April Fool

This is the message given in the Sunday night service in the Gettysburg United Methodist church on Sunday, March 28, 2021.  The Bible verses used are John 12:12-19.

            Have you ever been on the receiving end of a really cruel April Fools’ joke?  I’m not talking about the kind of joke that’s innocent and fun.  I’m talking about where someone fools you about something really important.  I’m talking about where someone plays with your emotions in a really serious way, and then pulls the rug out from under you.           

It seems like every year Palm Sunday comes somewhere around April first, April Fools’ Day.  It’s coming up on Thursday of this week.  It seems to me that, in a way, it’s kind of appropriate to have April Fools’ Day and Palm Sunday close together.  After all, what’s the essence of an April Fools’ joke?  It’s convincing someone that something is true when it’s really not.  That happens over and over again throughout the last week of Jesus’ life.

Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem is kind of April Fools’ joke, really.  This huge crowd is cheering Jesus on.  Everyone’s telling Jesus how great he is and how much they love him.  None of them really meant it.  They may have thought they meant it at the time, but it was all on the surface.  There was no depth to their love of Jesus.  Not long after that, some of those same people would be in the crowd that demanded Jesus be killed.  They were telling Jesus how much they loved him, only to say “April Fool” just a few days later.

How about Judas?  Judas was one of the most trusted of the disciples.  He was the one who was in charge of the money.  No one suspected Judas was disloyal to Jesus.  They all thought he was very loyal.  And for a while, he was.  After all, it’s not like he was planning to betray Jesus the whole time he was with him.  It was only at the end that he betrayed Jesus.  He had earned everyone’s trust, only to say “April Fool” and sell Jesus out to the Pharisees.

Then there’s Peter.  Peter was the one who swore up and down that he’d be loyal to Jesus to the end.  When Jesus tells Peter that’s not the way it’s going to be, Peter not only denies it, Peter actually gets kind of mad at Jesus for saying it.  Peter was sure he was going to stick with Jesus all the way, even if it meant he was going to have to die for him.  In the end, though, he said “April Fool” and denied he even knew who Jesus was.

None of these April Fools were fun, innocent pranks.  All of them had to really hurt Jesus.  Jesus was not really fooled at all, of course.  He knew exactly what was going to happen.  Still, it had to hurt him.  All these people said they loved him.  All of them, including the ones who were closest to him, were going to betray him and abandon him.  Can we even imagine what Jesus must have gone through, being with these people, hearing what they said, and yet knowing what was going to happen?

So, how about us?  We say we love Jesus.  We say we mean it.  We think we mean it.  But do we really mean it?  Or is our love for Jesus just an April Fools’ joke, too?

I don’t know that we can answer that question.  I don’t know that anyone can until we’re really tested.  After all, the crowd thought they meant it when they said they loved Jesus.  Peter thought he meant it when he said he’d never abandon Jesus.  Even Judas thought he meant it when he became Jesus’ disciple.

But then came the time when they were tested.  And they all failed the test.  The crowd failed the test because Jesus turned out not to be who they hoped he’d be.  He was the Savior, yes, but not the Savior they wanted.  He was not someone who was going to restore the mighty empire of Israel, the empire that King David had established.  It turned out that they did not love Jesus.  They simply loved what their hopes for Jesus were.  When those hopes were dashed, their love went away.

Peter failed the test because things did not happen the way he’d envisioned them.  When Peter said he would die for Jesus, he was thinking of dying in a battle.  He was thinking of going down fighting for the cause.  Instead, he’d have had to die in a humiliating way.  The same way that Jesus died, of course.  And when Peter found that out, he abandoned Jesus. 

Judas failed the test too, of course.  We don’t know what Judas’ motivations were.  It cannot have been the money—thirty pieces of silver were not worth that much in Jesus’ time.  Some have speculated that Judas was trying to force Jesus to use his earthly power, that he thought Jesus would fight back and wipe out the Roman guards.  We don’t know.  But whatever the reason, Judas failed the test, too.

Maybe that’s why Jesus talked so much about counting the cost of following him.  No matter how much we think we mean it when we say we love Jesus, no matter how strong we think we are in our faith, we never really know for sure whether we mean it until our faith is tested.  We never know for sure whether we can handle the cost of following Jesus until we’re actually asked to pay the price.  And the price may come in a way that we never expected or even thought about.

You know how, in the Lord’s Prayer, we say, “Lead us not into temptation”?  From what I’ve read, that’s not actually the right translation.  What I’ve read is that it really should say “Do not lead us to the time of testing.”  I don’t know for sure if that’s right, but it does make sense to me.

After all, we don’t really need God to lead us to temptation, do we?  We can find enough temptation on our own.  The time of testing, though, is different.  God does put us to the test sometimes, and it can be a scary thing. 

What makes the time of testing scary is that we can fail the test, just like the crowd did, and like Peter did, and like Judas did.  We think we love Jesus.  In fact, we’re sure we do.  We swear up and down that we’ll never abandon Jesus.  Then, the test comes, and it comes in a way we never envisioned.  We get into trouble, we get scared, we don’t know what to do, and we don’t trust Jesus enough to stay with him.  So, we yell, “April Fool” and run away.

That has to hurt Jesus.  There's good news about it, though.  The good news is that we always get another chance.  Even though we fail the test, even though we hurt Jesus, Jesus still gives us another chance to get it right.

Peter realized what he’d done.  He repented, he asked for forgiveness, and Jesus forgave Peter.  Peter not only was forgiven, he became the first leader of the disciples.  

I’d guess that some of those in the crowd, some of those who wanted Jesus killed, eventually realized what they’d done, too.  I suspect some of them repented and asked for forgiveness.  If they did, I’m sure Jesus gave it to them.  

Even Judas eventually regretted what he’d done.  The Bible does not say that Judas ever asked for forgiveness.  In fact, it implies that Judas did not think he deserved forgiveness.  Still, the Bible does not explicitly say that Judas did not ask for forgiveness, either.  If Judas did repent and ask for forgiveness, it’s possible that Jesus even forgave Judas for what he’d done.  In fact, I think he almost certainly would have.  After all, while he was hanging on the cross, Jesus asked God the Father to forgive all the people who were killing him.  Surely Judas would have been included in Jesus’ forgiveness, too, if he ever repented and asked for forgiveness.

We get that same chance that they did.  No matter how much we’ve hurt Jesus, no matter how many times our faith is just an April Fools’ joke, we always get another chance.  We can still go to Jesus, we can still repent, and we can still ask for forgiveness.  When we do, Jesus will give us that forgiveness. 

There is nothing we can do that will stop Jesus from loving us.  No matter how many times we hurt Jesus, and no matter how badly we hurt Jesus, Jesus still keeps loving us.  The salvation Jesus gave us on the cross is still available to us.  All we need to do is repent and ask Jesus for forgiveness.  When we do, we get that forgiveness every time.  We can return to faith and accept the salvation Jesus offers us.

And that salvation is no April Fools’ joke.  It’s a salvation that will last for eternity.

 

A Different Kind of Savior

This is the sermon given in the United Methodist churches of the Wheatland Parish on Sunday, March 28, 2021.  The Bible verses used are Mark 11:1-11.

            Jesus enters Jerusalem in triumph.  He is riding a donkey, a donkey that he specifically told his disciples to get for him.  

            We might wonder, why a donkey?  But no one in Jerusalem on that day would’ve wondered about it.  This was a deliberate, direct reference to an Old Testament prophecy, the prophecy of Zechariah.  In Zechariah, Chapter Nine, Verse Nine, it says, “Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion!  Shout, Daughter Jerusalem!  See, your king comes to you, righteous and victorious, lowly and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”

            When Jesus arranged things this way, he knew exactly what he was doing.  Everyone in Jerusalem, and especially the religious leaders, knew it, too.  This was a deliberately provocative act on Jesus’ part.  By entering Jerusalem in this way, Jesus made it quite clear that he was openly claiming the title of king.

            And on that day, the people appeared to be quite willing to give Jesus that title.  You heard how they spread their cloaks on the road in front of him.  You heard how they spread the palm branches in front of him, too.  That was not a coincidence, either.  In those times, people would salute conquering kings by putting palm branches in front of them or waving them in the air.  Everyone in Jerusalem, and especially the religious leaders, knew that, too.   By using palm branches in this way, the people were open proclaiming that they accepted Jesus as their king.

You heard how they were shouting Jesus’ praises as he rode past.  We sometimes focus on how some of this same crowd would betray Jesus later in the week, and that’s a legitimate point to make.  But there’s no reason to think that, at this moment, the crowds were not entirely sincere.  They truly believed that Jesus had come to save them.  After all, that’s what the word “Hosanna” means.  It means “save”.

            The people knew they needed to be saved.  They had been waiting for someone to save them.  They’d had others they thought might be the one to save them.  Sometimes it looked like it was going to happen, but it did not.  Now, they hoped Jesus would be the one.  They wanted Jesus to be the one.  They convinced themselves that Jesus would be the one.  And so, when Jesus came in riding on a donkey, making a claim to be the one, they were overjoyed.  They thought their dream had come true.  And it had.  But then again, it hadn’t.

            We’re told some of the things the crowd shouted.  Now, obviously, they were not just shouting these things in unison.  This was a big crowd.  There was lots of noise, lots of confusion.  If you’ve ever been in a big crowd, you know how that goes.  But we assume the things we’re told they shouted are the most important things.  

            So what did they shout?  “Hosanna”, of course.  “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.”  Well, if they were looking to Jesus to save them, that’s a pretty natural thing to shout.  But they also shouted this:  “Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David.”

            That’s why I say that their dream had not come true.  King David was a conqueror.  He was a military hero.  He went out and attacked the enemies of Israel and Judah, and he defeated them.  He established an empire, an empire that ran from the Mediterranean Sea to the Arabian Desert, and from the Red Sea to the Euphrates River, with Jerusalem as its capitol.  He had a huge army.  No one in the area dared to challenge King David, and no one dared to challenge Israel and Judah, either.  They were in complete control of the entire area.

            By Jesus’ time, of course, that empire no longer existed.  Israel was under the control of Rome.  The people dreamed of independence.  Every once in a while someone would lead a rebellion.  Sometimes they even succeeded in briefly gaining independence for Israel.  But it never lasted.  Rome would exert its might, and Israel would be under its control again.

            But the people never stopped dreaming, and never stopped hoping.  And they thought, in Jesus, they had their conquering hero.  He had already established that God was with him.  They knew he could do miracles.  They knew he could drive out demons.  If Jesus could drive out demons, surely he could drive out Rome, too.  The kingdom of David would be restored, and Israel and Judah would be returned to their former glory.

            And of course, that’s not who Jesus was at all.  Jesus had no interest in restoring the kingdom of David, or in establishing any sort of earthly kingdom.  He could have done it--Jesus had that kind of power, obviously.  But that was not why he had come.  As Jesus would tell Pilate, his kingdom is not of this world.  Jesus was about leading people to salvation and eternal life.  He was about gathering people for the kingdom of heaven, not about establishing a kingdom on earth.

            And maybe that’s why the people turned on him so quickly.  Maybe that’s why the crowd demanded that he be crucified.  They had put so much hope in Jesus.  And now here he was, arrested and found guilty.  Not only had he been arrested, he had not even put up a fight.  In fact, he had ordered people not to fight for him.  Even now, when he was facing the death penalty, he seemed to be just meekly accepting his fate.

            Jesus was neither the king nor the savior they wanted.  And so, they turned on him.  If he could not do what they wanted, if he could not establish an earthly kingdom, they had no use for him.  In their eyes, he was just another faker, just another failed rebel.  There’d be no point in having him released.  His usefulness to them was over.  Might as well let him be killed.

            But you know, the people in that crowd--the people who cheered him on Palm Sunday and betrayed him later in the week--they were not bad people.  I mean, maybe some of them were, but not most of them.  They were just people.  People who were doing their best.  But people who simply did not understand.

            They had the problem that people have always had in thinking of God.  Even the disciples had it.  Remember, on one of the times Jesus is trying to tell the disciples that he’s going to be killed, Peter tries to tell Jesus not to talk that way.  Jesus gets upset with Peter and tells him, “You do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.”

            Peter had human concerns in mind.  The crowd that cheered Jesus had human concerns in mind.  And far too often, you and I have human concerns in mind, too.

            We can be excused for that, to a certain extent.  After all, we are human--it’s pretty natural that we’d have human concerns.  And Jesus did not say human concerns were completely unimportant.  After all, what was the healing all about, what was the feeding all about, if not taking care of human concerns?  Jesus did care about our human concerns.  He still does.

            But as real as our human concerns are, they are not the most important thing.  Because no matter what we do, our lives are not long.  Maybe a little over a hundred years, at most.  When we’re young, that seems like a long time.  The older we get, the more we realize how short it really is.  And we also realize that it’s nothing at all compared to eternity.

            Jesus was a king.  But he did not come to establish an earthly kingdom.  He came to open the door for us and to lead us to the heavenly kingdom.  

            He tried in so many ways to show us the difference.  He said “What good is it for someone to gain the whole world and forfeit their soul?”  He said “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.  But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal.”  He said, “Whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for Me will save it.”

            The crowd did not understand.  The disciples did not understand.  And the truth is, you and I don’t always understand, either.

            But here’s the question:  not fully understanding, can we trust?  Can we have faith?  Can we trust that, as pressing as our human concerns may be, they are not the most important thing?  Can we trust that it’s worth staying faithful to God, even if it means trouble for us on earth?  Can we continue to believe in Jesus as the Savior, and make our faith in him our top priority, even if there’s a cost to us during our lives on earth?

            Jesus is the king, but not of an earthly kingdom.  He is the king of a heavenly kingdom.  He wants to take us to that kingdom.  So let’s shout “Hosanna!  Save us!”  And let’s keep our faith in Jesus, so we can have the kind of salvation that lasts for eternity.

 

Jesus' Prayer For You

The message given in the Wednesday Lent service March 24, 2021.  The Bible verses used are John 17:1-26.

            Every Sunday morning, we have a time where we ask for prayer requests.  Lots of churches do that.  It’s called “Joys and Concerns” or something similar.  It’s a time for people to express what they would like the church, and the people in it, to pray about.

            That’s a good thing.  We should pray for each other.  In fact, the Bible tells us many times that we should do that.  But in our Bible reading tonight, we have an example of Jesus himself praying for us.

            That’s a pretty awesome thing, don’t you think?  That Jesus Christ, the Savior, the divine Son of God, would pray for you?  And for me?  It’s another example of how much Jesus loves us.  After all, at the time of our Bible reading, Jesus had a lot on his mind.  The prayer we read tonight is, according to the gospel of John, the last thing Jesus said before he went to the garden of Gethsemane.  And of course, that is where he would be arrested, an arrest that would lead to his death on a cross.

            Jesus could certainly have been excused if, at that point, his thoughts were all on himself.  But they were not.  A little, yes, but not that much.  His thoughts were mainly on God and on his disciples and followers.

            So, what does Jesus pray?  First, he prays that God the Father will be pleased with what Jesus has done.  He says, “I have brought you glory on earth by finishing the work you gave me to do.  And now, Father, glorify me in Your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.”

            You know, when we talk about the sacrifice Jesus made, we immediately think of his death on the cross.  And of course that was a tremendous sacrifice that Jesus made.  But it’s not the only sacrifice Jesus made.  Jesus’ statement reminds us that Jesus gave up a lot just to come to earth in the first place.

            “Glorify me in Your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.”  Jesus, as God the Son, was with God the Father in heaven.  He always had been.  God the Son had glory with God the Father before the universe was ever created.

            Jesus gave up that glory to come to earth.  And he had a specific job to do while he was here.  Now, his work on earth is nearly finished, and he prays that God will be pleased with what he has done and will return that glory to him again.

            But again, Jesus does not spend much time on himself.  He goes on to pray for the disciples.  And it’s interesting, I think, to note that Jesus specifically says he is not praying for the world.  He is simply praying for those who are his, who follow him.

            What does he pray for them?  Maybe not what we’d expect.  Jesus does not pray that God the Father will make things easy for them.  He does not pray that they will have anything material.  He does not even pray that God will keep them from harm.  Instead, he prays that God would protect them from the evil one.  And he prays that God would sanctify them with God’s word, which is truth.

            Protect them from the evil one, and sanctify them with God’s word, which is truth.  What does that mean?  Why would Jesus pray that way?

Jesus knows that now the disciples have a job to do, just as Jesus had a job to do while he was on earth.  They are going to have to carry on the ministry that Jesus has started, spreading the good news of salvation.  And Jesus knows it’s going to be a tough job.  He’s already told them they’re going to have all kinds of trouble.  In fact, he’s told them that the world is going to hate them because of him.  And he knows he’s not going to be there any more to protect them.

But Jesus wanted the disciples to look at this the way he looked at it.  Jesus knew that, if he stayed firm, if he stayed with God the Father and with God’s truth, nothing the world could do could touch him.  Yes, they could kill his earthly body.  But they could not do anything to his eternal life.  If he stayed with God the Father, he would, as he said, return to his glory in heaven.

And that’s what he wanted the disciples to do.  Stay firm.  Stay with God the Father and with God the Son.  Stay with God’s truth.  And so, he prays that God the Father will protect them from the evil one.  Protect them from the temptation to compromise.  Protect them from the temptation to back off, to get along.  Protect them from the temptation to soften God’s truth to satisfy what the world wants to hear.  

Again, Jesus knows that, if they stand firm, they will get into trouble.  But he knows that, if they stay with God’s truth, there’s nothing the world can do to them.  Yes, the world could kill their earthly bodies.  But the world could not do anything to their eternal lives.  If they stayed firm, if they stayed with God’s truth, they would be sanctified.  They would be set apart, and they would go to heaven to be with the Lord.

As I thought about that, I realized that we don’t pray that way for each other nearly enough.  We pray for others’ good health all the time, and there’s certainly nothing wrong with that.  We should do that.  We pray, sometimes, for protection from storms.  We pray for favorable weather or for safe travels.  We pray for lots of things.  But we rarely pray that God would keep us strong in our faith.  We rarely pray that God will help us stand firm and stand with God.  We rarely pray that God would help us stay with God’s word and God’s truth.

That’s wrong.  And it’s at least partly my fault, as the pastor, that we don’t pray that way more.  I’m not saying every prayer we ever pray needs to be that, but we should pray that way more than we do.  And I’m going to try to do my part to correct that.

Because that’s something we all need.  You and I are every bit as tempted to compromise as the disciples were, if not more.  We’re every bit as tempted to back off, to get along.  We’re every bit as tempted to soften God’s truth to satisfy what the world wants to hear.  And we’re also tempted to convince ourselves that the “softened” version of God’s truth is the right one, because sometimes it’s what we want to hear, too.

But Jesus did not stop there.  Jesus continued, praying for all who will come to believe.  That includes you and me.

What was his prayer for us?  It’s a prayer for unity, but not in the way we might have expected.  Yes, he’d like us to be united, but united because we have God’s Holy Spirit in us.

Listen to what he says.  He prays “that all of them might be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you.”  A little later he says something similar, “that they may be one as we are one--I in them and you in me.”

Again, Jesus does not pray for the whole world.  He prays for believers.  Jesus knows that there can be no unity between believers and non-believers.  We should love them, yes.  We should pray for them.  We should treat them as we would like to be treated.  But we cannot be unified with them.  As Jesus said earlier, his disciples are not of this world, just as Jesus himself was not of this world.  Trying to be unified with the world is what leads to the compromises that Jesus prayed his disciples would avoid.

As believers, we are to be unified with Jesus.  That’s our goal.  To live as Jesus told us to live.  To treat others as Jesus told us to treat them.  To believe as Jesus believed.  To think as Jesus thought.  To love as Jesus loved.  To have the courage and trust in God the Father that Jesus had.  We’ll do it imperfectly, of course, because we’re imperfect people.  Even the disciples did it imperfectly.  But they did it, and we can, too.  And if we’re unified with Jesus, we can be unified with each other, too.

And Jesus prayed for one more thing for us.  He prayed, “Father, I want those you have given me to be where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.”

Jesus wants us to be with him.  To be in heaven.  To be with God the Father.  To see His glory.

            And when that happens, we truly will be unified with Jesus.  We will be perfect, just as God intended in the beginning.  Not because of anything we’ve done, but because the death of Jesus, and our belief in him, washes away our sins.  What an awesome thing.  What an amazing thing.  What an incredibly loving thing.  To be one with each other and one with Jesus in the presence of God in heaven.

            We should pray for each other.  But when you get down, when you get discouraged, when it seems like things are not going the way they should, remember this:  Jesus has prayed for you.  Jesus is still praying for you.  With Jesus on our side, there is nothing we cannot overcome.  We can stand firm in our faith.  The world may not love us for that.  But if we stand firm in our faith, we can be unified with Jesus, on earth and in h

The Way

This is the message given in the Sunday night service in the Gettsyburg United Methodist church on Sunday, March 21, 2021.  The Bible verses used are John 14:1-14.

            One of the things that can make faith hard for us is that we can never really fully describe God.  God is bigger and greater and more multi-faceted than we can even comprehend.  No matter how many words we use to describe God, there’s always more to say.  Language itself fails us when it comes to talking about God.

            Our reading for tonight has at least two of God’s qualities on full display.  On the one hand, there’s the incredible love God has for us.  On the other hand, there’s the judgment that awaits each of us when our time to leave earth comes.  We like the first part of that; the second, not so much.  But both are part of who God is, and both are essential to our understanding of who God is.

            Jesus is getting ready to leave the disciples.  This is the night before he’s going to be arrest and, ultimately killed.  Jesus has just told the disciples that.  But now, he tells the disciples they don’t need to be sad.  They don’t need to be worried.  Just believe.  Believe in God, believe in Him.  He tells them heaven has lots of room.  Lots of room for them.  And he’s going on ahead to prepare a place for them.  And then, when the time is right, he’s going to take them to that place.  And they will be with him forever.

            Jesus says that to us, too.  And it’s a very comforting thing, right?  Don’t be sad.  Don’t be worried.  There are lots of rooms in heaven.  There’s room for everybody, right?  And when the time is right, Jesus will come and take us to the place he’s prepared for us.  We’ll go to be with the Lord forever.  What could be better than that?

            The disciples liked hearing that, too.  But then Jesus says, “You know the way to the place where I am going.”  And that got them confused.  

            Thomas asks Jesus about it.  You just knew it had to be Thomas who’d ask, right?  The one they call the doubter.  But really, I don’t see Thomas as having any more doubts than any of the other disciples.  Thomas just is the one who has the courage to ask the questions all the disciples have, but that the rest of them are too scared to ask.  Thomas may have had doubts, but Thomas did not want to live with those doubts.  He wanted answers, and so he was going to ask questions.  He was willing to risk looking stupid if it meant he could find out more about Jesus.

            So Thomas asks.  “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way.”  And Jesus answers, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through me.  If you really know me, you will know my Father as well.  From now on, you do know him, and have seen him.”

            That’s the part that, sometimes, we don’t like so much.  Jesus is the way to heaven.  Jesus is the only way to heaven.  No one can go to God the Father except through Jesus.

            The disciples did not object to that.  They did not fully understand it--Philip asks Jesus to show them the Father--but they did not object to it.  Because they expect the Savior to, well, save them.  Save them from hell.  Save them from Satan.  Save them from the consequences of their sins.  As such, they had no problem with the concept that the only way to be saved and to go to heaven would be to follow the Savior.

            Today, though, it seems that many people do have a problem with it.  We have a problem with the idea that God would allow anyone to go to hell.  We’re told that God loves everybody, right?  In fact, we’re told that God is love.  And we’re told that God is forgiving.  In fact, we’re told that there is nothing God won’t forgive.  So how can this all-loving, all-forgiving God allow anyone to go to hell?  To a place of eternal punishment?  Surely, God’s love must save everyone, right?

            I understand why people believe that.  For one thing, we want to believe it, and we all have a great ability to believe that the things we wish were true actually are.  I know people who don’t believe in Jesus as the Savior.  I don’t like to think of them someday being in hell.  In fact, if you really take the concept of hell seriously, you would not want anyone to ever be there.  Hell is the worst thing imaginable, and it’s eternal.  If you take that seriously, you would not want your worst enemy to go there.

            The thing is that, yes, God is love.  And God is forgiving.  But that’s not all God is.  The idea that, because God is love and God is forgiving, and so therefore God will let everyone into heaven, is really based on a misunderstanding of who God is and how our relationship with God works.  It implies that God somehow owes it to us to allow us into heaven, no matter what we’ve done.  It implies that God is obligated to allow us into heaven, regardless of what we believe.

            And that’s simply not true.  No matter how much we might wish it was, it’s not.  God does not owe us anything.  God is not obligated to do anything for us.  God is God.  God is the Supreme Being.  God is not subject to any human rules.  God is who God is.  That’s part of what God meant when He told Moses that His name is “I am”  

Yes, God is love.  And yes, God is forgiving.  But God is also just.  And God is also righteous.  And God is holy.  And God is perfect.  

You and I, as human beings, are none of those things.  We can be, at times, but not all the time.  We can feel love, and we can show love, but we are not love.  We can forgive, at times, be we often fail to forgive.  We have our notions of justice, but they are not the same as God’s perfect justice.  We are not truly righteous, or holy, and we most certainly are not perfect.  

God is so far above us that we cannot even begin to imagine it.  And so, really, none of us belongs in heaven.  None of us belongs in the presence of the holy and righteous and perfect God.  Not only does God not owe it to us to allow us into heaven, God would be perfectly justified in not allowing any of us into heaven.  

In fact, when you think about it, the odd thing is not that God would allow people to go to hell.  The odd thing, the amazing thing, really, is that God would allow any of us into heaven.  Why would God even want us around at all?  I mean, yes, God created us, but look at what we’ve become.  We’ve already made a mess of earth, in many ways.  Why would God let us into heaven?  As broken and imperfect and sinful as we are, it seems like we can do nothing but mess heaven up, too.

            And yet, look at what God does for us.  Because God is love, and God is forgiving, God has provided us a way into heaven.  Jesus.  Jesus is the way.  All we need to do is believe in him.  If we have faith in Jesus, if we believe in him as the Savior, our sins are forgiven.  In fact, they’re more than forgiven, they’re completely wiped out.  It’s like they never happened.  It’s not that God does not know about them, of course--God knows everything.  But God chooses not to see them.  God chooses to ignore them.  God chooses to treat us as if we were righteous, and holy, and perfect, even though God knows that we’re not.  And God does allow us to be in heaven with Him for eternity.  And all we have to do is believe in the Savior, Jesus Christ.

You know, when you think of it that way, it’s such an incredible thing God has done for us.  God does not make us do some great, huge, almost impossible thing to get into heaven.  God does not even make us do a hard thing.  God could put any conditions God wanted to on our admittance into heaven.  And yet, God’s way for us to go to heaven is the simplest thing in the world.  Believe in Jesus Christ.  Believe that he is, in fact, who he says he is--the Savior.  

It’s the easiest thing in the world, really.  And yet, there are many people who simply refuse to do it.  They refuse to believe in Jesus.  I have to think that makes God very sad.  God does not want anyone to go to hell.  That’s why God gave us the way to heaven.  But God allows us to make choices.  And that includes the choice to refuse the way to heaven that God gave us.  If people decide to make that choice, God will let them.  God is not happy about their choice, but God will let them make it.

Our reading for tonight takes place the night before Jesus was arrested and killed.  But as we know, Jesus rose from the dead.  And he appeared to the disciples on a number of occasions before he went back to heaven.  And on the last one, he said this:  “Go and make disciples of all nations.”

That’s our job now.  That’s the job Jesus has given us--to make disciples.  To show people the way to heaven.  To help people make the choice to believe in Jesus and be saved.  We won’t succeed with everyone--even Jesus did not do that.  Again, God allows people to refuse the way to heaven.  But God does not want anyone to make that choice.  And so, God wants us to do our best to help people choose Jesus.  To help people choose salvation.  To help people choose eternal life.

Heaven has enough room for all of us.  Jesus is the way there.  May we all choose the way of faith in Jesus.  And may we do all we can to help others choose that way, too.

 

Are You Ready?

This is the message given in the United Methodist churches of the Wheatland Parish on Sunday morning, March 21, 2021.  The Bible verses used are Mark 13:1-37.

            We’ve talked before about how we see a lot of things going on right now that we don’t think are the way they should be.  Seeing all this stuff has caused some people to wonder:  are we living in the end times?

            Well, I don’t know.  I’m not saying that to evade the question, nor am I asking it to imply an answer.  I simply do not know.  Jesus said, “About that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.”  But I will tell you this:  if we are in the end times, we’re just in the beginning of them.  Because Jesus says things are going to be a whole lot worse than what we’ve experienced so far.

            Jesus is describing what’s going to happen to his disciples.  He does not paint a pretty picture.  Listen again to some of what he says.  “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.  There will be earthquakes in various places, and famines.”  “Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child.  Children will rebel against their parents and have them put to death.”  And Jesus says, this is just the beginning.  It’s going to get even worse after that.  “The sun will be darkened and the moon will not give its light.  The stars will fall from the sky and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.”

            And Jesus’ followers are not going to be exempt from all this.  In fact, the way it sounds, Jesus’ followers are going to get the worst of it.  Jesus says, “You must be on your guard.  You will be handed over to the local councils and flogged in the synagogues.”  He says they will be arrested and brought to trial.  And then Jesus says, “Everyone will hate you because of me.”

            I wonder what the disciples thought, when they heard Jesus say all this.  We’re they scared?  Were they anxious?  Did they wonder if they could really withstand all this?  Or were they confident, believing that they could and would stand up for Jesus?  Were they ready to be beaten and even die on behalf of Jesus if that was what God required of them?

            And how do we feel, hearing all this?  Because if the end times are beginning, then it seems likely that, at some point, what Jesus said about his followers will apply to us, too.  There are places in the world where Christians are jailed, or even killed, because of their faith.  We like to think that could never happen here, and to be honest I cannot envision it happening here.  But, when the end times do come, whenever that is, even Christians in small towns in South Dakota are not going to be exempt from the consequences of it.  

            What would we do, in that situation?  Would we be able to stand up for Jesus?  Would you or I be ready to be beaten, or even die, on behalf of Jesus?

            I don’t know whether we can really answer that question unless we’ve been in that situation.  After all, it’s easy to say we would, when we don’t really expect to be put to the test.  It’s only when we are put to the test that we can know for sure.

But that does not mean we should just drop the subject and move on.  In fact, we should do just the opposite.  Because, after telling the disciples that only God the Father knows when the end times will come, Jesus said this:  “Be on guard!  Be alert!”  In fact, Jesus says, it’s precisely because we don’t know when the end times will come that we need to be ready all the time.  If we knew, maybe we could afford to wait until just before it happened to get ourselves ready.  But we don’t.  So we need to be ready now.  Because we don’t have any guarantee that the end times will not come now.

            How do we do that?  I think the way we do it is to get and stay as close to God as we can.  I think the way we do it is to take our faith very seriously.

            Now, in saying that, I’m not saying that you don’t take your faith seriously.  I’m sure many of us do.  It’s not for me to judge how seriously you take your faith.  But I think a lot of us, definitely including me, could take our faith more seriously than we do.

            I think it starts with prayer.  Now, I don’t doubt that most people here, maybe everyone here, prays.  And that’s good.  But I suspect some of us could go deeper in our prayer life than we should.  

            How often are we truly honest with God?  How often do we tell God everything about what we’re going through?  How often do we tell God our hopes, our dreams, our fears, our worries, our concerns?  How often do we thank God for all God’s blessings, share with God our joys, tell God all the things that are on our minds and in our hearts?

            And then, after we’ve said that, how often do we open our minds and hearts so we can hear God’s response?  After we’ve prayed, do we really turn the things we prayed about over to God?

            Maybe you do.  Again, I’m not judging you.  That’s not my point.  But for those of who don’t, or who maybe sometimes do and sometimes don’t, it’s something we need to work on.  Really praying deep, honest prayers is one of the best ways we can really start to feel close to God and feel God’s Holy Spirit in our hearts and in our minds.  It’s one of the best ways we can get ourselves ready, as Jesus told us to.

            Another way to get ready and take our faith seriously is to read the Bible.  Now, I’m not suggesting you have to read the whole Bible cover to cover.  I mean, if you want to, that’s fine.  My guess is that some of you probably have.  There’s certainly nothing wrong with doing it.  But I don’t know that it’s the best way to get started if we really want to take our faith seriously.

I think the best way to start would be to read the words of Jesus.  The four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, give us the words of Jesus Christ.  They tell us how Jesus wants us to live.  They tell us what our attitude should be toward God.  They tell us what our attitude should be toward others.  

Again, I know many of you do read the Bible regularly.  But I cannot think of a better way to get closer to God than to read the words of Jesus and take them seriously.  I cannot think of a better way for us to get ourselves ready for whatever may come than to live our lives the way Jesus told us to live them.  Loving God.  Loving our neighbors.  Treating others as we’d like them to treat us.  Sharing the gospel.  Going and making disciples.  If we do those things, we will find ourselves closer to God than we’ve ever been.

            Another way to get ready and to take our faith seriously is to spend time with other people of faith.  Our faith will not grow in a vacuum.  We need other people to support us.  And we need to support them.  We all need the encouragement of others, and others need our encouragement.  After all, even Jesus did not try to live his life alone.  Neither did the disciples.  They had each other, and they needed each other.  We all need each other.  

            One of the ways to do that, of course, is to be here in church.  But there are other ways.  You can be in a Bible study.  You can be in a small group.  You can even do this online.  But somehow, in some way, we need to others to support us in our faith.  That support is needed to keep our faith strong, and it’s only by keeping our faith strong that we’ll be ready the way Jesus told us to be.

            Now, if we’re serious about this, it’s going to take a commitment.  And one of the ways we make that commitment is with time.  It’s not like we can do this stuff once, for a few minutes, and there we have it.  It takes time.  I’m not suggesting that you spend every waking moment doing these things.  That’s not practical.  But they do take time.  And if you’re like me, you’re not going to just magically have the time.  You’re going to have to find the time.  My suggestion is that you put it into your daily schedule somehow.  But if that does not work for you, then I encourage you to find a way that does work.  Because it does take a time commitment to do all these things.

            It may seem like it’s not easy.  But there are benefits.  For one thing, we’ll have God’s Holy Spirit with us.  Jesus told the disciples, and he tells us, that if we stay close to God, then when our faith gets us into trouble, we don’t need worry about how to handle it.  He says, “Just say whatever is given you at the time, for it is not you speaking, but the Holy Spirit.”

            And the other benefit is that we will be among the saved.  Jesus says that, when he comes in his glory, the angels will gather his people “from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of the heavens.”  No matter what may happen, through our faith in Jesus, we will be okay.  We will be among God’s people, gathered for the Lord.

            Again, I have no idea whether we’re in the beginning of the end times.  But it’s precisely because we don’t know that we need to be ready.  If we are, if we stay close to God and keep our faith strong, we have nothing to worry about.  We can withstand whatever may happen.  God’s Holy Spirit will be with us.  And we will be saved.

 

A Sad Goodbye

This is the message given in the Sunday night service in the Gettysburg United Methodist church on Sunday, March 14, 2021.  The Bible verses used are John 13:21-39.

            Have you ever had to say goodbye to friends?  Maybe because they moved away, maybe because you did.  Wanda and I have moved a few times in our lives.  Part of that is just the life of a United Methodist pastor, but we also moved once other time, long before I became a pastor.

Each time we were convinced that the move would be good for us, and that turned out to be true.  Still, moving is hard.  When you live in a place for a while, you make friends.  You have people who are important to you.  And now, you’re not going to see those people for a while.

You promise each other that you’ll stay in touch, and sometimes you do.  It’s a little easier now, with things like facebook--I can keep up with people in Wessington Springs, and in North Sioux City, and from my days in seminary, much more easily than you could twenty or thirty years ago.  I can even keep up with people I knew in Pierre, and it’s thirty years since I lived there.

But still, it’s not the same, is it?  You don’t see these people on a casual, everyday basis.  You don’t get to have those little conversations that cement a relationship.  Saying goodbye may be easier than it used to be, but it’s still hard.  It probably always will be.

It was hard for Jesus, too.  In our Bible reading for tonight, Jesus is saying goodbye to his disciples.  It’s his last night on earth.  And he knows that.  And he knows why.  He has just washed the disciples’ feet, which we talked about last week.  Now, Jesus tells them that one of them is going to betray him.  It turns out to be Judas, of course, but none of the disciples seem to have realized that at the time.  Judas leaves, and it apparently is just Jesus and the other eleven disciples who are there.  

Jesus starts talking to them.  He tells them he’ll only be there a little while longer.  He’s leaving.  He does not say where he’s going, but he’s leaving.  And the disciples cannot go with him.  This is it.  This is goodbye.

He goes on to give them the new command to love one another.  And they obviously remembered that later.  But right now, that’s not their concern.  Their concern is that Jesus is leaving them.  And they cannot go with him to where he’s going.  And they don’t understand why.

Simon Peter asks Jesus where he’s going.  Jesus does not say.  He simply says that the disciples cannot go there, at least not now.  He says they will come later.  Simon Peter still does not understand.  He says, why can’t I come?  I will lay down my life for you.  And Jesus, of course, responds that Simon Peter will disown him three times before morning.

We know now, of course, that Jesus was right.  But I think Peter meant it when he said it.  He did not follow through on it, obviously, but he meant it at the time.  He was carried away with emotion.  The last thing he wanted was for Jesus to leave.  And if Jesus had to leave, he wanted to go with him.  He wanted to go anywhere Jesus went.

Simon Peter, and all the other disciples, were sad that Jesus was leaving. But you know who else I think was sad?  Jesus.  I think Jesus was probably just as sad at leaving the disciples as the disciples were that he was leaving them.

His words just seem completely steeped in sadness to me.  “My children, I will be with you only a little longer. You will look for me, and just as I told the Jews, so I tell you now: Where I am going, you cannot come.”  A little later, he says again, “Where I am going, you cannot follow now, but you will follow later.”

Now, obviously, part of the reason Jesus was sad was because he knew what was ahead of him.  Arrest, beatings, torture, death.  No one would look forward to that.  But I think he was also sad just at the thought that he was leaving his closest friends.  Jesus had gotten close to these people.  They’d shared the most important experiences of his life on earth with him.  They’d been there through the miracles, through the healing, through driving out demons, through the preaching, through the arguments with the Pharisees, all of it.  And now, he had to leave them behind.  How could Jesus not be sad about that?

But of course, Jesus knew he had to do it.  Jesus knew he had to leave them.  It was his destiny.  It was what he had come to earth for in the first place.  He knew leaving them was the right thing to do.  And he knew it would not be forever, that he would see them again.  But still, this was a hard thing for him to do.  It’s always hard to leave friends behind.

Jesus goes on to tell the disciples a whole lot of things.  We’ve been talking about that in our Wednesday night services.  He tells them that he is the way, and that no one comes to the Father except through him.  He tells them that if they love him, they’ll keep his commands and do all the things he’s told them to do.  He tells them that his commandment is that they love each other, just as he has loved them.  He tells them the world may hate them for following him.  He tells them he’s going to send the Holy Spirit to them.

Jesus tells the disciples all this and more.  And they listen, and they remember.  But none of it really helps, not then.  All they can think about is that Jesus is going away.  He was saying goodbye to them, and they had to say goodbye to him.

It was one of the hardest things they had ever done.  It may have been one of the hardest things Jesus did, too.  But they did it.  They did it, because they knew it had to be done.  Again, Jesus knew it had to be done because it was why he had come.  The disciples did not necessarily understand why it had to be done, but Jesus said it had to be done, and they believed him.  And so, they all did it.  As hard as it was for them to do, they did it.

I talk sometimes about how we should feel joy at serving God.  And we should.  It’s a great honor to serve God.  It’s a privilege to serve God.  It’s incredible that we’re even allowed to serve God.  After all, we cannot do anything for God that God could not do for Himself.  God does not need our service.  God allows us to serve Him, out of love for us.  That thought alone should give us joy.

But even though I say that, and I believe it, the fact is that serving God sometimes requires us to do things we really don’t want to do.  Serving God sometimes requires us to do things that are hard.  And serving God sometimes requires us to do things that make us sad.

Why would God do that?  Why would God ask us to do things that we don’t want to do?  Things that make us sad?  Does God not want us to be happy?  Does God not want us to enjoy our lives?  Why would God want us to do things that make us sad?  Why would God ask us to serve Him in that way?

            Well, look at what happened to the disciples.  Did they stay sad forever?  No.  They were sad for a while, but then Jesus returned!  He rose from the grave on Easter, he appeared to them, he talked with them, he ate with them, he explained things to them.  And when he did eventually leave them again, they understood.  Maybe not everything, but they understood he was returning to heaven.  And they understood that they would go there someday, too, when their work on earth was done.  And they were not sad anymore.  They were filled with joy, knowing that their faith in Jesus had been and would be rewarded.

            And I have to think Jesus was happy, too.  Happy that he had stayed faithful to God the Father.  Happy that he was going to heaven to be reunited with the Father and the Holy Spirit.  Happy that things had gone and would go the way they were supposed to go.  He was not sad anymore, either.  I think Jesus was also filled with joy.

            Because that’s the thing about sadness--it does not have to last forever.  What we need to remember, in this and many other instances, is that God knows so much more than we do.  God has so many plans and purposes that we know nothing about.  What God asks us to do may make us sad right now.  But if we stay faithful, and do what God asks us to do, our sadness will not last forever.  At some point, it will be replaced by joy.  God will act, and things will go the way they’re supposed to go.  We may never fully understand, but we will understand enough.  And we will not be sad anymore.  At some point, we will understand enough that we will be filled with joy, too.

            Life has sadness sometimes.  Ecclesiastes Chapter Three tells us that there is a time to weep and a time to mourn.  But there are also times to laugh and times dance.  If you and I hang in there through the sad times, and continue to be faithful to God, God will turn our sadness into joy.

 

Not the Savior We're Looking For

This is the message given Sunday morning, March 14, 2021, in the United Methodist churches of the Wheatland Parish.  The Bible verses used are Mark 12:35-44.

            Have you ever talked to someone on the phone, or maybe heard them on the radio or something, but never actually seen them?  You get kind of a mental picture of what you think they look like, right?  And then you actually see them, and--you get confused.  Because they don’t look anything like what you thought they’d look like.  Your mental picture of them turns out to be completely wrong.

            I bring this up because one of the things that confused the religious leaders of Jesus’ day is that they all had a mental picture of what the Messiah would be like.  Not just his looks, but his actions, his beliefs, everything.  The Messiah would be the Son of David.  The Messiah would come as a conqueror.  The Messiah would raise an army, defeat the Romans, and re-establish the Kingdom of Israel.  And, of course, the Messiah would make sure the Pharisees and the teachers of the law and all the other religious leaders had a prominent place in the kingdom once it was established.

            And then, here comes Jesus, and he’s nothing like what the Messiah was “supposed” to be like.  He had no interest in establishing an earthly kingdom.  He did not want to fight the enemies of Israel--in fact, he said people should love their enemies.  He did not try to raise an army--he preached a gospel of peace.  And he had no particular use for the Pharisees or the teachers of the law or any other religious leaders of his time.

            It was not only that, though.  Jesus simply did not see things the way the Messiah was “supposed” to see them.  Jesus turned all the established rules on their head.  And we have three examples of that today.

            We start out with the idea that the Messiah would be the Son of David.  Now, the genealogies of Jesus, as set forth in Matthew and in Luke, establish that Jesus was, in earthly terms, descended from King David.  But Jesus says, worrying about that misses the point.  David himself said so.  Jesus said, David calls the Messiah “Lord”.  David would not call his son “Lord”.  So, the Messiah must not be his son.

            We’re told that the crowd around Jesus listened with delight.  We’re not told how the Pharisees or other religious leaders reacted.  But it’s not hard to guess that they were not very pleased.  “Everybody knew” that the Messiah would be descended from David.  For Jesus to say that did not matter--well, that was outrageous.  It certainly was not something the Messiah would say.

            Then, Jesus says something even more outrageous.  He tells people to watch out for the teachers of the law, and not in a good way.  Jesus said the teachers of the law were arrogant.  They made a big show of how great they thought they were, and they expected everyone else to think they were great, too.  Jesus says, “These men will be punished most severely.”

            Again, we’re not told how the teachers of the law reacted, but I’m pretty sure they were not happy about it.  These were the people the Messiah was supposed to love and bring to prominence.  These were the people who were supposed to get the top spots in the new kingdom of Israel.  To say they would be severely punished--well, again, that’s just not something the Messiah would say.

            Then Jesus goes to the temple.  He watches people put their money into the treasury.  He sees some people put in big amounts.  Then, a poor widow comes by and puts in a few cents.  And Jesus says her contribution was more valuable than all the others, because she has put in everything she has to live on.

            And again, the religious authorities were outraged.  Does Jesus not know how much money it takes to run the temple?  Does Jesus not know how many salaries have to be paid, how much the supplies cost?  How can Jesus say this little bit that the poor widow put in is more valuable than the big donations?  I mean, yeah, we get that she put in as much as she could, but if everybody put that little in, we’d never make it.  We need the heavy hitters, the big contributors.

            Now, it’s not that Jesus did not understand economics.  And note, he does not criticize the wealthy people for the amounts they put in.  He does not say their contributions are unimportant or are not valued.  His point is that most of us, no matter our financial status, put in what we can afford.  This woman put in everything she had.  She did not worry about whether she could afford it.  She was completely sold out for God.  And that’s what the religious authorities could not understand.  It just did not sound like something the Messiah would say.

            Now, we look at this, from our perspective, and we wonder how the religious authorities could be so dense.  How could they not understand what Jesus was saying?  How could they not see how wrong they were?  What was wrong with those people?

            And yet, are those religious leaders really all that different from you and me?  How many times do we just kind of ignore what Jesus said, because it does not fit our mental image of what the Savior should be and what the Savior should say?  I mean, we might pay lip service to it.  We might say, yeah, that’s what we ought to do.  That’s how we should live.  But then, so many times, we don’t live it out.  We just keep living like we have been, because what Jesus told us to do does not fit what we want the Savior to say.

            And again, I do this, too.  I know I say that a lot, but I never want anyone to think that I’m standing here thinking I’m better than you.  I don’t want this to sound like I think I get this and you don’t.  There are many, many times, as a pastor, that you preach to yourself as much as you preach to anyone else, and this is definitely one of those times.  I struggle with this at least as much as anyone else.

            But think of some of the things Jesus said, and think of how little we tend to live those things out.  “Love your enemies”.  How many of us do that?  How many of us even try?  I mean, maybe we do it in theory, but what actions do we take to show that we love our enemies?

            “If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to them the other also.”  How many of us have ever done that?  I mean, even once, much less as a regular practice?  It just does not fit the way we think a person should live their life.

            “Do to others as you would like others to do to you.”  Again, it sounds good in theory, but do we actually live it out?  Too often, we treat others as they actually treat us, not as we’d like them to treat us.  If people are nice to us, we’re nice to them.  If they don’t treat us well, we don’t treat them well, either.  Again, it just does not fit with how we think people should live.

            “Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back.”  That one does not even make sense to us, does it?  Did Jesus not understand human nature?  If we give to everyone who asks, we won’t have anything left.  Why would Jesus even say such a thing?

            “Whoever believes in the Son is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already.”  But God loves everyone, right?  Why would God condemn people for not believing in Jesus?  I mean, sure, maybe murderers and people like that, but why would God condemn good people, people who love others and do things for others, just because they don’t believe in Jesus?  That cannot be right.

            We could go on and on.  The point is that we tend to try to make Jesus fit our image of what the Savior should be, just like the Pharisees and the other religious authorities tried to make Jesus fit their image of what the Savior should be.  And when Jesus’ words do not fit our image, we tend to ignore them, or try to explain them away, or try to come up with some reason why Jesus did not actually mean what he said.  We don’t want to adjust our image to the reality of Jesus.  Instead, we want to adjust the reality of Jesus to fit our image.

            We are in the season of Lent.  One of the purposes of Lent is for us to take an honest look at ourselves.  We try to see who we are, and we see how far short we fall from who God wants us to be.  And we don’t just acknowledge that.  We then ask for God’s forgiveness, and we try to change.  We ask for God to help us be the people God wants us to be, rather than the people we actually are or even the people we want to be.

            As we do that, let’s take an honest look at the words of Jesus.  Let’s not ignore what he said.  Let’s not explain it away.  Let’s not come up with reasons why Jesus was not serious about it.  Let’s really look at Jesus’ words.  Let’s take them to heart.  And then, let’s ask for God’s help in living them out.  Let’s not worship the Savior who fits our image.  Let’s worship the real Savior, Jesus Christ.