8-28-11 The Injustice of Unforgiveness (Sermon Manuscript)

                Have you ever stopped and asked yourself, what was Jesus’ role in the grand scheme of the creation story to present? I don’t think we can ever truly understand Jesus, what he has accomplished for our lives, or what his will for our lives is until we first stop and ask the basic question of role. What was Jesus task, what did he accomplish? Let’s take a moment to try and answer that. You are being given permission to speak. Tell me, what was Jesus role, what did he accomplish?

8-21-11 Ability Through Prayer (Sermon Manuscript)

                This is our last week working through the book of James, at least for the moment. I know we have spent a lot of time on it and hopefully we haven’t beaten to death but rather breathed new life into our experience with it. James is very difficult as I am sure you have all felt, but at the same time it is not completely out of reach. What James teaches might seem impractical, unrealistic, and maybe even a little naïve, but ultimately what we have read in James, and believe it or not we did not read or teach all of it, is what it means to be a disciple of Christ.

8-14-11 Patience in God's Compassion and Mercy (Sermon Manuscript)

                Patience might be a virtue, but it is also a major headache. Throughout my life, my ability at being patient could be described as undetermined. In one moment I could wait and endure for hours on end, but in the next 5 minutes it is a stretch. Sometimes my ability to endure is determined by how much enduring I have already done today. I might be patient in the morning, but not in the evening. When we’re cooking dinner I will have virtually no patience. This is something Sarah and I both share. It is absolutely irresistible to not stick your finger in the frosting before its time to eat the cake, to not eat that stray piece of chicken before its time, to not taste test. I simply have no patience to wait until it’s time to eat, I have to sneak a bite now.

8-7-11 Stop Making Time (Sermon Manuscript)

                One of the most stressful things to deal with in our culture is how to manage what limited time we have. It seems no matter what time of day it is we have something we need to fit in that slot. Schedules and planners become second wallets and our calendars look like a toddler got ahold of it. I know I have been guilty in the past of attempting to micromanage every second of my day planning it out. If I need to leave at 2:15pm I used to wait until exactly 2:15 and zero seconds to go. I will sit and wait for the microwave to reach zero second instead of opening the door at 1 second.

7-31-11 The Meekness of Wisdom (Sermon Manuscript)

                How do we today regard wisdom? What is it to us? Maybe we can ask that in a simpler way by simply asking who we consider to be wise. I think the first and foremost quality we apply to wisdom is intelligence. Accompanying intelligence is prominence. Someone who has wisdom has generally become fairly prominent. We often times associate wisdom with colleges or universities. These are the houses of the wise. We turn on our tv’s to listen to the wise, go to book stores to read their books. We just hope to glean a little wisdom off of them, so that we might become a little more like them. Those who are wise are those who are listened to, or maybe better described as those who can get an audience to listen to them. The wise have a podium from which they can make their opinions heard loud. They are the ones who speak while the yet to be wise listen. The wise are the ones who deserve the podium.

7-17-11 Treated Like Adults (Sermon Manuscript)

                As a kid there was always something that I was told to do that I did not want to do. There was a long list of things I wanted to do and then a list of things my parents wanted me to do. Obviously I preferred my list over theirs. Mine included things like play hockey, play video games, play legos, play at my friends house. They pretty much all in some form or another involved the word play. My parents list would look something like clean my room, rake the leaves, clean the dog messes, clean the bathroom. Theirs involved almost entirely something revolving around the word clean. Obviously we both could not have our way. It wasn’t that my parents did not want me to play, but rather that wanted me to do more than simply play. Me, on the other hand, all I wanted to do was play, there was no room for any of that clean stuff. So in turn there was this power struggle.

7-10-11 Mercy Triumphs (Sermon Manuscript)

                Before I came to Oswego I worked at a grocery store for almost 5 years. The conclusion I came to in a rather quick manner when working there was that any job that oriented around customer service had to be one of the worse jobs one could hold. There seems to be, even for Christians, a sense of entitlement in being a Christian. Christians for some reason think that their call to serve ends when they come across an employee of any kind. People don’t simply want to be served, which is what a customer service position implies, but they expect to be pampered without any concern for the employee or the other customers. Customer service employees are easily some of the most mistreated people in our culture.

7-3-11 Sowing Peace in Trials (Sermon Manuscript)

                As we continue to work through James let’s turn to James 1:19-21.

James 1:19-21  Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger;  ²⁰ for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.  ²¹ Therefore put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.

                This section of James cannot be talked about without remembering the context of the rest of chapter 1 that we talked about last week. James here has a difficult enough call on us all to be quick to hear, slow to speak and slow to anger. But this call becomes even more difficult when we stop to realize the context of what James was just talking about. Remember the beginning of chapter one started, “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds.” James here has not stopped talking about trials or our reaction to them. If you remember we said that James laid a plan out for us in which to seek the wisdom of God. With the wisdom of God and the dependence on Him and His people we will be able to endure trials and grow through them. But James is now teaching us even more what it means to have the wisdom of God.

                Notice the contrast between verse 20, the anger of man, and verse 5, the wisdom of God. These stand in stark opposition. The anger of man is the wisdom of man. The wisdom of man cannot produce the righteousness of God, but only the wisdom of God. This seems simple enough in theory. We should not become overcome with anger when trials come upon us, but rather we should be overcome by the wisdom and grace of God. Our problem starts to arise when we realize that James is not talking about a trial as a thing, but he is referring to people. We are unable to listen to trials which are nonphysical circumstances. You can’t listen to circumstances. Rather James is calling us to listen to people and to not grow angry with people.

                One theme throughout the letter for James is the oppression of the poor at the hand of the rich. One of the main messages of this letter is how the ones who are being oppressed should react to those who are oppressing. In other words these trials are being created by other people. I am convinced that the most painful trials we can go through are the ones that are at the hands of other people. The pain inflicted by a person will always be greater than the pain inflicted by a circumstance.

                So now we are getting difficult. James is telling you and me that we should not become angry with the person who is doing us wrong and bringing about this great painful trial in our life. Thinking back to Jesus, He said love your enemies, bless those who curse you, turn the other cheek. James is now saying do not become angry with them and give them a listening ear. James is telling us not simply to take their physical and emotional beatings but to give them a listening ear in return.

                Remember James is the brother of Jesus and he would be pretty familiar with Jesus words on enemy love. We may not be the one producing the initial trial or evil, but if our reaction is in anger then we are being fueled by that evil and in fact producing evil of our own. To allow anger to manifest itself in us in the midst of trial is to produce the very same evil and sin that the person who has wronged us is producing. Our reaction makes us just as unrighteous and distant from the Kingdom as theirs does.

                James calls us to put this anger, which he says is filthy and rampant wickedness, away and instead live with the implanted word. Who is the word? Of course it is Jesus and the Holy Spirit. In other words put away the wisdom of man and grab hold of the wisdom of God. Notice it says implanted word. Implanted meaning it wasn’t originally there. This word is what God has given to us. Meaning we don’t act on our own desires and ambitions, but rather we rely on that which was given to us, we rely on God. The implanted word is a listening ear and does not manifest anger.

                Remember in Matthew 5:21-22 Jesus tells us that to be anger with someone is to in fact murder them in your heart. Anger is a very, very serious offense. There is no such thing as justified anger. It is all sinful. God is the only one with the right to become angry. Notice it says anger of man versus anger of God. Do not try to justify your anger as righteous. In justifying anger we are likely claiming ourselves to be God. But the real battle is not about what we believe or do but it is about who we follow. The beginning of James 4 tells us that fights and quarrels, anger, are the results of the desires within us. The question is whose desire will we follow? Will we follow our own desire of justice, revenge, and anger or will we follow the desire of God.

                God’s desire is for us to never be angry with those who do us wrong. In others words to never speak evil of anyone. When acting in the wisdom of God, following His desire not ours, we will never speak negatively or critically of anyone. We will not complain or gossip. But we will speak good of those who deserve condemnation. We will lift and build people up even, no especially, when they don’t deserve it. God’s righteousness cannot come about violent acts and words. It cannot be forced. In fact, when we work according to the wisdom of God, we hear but do not do. We look but do not see. We can be staring directly at the kingdom and miss it. Let me give you an example. Let’s watch this video. I want you to count and tell me how many times the people in the white shirts pass the basketball.

Video Illustration

                Read with me James 1:22-25;

James 1:22-25   But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.  ²³ For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror.  ²⁴ For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like.  ²⁵ But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.

                I hope that that video illustration helps to bring this part of James to life for you. James is telling us that is order to truly see, in order to feel and experience the kingdom of heaven we must hear and do the word of God. The word here translated as hearer means something along the lines of a pupil or student. For us to study and listen to the word of God and not to do it is like one who completely misses who God is. Like in that video we can get so fixated on our own desires and offenses that we miss what is really happening. So instead of accomplishing the will of God, producing righteousness and faith, we instead get completely lost ourselves.

                This is just like what we talked about last week. The wisdom of man, or here anger, fixates on the trial and therefore makes the trial more than it is. But the wisdom of God looks through the trial and sees the big picture. Therefore seeing the big picture it knows how to act and why it should act that way. James 3:18 tells us that, “A harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.” The only way for us to harvest righteousness is to sow peace. For us to endure and come through a trial successfully, especially one that involves other people and relationships, we must sow peace into that trial.

                In the case here James is telling us what we think does not matter as much as what we do. What we think does not matter as much as what God thinks. It makes no difference what your desire is, whether you think you are capable of it or not. What matters is that you step up, do not practice anger and instead listen and love. It is impossible for us to listen to an enemy, or one who has said or done hurtful things to us, without the implanted word. Without the Spirit of God, without Christ’s help, we cannot sow the peace that God desires. When we choose to live in the Spirit, when we allow it to work, we don’t sow anger, but we sow peace. To be doers of the word as it talks about in verse 22 is to allow the implanted word to manifest within us. The mirror in James’ illustration or the gorilla in the video are symbolic of God’s wisdom. If we are only hearers, if we are focused on our own desires, then we will fail to see his wisdom. Going back to the beginning of Chapter 1, the only way for us to endure and grow through trials is for us to see and receive the wisdom of God, the implanted word. The one who cannot see the wisdom of God refuses to allow the image that He has made them into to shape their life. Let’s read the remainder of James 1.

James 1:26-27  If anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this person's religion is worthless.  ²⁷ Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.

                If anyone thinks he is following the wisdom of God and does not control their anger and what comes out of their mouth evidences that it is not God’s wisdom they are speaking with. James says this in a little but harsher manner. If you think you are religious and you speak in anger, your religion is worthless. That is harsh. To not be a doer of the word, but rather just a student of it, to show Sunday and listen but go home and yell at your family, friends, neighbor, is to deceive ourselves and miss God completely.

                Look what James says pure religion is. In a broad statement it is to do what we know is right. To follow God’s wisdom and desires not our own. Another deception of sin is that love and peace are weak. But the fact of the matter is love unsettles hate. Peace corrupts violence and sin.

                We will come into confrontation and be wronged by someone we love. We will have anger rise up in our souls. In fact when it comes up in the spur of the moment we will have doubt as to what to say or do. The wisdom of God says, don’t say anything, but rather do love, sow peace. You know that the gospel calls us to visit orphans and widows, to keep oneself clean. You know what the gospel is, so do the gospel. It may be hard, it may even seem like it doesn’t apply to the current situation. This verse is not unrelated to the rest of chapter 1. The answer to enduring trials is simply to do what you know pleases God. Love unsettles hate. The presence of the Spirit drives out anger and divisiveness. Maybe the answer to how do I solve this problem is not to set them straight or even to seek an understanding of the wrong committed. Maybe the answer is simply to open the invitation to sow peace together. Maybe the best way for us to solve conflicts amongst ourselves is to get together with the one who has done us wrong and serve and do the gospel together. The Holy Spirit changes hearts and drives out evil, therefore doesn’t it reason that when we allow the Spirit to work, we allow it to fix and rectify relationships. Some of the greatest conversations I have ever had have not been heart to hearts sitting at a table together, rather they have taken place while we have been serving together. There is wisdom in this.

                God works through the trials when we seek his wisdom, when we receive the implanted word. If we wish to survive the trials of broken relationships then we must look through the trial seeing the wisdom of God. We must listen to those who have wronged us, we must forgo anger, we must sow peace, living the gospel together. Then we will see through to the kingdom of God. Then we will have religion that is pure and undefiled. We will produce the righteousness that God desires.

            

6-26-11 His Firstfruits (Sermon Manuscripts)

                A week and a half ago the Winter’s Son-in-law died at a seemingly very early age of 43. He left behind a wife and two teenage children. Hopefully you already know of this, as we have been praying about this for the past week or so. It is such a great tragedy for anyone to have to ever lose a father, a husband, or a son. How is one ever supposed to deal with that? I think more times than not it can seem like something insurmountable, it is just too big to handle.

"The God I Never Knew" By Robert Morris (Book Review)

Robert Morris identifies a deficiency that exists in most churches that are not Pentecostal and attempts to form a sort of middle ground. When it comes to the Holy Spirit most churches don't seem to know what to do with him. They many times either force the manifestation of spiritual gifts, which comes off looking more like a joke, or they seem to deny His entire existence. Morris grew up in a church that basically ignored the Spirit altogether, and he left with a warning to beware of those who talked about the Spirit. As his experiences expanded he was forced to engage the topic and realize the value and personhood of the Holy Spirit. As he writes Morris repeatedly tries to distance himself from the crazy antics that often times get associated with "Spirit-filled" believers.