Questions

Curious

January 6, 2015 by Patricia Leave a Comment

Hello: My Name Is Sycamore Creek Church – Curious
Sycamore Creek Church
January 4/5, 2014
Tom Arthur

Happy New Year, Friends!

I bet you ask lots of questions about God, faith, and life. I know I do. I’ve always been full of questions about the faith. I grew up in a Christian home, and prayed for Jesus to come into my heart when I was five years old. It was a real commitment, but the commitment of a five-year-old needs to grow as that five-year-old grows. As I got into high school I began asking lots of questions about this whole faith and Jesus thing.

When I was in high school I set up a meeting with my pastor to ask him a question that came up during my time of reading the Bible. Why did Jesus tell people not to say who he was after he had healed them? That was the beginning of my formal search for answers to my questions. I remember that meeting with my pastor, whose name happened to be Tommy, a very good meeting. I wasn’t chastised for asking questions about the Bible. He even seemed encouraged that I was asking questions about the Bible. There even seemed to be a pretty good answer to that particular question. Either Jesus was still figuring out what kind “messiah” he would be or he was concerned that his healings would lead to crowds that wanted him to be a “king.”

When I got into college, some of those questions led me to leave the Christian faith for a while. What I found out when I left Christianity was that there wasn’t any more certainty on the side of unbelief. The only difference was that unbelief seemed to offer no ultimate hope or meaning, whereas belief offered ultimate meaning and hope. Eventually I came back to put my trust in Jesus, in spite of the uncertainty I felt. But the questions remained. Here are some of the questions I’ve asked over the years:

If you have to hear about Jesus to go to heaven, what happens to the Native Americans?
Why should I trust the Bible? Are there any errors in the Bible?
Why are there two different stories of creation in the Bible?
Did Adam and Eve have belly buttons?
If Cain and Able were the first children of Adam and Eve, then who did Cain marry? His sister?
Where do the dinosaurs fit in?
How can evolution and faith work together? Can they?
What am I supposed to do with all these seemingly arcane rules in the Old Testament?
Why does God tell the Israelites to wipe out everyone, including all the children and even the animals?
Is it OK to swear?
If sex outside marriage is wrong, what exactly is sex? Does oral sex count?
What does God think about people with same sex attraction?
What if the Greek for “faith in Jesus” can also be translated “faith(fullness) of Jesus” as I learned in my seminary Greek classes? What does that mean for what I believe that we are not saved by “faith in Jesus” but by the “faithfulness of Jesus?”

So while I’ve always been very curious about questions of faith, God, and life, I’ve mostly committed to following Jesus except for that short time in college. My curiosity and my commitment have always made me just a little bit weird.

I’m not the only one asking questions. I asked my friends on Facebook what questions they’ve asked about faith, God, and life. Here are some of their questions:

If faith is a gift from God (Eph 2:8), then does God not give some that gift so they can be saved? Does God draw everyone? (John 6:44) What is a person’s part in faith?
How does God care about a little speck of dust like me when He created the universe? Why is it so hard to obtain faith when it’s so free to have it?
How do I make the church relevant in my life?
Why does it seem like most people who don’t believe in God, choose to come to God when they are having difficulty in life?

Here’s some good news for all the question askers at Sycamore Creek Church and in our community. Sycamore Creek Church is curious, creative, and compassionate. We’re starting a three-week series today called “Hello: My Name Is Sycamore Creek Church.” We’re going to spend three-weeks introducing ourselves to the community and remembering what hasn’t changed, even if we have changed our Sunday morning venue. While we are no longer a “Church in a School” (are we a “Church in a Church”?) we are still curious, creative, and compassionate. But what does each of those things mean when applied to a church?

Here’s a question to begin the whole thing: where did “Curious, Creative, Compassionate” come from? Good question. When we started our Church in a Diner, we were looking for a tag line to describe the kind of community that we were going to be. It had to be faithful to who we were and it had to be catchy enough to grab the attention of someone who didn’t really see church as something they were interested in. And it had to be a quick way to describe to them what we were doing, an “elevator speech” if you will. I believe it was Amberlee McCloud and I who came up with these three words. Once we had them down on paper, we realized that they didn’t just describe Church in a Diner but these three words captured and described all of Sycamore Creek Church in a way that was faithful to who we have always been and who we wanted to continue to be. So today let’s look at the first of these three words: Curious.

Merriam-Webster has two definitions of curious:

cu·ri·ous adjective \?kyu?r-?-?s\
1. having a desire to learn or know more about something or someone
2. strange, unusual, or unexpected
~Merriam-Webster

The first definition is obvious. Sycamore Creek Church welcomes all your questions about God. You don’t have to leave your questions at the door. As you heard, I’ve had my fair share of questions too. Jesus seems to be open to having questions and not being so certain about everything. When a father brings his son to Jesus and asks if he can heal him, Jesus responds that he can heal him if he believes. The father honestly presents his uncertainty and questions to Jesus. We read:

The father instantly cried out, “I do believe, but help me overcome my unbelief!”
~Mark 9:24 NLT

So what does Jesus do? I’d guess that Jesus would say, “Well, go get your questions figured out and when you can believe without any questions, then come back and see me, and we’ll see what I can do.” But that’s not what he does. He heals the father’s boy. He meets him where he’s at, questions and all.

In the book of Proverbs, the wisdom book of the Bible we read:

It is God’s privilege to conceal things and the king’s privilege to discover them.
~Proverbs 25:2 NLT

God likes mysteries and gives us things to hunt for. God gives us things to ask questions about so that we can discover answers. This is a theme that various church leaders have been exploring for hundreds of years. St. Anselm was a church leader during the 12^th century and his motto was “faith seeking understanding.” He wrote:

“I long to understand in some degree your [God’s] truth, which my heart believes and loves. For I do not seek to understand that I may believe, but I believe in order to understand. For this also I believe–that unless I believed, I should not understand.”
~St. Anselm (12^th Century Church Leader)

Anselm believed that sometimes you have to believe first before you can understand. He also believed that it was just fine to have faith but then to seek answers to questions you’ve got. Apparently this meant that faith usually comes before answers. Faith leads to curiosity.

So the first definition of “curiosity” is seeking understanding. But there’s a second less familiar definition of curiosity. Curiosity also means unusual or peculiar. When we decide to make a commitment to follow Jesus even though we’ve still got questions, we become somewhat peculiar. This isn’t really new. Peter, one of Jesus’ closest followers said:

But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that you should show forth the praises of him who has called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.
~1 Peter 2:9 AKJV

Following Jesus even when we’ve got questions, even when we’re uncertain makes us weird. In our day and age, we value certainty. We value having everything figured out before we make commitments. But if you wait to get everything figured out before you make any commitment, you’ll never make any commitments. Making a commitment to follow Jesus can make you kind of odd, unusual, peculiar, or curious.

1. Be curious about what the Bible/God says about a topic
So I’d like to offer you three practices of curiosity. First, be curious about what the Bible says about a topic. When Paul showed up in Berea and taught there we are told that the Bereans were a curious bunch:

And the people of Berea were more open-minded than those in Thessalonica, and they listened eagerly to Paul’s message. They searched the Scriptures day after day to see if Paul and Silas were teaching the truth.
~Acts 17:11 NLT

You see, the Bereans were curious if what Paul was teaching was in line with the Bible. So they dove into the Bible to see what it said. Now there are some things that are important to understand about being curious about the Bible. First, the Bible is sometimes very complex. Even the Bible says this about itself sometimes. Peter, one of Jesus’ closest followers and the author of two books in the Bible said that Paul, the first missionary of the church and author of several books of the Bible, was sometimes hard to understand:

This [teaching] is what our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you with the wisdom God gave him speaking of these things in all of his letters. Some of his comments are hard to understand, and those who are ignorant and unstable have twisted his letters to mean something quite different, just as they do with other parts of Scripture.
~1 Peter 3:15-16 NLT

If Peter found Paul complex to understand, then don’t get too down on yourself when you read the Bible and don’t always understand it!

Second, the Bible can sometimes seem to contradict itself, although this is rarely at a fundamental level. Take the four books that tell the story of Jesus’ life: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. All four tell the story with different details and even seem to tell it in a different order. But they all agree on some very basic things: Jesus lived, he died, and was raised from the dead!

Third, interpret the unclear sections through the clear sections of the Bible. If you’re not sure what to think about something in the Bible, then let the things you do know about the Bible guide your curiosity. If you still don’t know what to do, always err toward love. St. Augustine, a 4^th and 5^th century church leader said:

Whoever, then, thinks that he understands the Holy Scriptures, or any part of them, but puts such an interpretation upon them as does not tend to build up this twofold love of God and our neighbor, does not yet understand them as he ought.
~St. Augustine (4^th – 5^th Century Church Leader), On Christian Doctrine

Fourth, reading a little sporadically is better than reading none at all. Sometimes we really trip ourselves up on not reading every day or as consistently as we would like. It may be helpful to know that I’m just now getting into day 300 of a yearly Bible. Sounds pretty good right? What if I told you I began in January of 2012? I’ve taken over two years to read a “yearly” Bible. Yeah. Be patient with yourself. Don’t beat yourself up. Reading consistently is great. Reading a little every once in a while is better than none at all. Four websites that I’ve found helpful for reading the Bible include:

www.pray-as-you-go.org
www.youversion.com
www.biblegateway.com
www.blueletterbible.org.

2. Be curious about what others say about it (especially those who disagree)
So you’re practicing curiosity by searching for what the Bible says about a topic. A second way to practice curiosity is to be curious what others say about a topic. It can be especially helpful to seek out differing perspectives on the issue. Who disagrees with you? Why do they disagree? How do they see the issue and the answer? What questions are they asking?

Seek out what others are saying by participating in a faith community. Listen to a sermon each week. Participate live or download the sermon if you missed it, or read it on my blog. Or seek out others in a small group. This week we begin GroupLINK for our spring semester’s small groups. There are over 20 small groups that you can join to begin to build spiritual friendships with people who can indulge your curiosity. Or seek out what others say about a topic through books or videos or audio online. I continue to wrestle with the question of homosexuality. I’ve read about ten books on the topic that cover the whole spectrum. I’m being curious by seeking out the perspective of other people, some who might not agree with me. Warning: reading a lot of books can leave you with a lot more question than you began. Whenever I’m reading several books about a topic I’m reminded of this wisdom from the Bible:

Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh.
~Ecclesiastes 12:12

So nurture curiosity by asking others what they think about a topic.

3. Be curious in prayer
The third way to practice curiosity is to be curious in prayer. James, Jesus’ brother says:

If you need wisdom, ask our generous God, and he will give it to you. He will not rebuke you for asking.
~James 1:5 NLT

If you don’t know what to think about a topic or if you’ve got questions that you don’t have answers to, then ask God for answers. Or ask God for wisdom to be able to ask the right questions or better questions. Or ask God to give you help in seeking answers or to be able to commit while still having questions.

Over the years of being a student, I’ve compiled a bunch of prayers for study. Here is one of my favorite prayers for praying before you begin studying something:

Most blessed Lord, send the grace of Your Holy Spirit on me to strengthen me that I may learn well the subject I am about to study and by it become a better person for Your glory, the comfort of my family and the benefit of Your Church and our world. Amen

Curious About Our Community – Demographics
So what does it look like when you take this penchant for curiosity and point it out at our community? We as a church have just moved into a new building. This means we’ve been curious about our new neighbors. A couple of weeks ago we hired a demographics expert, Tom Bandy, who helped us learn about our community. What we found out was that there’s a key group we’re reaching that demographers call “Singles and Starters.” Experian, the credit reporting company, describes this in this way: “Young singles starting out, and some starter families, in diverse urban communities.” SCC is currently made up of about 14% “Singles and Starters.” Here’s the really cool thing. The biggest group right around our new building is “Singles and Starters.” They make up almost 28% of the population just around our new church building. Here’s what Tom says about this group:

“These younger singles, single parents, and ‘friends with benefits’ are not just too busy for traditional church. The church is not on their radar screen. It doesn’t easily fit into any part of their lifestyle…at work, play, or background soundtrack. Music may play constantly in their minds, but spirituality may not… For many people in this group, religion is not particularly relevant now, and perhaps not in the foreseeable future, but they are remarkably open to surprise.”
~Tom Bandy

So apparently this is a group that is somewhat hard to reach. They make up the largest group of people that we’re already reaching, and there are twice as many of them right around this building. Wow! Tom Bandy uses these words and phrases to describe this group:

Looking for “Heroes of Faith”, high energy, contagious enthusiasm, online, music soundtrack in the background, progressive, sociable, seeking fulfillment, high drive for affluence, high pursuit of personal growth.
~Tom Bandy

We’re going to continue to be curious about our new neighbors. And we’re going to continue to invite them to be curious with us. We’ll invite them to be curious about the Bible. We’ll invite them to be curious with our community. We’ll invite them to be curious with God in prayer.

Are you ready to be curious?

Filed Under: Sermons Tagged With: Bible, compassionate, Creative, curious, prayer, Questions

Questions 2.0 – Is God a Man?

June 20, 2011 by Tom Leave a Comment

Questions 2.0 – Is God a Man?
Sycamore Creek Church
June 19, 2011
Tom Arthur
Various Texts

Peace, Friends!

What questions do you have about God, faith, Jesus, the church? Today we continue a series where I’m trying to answer some of those questions. Well, maybe I’m not completely answering them, but I’m pointing us in the direction I think the answer would go. Today’s question is: Is God a Man?

Today is Father’s Day and it seems appropriate and comfortable to celebrate God as a Father. It seems so obvious that we rarely blink an eye when calling God “Our Father.” So as we celebrate fathers today in our culture, the question that comes into my mind is whether we could celebrate on Mother’s Day calling our God “Our Mother”?

While Sarah and I were at seminary in Durham, NC, we lived in a house with several other Christians who offered hospitality to women and children in transition. We would also gather each evening for prayer. When Sarah and I first moved in we were especially looking forward to praying together each evening. As we gathered that first night, we were told how the prayer time worked. It seemed pretty simple. We’d read some scripture, sing a song, pray, and close with the Lord’s Prayer. Besides how horrible we all were at singing and carrying a tune, the prayer time went off without a hitch. As we came to the Lord’s Prayer, we gathered in the center of the room, held hands, bowed our heads, closed our eyes and began praying together, “Our Mother…”

“Our Mother”?! What?! Before I could fully catch what was said, the prayer continued as I was familiar with it: “Our Father who art in heaven…” Hmmm…Each night this “Our Mother, Our Father” continued. At some point during a house meeting, I brought up how I wasn’t very comfortable with this variation of the Lord’s Prayer, and so I just remained silent and began when we got to the “Our Father” part. I was a little bit shocked to find out that the house was willing to drop saying “Our Mother” because I was uncomfortable with it. Wow! Where else did I have friends who were so flexible? Where else did I receive such hospitality? Not many places. And so began a time of biblical and theological searching for me. I figured that if they were willing to drop part of a tradition that I had, then I should at least look into the subject.

I don’t know that I’ve got a super firm answer to some of the questions surrounding the question “Is God a Man” although I definitely have an answer to that question. What I’d like to do is walk you through some scripture that speaks to this issue and also give you a taste of some of the theological issues that are at stake in this question. I’d like to finish by exploring what this all means for our practices of naming and calling to God. Let’s begin with the Bible.

Biblical Images

There are so many images of God as a man in the Bible that you don’t even have to name any of them. The Bible regularly uses “he” to talk about God. Then there’s the whole “Father” language. The Bible doesn’t shy away from using masculine language to talk about God. But does the Bible ever talk about God using feminine language? Absolutely. While not as often, the Bible doesn’t seem to have a problem referring to God as a woman.

God Giving Birth

“You neglected the Rock who had fathered you; you forgot the God who had given you birth” (Deuteronomy 32:18 NLT). Interestingly we find in this passage both a masculine and feminine image of God. God “fathers” and God “gives birth.” Hmm… God is both father and mother here.

This image isn’t just in the Old Testament. It’s also in the New Testament. Jesus regularly refers to the process of salvation as being “born again.” “Jesus replied, ‘I assure you, unless you are born again, you can never see the Kingdom of God’” (John 3:3 NLT). Sure, there isn’t an explicit reference to God in this passage, but who does the birthing? Do we? Surely we don’t give birth to ourselves. God is the one who gives us a new birth.

These are only two passages out of many that I could have chosen describing God as a woman who gives birth to God’s people.

Biblical – Nursing

God is also described as a nursing mother from time to time. We read in the prophet Isaiah, “Can a mother forget her nursing child? Can she feel no love for a child she has borne? But even if that were possible, I would not forget you!” (Isaiah 49:15 NLT). God apparently has breasts. OK. No. God doesn’t. But God’s love is like the love of a nursing mother. How strong is that love? I’m learning that it’s one of the strongest loves around.

No matter how hard I try I cannot keep Sarah from nursing Micah when he starts crying. We can be in the middle of eating, and I’ll say, “Just finish your meal. He’ll be fine.” Nope. Or we can be sleeping and he starts crying. I say, “Just let him cry. He’ll cry himself back to sleep.” Nope. We can be having a really important conversation, and Micah starts crying for milk. “Come on honey. Let’s just finish this out, and then you can feed him.” Nope. We can be right in the middle of…well, you know. Too much information! Yeah, right in the middle of that, and I can’t do anything to keep her from running to make sure Micah’s OK and gets fed. The love a nursing mother has for her child is one of the most unstoppable loves around. God’s love is like that.

Once again we can turn to the New Testament to see similar language. Peter says, “You must crave pure spiritual milk so that you can grow into the fullness of your salvation. Cry out for this nourishment as a baby cries for milk, now that you have had a taste of the Lord’s kindness” (1 Peter 2:2-3 NLT). Where does this milk come from? Who is the baby? Who is the mother giving the milk? What exactly is it that we are tasting of the Lord? Yes. Milk! The Lord’s milk.

So language is used in both the Old and New Testament to talk about God as a mother who gives birth and a mother who nurses her children. Any more feminine images to talk about God? Yes. Many more.

Biblical – Midwife

The prophet Isaiah talks about God as a midwife. He says, “‘Would I ever bring this nation to the point of birth and then not deliver it?’ asks the LORD. ‘No! I would never keep this nation from being born,’ says your God” (Isaiah 66:9 NLT). The role of the midwife is to help bring about birth. In that day and age, the midwife was always a woman. God not only is the mother giving birth, but God is also the midwife helping the birth and the mother who nurses the child after it is born. That’s a lot of roles. I can barely imagine Sarah not only giving birth to our son but also being the midwife. No way. Thank you Amanda, Teresa, Connie, and all the others who were there to help do it all. Birth and nursing were enough. But Isaiah says God is also a midwife.

God is a mother giving birth. God is a midwife. God is a nursing mother. Is that all? Nope. We don’t have time to go through them all, but the Bible also calls God a homemaker (in that day a woman), a baker woman, a mother pelican, a hen, and a mother bear. Yikes! A mother bear? I never want to run into a mother bear with her cubs in the wild. I wonder if that one isn’t thrown in there just to make sure we don’t think that female images are all soft and cuddly. A mother bear is truly a fearsome prospect.

Clearly, the Bible doesn’t have a problem describing God in these motherly ways. Should we? Is God a Man? The Bible answers that with language that says, “Yes, and a woman too!”

Theological Consensus

Over the centuries Christians have argued theologically quite a bit about this topic. What do I mean when I say “theologically”? Theology is made up of two words. Theos = God and “logos” = words. So theology is simply putting words together in reference to God. There has been a kind of consensus that the Church has reached of the centuries on issues related to this.

The big question here has to do with language. Is the language that we use to refer to God language that describes a name or is it language that is an analogy? What do I mean when I say that? You all understand a name. My name is Tom. I am not like a Tom. That makes no sense. I am Tom. Tom = Tom. That’s what a name is. So what about an analogy? An analogy is when you saying something is like something else. Tom is like a male model. Tom is like a champion weight lifter. Tom is like a Hollywood star. OK. I’m kidding. But you get the point. I’m not saying Tom = a male model. Tom is like a male model. A name and an analogy are different.

The big debate of the centuries has been whether the language we use to refer to God is a name or an analogy. Is calling God “Father” saying God = Father or are we saying God is like a father? Theologians have tended to say that “Father” is not an analogy but is a name. Theologians refer to these names as the Trinity. God is Trinity = Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Each is a name, not an analogy.

So some have attempted to bypass this sticky issue by suggesting that we could refer to God by more gender neutral names like “creator, redeemer, and sustainer.” Well, others say, now you’re calling God by a function rather than a name. I probably wouldn’t last very long in my house if I was always calling Sarah saying, “Hey, wife.” Or if in the office I referred to Susan as, “Hey, secretary” and Jeremy as, “Hey, worship leader.” Although occasionally they all refer to me as “Hey, pastor” and I inevitably fire back, “Hey, worship leader.” We want to be called by our names, not our functions.

Then there’s the tricky part of asking whether it is only “The Father” who was the creator. Doesn’t John say something about the Word, the Son, creating (John 1:3)? And don’t we read in Genesis about the Spirit of God hovering over the waters (Genesis 1:2)? So God the Father is not equal to the creator but God the Trinity is the creator.

So what to do about this whole name and language thing? I once only slightly jokingly suggested in a debate that we could solve all this by calling God by the Greek names for Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—Pater, Huios, and Agiu Espirtu—and then no one who speaks English would have any masculine connotations with those words. This suggestion didn’t help very much.

So maybe your head is hurting right now. “Get me out of here,” you’re thinking. Hang on there. We’re going to tie this all together in just a minute. But before we do, I want to look at some other things theologians have said about language and God, particularly each person of the Trinity.

Theological – Father

Remember that when Christians speak about God as Trinity they are not saying that we worship three Gods. We worship one God in three persons. How is something three and one at the same time? Consider a triangle. It has three sides and yet is one object. Or take speech. It has a speaker, words, and breath. Three aspects and yet one thing. A mystery? Most certainly. But there are some things that we can understand clearly.

When it comes to the first person of the Trinity, the Father, two key things must be understood. Christian theologians have not understood “the Father” to mean that God was a man. Gregory of Nazianzus, a 4^th century church leader said that whatever “Father” means it does not mean “male.”

Theological – Son

Let’s look at the second person of the Trinity, the Son. Once again we run into masculine language. Interestingly enough, while Jesus is the most obviously masculine person of the Trinity, many church leaders have referred to Jesus as “our Mother” over the years. Consider Julian of Norwich, a Christian leader in the 14^th and 15^th century who wrote the first published book by a female in the Western world. She liked to call Jesus “our mother.” She said, “A mother can give her child milk to suck, but our precious mother, Jesus, can feed us with himself.” What is she referring to here? Communion. Communion is a kind of spiritual milk for Julian that is like the milk a nursing mother gives to a child. So when we go to communion, according to Julian, we are nursing with our mother Jesus.

You might be thinking, “Ah, but she’s a woman. Of course, she’d refer to Jesus as ‘our Mother.’ Show me some men who call Jesus ‘mother’ and then we’ll be talking.” Julian wasn’t alone. Origen, a 2^nd and 3^rd century church leader referred to Jesus as mother. Irenaeus in the 2^nd century did too. As did Anselm of Canterbury and Bernard of Clairvaux both in the 12^th century. For many Christians over the centuries Jesus has been a mother.

Theological – Holy Spirit (Hidden Feminine)

What about the Holy Spirit? One biblical teacher I read liked to point out the hidden feminine throughout all of scripture. In the ancient Greek and Hebrew the verbs included both subject and verb and the verb had a gender. So a Hebrew verb had built into it either a “he” or “she.” Generally speaking the gendered nature of the language didn’t mean much, but this teacher pointed out that if we’re going to translate the times when the hidden “he” for God shows up then we also ought to do it when the hidden “she” shows up.

Let’s look at the very first verses of the Bible in Genesis. If we translate the “he” or “she” inherent in the verb, we get this: “In the beginning, God, he created, the heavens and the earth. The earth, she was formless and empty, and darkness was upon the face of the earth. And the Spirit of God, she hovered over the face of the waters” (Genesis 1:1-2, Literal Translation).

I don’t intend to suggest that the Holy Spirit is a woman and the Father is man and together they had the Son. No. In fact, I would argue against that idea, but I do mean to show that referring to God in feminine language isn’t alien to scripture.

Theologians ask the question, “Is God a Man?” They answer it saying, “I’m not so sure God is a man or a woman.”

Practices

So what about practices? What about where the rubber meets the road? What are we supposed to say when we pray or talk to or talk about God? Here’s the rub for many. As Mary Daly has said, “If God is male then male is God.” If we’re always referring to God as “he” or “Father” then it can come across as if there is a kind of way that men are made in the image of God more so than women, but that’s not true. Go back and read carefully the first chapter of Genesis, and you’ll see that both male and female were made in the image of God.

Practices – Trinity

As for my own practice, when it comes to the Trinitarian language of “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,” I always leave that alone. This is a long theological consensus built upon hundreds of years of trying to define very precisely the nature of God as one God in three persons. You tinker with it too much, and you’ll have some unintended consequences. It reminds me of when I took the spokes off my bike wheel to clean each one. “Good idea,” I thought. Then I tried to put them all back together. What a mess I had made for myself. They had, before I took them apart, perfectly balanced one another so that the wheel spun perfectly. When I got done putting them all back together, the wheel spun with a horrible wobble. I had to throw the wheel out. It was useless. The language of “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit” is a finely balanced wheel. If you tinker with it too much you may end up creating a wobble you didn’t expect or anticipate.

When it comes to the use of the word “Father” for the first person of the Trinity, many have very bad associations with the word “Father.” Their father wasn’t kind of loving or caring. Is God that same kind of a Father? No. God is the Father who holds your father and your mother accountable. On this Father’s Day, my first Father’s Day, I remember that the character of God is what holds me accountable, not the other way around. For those who had no father because your father abandoned you when you were a child or teenager, then God the Father is, perhaps, the Father you never had.

And yet, when it comes to times other than referring to the Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—I think we as a church should embrace the full spectrum of language for talking about God. Obviously, as I showed before, the Bible and even church leaders throughout history have had no problem referring to God in explicitly feminine ways. Why should we be?

Practices – Diversity

I like the diversity of images used to refer to God in several popular books or stories lately. Take the Experiencing God book. God is kind of like an old white guy. Is this a bad image of God? No, unless you only use this one image exclusively. Then there’s Bruce Almighty where Morgan Freeman, a black man, plays God. Most recently is the novel, The Shack. A little shockingly, God the Father is depicted as a big black woman called “Papa”! I love it. I must also admit that while I love it, there is still something in me that isn’t quite comfortable using this wide spectrum of images to refer to God. I still can’t quite stomach calling God “Our Mother.” This is probably due to the force of the conservative tradition I grew up in. We all get stuck in ruts from what we’ve always done. I’m no different than each of you. But I must add that I don’t cringe like I used to when I hear someone else refer to God in this way, and I encourage it.

Practices – Translation

Another aspect of practice related to this question is which translation to use. Not all translations are created equal in this regard. There are several that consciously attempt to be gender inclusive in their language. They don’t change the male gendered language about God, but they don’t shy away from the feminine either. The big three are the NRSV, NLT, and TNIV. I’d recommend using one of these three translations. It’s not that the others are bad, I use them too. They are just limited in this respect.

Practices – Humility

One last thing I think is worth saying about this question: Is God a Man? In our day and age, sometimes we ignore the second commandment. It reads, “You shall not make for yourself a carved image — any likeness of anything that is in heaven above…” (Exodus 20:4 NKJV). (Yes, I take note of the irony that I just suggested using the NRSV, NLT, or TNIV and now I’m using the NKJV. Sometimes with specific verses different translations just do it better.) In other words, don’t make an idol (as most modern translations put it). What is an idol? It’s an image of God. It says, “This is what God is.” I wonder if the language we use or the images we create to refer to God don’t at times become a kind of idol. It seems to me that there ought to be a kind of humility when it comes to the language we use to refer to God. Ancient and modern Jews stay so far away from the name of God that they don’t even say “God” and they never say God’s name. They say, “The LORD” or “The Name.” Maybe we could learn something from the way that they interpret and practice the second commandment when it comes to language. Maybe we could be a little bit more humble about the language we use to refer to God. Maybe we could be a little bit more open to other language than the language we’re used to. Do not make for yourself a carved image. Do not make for yourself a language image. Be humble when using language to refer to God.

So is God a man? No. God does not have male (or female) body parts. Is God like a man? Yes. Is God like a woman? Yes. Although it might be better to ask: Is a man like God? Yes. Is a woman like God? Yes.

Filed Under: Sermons Tagged With: gender, Questions

Questions 2.0 – Why Believe in God?

June 13, 2011 by Tom Leave a Comment

Questions 2.0 – Why Believe in God?
Sycamore Creek Church
June 12, 2011
Tom Arthur
Psalm 19

Peace, Friends!

Blake asks a great question: Why believe in God? It’s a question most of us find ourselves asking at some point or another. I myself have asked this question and fallen on both sides of the answer fence at different times in my life, although for the vast majority of my life, I have claimed to believe in God. I’m taking this question as a basic first question to Christianity about the existence of God. Does God exist? How do we know? Another set of questions that would take another sermon (or several!) would be why believe in the Christian God or in Jesus as God’s Son. I will not try to answer these questions today. I will focus more directly on the question of God’s existence.

I’d like to explore this question from the perspective of Psalm 19. So let’s take a look at this intriguing psalm.

Psalm 19 NRSV

The heavens are telling the glory of God;
and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.
Day to day pours forth speech,
and night to night declares knowledge.
There is no speech, nor are there words;
their voice is not heard;
yet their voice goes out through all the earth,
and their words to the end of the world.

In the heavens he has set a tent for the sun,
which comes out like a bridegroom from his wedding canopy,
and like a strong man runs its course with joy.
Its rising is from the end of the heavens,
and its circuit to the end of them;
and nothing is hid from its heat.

The law of the LORD is perfect,
reviving the soul;
the decrees of the LORD are sure,
making wise the simple;
the precepts of the LORD are right,
rejoicing the heart;
the commandment of the LORD is clear,
enlightening the eyes;
the fear of the LORD is pure,
enduring forever;
the ordinances of the LORD are true
and righteous altogether.
More to be desired are they than gold,
even much fine gold;
sweeter also than honey,
and drippings of the honeycomb.

Moreover by them is your servant warned;
in keeping them there is great reward.
But who can detect their errors?
Clear me from hidden faults.
Keep back your servant also from the insolent;
do not let them have dominion over me.
Then I shall be blameless,
and innocent of great transgression.

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart
be acceptable to you,
O LORD, my rock and my redeemer.

This is God’s teaching for us today. Thank you, God!

The Moral Law

This psalm has two themes. The first half has to do with creation and the second half has to do with morality. I’d like to look at the second half first. We read in verse seven:

The law of the LORD is perfect,
reviving the soul…
Psalm 19:7 NRSV

The psalm goes on to say quite a bit about this law of the Lord. I think it points us to a kind of law that is present in all of us: a moral law. I believe this moral law is one that we all live under and to at least some extent we all intuitively know or understand.

C.S. Lewis, one of the great Christian writers of the 20^th century, wrote a little book titled Mere Christianity in which he attempted to defend the basic Christian beliefs that are common among Christians of all stripes. He begins this book with a discussion of the moral law:

Every one has heard people quarrelling. Sometimes it sounds funny and sometimes it sounds merely unpleasant; but however it sounds, I believe we can learn something very important from listening to the kind of things they say. They say things like this: ‘How’d you like it if anyone did the same thing to you?’—’That’s my seat, I was there first’—’Leave him alone, he isn’t doing you any harm’—’Why should you shove in first?’ —’Give me a bit of your orange, I gave you a bit of mine’— ‘Come on, you promised.’ People say things like that every day, educated people as well as uneducated, and children as well as grown-ups.

Now what interests me about all these remarks is that the man who makes them is not merely saying that the other man’s behaviour does not happen to please him. He is appealing to some kind of standard of behaviour which he expects the other man to know about. And the other man very seldom replies ‘To hell with your standard.’ Nearly always he tries to make out that what he has been doing does not really go against the standard, or that if it does there is some special excuse. He pretends there is some special reason in this particular case why the person who took the seat first should not keep it, or that things were quite different when he was given the bit of orange, or that something has turned up which lets him off keeping his promise. It looks, in fact, very much as if both parties had in mind some kind of Law or Rule of fair play or decent behaviour or morality or whatever you like to call it, about which they really agreed. And they have. If they had not, they might, of course, fight like animals, but they could not quarrel in the human sense of the word. Quarrelling means trying to show that the other man is in the wrong. And there would be no sense in trying to do that unless you and he had some sort of agreement as to what Right and Wrong are; just as there would be no sense in saying that a footballer had committed a foul unless there was some agreement about the rules of football.

Lewis does a great job of making difficult concepts easy to understand. He takes this idea of the moral law and gives us some footholds and handholds so we can easily grasp hold. The question he is driving at is this: if there is a moral law, where did it come from? The answer he suggests is that if there is a moral law, there must be a moral law giver.

The Moral Law & Absolute Truth

I think that sometimes we get tripped up at this point about the moral law because we quickly run into the question of absolute truth. Truth seems so tricky. How can we nail down truth so that it is the same thing all the time in all places for all people? Usually we describe absolute truth as rules that govern what we should do and not do, but I don’t think that’s what Lewis is driving at here.

Consider the rule: Do not tell a lie. This seems a pretty basic moral rule or truth. It seems like it should hold up no matter who we’re talking about, where they live, or when they live. Don’t tell a lie. But immediately we are confronted with difficult situations where telling a lie seems the right thing to do. Take Corrie Ten Boom for an example.

Corrie was a Dutch Christian living during WWII in the Netherlands. When Nazi Germany invaded the Netherlands, Corrie and her family hid as many Jews as they could to save their lives. They often had to lie to the Nazis to save Jews. It is a lie that I hope each of us would make if we were in similar circumstances.

Here’s the rub: lying is wrong. Yes, but in a broken and sinful world, sometimes we are confronted with a situation in which there are no right answers. All our options (and always keep in mind that there are more than just two options in every situation) are less than perfect and we must choose the one that is the least bad. I think this complication points to something that is behind each rule: a principle.

What is the principle behind the rule to not lie? It is the principle of loving your neighbor by treating them the way that you would want to be treated. In the circumstances that Corrie found herself in, this principle of love was at odds with the rule of truth telling. Corrie’s Christianity demanded that she take the principle seriously while ignoring the letter of the law in the rule.

Jesus himself points to a kind of hierarchy in God’s law. When arguing with the Pharisees he says:

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill, and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. It is these you ought to have practiced without neglecting the others.
Matthew 23:23-24 NRSV

Notice the underlined portion. There are some moral laws that are weightier than others. Here the Pharisees were following the letter of the law of tithing even when it came to their herbs and spices, but ignoring the more important aspects of the law of treating people mercifully, justly, and faithfully.

Discerning what is weightier in any given situation is not always easy and is best done in a broad and diverse community, and let me be clear that I am certainly not advocating a kind of situational relativism where anything goes. I think that there will be a day when our character and our actions will all be judged. The point I’m trying to make is that there is a moral law that points to a moral law giver, and even though sometimes that moral law is a little tricky to discern, it is still there pointing to the moral law giver, or God.

The law of the LORD is perfect,
reviving the soul…
Psalm 19:7 NRSV

Creation

Now we move on to the first half of Psalm 19 which speaks of creation. We read:

The heavens are telling the glory of God;
and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.
Psalm 19:1 NRSV

Immediately when we begin talking about creation the question comes up about how to navigate through the relationship between science and faith. Are they opposed to one another or is there a way that they work in harmony with one another?

Whenever one begins talking about science and faith, it’s not very long before the name Galileo comes up. Galileo argued that the sun was at the center of our system and not the earth. Famously the church stood against him. He was put on house arrest and forced to recant. He did so (with his fingers crossed behind his back!).

Interestingly enough, one of the key verses in this debate came from this psalm. We read:

Its [the sun’s] rising is from the end of the heavens,
and its circuit to the end of them;
Psalm 19:6 NRSV

When you look up in the sky, you see the sun move from one side of the earth to the other. It seems pretty obvious that the sun moves and the earth doesn’t. But what is obvious always has to do with where one stands, as Galileo so clearly saw through his new instrument, the telescope.

Can we ever get past Galileo? I hope so. Galileo, we were wrong. Please accept our apology. Forgive us for our arrogance.

I think when most of us read Psalm 19 today, we see it as a kind of poetic language. Our faith in God isn’t shaken by the idea that what verse six literally says isn’t true. Interestingly enough, the Catholic church has come around to this perspective too. Pope John Paul II said, “Galileo sensed in his scientific research the presence of the Creator who, stirring in the depths of his spirit, stimulated him, anticipating and assisting his intuitions.” Amen.

I read a book several years ago titled, Galileo’s Daughter. Her name was Maria Celeste and she was a nun. I learned while reading this book that Galileo was a Christian! He wasn’t always the most faithful Christian, but he remained a Christian even amidst this controversy with the church. Apparently Galileo didn’t have a hard time integrating this new scientific knowledge with his faith. He said, “I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.” I suspect most of us today could relate to that claim.

Evolution

The question of evolution also often comes up in these kinds of conversations about science and faith. Is evolution incompatible with a belief in God? While the church may not have been on the progressive edge back in Galileo’s day, the Catholic church has responded to this question of evolution in a much more proactive way. Again, Pope John Paul II said of evolution, “New findings lead us toward the recognition of evolution as more than a hypothesis.” If the pope doesn’t see an essential conflict between faith and evolution, perhaps we shouldn’t either.

It’s not just religious leaders who see a harmony between science and faith. Many scientists do too. One of those is Francis Collins. Collins is a first rate scientist. He was the director of the Human Genome project which sequenced the 25,000-30,000 genes in human DNA and is the current National Institute of Health director by way of a unanimous vote in Congress. Collins is also a Christian. He has recently written a book titled The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief. In this book he makes a well thought out plea for Christians to see science and faith as compatible. He says, “It is time to call a truce in the escalating war between science and spirit. The war was never really necessary….Science is not threatened by God; it is enhanced. God is most certainly not threatened by science.” Amen.

I have personally never had a hard time connecting science with my faith. I wonder if this wasn’t because growing up even though I went to public schools, I had several science teachers in Jr. High and High School who also believed in God. I saw science and faith integrated together on a regular basis. I continue to see it today even in our church. We have several scientists who are members or regularly attend our church. One of the most well known is Mark Aupperlee who preaches often. Mark is a breast cancer researcher at MSU. Mark is married to Jana who is also a scientist. She is a professor of psychology at MSU. Then there’s Kathie Brooks who is in the Microbiology and Molecular Genetics department at MSU. I read some about her research on her faculty page the other day, and I didn’t understand any of it! We’ve also got two high school science teachers: Chrissy Hager (Leslie High School) and Ben Shoemaker (Mason High School). Several people in our church are involved with the science of medicine. Amanda Shoemaker is a doctor, and Bob and Martha Trout, Teresa Miller, Deb Hager, and Deb Ray are all involved in nursing or tech work in hospitals. You don’t have to look to the big guns of Francis Collins to see scientists who are also people of faith. Just look right here in our own church.

Let me take a tangent for a moment. Students, don’t think that to be a good Christian you have to become a pastor or missionary or work in a church. We need faithful Christians who are also scientists, engineers, mathematicians, and the like. Don’t be afraid to go into these fields of study because you think your faith will have to be put on the back burner. Talk to any of the people I just mentioned and you will most likely find a story about how science has strengthened their faith and vice versa.

God and Suffering

One of the big obstacles to belief in God is always the question of suffering. We read about this in Psalm 19:

Keep me from deliberate sins!
Don’t let them control me.
Then I will be free of guilt
and innocent of great sin.
Psalm 19:13 NLT

When we deliberately sin, we usually hurt others. Sometimes that hurt is more subtle than at other times. There is, of course, also suffering caused by creation itself. Sometimes this earth is a very harsh place to live. What are we to make of suffering and a belief in God? Shouldn’t a good and all powerful God have been able to make a world in which suffering didn’t exist? We’re going to deal with this question more fully in the next series, Why? But let me touch on it briefly for a moment here.

The primary response to the question of suffering is free will. Because God has given us free will, or the freedom to choose to follow God or to not follow God, to follow the moral law or not, all of us have at one time or another done harm to others. But couldn’t God have created a world where free will exists but suffering doesn’t? C.S. Lewis is again instructive:

If you choose to say “God can give a creature free will and at the same time withhold free will from it,” you have not succeeded in saying anything about God; meaningless combinations of words do not suddenly acquire meaning simply because we prefix to them the two other words “God can.” Nonsense remains nonsense, even when we talk about God.
C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

Lewis points to a logical incompatibility toward the belief that free will can also be required to always do the right thing. If it was required to do the right thing, then it would no longer be free will.

Suffering happens to everyone. Jesus himself says, “For [God] gives his sunlight to both the evil and the good, and he sends rain on the just and on the unjust, too” (Matthew 5:45 NLT). For me the difficulty with suffering comes down to one thing: hope. If you take God out of the equation, there is no hope amidst suffering.

Hope

Psalm 19 speaks to this kind of hope in the very last verse. We read:

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart
be acceptable to you,
O LORD, my rock and my redeemer.
Psalm 19:14 NRSV

There are three kinds of hope that a belief in God provides: hope for a better life, hope for a better world, and hope for something better than death.

Hope for a Better Life

When we believe in God, we are given hope that we can become better people. We can grow in character, virtue, and love. No, belief doesn’t lead to instantaneous perfection. It’s not like you become a perfect person when you believe in God. But belief in God leads to particular attitudes and actions that nurture growth in all who believe. Yes, we still fall down. Yes, we still sin. Yes, we still mess up on the moral law, but as John Wesley says, “Sin remains but it does not reign.” Belief in God provides hope that I can be better person.

Hope for a Better World

Of course, if there is hope that each of us can be a better person, then because the world is made up of individuals there is also hope that this world can be a better world. I look at groups like Habitat for Humanity whose mission is a world without shacks. To that end they have built over 400,000 homes worldwide. Or look at UMCOR (United Methodist Committee on Relief). UMCOR raised over $40,000,000 for Haiti in the aftermath of a devastating earthquake. There’s also our own mission work with Dr. Mir in Nicaragua where two teams a year go to run medical clinics. Each of these is motivated by a belief in God that leads us to hope and act for a better world.

Hope for Something Better than Death

Last of all is death. Death seems so, well, final. In some ways it is. It is good for all of us to occasionally be reminded of our mortality. What is the number one cause of death? Birth. We will all die.

Within each of us lies a longing that hopes for something better than death. It is a longing that death would not be the end of life. Belief in God provides hope that there is some good and meaningful existence after death. Once again we turn back to C.S. Lewis who said,

Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling want to swim: well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

I think we can see this longing in another psalm, Psalm 84:

I long, yes, I faint with longing,
to enter the courts of the LORD.
With my whole being, body and soul,
I will shout joyfully to the living God.
Psalm 84:2 NLT

Our longing for God is there, Lewis says, because the object of our longing, God, exists to fulfill that longing.

Faith & Uncertainty

At the end of this message, I’m not sure I’d say that I’ve presented evidence for belief in God. I think I’d say that I’ve tried to present reasons why I believe in God, but even amidst these reasons it has been my own experience that I can never come to a place where I am totally certain about belief in God. Belief requires faith. Paul says, “We walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7 NRSV).

Let me go back to Blake’s question: Why believe in God? The tricky part of this equation for me has always been that unbelief also requires faith! I have found no more certainty on the other side of the fence. Whether you believe that God exists or you believe that God does not exist (or even if you’re not sure), all of these positions require faith. Uncertainty never goes away.

So perhaps at the end of this message, Blake, you were hoping that I would have presented enough hard core evidence to wipe away all your uncertainties. I doubt (no pun intended) that I have done that or that I ever could do that. What I hope to have done is given you some of the reasons why I believe:

I look at the moral law and I think there must be a moral law giver.

I look at our world and even the scientific language and knowledge we use to describe it, and I see the fingerprints of a creator.

I look at suffering, and I see that belief in God offers three hopes:

Hope that I can become a better person,

Hope that this world can become a better world;

Hope that there is something better than death.

The decision is before you. You can choose to believe or not to believe. Both require faith. Which one will you choose?

Filed Under: Sermons Tagged With: atheism, belief, Questions

Questions – Q&A

April 27, 2010 by Tom

This past Sunday the message was a little different. People at SCC have been submitting questions over the past three weeks that I took some time to answer on this fourth week of the Questions series. Jana Aupperlee joined me as an interviewer, and the voice of those who submitted the questions. I didn’t see the questions before she asked them, and she asked me different questions in each service. We didn’t have time to answer them all, but here are the questions that were submitted. To hear the answers I gave to some of them, here are the audio files.

Questions

Is it possible to be a good Christian without believing the unbelievable (i.e. raising from the dead, transubstantiation, water to wine, etc…)? I don’t know if it is doubt I feel, or if I find so much else possible (ex. newly discovered gospels? -After all, one group of people decided for the rest of us!).

What about prayer? If God knows what is going to happen, do we change the future with prayer?

The Bible seems conflicted on prayer…if I have the faith of a mustard seed or if I bug God enough, I should get what I ask right? Why don’t I? I’ve heard people say I didn’t ask for it right or with the wrong thought, or with not enough faith – those sound like a cop out? Or does prayer just change us and how we experience life?

Why doesn’t God choose to relieve suffering?

How does reincarnation fit with Christianity?

How should extra-Biblical texts like the Gnostic gospels inform our faith?

What will heaven be like and how much time should we devote to pondering it now?

What if there is no God?

How do you encourage/force yourself to change to what you know to be God’s way & you just can’t do it?

Once we have chosen to believe, that’s enough by the grace of God. But, if we have chosen to believe are we not expected to change our lives as well? Should we change our ways of language, of jokes, of behavior? Or can we believe and still live with the same behavior we’ve always practiced?

If everyone is forgiven for their sins then why is there a Hell? Does it depend on how bad you sin? How does he decide who gets forgiven and why?

Why are those who murder destroyed? Aren’t all sins equal? Shouldn’t they be forgiven too?

Why do the wicked prosper? Why does it seem like evil and unethical people keep getting away with so much that affects the righteous, good people continually?

Why is there so much variation amongst different Biblical translations? What can we do to minimize confusion?

Can we understand the Bible without the historical context or without extensive knowledge about ancient Jewish laws and practices?

Is God a male or female?

What if I can’t forgive myself even though I know God has?

What happens to gay people who have believed in God & then die? Where are they? Will I see my cousin again?

If God is all-knowing, how do we have “free will”? Does he know when I sin? When & how I will die?

We all hear all you need to do is believe in God to go to heaven. What does belief in God mean?

I know plenty of people who believe in God. I think they even believe the cross happened and He rose again. They do good works and have hearts of gold. However, it does not appear they live their life for Christ. We all know to love our neighbor and do good works but what does it mean to “live a life of Christ?” I know we all sin and I know it’s not my job to say who is or isn’t but sometimes you hear what someone says and then you witness their actions and behaviors and they don’t match. What gives?

Does God/Jesus have a position on war and national defense? It seems that Christians often have very different views on this issue.

Filed Under: Sermons Tagged With: Questions

Questions – Why Do I Keep Sinning?

April 19, 2010 by Tom

Questions – Why Do I Keep Sinning?
Romans 7:14-25
Sycamore Creek Church
Tom Arthur
April 18, 2010

Peace, Friends!

Recently I was listening to the radio show, This American Life. A great segment came on with a poem titled, “The Fable of the Scorpion and the Tortoise.” The tale is told of a tortoise who is swimming along when he is greeted by a scorpion on the shore. The scorpion asks for a ride on the shell of the tortoise. The tortoise declines knowing that the scorpion is prone to strike and kill him. The scorpion replies that there would be no reason to do so because then they would both die. The tortoise is won over by the scorpion’s logic, so he gives him a ride across the river. Half-way across, the tortoise feels the scorpion sting him. As he begins to die and sink he cries out, “Why did you do this? We both will now die.” The scorpion replies that he does not know why he has done this, but he cannot help but sting because it is in his nature to do so. The morale of the fable is said to be that we cannot change our natures. What we are is what we are. What we do is what we do. Is this true?

The good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ is that our natures can change. We can change from what we have been to become a new creation with a new nature. It is not always easy, and there is certainly struggle along the way, but YES, we can change our nature.

Today we continue in the third part of a series on questions. These questions were questions that the teenagers in our church asked Sarah and me one day when we met them. I enjoyed the questions so much that I thought they were worth building a sermon series around. Each week a different teenager has asked me a different question. Week one: How do I know that Jesus is who he said he is? Week two: What’s up with heaven or hell? Today, week three: Gaelen asks, “Why do I keep sinning?” Let’s begin by taking a look at what Paul has to say about the topic in Romans.

Romans 7:14-25 (NLT)

¹⁴ The law is good, then. The trouble is not with the law but with me, because I am sold into slavery, with sin as my master. ¹⁵ I don’t understand myself at all, for I really want to do what is right, but I don’t do it. Instead, I do the very thing I hate. ¹⁶ I know perfectly well that what I am doing is wrong, and my bad conscience shows that I agree that the law is good. ¹⁷ But I can’t help myself, because it is sin inside me that makes me do these evil things.

¹⁸ I know I am rotten through and through so far as my old sinful nature is concerned. No matter which way I turn, I can’t make myself do right. I want to, but I can’t. ¹⁹ When I want to do good, I don’t. And when I try not to do wrong, I do it anyway. ²⁰ But if I am doing what I don’t want to do, I am not really the one doing it; the sin within me is doing it.

²¹ It seems to be a fact of life that when I want to do what is right, I inevitably do what is wrong. ²² I love God’s law with all my heart. ²³ But there is another law at work within me that is at war with my mind. This law wins the fight and makes me a slave to the sin that is still within me. ²⁴ Oh, what a miserable person I am! Who will free me from this life that is dominated by sin? ²⁵ Thank God! The answer is in Jesus Christ our Lord. So you see how it is: In my mind I really want to obey God’s law, but because of my sinful nature I am a slave to sin.

This is God’s story for us today. Thank you, God!

Paul’s thinking throughout this passage is a little difficult to follow. Thankfully he gives us a summary of what he’s trying to say in the last verse. We read, “Thank God! The answer is in Jesus Christ our Lord. So you see how it is: In my mind I really want to obey God’s law, but because of my sinful nature I am a slave to sin” (Romans 7:25, NLT). It could be said of our lives that sin remains but it does not reign.

It is a popular conception that one sin is no different than another sin. This is true from the perspective of whether any of us are better or worse in God’s eyes, but it is not true as to the consequences of sin. There are at least four different kinds of sin. Let’s take a look at each one of them.

The first kind of sin is external sin. External sin has to do with the big ones: idolatry, lying, stealing, murder, adultery, etc.. If you grew up Catholic you would have known to call this kind of sin “mortal sin.” This is the kind of sin that breaks our relationship with God. We know that it is wrong and that God does not want us to do it, and we do it anyway. Generally speaking, when one becomes a Christian, one does not commit these kinds of sins. We’re talking the Ten Commandments here. This is not to say that Christians never commit external sin. Rather, it is to say that when we know it is clearly wrong, we simply don’t do it, and if we do, we ask for forgiveness, and we intend to not do it again. These kinds of sins are easier to avoid because they are obvious.

When I was working in a church in Petoskey I committed this kind of sin one time. I lied to my secretary. It was not a big issue, but she confronted me about how I was using some office equipment. I knew what I was doing, and I knew that it was wrong. I was ashamed at what the truth meant for me. So I lied. I had not lied like this in a very long time. I couldn’t believe what I was doing. Immediately the Holy Spirit convicted me of this sin, but I did not immediately act upon this conviction. Eventually I did. I went and confessed to her what I had done and asked for her forgiveness. She forgave me. Thank you, God.

The second kind of sin is internal sin. Internal sin has to do with our attitudes, our spirit, our motivations. We’re talking about the sins of jealousy, envy, ill will, pride, etc. These are much more subtle sins. They don’t immediately break our relationship with God, but they can over time build up a resistance and hardness to the work of the Holy Spirit in us. If you grew up Catholic you might have known these sins as venial sins. These kinds of sins are harder to avoid, but you can grow in God’s grace to overcome them. The tricky part is that as you grow in maturity, you begin to notice all kinds of sins like this that you had never noticed before. So while you make progress, you also realize more and more how much progress needs to be made!

There was once a person I did not like very well. I tended to avoid this person. When I would see them coming down the hall, I would turn a corner so I didn’t have to meet them. There was something about them that just got under my skin. It wasn’t that they had done anything to me. I just didn’t like them. I didn’t ever do anything outright sinful to this person. I didn’t lie to them. I didn’t cheat them. I didn’t fail to follow through on commitments I had made. One day while I was in prayer, the Holy Spirit convicted me about my attitude. I realized I had to go and confess this sin to this person. I did. I was amazed to find that they were very receptive to my confession. They said that they saw a soft side of me in that moment that they had never seen before. I can’t say that I immediately liked this person, but the ongoing build-up of resentment stopped. Thank you, God!

The third kind of sin is sometimes called sins of surprise. These are sins that we don’t plan to commit, they just happen in the moment when we’re not thinking about it. You smash your thumb with the hammer and you say, “@%#$!” You see someone being bullied, and you don’t do anything. When you think about these kinds of situations you intend to do the right thing. When you think back on the situation you wish you had done the right thing. But in the moment of the situation, you react in a way that surprises yourself. These kinds of sins may be lessened over time, but they may never go away.

There is something about computers that really gets me agitated. It’s like they’re a magic black box that I can’t understand. I can get so agitated by them when they are not working right. I want to pick it up and throw it out the window. One time I got so annoyed with my laptop that I slammed the top down and brought my closed fist down on top of it. I immediately felt ridiculous. My stupidity was multiplied when the computer would no longer turn on. I had not planned on treating the computer this way. I was sorry that I had done so after it was over. I surprised myself by my reaction. I confessed my sin to God. God forgave me. Thank you, God!

The fourth kind of sin is corporate sin. It has to do with the sin ingrained in the structures of our society. If you live and work and breathe in our culture, you participate in the sinful ways of our society. These kinds of sin can be fought against but they will likely never go away completely until Jesus comes back to set everything straight.

I remember the day that I first realized that when I bought shares of a mutual fund I now owned a part of that company, and that meant that I owned a part of the responsibility of how that company was going about its business. I could potentially be profiting off of their misdoings. Do they pad their books? Do they lie to make money? Do they make money on sweatshops around the globe? Do they pay their employees a living wage? Do they harm the creation? Do they discriminate in their hiring practices in terms of the number of women or minorities in leadership positions? I began to pay more attention to not just the bottom line of how much money my investments were earning, but the manner in which the businesses that I owned went about making that money. When I realized this I found that there are investment strategies and investment brokers who care about these same kinds of things. Thank you, God!

There are different kinds of sins and some are easier to overcome than others, but over time we can be transformed so that sin does not have the same hold over us that it once did. Sin remains, but it does not reign.

John Wesley has a great sermon called On Sin in Believers. He has this to say about sin:

Every babe [new Christian] in Christ is holy, and yet not altogether so. He is saved from sin; yet not entirely: It remains, though it does not reign. If you think it does not remain, (in babes at least, whatever be the case with young men, or fathers) you certainly have not considered the height, and depth, and length, and breadth of the law of God.

Sin remains, but it does not reign. He goes on to add:

The usurper is dethroned. He remains indeed where he once reigned; but remains in chains. So that he does, in some sense, “prosecute the war,” yet he grows weaker and weaker; while the believer goes on from strength to strength, conquering and to conquer.

Sin remains, but it does not reign. It does not reign because the power of Jesus has come into our lives and broken the bondage that sin held over us. It does not reign because Jesus has made us free. It remains because the old habits remain, but it does not reign because we are free to replace those old habits with new habits of love.

So if sin remains in a Christian, what motivates us to continue the fight? Can’t we just settle for good enough? I mean, we’ve got our fire insurance. We’re Christians. That gets us into heaven, doesn’t it? Why worry beyond that? The answer to that question is that I don’t think there is such a static place where we are not growing. We are either growing as Christians or we are not Christians. We are either growing at following Christ or we are not following Christ. Health implies growth.

It is a beautiful thing to see a four or five-year-old dog paddle across the pool for the first time. It is rather disturbing to see that same person at age fifty still dog paddling across the pool. It is a beautiful thing to see a five-year-old riding their bike around with training wheels on. It is a very disturbing thing to see that same person riding their bike with training wheels when they are fifty.

Sometimes change is just noticeable improvement. I don’t spend a lot of time at bars. I’m not a big beer drinker. In fact, I don’t like the taste of beer. There’s nothing wrong with having a beer here and there if you don’t get drunk. Drunkenness is what the Bible has a problem with, not drinking.

Now I don’t know what you think about seminary students, but most of my friends at seminary liked to have a drink now and then. One of my friends had a birthday party, and it was at a local bar. There was a back patio that all these seminary students took over and celebrated my friend’s birthday. No one was getting drunk, but we were having a good time. I found out that night something I never knew. Beer girls aren’t just in beer commercials. There was this beer rep at the bar and he set up shop on the back patio. He was cursing up a storm and handing out free beer samples. I don’t think he realized that we were all future pastors. He brought along with him a beer girl. I call her a beer girl because I don’t know what else to call her. She was dressed like a girl in a beer commercial. That is to say, she was dressed to capture the eye of every guy in the joint. Skimpy top. Mini skirt. Stiletto heels. Being a guy, I noticed her. It was almost impossible not to notice her. It would be like telling my wife to ignore the gold finch at the birdfeeder. But that night something happened that had never happened before. For the first time in my life I noticed her and I thought to myself, “I bet she’s really uncomfortable in those shoes.” What happened in that moment? She became not just an object for me to look at, but she became a real person. How did this happen?

I’ve thought back on that night several times and wondered why that just noticeable improvement happened. Here’s why I think it did. First, I had been married for over ten years by then. I knew from my wife’s experience how uncomfortable women’s shoes can be sometimes. My marriage was a means of grace for me to grow in God’s grace. Second, I was surrounded by Christians. I had the community around me reminding me constantly not verbally but implicitly who I was called to be. Third, I had been practicing this for thirty plus years. I regularly pray, “God help me to see everyone through your eyes.” That night, God answered my prayer. I saw that “beer girl” as God saw her, a human being in need of a comfortable pair of shoes.

There are two ways to kill the fire of the Holy Spirit in us. The first is to throw water on it. That is to sin, but the second is to remove the fuel. That is to neglect the practices, habits, and disciplines of following Jesus. Do you spend unhurried time with God daily? If you do, you will see just noticeable improvements. You will see the habits of your new nature, your Christian nature begin to move to the forefront more and more, and you will see the old habits of your old self begin to move more and more to the background. Sin remains, but it does not reign.

So what would it look like if you grew to love more perfectly? I’m not talking about absolute perfection. I’m not talking about being at a place where you are never tempted, or can never fall back into sin. I’m talking about being at a place where you are fully submitted to God’s will that you are entirely devoted to God, you love God with everything you’ve got and you love your neighbor as yourself. As you grow in God’s grace what would it look like if you had a fully accurate self understanding in which you knew what you were good at without pride and knew what you were not good at without frustration or envy? If you were patient with others around you born out of a humility of knowing that others are patient with you. If instead of trifling your time away in front of another TV, computer, video game screen you spent your time enjoying the beauty of creation and God’s presence in it? If you didn’t ever worry about what to do next because you fully trusted in God’s leading? If you had no money anxiety because you trusted God by living simply and giving generously? If you were present fully to the people around you, able to love them not because you needed someone to love but because unconditional love flowed naturally from your entire being? If instead of loving the things of this world, you used the things of this world to love God and others? What would your life look like? We’re talking here about not just good enough, not just getting into heaven, but growing in God’s grace so that while sin remains, it does not reign.

If you want to know what it would look like take the famous passage from Corinthians about love and insert your name in the place of “love.”

1 Corinthians 13:4-8
_______ is patient and kind. ______ is not jealous or boastful or proud, or rude. _____ does not demand his/her own way. ______ is not irritable, and keeps no record of when he/she has been wronged. _______ is never glad about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. _______ never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance. ______’s love will last forever.

Why settle for good enough when there is a more excellent way of love? Why settle for the sin that remains when God’s grace is able to help you overcome the sin that does not reign? Why settle for just getting by when you can spend unhurried time with God every day and grow into the person that God has called you to become?

Gaelen, why do we keep sinning? Because sin remains, but it does not reign. We live in a fallen world and absolute perfection may not be available this side of heaven, but we can grow in maturity wrestling less and less with pride, impatience, anxiety, distrust, greed, hate, idolatry, and the like. We can grow to overcome the sin the sin that remains.

“Thank God! The answer is in Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 7:25, NLT).

Filed Under: Sermons Tagged With: Questions, sin

Question – Why do I keep sinning?

April 13, 2010 by Tom

We’re currently in a series called Questions. The questions I’m answering each week are based on questions the students in my church asked me one day when I met with them. I thought they should present the question then themselves. So here’s the question for this Sunday asked by Gaelen: Why do I keep sinning?

Filed Under: Sermons, Video Tagged With: Questions, sin, youth

Questions – What’s Up with Heaven or Hell?

April 13, 2010 by Tom

Questions – What’s Up with Heaven or Hell?
Matthew 22:1-14
Sycamore Creek Church
Tom Arthur
April 11, 2010

Peace, Friends!

This past Monday was a pretty heavenly day for me. Yeah, you knew it was coming. I had the opportunity to go watch my alma mater, Duke University, win the NCAA championship. I had an awesome time if you consider three hours of gut wrenching anxiety awesome. So my step-dad got his hands on some tickets and offered for me to come down to Indy to go to the game with my mom. It didn’t really fit in my schedule, but this was a once in a lifetime opportunity, and I made it work. So I drive down and get to my mom’s house. We leave about three hours early to find good parking and brave the crowds at the Lucas Oil Stadium. I’m pumped walking in amidst a sea of Butler fans. It was a zoo. The street we’re on has been shut down because there are too many people to walk on the sidewalks. So we’re walking down the street and Lucas Oil Stadium comes into view. I’m even more pumped. We go under a bridge and come out right in front of Lucas Oil Stadium. I’m even more pumped. I turn my head to the right and there’s these two guys wearing red and one of them is holding a big red sign that says, “You don’t deserve Jesus. You deserve hell.” What?! All of a sudden it’s like I’m at a family reunion and uncle Jack is spouting off his wacko theories again. Embarrassment. I try not to look. I try to ignore them, but their sign is designed to not be ignored. “You don’t deserve Jesus. You deserve hell.” Do I even really believe that? Is this strategy for drawing people to Jesus Christ even working? But they’re family, Christian family, so I chalk it up to the more eccentric side of the family and head into Lucas Oil Stadium to root for the Devils, the Blue Devils!

Today we continue the series of Questions. Each question is being introduced by a teenager in our church. Last week Alex asked the question: How do I know that Jesus is who he said he is? We explored uncertainty, doubt, and faith. Today Alyssa asks the question: What’s up with heaven or hell and what about my friends who die? Is it just like that sign said: You deserve hell? Or is there another way to look at this heaven or hell question? Let’s dive into a story that Jesus tells to begin exploring this question. It’s the parable of the wedding feast.

Matthew 22:1-14 (NLT)

¹ Jesus told them several other stories to illustrate the Kingdom. He said, ² “The Kingdom of Heaven can be illustrated by the story of a king who prepared a great wedding feast for his son. ³ Many guests were invited, and when the banquet was ready, he sent his servants to notify everyone that it was time to come. But they all refused! ⁴ So he sent other servants to tell them, ‘The feast has been prepared, and choice meats have been cooked. Everything is ready. Hurry!’ ⁵ But the guests he had invited ignored them and went about their business, one to his farm, another to his store. ⁶ Others seized his messengers and treated them shamefully, even killing some of them.

⁷ “Then the king became furious. He sent out his army to destroy the murderers and burn their city. ⁸ And he said to his servants, ‘The wedding feast is ready, and the guests I invited aren’t worthy of the honor. ⁹ Now go out to the street corners and invite everyone you see.’

¹⁰ “So the servants brought in everyone they could find, good and bad alike, and the banquet hall was filled with guests. ¹¹ But when the king came in to meet the guests, he noticed a man who wasn’t wearing the proper clothes for a wedding. ¹²‘Friend,’ he asked, ‘how is it that you are here without wedding clothes?’ And the man had no reply. ¹³ Then the king said to his aides, ‘Bind him hand and foot and throw him out into the outer darkness, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ ¹⁴ For many are called, but few are chosen.”

This is God’s story for us today. Thank you, God!

What we’ve just read is something unlike anything we’ve read up to this point in my time with you. It’s a parable or what the NLT calls a “story.” It’s not about something that actually happened, but that doesn’t mean it’s not true. Parables are symbolic stories. We understand symbols because they are used in our story telling today. Take these numbers for instance:

4 8 15 16 23 42

Those aren’t just any numbers. They are very special numbers. They’re the mysterious numbers that have driven Lost fans crazy ever since the first season. What do they stand for? Where did they come from? In this final season we’ve learned that the numbers are symbols. They each stand for one character in the show:

4 – Locke

8 – Hurley

15 – Sawyer

16 – Sayid

23 – Jack

42 – Sun and/or Jin.

So now we know what the symbols stand for, but what do they mean? What does it mean that each number represents one character. And what about the characters that don’t have a number? Ah, we know but we don’t know. We see but we don’t see. We hear but we don’t hear. A parable kinda drives us crazy sometimes.

There are two lines of thinking about parables. One line of thinking says that a parable has one main point and the details aren’t really very important. A second line of thinking says that the details are what make the story work and that the details have lots of different possible meanings. I tend to take a third line when it comes to parables. I tend to think a parable has one main point and that the details are flexible. A parable then has a certain amount of flexibility in its interpretation.

So what do the symbols stand for in the parable of the wedding feast? I think it’s fairly obvious that the King equals God. So who are the first guests who were invited: “Many guests were invited, and when the banquet was ready, he sent his servants to notify everyone that it was time to come. But they all refused!” (Matthew 22:3, NLT). These first guests stand for the nation of Israel. God invited the nation of Israel into a covenant with God through Abraham.

Amazingly all these invited guests refuse! Here we catch the first glimpse of what God’s judgment is like. God’s knee jerk reaction is mercy. We read, “So [Again] he sent other servants to tell them, ‘The feast has been prepared, and choice meats have been cooked. Everything is ready. Hurry!’” (Matthew 22:4, NLT). The king makes a second invitation!

What kind of king are we talking about here? This is no king I know about. We don’t quite have the experience here in America of what it must be like to have an absolute sovereign like a king. I have had two run ins with authority that approximate what it must be like to be summoned by a king, but only approximate. The first was the one and only one time I’ve been called to the principal’s office. Actually, it was the vice principal. It was in ninth grade. I was having a bad year with my math teacher. This teacher was horrible. One day I got so fed up with her that I told her to shut up just as the bell was ringing for the end of class, and I walked out of the room. She chased me down the hall and gave me a demerit. Later that day I was called to the principal’s office. What would have happened had I refused?! Certainly it would not have been good for me.

The other time I faced down an authority figure similar to a king was one night in a show-down with my dad. I don’t really remember what the argument was about. We didn’t have too many arguments growing up, but this one was pretty intense. I don’t remember what my dad said, but I just got up and walked out of the room. My bedroom was in the basement so I headed for my room. I remember my father standing at the top of the stairs with his voice booming like a loud speaker demanding that I come back up those stairs. He started to count. He had never counted with me before. I stood my ground…1…2…I caved and came back up the stairs. Had I refused, I might not be alive today to tell the story!

Now neither the principal nor my dad have the kind of power and authority that a king has, and no king has the power and authority that God has, and this king was refused and sent a second invitation. This tells me that the king is first and foremost a merciful king. This king does not rush to judgment but gives every possible chance to accept the invitation.

What kind of invitation is this? This merciful king makes an urgent and generous invitation. We read, “So [the king] sent other servants to tell them, “The feast has been prepared, and choice meats have been cooked. Everything is ready. Hurry!” (Matthew 22:4, NLT) Hurry! The food is getting cold. The meal is ready right now. Don’t dawdle or you’ll miss the good stuff. Good stuff? Yeah. The good stuff. Choice meats. This is an extravagant celebration. I’m reminded of the kind of feast that was put on for us every night when my parents took us on a cruise. Every kind of meat, cheese, vegetable, and sweet you could imagine. You want a second lobster tail? No problem. Would you like some filet mignon with that? No problem. Choice meats. The king makes an urgent and generous invitation.

Recently I came across a commercial that shows the absurdity of what’s going on in this story. Check it out:

This is crazy. The guests are at the table. Your loved one too. A beautiful meal is ready. And here you are laying on the ground playing with the cat! C.S. Lewis reminds us of what’s going on in moments like this:

“We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased” (The Weight of Glory).

The generous invitation is really an invitation filled with joy. It is an invitation made to goodness that is beyond our imagination. And it is urgent.

So how do the guests respond? We see two responses from the guests: apathy and antipathy. We read, “But the guests he had invited ignored them and went about their business, one to his farm, another to his store. Others seized his messengers and treated them shamefully, even killing some of them” (Matthew 22:5-6, NLT). Some responded with apathy by simply ignoring the invitation. Others responded violently and killed the messengers!

Let’s look at the first group, those who responded with apathy. It’s a little hard for us to imagine what it would mean to respond to God’s invitation with apathy, but we do it all the time, even those of us who call ourselves Christians. We, like the people in the story, are more interested in our business, our food, or what we’re going to buy next. Our apathy is based in our character. Who would ignore a king’s invitation? Usually we think that people will care about God and love God when they see God after death. But what if they ignore God just as much then? If they don’t like God’s invitation now, what makes you think they’ll like it any more when they die? Perhaps people actually choose hell because they don’t like heaven!

C.S. Lewis helps us wrap our imaginations around what hell might be if we chose it over heaven. In his novel, The Great Divorce, he tells the story of a bus that travels from hell to heaven and back every day. People in hell can get on it any time they want, and usually when they get to heaven, they choose to go back to hell. The natural inclinations they had when they were alive only develop further in the same direction when they die. If they were aiming toward God in life, then they develop more love for God after death. If they were aiming toward self when they lived, then they only become more selfish when they die.

The narrator in The Great Divorce meets another person on the bus on their way from hell to heaven. He comes to find out that in hell, anyone can build anything they want by simply thinking about it. At first this sounds great, but then he hears about how people move away from their neighbors at the first sign of conflict. They simply move one street over and build a house by thinking about it. Pretty soon the houses in the neighborhoods are miles, even tens of thousands of miles apart. Hell becomes a place where people who want to be isolated can live out their selfishness in perfect isolation.

One character goes to hunt down Napoleon and after hundreds of years of traveling finally finds him. What he sees is a man pacing back and forth in his house blaming this general or that general. Napoleon is in hell pacing back and forth for hundreds of years blaming others for his failures thousands of miles away from the nearest person. Now that’s what I call hell: allowing our own selfish tendencies to play out to their logical conclusion. This is a hell that we choose both here on earth and after death. This is a hell that is a natural out flowing of our natural nature.

So how does the king in Jesus’ parable respond after the second merciful invitation is refused? The king responds with proportionate judgment. We read, “Then the king became furious. He sent out his army to destroy the murderers and burn their city” (Matthew 22:7, NLT). Notice that the king destroys those who killed his messengers. This seems odd coming from Jesus who taught that we are to turn the other cheek. Wouldn’t God do the same thing? Remember, God is the king, and we are not. Never forget that we are not the king.

Interestingly enough no mention is made of what happens to those who responded with apathy by ignoring the king’s invitation. Does this suggest that there is still time for those people to respond and reconcile with the king?

So at this point the king has had enough of those who were first invited and the king opens up his invitation to others. Who are these others? If the first batch was Israel, then the others are you and me, the church. We read, “[The king] said to his servants, ‘The wedding feast is ready, and the guests I invited aren’t worthy of the honor. Now go out to the street corners and invite everyone you see’” (Matthew 22:8-9 (NLT).

This third invitation is like the first. It is urgent and generous, even to the point of being gratuitous. The wedding feast is still ready. The food is still getting cold. Come right now or else you’ll miss the amazing feast that is prepared. This invitation is made to everyone. Not just a select group but to the entire kingdom. Come!

Something odd happens at this point. After many have responded the king finds someone who doesn’t quite fit in. We read, “But when the king came in to meet the guests, he noticed a man who wasn’t wearing the proper clothes for a wedding” (Matthew 22:11, NLT). This seems somewhat odd. What are the wedding clothes and what do they stand for? The wedding clothes are faith and good works. We must not only respond to the invitation, but we must respond with the actions that are appropriate for such a response. I can’t say I love my wife and then ignore her. I can’t say I’m a good employee and always show up late. I can’t say I’m trustworthy with money and then blow it every time I get some extra in my pocket. There are clothes that are appropriate for a wedding and there are clothes that are not appropriate.

So the king responds again with proportionate judgment. It is apparently within the king’s power to destroy his enemies, but the king does not destroy this individual. He “bind[s] him hand and foot and throw[s] him out into the outer darkness, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matthew 22:13, NLT). Weeping and gnashing of teeth? I wonder if this isn’t the kind of weeping and gnashing of teeth that we saw Napoleon doing pacing back and forth year after year after year blaming this person and then that person, never coming to recognize one’s own responsibility in the matter.

Let’s get back to the question that Alyssa asked: What’s up with heaven or hell and what about my friends who die? Alyssa, I don’t know that any of us can know about the eternal state of someone else after death, but what we do know is that God is like a king who while making an urgent and generous invitation responds first with mercy when refused and judges proportionately to the wrong doing. In other words, we worship a God who is good and we can rest in the good and merciful judgment of God, both for us and for our friends. The parable that Jesus tells us of the king and the wedding feast does put before us and our friends an invitation. Hurry! Have faith. Meet that faith with good works that show your love for God and others. Hurry! The food is getting cold. Hurry! The offer is generous. Hurry! The king is good and merciful. Hurry!

Next Steps

1. Submit Questions (via email, questions@sycamorecreekchurch.org, or in the comments below)
2. Join Small Group (to explore questions with others)
3. Make your neighborhood a little less like hell and a little more like heaven (by getting to know your neighbors and reconciling with them)
4. Other

Filed Under: Sermons Tagged With: heaven, hell, Questions

What’s up with heaven or hell?

April 6, 2010 by Tom

On the last Sunday, I’ll be answering (or attempting to answer!) questions submitted by you. Got a question? Post it in the comment section below.

Filed Under: Video Tagged With: heaven, hell, Questions, youth

Questions – How Do I Know?

April 4, 2010 by Tom

Questions – How Do I Know?
John 20:19-21
Sycamore Creek Church
Tom Arthur
April 4, 2010 – Easter

Note to reader: This is a manuscript and not a transcript. While I prepare a manuscript, I don’t preach from it. All the major points are here, but there are bound to be some small differences from the sermon as it was preached live. Also, expect some “bonus” material that wasn’t in the live sermon.

Christ is risen, Friends!

That is crazy! Does anybody wake up from time to time and ask yourself, “Do I really believe that Jesus raised from the dead?” I’ve been to a lot of funerals, and I’ve seen a lot of people buried in the ground, and once the coffin shuts, they don’t come back up, but here we are on Easter claiming that Jesus did just that: raise from the dead.

Today we begin a series called Questions. The idea for this series was born out of a conversation I had with the youth of our church. On the first day that Sarah and I were introduced to SCC, we visited StuRev, the youth meeting at SCC. I asked the students that day, “What questions do you have about Christianity?” I didn’t have time that day to answer them, but I wanted to hear what kinds of things they were thinking about. It was a pretty incredible conversation. In fact, Sarah and I left our first visit of SCC super excited about the church, but even more so about the youth of the church!

So that day we kept track of the questions, and I’ve chosen three of those questions to answer over the next several weeks. They are: How do I know? What’s up with heaven and hell? And why do I keep sinning? On the fourth Sunday of the series, I’ll be answering questions that you all submit over the next three weeks.

To begin each message, I’ve asked a teenager to make a video asking the question. They aren’t necessarily the teenager who originally asked the question, but I think they’re broad enough questions that most of us probably have asked them at one point or are asking them now.

So how do you know that Jesus was who the Bible says he was? Great question. One I ask myself quite often. I suspect many of you are asking the very same question this morning. Maybe you’ve been coming to SCC for many years or maybe you’re here this morning because your mom likes you to come to church on Easter, but if you’re asking this question about how you know, then you’re in good company. You’re in good company because I, myself, ask this question almost every day, and you’re in good company because just about every person in the story we’ll hear this morning wasn’t so certain about this resurrection thing. So let’s get to the story.

John 20:19-29 (NLT)

¹⁹ That evening, on the first day of the week, the disciples were meeting behind locked doors because they were afraid of the Jewish leaders. Suddenly, Jesus was standing there among them! “Peace be with you,” he said. ²⁰ As he spoke, he held out his hands for them to see, and he showed them his side. They were filled with joy when they saw their Lord! ²¹ He spoke to them again and said, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” ²² Then he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. ²³ If you forgive anyone’s sins, they are forgiven. If you refuse to forgive them, they are unforgiven.”

²⁴ One of the disciples, Thomas (nicknamed the Twin ), was not with the others when Jesus came. ²⁵ They told him, “We have seen the Lord!” But he replied, “I won’t believe it unless I see the nail wounds in his hands, put my fingers into them, and place my hand into the wound in his side.”

²⁶ Eight days later the disciples were together again, and this time Thomas was with them. The doors were locked; but suddenly, as before, Jesus was standing among them. He said, “Peace be with you.” ²⁷ Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Put your hand into the wound in my side. Don’t be faithless any longer. Believe!”

²⁸ “My Lord and my God!” Thomas exclaimed.

²⁹ Then Jesus told him, “You believe because you have seen me. Blessed are those who haven’t seen me and believe anyway.”

This is God’s story for us today. Thank you, God!

The last line of that story always gets under my skin. It almost always irritates me. Jesus tells Thomas, “You believe because you have seen me. Blessed are those who haven’t seen me and believe anyway.” Come on Jesus, is this a joke?! I wonder if it’s a joke because pretty much all of Jesus’ followers had to see him to believe that he was raised from the dead. And we’re expected to do something that even they couldn’t do!? You’re blessing those of us who haven’t seen you and have believed when none of your closest followers could do that? Come on Jesus, you’ve got to be kidding. Can we get a different blessing?

If we go back to the beginning of the chapter we find that Mary Magdalene had to see Jesus to believe him. When she shows up at the tomb the day of his resurrection she finds it empty.

We read that “She ran and found Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved. She said, ‘They have taken the Lord’s body out of the tomb, and I don’t know where they have put him!’” (John 20:2, NLT). Mary thought that Jesus’ enemies had stolen his body. She had to see Jesus before she would believe, and blessed are those who have not seen and have believed? Come on, Jesus!

Then there’s Peter and John. They show up at the tomb at about the same time. We read first about Peter, “Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there…for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead” (John 20:6 & 9, NRSV). Peter saw that the tomb was empty, saw Jesus’ burial linens laying on the ground, and he didn’t believe. Peter had to see in order to believe, and blessed are those who have not seen and have believed? Come on, Jesus!

John fares a little better in this story. He shows up with Peter at the tomb and we read that “the other disciple [John] also went in, and he saw and believed” (John 20:8, NLT). This is sounding pretty good. Maybe at least some of us can believe without seeing, but John’s believing goes downhill from here. He too is gathered with the disciples locked in a room for fear of the Jewish leaders. So much for his belief, and blessed are those who have not seen and have believed? Come on, Jesus!

Lastly, there’s Thomas. You know Thomas is always called “Doubting Thomas,” but did you notice that the story never actually used the word “doubt”? He simply stated what he would need in order to believe. Doesn’t Thomas simply say what everyone else is thinking? I need to see in order to believe. He says, “I won’t believe it unless I see the nail wounds in his hands, put my fingers into them, and place my hand into the wound in his side” (John 20:25, NLT). Thomas wants to see for himself before he will believe.

We read Thomas wasn’t there with the rest of Jesus’ followers when Jesus first shows up. Why not? Why wasn’t Thomas there? John doesn’t tell us what Thomas’ motivations were, but I like to imagine why Thomas might not have been there. I imagine that Thomas probably figured the game was up. Jesus had been crucified, and his bluff was shown for what it really was: a bluff. Jesus was no more a revolutionary than any of the rest of us. He was just an average human being who wasn’t able to save anyone, let alone the entire nation of Israel from the oppression of the Roman Empire. Thomas figured he had seen Jesus for who he really was, and that meant the whole thing was done. I wonder if Thomas didn’t just go back to his day job. Forget the other followers of Jesus. Bills need to be paid. Family needs have built up. Time for the real world.

So when the disciples tell Thomas that they have seen Jesus, Thomas naturally wants some proof. Wow! Proof he got! A spark of curiosity in Thomas brought him back to see for himself, and boy did he see. His uncertainty about the whole thing diminishes when he sees Jesus and gets the proof that he is looking for.

In one sense I am comforted by Jesus’ response to Thomas. Jesus shows Thomas mercy. He doesn’t berate him for wanting to see. He gives him what he needs. I wonder if Jesus’ blessing to us who have not seen isn’t also a kind of mercy that Jesus shows us. Surely he recognizes the problem or he wouldn’t have offered the blessing in the first place. Surely Jesus sees the problem that each of us are in who have not seen and yet have believed or he would not have blessed us too. Surely Jesus knows the uncertainty we feel and meets that uncertainty with mercy.

In my own spiritual journey I have come to recognize a distinction between uncertainty and doubt that I think is helpful here. Uncertainty is the state of being human. To be human is to have finite knowledge. To be human is to have uncertain knowledge. If you are human uncertainty never goes away because your knowledge is always limited. None of us is omniscient, knowing everything.

I used to wrestle more with this state of uncertainty because I would look at science and think, “Now there’s certainty in knowledge.” But as I reflected further upon scientific knowledge and learned more, I recognized that even science is uncertain. You can see this just in the development of scientific theory. First, we began with Newtonian physics. For every action there is an opposite and equal reaction. But then Albert Einstein came along and introduced the theory of relativity. The speed of light is always constant and time is relative. Time is relative? That always blows my mind. Our ideas about cause and effect just got a lot messier. Einstein’s theory of relativity is pretty cool but recently quantum mechanics has been taking the stage. Interestingly enough there’s a principle in quantum mechanics called “The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.” What we’ve come to notice is that in the subatomic field, we can know either a particle’s speed or direction but not both. The more we know about one, the less we know about the other. Einstein was so disturbed by this idea that he felt like it was claiming that God rolls dice with the universe.

So here’s my point. Scientific knowledge is always finite knowledge. Our theories of how the universe works are always being updated. They’re always not quite right. As we seek to describe reality, we are always reforming our ideas and our language about how to describe it. Not even scientific knowledge is 100% certain.

So what do we do with this uncertainty? My own experience with uncertainty is that sometimes I experience it more, and sometimes I experience it less, but it is always at least in the background. Here’s where doubt comes in. Doubt is one possible response to uncertainty. The other is faith. In the face of uncertainty, we can choose not to act or commit and that’s called doubt, or we can choose to act and commit and that’s called faith. Doubt is one of two options each of us has in the face of uncertainty. Unlike uncertainty, doubt can go away as our faith strengthens and grows.

“So you’re telling me that I’ll never be 100% certain about Jesus?” Yes. But that doesn’t mean you will always doubt. Your faith can grow and in the face of uncertainty, you can and will respond more and more in faith rather than doubt.

John Wesley spoke of this very same thing in a sermon he wrote over 200 years ago. He says:

But how can unbelief be in a believer?” That word has two meanings. It means either no faith, or little faith; either the absence of faith or the weakness of it. In the former sense, unbelief is not in a believer; in the latter, it is in all babes. Their faith is commonly mixed with doubt or fear; that is, in the latter sense, with unbelief. “Why are ye fearful,” says our Lord, “O ye of little faith?” Again: “O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?” You see here was unbelief in believers; little faith and much unbelief (On Sin in Believers).

Basically what Wesley is saying is that when you are a new Christian, a “babe in Christ,” you will have belief (faith) and unbelief (doubt) mixed together, but as you grow in Christ, you will have less unbelief (doubt) and more belief (faith).

So let’s look further at this idea of faith. All knowledge requires faith. Have you ever thought of science as requiring faith? If scientific knowledge is finite, then it too must require faith. What about atheism? Does atheism require faith? Anne Rice, the vampire novelist, recently came back to the Christian faith of her youth. She wrote about this journey in her spiritual autobiography, Called Out of Darkness. As she reflects on her atheism she says, “My faith in atheism was cracking.” Faith in atheism? Yes, it takes just as much faith to not believe as it does to believe because knowledge is always uncertain. Knowledge is just as uncertain for an unbeliever as it is for a believer.

Lesslie Newbigin, a favorite author of mine who was also a missionary to India, writes about this phenomena of human knowing. He says, “The idea of certainty which relieves us of the need for personal commitment is an illusion…There can be no knowing without personal commitment. We must believe in order to know” (Proper Confidence, 46 & 50). In other words, there is no knowing without faith.

This faith-way of knowing is not a “blind faith.” There are many good reasons to believe, but if you’re looking for 100% certainty about anything, there will never be enough evidence to produce that kind of knowing. Knowing always requires the personal risk of commitment, faith.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German pastor during Hitler’s reign who was executed for resisting the Nazis, said, “Faith alone is certainty. Everything but faith is subject to doubt. Jesus Christ alone is the certainty of faith.”

With this distinction between uncertainty and doubt and the role that faith plays in all knowing, let’s go back and look at this story again. I wonder if we don’t get a clue about Jesus’ blessing in verses nineteen and twenty-six. Did you notice the day of the week that Jesus shows up? First, we’re told that it was the first day of the week, Sunday (John 20:19). Then we read that he showed up “eight days later” (John 20:26). Jews count days differently than we do. They include the current day in their count. So eight days later is exactly a week later on the same day of the week. Jesus shows up on Sunday and then Jesus shows up one week later on Sunday again. Jesus has a habit of showing up on the same day of the week! I wonder if Jesus isn’t showing us a pattern by which we can see him? I wonder if Jesus isn’t showing us himself when the community of those who follow Jesus gather for worship on this first day of the week, Sunday? Yes, in the gathered community we experience Jesus’ presence, we enter into this same story, God’s salvation story. Newbigin again says, “The business of the church is to tell and embody a story” (Proper Confidence, 76). When we gather together we enter into the same story that Thomas finds himself in. We see Jesus and we know Jesus not by 100% certainty, but by faith.

And I wonder if in the same way that Thomas saw Jesus’ wounds and knew that Jesus really had raised from the dead, we don’t know and see Jesus when we share our wounds with one another, our pains, our insecurities, our uncertainties, our fears, and even our doubts. We see Jesus when we, the Body of Christ, gather together not just in our strength but in our weakness.

Alex, how do you know that Jesus was who he said he was? The answer to that question is: you can’t ever know (anything) with 100% certainty, but we grasp glimpses in our life together as the church seeking to know more fully through faith.

Perhaps you’re still struggling with this whole thing. You can pray and ask God for faith. You can pray and ask God to give you the faith to respond to uncertainty not with doubt but with faithfulness. Do you need to pray for that kind of faith this morning? If so, here’s the prayer of St. Thomas that I offer to you to pray right now:

Everliving God, I believe, help my unbelief. You strengthened your follower Thomas with a firm and proper confidence in your Son’s resurrection: Grant me so perfectly and without doubt to believe in Jesus Christ, our Lord and our God, that my faith and our faith as a church may never be found wanting in your sight. Give us all this strength through Jesus Christ by the power of your Holy Spirit. Amen.

Note: Share your questions for Tom to answer on week four in the comments section below.

Filed Under: Sermons, Video Tagged With: Doubt, Faith, Questions, Uncertainty

The Question of God Small Group

March 23, 2010 by Tom

How each of us understands the meaning of life comes down to how we answer one ultimate question: Does God really exist? In concert with the upcoming Easter series, Questions, Tom Arthur (pastor) will be leading a small group that will be watching and discussing the video series: The Question of God. The Question of God is a PBS series exploring the similarities and differences between Sigmund Freud and C.S. Lewis and how they answer such fundamental topics such as Science or Revelation, Why Believe?, Miracles, Suffering and Death, and more. Each weeks discussion requires no preparation. Just show up, watch the video, and discuss. It will take place on Sunday nights from 6:30 to 8:00PM at the Arthur’s house (5058 Glendurgan Ct., Holt, MI, 889-5540) beginning on April 11th. Please RSVP to Tom at tomarthur@sycamorecreekchurch.org or sign-up at the book table.

Filed Under: Small Groups Tagged With: C.S. Lewis, Questions

Curious

Questions 2.0 – Is God a Man?

Questions 2.0 – Why Believe in God?

Questions – Q&A

Questions – Why Do I Keep Sinning?

Question – Why do I keep sinning?

Questions – What’s Up with Heaven or Hell?

What’s up with heaven or hell?

Questions – How Do I Know?

The Question of God Small Group

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