Faith

April 25, 2010 – Rick Feld

WRESTLING WITH GOD – FLIGHT, FIGHT OR FACE?

References: Genesis 28:10-22 Bethel – God’s House

Genesis 32:1-2 Mananiam – God’s Camp

Genesis 32:9-12 Jacob’s Prayer

Genesis 32:22-32 Peniel – God’s Face

1. Jacob set up pillars and altars as memorials throughout his life.

  What memorials do we look back on in our walk with God to strengthen our faith?

2. We all wrestle with God.

a) What are some of your past battles?

b) What are some of your current struggles?

c) What did God have to “touch” to bring you into willing submission?

3. What does it mean to “cling” to God? (Genesis 32:25-26)

4. Like Jacob we all attempt to control our fears and our future.

a) What have been some of your “strategies” to control the outcome?

b) How has God intervened?

5. How would our perspective on life change if we believed that everywhere, everyday, we were walking on “Holy Ground”?

 

 

April 18, 2010 – Ken Smith

KNOW THE IMPLICATIONS OF LOVE     John 21:15-19

 Love is better “caught” than “taught”.

Question:    What Biblical characters demonstrate that love is much more than a verbal statement?

1.    The inherent character of love        John 3:16

       True love exists to give not get.

 Question:   How does the work of God in creation illustrate this?

                  What is the greatest demonstration of love?

                  How does God know we live to give to/for him? 

2.    An old commandment        Lev. 19:18, Mt. 22:39

Question:     Who is your “neighbour”?

                    In what ways can you love your enemies?

3.    A new commandment        John 13:34-35

Question:    What is “new” about this commandment?

                  What kind of people are in your life?

                 How can you love all of them – unconditionally, fairly,  forgivingly? 

 

April 11, 2010 – Ken Smith 

 KNOW THE POWER OF HIS RESURRECTION        Phil. 3:20

 

1.    Power to be made right with God        Rom. 4:25, 1 Cor. 15:17

 

Question:     What if Jesus was just a martyr?

                    How does his resurrection guarantee that you are “right” with God?

 

2.    Power to master sin                            Gen. 4:7, Rom. 6:15-23, 1 Cor. 15:34

 

Question:    How does being a “voluntary slave” to Jesus give us real freedom?

                  Discuss the words of the late Henri Nouwen:

- to be so free that we can be obedient

- to be so autonomous that we can be dependent

- to be so in control that we can surrender ourselves.

 

3.    Power to be witnesses for Christ        Acts 4:33

 

Question:    How do you feel about persecution, especially from Jesus’ words in Mark 10:29-30?

                  How can we realize an increase in coming together for united prayer for boldness to witness?

 

 

www.facebook.com/Bill.Coleman.JR

WHEN GOD TAKES MY HAND

Faith Church, St. Thomas, Ontario www.path2faith.com 

Pastor Bill Coleman www.facebook.com/Bill.Coleman.JR

 EASTER 2010

 The message began with a video clip. To view this clip follow the link below from Sermon Spice, “This Hand”, Restoration Videos, (2:12)}

 http://www.sermonspice.com/search?q=this+hand&topic=All

 Hands. Wherever we go, our hands go with us. They see everything we see, don’t they. Museums of our past, a living history of what we have done with our lives, the good and the bad. Ten chapters of our very personal history recorded in memories: God’s memory and our memory.

 

Pilate

 Pontius Pilate knew he had to do something about his hands. Pilate was Roman prefect over Judah, who presided over the trial of Jesus Christ, who gave the word for His crucifixion. He thought he could do something with what his hands had done.

 Matthew 27:²⁴”So … Pilate … took water and washed his hands before the crowd, saying, ‘I am innocent of this man’s blood’; …”

 But, was he … innocent, really? Did he not act knowingly?

 Does anyone really believe that going through some ritual of washing, be it the ancient rite of baptism, or hand-washing, or scrubbing oneself in a Holy River with a sanctified loofah can actually remove one’s responsibility for sin? Hands with ten little eyes that know all about us, the good things we do and….

This is an important question, really, because there are many people, who hold onto their religious ceremonies or traditions as their way into heaven. What can wash away my sin? Ivory soap? Would Bounce help to keep them sticking to us like static cling? How far or how long does a person have to crawl on their knees or grovel before God until He is placated? Who gets to make that decision? Is it, some religious leader like a pastor, priest, pope, Imam, Rabbi, or, what about CNN, or Google maps, do they decide how far and how long?

 Voice

Is there not this voice from out in the universe, which we all hear, you know, when we are in that quiet place of our own hearts? A voice calling to us for justice, for righting the wrongs? Even children on the playground, when things don’t go their way, cry out “It’s not fair. Make it right.”

When these people of the world, and our neighbourhood, and us on our beds at night, thinking through our days, know that they/we/I did the wrong, not the right, there is this internal something, which seeks to wash the sin off of … the stained hands … and erase the memories which still linger.

 Pilate felt that call to justice too, otherwise he would not have felt compelled to wash his hands in this so public manner. Too bad he missed the point of that day.

 But, let’s be fair, don’t we all go that way too? Thinking that somehow, someway, we can wash away our own guilt. Burn some candles, give some money, walk a long ways in a pilgrimage, pray a bunch of prayers, sign up for this or that, punish ourselves. Do we really believe that that is all there is too it? How many donations of our best gift to the TV evangelist do we have to give before we get our miracle?

 Isolation

 This is not the teaching of the Bible. It is not the message of the Christian faith, that we can wash away this guilt and be innocent by something, anything we do, no matter how sincerely we may practice it.

 This teaching of nothing I can do, if left alone, would leave us stranded, hopeless, helpless, like a polar bear on an isolated ice floe, with no way to escape our just consequences before a holy God. Just no way out of our predicament, unless there is more to the story.

 Spot

 Like Shakespeare’s Lady MacBeth, who is driven mad by the blood stain on her hands for plotting in the murder of King Duncan. “Out I say!” “You spot of condemnation”, she held in her memory, but saw on her imaginary hands. That’s my Sunday morning, job protecting paraphrase, for you Shakespeare fans.

 It would strike terror into the hearts of all, and rightfully so as we meditate on the possibility of being held accountable by God for all of our actions, not just the better ones, the ones we like to remember, even those little, teeny, tiny sins.

 Encouragement for followers

 St. Paul did write to followers of Jesus Christ these encouraging words:

 Ephesians 2:^11…13a”Therefore remember that at one time you … were at that time separated from Christ,…having no hope and without God in the world. But, now…”

 Obviously, something really meaningful happened to them.

 But God

 Fourteen times in the New Testament we come across these words: “But God…”

 Most of the time, they picture God doing an intervention in the lives of His children in some dramatic way. Rather than leaving us in a state without Christ, helpless, or hopeless, floating through life with no solid ground in sight, trapped into some degeneration, depravity or desperation, He intervenes in stunning and staggering ways.

 His reaches out His hand to take our hands and lift us out of whatever depressing or despondent place we find ourselves. It’s compared, in the Bible, to being spiritually sick with a fatal illness, for which there is no cure, and needing a spiritual physician in our lives to give us the new life that only He can give, because He is the only One who knows the cure.

Sickness

 Leprosy affects the fingers on the hands, often first. Leprosy is a slow moving bacterial infection that starts in the skin of the hands and feet and nose and ears, affecting the nerves, setting up an environment numbing the person, killing the extremities through infection, producing a very ugly sight as parts dissolve and eventually fall off.

 The ancient people of biblical times were terrified of leprosy because, apart from a miracle from God, they had no cure. It was a slow, debilitating, disgusting, miserable death, including perhaps the worst consequence of being ostracized by society due to the fear of infection. They were considered as “unclean” needing to be quarantined. Think SARS; but, worse, at least for the one who caught it.

 It isn’t surprising, then, that the biblical people used leprosy as a metaphor for sin. Sin infects, makes us unclean before God and society. We like to think that in our liberal, secular society, that our culture is all about “tolerance and personal choice, live and let live, don’t be judgmental”; but, just look at Tiger Woods’ experience with this society. Society, even in these so-called post-modern tolerant times, is very unforgiving. They never forget.

 Sin puts those dreadful spots on our hands, which are stored not only in our personal memory, but also in the collective memory of our culture, and especially the media, who sees itself as the librarian.  This librarian who loves to dust off the volumes and keep the expose alive and circulating so long as it sells advertising.

 If left unchecked, sin eventually spreads and conquers our whole body, killing our minds, deadening our emotions, and pushing us out of healthy society into some form of social isolation and cultural rejection. Think unnecessary suffering and failure brought on by avoidable personal choices.

 It is much like these reality intervention TV shows. Someone’s behaviour gets more and more out of control until they are literally killing, in a holistic way, themselves and losing their place in family and society.

 Only when that person sees his or her need and some other loving person or family member intervenes to help them, do they get the help they need and, at some level, they really want. “I need this made right.” They know at that subterranean level of their hearts someone needs to come and help.

 The Bible says it is much like that with God and how the Scripture describes our relationship to Him. We are the hoarders, trapped with all of our stuff to where we are not experiencing the freedom that God wants for us. He is, painted, as the organizer, knocking on our front door asking to be let in. “Please, let me in”, He says, “I have an abundant life for you that is so much better than all this stuff. Take my hand, let go of the stuff. Let’s clean this place and give you some freedom to enjoy life with yourself and your friends and family”.

 Leper

 Properly understood the entire Bible is one big sermon from God, given through people, throughout the ages to us. When we read it, we are always looking for the spiritual message behind the narrative.  Here’s one example:

 Matthew 8:²“And behold, a leper came to Him (Jesus) and knelt before Him, saying, ‘Lord, if You will, You can make me clean.’

 Hands. We can imagine this man reaching up with those decaying hands with missing fingers appealing to Him. Intervene, please. I am helpless and hopeless. I can do nothing to save myself. I need a physician, who can do for me what I can’t do for myself. Help me get this place clean.

 This Gospel story is so much more than just a healing story. It is all that; but, it is a message that anyone with stains on their hands from sin, or any other place else on their body, can kneel in sincerity before Him and expect the same kind of intervention.

 What did Jesus do?

 Matthew 8:³And Jesus stretched out His hand and touched him, saying, ‘I will; be clean.’ And immediately his leprosy was cleansed.”

 It was a “But God” moment. “But for God”, he was helpless and hopeless to heal himself.

 This is a picture of the plan of how God deals with our sin. Those dreaded stains we carry in our memories, and even if we have forgotten them, God carries them in His eternal memory, others may as well, can be cleansed by coming to Jesus Christ in faith, asking for it.

 St. Paul, in his usual way, detailed this miracle of cleansing like this:

2 Corinthians 5:²¹” For our sake He (Father) made Him (Christ) to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him (Christ) we might become the righteousness of God.”

 This verse is a “But God” verse without the “but God”. He shows His intervention in the lives of sinners.

 “For our sake”, because we needed it and because of His great love with which He loved each one of us, in spite of our love for and addiction to sin and stuff, intervened. He intervened. How? “For our sakes,” for you, and for me “He made Him (Christ) to be sin.”

 God, one of whose names is Emmanuel, meaning “God who is with us,” as we celebrate each Christmas, took on human flesh to be one of us, who as God would be “knew no sin”.  He was, nevertheless, “made to be sin” for us.

His hands were nailed to the cross for a very good reason. His hands represented our hands. His clean hands covered in only righteousness, and ours dirty, covered in sin and guilt and shame and blame. It was our hands, which deserved to be nailed to the cross to satisfy God’s justice; but God intervened. He who knew no sin was made to be our sin for us.

 God intervened in person, took on human flesh, sinless as He was, to pay the full and complete price to Himself for any offense that you, or I, have caused Him. He footed your tab. He cancelled your bill. He did it His way, because He is the owner of the universe and it was to Him that we owed the eternal payment we could never cover ourselves. 

 All He asks is that we accept Him by faith for what He has done for us and quit trying to pay the bill, quit trying to wash that dreaded sin off of our own hands. It is a gift of grace to be freely received by faith alone.

 Gift Giving

 Would you not agree that it’s an offense to give someone a gift only to have them try to pay for it? “No, no, here have some money. Here, let me work for it.”

 Clean Hands

 What is, perhaps, even more striking is what God says next: “so that in Him (Christ) we might become the righteousness of God.”

 When Jesus Christ was raised from the dead, having been made sin for us; that is, God took His memory of your sin and the punishment it deserved and paid for it Himself, His own way. As the One who was owed the debt, only He has the right to make that decision.  People often try to come up with some other plan; but, God is the One to whom the debt is owed. Only He has the right to decide what satisfies that debt.

 The resurrection to new life was God’s way of saying, that the sickness and death of sin was replaced by new life to all who would come to Him in faith. It was a signal that not only was our sin debt resolved; but, much more than that, as we see in the text: “so that in Him (Christ) we might become the righteousness of God.”

 His righteousness becomes our righteousness as far as God is concerned. Christ’s clean hands become our clean hands. He wants us to believe it because He believes it. I know I need it to be true. Don’t you?

 Pilate

 Pilate’s problem was not really his hands any more than it was for Lady Macbeth. His hands simply represented a much deeper problem, his heart.

 His heart did not have the touch of Christ. It was broken by sin and a life of sin, which hardened it.  He could come out before he crowd wearing a mask of power, dressing in the clothing of royalty, putting on a mask of self-righteousness, a mask of ritual, or a mask of finger-pointing. Go ahead and crucify him, it’s not my issue. I wash my hands. I am innocent; but, did he really believe that in his heart of hearts or was it just a mask to cover up that voice he kept hearing calling him to face justice, to take the hand of Christ, to somehow wash away the guilt he felt on his hands?

 He had an opportunity to give his heart of Christ that day; but, didn’t. Don’t do that today. Let Him in. Just whisper to Him: “I give you my heart. I receive Your gift. I believe your death was for my sins. I accept your forgiveness by Your resurrection. Amen.”

 The message ended with musical mime given by our high school students.  To see a similar rendition, check

 www.YouTube.com and search “King of Hearts drama”.

 PERSONAL DEVOTIONS/LIFE GROUP PROJECTS

 1.  Watch this video clip again.

 http://www.sermonspice.com/search?q=this+hand&topic=All

 2.   During the Passion Week and leading up to Pentecost Sunday (May 23^rd) set aside some personal time to list the sins that have stained your hands and which are still in your memory.  Can you see that Christ’s righteousness has been applied to each one of them?  Can you acknowledge before God that you should not punish yourselves for them?

 3.   Read Matthew 27:24-28:10 slowly praying that God will make Christ’s death and resurrection personal to you.

 4.   Go to the website www.path2faith.com and read the section called “Get Life” which will help you near to Jesus Christ as your Saviour.