Fight the Good Fight!

By:
Stan Moody

September 18, 2008

1Timothy 6:3-21

In the 6th chapter of 1st Timothy, the Apostle Paul picks up on the dangers that the fledgling 1st Century Christian community faces in attempting to avoid persecution from Rome. Timothy is a disciple of Paul’s and a leader in the church that Paul had established in Ephesus, Turkey.

Ephesus was a center of sea trade and one of the most influential cites in the eastern part of the Roman Empire. Paul had ministered there for 3 years and was warning Timothy to guard against the tendency for the church to conform to their surroundings and fall victim to false teachers.

The church at Ephesus was credited by God in Revelation 2 for its good deeds, its hard work and its perseverance. It had successfully built into its culture an intolerance for “wicked men.” Somehow, unlike the church in America today, the church at Ephesus has successfully resisted false teachers:

I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance. I know that you cannot tolerate wicked men, that you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them false. You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name, and have not grown weary.

Yet, I hold this against you. You have forsaken your first love. Remember the heights from which you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come and remove your lampstand from its place.

Over a long period of time, the church at Ephesus had refused to tolerate sin among its members. They had resisted the widespread sexual practices of those who worshipped the goddess Artemis. In a world of tolerance such as that of the Roman Empire and the American Empire, it is popular to be open-minded toward sins, calling them personal choices or alternative lifestyles. That is all well and good. The church, however, must police itself.

When the church begins to tolerate an unrepentant spirit in its own congregations, it lowers its standards and compromises its witness. It is one thing to favor civil rights for everyone. It is another thing to favor civil rights within the church to the extent we become overly concerned with not offending anyone. The church is designed to police itself. Ephesus apparently had done a good job at policing itself morally and ethically, but it had fallen way short of the mission and goal of the Church of Jesus Christ.

I have often reminded you that “judgment begins,” not in the world in which we live and make our livings, but in the House of God. Repentance begins, not in evangelistic rallies but in the church among God’s people. We come here not to impress ourselves and each other with our righteousness but to live out our brokenness before God so that He may demonstrate His strength through our weaknesses.

Where the Ephesians were failing was that they had resisted sin out of their pride for their own righteous living. They had lost their zeal for God. They had become a busy church, doing much to benefit themselves and their community. Their work, however, was no longer motivated by their love for God.

We are going to explore this morning how fighting the fight against sin is apostasy if we are not fighting the “good fight of faith.”

Fighting seems to be a popular pastime in human history. We spend our lives fighting to gain a foothold in society. Not only do we lurch from war to war; we fight our parents while growing up; we fight our government; we fight against authority of any kind, and we fight to make a living and to ensure our comfort.

Young and old; high and low; rich and poor; educated and uneducated; we all have a very deep interest in fighting. You have only to take a look at the passion for sports in this country, and you can see the passion for fighting. The bloodier the sport, the more interest we have.

Our divorce courts are filled with fighting couples. People are suing each other over nothing. Sexual preferences are a cause for fighting among ourselves. This disgusting political season is just one more example of people fighting each other in order to become our Messiah-for-a-day. In the meantime, the Church of Jesus Christ is fighting for a piece of the power pie so that it might outlaw a short list of sins. It is fighting the fight of the damned rather than the good fight of faith.

I stand before you this morning as one who has been engaged in many fights over my lifetime. When I awaken in the middle of the night, I cringe over where some of those fights have taken me. Rather than the fight of faith, it often has been about fighting for a position at the top of the hill. I am reminded of that old saying, “too soon old and too late smart.” But then, I am energized by another saying, “It’s never too late!”

My time at the prison has made me aware that I had never taken Satan vey seriously. I have met him very up close and personal at the prison. I am inclined to lay all my past fighting at the feet of failing to take Satan seriously.

We as Christians and Americans have a hard time adhering to the words of Jesus, “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world.” We have a hard time wrapping our minds and lives around this because, let’s face it, there is much about America to be loved. We tend too easily to engage not the good fight of faith but the bad fight of worldly passion and success, thinking that success is the mark of God’s blessing on a faithful people.

The news the Christians do not want to hear is that the good fight of faith is quietly carried out within human hearts in little groups of seekers of the Kingdom of God such as in the NMMH Church. It is then reflected through those hearts to a world that seeks contentment that only true godliness brings to the broken. You can pass all the laws you want. You can crusade for justice. You can give yourself to missions and good works. But the bottom line is that for most of us our final parting shot is a quarter of a column in the local newspaper, a loving epitaph by folks who will now spend our money and finally the eternal Judgment over whether we fought the good fight of faith.

We are told in the Scriptures to “Put on the whole armor of God.” That is the good fight of faith that has nothing to do with fighting against the laws that our pagan nation has put into place. By failing to take Satan seriously, we are failing to take up arms and therefore become complacent Christians with sloppy discipleship.

We may be good church members; we may be married in a Christian service; we may be buried as Christians when we die. But, have we fought the good fight of faith?

In 1 Timothy 6, Paul lays out the characteristics of waging a fight of faith within the church. Those who are under authority – employees and prisoners, for example – are to consider their masters worthy of full respect, whether Christians or not, so that God’s name will not be slandered (v. 1). Paul condemns false teachers who are conceited while understanding nothing (v. 2), those who quarrel over words and cause friction, who rob the truth and think that godliness is a path to financial success. That’s where we get all this frenetic business about the Second Coming and Armageddon and the health and wealth gospel. False teachers!

Paul reminds us that “godliness with contentment is great gain” (v. 6). How easy it is for any of us to worry about what is going to happen tomorrow. We spend our lives fighting and worrying, don’t we? The American financial system seems to be falling apart. We may be on the verge of another Great Depression. If not, we may be facing runaway inflation with all this debt we are accumulating - $5Trillion worth of national debt. With the bailout of AIG, we citizens of the US have assumed their $10 Trillion worth of debt. What if it all collapses? Where will we be then?

In all this chaos and confusion, we somehow are supposed to be content with food and clothing, for “we brought nothing into this world, and cannot take anything out of it” (v. 7). “People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction” (v. 8). “Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs” (v. 10).

As I was growing up, I came to the conclusion that the simple people with whom I worshipped were putting too much emphasis on faith and not enough on their own preparation. They had not fought to be in a position of power so that through their lifestyles they could be more effective witnesses. I was dead wrong! That was putting the cart before the horse. You don’t begin to fight the good fight of faith after you have gotten the credentials. The credentials may be helpful but are secondary to fighting the good fight of faith. The fight is not for credentials; the fight is for your own soul and the very soul of Christ’s church.

“Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share” (vs. 17, 18).

The so-called American Dream makes it easy not to trust God, particularly when we assume as I did as a young person that the evidence of God’s blessing on a life was success. “If these people are so righteous,” I thought, “how come they are not successful?” That’s the health and wealth gospel that robs us of the truth and makes us believe that godliness is the path to financial success (v. 5).

John Piper ties all this wasted energy to the warning of the Scriptures against covetousness. When you think about it, every message in the Bible points to the danger of covetousness. The entire Ten Commandments are about covetousness – desiring something so much that you lose your contentment in God and your deep and abiding compassion for your neighbor. You fail to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength because you want something else or someone else. You fail to love your neighbor because you are too busy grasping something for yourself. You take other people’s property, other people’s spouses and other people’s possessions because you want them for yourself. Paul counters with, “Godliness with contentment is great gain.”

Covetousness is the breeding ground for a thousand other sins. The Church of Jesus Christ has turned away from its first love because it wants to be like other people – doesn’t want to be considered as a peculiar people and does not want to be unsuccessful or appear weak.

To fight the good fight of faith, then, is to run away from the trap of covetousness. When you see it coming in the guise of an opportunity for “making a difference,” evaluate it and run away from it with faith that God will help. When you see it coming in the form of a new experience from a brochure or a catalogue, run away from it with faith that God will help.

Biblical history tells us that even though Israel pursued the law in the same way the Christian Right is pursuing the law today, she did not attain it because she pursued it by works rather than by faith. “Works” attained by the law is the kind of warfare that is not by faith. It robs us of the contentment that is ours by true godliness. It is condemned in the Scriptures, and yet America is deeply engaged in that very kind of warfare. Christian worship, if it is not entertaining and condemning of what those evil non-Christians are doing out there, is not worship today.

How can we possibly fight if, at the same time, we are content? That’s a good question. What it suggests is that the fight is against our natures. Somehow, we cannot fight unless we are content. Caving into our natures may make us fighters in one sense, but it robs us of our contentment. In order for the church to be triumphant over sin in the world, every one of us must fight the good fight of faith within ourselves and within our communities of worship. Taking the fight to the legislature is the fight of works, not faith. The fight belongs within every one of us daily.

We are called to be soldiers and must arise in the morning ready to fight the trend within ourselves to make the world and its temporary benefits our true home. The fight within the daily life of every Christian is three-fold – the world, the flesh and the devil. Those are the enemies against whom we must put on the whole armor of God.

To fight the world is to resist daily the love of the world’s good things, to overcome fear of the world’s laughter or condemnation of belief, to squelch our desire to be accepted by the world, to stifle our secret wish not to be different and to empty us of our fear of being extreme in our views.

Christianity is an extreme religion. It is the religion of a peculiar people. It is a radical religion that flies in the face of every popular instinct. It is a religion that you should not accept unless and until you are ready to fight.

The flesh is the second fight we must engage. That requires that we face squarely our own weaknesses by struggling daily in prayer. Do you know your weaknesses, or are you assuming that you are disciplined enough to keep them hidden? They are not hidden from God. Paul cries out in Romans 7, “I see a law in my members warring against the law of my mind and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin in my nature. Oh wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death?”

Paul, with all his education, training and 3-yrs of fellowship in the desert with the Spirit is decrying his own weaknesses and acknowledging his total dependence on Jesus Christ for deliverance. Are we merely putting a cover on our weaknesses, or are we bringing them to God in prayer daily?

The devil is the third fight we must engage daily. He is not dead. Ever since the fall of Adam and Eve, he has been restlessly walking to and fro on the earth working toward your ruin and mine. He never slumbers nor sleeps. While you and I work hard for our piece of the American Dream, Satan uses the American Dream to offer us a false contentment and to divert us from God. He is a murderer and a liar, sometimes suggesting superstition or luck; sometimes suggesting infidelity; always waging a campaign against our souls.

We make a mistake when we underestimate or underrate Satan. We make a mistake when we minimize Hell. We make a mistake when we view Heaven as a boring future. I know because I have made all those mistakes and continue to do so at one level or another. We are here to help each other engage in the good fight of faith.

We make a mistake when we fall into a comfortable religiosity. The overriding issue of whether or not we want to be Christians has nothing to do with making a personal choice among a myriad of religious choices open to us. It has to do with whether or not we are prepared to fight for our own souls and trust God in faith to be victorious.

We eat, we drink, we dress well, we work, we amuse ourselves, we get money, we spend money and we go through a round of formal religious services once a week. But the great spiritual warfare involves vigilance, agonies, anxieties, battles and contests within. The worst chains of slavery to the world and the things of the world are those lurid attractions of the world embellished by Satan and not felt by us as prisoners because we have been desensitized to their presence.

The Christian good fight of faith is totally unlike the conflicts with which we are accustomed in our daily living in the world. It does not depend on a strong arm, a quick eye or a swift foot. It is not waged with weapons of human goodness but with spiritual weapons unseen by the unfaithful. Success in the Kingdom of God is not reflected in our bank accounts or our resumes but, instead, depends entirely on believing, especially when there is no physical evidence of that success.

In the way of encouragement, I should hasten to say to you this morning that while this is a private fight, it also is a community fight. We are here to help each other arm ourselves for war. Do you find yourself falling short of the Kingdom of God? Do you find your flesh warring against your spirit and your spirit against your flesh? Are you conscience of two enemies at war contending for your allegiance? If so, that is a good thing. That says that you are no friend of Satan. That says that Satan, who does not assault his own people, has keyed on you because he wants to discourage you in your walk with his enemy, God.

Anything better than apathy, stagnation, deadness of spirit and indifference puts you in a better state than most Christians today, many of whom have no feeling at all except to fight against what their unbelieving neighbor is doing.

Do not be discouraged that you feel that you do not have enough faith or have less than that of others. Faith is a matter of degree in everyone. All people do not believe alike. Every Christian has ebbs and flows of faith and believes more at one time than at another. But fight according to the faith you have been given and pray for faith to wage the good fight. Those who have the most faith will always be the happiest, most content soldiers.

Worldly wars that are sometimes necessary are always evil. They usher into eternity those who are totally unprepared for Judgment. They bring out the worst passions of mankind. They destroy and waste property and bring out racism and bigotry even among Christians. They fill the peaceful hours of life with the mourning of widows and orphans. They spread poverty, taxation and national distress. They derange the order of society and interrupt the witness of the Gospel. They direct our energies toward killing and physical results rather than toward good deeds and spiritual results. Every Christian ought to be crying out, “Lord, give us peace in our time!”

The “good fight,” however is quite another thing. We have the best of generals – the Lord Jesus Christ. He cares for the weakest and the poorest among us. He guides and directs us daily. His eye is on His people. He will never leave us nor forsake us. He never rejects those who come to Him in faith. No soldiers of Christ are ever lost, missing in action or left dead on the battlefield.

It is a good fight because it does an enormous amount of good to the soul. It calls forth the best things of life. It promotes humility and charity. It lessens selfishness and worldliness. It encourages people to put their affection on things above. It does good in the world. Wherever true Christian’s live, they are a blessing. They raise the standard of religion and morality by their lives and their contentment while the world is falling apart around them.

Fighting the good fight of faith means to engage the struggle without seeing the end - taking on the campaign without seeing the reward; reaching for the cross without the crown. This is hard, thankless piece of work that leaves us not looking very righteous to others but being content.

The time is always short. The Kingdom is at hand. The Lord who has come will appear again. There is urgency about this fight of faith.

I need your help to engage this fight with courage not seen in the traditional church today. You need my help to fight and overcome complacency. We need each other’s help to be prepared to live as a peculiar people, aliens and strangers in this land but adopted children of the Most High God.

We need each other’s help to fight the good fight of faith and to lay hold of eternal life to which each of us has been called. We have been called; it is time to answer the call.

Regression Progression!

By:
Stan Moody

September 11, 2008
Matthew 18:1-11

Two things there are that seem certain in this life besides death and taxes. The first is that when we are children, we can’t wait to grow up so that we can take over our own lives. The age of 21 seems to a kid to be the point at which all our hopes and dreams are realized and we are now positioned to the long trip down hill. We get to age 21, and we begin to realize that the toughest challenges yet lie ahead. Every decade, even when you are 80, becomes a challenge. We humans forever chafe at being under the thumb of authority, and to us progress means moving into the next decade as quickly as possible.

That is, perhaps, the point at which Jesus speaks to us in this 18th chapter of Matthew, v. 3: I tell you the truth. Unless you change and become as little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. The only answer is the one we give to Peggy Lee, “No; Peggy, that is not all there is. There is the business of becoming somebody – my career and raising a family that will be a credit to me.” As we approach 30, though, our goals and our dreams become empty as we attain them, and Jesus begins to speak more loudly: I tell you the truth. Unless you change and become as little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven! What part of “never” don’t we understand?

The great irony in all this is that at the very time we are in progression, we begin to realize that we also are in regression – back to the earth, another certainty. We are racing toward our own demise, and we put on a full press to fulfill ourselves. Jesus begins to speak more loudly: I tell you the truth. Unless you change and become as little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven!

The peace that God promises to those who seek first the kingdom of God and the righteousness of Christ is that the only progression worth having is the that of the road less traveled – the narrow way of the Kingdom of God. Some wise person once said, “All sin goes back to ‘I want to be somebody.’” The Bible teaches that the first requirement of getting the things we need is to first seek after the Kingdom of God. Jesus tells us, however, that in order even to enter the Kingdom of God, we have to go back to the starting point – become as little children.

We will be thinking this morning about what Jesus was intending for us to hear in that message.

Last Sunday, we had a visitor from a local fundamentalist church that is growing by leaps and bounds. During the prayer-request time, he asked to speak and, essentially, invited you to become saved. This was in reaction to the perception locally that you have never heard the Gospel here at the NMMH Church. I thought it was one of the rudest, most judgmental things I had ever seen happen in a church. However, it encouraged within me some soul searching of my own, giving rise to the sermon this morning.

A couple of other things happened recently. On Friday afternoons, there is a woman who comes into the prison to visit her husband. I am told that she corresponds with some 900 inmates across the country. She does not know who I am, but I have figured out who she is by association.

One Friday, I walked into the lobby deep in thought, and her voice rang out through a room full of people, “Sir, you need to smile more!” Is that it? The joy of the Lord is reflected in a smile? Is that what we have come to in this country – that happiness is wrapped up in how we appear to other people? Or was this just another rude, boundary-crashing member of the Christian Right?

Finally, the last object lesson – Brandon Drewry. I have been working with Brandon Drewry for months now. He was homeless, living in Portland’s little Bowery – the Bayside region. He had been in town for 3 days and was arrested and tried 27 months later for gross sexual assault on a street woman. There was not a scrid of physical evidence. He was defended by the public defender system, convicted and sentenced to 30 years solely on the testimony of two crack/cocaine addicts.

I thought Brandon’s story needed to be told – the failure of the public defender system and the public outcry to get the homeless out of our sight. Whether he did it or not, I don’t know and don’t really care. The point is that at age 47, unless he gets a sentence reduction or clemency, he will be going out feet first because not only is he mentally ill; he has been diagnosed with PTSD and Hepatitis A.

His previous life was as a cab driver and a petty drug dealer in Daytona Beach, FL. I have tried to make him understand that the Kingdom of God precedes anything he does to gain a legal remedy. His answer is that he is a good person because he has never done anything to hurt anyone. In other words, he may have been guilty of misfeasance, but he is not guilty of malfeasance. He wants a chance to prove that he is inherently good but sees the Kingdom of God as a diversion from the goal of his life – getting out of prison. He sees no harm to anyone in selling dope.

I tell you the truth. Unless you change and become as little children, you will not enter the kingdom of God!

When we think about the qualities of a child, what comes immediately to mind are “vulnerable, dependent, teachable and focused.” Those are the easy ones.

The context of this message by Jesus to His disciples is important for us. First, this is not a generic message like the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus has just been asked a question by his disciples, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” As they often did, they had been arguing among themselves as to which one of them would be top dog when Jesus established His kingdom in Jerusalem, an event that was never going to happen.

That seems very adult, doesn’t it? “Who is in charge? Who is going to be President?” Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven on earth?”

Bear in mind that these people to whom Jesus is talking are not neophytes who have never heard the Gospel. They have been with Him now for some time – nearly 3 years. Under those conditions, we would think that they were already citizens of the Kingdom of God. They had given up everything to follow Him. They had heard all the best sermons on the love of God ever preached in the history of mankind. They knew that Jesus was the way to salvation. Yet, there was this one thing.

They were arguing about which one of them would be the greatest in a Kingdom they would not even enter unless they changed, regressed and became as little children. They were jockeying for position, like a bunch of egocentric politicians: “Who is the greatest?” To merely enter the Kingdom required that they give up jockeying for position.

With respect to our day, you might say that the disciples to whom Jesus was speaking were professing Christians – those, perhaps, who had repeated the Sinner’s Prayer. To our visitor last week who thought that the way into the kingdom of heaven was by locking in the precise date you were saved – to mark it on the calendar – perhaps he has forgotten that while the kingdom of God is about accepting Christ as Lord and Savior, there is a little-mentioned other piece of business: “He who perseveres (endures) to the end will be saved” (Matt. 24:13). Just as the Kingdom of God is present already but not yet fulfilled, so our salvation is present already but not yet fulfilled.

The path to fulfillment is to change, to humble ourselves and to become as little children, making certain that we do not “look down on one of these little ones” along the way. That is the message of Matthew 18.

OK; what does it mean to someone already schooled in the way of grace to become as a little child? I had the advantage of the classic sermons of George Whitfield to help us get through this “regression progression.” George Whitfield was the preacher who, along with Jonathan Edwards and the Wesley’s, kicked off the First Great Awakening of the early 18th Century.

I would be quick to point out here that, while it has taken each of us decades to become adults, it will perhaps take us decades to reverse the direction. I tell you that because “regression progression,” like the victorious Kingdom of God, is a process, not an instant reversal. That is why perseverance to the end is a critical component of salvation.

At the same time we are grasping for some degree of personal power and glory – those things that elude most kids – we are haunted by the reality that we are hurtling toward our own demise and then the Judgment. We want to be certain how to stand up at the Judgment and hear the words, “Well done, good and faithful servant; enter into the joys of your Lord.”

Brandon Drewry’s formula is too risky – “Do no harm.” Our visitor’s formula is equally risky – memorize the date you were saved. Since only some 4% of those who go down to the altar at evangelistic rallies actually stick with the long-range program, celebrating your salvation date is pretty risky for something that will not be declared as finished until the “end” of our lives.

To put a smile on your face, showing the world how happy you are since you accepted Jesus, is also very risky. There are a lot of mental patients who wear smiles on their faces. Sometimes a smile can be a barrier against real communication. It can be a put-down to someone wrestling with real problems. It can be a defense mechanism to keep other people at bay. Chances are, it has nothing to do with entering the Kingdom of God.

These are the things that people do who have a Christ in their heads but no Christ in their hearts. Yet, Jesus says, I tell you the truth. Unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

The words of Jesus imply that before you or I can have any well-grounded hope of being happy in a future state, there must be some great, notable and amazing change that passes over our souls and dramatically alters our allegiances. While we watch our bodies change, why is it that we pay so little attention to changing our souls so that our temper, our conduct and our habits become progressively centered on God and His Kingdom?

Jesus is not telling us to go back to being a blank piece of paper. Anyone who has raised children knows that they are not sinless by any stretch. Kids are conceived and born into sin. Any parent who is paying attention will be able to tell you that if you do not understand that, and if you do not discover the overwhelming urge of self-will in a child, your child is headed for big trouble, and you are headed for big grief.

Jesus is not telling us, therefore, that in order to enter the Kingdom of God we must become innocent, naïve and sinless – far from it.

On the other hand, while kids are certainly innocent compared with grownups, they have hearts that are sensual and minds that are carnal, and they lie with impunity much of the time. How many of us as parents have spent hours trying to unravel one of their lies. Does Jesus want us to become like that? I think He assumes that we have already taken lying to an art form. No; there is something more to this matter of becoming as little children.

Let’s not forget that the context to this statement by Jesus was a dispute over which of the disciples was going to be the greatest in the kingdom – a very adult exercise. The child-object lesson, then, is not only Jesus’ antidote to power and ambition but is the key to turning the corner from “me” and my legacy to God and His glory. In this time when our nation is preoccupied with change, Jesus offers change that is eternal and rejects the lust after power and ambition.

On the other hand, this has nothing to do with closing our businesses, resigning our positions on the school board and retiring to the woods, turning into hermits. The problem with that remedy is that our sinful hearts follow there with us. Christianity is a social religion. We have to stay engaged in whatever it is we are doing.

What Jesus is telling us here, I think, is that while we are not to go out of this world, if we are truly converted, or changed, we will be loose from this world. Though we are engaged in it through our careers, our families and our relationships, yet if we are real Christians we will be loosely tied to the world wherein we raise our families and earn our livings. Ask a child about presidents and senators and representatives and bishops, and he will have no idea what you are talking about because he is loose to the world – loosey-goosey, so to speak. Children live in the world but are restricted to their own authority structures. That is where God wants us to be – to live in the world but to owe our allegiance to the authority structure that He has appointed for us.

Be loose from the world but aware of our Eternal Father, God.

Another way in which Jesus says we must change and become as little children is that we must be aware of our weaknesses. It is the characteristic of adulthood that we long to get to the position where we don’t need anyone. We call that freedom. Jesus is telling us to go back to the kind of dependency that seeks God’s guidance in every aspect of our lives. We step off the worldly treadmill when we confess Jesus Christ as Lord. We step off into the great unknown, guided by the Holy Spirit. Never have we been more vulnerable since we were children.

Are children aware of their weaknesses? Yes! Must they be led by the hand? Yes! The way to the Kingdom of God is to let go of our exalted opinions of ourselves. If we are rich and lack nothing and are proud of it, we are inwardly poor. Like little children who will gladly give up their hand to be guided by a parent, so must real Christians give up their hearts, their understanding, their will and their affections to be guided by the Word of God, the Providence of God and the Spirit of God.

As little children look on themselves as ignorant, so must we look upon ourselves as ignorant because we have taken on the eternal mysteries of the Kingdom of God. The Apostle Paul, who was a rising star in ecclesiastical circles, said this about himself: “Unto me, who am the least of all saints, is this grace given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ” (Ephesians 3:8). Paul’s conversion required of him that he consider all his previous accomplishments and credentials as dung.

Little children are guileless. That is to say, they are vulnerable in the sense that they lack cunning in dealing with others. We who profess Jesus Christ as Lord must also become guileless. That does not mean that we ought not to be watchful and careful or that we ought to expose ourselves to every assault. What it means is that we ought to pray for the wisdom of a serpent and yet be as harmless as a dove. We ought to take the knowledge that we have gained from being an adult and apply it harmlessly to every circumstance of our lives.

Are you one of God’s children? Then deal with God as your little children have dealt with you. As soon as they want anything, or if their body hurts, have they not run to you as a parent? Does the evil of this world trouble you? Run to God! Does the world trouble you? Go tell your Father about it. “As a father pities his children, so will the Lord pity them that fear him.”

What you should be seeing from this little object lesson that Jesus gave to His disciples is that there is for us a sea change in attitude in this business of joining the Kingdom of God. Perhaps our visiting friend from last week was inclined to think that your date of conversion was the most important thing in your life. Unless it is accompanied by a “regression progression,” however, it is a fake conversion. Repeating a Sinner’s Prayer or being baptized into a church is easy to do. Regressing back to a little child is a conscious and painful rejection of all that we have spent our lives trying to overcome. It is much easier to go through the motions of religion than it is to be broken from the limitations and dependencies of childhood.

Life in the Kingdom of God is tough and lonely at times, and there are very few who are willing to take that journey. There is, however, one more warning about becoming as a little child.

God is not a willy-nilly parent. He is a jealous God who loves his children too much to spare the rod. God chastens those He loves. He teaches us to pray for the qualities of childhood – humility, faith, love and grace in time of need.

I thank God that I fellowship with a people who seek God’s grace and have a childlike faith. I thank God that Jesus has shown us by example and declared to us by word the characteristics of the Kingdom life from the average run-of-the-mill religious experience.

I thank God that the NMMH Church is a place where I can come to grips with the ordinary in the process of professing the extraordinary.

Regerssion

By:
Stan Moody

September 11, 2008
Matthew 18:1-11

Two things there are that seem certain in this life besides death and taxes. The first is that when we are children, we can’t wait to grow up so that we can take over our own lives. The age of 21 seems to a kid to be the point at which all our hopes and dreams are realized and we are now positioned to the long trip down hill. We get to age 21, and we begin to realize that the toughest challenges yet lie ahead. Every decade, even when you are 80, becomes a challenge. We humans forever chafe at being under the thumb of authority, and to us progress means moving into the next decade as quickly as possible.

That is, perhaps, the point at which Jesus speaks to us in this 18th chapter of Matthew, v. 3: I tell you the truth. Unless you change and become as little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. The only answer is the one we give to Peggy Lee, “No; Peggy, that is not all there is. There is the business of becoming somebody – my career and raising a family that will be a credit to me.” As we approach 30, though, our goals and our dreams become empty as we attain them, and Jesus begins to speak more loudly: I tell you the truth. Unless you change and become as little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven! What part of “never” don’t we understand?

The great irony in all this is that at the very time we are in progression, we begin to realize that we also are in regression – back to the earth, another certainty. We are racing toward our own demise, and we put on a full press to fulfill ourselves. Jesus begins to speak more loudly: I tell you the truth. Unless you change and become as little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven!

The peace that God promises to those who seek first the kingdom of God and the righteousness of Christ is that the only progression worth having is the that of the road less traveled – the narrow way of the Kingdom of God. Some wise person once said, “All sin goes back to ‘I want to be somebody.’” The Bible teaches that the first requirement of getting the things we need is to first seek after the Kingdom of God. Jesus tells us, however, that in order even to enter the Kingdom of God, we have to go back to the starting point – become as little children.

We will be thinking this morning about what Jesus was intending for us to hear in that message.

Last Sunday, we had a visitor from a local fundamentalist church that is growing by leaps and bounds. During the prayer-request time, he asked to speak and, essentially, invited you to become saved. This was in reaction to the perception locally that you have never heard the Gospel here at the NMMH Church. I thought it was one of the rudest, most judgmental things I had ever seen happen in a church. However, it encouraged within me some soul searching of my own, giving rise to the sermon this morning.

A couple of other things happened recently. On Friday afternoons, there is a woman who comes into the prison to visit her husband. I am told that she corresponds with some 900 inmates across the country. She does not know who I am, but I have figured out who she is by association.

One Friday, I walked into the lobby deep in thought, and her voice rang out through a room full of people, “Sir, you need to smile more!” Is that it? The joy of the Lord is reflected in a smile? Is that what we have come to in this country – that happiness is wrapped up in how we appear to other people? Or was this just another rude, boundary-crashing member of the Christian Right?

Finally, the last object lesson – Brandon Drewry. I have been working with Brandon Drewry for months now. He was homeless, living in Portland’s little Bowery – the Bayside region. He had been in town for 3 days and was arrested and tried 27 months later for gross sexual assault on a street woman. There was not a scrid of physical evidence. He was defended by the public defender system, convicted and sentenced to 30 years solely on the testimony of two crack/cocaine addicts.

I thought Brandon’s story needed to be told – the failure of the public defender system and the public outcry to get the homeless out of our sight. Whether he did it or not, I don’t know and don’t really care. The point is that at age 47, unless he gets a sentence reduction or clemency, he will be going out feet first because not only is he mentally ill; he has been diagnosed with PTSD and Hepatitis A.

His previous life was as a cab driver and a petty drug dealer in Daytona Beach, FL. I have tried to make him understand that the Kingdom of God precedes anything he does to gain a legal remedy. His answer is that he is a good person because he has never done anything to hurt anyone. In other words, he may have been guilty of misfeasance, but he is not guilty of malfeasance. He wants a chance to prove that he is inherently good but sees the Kingdom of God as a diversion from the goal of his life – getting out of prison. He sees no harm to anyone in selling dope.

I tell you the truth. Unless you change and become as little children, you will not enter the kingdom of God!

When we think about the qualities of a child, what comes immediately to mind are “vulnerable, dependent, teachable and focused.” Those are the easy ones.

The context of this message by Jesus to His disciples is important for us. First, this is not a generic message like the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus has just been asked a question by his disciples, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” As they often did, they had been arguing among themselves as to which one of them would be top dog when Jesus established His kingdom in Jerusalem, an event that was never going to happen.

That seems very adult, doesn’t it? “Who is in charge? Who is going to be President?” Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven on earth?”

Bear in mind that these people to whom Jesus is talking are not neophytes who have never heard the Gospel. They have been with Him now for some time – nearly 3 years. Under those conditions, we would think that they were already citizens of the Kingdom of God. They had given up everything to follow Him. They had heard all the best sermons on the love of God ever preached in the history of mankind. They knew that Jesus was the way to salvation. Yet, there was this one thing.

They were arguing about which one of them would be the greatest in a Kingdom they would not even enter unless they changed, regressed and became as little children. They were jockeying for position, like a bunch of egocentric politicians: “Who is the greatest?” To merely enter the Kingdom required that they give up jockeying for position.

With respect to our day, you might say that the disciples to whom Jesus was speaking were professing Christians – those, perhaps, who had repeated the Sinner’s Prayer. To our visitor last week who thought that the way into the kingdom of heaven was by locking in the precise date you were saved – to mark it on the calendar – perhaps he has forgotten that while the kingdom of God is about accepting Christ as Lord and Savior, there is a little-mentioned other piece of business: “He who perseveres (endures) to the end will be saved” (Matt. 24:13). Just as the Kingdom of God is present already but not yet fulfilled, so our salvation is present already but not yet fulfilled.

The path to fulfillment is to change, to humble ourselves and to become as little children, making certain that we do not “look down on one of these little ones” along the way. That is the message of Matthew 18.

OK; what does it mean to someone already schooled in the way of grace to become as a little child? I had the advantage of the classic sermons of George Whitfield to help us get through this “regression progression.” George Whitfield was the preacher who, along with Jonathan Edwards and the Wesley’s, kicked off the First Great Awakening of the early 18th Century.

I would be quick to point out here that, while it has taken each of us decades to become adults, it will perhaps take us decades to reverse the direction. I tell you that because “regression progression,” like the victorious Kingdom of God, is a process, not an instant reversal. That is why perseverance to the end is a critical component of salvation.

At the same time we are grasping for some degree of personal power and glory – those things that elude most kids – we are haunted by the reality that we are hurtling toward our own demise and then the Judgment. We want to be certain how to stand up at the Judgment and hear the words, “Well done, good and faithful servant; enter into the joys of your Lord.”

Brandon Drewry’s formula is too risky – “Do no harm.” Our visitor’s formula is equally risky – memorize the date you were saved. Since only some 4% of those who go down to the altar at evangelistic rallies actually stick with the long-range program, celebrating your salvation date is pretty risky for something that will not be declared as finished until the “end” of our lives.

To put a smile on your face, showing the world how happy you are since you accepted Jesus, is also very risky. There are a lot of mental patients who wear smiles on their faces. Sometimes a smile can be a barrier against real communication. It can be a put-down to someone wrestling with real problems. It can be a defense mechanism to keep other people at bay. Chances are, it has nothing to do with entering the Kingdom of God.

These are the things that people do who have a Christ in their heads but no Christ in their hearts. Yet, Jesus says, I tell you the truth. Unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

The words of Jesus imply that before you or I can have any well-grounded hope of being happy in a future state, there must be some great, notable and amazing change that passes over our souls and dramatically alters our allegiances. While we watch our bodies change, why is it that we pay so little attention to changing our souls so that our temper, our conduct and our habits become progressively centered on God and His Kingdom?

Jesus is not telling us to go back to being a blank piece of paper. Anyone who has raised children knows that they are not sinless by any stretch. Kids are conceived and born into sin. Any parent who is paying attention will be able to tell you that if you do not understand that, and if you do not discover the overwhelming urge of self-will in a child, your child is headed for big trouble, and you are headed for big grief.

Jesus is not telling us, therefore, that in order to enter the Kingdom of God we must become innocent, naïve and sinless – far from it.

On the other hand, while kids are certainly innocent compared with grownups, they have hearts that are sensual and minds that are carnal, and they lie with impunity much of the time. How many of us as parents have spent hours trying to unravel one of their lies. Does Jesus want us to become like that? I think He assumes that we have already taken lying to an art form. No; there is something more to this matter of becoming as little children.

Let’s not forget that the context to this statement by Jesus was a dispute over which of the disciples was going to be the greatest in the kingdom – a very adult exercise. The child-object lesson, then, is not only Jesus’ antidote to power and ambition but is the key to turning the corner from “me” and my legacy to God and His glory. In this time when our nation is preoccupied with change, Jesus offers change that is eternal and rejects the lust after power and ambition.

On the other hand, this has nothing to do with closing our businesses, resigning our positions on the school board and retiring to the woods, turning into hermits. The problem with that remedy is that our sinful hearts follow there with us. Christianity is a social religion. We have to stay engaged in whatever it is we are doing.

What Jesus is telling us here, I think, is that while we are not to go out of this world, if we are truly converted, or changed, we will be loose from this world. Though we are engaged in it through our careers, our families and our relationships, yet if we are real Christians we will be loosely tied to the world wherein we raise our families and earn our livings. Ask a child about presidents and senators and representatives and bishops, and he will have no idea what you are talking about because he is loose to the world – loosey-goosey, so to speak. Children live in the world but are restricted to their own authority structures. That is where God wants us to be – to live in the world but to owe our allegiance to the authority structure that He has appointed for us.

Be loose from the world but aware of our Eternal Father, God.

Another way in which Jesus says we must change and become as little children is that we must be aware of our weaknesses. It is the characteristic of adulthood that we long to get to the position where we don’t need anyone. We call that freedom. Jesus is telling us to go back to the kind of dependency that seeks God’s guidance in every aspect of our lives. We step off the worldly treadmill when we confess Jesus Christ as Lord. We step off into the great unknown, guided by the Holy Spirit. Never have we been more vulnerable since we were children.

Are children aware of their weaknesses? Yes! Must they be led by the hand? Yes! The way to the Kingdom of God is to let go of our exalted opinions of ourselves. If we are rich and lack nothing and are proud of it, we are inwardly poor. Like little children who will gladly give up their hand to be guided by a parent, so must real Christians give up their hearts, their understanding, their will and their affections to be guided by the Word of God, the Providence of God and the Spirit of God.

As little children look on themselves as ignorant, so must we look upon ourselves as ignorant because we have taken on the eternal mysteries of the Kingdom of God. The Apostle Paul, who was a rising star in ecclesiastical circles, said this about himself: “Unto me, who am the least of all saints, is this grace given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ” (Ephesians 3:8). Paul’s conversion required of him that he consider all his previous accomplishments and credentials as dung.

Little children are guileless. That is to say, they are vulnerable in the sense that they lack cunning in dealing with others. We who profess Jesus Christ as Lord must also become guileless. That does not mean that we ought not to be watchful and careful or that we ought to expose ourselves to every assault. What it means is that we ought to pray for the wisdom of a serpent and yet be as harmless as a dove. We ought to take the knowledge that we have gained from being an adult and apply it harmlessly to every circumstance of our lives.

Are you one of God’s children? Then deal with God as your little children have dealt with you. As soon as they want anything, or if their body hurts, have they not run to you as a parent? Does the evil of this world trouble you? Run to God! Does the world trouble you? Go tell your Father about it. “As a father pities his children, so will the Lord pity them that fear him.”

What you should be seeing from this little object lesson that Jesus gave to His disciples is that there is for us a sea change in attitude in this business of joining the Kingdom of God. Perhaps our visiting friend from last week was inclined to think that your date of conversion was the most important thing in your life. Unless it is accompanied by a “regression progression,” however, it is a fake conversion. Repeating a Sinner’s Prayer or being baptized into a church is easy to do. Regressing back to a little child is a conscious and painful rejection of all that we have spent our lives trying to overcome. It is much easier to go through the motions of religion than it is to be broken from the limitations and dependencies of childhood.

Life in the Kingdom of God is tough and lonely at times, and there are very few who are willing to take that journey. There is, however, one more warning about becoming as a little child.

God is not a willy-nilly parent. He is a jealous God who loves his children too much to spare the rod. God chastens those He loves. He teaches us to pray for the qualities of childhood – humility, faith, love and grace in time of need.

I thank God that I fellowship with a people who seek God’s grace and have a childlike faith. I thank God that Jesus has shown us by example and declared to us by word the characteristics of the Kingdom life from the average run-of-the-mill religious experience.

I thank God that the NMMH Church is a place where I can come to grips with the ordinary in the process of professing the extraordinary.

Those Human Moments!

By:

Stan Moody, Ph.D.

1 Samuel 25:1-8, 10-12, 18-25

This story of David and Abigail is almost impossible to cover without reading the entire 25^th chapter of 1 Samuel. We do not have time for that in a single worship service. I would invite you to read that chapter yourself at your leisure, admittedly a limited commodity these days. It is a remarkable insight into David’s human foibles and how Abigail was used by God to correct him.

Last week, we spoke of Jonathan’s friendship with David. David needed to have his spirit strengthened at a time when Jonathan’s father, King Saul, was possessed by a compulsion to kill him. Jonathan’s message to David was that God would prevail and that his father was rebelling against what he knew to be true – that David would succeed him to the throne of Israel.

Because David was a “Man after God’s own heart,” he could be instructed by those whom God sent to correct him. Jonathan was such a person; the Prophet Samuel was such a person; the Prophet Nathan was such a person – you will remember that Nathan condemned David’s adultery with Bathsheba and murder of her husband, Uriah. Over and over again, we are confronted with the teachable nature of David – how he could change course once he recognized God’s truth in what another person was trying to tell him.

In this story, God uses Abigail, the wife of Nabal, to make the correction in David’s course of action.

Saul, on the other hand, was unteachable, as was Michal, his daughter.

At the time this story takes place, David is married to Michal but has been away from her for several years while fleeing from her father, and Michal is married by now to someone else. Michal was a consolation prize when Saul reneged on his offer of her older sister, Merab, to David. His younger daughter, Michal, was a replacement to David, a proposition that Michal herself very much wanted because she was in love with David. David eventually got Michal back, by the way, causing her new husband to be grief-stricken.

Saul’s motivation was to get David killed, knowing that Michal was loyal to her father. :

"And Michal, Saul's daughter, loved David; they told Saul, and the thing pleased him. And Saul said, I will give her to him, that she may be a snare to him, and that the hand of the Philistines may be against him." (1 Samuel 18:17,19,20)

In the meantime, David began his own history of marrying at will. The 25^th chapter of 1 Samuel has David marrying two women, Abigail and Ahinoam of Jezreel.

It appears that things have not changed a whole lot down through history. It reads like tabloid trash in Hollywood!

The point of this story in 1 Sam 25, I think, is to highlight the human condition. That is, that we are in constant search for some sort of godlike qualities that enhance our self-esteem. At the very moment we get beaten down, we search for instant relief. That is why people in power seem to go off the moral compass. It is a great irony. We work hard to become like gods, and when we get there we begin to act out because we are struck by how unlike gods we really are. We drag our sinful natures with us up the ladder of success.

Political conventions are designed to raise people to god-like status and then watch them fall apart under the pressures. Being a god is not an easy business. Adam and Eve thought it was just a little jump of exercising their own power over a thing known as the “fruit of the knowledge of good and evil.” Once you have a grip on the knowledge of good and evil, however, you are smack up against your own impotency, and you seek other ways of affirming your power – usually sex or war.

David was no exception. In fact, he was up against enormous object lessons of his own impotency. He had just defeated Saul by being kind to him. This happened in the wilderness of En Gedi, a mountainous ravine on the Western shore of the Dead Sea. Some years ago, I actually climbed up through that ravine that is thought to contain the very cave that housed both Saul and David at the same time. You cannot look up at those caves without that whole scene unfolding before your eyes.

Saul has 3000 men; David has around 600 men. Saul slips into this cave to rest himself. David cuts off the hem of Saul’s garment, slips to the back of the cave again and waits for Saul to leave. He then cries out to Saul, “My lord the king!” Saul repents because David could have killed him. Saul goes back home, and David goes down to the wilderness of Paran in the northeastern region of the Sinai Peninsula – near Hebron. It was the staging point where the Israelites waited after leaving Sinai. It is the place from which Moses sent in the spies to Hebron to scope out the Promised Land.

Maybe David was feeling a little pleased with himself. He had gotten the King of Israel not only to back down but to repent in tears. It looked as though his fears and trials were coming to an end. He was being given a moment of respite, and perhaps he was preparing himself to take over the throne when God was ready to move. Or maybe he was thinking that he was a “Man after God’s own heart.” Who knows?

At any rate, there he was, a stone’s throw away from Hebron, where he eventually took the throne as king over the ten tribes.

Apparently, David had been in Paran for some time – perhaps for a season, at least. He knew of this man, Nabal, a wealthy sheep farmer and descendent of Caleb, the faithful spy and a leader with Joshua. In fact, David was waiting for a payoff from Nabal, who was not even aware that he owed David anything. It was a protection racket, you might say. David had protected Nabal’s shepherds from any harm by the marauding Philistines. That would have been news to Nabal, as this was not a real active involvement. Just by being there, David had kept the Philistines from stealing the sheep.

David waited until the sheep were ready to be sheared to collect his protection fee. It all falls under the category of the assumption that Nabal should have known what David had done for him. It’s one of those co-dependent “should have/could have” moments to which we are all inclined. We decide what other people should be doing and make our own moves based on our warped opinions, without even checking with the other person. “You should have known this; you should have done that; you should be doing this! Because you failed me, I’m writing you off!” No room for the grace of God there, I guess.

In fact, Nabal was probably too busy with himself even to be aware of what David had done.

It doesn’t help that Nabal was a scoundrel – “churlish and evil in his doings,” the Bible tells us. On the other hand, his wife, Abigail, was a “woman of good understanding and beautiful.” This is what would be considered to be a good marriage. How often we have seen a churlish and evil person married to a good woman – or vice versa.

David is preparing to make his move toward power and is beginning to feel his oats. He decides to use his smooth talk to get what he wants, but Nabal is not hearing him. That enrages him, and he decides that Nabal needs to have his clock cleaned, so to speak.

What we have here is one sin leading to another. David runs a protection racket by sending 10 young men to greet and remind Nabal and then gets murderously angry that he is not paid off. These are the typical words you would expect from a mafia boss:

Go up to Nabal at Carmel and greet him in my name. Say to him: “Good health to you and your household! And good health to all that is yours! Now I hear it is sheep shearing time. When your shepherds were with us, we did not mistreat them, and the whole time they were at Carmel nothing of theirs was missing. Ask your own servants and they will tell you. Therefore, be favorable toward my young men, since we come at a festive time. Please give your servants and your son David whatever you can find for them (vs. 4-8).

In other words, “Hey, Nicky! I hear youse been doing good! How’s the little woman and the kids? I been watching out for youse and am happy for youse! I come to give you a chance to say thanks!”

You know what the response was – “Who the H is David?”

It appears that David is getting a little full of himself, now that Saul has gone back to the Jerusalem area. Had it been left at that point, it would have been bad enough. But David’s pride is hurt. He is not calling for the Ephod this time – no way. He takes 400 men and sets out to kill every man who works for Nabal.

What has happened here is that one sinful assertion of power has led to another more sinful assertion of power – one sin has led to another. One failure to consult God’s will leads to a chain reaction of cover-up and sinful insistence by David that he get his own way.

God, however, has a lesson in store for David. Thankfully, this does not get out of hand, because David is a “Man after God’s own heart.”

I want to bring to your attention a few verses of Scripture about anger:

Ephesians 4:26 – In your anger, do not sin. Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold. David has given Satan a foothold.

Psalms 37:8 – Refrain from evil and turn from wrath; do not fret – it only leads to evil.

Proverbs 19:11 – A man’s wisdom gives him patience; it is to his glory to overlook an offense.

Matthew 5:22 – But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment.

What we have here in David is a proud, angry man. His pride gets hurt, which justifies his righteous anger. Once you go down that road, there is no going back, is there? It is like Eve asking, “What can be wrong with eating a piece of fruit?” It starts a whole chain reaction that makes us have to back and fill to cover up our first sin.

A story is told about Alexander the Great who, as you know, conquered the entire known world in his time. Cletus, a childhood friend and a general in his army, became drunk and insulted Alexander in front of his men. Alexander became so enraged that he hurled a spear at Cletus intending to scare him. Unfortunately, the spear killed his friend, and Alexander was filled with remorse. It may be that he never got over it.

The formula is simple. If we fail to control our anger, our anger will control us. Aristotle once said, “It is easy to fly into a passion – anybody can do that – but to be angry with the right person at the right time and with the right object and in the right way – that is not that easy. It is not everyone who can do it.”

Well; Nabal was an easy man with whom to get into a fight. He was called “surly and mean.” He had a bad attitude in business – taking advantage of anyone with whom he was dealing. He was a rich man – very rich, in fact. That means he was loaded and threw his weight around. To top it all off, Nabal’s name means “Fool.” David, then, took on a man named Fool who lived up to his name.

So, because his pride is hurt, David takes 400 men to kill just one fool who doesn’t know enough to listen to his wife. That is a definition of insanity, is it not? This is the same David who refrained from killing Saul because Saul was the “Lord’s anointed.” But here, Nabal is an ant who can be stomped into submission for failing to acknowledge that David was going to be king. “I’ll show him who is king of the mountain!”

David was blinded by rage. That is what anger does! It takes control of the mind and turns sane men and women into raving lunatics. It causes us to say things that we wouldn’t ordinarily say and puts us in the position of not being able to take our words back. It also puts us in the position of having to repent later, which is a very humbling experience.

Nabal was a fool, but his wife, Abigail, was everything he was not. Even her name meant “My father is joy” – not too bright, perhaps, in arranging her marriage to Nabal. Knowing David’s proclivity for the opposite sex, I imagine it did not hurt her to be beautiful as well. When she hears what her foolish husband has done, she takes the steps necessary to make matters right.

We are given an insight into Abigail’s nature – even her standing with God. She takes a very big risk by doing this without telling her husband, who would only prevent her from interceding. If it were Michal, Saul’s daughter, she might have said, “This is what I have been waiting for! I’ll just sit here and wait, and David will take care of the old buzzard for me.” Instead, she worked behind the scenes to protect her husband. In fact, she literally saved his life.

Before Abigail reached him, David had just said, “It’s been useless – all my watching over this fellow’s property in the desert so that nothing of his was missing. He has paid me back evil for good. May God deal with David, be it ever so severely, if by morning I leave alive one male of all who belong to him.”

Is this statement not just like those of Saul – invoking God in the outcome of his own evil ways; taking the Lord’s name in vain? You will recall from last week’s sermon that because David hemmed himself into Keilah, Saul was convinced that God had handed David over to him. It was God’s will that Saul kill God’s anointed, therefore. How easy it is for us to begin the downhill slide into Saul’s superficial trust in God’s love and sovereignty. One simple sin can begin the downslide; one simple act of grace, however, can reverse it, provided we are men and women after God’s own heart.

When Abigail meets David, she falls at his feet. She refers to him 14 times as “my Lord.” Her logic is straight out of the Sermon on the Mount. She prays that all David’s enemies will be as foolish and vulnerable as is her husband, Nabal. She reminds him that if he stoops so low as to kill Nabal, it will hang over his legacy like a dark cloud. If he does what his anger is telling him to do, he will regret it forever.

David has just invoked God’s severe dealing with him should he leave even one of Nabal’s men alive.

Now, he in effect backs away from God’s judgment

This gross error in the life of David has been sidelined by the grace of God. That is what it means to be a “Man after God’s own heart.” It has to do with how you handle yourself after you have been corrected. The still, small voice of the Holy Spirit that is trying to reason with us is otherwise drowned out by the cry of anger in our hearts.

David, a “Man after God’s own heart,” had this to say:

Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel, who has sent you today to meet me. May you be blessed for your good judgment and for keeping me from bloodshed this day and from avenging myself with my own hands. Otherwise, as surely as the Lord, the God of Israel, lives, who has kept me from harming you, if you had not come quickly to meet me, not one male belonging to Nabal would have been left alive by daybreak.

David took the gifts from Abigail in good faith. He was obedient to the timeless command of God, “Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath; for it is written, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord…Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good” (Romans 12:19).

Like a dutiful partner, Abigail waits until her husband is sober and tells him what she has done. He has a stroke and dies 10 days later. David marries Abigail and probably takes all of Nabal’s property, not that any of that was his reward for holding his anger in check.

This is not just a lesson about anger. It is a lesson about a lot of emotions that happen to us when we fail to stand on the foundation of God’s love for every one of us. It could be fear or pride or lust or jealousy, instead. What we must do when these emotions overwhelm us is to bring them quickly to the Lord and ask for help. When emotion comes over us, we need God’s help to respond properly.

We have seen in the past several sermons in what way David was a “Man after God’s own heart.” He listened when corrected, and he respected people who took the risk to do the right thing, as Jonathan and Abigail did.

If we here at the NMMH are people after God’s own heart, we need not fear the future nor react to a perceived slight. Our enemies are legion – mostly those of local Christian Right churches for whom the standard of righteousness is the Sinner’s Prayer rather than the Redeemed Life. The future and retribution of our enemies, however, remains in God’s hands.

“Wait on the Lord, Be of good cheer. Wait, I say, on the Lord” (Psalm 27:14).

"Bring Hither the Ephod!"

By:
Stan Moody

August 28, 2008

1 Samuel 23:7-18
Hebrews 3:7-15

We live in a day when we are accustomed to “taking the Lord’s name in vain.” By that, I am not necessarily talking about using God’s name as an expletive, although that certainly is very common. What I am referring to is another way of taking the Lord’s name in vain. That is, to evaluate what is happening around us and interpret that God is speaking to us and determine what He is trying to tell us. It is a form of reading the tea leaves, so to speak, and blaming God for the results.

That is not to say that God does not at times give us clear indications that we are walking in His will. The Holy Spirit has a way of confirming our steps from time to time. We have to be careful, however, and make certain that it is God who is affirming what we are doing and not just one of those coincidences to which all of us are exposed from time to time.

I once had the idea that if the direction we are taking flows, the Spirit must be directing it. No longer do I have that point of view. You can have an affair that seems to flow. You can be making a lot of money without much effort and be fooled into thinking that God wants you to be rich. You can go your entire life without ever having surgery or serious illness and believe that you must be pleasing God because you are healthy. You can have a great family and believe that it is because you have been faithful to God.

There may be an element of truth in all of this, but the Holy Spirit is evident especially at times when there is great conflict. Jesus declared the HS to be a “comforter” that He would send in His physical absence. The need for a Comforter comes from needing to be comforted. That suggests conflict, confusion and desperation at times when things are rough and God appears to have left us out on a limb to be knocked around by Satan.

Faith comes at times of being uncertain of what we are doing and where we are going, does it not? God reveals Himself to us by directing our ways when we are wandering about aimlessly. In fact, if it goes too smoothly, we might be inclined to question whether we are walking where God wants us to walk.

Our faith does not grow if we walk on a smooth road. Our faith grows when we are sorely tested and tried. “Broad is the gate and wide the way that leads to death, and many there by that go therein” refers to the easy way of walking through life – looking for the most-traveled road, so to speak. The “narrow way” is the way of life and requires of us that we step into uncertainty without a roadmap. The point is that we cannot see where we are going but are depending on God through Christ to lead us there.

It is all too easy to interpret events that happen to us daily as evidences of God’s direction in our lives. I am working at the prison today because of a couple of strange events. The first event was that I needed something to do. One morning, Barbara asked me what I would prefer to do. I told her that I had always wanted to be a prison chaplain. I went to my computer, Googled “Maine prison chaplain job” and discovered that there was a half-time position open. Bingo!

I then called the prison and was told that it had been closed. I then called the House Speaker’s Office and asked them to inquire. I then received back the word that they would re-open the position. Bingo!

The fact is that I didn’t exactly call for the Ehod. I interpreted events to fit my interests. That is not to say that God does not want me to be a prison chaplain – certainly, there is enough conflict there to satisfy me for the rest of my life. You might say that, like my election to the legislature, I got there on a wing and a prayer. The real test is how and when I get out. To leave this position because it is too rough or too non-productive might be to take the broad, easy way. On the other hand, while David found it relatively easy to run to Keilah with his men, he called for the priest and the Ephod and inquired of the Lord whether he should stay. The answer was that he should leave Keilah because they were going to give him up to King Saul, who was chasing him intent on killing him.

What, then, is the Ephod? The Ephod is the process by which we find the assurance that we are in God’s will. In ancient Israel, The Ephod was an apron-like garment worn by the high priest. It was made in four colors: blue, purple, scarlet and the white of the fine linen. These are the same colors that could be seen in the Temple at the Door to the Outer Court, the Door to the Sanctuary and in the Veil; they refer to Christ as He is revealed in the four gospels. There is an important additional feature of the Ephod, though: gold thread (cut from gold plate) was interwoven with the other colors. Gold is not only precious, it implies that the Ephod is 'of God, divine and heavenly.


When Saul or David wished to question Yahweh, they commanded the priest, "Bring hither the Ephod."

Now, you and I do not have any Ephod to consult. We have redemptive history, however, in which the blue door of the Outer Court is the broad way to participate in a Godly atmosphere without commitment. You could say that America, if it is a Christian nation, is a form of Outer Court. The church is a form of Outer Court. You can glean from the benefits of both without committing yourself.


The purple Door to the Sanctuary is the narrow way, and the scarlet veil is narrower still – the entrance to the Holy of Holies – into the presence of Almighty God. Christ is revealed to us as the way to the Father. Many go into the outer court but remain there throughout their lives. Many sneak a peak through the Door of the Sanctuary. They seek the safety of the outer court but resist the uncertainty of what is hidden by the veil. Few, we are told, enter God’s presence through the veil.

Our Ephod, then, is prayer through Christ. We make decisions to go or to leave in Christ and Christ alone. God desires of us that wherever we are, we walk with Him through the valley of the shadow of death that we are bound to find there. What that means to me is that, like the Energizer Bunny, I keep going and going until it is clear that changing course is inevitable. That applies to the prison, where it is almost impossible to see any results, as well as the NMMH Church.

Bring the Ephod! I want to know what God wants me to do!

God wants us to stay where we are planted or have planted ourselves, until we either bloom or die, all the time trusting Him to direct our lives; all the time desiring to live and die for His glory.

I think about the time when Joshua had just crossed the Jordan River and was scoping out the walls of Jericho. He saw a “…man standing in front of him with a drawn sword in his hand. Joshua went up to him and asked, ‘Are you for us or for our enemies?’” (Joshua 5:13).

The man answered this way: “Neither, but as commander of the Lord’s army, I have come.” At that, Joshua stepped aside from his preoccupation with himself – what he was doing and where he was going – and fell facedown on the earth in reverence and asked him, “What message does my Lord have for his servant?”

To assume that God is on your side because you somehow are in the right place at the right time is not to delve deeply enough into how you are to conduct yourself in this place in which you find yourself. We here at the NMMH Church have been bound together by God and before God. It is not enough just merely to be here and greet each other. Somehow, there is more to this bonding about which we need to seek God’s guidance and direction.

The answer that Joshua” received from the angel was, “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy.” Joshua did as he was told. Awe and respect are the responses due to God – power, authority and deep love must be our attitudes, no matter in what circumstances we find ourselves.


In the East, it is a gesture of respect to the owner of a house to remove your shoes before entering. I wonder if we could take that metaphor a bit further. The only other time when removal of shoes in the presence of God is commanded was when Moses in curiosity approached the burning bush. In both the cases of Moses and Joshua, God was sending them on a specific mission with specific instructions. “Moses and Joshua, take off your shoes so that you will not be tempted to walk away and will not put them back on until you have received instructions from me.” Shoes are our vehicle of choice when we want to go our own way. Holy ground demands that we take off our walking shoes, stop and listen to God before moving on – hopefully in the direction He desires for us.

Wherever we are, we are symbolically to recognize that we are standing on holy ground. The Christian stands on holy ground because he has entered the temple veil into the Holy of Holies. We are to seek God’s direction for each step we take because we stand on holy ground. We are to consult the Ephod, so to speak. It is not enough just to be there. Like Joshua, we have to ask the Lord, “Now that I am here, what do you want me to do next?” God is not on anyone’s side. He is on His own side, and he will join with us when we call on Him to direct our ways: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not unto your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight” (Proverbs 3:5, 6).

One of the key differences between Saul and David, both anointed of the Lord as kings of Israel, is that David was in pursuit of God’s heart. Saul was not. David refused to presume anything for God by taking His name in vain. Saul read the tea leaves and decided what God wanted him to do, thereby taking His name in vain. Jonathan, Saul’s son, sought the Lord, took enormous personal risks and came out to see David in order to “strengthen his hand” in the Lord.

This tells us something about what it means to live out our separate lives while, at the same time, living out God’s will and way. That is where we are going with this message this morning.

The 23rd chapter of 1 Samuel offers insight ass to why the Holy Spirit left Saul and descended on David as the anointed King of Israel. It offers insight as to why David was a “man after God’s own heart,” while God repented that He had made Saul king. It raises the more common interpretation of “man after God’s own heart” as David having the spirit of Christ in the way he went about things.

Saul was content to interpret events that were happening around him as evidence that God was with him. David insisted on confirming God’s will and presence, despite what was happening around him. Like so many Christians today, Saul interpreted what God was doing by how he personally was affected. We find David inclined always to inquire of the Lord.

David inquired of the Lord, and God delivered the city of Keilah into his hands by driving out the Philistine forces. He saved the people of Keilah. That would have been enough for Saul to build a monument to himself. David, however, took nothing for granted.

Saul pursued him to Keilah, a city surrounded and locked in with gates and bars. David deserves to assume that since he has just delivered Keilah, he and his men are safe there. Nevertheless, he calls for the Ephod and inquires of the Lord: “Will Saul come down to Keilah and destroy the town on account of me?” The Lord answered, “He will.” “Will the citizens of Keilah surrender me to Saul?” The Lord answered, “They will.” So he escaped to Horesh.

Saul, on the other hand, sees that David is locked into Keilah and takes the Lord’s name in vain: “God has handed him over to me, for David has imprisoned himself by entering a town with gates and bars.” Like the religious leaders who thought they were doing God’s will be crucifying Jesus, Saul interpreted events to fit his own interests.

David searches for God, while Saul searches for David. David’s vision is with his God, while Saul’s is with killing David. David was a man after God’s own heart.

Saul was ready to take David’s life at Horesh. Saul’s son, Jonathan, went to David and “helped him find strength in the Lord.” “Don’t be afraid. My father Saul will not lay a hand on you. You will be king over Israel, and I will be second to you. Even my father, Saul, knows this.” Saul knew what God was going to do, but what he wanted stood in the way. Jonathan served God at the expense of his loyalty to his father. Jonathan strengthened David’ hand in the Lord. Jonathan was also a man after God’s own heart. He resolved the conflict between his earthly ties and God’s will and stood in support of God’s will at his own risk.

In fear, David sought the Lord. In anger, Saul did whatever was necessary to achieve his goal of killing David and interpreted every advantage as God’s blessing on his mission. Saul was unable to discern God’s will because he did not love God enough to become a man after God’s own heart.

It is the heart of unbelief in the infinite love of God that leads to falling away from the Lord. It is the ability to have a little bit of God and a lot of ourselves and still be successful that gets us off track. As Christians, God has appointed a means by which He will enable us to hold our confidence in Him even when everything seems stacked against us. That means is the fellowship of other Christians – relationships that help us hold fast to the promises of God and escape the deceitfulness of going in our own direction, no matter how logical it may seem.

Success in ministry is not the criteria by which we measure if God is with us. The criteria by which we measure if God is with us is whether or not we are unified in strengthening each other in the Lord. Our church ought to be about Christian relationships pledged to each other to fight the fight of faith and protect each other from the subtle encroachments of sin. Every decision is made, not just on the basis of our worldly interpretation of supporting events as they unfold, but on the grounds of what happens when we call for the Ephod. “Bring the Ephod!” David had the edge, but he inquired of the Lord even when he had the edge.

If, as a Christian, you are making decisions about your life outside the exhortation of a cluster of other Christians who inquire of the Lord even when things are going your way, you neglect the means of grace God has intended for you. The decisions we make and the directions we go in life can seem right to us because they are successful. But without the cluster of Christian friends who strengthen us by seeking God’s will rather than their own, we neglect the means of grace necessary to keep us focused on Him.


The church is about Christian comrades who need each other to strengthen their hands in the Lord. We never grow out of our need for Christian comrades. The minute we think that we no longer need daily exhortation in the fight of faith, we probably already have fallen prey to the deceitfulness of sin.

I am pleased that I have Christian friends here who would rather strengthen me in Christ than see me and us wildly successful. The great 19th Century evangelist, Charles Spurgeon, in one of his depression bouts, once preached a sermon in which he cried out to his congregation, seeking deliverance from his malady and seeking God’s will on his life. He desperately needed to have his hand strengthened in the Lord.


It takes a conscious effort to strengthen each other hands in the Lord. It is much more than mere visitation. It is speaking to the other person’s heart when it is needed and at the lowest ebb. What a difference it would make in our church if we were to awaken tomorrow morning and plan to strengthen someone’s hand in God. Jonathan did not see much of his beloved friend, David. But he did not accidently meet David in Horesh, either. He planned to go and strengthen him.


Are we calling for the Ephod? Are we inquiring of the Lord? Are we helping each other fight the fight of faith? Do we desire to be men and women after God’s own heart, or are we satisfied with where we are, what we have accomplished and the barricades we have erected against God’s will?

We have a paradox here. On the one hand, we say that we need each other. On the other hand, we say that the only way we can really help each other is by saying something or doing something that will cause us to depend on God and not on ourselves.

The theme of being men and women after God’s own heart is to have a radical God-centeredness in everything we do.


What Hebrews 3:12 tells us is this:


See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness.
Apparently, then, there is a very serious danger of becoming so hardened by our own directions in life, as Saul was, that we interpret events around us as evidences of God’s will. We may use our faith as a cover for our selfishness, but we are no longer centered on God. We may be men and women after God’s own head, but we are not men and women after God’s own heart.

Like with Job, Saul’s ears had heard of God, but his eyes did not see him. God was only skin deep in Saul.

Strengthening a hand in the Lord is far more important than anything else we can do here. Be open to God’s timing. Be ready to take action when that timing is right. Become a fountain of living water. Come; let us strengthen each other’s hands in God!