Forgive Your Brother From Your Heart
                                                            #4 in the Series “All I have Commanded You”
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Primary Text, Matthew 18:15-35  (NIV)
 15"If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault, just between the two of you. If he listens to you, you have won your brother over. 16But if he will not listen, take one or two others along, so that 'every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’  17If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, treat him as you would a pagan or a tax collector.
 18"I tell you the truth, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be  loosed in heaven.
 19"Again, I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything you ask for, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. 20For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them."
 21Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, "Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?"
 22Jesus answered, "I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times
 23"Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. 24As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand talents  was brought to him. 25Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt.
 26"The servant fell on his knees before him. 'Be patient with me,' he begged, 'and I will pay back everything.' 27The servant's master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go.
 28"But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii.[g] He grabbed him and began to choke him. 'Pay back what you owe me!' he demanded.
 29"His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, 'Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.'
 30"But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. 31When the other servants saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed and went and told their master everything that had happened.
 32"Then the master called the servant in. 'You wicked servant,' he said, 'I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. 33Shouldn't you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?' 34In anger his master turned him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.
 35"This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart."
 
            In this series of messages my objective is to describe a mental picture that will summarize all the teaching of the Lord Jesus in an attempt to be faithful to the Great Commission: Teach them to observe all that I have commanded you.  The image I am working with is a wagon wheel (upon which we are riding to heaven).  The rim of the wagon wheel is Jesus’s command:  Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness; our priority is to live in willing submission to God’s best desires for us and our world.  The first spoke of the wheel is You must be born again; by submitting our lives to the will of God in Jesus Christ we are transformed and enter an ongoing process of continuing transformational experiences.  The second spoke of the wheel is Be ye perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect; God centers His perfection on his compassion rather than his being the judge of the world, and our becoming perfect entails our being transformed into God’s perfectly compassionate children.
            The third spoke of the wheel, the highest expression of that transformation into compassion, are the words Forgive your brother from your heart.  It seems to me that this is a very difficult commandment. 
            Consider Ruby Session in relation to her son Timothy Cole.  In 1985 Timothy, a young African American student at Texas Tech in Lubbock was arrested, tried, and convicted for the rape of white co-ed who was convinced that he did it.  There were holes in the evidence, however.  Timothy claimed to be studying in his apartment, a claim that was backed up by his brother and several friends who were there playing cards at the time.  More importantly, however, Timothy was an athsmatic and the young woman’s attacker had been smoking the whole time he drove her into the country.  Finally, Timothy was a slight man, and the attacker had overcome the very athletic young woman with brute strength.  The man who actually committed the rape was a chain rapist who was arrested for a separate offense at the same time Timothy was convicted (this man’s name happened to come up at Timothy’s trial, but no one paid attention to it).  This man was actually in a cell adjoining Timothy’s and heard him weeping and proclaiming his innocence over and over.  The rapist waited ten years for the statute of limitations on the crime to run out, and then wrote to Timothy, to the Lubbock District Attorney, and to the trial judge in the case to confess to the crime for the purpose of exonerating Timothy.  For several years the criminal justice system would not respond, Timothy was just one more young Black thug to them.  Finally, the original victim joined the family in asking a review of the case, and a test of the DNA evidence proved conclusively that Timothy was innocent.  On February 7, 2009 Timothy was cleared of the conviction by a state judge, more than 23 years after his arrest.  The exoneration came too late for his mother Ruby to celebrate, however.  In 1999 Timothy suffered the third of three serious athsma attacks while in prison.  This one took his life.  Who should Ruby forgive?  Should Ruby forgive?
            Every Christian has the right to appeal their cases of injustice to God.  The Old Testament, and particularly the Psalms, shows God’s people exercising this right, calling upon God to arise and judge the unrighteous.    When Jesus tells Christians that whatever we bind on earth will be bound in heaven and whatever we loose on earth will be loosed in heaven, He declares that this right is very much still ours in him.  As Christians we can cry out to God for justice and He has placed himself under obligation to render judgment. 
            Consider, however, that Christians are not the only ones who can ask God to be Judge.  Satan himself is continually asking God to judge.  That is precisely why Satan is called the Accuser.  When Satan entered the garden to tempt Eve, it was for the express purpose of placing Adam and Eve under God’s judgment.  After they fell into disobedience and God found them hiding in the garden, their response to His inquiry was to ask him to place the other under judgment (“The woman you gave me . . .”  “The snake . . .”).  For this reason one can say that sin itself is the choice humans make to relate to God as judge instead of as Father. 
Any sinful person (including Satan) can accuse any one of us, and God must answer that accusation if it is factual.  This is why Jesus’s sacrifice for us is so important.  Picture it this way.  Satan, the accuser of our souls and the rightful representative of all those who disobey God, was before God presenting the case against us.  The only possible verdict for our selfish actions and attitudes was “guilty.”  God then presented Satan, the prosecutor, with a choice—the punishment could either fall upon the guilty ones or God would let Satan punish Jesus instead, make Jesus pay our fine for us.  The opportunity was too good for Satan to pass up and he took it.  Satan eagerly invited humanity to carry out God’s just verdict upon sin upon the person of Jesus at the cross.
What Satan didn’t forsee, however, is that when one of us surrenders our life to God by accepting Jesus’s lordship in our lives, any further demand on justice is met.  When Satan (or anyone else) tries to accuse us before God, Jesus immediately responds to the guilty verdict that He has paid the penalty for us.  The New Testament is clear that there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. 
Jesus, then, teaches that our spiritual health depends on our knowing God as Father rather than as judge.  This is why forgiveness is so important in the life of a Christian.  If one of us is so hurt by someone else that we refuse forgiveness and cry out to God for justice, we obligate God to not only judge the offender but also the offended.  God cannot judge someone who has hurt me without judging between us.  If I ask God to judge someone else, I am also asking God to judge me, a judgment from which I cannot emerge vindicated.  This is why Jesus teaches “Judge not, lest you be judged.”  It is why the Lord’s Prayer ends with the exhortation “for if you do not forgive others their sins, neither will my Heavenly Father forgive your sins.”  Even if we could be absolutely pure and innocent, our choice to relate to God as judge rather than as Father places God at a distance from us.  This is precisely the message of the book of Job.  It is spiritually more harmful to feel that one is in the right in any given situation, than to hurt someone else and know that I am in the wrong.  When I bring suit in God’s court I place myself under his examination as well as the person I bring suit against.  If I also prove to be guilty, negligent or merely selfish—I also have to pay! 
Notice the emphasis that Jesus places in Matthew 18 on the need for our brother to hear us.  When a brother or sister in the church has hurt me, what is vitally important is not first that they say they are sorry.   What is most important is that they hear me—that they make the effort to understand my hurt and that I make the necessary effort to communicate it to them.  In other words, after someone hurts me, it is more important for my spiritual wellbeing that they hear me me offer them forgiveness than it is for them to ask my forgiveness in return.  Of course, both are important, but we have been conditioned since Kindergarten (“say you’re sorry!”) to believe that asking forgiveness is more important than offering forgiveness and that the person who has hurt another must seek them out to offer that forgiveness first.  Jesus says no—it is the responsibility of the Christian who has been hurt to seek out the person who hurt us (with witnesses or before the whole church if necessary) to ensure that they hear: 1. exactly how we were hurt  2. our words of forgiveness.   If they will simply not hear us out, no matter what, then we are to declare both our hurt and our forgiveness before the church, which can come to consider them as outsiders, not because of how horrible their sin was, but because they were unwilling to be confronted with it.  The gospel has no message for those who would  prefer to keep themselves under judgment.
It is spiritually essential to me that I forgive my brother (or sister) from the heart.   I take this to mean that I am to forgive not only in my mind before God (“O Lord, please help me to forgive this scumbag.”) but with my mouth before the person who hurt me.  This is what initiates true reconciliation.  The power of this reconciliation is evident in the story of Timothy Cole.  From Wikipedia:
          On February 6, 2009, a Texas district court judge announced "to a 100 percent moral, factual and legal certainty" that Timothy Cole did not commit the rape. The judge, Charlie Baird, reversed the conviction and ordered Cole's record expunged.[3][4] It was the first posthumous DNA exoneration in the history of the state of Texas.[5] Cole's exoneration led to numerous changes in Texas law.
        The Texas Senate passed legislation to exonerate Cole. The Texas House of Representatives bill passed through committee and then the full house. After that, it went to Governor Rick Perry to be signed into law.[6][7] Another bill, named after Cole, was passed by the legislature and sent to the governor on May 11, 2009. It made those who are falsely convicted of a crime eligible for $160,000 for each year of incarceration—half paid as a lump sum, and half paid out over the claimant’s lifetime as an annuity[8]—and provide them with free college tuition.[9][10] Texas law firm Glasheen, Valles & Inderman also worked with Texas Senator John Cornyn to convince the United States Internal Revenue Service that compensation for incarceration stemming from a wrongful conviction should not be treated as taxable income, that instead it should be treated the same as compensation for personal injuries which is not taxable income.[11] This ultimately led to the passing of the Protecting Americans from Tax Hikes Act of 2015.[12]
        The bill also established the Timothy Cole Advisory Panel on Wrongful Convictions. A panel set up to study the causes of wrongful convictions and to devise ways of preventing them is to report to the Texas governor no later than 2011.[13] While Perry stated he wanted to issue a pardon, he felt that he was not legally able to do so. However, on January 7, 2010, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott issued an opinion which cleared the way for the governor to pardon Cole.[14] On March 2, 2010, Governor Perry granted Timothy Cole the state's first posthumous pardon. On May 19, 2015 Governor Greg Abbott signed the Tim Cole Exoneration Review Commission into law. The Tim Cole Commission will review past exonerations and make recommendations to the Texas Legislature regarding criminal justice reform.

        Ruby’s son  did not die in vain, and the care with which Ruby, her family, and the Innocence Project had in telling Tim's story have helped to make repentance real and meaningful.

"The Good Shepherd"   From the Catacomb of Callixtus,  Rome, 3rd Century (200s)

                                          Be ye Perfect as Your Heavenly Father is Perfect
                                            #3 in the Series “All I have Commanded You”
 
 
Primary Text:  Matthew 5:43-48  You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’  But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.  For if you love those who love you, what reward have you?  Do not even the tax collectors do the same?  And if you salute only your brethren, what more are you doing than others?  Do not even the Gentiles do the same?  You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
 
            This is the third in a twelve-part series of messages which seek to summarize the entire teaching of the Lord Jesus.  I have suggested that His teaching may be compared to a wagon wheel with ten spokes.  On that wagon wheel the rim that becomes the point at which the entire wheel touches reality is the command: “Seek ye first the kingdom of God”—that place where we voluntarily accept God’s will.  The first spoke is the command: “You must be born again”—we are not only saved by accepting Jesus as Lord and Savior, we are also open to the possibility of being repeatedly transformed by Him.  The second spoke on the wheel is the command: “Be ye perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.” 
            Allow me to go down a rabbit trail for a moment.  Houston is not usually thought of as being in the big leagues of crime.  New York with the Mafia, Chicago with Al Capone, and Los Angeles with the Crips and the Bloods come to mind as the contenders for leaders in the crime hall of shame.  But for a moment in the late ‘90’s up to 2001 Houston was the national capital of white collar corporate crime.  The company was Enron, and the brains of the company was a brilliantly devious Chief Financial Officer by the name of Andrew Fastow.  Suppose Billy Graham came to town to preach a crusade in the soon-to-be-renamed Enron field.  Suppose there was a  parade to the stadium through downtown, but when the motorcade passed in front of the Enron Building, Billy asked his driver to stop, and with cameras clicking and video rolling, he entered the building.  He looked for a moment at the building directory, and then with reporters still in tow took an elevator to an office near the top floor.  The office was marked “Director of accounting and Finance—Andrew Fastow.”  Inside there was a man who everyone knew would be hauled into federal court for fraud and insider trading charges and who was responsible for the the shady deals that built Enron into a great house of cards that would take thousands of employees and their savings down with it when it fell.  The preacher walked into the office, shook hands with Mr. Fastow, and said “God has sent me to Houston to come to your house for dinner this evening.”  Pleased and flattered, Mr. Fastow, Houston’s most notorious white collar criminal, invited the preacher home.  Do you think the headlines in the paper the next morning read “Preacher Proves He is Like God?”  I don’t think so either.
            As they saw Jesus going to the home of Zaccheus, the chief tax-collector for Rome, people were not thinking, “My, how perfect Jesus is.”  They were thinking, “He is going to the home of a sinner!”
            When Jesus says that we are to be perfect as our Heavenly Father is perfect, I believe we can safely suppose that Jesus is not referring to the qualities of God’s sovereignty.   I don’t believe that Jesus means that we are to seek to be almighty, all-knowing, all-powerful, or perfect in unapproachable holiness.  Instead, it seems clear from the rest of chapter 5 of Matthew that Jesus means that we are to be perfect in righteousness.   This “righteousness” has to be clearly defined, however.  Earlier in chapter 5 of Matthew Jesus tells us unless your righteousness is greater than the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees you can by no means enter the Kingdom of Heaven. 
            I confess that I am afraid that when Jesus tells me to be perfect as the Heavenly Father, He means that I should never make any mistakes.  My life has been one of many mistakes, and because I like to try to be funny, I constantly make regretful mistakes when I talk.  In trying to be funny, I hurt people. 
            Jesus never denies that God’s existence is mistake-free, but in the stories Jesus tells about God . . . God seems very eccentric, to say the least.  I am indebted to William Willimon for this realization.  Consider the parable of the Sower where a farmer (whom the story implies to be God or one of his agents) scatters seed everywhere.  Most farmers are careful to plant the seed where it will grow, but this farmer throws seed on the road, among the rocks, into weeds, and at soil that hasn’t even been plowed.  Only one in five seeds lands where it can actually grow and bear fruit.  What kind of a farmer is this?  In another parable God appears as a farmer who plants his fields with wheat.  His servants discover weeds growing among the grain and ask what they should do.  He claims that an enemy has done this, but because he loves each wheat plant so much, he is afraid that if they try to pull the weeds they will damage the wheat.  No good farmer would say “let the weeds grow together with the wheat until the harvest,” but this one does.  Why?   Finally, in another parable God is a shepherd with 100 sheep.  When he discovers that one of them is missing, He leaves 99 sheep out in the field where the wolves could get them in order to search for the one lost one.  What kind of shepherd risks 99 for the sake of one?  God seems to have a foolishly soft heart. 
            Each of these parables demonstrate that although God is perfect, being mistake-free is not his greatest priority.  Put another way, the center of God’s righteousness is something other than infallibility. 
            In the Lord’s Prayer there is a strange sentence:  “Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.”  The Bible says that God does not tempt anyone, so why on earth would it be necessary to ask him not to tempt us?  The answer to this question has to do with what we think is the center of God’s perfection.  If God’s righteousness has its source in his judgment (in the fact that He is judge of the world), then we will believe that He must be forever testing our goodness, faith, and obedience.  The center of God’s perfection, however, is not his judgment but His compassion. 
            If we believe that our being perfect as God is perfect has to do with how perfectly we keep the rules, then when we will believe that He not only judges us according to the rules but we also can judge others according to the rules (which we, of course, understand perfectly).  When Jesus said that our righteousness had to be greater than that of the scribes and Pharisees (who kept the rules VERY strictly) he didn’t mean that we had to be more strict but that we had to have a greater kind of righteousness. 
            The gospels show Jesus constantly showing that the heart of God’s righteousness is a heart of compassion.  This is why God is a soft-hearted eccentric in Jesus’s parables.  Jesus does all kinds of things that the Pharisees would never dream of doing—he allows a prostitute to wash his feet, he calls stinky fishermen to be his disciples, he speaks to a Samaritan woman, he forgives a woman caught in adultery, and so on.  We know that we are on the right track here, because in the parallel passage in Luke, instead of “Be ye perfect,” Jesus says “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful”  (Luke 6:36)
            The Greek words for compassion are only applied to Jesus in the Gospels, as at Mark 8:2 “I have compassion on the multitude, because they have nothing to eat.”  In English the word “compassion” comes from two Latin words that mean “suffering with.”  God’s heart is to suffer with us (the Greek words for “compassion” mean “gut feeling”, since the guts were considered to be what we call “the heart”, the place of sincere feeling).  This involves much more than pity, which is simply feeling sorry for someone.  Compassion certainly involves feeling, indeed, the major difference between compassion and mercy in the New Testament is that you can “show mercy” without feeling anything, but Jesus is “moved to compassion”.  Compassion, however, adds two components to the feeling:  1. the ability to discern the place of pain and need in a person, even when that person is not externally pitiable; 2. the ability to act on that discernment to address a person’s need.  Jesus says that God is moved with compassion toward everyone—he sends rain on the just and the unjust. 
            Almost everything that Jesus commands his disciples to do throughout the Gospels should be understood in the light of God’s heart of compassion.  In the famous passage of the judgment of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25, Jesus judges the world not on the basis of the world’s ability to follow the rules, but on the basis of their ability to show mercy in a compassionate way.
            This compassion is at times very active, as when Jesus heals the blind or the lepers.  Sometimes compassion involves interrupting an activity and simply giving someone his undivided attention, as when Jesus says “Let the little children come to me” and then spends time with them.  Sometimes compassion merely waits for another to make their own mistakes and come to a realization of their own need, as when the father waits for the Prodigal Son to come home in Luke 17.  Occasionally compassion is confrontational as when Jesus drives the money changers out of the Temple. 
Through our selfishness and sin we choose to experience God as judge—we choose to believe that God is constantly putting us to the test.  When we surrender our lives to Jesus and recognize his Lordship over us, we receive a new relationship to God—God ceases to be our judge and becomes our Father.  Last week I showed how Jesus commands us to be constantly transformed, “Ye must be born again.”  A great part of that transformation has to do with our change of heart.  God wants to take from us a righteousness based on our critical observance of the rules by which we ourselves will judge others, and He wants to give us a righteousness based on compassion.  In other words, He wants us to cease to measure people by how they have hurt us.  He wants us to be able to discern the hurting places in people, to share that hurt, and to act in God’s power to help that hurt.  It is that heart of compassion that moved Jesus to say “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do.”  At that moment Jesus was as perfect as His heavenly Father.

Henry Ossawa Tanner,  "Nicodemus and Jesus on a Rooftop"    1899    Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art

You Must be Born Again
#2 in the Series “All I have Commanded You”
 
 
Primary Text:  John 3:7  “Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’”
 
Secondary Text:  Mark 8:34-35  And he called to him the multitude with his disciples, and said to them, “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.  For whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it.”
 
            Before Jesus even began his ministry, John the Baptist announced the spiritual difference between Jesus and other religious leaders:  “I have baptized you with water, but He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” (Mark 1:8)   John was administering a ritual, Jesus would bring a life-changing transformation.  If, as I have suggested, the teaching of Jesus is like a wagon wheel upon which we ride to Heaven with “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God” being the rim, then “You must be born again” is the first spoke. 
            As I wondered how best to describe Jesus’s teaching regarding the transformation that He works in a person’s life, I found myself considering one of the prime examples of a person whose life Jesus completely changed:  Peter.  I found myself asking a question, however, which event in Peter’s walk with Jesus was the one moment where Peter’s life changed?  For Peter was granted a whole series of experiences, any one of which would have been completely lifechanging for any one of us.  Peter had a miraculous catch of fish through which he recognized his sinfulness (Luke 5), he walked on water with Jesus (Matt 14), he made the confession of faith upon which Jesus said he would build his church (Matt 17), he experienced Jesus’s transfiguration and appointment with Moses and Elijah, he was restored to fellowship with Christ in a private meeting after the Resurrection (Luke 24:34), and after a second miraculous catch Jesus challenged him three times by asking him “Do you love me?”  (John 21).  Even after Jesus ascended into Heaven, he changed Peter’s life at least two more times: the first when the Holy Spirit descended at Pentecost (Acts 2) and the second when Peter was called to preach to the Gentiles (Acts 10).  Peter did have an initial conversion experience: the moment when he, Andrew, James and John, answered Jesus’s command to “Follow me” by leaving their work behind to walk with Jesus.  This initial experience, however, was not the end of Peter’s transformation but rather the door that Peter entered to make all the other transforming experiences possible. 
            As I look at Peter’s life as a model for our lives as Christians, it seems to me that following Jesus is not principally about what we do, and it is not principally about what we are, but it is most about what we are becoming by walking with Jesus.  We believe that a person is saved at the moment that one recognizes that one is a sinner and when one surrenders one’s life to Jesus in faith that his death and resurrection make it possible to lead a new life.  Peter’s life demonstrates, though, that such a moment can lead to many other transforming moments.  Through his walk with Jesus, Peter was not only “born again” he was “being born again.”  To paraphrase a cherished Baptist motto, Christian discipleship is not only “Once saved, always saved” it is “Once saved, always being saved.”  As Christians we are always being transformed by Jesus
            Nicodemus’s spiritual experience (and that of many of the religious leaders) was very different than that of Peter.  He had been brought up to strictly keep the laws and traditions of his religion.  He worked hard at being pious, faithful, and virtuous.  I’m sure he was at the synagogue whenever it was open.  But when spirituality has its basis on one’s own hard work, it is never tranformational.  Nothing in Nicodemus’s experience prepared him to understand Jesus’s command, “You must be born again.”  Most people’s religion is not about being “born again” but about “being good enough to get into heaven.”  Jesus says that unless we are “born again” we can never enter the kingdom of  heaven, and being “born again” is not something we accomplish, it is something the Spirit accomplishes in us.
            For that reason, most spiritual experiences are not transformative, and even miracles may work a transformation that makes us worse and not better people.  In Luke 11 Jesus speaks of casting a demon out of a person who, because they did not turn to God, ended up with many more demons.  I wish it were not so, but Satan can work in a person’s life in two ways.  He can either leave them alone knowing that in the absence of any transforming experience they will remain bound by their own selfishness or he can offer them a condemnatory experience (a crisis, a loss or an emotional experience that masquerades as transformation)—the kind which leads to greater hopelessness, bitterness and wickedness.  God, on the other hand, wants true transformation in our lives, taking away our sin-soaked life of the self and replacing it with His life of love.       
            Although the Holy Spirit is the one who works this life-changing experience in us, it is not true that we Christian are merely passive recipients.  We are instead active recipients.  Jesus speaks over and over about the ways in which those who are being born again, prepare to receive the transformation of the Spirit.  Jesus speaks of four elements in receiving the continuous work of the Spirit in our lives: 

1. We recognize our own ongoing need for God’s action in our lives, and we implore it.  “Blessed are the poor in spirit” Jesus says in Matthew 5; those who recognize their need for God enter His kingdom.  Jesus also says “Ask, and you shall receive; seek and you shall find; knock, and the door shall be opened to you.” 
2. We keep a teachable attitude.  “Unless you receive the  kingdom of God like a little child, you shall never enter it.”  (Mark 10:15)  Little children have to be taught everything, and they become what they are taught. 
3. When God initiates a transformation, it becomes our highest priority.  Jesus said that the kingdom of God was like a buyer of pearls who found the perfect pearl.  He sold everything that he had to buy that one pearl. 
4. God’s transformation requires a willingness to die to the old life.  Jesus said “whoever would save his life will lose it.”  We cannot be transformed and at the same time try to hang on to our old selfishness. 

During his own time on earth, Jesus transformed everything and everyone he touched.  He was dedicated as a baby and transformed that ceremony, he was baptized by John and transformed baptism, he died but transformed death, and every relationship he entered transformed those involved.  The true disciple of Jesus has the same effect.  If we enter the doorway through which we will be born again, not only we but our family, our friends, our church, and our world will never be the same. 

Frederic Bazile (1841-1870)  "African Woman Arranging Peonies"

 A REDEEMING DEBT
 
Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law.  Romans 13:8
 
            If you watched any of the coverage during or after Hurricane Harvey, you were impressed, as indeed the entire country was impressed with how the ethnically most diverse neighborhoods in the world, in and around Houston, came together to help each other in the midst of hardship.  My own family, wife and sons, participated in this experience as they went out with First Baptist Church in Houston and First Methodist Church in Sugarland to clean out the homes of people in poor and rich neighborhoods—black, white, arab, old and young, Southern and Northern, Republican, Democrat, and immigrant.  I did not share in this experience.  Since I have been hobbled by a knee injury, I have been responsible to keep the house in order and to go to my English teaching job every day.
            Still, it seems that the Lord had an experience in store for me that allowed me to share in the relief in an unexpected way.  I received assistance. 
            I, like many of you, find that there is a remnant of Anglo-German-Scotch pride in my heart.  I do not like to receive charity, and I do not like to feel that I am in debt.  In the present age, it seems impossible not to borrow for cars, homes, and major purchases, but, since those debts are impersonal, I can live with them.  Personal debts I can’t abide.
            Two days after the flooding had receded in our neighborhood and I was back teaching again, I came home in the early afternoon to do some housework.  Ceci was going to go to work in the evening, so I decided that before she left I would run to Kroger to get some things.  I made a mistake and set my car in the direction of the Kroger nearer Houston rather than the Kroger away from Houston.  On the way to the store, I got caught in a terrible traffic jam, jammed in both directions.  The five minute trip there stretched to 30 minutes and the trip home would take more than an hour. 
            Oh, well, I was at Kroger, so I might as well buy the vitamins, vegetables, fruit, and nuts that we needed.  I went around and made my choices.  The cashier was checking out my things, when I reached into my pocket for my wallet . . . and found nothing.  I quickly made an apology and said I had left my wallet in the car, to check someone else out, but I would be right back.  I limped as quickly as I could to the car and found . . . nothing. 
            I did have a phone, so I called Ceci.  She reported that the wallet was on my desk (at a five-minute’s hour and a half distance).  I kept her on the phone as I walked back inside, thinking that maybe I could get the store manager to take my credit card information and make my purchase that way.  My cashier was checking out a few things for an older black woman.  The cashier looked at me in a panic and heard my request.
            “I will pay his bill,” the African American woman said.  I looked at her.  She was not young, she was alone, and she was looking intently at the cashier, and not at me.  She was dressed in a scrub, perhaps a nurse, perhaps a technician, probably a Nurse’s Aide.  She had paid her bill with plastic.  It was not platinum, or gold or slate, but multicolored—probably a debit card.
            “I can’t let you do that!” I said with a note of uncertainty.
            She would hear no objection, gave the cashier the card again.
            “Please let me send you a check!”
            “No, that is not necessary.”
            I thanked her profusely.  She handed me the receipt and left, and I walked to the opposite entry and paused for a few minutes to tell my wife what had happened.  I was so embarrassed that I did not want to see my benefactor again in the parking lot. 
            But sometimes embarrassment is healthy.  I am in debt to a Black woman.  I will never forget it, and now that I think of it—I am proud to be able to say it.  Before the hurricane the news was full of strife between those who stood with African Americans and those who wanted to defend the culture of Southern Whites.  During and after the storm, I noticed that the news seemed to be full of southern white men with boats who were helping people of all colors find refuge (A parable there, if there ever was one!).  I am absolutely certain that none of that even crossed the mind of the woman who helped me. 
            I have heard many talk about racial reconciliation, and it often seems that we are farther from it than ever.  Maybe we all need to become the right kind of debtors.          
                                                                              Humbly in Christ,       Pastor David

 Edward Hicks,  c. 1830,  "The Peaceable Kingdom",   Metropolitan Museum of Art

Seek Ye First The Kingdom of God
#1 in the Series “All I have Commanded You”
 
 
Primary Text:  Matthew 6:33—“Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.”
 
Secondary Texts:  Matthew 6:10, Mark 1:15,  Mark 4:30-32, Luke 11:14-23,  John 14:35
 
            Once upon a time there was a large island in the ocean.  This island contained two countries.  The first of these two countries was a constitutional monarchy with a good king, free people, and the rule of law.  The second country was a military dictatorship characterized by nepotism, corruption, and the rule of terror. 
            These two countries had fought a desperate war with each other when the dictator made a greedy and unsuccessful bid to become the only ruler of the whole island.  As these things often go, there was no clear winner of the war, and the two countries merely called a truce.  There was no peace treaty, but the terms of the cease-fire held for many, many years.  According to these terms, no person from the dictatorship could be offered asylum in or escape to the kingdom.  Conversely, no person who belonged to the kingdom could be harmed by the dictatorship—only deported. 
            Because the situation of the people in the dictatorship was so desperate—there  was so much crime, corruption, violence, illness, and death—the king resolved to invade the dictatorship, which did not have the military resouces to stop him.  The dictator, however, began having doctors inserting a vial of deadly poison which could be released by remote control into every person in his country from birth.  He treatened the king by saying that if there were any invasion he (the dictator, that is) would kill himself and would also kill every other person in the country. 
            The king and his advisors thought long and hard about what they could possibly do to put an end to the cruel dictatorship while saving the people of the country.  Finally, the king resolved to send a secret agent into the dictatorship to offer people there the opportunity to become citizens of the kingdom.  Under the terms of the ceasefire they would be protected from harm by the dictatorship—as long as they could furnish proof that they were indeed citizens of the kingdom.  That proof would have to be an ability to speak the kingdom’s language: a unique, beautiful, and very difficult tongue which if spoken by anyone would conclusively prove that they were subjects of the king. 
 
            At the beginning of his ministry, Jesus came from the desert where he had been tempted by Satan to Galilee where he proclaimed this: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of heaven is at hand.  Repent and believe in the gospel! (Mark 1:15)”  If you can picture the entire collection of Jesus’s teachings as a wagon wheel, consisting of a rim, a hub, and ten spokes, then what Jesus had to say about the Kingdom of God is the rim—that which connects all of Jesus’s instruction to the reality of the world.  The Old Testament prophets spoke of “The Day of the Lord”, a moment in which God will violently and suddenly invade the world to bring about drastic change.  Jesus speaks of that day, but he also speaks of a reality called the Kingdom of God which is already at work in the world in a subtle way. 
            What is the Kingdom of God?  It is simply that place where what God wants is done voluntarily.  Although ultimately all designs of God are carried out, Christians have long distinguished between what God’s permissive will (what He allows) and His perfect will (what He desires).  God’s kingdom is present when people wholeheartedly pray “Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”  In other words, God exercises authority (a constant theme in Jesus’s teaching) everywhere, but His kingdom is where his subjects submit to his authority by choice. 
            Jesus recognizes that the effective ruler of this world is Satan.  Furthermore, Jesus also recognizes that Satan gets to keep the people who belong to him.  Anyone who voluntarily chooses to live under the rule of selfishness will also voluntarily go with Satan.  Anyone who will not choose to pray “Your kingdom come” thereby chooses citizenship in the dictatorship. 
            Satan’s pull is so strong, that the kingdom of God has to work in a sneaky way.  In three of the gospels there is a story in which the religious leaders accuse Jesus of performing a healing by the power of the Prince of demons.  Jesus points out that Satan is like a strong man who is armed to guard the treasures of his house.  God’s kingdom is like a stronger man who binds up the stronger man in order to steal those treasures.  God’s kingdom comes like a thief in the night.  Jesus doesn’t heal people by Satan’s power.  Instead, he has to surprise and overpower Satan for each soul to be delivered. 
            For this reason Jesus teaches that at this time the kingdom of God comes very subtly, like the growth of a mustard seed which is at first so tiny it is nearly invisible but becomes the largest bush in the garden, or like a bit of yeast that disappears into the dough but eventually causes all of it to rise.  There will be an invasion, a “Day of the Lord,” but Jesus himself refuses to even know when it is—because before that day comes He wants to rescue as many people as possible.  Just before his ascension into Heaven the disciples asked Jesus, “Will you restore the kingdom to Israel?”  At that point all of Jesus’s followers belonged to a single nation, and the restoration of the kingdom would at that moment have been limited to a single nation.  Jesus instead responds in effect, “don’t worry about that.  Instead, you are to witness to me throughout the world.”  It is not a matter of restoring the kingdom to Israel but of bringing the kingdom to every culture, language, and people group on earth, usually without anyone noticing.
            When we accept Jesus’s gift of salvation and ask for God’s will to be done in our lives, we declare our allegiance to the kingdom of God.  Once chosen that allegiance has to grow, however.  Satan will waste no opportunity to try to reassert his jurisdiction over us.  That is why it is so important that we learn the language of the kingdom.  When we speak the language we live completely in the kingdom’s cultural reality.  What is the language of the kingdom?  Jesus says it best, “By this all men will know that you are my disciples (citizens of the Kingdom of God), if you love one another.”   Let us learn that language so well that Satan has only one choice regarding what to do with us: deportation.
                                                                                                            In Christ,     Pastor David

John Martin,  "Joshua Commanding the Sun to Stand Still Upon Gibeon", 1816       National Gallery of Art

          10 David was conscience-stricken after he had counted the fighting men, and he said to the Lord, “I have sinned greatly in what I have done. Now, Lord, I beg you, take away the guilt of your servant. I have done a very foolish thing.”
11 Before David got up the next morning, the word of the Lord had come to Gad the prophet, David’s seer: 12 “Go and tell David, ‘This is what the Lord says: I am giving you three options. Choose one of them for me to carry out against you.’”
13 So Gad went to David and said to him, “Shall there come on you three[a]years of famine in your land? Or three months of fleeing from your enemies while they pursue you? Or three days of plague in your land? Now then, think it over and decide how I should answer the one who sent me.”
14 David said to Gad, “I am in deep distress. Let us fall into the hands of the Lord, for his mercy is great; but do not let me fall into human hands.”
15 So the Lord sent a plague on Israel from that morning until the end of the time designated, and seventy thousand of the people from Dan to Beersheba died. 16 When the angel stretched out his hand to destroy Jerusalem, the Lord relented concerning the disaster and said to the angel who was afflicting the people, “Enough! Withdraw your hand.” The angel of the Lord was then at the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite.
                                                                                                                                   2 Samuel 24:10-16  NIV

            In insurance terms, storms, natural disasters are called “acts of God”.   Was Hurricane Harvey indeed something that God brought about?  I remember that after Katrina and Sandy there were Christian preachers who suggested that those storms had been punishment upon the wickedness of New Orleans and New York City respectively.  Those of us who live in Houston, however, think of ourselves as better than those cities, a pride that has its good side, make no mistake.  The hundreds of thousands of volunteer rescuers and helpers both during and after the storm have spoken from that pride even as they have worn their “Houston Strong” T-shirts in helping their neighbors.  Is our city so much better than New Orleans or New York that God simply made a mistake, or maybe none of the three suffered divine punishment.
            There are those who say that these storms and the devastation they caused are our own fault, the fault of city planners, of politicians, of engineers, of Americans, of humans in general. 
We have changed the climate, we have failed to adequately plan or zone our cities, we have paved too much of the landscape, we have built too much too near the coast, we have not spent enough money on dykes and levees. 
            As a preacher, I often point out human sin and weakness, but it seems to me that far from being to blame for Harvey, we humans, and especially American humans, and even human politicians, bureaucrats, and city planners have proved ourselves instruments of mercy in this case.  Consider that the 1900 Galveston Hurricane killed an estimated 6,000 to 12,000 people.  The death toll from Katrina was more than 1,800, from Sandy more than 200, and the number of residents who died in puny Hurricane Rita was more than 100 (mostly attempting to evacuate).  Even with all of the destruction and misery, Harvey has caused the deaths of only about 50 people, twenty-five times less the number of people that died from flooding in Africa during the month of August.  Indeed, the human response to this storm-Government, Churches, corporations, and non-profits is truly awesome.  Check this website if you don’t believe me: https://www.texastribune.org/2017/08/28/hurricane-harvey-relief-efforts-how-help/ . 
            But I want to get back to my original question: who is responsible for Harvey?  It seems to me that there are essentially five choices:  1. humans,   2. the devil,  3. fate (or luck, or nature), 4. God,  or 5. some combination of the other four.   I have noticed that the most popular contender recently seems to be blind fate.  I think this is because we don’t really believe in the devil and we don’t want to blame either humans or God, both of whom we would like to believe are essentially good, and “would never do anything like that,.”  I must admit that for me, since there is too much seemingly conscious perversity in the world for it to be otherwise and because the Bible clearly says that the devil is “the lord of this world;”  indeed the Bible says that nature itself is in bondage awaiting for the kingdom of God to be revealed. 
            Consider the passage from 2 Samuel 24.  King David had sinned in counting the fighting men, showing greater dependence on military might than on God.  In response to this sin, God sent the prophet Gad to offer David a choice of punishment.  Set aside for a moment the question of whether or not God punishes people in this way, or at least whether He still punishes people in this way after the coming of our Lord Jesus.   What is most remarkable to me is the basis upon which David makes his choice.  He says, “Let us fall into the hands of the Lord, for his mercy is great; but do not let me fall into human hands.”   If David has a choice in the source of a hurricane, he emphatically would prefer that the hurricane came from God, rather than from blind fate, human responsibility, or the Devil. 
            I believe that we need to rediscover the possibility of God’s discipline, not as something that happens to some other wicked and godless city, but as something which we Christians see as holding a promise for ourselves.   If, in your faith and experience God is a loving and merciful God;  and if you believe that all things come from His hand; then you will look to find mercy and grace even in a terrible natural disaster like Harvey.  You will not simply endure such a disaster in the belief that you are a helpless victim of luck, human blunders, or the evil one, but will expect to emerge from such a disaster as a better person, a better city, a better country. 
            This is why, in the Bible, God never responds to the human questions concerning any disaster, whether natural or man-made, by saying “It’s not my fault.”  God even takes responsibility for the depredations and cruelties of the truly deplorable Assyrians and Babylonians.  God allows, even invites, us to blame Him, knowing that if we believe Him to be in control, we will indeed experience His presence in the midst of the storm, and along with His presence we will experience mercy, redemption, grace, and maybe even a measure of the peace that passes understanding.  In this sense, “God, why did you allow this?” is the RIGHT question.  It is not necessarily a question with an immediate answer, but it is a question that puts God in control of the circumstances of our lives, and when God is in control, He can speak to us from the midst of the storm.