Merredin Uniting Church

SERMON FOR OCTOBER 2^ND 2011

A couple of weeks ago, we were having our lunch like any other normal day, and we received bad news.

Terrible news, the kind all parents have nightmares about.

Our old friends in Narembeen had lost their youngest son in a dreadful car accident the previous evening.

It was in truth an horrific accident with Adrian left dead, and the others in the car critically injured and lost,…… unable to explain to anyone where they were, ………so they waited while the emergency services frantically searched for them through the night.

What followed was a harrowing week for our friends as they tried to deal with it all and arrange for the funeral.

But as often happens in these situations, tragedy bought the best out of everyone. They were swamped with love……… from their church family

from their actual family………. and from the community.

The sheep were crutched, the paddocks were sprayed, meals were delivered along with a constant stream of visits, phone calls and messaged of support.

The funeral was like nothing I’ve experienced before.

It was a big one, maybe 6-700 people.

The church was full, the church hall via a video link was full,

there were people crowded outside.

The service had moments of abject misery as his siblings gave eulogies but as the service progressed a picture emerged of an amazing young man who had excelled in all areas of life, from his career, his church life and mission activity, sport, community service, philanthropy, and social activity.

A procession of over 100 cars proceeded to the cemetery where we were greeted to a 100m  long guard of honour made up of police, fire brigade, St Johns ambulance, players from at least four teams in the hockey association, work mates and possibly more.

All this for a man who turned 21 just 3 weeks before his death.

This was a death that made you think a lot about life.

 

For those of you who know me well you will understand that mornings are not my best times.

You could say I’m a bit fragile in the mornings.

It takes a lot of concentration for me to get dressed properly.

It drains me ……coping with the complexities of boiling the kettle for my cup of tea, …………and choosing which breakfast cereal to eat, which spread to put on my toast.

If it wasn’t for my darling wife, helping me through this maze of morning activity I could end up out in the paddock half dressed, hungry and very disoriented.

If you have this mental picture in mind can you imagine my shock the morning after the funeral to read this on Luke’s nutri-grain packet.

“When the time comes ………

will you be ready.”

 

Repeat………

 

Now this is heavy, this is real heavy.

My eyes are now wide open and clear.

I’m grabbing the packet and reading it again to make sure that’s what it says.

I’m rushing around trying to find someone else to read it to make sure it’s not a dream ………that God is not talking to just me in some divine revelation.

But no, it was there all right.

There’s nothing like the death of a friend to make you think a lot about life is there.

It’s interesting how God works.

 

The lectionary reading for today comes to us from Philippians 3:4-14

I noted with interest that a lot of sermons are written on this passage, I saw a list of 158 one site on the net.

Because I’m not a great biblical scholar I like to read other sermons to give me an idea on how others interpret the passages.

But in this case, perhaps because of my recent experiences , I think they all kind of glossed over the passage a bit.

It was the lead into a motivational pep talk for a new years day service drawing on that theme Paul develops ;

in pressing on……..in striving towards the goal.

It’s a valid theme ….to refocus, to rededicate…. but there is more to it I think.

Much more.

If you read the book of Philippians, Paul clearly has a soft spot for the church in Philippi.

He has visited them several times and grown to love the congregation there.

In verse 3 of chapter 1 he say’s

“I thank my God every time I remember you”

Isn’t that awesome!

What an endorsement of the people from a guy like Paul.

Although I have often wondered what Paul would have been like in the flesh.

 

I had a friend called Ray in my youth.

He had a kind of restless energy and he was full of zeal.

He was relentless in his efforts to drive us to greater levels of commitment and service to Christ, or to football, or to cricket, or whatever it was.

You had to admire him, and he was a good mate, but he really could drive you mad.

I think Paul might have been a bit like that.

When he was with you ……..life was like an extreme sport……

just full on and dangerous

And when he moved on everyone took a breath and rested.

When he wrote the church a letter all the elders had to sit down for a week and absorb all the stuff that he was saying, all the deep and meaningful.

They had to brace for the verbal serve, the not very subtle illustrations of where they had gone off the rails.

This was Paul the apostle, Paul the theologian, evangelist  and crusader.

 

There was some debate in the commentaries I read,….. but general agreement that when Paul wrote this letter he was in prison.

It is quite likely he was in prison in Rome where he was for held for 2 years and waiting for the outcome of his trial, which probably was going to be bad.

Philippi is about 6 weeks travel from Rome so it’s not that easy for the congregation to support him and not that easy to pass messages on.

Paul knows that his time is possibly up, and these are likely his last words to his friends in Philippi.

When you put it this context, this is not about new years resolutions.

This is about life and death.

This is messages on the nutri-grain box

“When the time comes will you be ready.”

In the verses leading up to our reading Paul is addressing an issue which has arisen in the congregation and it is the trend of self justification.

If I understand the issue correctly it is a timeless issue.

If we’ve done this good deed, if we’ve acted that way, if we’ve observed this ritual or custom then we are a child of God.

Paul then challenges them, and by association us,

In verse 4:   Look if you think you are justified by your actions,

Whatever you’ve done …….. I’ve done more.

If you think you’ve been a good person,  I’ve been better.

If you think you’ve got a superior background , I’m better connected.

“But do you know what !”  he says……..

“I   consider   all   that   I   was ………rubbish”

Some commentators suggest in trying to understand the meaning of the original word “skybalon” that the best modern translation of the word is “muck”.

Muck is kind of sticky and clings to you. You have to shake it off !

What is he talking about ?

You will remember Saul the zealous Jew… persecuting Christians in the pursuit of righteousness.

He has a close encounter with the risen Christ on the road to Damascus, …and his life is turned on it’s head.

He becomes the apostle Paul, evangelist and missionary.

“All that stuff I counted as important, I now count as loss for the sake of Christ” he says.

“I have no righteousness of my own that comes from doing good things

But I count only on the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith.”

The things he thought important has been completely turned on its head

In verse 10

“I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection………”

Remember my friends ; Paul can sense the end !

He understands his time is not long.

This is not a time to mince words

This is not a time to give false hopes

Paul is trying to get his friends to focus on the big things, the important things.

And that is getting their relationship with God right .

In the context of eternity….. there is nothing more important.

And what’s changed for us today !

I’ve been thinking about it as I prepared for today.

I’m not as tough as Paul.

I find it hard to dismiss a persons attempts to live a good life as rubbish or muck.

But I did start to see that we live very much in two parallel realms.

As ordinary humans we live in the world as we know it. We work and strive to make money, to raise our kids as best we can.

We work even more to build up a nest egg in the hope of a comfortable retirement, and all the while trying to be a good person.

This is normal…………

But there is another realm.

That is the world of eternity.

Sooner or later we will all be experiencing that personally.

It’s something none of us can escape from.

 

Some of you might be young like Adrian.

You might be 95

But most of us are so absorbed in the realm of living this life ….

that we continue to ignore or put off dealing with the big issue of God …. and our eternal future with him.

We are not ready

We are not prepared.

We have not taken the job seriously of finding out what God wants from us.

 

I have to ask you today

Are you ready

Are you prepared.

 

If you’re not .. then when are you going to do something about it.

Make an appointment with David.

He is awesome at helping work through some of these issues.

Make use of him.

In the last section of our reading  today, Paul talks about “pressing on toward the goal”

This is not some half baked new years resolutions.

This is the line in the sand.

This is an acknowledgment that although he is forgiven in Christ and he is confident of his eternal reward ………he strives on.

“Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead…….

I press on …….toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.

I thought long and hard about how to finish this.

Because it’s not all about misery and bleakness.

It’s about embracing the eternal love of God offered to us,

It’s about understanding his eternal promises to us.

It’s about then setting a path forward ; God’s path…….in obedience,

not in cowering submission,…. but in confidence and purpose and assurance.

This may not be relevant but I want to share some of Winston Churchill’s more famous defiant words during WW2.

This was Churchill willing the nation to press on toward the goal.

Note the determination in his words.

His first statement in Parliament as PM

“I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.”

A few weeks later at Dunkirk

“We shall not flag or fail, We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France

we shall fight on the seas and oceans.

And we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air.

We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be

We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds

We shall fight in the fields and in the streets

We shall fight in the hills, we shall never surrender.

A few months later

“Death and sorrow will be the companions of our journey

Hardship our garment, constancy and valour our only shield

We must be united, we must be undaunted, we must be inflexible”

The following year..  addressing Hitler.

“We will have no truce or parley with you, or the grisly gang who work your wicked will.

You do your worst……. And we will do our best”

And later in 1941 addressing a boys school.

“Do not let us speak of darker days, let us speak rather of sterner days

These are not dark days ; these are great days

The greatest our country has ever lived

And we must thank God that we have been allowed,

Each of us according to our stations

To play a part in making these days memorable in the history of our race.”

 

If you have drawn that line in the sand.

If you are ready to press on with God  , can you then join me in reading this statement that I read on the wall of the church hall at Adrian’s funeral..

If you are not ready then remain silent.

The choice has been made

There is no looking back

I have stepped over the line

I won’t let up, back up, give up or shut up

My focus is clear,

My path straight

My God reliable

I am a disciple of Christ.

 

 

 

Exodus 20:1-20:17

In Lewis Carroll’s book “Alice in Wonderland”, Alice was having a conversation with the Mad Hatter and the March Hare one afternoon. And the March Hare scolded her, saying, “You should say what you mean!”
Alice said, “I do — at least, I mean what I say — that’s the same thing you know.”
The Mad Hatter says, “It’s not the same thing a bit! You might just as well say that ‘I see what I eat’ is the same thing as ‘I eat what I see’!”
The March Hare adds, “You might just as well say “that ‘I like what I get’ is the same thing as ‘I get what I like’!”

We know that it’s not the same thing, and as Christians we need to say what we mean and we mean what we say, especially when it comes to God. Today we are looking at the Third Commandment .

“You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain, for the LORD will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in vain.”

The very name of God is sacred. The Jews took this command so strictly that they avoided pronouncing God’s name altogether. They were so afraid of using it in vain that it got to the point where it was pronounced only once a year, that was by the high priest on the Day of Atonement.

A class of students were studying Hebrew under an orthodox Jewish rabbi. One day the students were reading the Hebrew text out loud. One of the rules of the class was that when you came to the name of God you were not to pronounce what was in the text. You were to change the name to “Adonai” which is Hebrew for Lord.
Well, one of the students inadvertently pronounced the name of God and upon hearing it the rabbi put his hands over his ears and ran from the classroom. No one saw him for several days. When he finally surfaced again they found that he considered himself so unworthy of hearing the name of God that he spent days in prayer asking for forgiveness.

Now, that’s probably a little extreme. What’s the big deal? In fact, you might even wonder why the name of God is even mentioned in the third commandment. Why didn’t God just say, “I am the Lord, and you need to take me seriously”?

After all, as Juliet said to Romeo, “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet…”

And there is a degree to which that is true. The four-legged creature we call a “dog” could just as easily have been called a “zuffle” and it really wouldn’t have made much difference.
But, in another sense, Shakespeare was very, very wrong. Names do make a difference.

In the scriptures, the significance of a person’s name defined their life. A name wasn’t just a label. It stood for the person, revealed his character and identified his role. And sometimes they needed a name change.

In Genesis 17, God said, “No longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be Abraham; for I have made you a father of many nations.”

When twins were born, they were given names the names Esau which means red or hairy and Jacob which means grabber or deceiver — which is very fitting for his whole life. But, following a wrestling match with God, the Lord gave Jacob a new name: Israel, which means “one who struggles with God.” And that name eventually became the way of identifying the entire Hebrew nation — they were a people that struggled with God.

When Simon came to Jesus, Jesus said, “You are Simon, the son of Jonah. You shall be called Peter (which is translated, a stone).” (John 1:42).
Those passages let us know that their names were significant statements about the purpose of their lives.

Now look at this can of Coke. If you look good enough at this you will see a little TM after the name, which stands for Trademark. Even though we use the word Coke to describe nearly every kind of soft drink, the name Coke is the sole property of the Coca Cola Company.

What do you think would happen if I took a cup of water, added some caramel coloring to it and some sugar and then slapped a Coke label on it and tried to sell it? I would get sued because I had put the same name on my product that was on their product. Well, what’s the problem with that? What’s so important about the Coke name?

The name stands for everything that they are as a company – their entire reputation – is wrapped up in that name. So we can understand why they would get upset when someone uses that name in an inappropriate way.

Now if we can understand that about a can of Coke, how do you think God feels when we use His name in an improper way?

The last part of Exodus 20:7 says that God will not let you go unpunished if you misuse his name.

So how do we take God’s Name in vain
There are at least two different areas in which the name of God can be used “in vain”.
1. We can misuse God’s name through our speech
One of the things God was concerned about was the use of His name in the taking of vows. In Leviticus 19, God said, “And you shall not swear by My name falsely, nor shall you profane the name of your God: I am the LORD.”
It’s as if God was saying, “Don’t you ever use my name in any oath you don’t plan to keep. Don’t ever claim to tell the truth or make a promise on the basis of my name, and then fail to fulfill that promise! My name is too holy to be attached to anything empty or untruthful.”

God’s point is that when a person uses His name to take an oath and then neglects to do what he said he would do, he smears the name and reputation of God. You’ve proven that you don’t take him seriously.

Jesus goes a step further. In the 1st century the Jews had established an informal system of oath-taking. If you swore by God, you were bound to it. But if you wanted to get out of your vow you could make it you promise on something or someone else. For example you could say, “I swear on my mother’s grave.” Then when you wanted to get out of it, you could later follow up with, “Ha, ha, she’s still alive!”

The Pharisees believed that the closer your vow was to God, the more seriously you had to take it. But the further away from God and his name you moved, the more latitude you had with the truth.

Jesus tells us in Matthew 5:37, “But let your ’Yes’ be ’Yes,’ and your ’No,’ ’No.’

- Another way that we misuse the name of God is in profanity.
There’s a verse in Isaiah 52:5 where God is mourning the plight of his people. As he lists the evils of that day, he says, “My name is blasphemed continually every day.”

Sound familiar?

We hear it in movies, on television, at work or at school. We’ve all known people who get angry or frustrated and use God’s name to condemn whoever he sees as the source of his problem.

What in the world could be more unholy than condemning someone or something in the name of the God who desires for all men to be saved?
When we take the name of God and misuse it, we reveal something about ourselves — either we misunderstand the nature of God, or we just don’t care about him.

“God” and “Jesus” have become adjectives.

Most people will say, “I didn’t mean anything by it.” But the point God wants to get across is that we shouldn’t utter God’s name unless we do mean something by it, because his name does mean something. And we ought to have respect for that which is holy.

This is the third command that tells us how important God is to our lives. He’s not just “background noise” in our lives. He is the reason for our lives.

Kentucky Fried Chicken Founder Colonel Sanders said, “Becoming a Christian cost me half my vocabulary.”

2. We can misuse God’s name through our lifestyle.
When God gave his covenant to the Jews, the nation of Israel carried around the responsibility of bearing God’s name. The Jews became God’s people. That meant, among other things, that they bore the responsibility for carrying God’s name to the rest of the nations of the world.

When others looked at Israel, they saw God’s people. They got an idea of what God was like. They carried God’s reputation with them just like every can of Coke carries the reputation of its parent company.

When I was at school the headmaster would tell us over and over again that we represented the school. How we acted reflected on the whole school and affected the reputation of the school.
In the same way, the actions of Israel reflected on God and God’s name because they were God’s people. They had a responsibility to live up to their role as the bearers of God’s name.
Listen to what Paul says in Romans 2:21-24: “You, therefore, who teach another, do you not teach yourself? You who preach that a man should not steal, do you steal? You who say, “Do not commit adultery,” do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? You who make your boast in the law, do you dishonor God through breaking the law? For “The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you.””

God’s name was blasphemed because of the way they were living. They were teaching all the right things, but they weren’t living it. And as a result, God’s name was taken in vain.

In Malachi 1:6, God says, “A son honors his father, and a servant his master. If then I am the Father, where is My honor? And if I am a Master, where is My reverence? says the LORD of hosts to you priests who despise My name. Yet you say, ’In what way have we despised Your name?’”

God says, “You’ve despised my name, you’ve taken it in vain.” What was their response, “What are you talking about? How have we done that?” And so God goes on to explain that they despised his name by not living lives of righteousness. These people had shown contempt for God’s name, but it wasn’t through their words; it was through their actions.

The Israelites were supposed to bring their best animal as a sacrifice. Specifically, the sacrifice was to be a one-year old male lamb that had no blemish or spot, no broken legs, and no disease. Instead, they were bringing the leftovers – the ones that they and no one else wanted.

God says in vs. 8, “Try offering them to your governor!” What they were bringing to God supposedly to honor his name was something that their public officials would have laughed at and been offended by.

God’s name was supposed to be lifted up and magnified in Israel so that the rest of the world would see what a great God they had and magnify Him. But instead, Israel through its actions had thrown mud on God’s name so that the rest of the world laughed at their God rather than praising Him.

You see, anyone can talk about God. When someone sneezes, we easily say, “God bless you!”

But faith isn’t just talking about God. Christianity isn’t about words; it’s about a relationship.

That’s why this command talks about our sincerity to God in terms of using his name with reverence. God is holy. He deserves our reverence and our worship — not just our words, but our genuine, sincere faith and worship. When we talk about God, we need to mean what we say.

This commandment is calling us to authentic faith. God doesn’t want you to merely say that he’s number one; he actually wants to be number one. When it comes to God, we need to “practice what we preach.” After all, if you’ve given your life over to Jesus, you bear his name. When you call yourself a “Christian,” you’re saying that you are his representative. Your actions are a reflection on his reputation.

Sometimes God may need to say to us, “Change your life or change your name?” We cannot call ourselves a “Christian” and act like the world.

If we are to bear Christ’s name, then our lives must have a quality about them that reflects the meaning of his name.

As Christians, we carry around the name of Christ wherever we go. We are the people of God. Wherever we go and whatever we do reflects back on God and how the world thinks of Him.

Using God’s name in vain is more than a ban against cursing.

And it shouldn’t cause the kind of extremism experienced by Jews, who are afraid to speak the name of God at all, lest they misuse it in some way.

This third commandment is an instruction to use God’s name with reverence and to mean what we say. It is a call for sincerity in our relationship with the Lord.

Ultimately, the question we need to answer for ourselves is this: “How much respect do I have for God and His name?” Am I using the kind of language that is going to bring honor to the name of God? Even further, am I living my life in such a way as to bring honor to the name of God?

Names are important. Acts 4:12 tells us, “Nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”