Burning Questions What about grace?

Burning Questions

What about grace?

9/23/2012

 

Billy Graham tells about driving through a small southern town, he was stopped by a policeman and charged with speeding. Graham admitted his guilt, but was told by the officer that he would have to appear in court.

The judge asked, "Guilty, or not guilty?" When Graham pleaded guilty, the judge replied, "That'll be ten dollars -- a dollar for every mile you went over the limit."

Suddenly the judge recognized the famous preacher.  "You have violated the law," he said.  "The fine must be paid--but I am going to pay it for you." He took a ten dollar bill from his own wallet, attached it to the ticket, and then took Graham out and bought him a steak dinner! "That," said Billy Graham, "is grace!"[i]

Grace is when God not only pays the fine we deserve to pay, but buys us the best steak ever!

 

We have all heard of grace.  We are all the benefactors of grace.  Yet how well do we understand it?  As selfish human beings, I think we understand grace just a little less than we understand our own hearts.  As self-centered human beings I think I understand grace just a little less than I understand the origin of the universe and the source of life.  As a sinner, I don't understand grace at all, but I recognize it when I see it.  Whether it is in the story of the prodigal son, the Billy Graham anecdote, or in my own life; the mystery of grace is very real and very powerful.

 

The Bible has a lot to say about me as a sinner.  It says  

·        I'm one who does evil continually.  [ii]

·        I'm impure –.[iii]

o   Not righteous or good –[iv].

o   Full of evil and madness –[v].

·        It says I'm wicked and estranged –[vi].

·        I've gone my own way –[vii].

·        I'm rebellious –[viii].

·        I have loved darkness –[ix].

·        I am a slave to sin –[x].

·        I am a child of the devil –[xi].

o   Without fear of God[xii].

o   And hostile to God –[xiii].

·        I'm spiritually foolish –[xiv].

o   Spiritually dead[xv].

o   Darkened; alienated; ignorant, having a hard heart, callous; perverted, greedy, and impure.  [xvi].

·        I'm dead –[xvii].

·        I'm defiled.

·        I'm unbelieving –[xviii].

·        I'm under the power of the evil one –[xix].

·        And I'm foolish, disobedient, and led astray, and I am a slave to various passions and pleasures, passing my days in malice and envy, hated by others, and hating others –[xx].

That is God's ungarbled, unvarnished, absolutely, brutally honest assessment of who I am, apart from Jesus.

Now, it doesn't surprise me at all that I'm a sinner.  I know that.  I admit that.  What does surprise me is that God responded to me and continues to respond to me with grace. I can't even in my wildest imagination understand how a guy like me can be loved by God or get into heaven!  It is absolutely unfathomable.  But that is grace.  It is one thing to say Grace is undeserved.  It is quite another, I think, to realize that God's grace is exactly the opposite of what I deserve. 

Every other religion says you need to be a good person, 'cause God loves good people. Christian grace says, "You are not a good person, however God loves you and desires your love in return.  By that same grace, he will change you so that you can be good and live with him eternally."  Isn't that unbelievable? 

Grace is way beyond our ability to grasp or understand, so let me instead point to 3 experiences of grace.  There is only one grace, but we experience it in three distinct ways throughout our lives.

 

First we experience prevenient grace.  "Prevene" is not a word that we often use.  You might think of a word that has the same Latin root "INTERvene"- that means to come between.  "PRE-vene" then, means to come before.  Prevenient grace is the grace that comes before we even know God.  

Another way of looking at Prevenient is that it is a form of the word "prevent."  Prevenient grace prevents us from moving so far from God that we cannot respond to his offer of love. The prodigal son story teaches us that we are never so far away from God that he is not trying to get us to come home to him.

Prevenient grace is the grace that invites us home even if we have forgotten where home is.  Prevenient grace is the grace that invites us home even when we have forgotten that we have a home.

John 6:44 says "No man can come to me, except the father draw him:" In other words, no one comes to salvation except that God brings him or her.  Before we come to God.  Before we are saved.  When we are in a far off land, sinning our brains out; it is the prevenient grace of God that draws us, invites us, woos us, and attracts us into relationship with God.  God might speak to us through other people, through worship, through the sacraments, through nature or any other means God might find to reach us. The point is God is working before we even know it.

John Wesley says, "No man can believe in Christ, unless God gives him power. He draws us first by good desires, not by compulsion, not by laying the will under any necessity; but by his strong and sweet, yet still resistible, motions."^[xxi]  Prevenient grace is the grace of God working in our lives before we are even aware that God is working, or that God is.

 

Our second experience of grace is called justifying grace.  This is the experience that most people associate with grace.  This is the experience of God seeing us walking up the driveway in all our sinfulness; and throwing his arms open anyway.  This is the grace that comes to us only through the cross of Christ.  Justification comes through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ- justification comes to me by God's grace.

 Paul writes, "In Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them" ^[xxii]And in his letter to the Roman Christians, Paul wrote: "But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us" [xxiii]

Think about the Billy Graham story I told.  Did Graham deserve to be punished?  Yes.  Did Graham deserve to pay the fine?  Yes.  Did the judge know that?  Yes.  Did he pay it for him anyway? …  Yes….  That's grace.

Do we deserve to be punished?  Yes.  Do we deserve to go to hell?  Yes.  Does God know that?  Yes.  Did he save us anyway?  Yes…. That's justifying grace.

 

We are brought to God by prevenient Grace, accepted, and forgiven by God by justifying grace . . .  and finally, we are made more like God, by sanctifying grace.

After we are saved, we become disciples and the rest of our lives is spent in the process of learning to be the person God wants us to be.  Learning to live more like Jesus.  We experience God's gracious presence transforming us into the person God intends us to be.

In sanctifying grace, we deepen our knowledge of and love for God.  As we respond with compassion to human need and work for justice in our communities, we strengthen our capacity to love our neighbor. Our inner thoughts and motives, as well as our outer actions and behavior, are more and more aligned with God's ideal will for our lives.

The story is told of a young girl who accepted Christ as her Savior and applied for membership in a local church. "Were you a sinner before you received the Lord Jesus into your Life?" inquired the pastor.  "Yes, sir," she replied.  "Well, are you still a sinner?" "To tell you the truth, I feel I'm a greater sinner than ever."  The pastor asked "Then what real change have you experienced, then?"  "I don't quite know how to explain it," she said, "except I used to be a sinner running after sin, but now that I am saved. I'm a sinner running from sin!" 

Sanctifying grace is God's energy in our lives helping us to run further and further from sin.  And of course, the further we get from sin, the closer we come to the sinless one, Jesus Christ.

John Wesley described this as going on to perfection.  Not that he believed that we would become perfect in this life.  

Wesley was clear that Christian perfection did not imply

·        Perfection of health

·        Or judgment.

·        Or freedom from temptation

·        Or sinlessness

·        But rather perfection is the state of choosing not to sin.  Or desiring not to sin.

In Matthew, Jesus says "You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect."[xxiv]

Paul writes Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own[xxv]

 

Sanctifying grace is God actively working in us to perfect us in love.

 

What about grace?  Prevenient grace, justifying grace, and sanctifying or perfecting grace.  One God, one grace, but three experiences of that one grace.  No matter where you are on your journey of grace, remember God said, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." ^[xxvi]

May God's grace go before you.  May God's grace chase behind you.  But most of all may God's power work on your weakness as his grace works in you.

 

 

 

---

[i] Progress Magazine, December 14, 1992.

[ii] Genesis 6.

[iii] Proverbs 20

[iv] Ecclesiastes 7

[v] Ecclesiastes 9

[vi]Psalm 58

[vii] Isaiah 53

[viii] Isaiah 65

[ix] John 3

[x] John 8, Romans 6

[xi] John 8

[xii]  Romans 3

[xiii] Romans 8

[xiv] I Corinthians 2

[xv] Ephesians 2

[xvi] Philippians 3

[xvii] Colossians 2

[xviii] Titus 1

[xix] 1 John 5

[xx] Titus 3

[xxi] Wesley's NOTES ON THE NEW TESTAMENT

[xxii] 2 Corinthians 5:19

[xxiii] Romans 5:8

[xxiv] Matthew 5:48 ESV

[xxv] Philippians 3:12-15 ESV

[xxvi]  2 Corinthians 12:9

Prayer for the Circumstantial Will of God

Here is the prayer from the service Sunday September 16th 2012

Prayer for the Circumstantial Will of God

Dear God, There is much I do not understand.  There must be much I cannot be made to understand until I pass out of this “childhood” stage.  But I know my Lord through other means, especially through Your Word, the holy scriptures and as You  were revealed through my Savior Jesus Christ.   In times of heartache and confusion I will trust.  I will walk by faith, trusting in the light I have, even though it f eels at times like I am hanging on in the dark.

I will do faithfully what I see to be Your will  even when confronted with evil circumstances which you have allowed. I will be faithful, trusting and courageous knowing Your ultimate will and purpose for my life can never be defeated and your grace is sufficient for me in every need.  This is my pledge and my prayer, in Jesus’ name. Amen.

God’s intentional will

 

 

In the midst of the Nazi blitzkrieg bombing of England during WWII when 43,000 civilians were killed and 1 million private homes were destroyed, Methodist preacher Leslie Weatherhead preached a series of five sermons on the Will of God.  His messages ultimately became a book by the same title and sold 800,000 copies over the next 50 years and today has been reformatted into a workbook. 

 

This is our second and for the time being the final sermon on the will of God, based largely on Weatherhead's work. You will recall if you were here last week that Weatherhead names three aspects of God's will. 

 

God's intentional will:  This is God's original plan for the good of his children.  God's intention, before sin entered, was for all of his creation to be good and that he would share a relationship of love with all his children.

 

God's Circumstantial Will

This is God's plan within certain circumstances, often created by sin and evil.  It is the will within the will of God.  When our relationship with God is broken by sin or evil God works with us and through those circumstances to bring us back into loving relationship with himself.

 

God's Ultimate Will: That there is nothing and no one that can ultimately prevent God's will from being fulfilled. 

 

We established last week that God's intentional will for our lives is good -- always good.  Yet, we are so clearly reminded in a week like this past one that bad things do happen.  The are many things that interrupt or divert us from the goodness that God desires to pour out upon us.

 

Human sin and foolishness:  keep us from living in the intentional will of God.  When a child is left unsupervised with a gun in the house that is, frankly, foolish.  If the child finds the gun and it fires, injuring or killing the child, that is not God's will.  God never intended for the little ones he loves to suffer.

 

 

A teenager texting her boyfriend while driving veers across the center line and hits an oncoming car.  She's been warned time and again about the dangers of texting and driving.  She made a foolish choice that results in tragedy for herself and the other driver. 

 

We all abuse our God-given free will at times to make foolish choices.  We all sin and fall short of the glory of God.  

 

We are diverted from living within God's intentional will by the fact that we are united as one great family of God.  We are impacted by the actions and circumstances of others.  Look at this picture:

 

Like me, you probably get a clenching in your gut when you see this image.  This is because even though most of us were ½ a continent away from New York City on September 11, 2001, we are a family.  As a nation we are a community.  Spiritually we are the family of God.  When one member of the family suffers heartache we all share the pain and tears.

 

Evil perpetuated by other members of the family of God create circumstances that disturb God's intention for us.

 

We are also diverted from living within the intentional will of God by the laws of nature, especially when those laws are used for evil purposes. 

 

So rarely are these laws set aside that when they are we call that a miracle. 

 

If you pound a nail into a very dry piece of wood carelessly, the wood will likely split.

 

If you pound a spike or large nail into the flesh of a man being crucified, he will bleed, suffer and eventually die.

 

What hope is there then when we make foolish mistakes, commit sins or are brought to our knees by the suffering of others whom we know as brothers, sisters and neighbors?

 

Our hope is that there is a will within the will of God.

 

It was not the intentional will of God that Jesus should be murdered, but rather that he should be followed.  If the nation had understood and received his message, repented of sin and realized his kingdom the history of the world would have looked very different.  Jesus' crucifixion was not the intentional will of God.  It was the will of evil men who sought to destroy Jesus.  God knew that even these circumstances could not thwart his ultimate will of redemption.  Not inspite of the cross, but through the cross, God would see his will fulfilled.  In that context Jesus prayed, "Thy will be done."

 

Jesus did not  JUST submit to crucifixion with resignation.  He grasped hold of the situation.  In the gospels it tells us that Jesus "set his face toward Jerusalem"  He knew the threat of the Teacher of the Law and Temple authorities, but he intentionally set course for the very city where he would be most vulnerable to their threat.  Given the circumstances evil produced, it was God's will that Jesus should not die like a trapped animal.  Rather, he should react to evil in a way that was positive, creative and courageous and would bring good out of evil circumstances.  In this we see that the fulfilling of God's circumstantial will often requires our cooperation. 

 

Weather head gives three criteria for our cooperation:

 

1.  How can I respond to these circumstances in a way that benefits my community?

 

2.  How can I respond to these circumstances in a way that is satisfying to me personally and in keeping with my God - given attributes?

 

3.  How can I respond to these circumstances in a way that is in harmony with my personal values and ideals? 

 

Christ is the inspiration for these criteria.  His willingness to go to the cross so that the greater good of humanity's redemption might be accomplished through the cross, not in spite of it.  His actions embodied the values of sacrificial love and service that he taught to his followers.

 

Last week I told you about how difficult it was for me as a young mother to come to terms with the potentially life threatening heart conditions of our children.  One of my greatest fears after Richie was born was what I would do if the worst happened and Richie died.  I couldn't imagine how I would survive that, let alone how I would help 3 year old Amber through that.  I wondered, how do families do this?  How do you help your children grieve when you are already overwhelmed with the pain of loss yourself?  God had allowed the laws of nature and heredity would not be set aside for my family, thrusting me into circumstances that caused me heartache.

 

I could have chosen many paths.  I could have given in to anxiety and fear.  I could have said it was all too much and run away.  I could, and I hope I did, cooperate with God's will in these circumstances by becoming the best mom I could be and finding a way to use these circumstances that would serve humanity and bring glory to God.

 

Years later I founded RHOH.  RHOH meant a lot of things to me, but in part it was a way for me to take my own encounter with vulnerability and mortality and create from them something good and hopeful for myself and the community at large.  Taking pain and fear and anxiety, continuing to walk by faith and converting those painful circumstances to good is what is meant by the circumstantial will of God. 

 

As I watched the special programs on 9-11 I was reminded of the circumstances of Flight 93.  Our Heavenly Father whose intention is our good, saw all that was happening in the days leading up to 9-11.  On that morning, our God - who gave up some of his own power so that we might have free will --saw the abuse of that will and the evil plot of terrorists coming to fruition. 

 

You remember the story:  On United Flight 93 terrorists hijacked the plane and took over the cockpit.  Multiple crew members were stabbed to death in the initial takeover.  Passengers were forced to the back of the plane. They began to phone their loved ones to tell them what was happening and to say I LOVE YOU - knowing it could be for the last time.  In those phone conversations they learned about the planes that hit the twin towers and the Pentagon earlier that morning.  They knew their plane was probably going to be used in a similar attack (in fact now we know the terrorist intended to fly United 93 into the capitol building in D.C.)

 

What was God's will in these circumstances?

 

The 44 passengers on Flight 93 took a vote - they would fight to take back the cockpit from the terrorist now flying the plane.  Their revolt began at 9:57.  Certain passengers stormed the first class section of the plane where the terrorists were.  A great struggle broke out.  In the cockpit, a hijacker named Jarrah, heard the struggle and began to roll the plane from side to side in an attempt to thwart the passenger revolt.  A few moments later he changed his tactic and pitched the plane up and down.

 

Amidst sounds of screams, crashes and the shattering of glass and plates, Jarrah called, "Is that it? Are we finished?  Do I put it down?"  His cohort responded, "No, Not until they all come."  More struggle.  And again, Jarrah called,  "Is that it?"  This time the other hijacker yelled, "Yes, put it down." 

 

And so it was that amidst the continued sounds of the continued struggle, the aircraft picked up speed.  The sounds of whooshing and shrieking wind picked up on the flight recorder, then finally plowed into an empty field outside of Shanksville, PA about 20 miles flying time from Washington D.C.  

As far as I can determine, the passengers of Flight 93 never gave up their attempt to re-gain the cockpit, which would have surely saved their lives as well as unknown lives in DC.  They embraced the risks and in the end sacrificed their lives for the good of the nation and to save the lives of others -- a sacrifice Jesus called "the greatest love of all." 

 

It may seem callous to say that God allows tragedies that are not his intention for us.  This is a mystery and a stumbling block to us. 

 

Think of a small child who comes running into the house all hysterical and dramatic wailing:  "Daddy, look at my knee," because she has fallen down and skinned her knee.  The father, while good and kind, responds calmly and comfortingly, but definitely not with the same level of concern because he sees the situation from a different perspective.  He knows that in the grand scheme of the child's life a skinned knee is a pretty minor event.

 

The child may think the father doesn't care.  The child may think the father should leap into action to deal with such evils in the world as cracks in the sidewalk that cause people to trip and fall.  When the parent fails to respond like this the child may think he's callous and uncaring.  The the child and the father just see things from very different perspectives. 

 

Perhaps childhood tragedies are to us what our tragedies are to God--not that God is uncaring anymore than the father in our story was uncaring.  If the child thought about it, he might say, "There is much I still don't understand, but I know my father loves and cares for me."

 

I don't know if you'll ever face a situation as drastic as the passengers of United Flight 93.  I hope not.  But sometime in your life you are going to be confronted by heart-breaking circumstances.  A loved one is involved in a tragic accident.  A friend betrays you.  Your child or grandchild is suffering.  And your heart breaks too.

 

Studying and thinking about the will of God before these circumstances arise will help you to keep faith that God's will for you is good.  It will prepare you to embrace your circumstances with creativity and courage.  It will help you to trust the truth that there is nothing and no one that can ultimately separate you from the love of God through Christ Jesus our Lord.

 

This faith is possible!  As I worked on this message this week I encountered story after story of people who are doing this very thing. 

 

America's Got Talent British Version.  Shaking and crying with nerves.  Judges kindly talking to him and try to calm him, but expecting the worst.  Then he opened his mouth to sing and the judges jaws fell.  The audience raved their support.  He embraced his fear.  Used his God-given talents. The audience was blessed and God's will for him moved toward fulfillment. 

 

A widow's life is literally saved when she falls in love for the second time.  Her life is filled with blessing and goodness.  Then her second husband contracts a fatal illness.  She says, "the good Lord has seen fit to put me in the role of caregiver twice in my life." 

 

God has given you many good things.  God wants to bless you even more abundantly.  The trials and struggles of this life can deter us from God's will for a time.  Even in the midst of those circumstances, God will work to help you grow, to bless you and the community around you.  Ultimately God's desire to live in love with you will be satisfied. 

 

If you are willing to accept these truths by faith I invite you to pray this unison prayer with me:

 

God’s Intentional Will

God's Intentional Will

Matthew 18:1-14

 

"So it is not the will of the Father in heaven that even one of these little ones should be lost."

 Vs. 14

 

Why didn't God heal her?

Why did God let this happen?

Why my child?

Why cancer?

Why now? 

Where are you, God?

Is this your will? 

If it were up to me, I would have….

 

Most of us have asked questions like this at one time or another.  I know I have. 

During WWII these types of questions were on the hearts and lips of probably everyone living in London.   The German Blitzkrieg-- bombing of England-- killed over 43,000 civilians by May 1941.  More than a million homes were destroyed or damaged, with ½ of those homes located in the city of London.  In this historical context one Methodist pastor took on the task of writing a series of 5 sermons on the Will of God.  What I present to you is his work.   The sermon series became a book by the same title and sold over 800,000 copies over the next 50 years.  Recently I began working through the workbook form of Weatherhead's Will of God.  Today and next week I want to share with you some of the wise teaching of Leslie Weatherhead on the subject the will of God.  The key concepts I present are his, but they ring true and theologically sound to me.  I think they will challenge you.  I hope these sermons change forever the way you think about the will of God.

Leslie Weatherhead begins by defining 3 different aspects of God's will.

 

1) God's Intentional Will

God's original plan for the well-being of his children.  The way God pours himself out in goodness to his children.

 

2) God's Circumstantial Will

God's plan within certain circumstances set up by humanities evil or determined by natural law.

 

3) God's Ultimate Will

God will reach at last his ultimate goal and nothing of value will be lost.  Nothing can happen that will finally defeat God. 

 

Today our focus is going to be on God's intentional will.  To keep it simple and be clear, let us say from the outset that God's intention for us is good.  Always.  We like that belief, but the first time trouble comes to us we get confused.  That is why it is so good that so many of you, in one way or another, asked questions related to the nature of God's will.  We need to think clearly about this before disaster strikes our lives.  We need to know what we believe, why we believe it and what difference it makes in our lives. 

 

            Consider this:  A woman stands in the hospital room weeping.  She says, "If the doctor had only come on time he could have saved my baby.  But I know I must accept this as God's will." 

            So if the doctor had arrived earlier the doctor could have outwitted the will of God???  Is that possible?

 

            The small son of a missionary in India died during a cholera epidemic.  The grieving father says to his friend, "Well, it is the will of God. That's all there is to it.  The will of God."

            His friend asked him then, "But suppose someone crept up the steps of your veranda tonight, slipped into your little daughter's room and deliberately put a wad of cotton soaked in cholera germ culture over her nose and mouth as she slept.  What would you think of that."

            The man was, of course, appalled.  He said, "I would kill the man.  I wouldn't even have to think about it.  How could you even suggest such thing?"

            "But don't you see," his friend replied, "that is the very thing you are accusing God of doing when you say your son's death was God's will." 

            When a child dies from cholera or from cancer or in some tragic accident, we can call the cause of death mass ignorance, massive foolishness, original sin, bad drains, bad laws or communal carelessness, but we cannot call it the will of God. 

 

It is not the will of God that even one of these little one's should suffer.

 

God, who created the world, looked at his creation and said, "It is good. It is very good."  That was his intention from the beginning.  Goodness.  We cannot attribute to God something for which a man would be locked up in prison.  God is not evil.  God is not the author of evil.  We need to dissociate from the phrase "will of God" all that is evil, unpleasant or unhappy.  

           

What sort of God, by divine intention, pours misery, unhappiness, disappointment, frustration, bereavement, calamity or ill health out on the children he loves and then asks them to look up through the tears in their eyes and say  "Thy will be done."  God is not sadistic.

 

We have to give up the idea that everything that happens is the will of God.  God IS all powerful.  But when God created us God surrendered some of his power in order to give us free will.  For good or bad, we make decisions that affect our lives, our health and our happiness as well as the lives, health and happiness of others.   This was never more true than on the cross of Calvary. 

I have heard it said again and again that it was God's will for Christ to come and die.  I want to challenge that view today.  Was it God's intention from the beginning that Jesus should go to the Cross?  The answer must be NO.  Jesus came with the intention that men would follow him.  The discipleship of persons, not the death of Christ, was the intentional will of God or God's ideal purpose.  Next week we will look more closely at this and learn about God's will once the men exercised their free will to plot against Jesus and plan his death. 

 

Now, someone may say, "I can't stand to think that this hardship is the result of some ghastly mistake or random chance or just plain evil.    It is easier for me to bear this tragedy if it is God's will."

 

I can understand this, to a point.  But the fact remains that God is good.  God created us to live in love with him.  God is not evil and not the source of evil in our lives.  There is a time and a place to say all things.  When one is standing square in the middle of some great loss or tragedy, there is very little that can or should be said about the will of God.  To suggest that it was God's will for you to get cancer or God's will for child to suffer permanent brain damage or worse in an ATV accident is not consistent with these basic beliefs of Christianity and it certainly is not a compassionate or comforting word to those who are grieving such losses.    Weatherhead says that attributing such heart aches to the will of God is a lie, and belief in a lie will never provide any real comfort.

Imagine building a storm shelter out of 3 pieces of plywood painted to look like stone.  Then the storms come, the winds blow and you discover quickly that your belief that you would be protected in this shelter is shown to be false.  "He who hides in an idea about God that is not true will, in the hour of real need, be left as comfortless as atheism would leave him.

 

Another person might object to this view of God's will by pointing out that some of the greatest qualities in people are made through suffering, therefore suffering must be the will of God.  War makes courageous men of action out of young boys.  Fighting cancer may be the experience that finally teaches us to trust God one day at a time.   Raising a special needs child may teach us the virtue of patience to a degree we have never known it before.

 

The flaw in this :  If we say that the suffering caused by evil is essential because of the wonderful traits and  qualities that we may develop as a result of it, then we are  just a hop, skip and jump to logically suggesting that God needs evil to produce good.  We suggest that God cannot produce men of courage unless an evil like war comes to demand courage of us.  We suggest that when Jesus healed persons he was actually defying the will of God instead of doing it, for he was removing from their lives something essential to the development of their character. 

 

Evil does not create good.  Ever.  Period.  Evil does not make good qualities in us.  Evil may reveal those good qualities and give opportunity for their expression.  But those same qualities may be revealed and expressed as a response to goodness.  Surely this is God's intention.   The greatest qualities of human nature – the ability to love, to create, to cure diseases, to love unconditionally, to care for the physical needs of those who cannot care for themselves, to endure, to rise above, to dream dreams…all these things  are not given birth by evil.  God creates them. They are sometimes revealed by the right reaction of a good man to evil, but they do not have their origin in evil. 

 

As a new mother I was forced to face the reality that my child had a life-threatening heart problem.  It would have been easier I think to face my own mortality, but I had to come to terms with the fact that anything could happen to Richie at any time.  I would be lying now if I told you that I never uttered those anguished "why" questions.  Why my child?  What did I do to deserve this?  Am I being punished?  Are you there God?  Don't you care that we're hurting like this? 

However, I believe I can say to you today with all honesty that I do not blame God for this anymore.  I still don't understand how it happened that both of my children were born with heart problems.  I am ignorant and unable to understand the nuances of genetics and human development that created this situation.   I CREDIT God with medical advances that have saved Richie's life over and over again.  I CREDIT God with bringing into our lives some of the best of the best pediatric cardiologist in the country.   I CREDIT God with giving us a son who can spend a week at Disney World, Sea World and the beach and still says the best part of his vacation was spending time with his family.  I CREDIT God for all goodness I see in Richie, whether he is cooking a spaghetti dinner for his staff and room-mates or mowing our lawn or serving chicken noodle supper at his church.  These things –the good and the lovely things- are God's intentional will for our life as a family for as long as we have to share this life together. 

 

Next week, we will dig deeper to gain new insights into the will of God during times of catastrophe.  But for now, settle just this one thought in your heart and mind:  That God's intention for us is good.  God pours out goodness upon us, much like loving parents desire and offer good things to their children.  And so when you see God's glory reflected in the loveliness of the natural world, look up to your father in heaven and say "Thy will be done."

 

When you hear the words and lilt of a great piece of poetry or read an inspirational story stop, look up to your Father in heaven and say, "Thy will be done."

 

When you hear a marvelous piece of music, stop, look up to your father in heaven and say , "Thy will be done." 

 

When a child in your life makes you laugh out loud with joy, look up to your father in heaven and say, "Thy will be done."

 

When you are touched by the kindness of a stranger or a friend, stop, look up to your father in heaven and say, "Thy will be done." 

 

For it is the good things in life that offer us our best picture of God's will.  

AMEN.

 

 

Burning Questions: In the Beginning… then what

Burning Questions: In the Beginning… then what

RUMC 9/2/12

 

I come to tell you today, that both the evolutionists and the creationists are completely wrong about how life began on earth.  I have seen definitive evidence that it was neither God, nor the big bang and primordial ooze.  Life began about 4.5 billion years ago with … pizza.  Yes, Pizza!  Have you ever left a piece of Pizza in the back of the refrigerator for too long?  It begins to recreate the beginning of life right there in your kitchen…  "My theory is that around 4.5 billion years ago, the earth was bombarded by intergalactic pizzas.  These then provided the ideal breeding ground in which early organisms could thrive and" [i] and voila… here we are.

I would have been surprised if I hadn't received a question about Creation and evolution for the Burning Questions series.  For 153 years, since Darwin published his book Origin of the Species there has hardly been a time when creation and evolution were not debated in scholarly circles and churches, if not around kitchen tables.

I was surprised to learn, however, that today 46% Americans believe in strict Creationism.  That is much higher than I expected.  According to last May's Gallup Poll 15% believe in strict Evolution without God.  32% that God had a part in evolution.  [ii]  It seems like everyone has an opinion.  Why?  Because these are the seminal questions of our existence.

• When did we get here?
• How did we get here?
• And why are we here?

We ask these questions in 100 different ways, but the search for the beginning of humanity, the world and the universe is a universal quest of both science and faith.  It is the quest of both the physicist and the theologian.  That is good, because I want to say today that it takes both the biologist and the Bible to provide sufficient answers for me.  I believe, when science is rightly understood, and the Bible is rightly understood there is no conflict.

 

Yet we have two groups on opposite ends of the rope playing tug of war.  What is the argument, then?  I suspect you know it well, but to summarize the two extremes:

·         On the one hand are learned scientists who say the universe is 14 billion years old, the result of the big bang.  The earth is 4 billion years old and life started 3 billion years ago by completely natural processes.  Life has slowly and steadily evolved into the diversity and complexity that we see today.  Any suggestion that they cannot study, know, and explain the whole process in detail is "ignorant, the dogmatic, and the prejudiced." ^[iii]

·         At the other extreme, there are faithful folk who say the earth is 5,772 years old because they have counted the Biblical generations back to Adam.  God created the world in 144 hours and rested for the next 24.  Any suggestion of an older world or any process not in the first two chapters of Genesis is a threat to their faith.

Those who hold this dogmatically theistic worldview are forced into a corner having to either schizophrenically separate faith from science so they never cross paths, or reinterpret the Bible saying the days of creation were billions of years long, and that dinosaurs appeared and disappeared in day 4. 

The truth according to the Gallop poll is at least 1/3 of Americans (I suspect even more) are somewhere in between these two characterizations.  I know I am.  It may or may not surprise you to know that I love science and as a youth, I thought I would be an organic chemist working for one of the oil companies.  I used to hang out in the physics room instead of going to study hall.  My all time favorite course in High School was chemistry.  Yet, you know me as a man of faith.  I take seriously the teachings of the Bible and the importance of the spiritual life.  How do I bring those two things together in a culture that likes to force us into one pigeonhole or the other?

I believe that neither science nor religion should be afraid of the truth contained in the other.  As Hugh Ross, a Christian astrophysicist wrote, "The work of secular scientists is the friend, not the foe, of Christians.  Their efforts have given us some of the strongest evidences for our Creator, God, and Savior."[iv]

Francis Schaeffer stated it well when he said, "when all the facts are finally in, we will discover that there is no final conflict between the Bible rightly interpreted and the facts of science rightly understood." [v]

I have come to what I want to call a modern Biblical worldview.  Although I credit the many authors whose names I have, over the years, forgotten, this is wholly my personal position, but I believe it is cohesive, and has both theological and scientific integrity.

As I speak, remember I am a Christian, but God gave me a brain and I like to use it.  I am not a scientist, but I love science.

I think it is our job as Christians to turn the world upside down.  So I think the way to approach these seminal questions is exactly backwards of how I listed them before.

The first question becomes, "Why are we here?"  I start there because that is the fundamental question of Genesis.  It is, unfortunately, a question that Science does not address.  That is a question the biologists prefer to leave to the philosophers and theologians.  As people of faith when we read Genesis, what does it tell us?

·         Are we the chance products of mindless evolution; or are we here because God created us?

·         Did the human race rise up from the primordial ooze; or were we intentionally created by the hand of God? 

Genesis tells us clearly, (even if we can't agree on anything else) that we are here because God created us.  By divine Fiat-- that means that by the power of the free will of God saying "Let there be life" we are here.  We are here because God wanted us here!  Not by chance, not by accident, but simply because God wanted us here.

 We are certainly products of natural processes and natural selection.  We are certainly genetically related to the chimpanzee, the koala bear, and the porcupine.  However, there is something special about humanity.  We are created in the image of … (what) the image of God. 

If we don't believe that we are here because of Divine Fiat and to be God's image on the earth; then there is nothing more than time, plus chance, plus a few helpful mutations that separate us from the chimpanzee, the koala bear, and the porcupine.  If that's all we are, then we don't need God because the universe can take care of itself quite nicely without him.  If I can believe that I am an animal, it will be easy to live like a baboon.  If survival goes to the fittest, I can eliminate the weak.  However, because I believe that every single man and woman is a creation of God, and that we are unique because God made us in his image, then I will have an entirely different view of the universe and my place in it.

Why are we here?  We are here because it is God's desire, and because we bear God's image.

The second question is, "how did we get here?"

As people of faith, we read Genesis and it tells us how we got here.  On day one, day two, day three, day four… right?  If that is all we see, I think we miss something important.  What if the meaning of the first two chapters of Genesis is not in the words, but behind them?  In other words, maybe this is not God's daily to-do list, but rather a story of the process by which we came about?  That process, according to Genesis, started with light and matter, and the collection of that matter in dry places and wet places.  The first chapter of Genesis is certainly not written by a 21^st century physicist, but the process sounds a lot like the Big bang Theory?  In fact, it solves one of scientist's major problems.  One of the problems with the big bang theory is what set it off?  (Let's ignore the problem of the first law of thermodynamics which says that mass and energy can nether be created nor destroyed, so where did the matter and energy come from)  Wherever it came from, the Big Bang theory says that all the matter in the universe was in a spot the size of a pinhead.  It should have been the densest black hole of all time.  Yet something overcame natural law, (Big bangers disagree on what that something was, some even saying that the laws of physics did not exist yet.) Nonetheless, something or someone… had to put enough energy into the system that it stopped condensing, and exploded.  Something or someone lit the fuse, it was evening, and there was morning.  And someone called it good.

Bio- poe- ee-sis

The process of evolution is more than a theory in the way that most of us use the word theory.  Microevolution has been observed documented and tested.  Macroevolution, evolution from one species to another has a great deal of scientific support, but I have two unanswered questions.

First, the first life form would have to have arisen from Biopoiesis.  That is from non-living matter.  The very popular evolutionist, Dr. Carl Sagan of Cornell University, figures that the odds of even the simplest life beginning naturally on a planet such as earth would be about 1 out of 10^2trillionth power.  That is astounding.  That is a 1 followed by 2 trillion zeroes.

Borel's Law of probability says that anything with more than 50 zeros is the limit at which one can reliably say something is impossible.  This number is 40 billion times less likely than Borel's limit.  

Noted astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle commented that the chance that higher life forms might have emerged through evolutionary processes is comparable with the chance that "a tornado sweeping through a junk yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the material therein."

That is all true unless… unless just by chance there is an outside force that starts the process, and guides the process, and declares it good.  Is it possible that evolution is part of the process described in Genesis?  I think so.

 

The other question I have, has to do with the second law of thermodynamics.  "All systems if left alone tend to become less organized" (it actually says will increase in entropy) but for our purposes we will say they become less organized or simpler.  Without additional energy, everything in the universe moves from complexity, to simplicity, to random chaos.  Clocks run down, clothes wear out, our bodies grow old, and our hair falls out.  What happens when you don't mow your grass?  It doesn't mow itself.  Your yard turns into a jungle.

  So how is it that a bacterium becomes a more complicated amoeba; and a fish becomes a more complicated bird; and a monkey becomes a more complicated human being?  It can't, according to the second law of thermodynamics, unless that system is not left alone.  Unless there is something or someone saying "Let there be birds in the air, and let there be fish in the sea, and let us make man in our own image".  I don't know how it worked, but the only way I, in my best (albeit simple) scientific mind, can understand evolution is with an outside force adding energy to the system.  I call that outside force and energy, God.  It was morning and it was evening, and it was good.  

As people of faith, we read Genesis and it tells us where life came from what about the primordial ooze of evolution?  I don't have any problem believing that God worked through that primordial ooze.

 

The last question is, "when did we get here?"  That is a relatively easy question.  Reading genesis there is no reference to time.  The Hebrew word we translate as beginning, as in "in the beginning" means a great expanse of time.

We know that human beings have been here for more than the 6000 years the strict creationists give us.  That is not counting anything that came before us. 

My geologist brother would say the world is about 4.6 billion years old and life started 3.6 billion years ago.  That sounds like a great expanse of time to me. That sounds like "In the Beginning."

 

I am no scientist, but I think as Christians our worldview starts with God; integrates the best science we have available, and it returns to God.  Where is the conflict?  There is none, except for those unfortunate few who are too entrenched in their little worldview, either naturalistic or Biblical, to see what they are missing.  For the rest of the faithful and the rest of the science community the conflict just does not exist. 

 

Creationists and evolutionists, and everyone in between, can all agree that putting a man on the moon was one of the greatest scientific accomplishments of the 20^th century.  Those who were involved were the best and the brightest this country had to offer.

On Christmas Eve, 1968, the three astronauts of Apollo 8 circled the dark side of the moon and headed for home.  As their tiny capsule floated through space, they saw the glistening blue and white hues of earth rise slowly filling their window.  In that moment, what do you think those men did?  They did not quote Einstein, Shakespeare, or Darwin.  Only one thing could capture the magnificence of the moment.  Billions of people around the world heard the voice of Jim Lovel from outer space as he began to read Genesis chapter 1: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."  The astronauts read Genesis 1 to a worldwide audience.  In that moment science and spirituality stood side by side in harmony.

 

May you find God no matter where you have come from, and no matter where your search may take you.

 

 

 

---

[i] Mark D. Greene, "How Life Began," Time, 142:8, November 1, 1993 

 

[ii]  Results are based on telephone interviews conducted May 3-6, 2012 with a random sample of –1,024—adults, aged 18+, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. Http://www.gallup.com/file/poll/155006/Creationism_120601.pdf

 

[iii] Horatio Hockett Newman, University of Chicago

 

[iv] Hugh Norman Ross (born July 24, 1945) is a Canadian-born astrophysicist and Christian apologist.Ross has a PhD in astronomy from the University of Toronto and an undergraduate degree in physics from the University of British Columbia. He is known for establishing his own ministry called Reasons To Believe which uses scientific evidence to ague for the truth of Christianity. It promotesprogressive and day-age forms of Old Earth Creationism. Ross accepts the scientific consensus on an old age of the earth and an old age of the universe, though he rejects the scientific consensus on evolution and abiogenesis as explanations for the history and origin of life (Wikipedia)

 

^[v] No Final Conflict: The Bible Without Error in All That it Affirms: Inter Varsity Press / Tyndale / Hodder and Stoughton (1975)