Sunday, June 20, 2010
“How to Lose Your Life”
1st in a Series
LIFE: Upside Down
Teaching Pastor Barry Wingfield
Do you remember as a kid exploring different ways to view the world?
Spinning on a merry go round until you couldn’t see straight?
Wearing 3-d glasses for days after you saw your first 3-d movie?
I remember the “hanging bars” on the playground in elementary school. They were really chinup bars, but after school a friend of mine and I would have a contest to see who could hang up side down the longest without falling off or giving up. The first few attempts were pretty weak, but after several days of practice and developing our technique, we became quite skilled at hanging upside down until the our faces were beet read and we couldn’t get down if we wanted to because we had no feeling left in our legs from the loss of blood flow and we were too dizzy to reach up and grab the bar with our hands and flip over, so we just hung there. After a little boredom, we would talk about how different everything looks upside down! The sky was the ground, people and cars stuck to the “roof” because there was now a ceiling over everything, balls on the playground bounced “down” then stuck to the ceiling, and the kids that came up to talk to us looked really funny and we would laugh at their mouth that was at the top of their heads and spoke with their chins going up! You could see inside their noses and their eyelids closed up when they blinked. They were all so weird! The whole world was weird!
The life that Jesus lived and taught, when compared to the ways others lived life and the principles they lived by, seems very much like a life lived upside down. In fact, many of the things Jesus said were the exact opposite of what most people knew to be common sense approaches to understanding and living life. Jesus teaching, and that of his followers later, was illogical, absurd, contradictory, and seemingly impossible! In summary, he taught a life that to everyone else seems very much UPSIDE DOWN.
There are several in this room who are red-cross certified in first aid or as a first responder. Being one of those myself, and having taken the certification course at least 3 times as an adult, I’m always amazed with the simplicity of the instructions of how to save a life. I’m sure I’m over simplifying this, Kathy don’t take my card away if I miss this, but basically it boils down to three things: breathing, heartbeat, and blood flow. Very simple things can be done to maintain these three systems until professionals arrive.
In an UPSIDE DOWN fashion, before Jesus taught how to save a life, he first taught how to lose it. Three very similar statements by Jesus break this teaching down for us:
Three Upside Down ways to lose your life according to Jesus…
1. 1. Find it
Matt 10:37-39(a) Whoever finds his life will lose it
(Define it on your own terms)
2. 2. Save it
Luke 9:18-24(a) 24 For whoever wants to save his life will lose it
Luke 17:33(a) 33 Whoever tries to keep his life will lose it,
(Spending all efforts on self-preservation)
3. Love it
John 12:20-25(a) 25 The man who loves his life will lose it,
(Loving the life the world offers)
What this means is that a person’s life really can be lost.
We get confused! We see smiling faces on People magazine, TV and movie stars talking endlessly about their “wonderful” lives, even your friends on FaceBook who are constantly trying to “one up” all their other friends by extolling their successes or vacations or parties or whatever… and we begin to believe that they have “found” themselves, that they’re being successful in “keeping” it and that they truly “love” these things because they are what make their lives complete!
We tend to speak about half of the spiritual reality of life: people need to be saved. Yes. Why? Because if they aren’t, then they’re lost. Really lost. Without purpose. Without God. Chasing one fleeting promise or dream after another. Trying to create a life worth living out of momentary physical or emotional pleasures. Believing lie after lie and not knowing it.
If living the wisdom of the world is the way to lose your life, it’s also the way to waste a saved life. (Ineffective for the kingdom, selfish more than giving, displaying anger and resentment and jealousy more than joy and peace and thankfulness.)
Colossians 3:5-10
Even though he comes to us bringing and offering salvation from being lost, he comes to us with a life worth finding and keeping…he still allows us to pursue our own life if we love it more than Him.
Luke 18:18-23
18 A certain ruler asked him, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
19 “Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good—except God alone. 20 You know the commandments: ‘Do not commit adultery, do not murder, do not steal, do not give false testimony, honor your father and mother.’a”
21 “All these I have kept since I was a boy,” he said.
22 When Jesus heard this, he said to him, “You still lack one thing. Sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”
23 When he heard this, he became very sad, because he was a man of great wealth.[1]
• Am I spending most of my energy and time and thoughts on ME?
• Am I falling more in love with this world?
The answers to these questions matter…!! If these answers are YES or even MOST OF THE TIME… then I may be going my own way…!!
Sunday, June 6, 2010
Let the Worshipers Arise
6th in a Series
Preparation
Here’s a dangerous question: Is it possible that we are more comfortable worshiping God than we ought to be? In her book Teaching a Stone to Talk, Annie Dillard worries that we have forgotten how dangerous it is to come into the presence of the living God. She writes:
On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of the conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews.3
In The Chronicles of Narnia, an allegory by C. S. Lewis, the author has two girls, Susan and Lucy, getting ready to meet Aslan the lion, who represents Christ. Two talking animals, Mr. and Mrs. Beaver, prepare the children for the encounter.
“Ooh,” said Susan, “I thought he was a man. Is he quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion.”
“That you will, dearie,” said Mrs. Beaver. “And make no mistake, if there’s anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they’re either braver than most or else just silly.”
“Then isn’t he safe?” said Lucy.
“Safe?” said Mr. Beaver. “Don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? Of course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the king, I tell you!”[2]
The message of this passage, then, is readiness for meeting with God and preparation for the worship of God. What exactly is required to approach the God of gods, King of kings, and Lord of lords?...
Preparing for God’s Presence involved:
1. Consecration (Ex 19:10-11) anything that is “consecrated” has two things happen to it:
a. Separation (make known as different - offerings, Levites, days and even years)
b. Cleansing (this was both ritualistic and behavioral – symbolic and literal – vs. 10)
Just as the temple of Solomon was consecrated from all other structures by these two things according to God’s word, so too are all believers to be consecrated from the world by their calling to be separate and pure: 2 Corinthians 6:14-17
2. Attention (Ex 19:12-15) God used two things to “get their attention” or “get their minds right”
a. Boundaries (I Peter 1:13-16)
b. Abstinence (I Cor. 7:5 – can be a “sexual fast” used to promote prayer.)
3. Patience (Ex 32:1; 33:14-17)
a. Their lack
b. His display
God’s people are called to continually prepare for and continually live in a state of worship.
“The problem with being a living sacrifice is its tendency to get up and crawl off the altar.”
Preparing to worship with God’s people:
1. Set aside time
a. Between Sunday mornings.
b. On and for Sunday mornings.
2. Call your attention to God
a. By removing obvious distractions
b. By listening to Him beforehand.
3. Be patient
a. The Lord moves on His timetable (2 Peter 3:9)
b. With each other
