I mentioned in my sermon this past week that Paul calls imitations, imposters "children of disobedience" rather than children of God, and that God's wrath is on them and they will have no inheritance in the Kingdom of Christ and of God.
Our betraying each other and God is not something he will allow to fester and spread against His good creation and against people made in His image and against His own throne. His wrath is the settled, consistent, and righteous opposition to the absurd arrogance and atrocious apathy that we assume when we thoughtlessly trample God's name, his ways, and his people.
It is a hard word, but I spoke it with tears.
A good sermon by Jonathan Edwards that I've condensed and modernized into brief headings and paragraphs: visit www.BethelCC.net, Bethel UC, Resources, and scroll to the bottom, "God Just in Punishing Sinners." (sorry, hyperlink function not working today)
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
Imitate Him, not Imitations
This Sunday Aug 31, 2008, I preached Ephesians 5:1-14, http://bethelcc.net/sermon_archive.php?targetPage=73 on being imitators of God, rather than being imposter imitations of the world's shame or just some external religious sham. We had a good discussion Sunday night at the Ellis' home on how to really be light to such a hard and dark world with headlines in our own neighborhood that make us shudder.
Whether my neighbor the landlord who was burned to death last week, or the kid across the street who was arrested the very next day for dragging, stripping, and beating another kid who came from a few blocks down to our block, whether the young mother of four who aborted another child and is trying to raise her children while the two fathers of her children are incarcerated, or the two men who stood across the street for an hour last weekend till past midnight having a rap battle using the most loud, perverted, and violent language you wouldn't want to imagine, while the kids who come to our kid's ministry literally rolled in the middle of the street with laughter...
It could almost seem hopeless. But the call of Isaiah echoed in Paul in Ephesians 5 is
"Awake O sleeper, and arise from the dead,
and Christ will shine on you."
This is not just a gentle reminder that breakfast is on the table and we should roll out of bed. This is the voice of God that thunders, shakes the forests, and wakes the dead. This is the prophetic voice calling to the four winds and the Spirit of God rushing upon dead bones in dry valley to assemble a living army and produce a flowing river teeming with life.
This is a command that provides what it requires, giving sleepers the call to come out from the covers of darkness, giving corpses the command to walk out of their coffins, giving all of us who live in darkness, the hope of the light of Christ, the light of life.
And we are not just living in the light of Christ, but the light of Christ is in us, we are children of light, begotten of His light, and Paul even says in this text that we ARE LIGHT in the Lord. Kind of hard to escape holiness and evangelism when Paul puts it like this. How can we go on sinning? He doesn't just say, "The light shines on you to expose your sin" (though he does), but "You ARE light" (what place does darkness even have in you, what business could it possibly have at the doorstep of your mind?). How can we keep our lives and mouths from proclaiming His marvelous light when we ARE light in Him?
We MUST imitate God, for we ARE His children. We must shine His light in our dark world, for we ARE His light.
Whether my neighbor the landlord who was burned to death last week, or the kid across the street who was arrested the very next day for dragging, stripping, and beating another kid who came from a few blocks down to our block, whether the young mother of four who aborted another child and is trying to raise her children while the two fathers of her children are incarcerated, or the two men who stood across the street for an hour last weekend till past midnight having a rap battle using the most loud, perverted, and violent language you wouldn't want to imagine, while the kids who come to our kid's ministry literally rolled in the middle of the street with laughter...
It could almost seem hopeless. But the call of Isaiah echoed in Paul in Ephesians 5 is
"Awake O sleeper, and arise from the dead,
and Christ will shine on you."
This is not just a gentle reminder that breakfast is on the table and we should roll out of bed. This is the voice of God that thunders, shakes the forests, and wakes the dead. This is the prophetic voice calling to the four winds and the Spirit of God rushing upon dead bones in dry valley to assemble a living army and produce a flowing river teeming with life.
This is a command that provides what it requires, giving sleepers the call to come out from the covers of darkness, giving corpses the command to walk out of their coffins, giving all of us who live in darkness, the hope of the light of Christ, the light of life.
And we are not just living in the light of Christ, but the light of Christ is in us, we are children of light, begotten of His light, and Paul even says in this text that we ARE LIGHT in the Lord. Kind of hard to escape holiness and evangelism when Paul puts it like this. How can we go on sinning? He doesn't just say, "The light shines on you to expose your sin" (though he does), but "You ARE light" (what place does darkness even have in you, what business could it possibly have at the doorstep of your mind?). How can we keep our lives and mouths from proclaiming His marvelous light when we ARE light in Him?
We MUST imitate God, for we ARE His children. We must shine His light in our dark world, for we ARE His light.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
