not in its reality—they do not know what the kingdom of God truly is. Today when many people preach the gospel, they preach the “heavenly mansion” as the central and most important matter. This is truly ridiculous.

A careful reading of the New Testament from the first book to the last will reveal not even a single verse that says that the goal of the gospel is for people to go to heaven. Rather, almost every book in the New Testament speaks of the kingdom of God and says clearly that the central goal of the gospel is the kingdom of God. God’s intention with the gospel is not to save people into heaven but to save them into the kingdom, that is, into the kingdom of the heavens.

The kingdom of God is not only righteousness but also peace. This means that although we need to be strict with ourselves by being righteous, we need to deal with others in peace. God’s kingdom requires us to have peace toward others. Our dealings and interactions with others must be in peace. If we Christians do not have peace toward others but rather have many problems with others, this shows that we have not allowed God to rule in us. If we allow God to rule, our relationship with others will be peaceful, and there will be no quarrels or arguments with others, nor will there be opinions. We must be ruled by God and have peace toward others.

This past week, I was given a book written in 1888 by Ellen G. White, the founder of the 7th Day Adventist Church, a home for some of the most peaceful, committed believers I have ever encountered. I am in the process of reading it. It is a wonderful historical treatment of the Jewish and Christian churches as they attempt to merge the Gospel with government. On that score, she is right on.

Where it falls apart, however, is in the lack of a doctrine of the Kingdom of God. Her legalistic condemnation of a Sunday Sabbath attempts to correct the problem through proper worship forms. But Jesus said to the woman at the well in Samaria, “…a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem…A time is coming and has now come, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshippers the Father seeks” (John 4:7-9). Worshipping the Father in spirit and in truth is, in fact, the very essence of Sabbath rest.

We have to ask, “If Jesus proclaimed Kingdom time as one in which the place of worship is irrelevant, how then can we split hairs over when we worship?” Was the Sabbath made for man, or was man made for the Sabbath? While she had the problem very well analyzed, her remedy is inappropriate.

The veil to the Holy of Holies at the Temple was ripped in two at the death of Jesus, signifying that where God is worshipped no longer is controlling.

The Prophet Haggai ministered to the exiled Jews who had returned from Babylon but had stalled in the re-building of the Temple. His task was not only to get them going but to set the stage for a new experience in worship, when we would worship not at the Temple but at the altar of the living God. He asks the question in v. 3, “Who of you is left who saw this house in its former glory? How does it look to you now? Does it not seem to you as nothing?”

This Second Temple is remarkably inferior to the one built by Solomon, one of the most remarkable buildings the world had seen up to that time. Nothing could possibly compare with that built at the apex of the power and glory and wealth of Israel. Yet, Haggai has good news in vs. 7-9:

“I will shake all nations, and the desired of all nations will come, and I will fill this house with glory,” says the Lord Almighty. “The silver is mine, and the glory is mine,” declares the Lord Almighty. “The glory of this present house will be greater than the glory of the former house,” says the Lord Almighty. “And in this place, I will grant peace,” declares the Lord Almighty.
The Second Temple was honored by the living presence of One in whom bodily dwelt the fullness of the Godhead.

The Desire of Nations was the very Messiah who came to the Temple as the Man of Galilee and who taught and healed within its courts. God’s glory in the Son of Man would fill the Temple, making it far greater than the glory of Solomon.

Herod the Great, over a period of 40 years, had poured wealth and the best of architectural skill into the Temple, making it again a place of international pilgrimage. Its enhancement by the scoundrel Herod was the very enticement that brought the entire world to witness the crucifixion of Christ. He rebuilt the Temple to make its destruction even more devastating to the Jews and even to the Roman general, Titus, loathe to destroy an architectural wonder.

You will recall Solomon’s dedication of the First Temple, when he acknowledged that God could not be contained within it. Yet, the presence of Jesus Christ, the Desired of Nations, had brought the glory of God within the very Temple walls. When we move to Luke 19, we find two things happening. The first is that the disciples were admiring how the Temple was adorned with beautiful stones and with gifts from the Emperor of Rome dedicated to God (Luke 21:5). The second is that Jesus wept over Jerusalem from the crest of the Mount of Olives.

It was a peaceful scene spread out before Him. It was the Passover, and people had journeyed from all over the world to worship Jehovah there. Jerusalem was surrounded by gardens, vineyards and palaces. The temple rose up in the middle with glistening marble walls, the pride of a Jewish nation under the domination of Rome. Jesus had just entered this marvel of a city to the cheers and praises of thousands who believed that the signs of the times announced the arrival of the Messianic kingdom. Jerusalem had been chosen by God above all the other nations on earth. But the history of its people was one of rebellion against God because they sought to institutionalize and nationalize God’s Kingdom on earth.

Jesus looks down at all this beauty and opulence from the Mount of Olives, and what does He do? He weeps:

O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, if you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace – but now it is hidden from your eyes. The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side. They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of God’s coming to you.

Some forty years later, that prophecy was fulfilled to the extreme.

You cannot gloss over AD 70 in redemptive history. After I completed my dissertation in 2000, I went back to a book I had read that made a profound impact on me. The title of the book was, From Darkness to Dawn, nearly 600 pages long. It was a historical novel of the life of Caesar Nero. I actually retyped the book so that I could at some later date edit if for modern consumption, as it was written in the mid to late 1800’s. You cannot read that book without knowing that it was a time of great transformation from the Old Covenant to the New – from Temple worship to life in the Kingdom of God – from the law to grace.

Next week, a number of us will be headed back over to Israel/Palestine. While there will be a time for reflection, this will not be a tourist trip. We will be confronted with some very grave realities that have been brought about by the bondage of religious systems bound down by ritual and worship forms. You see, the Kingdom of God becomes relevant to us only when the kingdoms of this earth become treacherous.

There is in Palestine a remnant of those who believe in living within the Kingdom of God and have given their lives to its advancement there. We will be meeting them. While they are imprisoned, they yet are free; while they are poor, they are rich. These stand as bastions against the attempts of religion to establish God’s Kingdom on earth and to take pride in its worship forms and its splendor.

I ask that you keep us in prayer as we take this journey. You have stood with us; stand with us in prayer. Especially, I ask that you lift up daily these young people who are being raised in a theocratic world view that longs to force God’s hand in history.

Your brothers and sisters in Christ there have learned patience and perseverance in the midst of suffering. I ask that you embrace them on the Highway of the Redeemed as they travel with you on life’s journey. God bless you in these coming weeks as we ponder together what God has for us in the future.

Conferring a Kingdom

By:

Stan Moody, Ph.D.

June 22, 2008

Luke 22:14-30

We cannot read this 22^nd chapter of Luke without being conflicted over the American Dream of prosperity and success. In fact, as you read this passage of Scripture, you have to say that the American Dream of prosperity and success is as old as human nature itself.

The disciples were consumed not only with the prospect of restoring the former glory to Israel by establishing a throne in Jerusalem; they were consumed with what role each of them would play in that new kingdom: “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?” (Acts 1:6). Before the trial and crucifixion of Jesus, they had been jockeying for position, despite all the teaching that Jesus had given them about the Kingdom of God being within. After the Resurrection; despite the recent memory of their fear and their cowardice; despite the prediction by Jesus that He would be leaving them, they were ready to take up where they had left off – “Who will be the greatest in the Kingdom?”

These disciples had been confronted with their own cowardice and disloyalty. They had been confronted with their own weakness and sin. Yet, jockeying for position becomes an all-encompassing passion. Jockeying for position is as natural a human instinct as is self preservation. In fact, they may well be one in the same. Our instincts tell us that the more powerful we are, the less likely we are to crash and burn.

Israel is an object lesson in what happens to a nation that considers itself to be holier and mightier than others. Once at the pinnacle of world power, the only thing that First Century Israel had left was its religion. The temple in Jerusalem had become a Mecca for worshippers of the One True God from all over the world. Yet, Israel was under the thumb of Rome – powerless and a thorn in their side. Forty years after their execution of the Son of the One True God, physical Israel would be no more and would remain as such until 1948.

Today, with some 500 warheads, Israel is the fourth largest nuclear power in the world. It is the third largest arms manufacturer in the world, behind the US and Russia. And yet, it remains insecure and unfaithful and fearful, pushing into the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea a people who have been dispossessed of their land and their heritage. It has done this with the complicity and financial backing of the government of the United States that claims to be a Christian nation.

Right makes might, and might makes right! That is the theory.

I have tasted a bit of power from time to time and have discovered, much to my astonishment, that even the smallest amount of power corrupts. And yet we seek it at all levels of society. People are convinced that they can “make a difference” by being in positions of power. The disciples were convinced that they could rule and reign with compassion and charity once they were installed as rulers in the new kingdom of Israel.

Jesus makes it clear in the 22^nd chapter of Luke that this is the way of the heathen nations – the Gentiles. “Who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is not the one at the table? But I am among you as one who serves” (22:27). Jesus turns the instinct of human power and human glory on its head. He who created us becomes our servant – not just to serve but to suffer for refusing to accept power for Himself.

The disciples do not know it yet and will not know it until Pentecost, but they have been consigned to the same destiny as was Jesus – that of suffering servant. This new kingdom concept runs directly contrary to human nature. He who is the least will be the greatest, and he who is the greatest will be the least.

The great tragedy is that from time to time, even the Church of Jesus Christ has bought into this human instinct that given power, it can preside over a righteous world. Like Emperor Constantine, the Religious Right in American has assumed that the spiritual values of Christianity can be enforced by the state. I used to think that these were Christians who were merely misguided. No longer do I think that way. This is a demonic theology that was patently rejected by Jesus during His temptation by Satan in the wilderness. The Devil made it clear to Jesus that he had the power to offer Him the kingdoms of this world if He would simply bow to his authority.

From the very get-go, Satan appeals to Jesus’ human instincts. Now, he is tearing asunder that little band of followers by appealing to their human instincts of power and glory while the Lord of heaven and earth dies alone.

Jesus says to His disciples in Luke 22, “Is any among you the oldest? Serve the youngest. Is any among you the most powerful? Become the weakest. Do you want to be the greatest in the Kingdom of God? The cost is the path of suffering and death – rejection of human power, human glory and self. Do you want a seat at the table? There is a banquet ready for those who persevere to the end.

“You are those who have stood by me in my temptations and trials. I confer on you a kingdom, just as my Father conferred one on me, so that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom and sit on thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel” (22:28-30).

We have cause and effect in this conferring of a kingdom. Because they have stood by Jesus in His temptations, however poorly, the disciples receive a kingdom, just as the Father conferred one on Him. That seems like more of a sentence than it does a reward, does it not? The portal through which they will enter this kingdom is the loneliness of suffering and death and the refusal to make the good things of life their purpose and their god. The thrones for which the disciples longed – perhaps Secretary of State, or Secretary of defense, or Prime Minister – could not be had through either government or religion.

The religious establishment was and is today nothing but an idolatrous addiction to middle-class respectability. In our world, it is a conceit that entered Christianity around the time of the Reformation and gave birth to a belief that God would reward His saints on earth with material goods. Christianity gradually became associated in the minds of believers with economic success. It you didn’t rock the boat and went along with the prevailing cultural and religious norms, you could have a comfortable and affluent life.

This self-congratulatory lust for respectability is a lethal form of idolatry and spiritual laziness that can lead us into a counterfeit Christianity without risk, character or moral imagination. To worship respectably means never to criticize the government, the military, other Christians or even the American Dream of power and money.

The problem is, however, that if the church is unwilling to witness against its own evils, it becomes an advocate for the demonic forces of nationalism, racism and materialism.

Politics is about getting power. Jesus’ message is about changing the nature of power – from hate to love; from death to life. That has been the struggle in my own life and that of many of you, I am sure. Power is power, no matter how incidental or vast it may be. By itself, power is something in which we all share as we make our way through the pecking order of this life. It is the pursuit of power, however, that corrupts us and derails us from pursuit of the Kingdom. That is why Jesus said, “Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” We waste our time trying to be God’s instrument in our little fiefdoms. Seek the Kingdom, and our place will be made clear.

How I wish I had gotten that straight decades ago. Instead, like American evangelicals everywhere today, I had focused too much on the loopholes.

A story is told of W.C. Fields when he was dying. He was taken with reading the Bible. An old friend came by and said, “Bill, you don’t believe in God. Why are you reading the Bible?” In typical fashion, Fields said, “Looking for loopholes.”

The Bible can be a dangerous instrument of distortion in the hands of people who are looking for loopholes out of a life of suffering and service. The Bible can be used by people to justify their own prejudices by thinking they are proving that they are right because “God thinks that way, too.” The Bible can be a means of justifying grabbing and holding power. The Bible can be an excuse for not taking a fearless look at ourselves and making necessary adjustments in attitudes and behaviors.

A statement is attributed to Archbishop Desmond Tutu, “When the missionaries came to Africa, they had the Bible and we had the land. They said, ‘Let us pray.’ We closed our eyes. When we opened them, we had the Bible, and they had the land.” In the hands of those Christians who prefer power and control now rather than the Kingdom of God and its rewards later, the Bible has become a divinely inspired book best suited to the spiritual needs of their neighbors or some third world country.

Jesus turned all that on its head. His teaching and His example showed us how absolutely impossible it is for a human being to achieve the ideal of loving, giving and trusting God. We fall on our faces every time. Jesus gives us a warning about attempts at judging or trying to improve others before you, yourself, are entirely loving, giving and trusting.

You want a seat at the table? Be so loving, giving and trusting that there is absolutely no time left to judge others.

The image of Anita Bryant on the cover of Newsweek magazine is burned into my memory. There she was, kneeling with her husband and children in prayer. Her campaign against homosexuals had the backing of most fundamentalist Christian organizations and celebrities. A few weeks after the cover shot, she announced her divorce. We never seem to learn, do we?

Dale Evans, Roy Rogers’ wife, was a popular Christian lecturer and author at that time and was asked what she thought about homosexuals. Expecting some kind of knee-jerk reaction, like “The Bible says it is an abomination, and it is unnatural,” she surprised everyone by saying, “I’m too busy loving everybody to have time to hate anybody.” The great Christian cover-up today is “hate the sin and love the sinner.” There are very few who can pull that off with any kind of integrity. It you could pull it off, the last thing you would want to do is proclaim it as an example of Christian faith and practice. Those who are so quick to spout that justification for self-righteousness would not know love it they tripped over it.

There is a bottom line to all this talk about the Kingdom of God. The bottom line is that Jesus was clearly in favor of separation of church and state:

1. “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36).

2. He left an organization of just 11 men under the leadership of the irascible Peter.

3. When He was offered absolute power on earth by the Devil, He turned it down.

4. When He was offered a kingdom on earth by the people, He turned it down. (John 6:15 – Jesus, knowing that they intended to come and make him king by force, withdrew again into the hills by himself)

5. “Someone in the crowd said to him, ‘Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.’ Jesus replied, ‘Man, who appointed me a judge or an arbiter between you?’”

6. Jesus threw over the money changers in the temple because He believed that the temple should be a “House of Prayer” and not be involved in collecting a temple tax from foreigners.

7. He paid His taxes as an obligation to Caesar and distinguished Caesar and God as two distinct and separate realms.

8. Jesus would be against prayer in public schools. “When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men…But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father…(Matt. 6:5,6).

9. Jesus prayed in public at His baptism, the Last Supper and on the cross.

10. Jesus would be against the oath, “So help me God.” “But I tell you, do not swear at all. Simply let your ‘yes’ be yes and your ‘no’ be no; anything beyond this comes from the evil one” (Matt. 5:34, 37).

We come down to the conditions under which the Kingdom of God is conferred to the disciples and why.

Jesus experienced a declining number of followers over the three years of His ministry. There was a time when He was explaining the death that each of us must experience if we are to have eternal life. Jesus’ life must become our own. We are to be united in spirit with Him. In John 6, He explains this in grotesque terms: “I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you…For my flesh is real food, and my blood is real drink…From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.”

“You do not want to leave too, do you?” Jesus asked the Twelve. Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.”

Now, He was down to 11. The condition under which Jesus was to confer a kingdom to the 11 was that they had stood with Him in His temptation. What does that mean?

The temptations of Christ were many. He was despised and rejected, reproached and reviled and was ridiculed by sinners – sinners smug in their knowledge of the law. He spoke in parables and riddles that most could not understand. Through it all, the 11 disciples, guilty by association, stood with Him and suffered in silence when He refused to defend or explain Himself. They stood by even when they did not understand what He was saying. And they did so at the expense of their own livelihood.

Peter’s reply says it all: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.”

Yes, they were weak and defective in their duties. They were slow witted and frustrating. Yet, the Master counts it all as nothing because they persevered without knowledge. They trusted when their own reputations were at risk. “You are those who have stood by me in my trials and temptations.”

The kingdom that Jesus conferred upon them is the same kingdom that He has conferred upon us, weak though we are and defective in faith though we may be. Perseverance to the end is the true test of citizenship in that kingdom. Conferment of a kingdom is the reward for standing by Christ when the whole world scoffs and dares Him to react. Conferment of a kingdom is the reward for standing by Christ when even His church denies His power and glory and tempts Him to return in our time rather than in the Father’s time.

Jesus confers a kingdom on His disciples in order to give them a seat at the banquet table set for a King and His subjects. But there is much more for these 11. Jesus has conferred on them a kingdom so that they may sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel.

According to His promise, they took their seats on those thrones on the day of Pentecost and are on those thrones to this day, judges of the twelve tribes of Israel, whose tent was enlarged to include the Gentiles – you and me. Notice that in the early church it was always the Apostles to whom matters of dispute were referred for decision. Notice, too, that we as believers search their writings in the New Testament to find what they have taught on doctrine. Their infallible words, written under the divine guidance of the Holy Spirit, have settled theological questions down through Christian history.

The thrones are symbolic of their apostolic office. As they have no successors in that office, they will continue to judge to the end of time.

You will remember that Jesus said to Peter, “I will give to you the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you find on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven” (Matt. 16:19). The apostles, then, have plenary authority to judge the expanded spiritual Israel, to bind us to the spirit of life through Jesus Christ and to release the legalist from the bondage to the Law of Moses.

No greater judgment of the House of Israel has ever been pronounced than that spoken by Peter at Pentecost from his apostolic throne: “Therefore, let all the house of Israel know assuredly, that God has made that same Jesus, whom you have crucified, both Lord and Christ.” Luke shares with us the effect of this judgment: “Now when they heard this, they were cut to their hearts and said to Peter and to the rest of the apostles, ‘Men and brothers, what shall we do?”

First came the judgment; then came the conviction; finally came the solution: “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off – for all whom the Lord God will call.”

That day, what the apostles bound in Jerusalem was bound in heaven – around 3,000 Jews, to be precise. The judging did not stop there, however. Peter pleaded with them, “Save yourselves from this corrupt generation.”

Call on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and save yourselves from this corrupt generation!

We have come full circle, haven’t we? There are professing Christians today who claim to have called on the Lord Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of their sins but who not only refuse to save themselves from this corrupt generation but who insist on embracing this corrupt generation in order to avoid the cost of following Christ. They and we stand judged by those who gave up their lives and their fortunes for a place at the table.

It ought to encourage us this morning that there has been a place at the table reserved for every one of us who, even in our worst moments, have continued to stand by Jesus in His temptations and trials.

This kingdom conferred on them and us calls us to a life of sacrifice and service to the exclusion of power and glory for ourselves. And yet, if we but seek that kingdom first, all these other things will be added to us.

Consider how radical such a life must be and count the cost.

Sifted Like Wheat

Rev. Stan Moody, Ph.D.

June 11, 2008

Job 9:25-35
Luke 22:31-38

Over the years, I have seen the effects of the influence of the evil in my own life. Remember that expression from Laugh In, “The Devil made me do it?” It is all too easy to fall prey to temptation in our discouragement and fear from what is or is not going on around us. Temptation rears its ugly head in our moments of greatest uncertainty and doubt – the very moments when faith is at its highest demand. We cave in when we can’t see light at the end of the tunnel. If “faith is the evidence of things not seen,” temptation is escape from things not seen.

Satan’s temptation of Jesus in the wilderness was an act of desperation by this fallen angel. His appeal was to the human nature of Jesus: “You can avoid all that suffering simply by claiming what is already yours!” It worked with Eve. God had given modernity’s first parents dominion over the earth with one little exception – the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. Satan approached Eve in the disguise of a serpent, bearing good news: “You will surely not die if you eat the fruilt.”

Let me tell you something. If it hadn’t been Eve who caved, it would have been someone else sooner or later, which may indeed seal the Creation metaphor. If Satan were to have dominion over the human race, there had to be something known as guilt – the competing knowledge of good and evil. Satan’s message is very clear: “You don’t have to wait for good things to happen; you can have them now!” Satan’s desire is that every one of us take our eyes off Jesus and the Kingdom of God and put them on this earth and its pleasures. He offers us the temptation of unbridled enjoyment of creation without obedience to the Creator.

Prison is a community of folks who have taken temptation to its deadly conclusions. It is comprised of people who have drunken the pleasures of this world with no thought given to the command and control of the sovereign God. We are told that the prison population in the US doubled in the ten years between 1986 and 1996. More and more people, I guess, are finding the pleasures of this world too enticing to refuse. Out of that lust for whatever this world has to offer right now comes a mentality that says you are entitled to what you want, regardless of who is in possession of it.

You are entitled to somebody else’s money. You are entitled to your own or somebody else’s spouse. You are entitled to somebody else’s love and devotion and are entitled to kill if it is refused. The list goes on in this entitlement world.

It should surprise no one, then, that Satan is alive and well in prison. It is a place of delight for Him. You might say that prison is a homeless shelter for Satanites. Where the surprise comes is Satan’s grip on the prison “church.”

The church in prison, both Protestant and Catholic, ought to be the bearer of light, pushing back the darkness. Instead, it has become a place where the Prince of Darkness is enticing with the message, “You don’t have to love to be saved! You are entitled to be fed good Gospel music, a full schedule of sacraments and fiery sermons. You are entitled to your rights! Demand them! Take whatever you can now, and surely you will not die. Besides, Jesus is coming back soon to take you out of here!”

So, we have people pointing out the holiness of others as “anointed” because they have memorized a lot of Scripture and can spout it at a moment’s notice. The great irony is that most of these “anointed” people are the first to make trouble in the church – to condemn others, to rebel against any kind of authority, to pass judgment.

Jesus is hard to find in prison, and it is rare to find Him in His church.

In all these examples of the dominion of Satan, however, one thing stands out. Satan cannot sift you like wheat without permission from God. God is sovereign. He is in control. Contrary to popular opinion, this world is not a world of competing equals of good and evil. Good reigns because God reigns. Evil is present and is allowed to hold sway sometimes even under the guise of goodness. When it comes to God’s people, however, while sin sifts us like wheat at times, evil cannot reign. Satan has no hold on God’s people without permission. No one, Satan or anyone else, can pluck the citizens of the Kingdom of God out of God’s hand.

“Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift you as wheat. But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers” (Luke 22:31, 32).

The original Greek has Satan demanding to sift Peter as wheat. The word for “you” is plural rather than singular. Thus, it ought to read, “Simon, Satan has demanded to sift all of you as wheat. But I have prayed for all of you, Simon, that your faith may not fail.”

Nothing demonstrates the covenantal change in God’s dealing with His people more than comparing Satan’s attack on Job and Peter. Job’s righteousness before God was dependent on his goodness. We are told that there was none like him in all the earth. Satan scoffs by saying, “That is because you have blessed him. Give him to me, and he will curse you.” In all his distress, we are told that Job did not sin. And yet, when he finally understands what is going on, he repents:

I know that you can do all things; no plan of yours can be thwarted. You asked, “Who is this who obscures my counsel without knowledge?” Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know. You said, “Listen, now, and I will speak; I will question you and you shall answer me.”

My ears had heard of you but now my eyes see you. Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.

Job has a problem. He has nobody to plead his case. “If only there were somebody to arbitrate between us, to lay his hand upon us both, someone to remove God’s rod from me, so that his terror would frighten me no more. Then I would speak up without fear of him, but as it now stands with me, I cannot” (Job 9:33-35).

What the New Covenant offers to Peter that was not available to Job is someone to arbitrate between man and God: “Simon, Satan has asked to sift you like wheat. But I have prayed for you.” Jesus steps forward as an intermediary that neither Eve nor Job had.

Another critical change in God’s dealing with His people is that with the death and Resurrection of Jesus, Satan symbolically was thrown out of Heaven. In both instances of Job and Peter, Satan is one of the “sons of God” – the angels – and was able to present himself before God’s throne. He is impatient. He is frustrated. He is demanding, insisting and asserting. Satan thinks he has rights, and he wants us to think we have rights!

But what was just around the corner was that he could no longer barge into heaven for an audience with God:

But now has come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Christ. For the accuser of our brothers, who accuses them before our God day and night, has been hurled down…Therefore rejoice, you heavens and you who dwell in them! But woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has gone down to you!

He is filled with fury because he knows that his time is short (Rev. 12:10-12).

Woe, then, is us! If the disciples who saw Jesus fell so horribly when Satan sifted them, how can we stand in the face of hate-filled acts of desperation? The answer is in those 6 words of Jesus, “Simon, I have prayed for you.” Jesus is announcing Himself as a Mediator who stands between God and His disciples in the face of Satan’s demands.

How does Jesus pray? We are treated to His means of mediation in John 17, where He says, “I pray for them (the disciples). I am not praying for the world, but for those you have given me, for they are yours…My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one…My prayer is not for them alone. I pray for those who will believe in me through their message…” Jesus’ prayer for His disciples and for us is that God would keep them, preserve them, protect them, guard them, hold on to them, keep their faith from failing.

That is our defense, is it not? That is also our hope. To be sure, we would rather have had Jesus ask God to deny Satan’s demand to sift the disciples. We know that is true because that is what we want for ourselves, is it not – that we not be sifted like wheat? Jesus’ prayer is not that the disciples might not stumble in sin, it is that they might hold onto their faith in the face of their sins, repent and be forgiven.

In heaven, Satan has lost his standing as an angel. There is no more bargaining with God – challenging His people. Jesus implies that Peter will not only stumble and fall, by denying his Lord three times, He implies that Peter is going to repent: “When you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.” Turning back is a given – not an option. Once you have tasted of the beauty and holiness of God, you will never forget and will always turn back. No matter how out-of-sync with God you may feel, take comfort in Jesus’ words, “When you have turned back…” You will always turn back. That is God’s mission with you.

Here is both the weakness of the disciples as well as the strength of the Lord. While we fall, Satan is not able to tear any of us from God’s hand because God honors Jesus’ prayer. Are we weak? Yes! Are we sinful? Yes! But we know that God has chosen the weak things of this world to confound the mighty (1 Cor. 1:27). Let the weaknesses of Peter and all of us come out. Let Satan find lots of evidence of weakness and sin and unworthiness in the people chosen for life. Let it be God’s act of grace that chooses and restores, rather than our own acts of righteousness. Let these things be so that by example we may demonstrate how rich and glorious and powerful God is!

The word “sift” is no stranger to you who have farming backgrounds. By shaking the wheat back and forth, the kernels work their way to the bottom of the sieve and fall through the mesh, leaving the garbage behind. Satan wants to put Peter in to a sieve, shake him, throw him around and give him a rough time to show God that Peter is nothing but chaff.

Satan wants to demonstrate to God that Peter is as vulnerable as he was when he rebelled against God as the angel Lucifer. His mission is to show that Peter is not sincere in his love and zeal for God. He wants to collect evidence that Peter is not worthy to be God’s child. He wants to show God that Peter cannot be of any use to Him – that he is too sinful to have a place in the Kingdom of God.

Is that not where we tend to go when we are being sifted and falling victim to doubt and sin? “God is not listening to me anymore; God has turned His back on me; I am not worthy of His love.” Satan starts with the leaders of the church. If he can make the leaders go astray, it will be far easier to wreck the work of the church. That is why so many pastors are tempted to commit adultery or commit the sin of pride or refuse to listen to Godly advice. Satan wants to destroy the church and the Kingdom of God, so he goes after the leaders – pastors, elders, deacons, teachers, parents. He wants them to fall so that those under them will be like sheep without a shepherd – lost, weak and helpless.

A number of years ago, there was a mass suicide of the “Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God” cult in Uganda. Cult leaders started killing followers when their prophecies that the world would end January 1, 2000, failed to come true. Over 500 were burned to death when they set their own church building on fire. Later, another 400 bodies were discovered. Satan attacked the leaders over something that was not much different than what Pat Robertson was saying at the time regarding Y2000.

Jesus says an astounding thing in v. 32: “When you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.” Jesus knew about Peter’s fall beforehand. He knew all about the denials, the lies and the cursing. He knew all about the bitter tears after the rooster crowed. He knew about the pride, the fear, the reckless boasting, the shameful denials and the broken heart. He also knew what Peter needed, and He prayed for that. And He did nothing to prevent it from happening. We have to ask ourselves why.

The best answer comes from the book of James: “Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking in anything” (James 1:2-4).

Unless we are tested, we do not mature. What happens to us when we face trials of many kinds, stumble and fall but do not lose our faith?

1. We come face-to-face with our sin and our sinful natures. We come face-to-face with our inability to stand as righteous under our own power. We see that our only hope is in a Savior who prays for us that we will not lose our faith.

2. We are stripped of our pride. We realize we cannot stand on our own for even a second. We realize we are not any better than anyone else, including those whose sins are expressly forbidden in the Scriptures. Peter thought he was more courageous than the others – that he was willing to go to prison and be killed for his Lord. When the rooster crowed, he was broken and wept bitterly.

3. We become totally dependant upon God. We realize that we are nothing without Him. We need His grace, His mercy, His strength, His power, His Spirit, His prayers. We realize that only through Him can we make a contribution to the Kingdom of God.

4. We become prepared for greater work in the church and in the Kingdom. Peter had to fall so that God could raise him up again. The falling part was Peter’s doing; the raising part was God’s doing in response to the prayers of Christ so that Peter might do wondrous things for the church and the kingdom.

What do we do, then, when we are tempted to fall into these sins that grip us from time to time? We are told in the Scriptures that we are not to fall into temptation. Yet, we seem to be unable to prevent it. In fact, it is the very falling into temptation that strips us of our pride and prepares us for a life of service.

The question is not so much that of what you do when temptation creeps up on you but how you confront it when you see it cominng. Do we meet temptation head on and boldly confront it, or do we slide in and slide out without much thought? Certainly, there is more thought on the way out than on the way in, isn’t there? Nobody has to tell us that God is watching us. But God’s eye is of less concern to us than that of somebody catching us. The fear of being caught keeps us from falling into temptation, but that has nothing to do with overcoming temptation.

What did Jesus do when He faced temptation? What did He do when He struggled with the will of the Father? Hebrews 5:7 tells us, “During the days of Jesus’ life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the one who could save him from death…” At Gethsemane, He prayed, “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.”

Jesus is tempted to opt out of the suffering. Who wouldn’t be? So He prays. And the Father hears and answers the prayer of His Son. “An angel from heaven appeared to him and strengthened him” (Luke 22:43).

Is it possible that we can pray-in an angel to help us, as God did for Jesus in the wilderness and at Gethsemane? When Elijah was fleeing King Ahab, an angel appeared to him and said, “Get up and eat.” An angel appeared to Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego when they were thrown into the furnace. When Peter was in prison and under the threat of execution from Herod, God sent an angel to rescue him and strengthen the saints who were praying for him.

One minute Jesus is sweating drops of blood and pleading to have the cup of God’s wrath removed from Him. He prays, the angel comes, and the next thing you know He gets up to meet those sent to arrest Him. After struggling with God in prayer, His fear of suffering and death that in the first place brought on the temptation to escape has left Him.

Perhaps the answer for us, then, is that we have a choice between prayer and temptation. That does not mean that people who pray will not fall into temptation. The reason Peter fell, however, was that he was resting in his own ability to stand firm when Jesus was accused. He did not pray. He did not follow the example of Jesus at Gethsemane.

Those sins that keep recurring in our lives – those vices we struggle against day after day, year after year. How do we handle them? The approach Jesus takes is to “Pray that you will not fall into temptation.”

That’s easier said than done, isn’t it? We like to pat ourselves on the back for the progress we have made in the Christian life. And then it happens again! We fall off the wagon. Then, when others find out that we are not living up to what we pretend to be, we fall even further.

Try this theory on for size. Jesus seems to be implying here that Peter’s fall was to strengthen the brothers: “When you have turned back, strengthen the brothers.” Is it possible that God uses our falling to strengthen the church by sharing with others our experience of His abiding grace?

Greed and Power

Rev. Stan Moody, PhD

June 8, 2008

2 Samuel 9:1-7
Luke 22:1-6, 24-30

In the 22^nd Chapter of Luke, Jesus has a hard time wrapping up the last phase of his earthly relationship with His disciples. He is about to leave them for 3 days and will usher in a brand new phase about which He has been informing them all along but that they don’t seem to get. They cannot wrap their minds around spiritual kingdoms and Comforters who are with them but cannot be seen, touched and heard. They are earthbound people – OT people who cannot comprehend anything they cannot see, touch or hear.

Their proclamation that Jesus is the Son of the living God is meaningless outside the context of the restoration of the physical nation-state of Israel. To a Jew at that time, carrying the Kingdom of God within you would make no sense. It would be like telling Don Smith that you don’t need sap to make syrup.

There are at least 3 important points that are made in our lesson this morning from the 22^nd chapter of Luke – points that ought to attract our attention. I will take them one at a time and then attempt to bring them together at the end.

The first point that Luke makes is that greed in a Christian is deadly. He lays that out with a simple statement that we might just brush over with no second thoughts: v. 3, “Then Satan entered Judas called Iscariot.” That seems like a no-brainer, doesn’t it? We know what Judas is about to do, and what he is about to do cannot be done unless under the influence of Satan. He conferred with the chief priests and officers how he might betray Jesus to them. They were glad and agreed to give him money. Is it news that Satan entered into Judas?

Maybe not, but it tells us a number of things.

First, if Satan entered Judas at that moment, we have to infer that Judas was not running around all the time under the influence of Satan – that in order to do this dastardly deed, he must have a personal visitation by the Devil.

How can this be? Did Satan simply master a good Judas, or was Judas already walking in step with Satan, who simply decided that now was the time? “If Satan’s final defeat was dependent on the death and resurrection of Jesus, why would Satan even do something that would lead to His own defeat?

A more puzzling question is one with which we have wrestled for some weeks now as we have considered how God sometimes permits the grossest of sins to occur in the interest of advancing His will: “Where was God when this happened?”

Judas was not exactly an innocent bystander when Satan entered him, was he? In fact, John 12:6 tells us that Judas was a thief. The groundwork had already been laid for Satan’s control over Judas through his greed for money. When Judas complained that Mary had wasted money in anointing Jesus with a precious ointment, John comments, “He said this, not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief, and having charge of the moneybag he used to help himself to what was put into it.”

We get incensed that Judas would steal the little bit of money that Jesus and the disciples were able to save for their food and lodging. Yet, we have heard recently of Christian leaders who used ministerial gifts to buy $39,000 worth of clothes a year at one store and send their kids on a $29,000 trip to the Bahamas, drive a white Lexus and a red Mercedes. Judas sat beside Jesus at the Last Supper probably with his pious face. In fact, he leaned on Him at the Last Supper. He had cast out demons in Jesus’ name. Yet, he loved the power and pleasures that money could buy.

Greed was all the opening Satan needed. Because there are no innocent people, Satan does not take innocent people captive. Instead, Satan has power where there are sinful passions. Judas was a lover of money, and he covered it with a phony, external relationship with Jesus. So he sold Him for 30 pieces of silver, the price of a slave gored by an ox.

But why would Satan want to lead Judas to betray Jesus? When Jesus began His ministry, Satan tried for 40 days and nights in the desert to turn Him away from the path of suffering and sacrifice. He tried to entice Jesus not to walk the path of suffering and death but to use His power to escape suffering, just as He is enticing Christians today to escape suffering from daily cross bearing. “If you are the Son of God, you have all the right in the world to reign. Whatever you do, don’t go to the cross.”

You will recall the time when Peter rebuked Jesus for saying that He would suffer many things and be killed. “This will never happen to you, Lord.” Jesus did not thank Peter but said to him, “Get behind me Satan! You are a hindrance to me. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man” (Matt 16:23). Hindering Jesus from going to the cross was the work of Satan because it would be His undoing. Peter became his agent.

Here Satan is, entering into Judas, leading him to betray Jesus. One writer suggests that Satan saw His efforts in diverting Jesus from His mission as failing and concluded that there was no way to stop Him. He decided that if he couldn’t stop Him, He would make it so ugly and painful and heartbreaking that there would be enough doubt to cast a pall over Jesus’ sacrifice – death by denial and abandonment. If He couldn’t stop it, He would drag others into it and do as much damage as he could. The best way to do that was to enter a person whom Jesus loved and to display the cowardice and faithlessness of the Disciples.

Where was God when this happened? The short answer is that that is a question we should neither ask nor attempt to answer. My opinion and yours does not matter here. All that matters is that the details surrounding the death of Jesus were prophesied hundreds of years before they happened. “You will all fall away because of me this night. For it is written, ‘I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be scattered’” (Zechariah 13:7).

The prophesies tell us that God foreknew, did not prevent and therefore included in His
Plan that His Son would be rejected, hated, abandoned, betrayed, denied, spit upon, flogged, mocked and killed. God could have stopped them, but He chose not to because it was His sovereign will that they take place.

All these things were evil – sin. Yet, God brought them all to pass: “It was the will of the Lord to crush him; he has put him to grief” (Isaiah 53:10). The only conclusion to which we can come is one that is too terrible for us to admit – that the invisible hand and plan of God are sometimes behind the most spectacular sins in the universe. In a perverse way, John Hagee may be right when he suggests that the Holocaust was allowed by God to happen. Where he goes wrong is when he begins to glibly interpret why, as though he could know the mind of God.

The simplest of answers is that if God were not the main Actor in the death of Jesus, then the death of Jesus could not save anyone from their sins, and we would be doomed to Hell.

Greed, then, was all the opening that Satan needed to facilitate His entry into Judas and trigger God’s divine plan for His Son. At the Last Supper, Jesus intended to drive that point home to His 11 faithful disciples. Greed has no place in the church. It invites not only the presence of Satan but the dominion of Satan.

Right in the middle of all this, Jesus tells Judas to hurry up and do what he must do. Judas goes out into the night, and the Disciples lose the focus of what is going on. They begin to squabble among themselves (v. 24).

The squabble concerned who of the twelve was considered by the general public to be the greatest – the most important. They all wanted the acclaim, praise and love of the crowds. Not only were they arguing about who was the greatest, they were arguing about who ought to be the greatest. They all wanted to be No. 1 – Jesus’ right hand man. When Jesus became king, they wanted to be His chief of staff or His Vice President, perhaps.

These things do not happen in a vacuum. Jesus had just created the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. He was preparing His disciples for the events of the next few days. He has made clear to them that what they should focus on was not power, position, authority and glory, but on His atoning death and Resurrection.

One of the worst things that can happen in any organization is staff members competing with each other, undercutting each other and criticizing each other. Imagine how Jesus felt when His disciples began to argue over who was or was to be the greatest. Jesus was about to be the object of the greatest crime in human history, and His disciples are re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

Jesus has told them that the ship of Judaism is about to hit an iceberg, and they are running around re-arranging the furniture. He has just given them a graphic lesson on greed with the behavior of Judas, and they themselves are consumed with power and position. Apparently, then, power and authority rank right up there with greed as one of the deadly sins of the church. Jesus gives them a 3-pronged rebuke for such behavior.

1. The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those who exercise authority over them call themselves Benefactors. But you are not to be like that.

Presidents, CEO’s, Prime Ministers, business tycoons lord it over their subjects. They issue commands, give orders and tell people what to do and how to do it. They are the bosses. Sometimes, as in our presidential elections, these earthly rulers try to enhance their reputations by making gestures of good will. The Romans used sometimes to invite the public to the Coliseum for free entertainment. Sometimes they would distribute bread or enlist the armies for a public work project. By doing these good things, they would be called Benefactors.

“But you are not like that,” Jesus told them. Followers of Jesus are not to be concerned with position and acclaim and authority and praise. In 1 Pt 5, Peter writes, “Be shepherds of God’s flock…not lording it over those entrusted to you.”

In Jesus’ second rebuke, He points to Himself by saying, “But I am among you as one who serves.” Another account of the Last Supper has Jesus getting up from the meal, taking off his outer clothing, wrapping a towel around His waist, pouring water into a basin and washing His disciples’ feet. Imagine this scene: They are arguing among themselves about who was and would be the greatest. Jesus gets up quietly, puts on the garb of a servant and proceeds to wash and dry their feet.

This was the kind of work a slave did for his master. It was degrading and humiliating. Peter rebels against this and insists that he should wash Jesus’ feet, whereupon Jesus tells him that if he will not let Him wash his feet, he would have no part of Him.

As I have stayed over in Rockland on Friday evenings, I have seen the Clint Eastwood film, Line of Fire, a couple of times. Frank Horrigan had protected the life of the President of the US for more than 3 decades but froze in shock on that day in Dallas in 1963 when Kennedy was assassinated. For the next 30 years, he wrestled with the question, “Can I take a bullet for the President?”

Those of you who have seen the movie remember that at the last split second, he throws himself into the path of an assassin’s bullet to save the Chief Executive and thereby redeems himself and retires.

At Calvary, Jesus took a bullet for each one of us. What He went through on the cross was humiliating, but it was necessary in order to take the assassin’s bullet intended for us. Therefore, it is not we who deserve the power, honor and glory, but it is Jesus who deserves all of it. Yet, He says, “I am among you as one who serves.”

If Jesus can serve, how dare His disciples argue as to which of them was considered to be the greatest.

His 3^rd rebuke of their dispute had to do with this incredible statement in vs. 29 and 30:

I confer on you a kingdom, just as my Father conferred one on me, so that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom and sit on thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.

Jesus is making several points here. First, it is nonsense to argue over greatness in the Kingdom of God because the Kingdom of God belongs not to us but to Christ. The glory is His; the power is His; the authority it His; the greatness is His. He has earned it, not by making some kind of power play, but because of His life and death as a slave – a servant.

It is unnecessary to argue about greatness. It is unnecessary because Jesus’ followers will share in the glory, power, authority and greatness that belong to the crucified, risen Lord. This is not a competitive sport. It is a gift given to all believers. Because His glory, power, authority and greatness are infinite, there is more than enough to go around for everyone.

We read in the OT this morning the story of David settling his accounts just after he succeeded King Saul to the throne of Judah. He could have wiped out his enemies in one stroke and would have been justified in doing so. Instead, he asked if there were anyone left of the family of his friend Jonathan, Saul’s son, who had been killed in battle.

His servants found a son of Jonathan, Mephibosheth, crippled from birth. David brought Mephiboseth to the palace and had him eat from the king’s table from then on. He did this because of his love for Jonathan.

Like Mephibosheth, we, too, are cripples in God’s sight. Yet God, because of Jesus’ love for us, lets us eat at the King’s table. It has nothing to do with how good we have been or how wonderful we are, or how spiritual we are or how much Scripture we can quote. Instead, it is a gracious gift of God, freely bestowed without merit.

By conferring on His disciples the Kingdom of God, Jesus makes clear that the Kingdom becomes both a present reality and a future hope. His instructions are found in vs. 26: “…the greatest among you should be like the youngest, and the one who rules like the one who serves.”

The kind of service to which Jesus calls us is the kind that one does for free and does obediently and to the best of our ability. In that time, it was the youngest that performed the lowliest service. Yet, Jesus says that the greatest should be the lowliest, as He demonstrates by His own example.

I marvel, often, over the life of service lived by those of you who are here this morning. As a businessman, I think in terms of remuneration. It cheers my heart to know that you take the time to visit those among us who are ill and troubled in spirit. That is not a natural attitude with me. But that is the mindset of Christ. We are here to serve, and service demands humility. There is no room for the executive or presidential style of decision-making within the church. There is no room for those within the church, including the pastor, to give orders, make demands and issue decrees.

I have a son and daughter-in-law who earned their PhD’s at William and Mary College in Virginia. I am told that at the annual homecoming, many of the returning alumni wear white jackets – even those who have achieved the status as movers and shakers. Why the white jackets? To show that they were among the many students who earned their way through college by waiting on tables. Their white jackets symbolize a willingness to serve in a not-so-glamorous job.

As you know, I have struggled with the lack of focus on the part of the Protestant church in prison. They want and want and want. They want a shepherd; they want a prayer group; they want a fiery preacher; they want their Rapture eschatology. In other words, they are looking for me to meet their needs. You know enough about me to know that I don’t go for that. When I have been told in the past that “I want to be fed,” I cringe.

The church will become the church only when its people stop saying, “I want to be fed” and start asking, “Who can I feed?” Another way of saying it is to say, “Ask not what my church can do for me, but ask what I can do for my church.”

Greed, power and authority have no place in the church of Jesus Christ and in fact are only openings for Satan to divide and destroy God’s work. Instead, the words of Jesus ring out to us, “But I am among you as one who serves.” “Follow me.”