"Where's the Beef?"

By: Stan Moody

August 24, 2008
1 John 4:7-20

I have been struggling lately with two things. The first struggle has to do with what was going on in King Saul’s heart that God would reject him because of what would seem to us to be a minor variation of obedience to God’s command to immediately kill everything and everybody associated with the Amalekites (1 Samuel 15). Saul herded up the best of the animals to sacrifice to the Lord and brought back their King Agag. Samuel condemned Saul with the words from Isaiah, “To obey is better than sacrifice and to listen than the fat of rams.”

The second thing with which I am struggling is to make the distinction between Godly prophets and false prophets. It had to do with the answer that Jesus would give the false prophets at the judgment (Matthew 7):

Not everyone who says to me, “Lord, Lord,” will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?” Then I will say to them plainly, “I never knew you. Away from me, you evil doers” (Matt 7:21-23).

Since this was Jesus’ closing statement to His Sermon on the Mount and the Beatitudes, the test of our standing with Him is whether or not we are living or striving to live by the standards of the Sermon on the Mount. Because the standards of the Sermon on the Mount turn human nature on its head, to live by them requires the active presence of the Holy Spirit as the change-agent in our behavior.

The message that the Bible is trying to give us has little to do with Saul or false prophets. The message is about God, His love of us and our trust in that love. You will recall that Jesus continued in Matt 7 by saying:

Therefore, anyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock.

Those words that we are to hear and put into practice are the words of the Sermon on the Mount – particularly the Beatitudes – and have to do with what and whom we love. Love your enemy; do good to those who persecute you; be meek, poor in spirit, mournful; hunger and thirst not after fame and fortune but after righteousness; be merciful; be pure in heart; be peacemakers. These are all those things of which we are totally unprepared and incapable of practicing outside of a transformation of the heart and life. If we put those principles to work it is because something miraculous and supernatural has happened to us.

That is the test of true discipleship. The instinct and ability to love one another and forgive one another – especially an enemy – are gifts from God to His children and confirming evidences of His presence in our lives. In fact, it may go something like this: “I must really be a child of God! I find myself caring for and praying for this person I don’t like and who clearly doesn’t like me!”

That was the difference between King Saul and David. That is the difference between the world and the Kingdom of God. The false prophet is one who stands before Heaven’s throne and pleads his case. He may not have lived according to the Sermon on the Mount, but he did all kinds of things for God – prophesied in Jesus’ name; drove out demons in Jesus’ name; did signs and wonders in Jesus’ name. “Depart from me; I never knew you.”

Jesus is telling us that you cannot bypass the Sermon on the Mount.

You will recall my conversation with Cong. Tom Allen about his evangelical pastor friend in Portland who told him that the Sermon on the Mount is for a later time – after Jesus returns. Would it be too far off the reservation to suggest that this pastor friend of his may well be one of the false prophets that Jesus will tell at the Judgment that He never knew him?

What is this rock on which wise men stand? We have always thought of it as being the physical and spiritual person of Jesus. But what if that rock instead is something that Jesus is or demonstrates to us through His life and work? What if that rock is love itself – that a wise man who hears Jesus words and puts them into practice is standing on God’s love, depending on God’s love, living on God’s love and trusting in God’s love?

What King Saul lacked was trusting-love, was it not? What David had, despite his sins, was trusting-love. You have only to read the Psalms to know that for certain. The difference between Saul and David was their trust levels of God’s love. Saul built an altar to himself in Gilgal on the way from the battle with the Amalekites. He decided it would be OK to share some of the glory with God; he decided that pleasing the people would be an admirable thing for both Israel and the God of Israel; he disobeyed God out of a failure of complete trust of God.

The Sermon on the Mount is about the degree of trust that we have in God’s love. Does God love me enough to hold me up when my enemies seek to destroy me, or must I depend partially on my own ability to defend myself? Does God love me enough to protect and shield me when I am meek, lowly, poor in spirit, mournful, pure in heart? Does God love me enough to keep me from being destroyed by my enemy if I choose to love that enemy and pray for him?

These are the distinguishing features of a Christian. The ability to live in the shadow of the Sermon on the Mount is directly proportional to the degree to which we trust God to love us unconditionally. The saints of God have a sense of that truth and stand, somewhat wobbly at times, on the rock of God’s love. The people of the world stand, most of the time, on their own wits and wisdom. That was the difference between Saul and David.

After the service last week, one of you said, “That was depressing! No matter how hard we try, it may not mean anything in the final analysis.” In a way, that is very right. Our standing with God is not dependent on how much we love Him. It is dependent on how much we trust that He loves us, His love being shown to us in sending His Son to be sacrificed for us. It is not about trying; it is about being loved and standing on that foundation of hope. If you read the 10th verse of 1 John 4, it is clear that God’s love toward His children is total and unconditional, while our love toward Him is a process, making our ability to live by the Sermon on the Mount also a process:

This is love; not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. The bottom line, as I read it, is that anyone who says that the Sermon on the Mount is for a later time when Christ reigns on earth doesn’t have a very valid eschatology and outright refuses to trust God’s love. Anyone who advocates for that position may be, in my reading, one of those false prophets who will come into Judgment before the Great White Throne with an appeal to fairness and human rights rather than to salvation by grace alone.

Anyone who advocates for his own good works is like the foolish person who builds his career and his life on the shifting sands of public opinion and cultural drift. Do you understand what I am saying here? He builds the structure of his life on the shifting sands of public sentiment – good works.

You have only to listen to the presidential candidates to understand about the shifting sands of public sentiment. Every time we come into a new presidential election year, we have all kinds of remedies to the latest crises. Those change as the crises change. Shifting sands! When the rains and the winds come, down go plans for creating a New Jerusalem out of America. The reason 9/11 has paralyzed our nation for the past 7 years is that America has been built on public opinion and cultural drift. As the national crises change, the cultural drift changes. One time it’s the economy; another time it’s energy; another time its race and human rights; another time it may well be prisoner rights.

The sad part is that the one structure that was built on the solid rock – the church of Jesus – keeps moving and rebuilding itself into a popular thing that ebbs and flows with the cultural tide. It has forsaken its first love. It has turned away from grace and toward the law. It has turned away from faith and toward prosperity and success. It has tired of waiting for God to act and has taken matters into its own hands by becoming politically active and promoting war in the Middle East. The new Christian Church in America is an institution that no longer values putting those words of Jesus – the Sermon on the Mount – into practice. It has become the American Dream church that demonstrates how much it can accomplish without God.

When the wind and the rain come, guess what! The Church of Jesus Christ will have no other recourse than to tear down its phony buildings, its useless programs, its big money and its political PACS, repent in sackcloth and ashes and rebuild on the Rock.

Jesus makes it very clear that forsaking the principles of the Sermon on the Mount invoke the rantings of false prophets – people who promise things they can’t deliver because they fail to understand that love of God is the foundation upon which everything lasting is built. You can pass all the laws you want concerning morality and ethics. If you don’t have love that is divinely given to those who hear and put into practice the words of Jesus, your morality is as sounding brass and tinkling cymbal – shifting sands.

Romans 12:2 is right on point:

Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – his good, pleasing and perfect will.

The transformation of the whole person is the test of discipleship. Transformation by the renewal of your mind is about living in the shadow of the Sermon on the Mount. Remember that Jesus said in Matt 7:21, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of the Father who is in heaven.” Be transformed by the renewing of your mind,” Paul says, “and you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is.”

I believe that God’s will has far less to do with what we are doing, where we are going and how we are going to get there than it does about trusting in His love for us today so completely that we are relieved of our worldly need to get the best of our neighbor and the best for ourselves– our need to act and react to keep the upper hand.

Conforming to this world means to downgrade love into lust. Lust is self-centered and self-destructive. Lust is not just about sex; it is about what has out attention and our devotion. 1 John 4:18 tells us that there is no fear in love – the kind of life-giving love that builds on the solid rock. Fear has to do with punishment. Perfect love drives out fear because it drives out punishment. Our punishment has already been served by God’s Son as a perfect demonstration of His love for us. Let’s take a look at this business of perfect love for a few minutes in closing.

1 John 4:17 talks about what it takes to have confidence on the Day of Judgment. It has nothing to do building a resume of miraculous accomplishments for God in the name of Jesus Christ. The only way love can be made complete in us is for God to live in us. There is no way God can live in us if we fail to trust Him not only for our salvation but for His promise to uphold us Trust demands that we reject behavior standards of this world – an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth; hatred for a brother, a security guard, the prison administration, the chaplain; lust of the eye; divorce; swearing on the Bible, etc.

It is not our love of God that counts; it is our trust of God’s love for us that transforms us.

How great is that love of God for us?

When Jesus was praying in the Garden of Gethsemane, as written in John 17, He had this to say about us as His future disciples: “I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even… as…. you… have… loved… me” (v. 23).

Do you get it? Jesus is equating the Father’s love of us at the same level as the Father’s love of Him. Equally loved means no more and no less. It means that we can truthfully say that there is not another being in the entire universe, including Jesus Christ, who has been more loved by God than you and me.

Jesus’ prayer demonstrates His own love. He has been with God forever. Yet, He feels no jealousy, no remorse and no animosity toward us in the same sense as did the older brother of the Prodigal Son. In His prayer, Jesus is not only acknowledging that He is not loved any more than are you and me. He is asking the Father to broadcast that all over the world – “let the world know that you have loved them even as (much as) you have loved me.” As the perfect parent, God does not love any one child more than the others.

Our very salvation depends on believing how special we are to God – how much He loves us. Lamentations 3:21-23 says this: “But this I call to mind, and therefore have hope: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is thy faithfulness.”

The damage to our nation, to the church, to our families and to our institutions is caused by our unbelief of how special we are to Him. Matt 24:12 says this, “Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, but he who stands firm to the end will be saved.” How do we keep our love from growing cold so that we continue to seek to live in the shadow of the Sermon on the Mount? We go to the source of that love – not a domestic partner; not the American Dream of prosperity and success; not our pseudo codes of morality and ethics; not the President of the US; not even our spouses. 1 John 4:19: “We love him because he first loved us.”

In our time, the Church of Jesus Christ – that institution built on the Rock Christ Jesus – has raised up leaders who no longer believe how special we are and how much God loves those He has called. Like ancient Israel, they are not satisfied with God’s love. They want to be like their neighbors – want to become like other churches. Once we go down that road, we cut ourselves off from the only true source of love. Our love of Him and each other begins to grow cold.

We then begin walking by sight and human reason rather than by faith rooted in God’s love. We have not endured to the end. Instead, we have insisted that God bring the end Right Now before we get into further trouble with Him and with our neighbor or cell mate.

Every thought, every word, every act of God is an expression of His love. God is sovereign. He has the right to do whatever He wants. With any human being or even with Satan, this would result in tyranny except for one clear distinction. Everything God does is motivated by love. Even our trials, sickness, death, financial setbacks are motivated by love.

I would be willing to bet that Job was one of the hardest nuts to crack in redemptive history. Proud, self-righteous, self-satisfied, legalistic; yet God said of Job that there was none like him in all the earth. God was holding out on Job and needed to break him in order for him to finally see God:

Then Job replied to the Lord: “I know you can do all things; no plan of yours can be thwarted. You asked, ‘Who is this that 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 have heard of you but now my eyes see you. Therefore, I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.

Is that not the place where the Church of Jesus Christ needs to come in our day? They say there are worsening times ahead. Instead of trying to predict those times, is it not time to build up God’s people so that they will be standing on the Rock when the wind and waves come at us? I submit to you that the Church of Jesus Christ in America is not prepared to survive spiritually in time of wind and waves pounding against our lives.

Rather than insisting on having faith in this promise or that promise, how about insisting on having faith in God’s unfailing love? Such a faith has a very critical purpose. Its purpose is to give us the confidence, courage and hope that we need to live as Christians in the Kingdom of God – standards of behavior that are 180 deg out of phase with the way the world thinks and acts.

Too often we have interpreted 1 John 4:18 to mean that it is our love of God that casts our fear. Our love, however, is not “perfect.” John is writing about God’s love as the love that casts out fear because God’s love is perfect as demonstrated and revealed through the person and work of His Son. No one can snatch us from God or stand in His way (Isaiah 43:13) means that nothing outside ourselves can stand in the way of God’s purposes for us.

The Sermon on the Mount demands more of us than any of us is capable of delivering in and through the flesh. And yet, we know that this is the only way of following Christ through His death and into the transformed life. I urge you to stand with Job who discovers, much to both his sorrow and joy, that what he knew about God was not enough.

That love is there for every one of us and has less to do with phony smiles of joy on our faces and a bunch of memorized Scripture verses than with hearts turned to Him and attitudes changed from within because we fully believe we are special to God.

The Babylonians are Coming!

By: Stan Moody

Jeremiah 9:1-6
Jude 17-23

The overarching theme of the Bible is that God speaks to and through His chosen people in order that His elect would hear the Gospel, repent and bear witness to His love.

That is the overarching theme of the Bible. The leap from God’s chosen people as the nation of Israel to God’s chosen people as the Church of Jesus Christ has not changed the message nor the mission. God seeks to speak to and through His people to an unbelieving world. The message of the weeping prophet, Jeremiah is the same as the message of the voice crying in the wilderness – John the Baptist: “Prepare the way of the Lord; make straight His paths; every valley shall be filled in and every mountain and hill be made low. The crooked ways shall become straight, the rough ways smooth, and all mankind shall see God’s salvation.”

How effective it might have been if that crazy man in the desert, John the Baptist – clothed in a camel’s skin and eating locusts and wild honey, had catered to the masses. We are told that all of Jerusalem went out to see John and be baptized. What a missed opportunity to build an empire. If only John had had the vision to Focus on the Family. If only he had had the vision to preach the “Purpose-Filled Life.” Instead, here is what he said to the crowds coming out to be baptized: “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance” (Luke 3:7, 8).

John the Baptist may have missed the great opportunity to kick the Messianic age into high gear and build for himself a high-flying career in the Gospel business. Instead, he barely gets going, and he winds up with his head on a silver platter at Herod’s birthday as payment for a sexual dance.

My friends, it fell on the church of the OT to cry for repentance. If fell on the transitional church of John the Baptist to cry for repentance. If falls on the Church of Jesus Christ today to cry for repentance. God cries for His church. He no longer cries for the nation-state of Israel; He cries for His church. He does not cry for America; He cries for His church – His chosen people.

Last week, we talked about the first recorded instance of idolatry in Israel – the story of Micah, a wandering Levite for sale, an ephod and a shrine. When you mix a little gospel with a little self-esteem, what you get is a church that gets along – “The church of what’s happening now!” You get a church that is no longer holding itself to a biblical standard but is working hard not to upset non-believers. The first thing to go in such a church is the doctrine of sin and redemption. Without the doctrine of sin and redemption, the people of God soon forget why they are there. The church becomes another social service club, doing good works in the strength of human ingenuity, money and organization.

I concluded that sermon with a strange thought. That is, that if we drag our sin baggage up Golgotha Hill in exchange for a free trip to Heaven, we know nothing about sin, repentance and redemption and know even less about the person and work of Jesus Christ. Acceptance of Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior is no quid-pro-quo deal – Heaven in exchange for repeating the Sinner’s Prayer. Acceptance of Jesus Christ must come out of the utter hopelessness of our sin and our gratitude for God’s mercy. I suggested that the true Christian must be so overwhelmed with the love and trustworthiness of Jesus that he would worship Him, serve Him and love Him even if there were the possibility that he would wind up in Hell anyway because he failed to come to grips with his own depravity.

We live in a world where success and enjoyment of the good life are valued over all else. There is nothing wrong with success and the good life until it interferes with the mission of the church to call itself to faithfulness and repentance. Today, the good life has infected the church to the degree that instead of calling itself to faithfulness and repentance, it is calling America to faithfulness and repentance. You can talk all you want about the moral decay of America. The main reason we are experiencing this moral decay must be set squarely on the shoulders of those of us who are Christian leaders and on those of you who hire Christian leaders and dictate any other gospel than that of the Word made flesh.

Denomination after denomination has sold its birthright for popular appeal. Evangelicals have opted for strategic silence on matters of discomfort to their congregations. In wanting to be user friendly; in seeking praise and acceptance by the world, we have befriended the world and scorned Jesus Christ. The Apostle Paul nails our condition in 1 Cor. 14:8, “If the trumpet does not sound a clear call, who will get ready for battle?” We have spent far too much time trying to make America look holy and far too little time calling God’s church to remain in a state of repentance.

Jeremiah, the Weeping Prophet, was a failure. He was not a trendsetter. For 40 years, he was God’s spokesman to Judah. When he spoke, nobody listened. He was poor and deprived. He was thrown into prison and into a cistern. Finally, he was taken to Egypt against his will as the Babylonians prepared to attack. He was stoned to death by his own people in Egypt.
Jeremiah’s message was that the judgment of God was coming against His people. He kept warning Israel that the Babylonians were coming and would be God’s instruments of judgment. “Repent, or the Babylonians will come!” Israel opted, instead, to listen to their positive-thinking preachers. They preferred the message of peace, peace and prosperity. They liked hearing that they could think and grow rich and that if their minds could conceive it, they could achieve it. They liked being the chosen people of God and assumed that because they were chosen, they were under His protection despite what they did and how they lived.

“What are you weeping about, Jeremiah?” “Oh that my head were a spring of water and my eyes a fountain of tears! I would weep day and night for the slain of my people. Oh that I had in the desert a lodging place for travelers, so that I might leave my people and go away from them; for they are adulterers, a crowd of unfaithful people.”

Come on, Jeremiah; what’s wrong with you? Why do you have to dwell on the negative side of things? Don’t you know that the preaching of sin and repentance will not draw a crowd? Don’t you know that it is better to preach positive things such as God’s obligation to prosper you and make you happy now?

The weeping prophet only says, “Oh that you would understand. It breaks God’s heart to have to use terrorists from Babylon to judge you and to humble you. It breaks God’s heart to have to use unbelievers and scoffers to mock the hypocrisy and self-righteousness of His church. It breaks God’s heart that His church leans not on the Everlasting Arms but on their entertainment and their fleshly marketing skills. It breaks God’s heart that His church has despised the call to suffering with Christ. It breaks God’s heart that we have bought into the lie that God’s plan for us is that we be healthy and happy. It breaks God’s heart that we handle our congregations with kid gloves so that we not make unbelievers too unhappy.”

Jeremiah abandons himself to sorrow. He cries for God’s people and hears nothing but the echo of his own voice. He weeps and wishes he could weep more so that he might rouse a stupid people with the judgment of God. The Savior said, some 600 years later, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” We could finish that thought by saying that as long as the mourners are here, there may be no rainbow after the storm but only more storm clouds. Comfort may not come in our lifetime; comfort is not guaranteed to the faithful church. Comfort now is an American ideal – not a Christian ideal.

Jeremiah cries for the slain of his people – those of the church who are about to come under God’s judgment: “I would weep day and night for the slain of my people.” Who are “my people?” Why, they are the elect of God worldwide. They are the Palestinians who worship Jesus Christ as Lord. They are not only among the 4,100 Americans who died in Iraq; they are among the up-to 1.2M Iraqi civilians who died in the American assault on Iraq. They are the people all over the world who are brothers and sisters in Christ but who suffer because of an apostate church in America that passes judgment on everyone else but itself.

“Oh, that I had in the desert a lodging place for travelers, so that I might leave my people and go away from them…” How we all long for a cabin in the woods somewhere, away from God’s people! Yet, Jeremiah stays and preaches a sermon that has no audience. “Why not retire, Jeremiah?” “Why not get away from all this adultery and unfaithfulness – this worship of prosperity and success God’s desire for the nations and His blessing on the faithful?” He stays because he cannot go out of the world, as bad as it is, before his time. He cannot give himself into a life of golf and luxurious retirement. There is work to be done; there is preaching to be done. He must stay. If he cannot reform them, he can bear testimony against them, even as it makes him weary of his life to see them dishonoring God and destroying themselves. Paul said it this way: “For me to live is Christ and to die is gain.”

We have an interesting twist of events, reminding us of how easily and how quickly things change. 400 years earlier, David writes from the wilderness that he longed to be in the courts of God’s house. Here, Jeremiah writes from God’s house that he longed to be in the wilderness. “They have taught their tongues to lie; they weary themselves with sinning.” They dare not trust their friends nor their brothers, “for every brother is a deceiver, and every friend a slanderer.

How difficult it is to always be on your guard and to trust no-one. How difficult it is to live as one who must always screen every word through a web of caution and deceit. Yet, is this not the climate in which we live today? “You live in the midst of deception; in their deceit they refuse to acknowledge me,” declares the Lord.

Jude writes that “In the last times there will be scoffers who will follow their own ungodly desires. These are the men who divide you, who follow mere natural instincts and do not have the Spirit.” We are called to preach to such people – folks who are so consumed by their own agendas and their own web of deceit that they have no time for God or the things of God. More tragically, we live in a time when church people are so busy with survival mode that the things of God simply detract from their self-appointed schedules.

Jude suggests a remedy. “Build yourselves up in your most holy faith and pray in the Holy Spirit. Keep yourselves in God’s love as you wait for the mercy of the Lord Jesus Christ to bring you to eternal life.” “Build, pray and keep” – those are the active verbs of the life imbedded in God through Christ Jesus.

The mission of the church, according the Jude, is something quite different from what we see in our day. “Be merciful to those who doubt; snatch others from the fire and save them; to others show mercy, mixed with fear – hating even the clothing stained by corrupted flesh.”

Mercy mixed with fear – that is mission impossible. This message is to the church. We are to show mercy to those who are corrupt, all the while hating even the clothing stained by corrupted flesh. What does this mean?

It means that we are to turn away from what is profitable to what is prophetic. God hates unrepentant sin in His church. We are to risk extending mercy to those who doubt and those who have not locked onto the mercy and longsuffering of God. The more we focus on looking good and feeling good, the more discontented God’s people become. Focus on communication in marriage, and the divorce rate goes up. Focus on money and the debt rate goes up. Focus meeting perceived needs, and God’s people become more desperate and depressed and unfulfilled. We have forgotten that we are to seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness in order for our real needs to be met.

Sentimentality is choking the evangelical church in America. Preach the Gospel, and you will be accused of being a bigot, arrogant, narrow-minded, a homophobe – even an anti-Semite, as I have been called. More to the point, however, you will not draw a crowd. Preaching on Hell, a subject of which I know precious little, will turn people off, they tell us. Preaching salvation by the blood of Jesus Christ alone will turn people off.

Jeremiah was a prophet of doom. Nobody likes to be in that position. He could have softened his approach and saved his skin, perhaps. Like all of us, he must have wanted to be liked and accepted. But it comes down to that matter of accountability – what will be our answer at the Great White Throne? Have we been faithful rather than popular.

As I go through my days at the prison, I wonder how being loving to sinners can ever turn their hearts. How can I love the person and hate the sin? How can I shed tears over God’s church as Jesus shed tears over Jerusalem, especially when I myself am complicit in the church’s apostasy? The wonder of the church is that we can advocate for repentance from our sin condition even though we know very well that we are sinful ourselves. That is the beauty of brokenness before God. Because I am a sinner saved by grace, I can share that message with you. It is not a message to reclaim some past vision of America; it is a message to reclaim the presence of the living Lord within His church.

“The Babylonians are coming!” They are always there to bring God’s people back to His heart. Moral reform of a nation is a function of the faithfulness of the confessing church. A church that confesses that Christianity offers a good code of successful living is a church in decline of witness and outreach no matter how many people enter its doors. A church, however, that confesses that Jesus Christ is Lord, is an instrument for renewal.

There is an old song that the kids used to sing years ago. It was among a series of revival choruses that we were accustomed to singing in the church in which I was raised. While it was then and is now the hope of the church to revive the outside world, one little chorus slipped in: “Lord, send a revival. Lord, send a revival. Lord send a revival, and let it begin in me.”

The only thing that will revive America is revival of God’s church. I mentioned last Sunday the observation of a Chinese Christian who visited America and said when asked, “What is amazing about America is how much they are able to accomplish without God.”

Perhaps we have been too successful over the years in accomplishing things in the church without God. Perhaps we have been too quick to condemn those who find no solace or hope within the church because it is too much like the local service club. Perhaps we have failed to speak the truth of the Gospel when we feared it would offend someone. Perhaps we have failed to believe that God loves His church so much that He gave His Son to die for it.

I pray that this little fragment of the Church of Jesus Christ in America will never lose its commitment to truth. We will have heard Jeremiah’s weeping; we have been convicted of our selfishness and our self-righteousness. Let us never lose sight of the truth.

"Ten Shekels and a Shirt"

An Adaptation of a Sermon by Paris Reidhead:
By: Stan Moody

August 3, 2008
Judges 17 – 18:6

This is the second Sunday of our 15th year here at the NMMH Church. In some ways, we can be proud that we have lasted this long – the longest settled ministry in the history of this church established in 1792. In other more important ways, however, we continue to struggle with what it means to be a Christian in an un-Christian world – a world that systematically and consistently places its hope not in the person and work of Jesus Christ but in our own power to make ourselves happy. The right to the pursuit of happiness is a bedrock principle of our nation that seems to have gotten out of control.

The thought for the sermon this morning came from a classic sermon by Paris Reidhead, a preacher of the mid-20th Century and, ironically, in the Christian and Missionary Alliance denomination, where I spent the first 14 years of my church life. I adopted the title and some of the thoughts because they seemed so appropriate for our day.

I have stumbled along with the rest of you during this past 14 years. I hope, however, that the focus of this ministry has been to challenge us to forsake our pride in humanism (or good old Yankee independence) and to trust God to move us and mold us and make us instruments, not of happiness for others, but instruments of glory for God. The danger we face as we experience a little bit of success here and there, however, is that we will come to believe that God cannot get along without us.

We are facing an election year when one of the candidates is asking us to trust him in a sort of Messianic way. He is the agent of change; he wants to become our hope. What a temptation it is to want to believe that. I remember when Jimmy Carter was the agent of change and hope. His presidency promoted the belief that all you had to do was to believe in some inherent goodness of mankind - believe that we could join hands around the globe and sing “We Are the People;” believe that we could coax forth that inherent goodness that lies within us.

The problem is that if everyone is inherently good and can be coaxed to exhibit their good side, there is no place for the suffering and sacrifice of Jesus Christ. There is no place for a church that teaches repentance and forgiveness of sin because there is no inherent sin – only a poor self-esteem.

Now, having said that, the alternative is even scarier – running around the world stamping out evil where it is conveniently found and declaring ourselves as good without the sacrifice of Jesus Christ as atonement for our sin.

As I walk through the prison every week, I have to remind myself that I am not there to make inmates happy. Making them happy is just another example of the humanism of the Christian church in America. You can make them happy on the way to Hell. No; my job there is to be available in the expectation that there might be one here or there who might be so fed up with his sin that he is seeking Jesus as the remedy.

If I approach my job from that point of view, I can be comfortable with the Muslims, the pagans, the Native Americans, the Wiccans and every group except the evangelical Christians. It matters not what others believe. In fact, it is a good thing that they are trying to make themselves more human and loving. That works for all of us, doesn’t it? It makes easier the job of guarding the prison. When it comes to evangelical Christians, however, I have to hold them to a different standard. They claim the cross of Jesus Christ, but their religion is not a religion of suffering and following Christ but a religion of do’s and don’ts. They claim the Holy Spirit, but they fail to honor the gifts of the Holy Spirit in their daily lives. They claim the truth, but they have perverted the truth for Christianity without Christ.

Several of us here are brainstorming about how we can consolidate the various ministries that have spun out of this little congregation. In the process of doing that, however, I have to very carefully think through what we are doing. Are we just another humanistic social organization trying to make people happier without Christ? Are we just a model of religious humanism, or are we Christians in the true sense of the word?


Tom Oliver reminds us from time to time that the ultimate end to which we are striving as a church is to be able to say with the Apostle Paul, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me…I do not set aside the glory of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!” (Gal. 2:20, 21). A certain degree of happiness may very well be achieved through the law – through a Messianic type of President, or through the exporting of something akin to Democracy, whatever that may mean at the moment.

The Christian, however, does not set aside the glory of God in the process of making people happier or healthier. If that could be done, Christ died for nothing. That is the task of the world’s religions – not the task of the Christian church. We are not called to make heaven on earth for anyone. We are called to be crucified with Christ so that we are enabled to bring God’s message of love to those who have no interest in heaven and are in love with their sin.

In a few moments, I will be reminding you of a number of human failures down through redemptive history. First, however, I want to go back to this story of Micah, a person to whom I had never given a minute’s thought until this week.

A key verse is Judges 17:6: “In those days, Israel had no king; everyone did as he saw fit.” Sounds like a Baptist or a Congregational church, doesn’t it? Micah was a thief. He stole 1100 shekels of silver from his mother, later confessed and returned it to her. She dedicated the money to the Lord and, for some strange reason, thought that the best use of the money was to carve an image and cast an idol. In the process of spending the money for the forging, however, we find that she kept back 900 of the 1100 shekels. She took the middle road of pragmatism, you might say. What happened to the 900 shekels, we don’t know.

This happened right around the 12th Century BC, just before Samuel anointed Saul as the first king of Israel. It is the first recorded instance of idolatry in Israel. God’s people could only be happy, you see, if they adopted the practices of their pagan neighbors. God forbid that they should be different – strangers and aliens in a hostile land and totally reliant on God for their security.

What we have here is a religion of expediency. Micah wanted to build a shrine. So he made an ephod and some idols with his mother’s money and installed one of his sons as his priest. But a better deal came along. A young Levite wandered in from Bethlehem up to Mount Ephraim to see if he could make a better life for himself at some other place than Bethlehem. He came to Micah’s house. Being a Levite, this young man was a priest of the tribe of Levi. Micah saw an opportunity. Offer the young man a salary, food, lodging and a suit of clothes, and he could have his own priest. He would even call him “Father.” Everything was in place. “Now I know that the Lord will be good to me, since this Levite has become my priest.”

The deal was sealed, idols and all.

The tribe of Dan was one of the few tribes of Israel that had no homeland. They had been pushed around by the Amorites. Mount Ephraim looked like a place they could settle. So they sent out some scouts. What they found was Micah, a priest of God and some idols – a compromised religious expression. For ten shekels and a shirt, one of the anointed of God had moved up in the world from where he had been in Bethlehem. It was about to get better.

The scouts liked what they saw. They even managed to get a blessing from the young priest. Since this priest seemed to be under the protection of God, perhaps both he and Micah’s idols could become part of the new hope for the tribe of Dan.

What did the priest tell the scouts when they asked him to inquire of God whether their journey would be successful? “Go in peace. Your journey has the Lord’s approval.” They came to Laish, just north of the Dead Sea, and discovered that the people there were living in safety and were prosperous. They were “unsuspecting and secure,” the Scriptures tell us. Who could blame the Dannites for figuring that if they had the priest and the idols, they would find happiness in Laish? What this priest offered was the hope of humanism – happiness in this life while in ignorance and disregard of what might happen in the next life. The glory of God was the furthest thing from their minds.

They came back to Mount Ephraim with 600 men armed with WMD’s, stole the idols and told the young priest to keep his mouth shut and join with them. The hook was this: “Don’t say a word. Come with us, and be our father and priest. Isn’t it better that you serve a tribe and clan in Israel as priest rather than just one man’s household?” (v. 19).

Did the young priest have even a moment of conscience? We are told in the very next verse that “the priest was glad. He took the ephod, the other household gods and the carved image and went along with the people (of Dan).” Suddenly, this wandering priest discovered that ten shekels and a shirt were not enough. He was about to become high priest for a whole tribe. He was moving up in the world, so he becomes complicit in a robbery. You might say he was working on his liturgical resume.

It gets better. They went on to Laish, reported to be inhabited by a peaceful and unsuspecting people – probably some of the original Palestinians. They attacked these unsuspecting people with the sword and burned down their city, rebuilt the city and settled there. We are told that they set up for themselves idols and continued to use the idols Micah had made, while all the time the house of God was in Shiloh, some 80 miles from Laish – about 20 miles less than the distance Jesus had to travel from Galilee to Jerusalem.

If we were to apply this teaching to the evangelical church in America, we can see where a little bit of legalism and a little bit of grace has been mixed together to make a utilitarian and expedient Christianity in the interest of being accepted by non-believers. The test of all practices within the church of Jesus Christ ultimately comes down to the question, “Does it work?” If it succeeds, it is good. And yet, we are faced with the reality that according to that principle, some of the greatest failures of the ages have been people whom God has honored the most.

Bill Cosby has immortalized Noah for American Christians, I think. In his routine on Noah, a routine that he calls “Right,” Noah is introduced as a hard working carpenter who doesn’t need any kind of interruption. When God speaks to him, he says, “What is this? Am I on Candid Camera?”

Noah may have been a good carpenter or shipbuilder, but he was a failure as a preacher. His wife and three children and their wives were all the converts he had – seven converts after 120 years of preaching. Most mission boards would have asked him to resign long before this. Yet, consider the impact that he made in redemptive history. His righteousness was what prevented God from destroying His human creation and starting all over again.

Jeremiah was given the terrible assignment of preaching to a doomed nation and achieving zero results. He lost out with the people, the leadership and everyone but God. Today, however, it is Jeremiah’s prophecy that helps hold together the eternal plan of God through Jesus Christ from Adam to Revelation.

The Lord Jesus Christ was another colossal failure. He could not even keep 12 disciples together. He organized no church or denomination. He never built a school. While James Dobson has made his hundreds of millions on teaching us to “Focus on the Family,” Jesus told us that the enemies of the Gospel would be the members of our own families and that whoever was not willing to leave family and follow Him was not worthy of Him. He preached for 3 years, healed thousands of people, fed thousands of people, but when it was over, He had 11 disciples and probably 100 others who were interested enough to see Him through to His Ascension. Yet, what an impact He made.

We are told that David Livingston gave his life to missionary work in Africa and, at the end, may have had only a couple of converts. Today, millions claim Christ as Lord in Africa. William Carey labored in China for a handful of converts. Today, believers in Jesus Christ in China are estimated to be nearly 100M souls.

The Pilgrims who first landed at Plymouth Rock nearly all died of starvation that first winter, and their brand of the Gospel did not survive the second generation. Yet, it was their vision and their work that gave rise to this great nation that has spread the Gospel throughout the world and shared its resources with billions.

The list goes on and on – failures who planted the seed for others to water and still others to harvest. This raises the question as to our standards of success. By what are we to judge our lives and our ministry? Putting it another way, “Is God an end, or is He a means to an end?”

Are we going to be like Levites who serve God for ten shekels and a shirt? Are we serving people in the name of God, or are we serving God? This Levite who performed religious services was looking not to glorify God but was looking for a place that would give him security and a name for himself. Perhaps that was the point at which religion officially became a means of making a living.

It has always been easy for Evangelicals to point to liberals and accuse them of a gospel of humanism – the happiness of man with little or no thought to where man is going. In our day, however, Evangelicals have fallen victim to the same heresy. They say, “We believe in the inspiration of the Bible! We believe in the deity of Jesus Christ! We believe in Hell! We believe in Heaven! We believe in all these things!” The whole plan of salvation has come down to an intellectual assent to a few statements of doctrine. A person becomes a Christian because he can assent to a few basic things. He receives a pat on the back and a big smile with, “Brother, you’re saved. Let me add you to my mailing list!”

The religion of the Evangelical, then, has more to do with making you happy than with glorifying God. It has more to do today with changing the political order than it does with changing hearts and lives. It has more to do today with creating Heaven on earth than it does with living out the reality of the Sermon on the Mount.

“Accept Jesus so you can go to Heaven! You don’t want to go to that old nasty burning Hell when there is a beautiful Heaven up there!” In light of the suffering and sacrifice of God’s only Son, that statement is about as selfish as it gets, isn’t it? In fact, it is the complete opposite of Christianity. When he purchased a priest for 10 shekels and a shirt, Micah said, “Now I know the Lord will be good to me.” That was selfishness! The Levite, who was looking for a place, fell right into it.

Today, we have covered over the doctrine of sin and redemption until we have convinced ourselves that God is in Heaven for our happiness. We forget that God’s desire for our happiness is not the prime objective; happiness is a by-product of the committed, crucified life.
Humanism says, “The chief end of all being is the happiness of man.” Christianity says, “The chief end of all being is the glory of God!” One is all about the deification of man. The other is all about the glorification of God.

There is only one reason for a sinner to repent, and that is because Jesus the Christ deserves the worship, adoration, love and obedience of the heart. A person comes to the cross and embraces death with Christ, not because it is a path to paradise, but because it is the only way by which God can get the glory out of a human being. Anything else, including all our skills, glorifies us rather than God.

Hear the cry of the repentant heart: “”Lord Jesus, I desire to obey you and love you and do whatever you want me to do as long as I live, even if I go to Hell at the end of the road. You are worthy to be loved, worthy to be obeyed and worthy to be served. I am not trying to cut a deal with you, for I have nothing to offer but my own sinfulness.”

That is what it means to live for the glory of God. That is the only means by which God can be glorified through our lives. If our acceptance of Christ requires that there be a guarantee of Heaven when we die – a quid pro quo deal, we have accepted Him for all the wrong reasons.

Eternal life begins right now – not in the “sweet-by-and-by.”

The story is told of a Chinese Christian who visited America. When asked his impressions, he said, “What impressed me most about America is what Americans can accomplish without God.”
That’s it, isn’t it - accomplishing great things without God because accomplishing great things is the American way, with or without God.

As we think about the past and the future of this little church, let’s not only be willing to have been a failure for the cause of Christ, but let’s set a new course for the future. Let’s reject a utilitarian Christianity that makes God a means, rather the glorious end that He is. Let’s resign from American evangelicalism. Let’s tell Micah that we are through. We are no longer going to be priests serving for ten shekels and a shirt. Let’s tell the tribe of Dan that we are through. Instead, let’s cast ourselves at the nail pierced feet of the Son of Man and tell Him that we are going to obey Him, serve Him and worship Him as long as we live because, and only because, He is worthy!