The Gospel According to Calvin & Hobbs

Good afternoon, everyone! Get wired up here. Good afternoon. Good to see all of you and everyone from the areas of Terre Haute and Lafayette have you in today. We are not quite back to the end of the hall. Maybe next week, when Fort Wayne comes down and joins us, we'll push the boundaries of the wall back there and have a few more people here. But it's always good to get everyone together here in central Indiana for the Holy Days and to renew friendships and get caught up on things of the month, months past, and how things have been going, and your life, and to see all of us a little bit older. Some cases a little heavier, some cases a little thinner, but it's good to see all of you and to be here on God's Sabbath on the Holy Day. Some of you had asked about my father-in-law, Joe Gabriel. He was supposed to have been here today, and we had announced that he had had a heart attack a week ago Sunday. In fact, we didn't know what was going to happen as he was in the hospital. If we'd be over there today or not, and I'd ask Mr. Kubik to be ready to step in today and speak. And if we were not here, and some of you knew about that and asked about it, and he is at home resting well, doing well, he was able to take Passover and go to the night to be observed last night. He had a couple of blockages, but he's...my father-in-law is like an energizer bunny. He just keeps on ticking with so many ailments. And if I have 10% of inspiration from him as I get to that point in life, I'll do just fine. But we appreciate your asking about him and your thoughts and your prayers.

Okay, let's see if this works. The technology is always nice when it works.

I think it does. We don't need to turn the lights off. This is not a full PowerPoint today. I just got a few slides I want to show you here to begin, kind of get your attention, and then you can go back to sleep.

I want to show you...we're going to go to the Sunday Funnies here at the beginning of my sermon here. We all like comic strips. We've had our favorites over the years, and you have yours, and I have mine. This is a defunct comic strip called Calvin and Hobbes, yet one that I'm sure most of us in this room are familiar with, and we've read over the years. Calvin and Hobbes ceased publication and syndication a little over 11 years ago. December 31, 1995, was the last Calvin and Hobbes strip that was drawn. There have been no others drawn since then. There are no Calvin and Hobbes stuffed toys or t-shirts or anything else. The author of the strip did not want to commercialize his product, so when he ended it, he ended it. You could pass him on the streets of Cleveland today, Mr. Watterson, and you wouldn't even know who he is. The only thing you see about Calvin today is if you sometimes pull up behind a pickup truck. You already know what I'm talking about, and you see a little Calvin figure doing something little boys shouldn't be doing in public. Those are bootlegs. Those are not official trademark representations of Calvin. Anyway, this is the last Calvin and Hobbes comic strip that was done. December 31, 1995. I cut it out. I didn't cut this one out, but I did cut one out of the Akron Beacon Journal at the time. I still had it on my desk, and I very often read it and look at it. I wanted to share it with you here today. Keep in mind that it came out on December 31st, so it was in the middle of winter, and I'll just blow up the panels to you. Calvin and Hobbes come out on a snowy day, and they said, wow, it really snowed last night. Isn't it wonderful to Hobbes? Everything, Hobbes says, everything familiar has disappeared. The world looks brand new. Calvin says, a new year, a fresh, clean start.

Hobbes says, it's like having a big, white sheet of paper to draw, a day full of possibilities.

And then they get on their sled, and Calvin turns to his imaginary buddy, Hobbes, in normal times, his stuffed tiger. But as they go out romping through the world in the universe, he says, it's a magical world, Hobbes' old buddy. And then they take off down the hill. The last words from Calvin and Hobbes, let's go exploring. Let's go exploring. I saw that comic strip in the midst of the winter of 1995, and I've always enjoyed all of them. Our boys did, and we bought all their books that they finally came out. I think we have about every Calvin and Hobbes strip that was done, but it was a favorite. Sometimes I hope that he will bring that strip back and do a reprise of it. But I thought this one spoke to me in a number of ways. And when you really stop to think about it, it speaks to the theme of this time of year, a fresh new start, a big, white sheet of paper to draw on. Because, you know, when we keep the Passover every year, when we come out of the Passover service and we go into the Days of Unleavened Bread, we've commemorated the death of Christ, we've observed those symbols, and we've taken the bread and the wine, and we have come under the blood of Christ once again in that rededication and that renewal. And I always feel pretty clean, in a sense, for a little bit of time after I take the Passover. And I know many of you do as well, that we have examined ourselves and we have found a need once again to express that faith in Christ. And we take those symbols and we recognize that we have made it through another year, and in a sense, we have a new white sheet of paper, a fresh start in life for another day or two or three, whatever, before something happens or whatever. But it's a wonderful feeling, if it is a magical feeling in one sense. But the Passover and the Days of Unleavened Bread are a wonderful experience for us as we begin to keep these days. Let's turn over to 1 Corinthians 5, and let's look at what we are told here regarding these days. 1 Corinthians 5. And beginning in verse 7, the Apostle Paul writes the instructions that sum up our teaching and what we do with this today. As he told the church there to purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, a fresh, clean lump, since you truly are unleavened. And by God's grace and forgiveness, every one of us have the opportunity to be spiritually unleavened. For indeed Christ, our Passover was sacrificed for us. Therefore, he says, let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. The Days of Unleavened Bread are designed to help us to see our past, remind us of a few things, and to be a prod to us to walk away from the past. There's always a movement in God's plan. It's always a movement forward. And these days are to help us to understand we have to continue moving away from our past, from the inertia of sin that hold us down, that keep us from really advancing and growing. And we put out the old leaven as we keep the feast of the Days of Unleavened Bread. What is it that God wants us to learn during these days? What is really the practical value of putting out old leaven and eating unleavened bread? It's ritual. To those that don't understand it, it's kind of archaic, Old Testament, legalistic. One gentleman years and years ago told me about when he was...

we were having an exit interview. I didn't realize it was an exit interview as he was leaving the church, but we were talking about the Holy Days. And he said all that unleavened bread business, he said, that's kind of like some old fraternity prank, sounds like. Putting out sin, putting out leaven, not eating any leavened bread during that period of time. And he had a rather caustic look at it, and he kind of likened it to a fraternity or sorority prank in that sense. And again, to a mind that is not converted, not led by God's Spirit, it looks odd, different. You know, flat bread that you would normally just pass by on the grocery shelf. Why would you buy matzos?

Why would you buy these dry things called rye crisp? You don't notice they don't take up a lot of shelf space, but just don't, they don't think the shelf space on rye crisp has grown in 50 years. It's kind of stayed static. You wouldn't normally, but we do, and others do. They symbolize something. They teach us in a graphic way, something about what we are to put out, what we are to come out of. Sin. Changing. Putting out. Putting away. Walking away. And that's what it's all about.

You and I go through a period of time where we will examine our lives during a time such as this, and we will, if we're honest, see things that we maybe saw last year, 10 years ago.

Maybe we'll see a little bit less of it from time to time. There's an old saying, as the twig is bent, so grows the tree. We've all been bent in certain ways by our environment, by the way we were raised, by things that have happened to us, and life has put a notch into our trunk and has shaped our limbs. Some of them may have been cut off in a storm, and we grew a little bit lopsided. Maybe lightning struck us at some point in our life. I have an oak tree on the south end of my house that has been struck by lightning at least twice, since I've owned the house because it knocked out the hole into my gable when it struck and killed about three major limbs on the tree. When I saw that about seven years ago, when it last time it struck, I got to looking closer at the tree, and I saw this streak running up and down the whole trunk that I'd never really looked at and focused on before. I realized that tree was struck another time early in its growth development, and the result is still there. The scar is still on the trunk of the tree where it was struck by lightning. We're all like those oak trees that get shaped and bent and fashioned and formed by our environment, by life. Very often that works out for the good. Sometimes it shapes us in other ways, and we spend a whole lifetime in the environment of the church keeping the Days of Unleavened Bread, trying to reshape, trying to straighten out certain things. And it's a lifelong project. It's an important one. It's called change, or it's called repentance. It's called putting out sin, putting on the new man. We're familiar with these phrases. We see them from Ephesians and Colossians, and we see it right here in 1 Corinthians, and we understand it as part of the story of Israel from the past. We see it as part of the story of the church today, and if we look very carefully, we see it as our story. Putting out, putting out the old, and putting on the new. And it's called change. What I want to get into today, and what I really want to leave you, is with an understanding of one thing, and that is the foundation for change.

I'm not going to give you seven points on changing. You can find that in a number of books that you probably already have on your shelf. Stephen Covey can give you seven habits to develop. Somebody else can give you eight. Someone else can put another book together and come up with 12.

Things to change, things to develop, points on success, this and that, and they're all over the place. I'm not going there today, but I want to talk about the foundation for any change that we would make. For any growth that we would make, that would demonstrate the spirit of God in our lives. I want to leave that with you today, what that foundation is, as we will walk through a number of the scriptures. When we look at the history of Israel from the scriptures, as we know the Passover and Days of Unleavened Bread began when they were in Egypt, and they left Egypt at midnight under a great deal of duress and stress with the death angel having passed over. They swiped the blood across their door post and they left in haste and they began that exodus. But they left. They didn't leave themselves. They took themselves. They took who they were. They took their nature, and again, the way they'd been shaped in slavery. They took that with them, and they had to live with that the rest of their lives, as we see in the example within the scriptures. In Psalm 78, you can turn there and just look at a little bit of the history of that, as it's told here in Psalm 78.

In the beginning of verse 19, we'll just look at a few verses here. They spoke against God. They said, Can God prepare a table in the wilderness? Behold, He struck the rock so that the waters gushed out and the streams overflowed. And then they asked, Can He give bread also? Can He provide meat for His people? Therefore, the Lord heard this and was furious, and the fire was kindled against Jacob, and anger also came up against Israel because they did not believe in God and did not trust in His salvation.

And it goes on to talk more of this, how in verse 26 He caused an east wind to blow in the heavens, and by His power He brought in the south wind. And down in verse 32, in spite of all of this, in spite of all of His interventions and His miracles and what He provided, they still sinned and did not believe in His wondrous works.

Therefore, there are days He consumed in futility and their years in fear. And then down in verse 42, it says, They did not remember His power the day when He redeemed them from the enemy. They did not remember His power. It's easy for us to look back at the story of Israel and criticize them and say, How could they have failed and messed up?

If I'd seen a whole body of water part in front of me like that, I'd believe, well, we probably would. For five minutes, for five hours, maybe five days, and then something else would come in and we'd be just like Israelites. I don't know that we would be any different. The point is, verse 42, they didn't remember the power of God. They didn't focus on that. In Acts 7, Stephen gives another account of the children of Israel, a thumbnail sketch of the history of Israel.

Several of them are given throughout the scriptures. Here in Acts 7, verse 37, jump right into the middle of his sermon to the Sanhedrin, the one that got him stoned. Stephen was a one-sermon wonder. He gave one sermon and that was it. But it's been stronger than any sermon I've ever given. It was written down and it works for us all through the years to this very day. But in verse 37, this is that Moses who said to the church of Israel, The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brethren him you shall hear.

This is he who was in the congregation in the wilderness with the angel who spoke to him on Mount Sinai with their fathers, the one who received the living oracles to give us. Verse 39, whom our fathers would not obey but rejected. And in their hearts, they turned back to Egypt. That last phrase in verse 39 is one to focus on.

In their hearts, they turned back to Egypt. You know the story, they never turned back physically and went back into Egypt. They wanted to, but they didn't. They kept going or they kept going around in circles for all those years. But Stephen says in their heart, they went back, which means for many of them they never left Egypt in their heart. But it was right in here. The very depth of their being and their thoughts and their conscious awareness.

They did not in their heart really leave it. They turned back to Egypt in their heart. That's where all the emotions begin. That's where all the words begin. That's where all the actions originate in our heart. In verse 51, it says, you stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears. You always resist the Holy Spirit as your fathers did. So do you. So they resisted the working of the Holy Spirit as it was working externally among them. Not in the same way that it works in us, but they saw its manifestation.

They saw the manifestation of the power of God and they just resisted it. They could not get beyond that. But what Stephen says about their heart is what's interesting to focus on. Because when we go forward to Hebrews chapter 8, we find the real trucks of our relationship with God today far different from that which Israel had.

Hebrews chapter 8 tells a different story about God's relationship. We know these verses as it describes the New Covenant. In verse 7, Hebrews 8 and verse 7, Paul writes that if that first covenant had been faultless, then no place would have been sought for a second. There was a problem with it because finding fault with them, the people, he says, Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. And he begins to quote the prophet Jeremiah here. Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt because they did not continue in my covenant and I disregarded them, says the eternal. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel. After those days, says the Lord, I will put my laws in their mind and write them on their hearts, and I will be their Lord, and they shall be my people. None of them shall teach his neighbor, and none his brothers, saying, Know the Lord, for all shall know me, from the least of them to the greatest of them. For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness and their sins, their lawless deeds I will remember no more. Two nights ago, Sunday night, we took the symbols of that new covenant, the bread and the wine. And we could walk out of that room, fully confident, every one of us, that our lawless deeds, our sins of the day, the past week, were forgiven, wiped clean. We had a clean slate, a magical new beginning, a white sheet to begin a new life on. That's God's promise, and that's God's guarantee to every one of us. But he expects us as we go into these days of the love and bread, then to follow through on our part, which is to strive against sin, to resist it, and to work against it. He says that those but sins will be remembered no more. Verse 13 here of Hebrews 8, he says, In that, he says, a new covenant, he's made the first obsolete, and what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away. This is the real heart and core. This is the nexus of our relationship with God and what everything is all about in our relationship with Him and why we do what we do. What is being described in this writing of the law upon the mind and upon the heart is an immersion in the way of God. It literally becomes a part of our nature. This is what God intends. His law, His way of life, becomes a part of our nature. It becomes so much a part of our nature that it becomes, in other words, it becomes natural to do the fruits of the Holy Spirit. Think about the fruits of the Holy Spirit, just to use that collection as a benchmark to help us understand something tangible. Love, joy, peace. Love becomes our natural way of expression. And every word we say, and every action that we take, and every part of our life, it becomes our nature. For joy is the first experience that we have when we relate to someone else, when we hear someone else's good fortune.

When we think of their life, we have joy. When we think of our calling and we think of God, we have joy. We don't have fear. We don't have dread. Joy is our first reaction. Where peace is the natural byproduct of our words, of our relationships, rather than strife. That's what it means to have the law of God written on our mind and on our heart, to where it becomes our nature. And so then the other parts of the works of the flesh, of wrath or anger or envy, those are things that we, in a sense, we have to stop and think about before we may express them. How quick may we be to go to anger over something that's happened? How quick are we at envying something that's not ours? Something that hasn't happened to us?

How deep does it affect us? It depends on how much of a part of our nature it is.

That's really what God is. That's what the Luke Covenant is all about. It is about writing upon our heart, in our mind, the fruits of the spirit, the way of life, so where it becomes our nature. We are naturally patient and we're long suffering with the faults of human nature, our own, or somebody else's. And then when it becomes our nature, then we will have put on Christ.

And we will find it hard to say or hard to do the works of the flesh. We'll have to grasp for them. We'll have to really think about doing them and having them be a part of our life. To where at some point those things would be distant, alien, or unfamiliar with us.

Now, am I describing the ideal? Yes. I hope I'm describing God's ideal of what He wants us to be and what Hebrews 8 here is really describing in terms of the process that begins with us when we were baptized, when we said, yes, Christ, I need your blood to be applied to my life. I need your forgiveness. I need a new start. I need a new life. Begin to work with me.

And whether that was two weeks ago, two years ago, 20 years ago, 40 years ago, it's a process that's still working, still ongoing. And we have to ask ourselves, how much have we really changed? How much is it really? How much do we really change?

A few weeks ago, I was on a trip and had a long layover and I was going through a town that a friend of mine lived in that I hadn't seen in 11 years. I said, come on out to the airport, let's have breakfast. I've got a big layover. And so he stopped at the original house of pancakes and brought in some of the softest, fluffiest French crepes you could ever have. Not until next Tuesday. Can you have them, though? And we talked, caught up for two or three hours. And it was interesting just to talk. Some of the parts of the conversation continued just as they might have 12, 15 years ago. And after a while, I realized, hey, you know, how are the kids? And how about those cults?

Some things change. Some things don't change. Sometimes we can be brought up and realize, hey, maybe I haven't made that much progress in all of this. And I still need some work to do. It takes time. Frankly, it takes many years for all of us. But you know what? It's a lifetime commitment.

You also know that it can be done. It can be done. God says it can be done. That's why we are here to keep these days of Unleavened Bread. I have a very good friend, Paul Kiefer, who's our minister in Germany. Paul and I have known each other for 37 years. We were roommates at college, went in at the same time together, and maintained a very good friendship all these years.

Paul has studied the German language for at least 40 years. He began in high school studying German, continued through college, and then upon graduation, began to work in Germany for the church and the German language areas, and has done so since 1973, with a big brief exception with the years where he was in the Philippines. Today, he is the regional pastor for German speak language areas in Europe. Good friends have been here many times, and we've assisted the work there from our funds and on a regular basis as well. Paul has immersed himself in the German language, and I've watched him over the years with this. It's been very interesting to observe.

As I said, he started studying it in high school. It was his second language. He grew up in Missouri like I did, and English is his first language. But living there, studying it, and editing the publications, translating from English into German, all the publications virtually over the years, and especially in the United Church of God to make that available to the members there, has changed him, I've noticed, in recent years. At times when I'm with Paul, we'll be talking, and he will have to grasp and fumble around for an English word or phrase to describe something that is very common. He'll have to grasp for an English idiom, and it's easier for him to say it in German. In fact, he'll do that. He'll kind of be caught in mid-sentence, and he'll turn to his wife Monica and say, what's that word in English? What's that word in English? And I've noticed that more frequently in the last few years with him, because he didn't used to do that before, but what I finally realized is, and I think you've noticed his English speech patterns change to where they're a little more rigid, they're a little more stilted. Listening to him in English is much different than listening to him in German. He's much more fluent and rapid in German than he is in English, and quite frankly, for an English audience, it may be a little difficult to stay with him, as he will be grasping for words. And what I finally realized is that after 40 years, he has so immersed himself in German, a second language, if you will, a new language, that it's easier for him to think and speak in German than it is for him to at times do it in English. German has been written on his mind and on his heart, is the point, and that happens with people as they study language in that sense. I've noticed that about my friend. It illustrates the process, how the process works. God says he will write his laws on our mind and on our heart, and as that works over the decades, for some of us 40 years and still counting, we begin to eventually take on the nature of God, the nature of Christ. And there are changes that begin to take place. And hopefully, we will begin to see that we are grasping for the old more frequently than we used to. And we're expressing the new, the spiritual dimension of life, peace, joy, love, patience, long suffering. We're expressing that on an easier basis in our life than we are the other works of the flesh. That's how it works. God's Spirit comes into our life to help us become the past. Should I take my... Is it okay on the wireless part of it? You sure?

For those of you that don't know, one time I did have a mic on and Lightning came in through this building and shot across over here. You could see it coming across over there and knocked it out of my hand. That was a wireless mic then. It wasn't? It was wired. Okay.

You're anxious to get a new ministry in here, aren't you?

Won't work, though. Okay. All right. Well, let's hope that this thing passes on over. I knew we were coming in for some storms here as this afternoon wore on. Let's hope that we can get through this and I assume these other lights will come back up. They probably just got tripped up there for a minute. How do you look at your past? That is the key to our looking at the future. I think some, a lot of us have been through a lot of the self-help popular psychology that's taken place that has been meant to heal and to help and to one degree or the other. Those things can provide some help, but sometimes they don't. Sometimes they finally leave you lacking and those books, those tapes, those programs begin to gather dust on the shelf and pretty soon you realize 10 years have gone by since this was the hottest best seller and the best idea that Oprah was entertaining from this author or this psychologist and you wonder, where did the time go? What are we into? So often, the experience can lead to other problems. One of the reasons, one of the keys to our examination of the past is the key of forgiveness and that's a spiritual element. We have to forgive each other, we have to forgive ourselves, and sometimes if it's really been rough, we have to forgive God and learn to do that. But the whole process is a matter of learning to come out of and to overcome.

All the examples, so many of the prominent examples of the Old Testament lead us in that direction. Lot coming out of Sodom is one. It was hard in that story to get them to come out.

They had to be nearly drug out of town before God rained down fire and brimstone. We know that Lot's wife didn't really want to come out. She did physically, but then it says she looked back and we know the story that she became a pillar of salt and she's used even by Jesus Christ as a byword in Luke 17 where he said, Remember Lot's wife. Whoever seeks to save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it. And he wasn't talking about the physical life, he's talking about the spiritual inner person that we are developing. He says, If we seek to save that, we are going to lose our life. It is going to overcome us. We have to see the past for what it is. View it through God's eyes and walk away from it. That's what God expects us to do.

If we seek to preserve any part of our past, we will jeopardize our future. If we can deal properly with the past, with the help of God's Holy Spirit, then we can preserve our future and move properly and build on a solid foundation. And that's what we are called to do. This society produces us. All of us have been a lot like Lot, his wife and his children, dealing with circumstances beyond our control. But at some point, we have to learn to not defend it. We need to put it under the blood of Christ and don't look back. We turn over to the book of Ephesians, Chapter 2. Ephesians, Chapter 2. And verse 1, You he made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others. This is a description of what we were like. And so God called us and called us to a different life. In Romans, Chapter 6, Romans, the sixth chapter, this whole chapter is really one for the days of Unleavened Bread. We'll just look at a few verses here.

It's a chapter that would be good for Saul to study during this period of time.

Again, reflect on. Beginning in verse 1, Paul asks, What shall we say, then? Shall we continue in sin that graced me abound? Certainly not. How shall we who have died to sin live any longer in it? Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? Therefore, we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. And that's the new white sheet of paper that we have, a new life, a new opportunity. Baptism, every year renewed in a symbolic sense on the Passover. For if we've been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection. Knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin. For He who has died has been freed from sin. And if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Christ. And then verse 12, he says, Therefore, do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lust. That's why we put this 11 products out as a physical reminder that we have our part in the whole process of letting Christ live His life within us. And as we eat that unleavened bread for seven days, we are reminded that that's showing us Christ's life is to be within us. For seven days, we in essence celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ. We celebrate His life. Again, I will remind us all, as I think I do try to do every year, rather than we don't keep Easter and celebrate that for the resurrection of Jesus Christ. We go a whole lot further. We keep seven days to picture the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Don't ever let anybody tell you you don't keep and observe the resurrection of Jesus Christ by not observing some other holiday. We do. Through these seven days, we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ. We understand what it means. We understand why He lives and how He is to live within us. It goes on in verse 14, sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace.

And here He gets into, you know, that sticky area that for some can be a place they get tripped up. Law and grace. Either or. And it's both. It's both. It's law and grace. It's not law or grace. It's law and grace. You can't have grace without law. And we can't understand the law without grace.

We can't begin to have the law written on our minds and on our heart without grace. And then He goes on, verse 15, What then shall we sin, because we are not under law but under grace? Certainly not. We can still stumble and fall. We still have to deal with our nature. Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey, you are that one's slaves whom you obey, whether of sin leading to death or of obedience leading to righteousness? But God be thanked that though you were slaves of sin, yet you obeyed from the heart.

You obeyed, He said, from the heart that form of doctrine to which you were delivered.

Here is the foundation of change. Here is where we really begin to understand the foundation of change. Couple this in verse 17 with what we read in Hebrews 8 about the writing of the law upon our mind and upon our heart.

If you still are in the habit of chain-referencing your scriptures, how many of us still do that?

Put a little mark in there to Hebrews 8, or go back to Hebrews 8 and tie it back in here to Romans 6, verse 17. Because Paul says in verse 17, you obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine. Doctrine is important. Doctrine is why we're here today on this holy day, keeping the days of Unleavened Bread, because this is a doctrine of the Bible. It is a fundamental teaching of the Bible.

But we're not here out of compulsion. We're not here out of some legalistic compulsion.

At least, I hope not. Are you? How many of you are here out of legalistic compulsion?

Good. We're all here for the right reason, then. We're here because we've obeyed, hopefully, from the heart. From the heart! Because we believe it. Because we love the truth. As Paul wrote in 2 Thessalonians 2, we have a love for the truth. And we love the holy days. We love the Sabbath. We love them for what they teach us about God's love for us. We don't keep them as an end in itself. We keep them, and we keep all of the other points of God's law, because we love to keep them. And it is an expression of our love toward God, even as He's already shown His love toward us, in that Christ died for us while we were sinners, we're told. The holy days, the Sabbath, any of the other points of the law, it's not an end to itself.

We keep those, and through them we learn about the love of God, which shall be brought in our hearts by the Spirit of God. And as Paul says here, we obeyed from the heart. How many of us as parents? How old were we as parents? How many years had we been parenting? How old were our kids? Before we learned the lesson, the big, big lesson of child learning, which is that you've got to get to their heart, and they obey you. They do what you tell them from the heart, because they love you. Were they 17? Heading out the door? And we finally realized we can't control them in a rigid, authoritarian way anymore? Or was it 8, 10, whatever? When did you learn as a parent that you can't control and compel in a legalistic fashion your child, and you recognized that you had to parent from the heart and to the heart, so that they obeyed you from the heart? Your teachings, your guidelines, everything that you had in your family, your household? That's really 17 here is where Paul gets right down to. This is the foundation of change. We obey from the heart. We get that right, then we can read all the other books we want, pick up all the other anecdotes and success points, tips, email letters, seminars, tapes, gurus, whatever it might be, and they can be helpful, and they can click in and help speak to us where one doesn't and the others do. But it's got to be upon a foundation of a changed heart, and that's how God deals with us. No change will be lasting, permanent, and effective, unless it begins in our heart. And we obey from the heart in that sense. That's it. This is the foundation of change. We've become convinced from deep within our heart, our inner man, that the change is necessary to improve our life. To get us out of that hole we keep falling into, every, you know, going down that street, we finally start going down a different street, as that story tells us. And it's necessary to improving our relationship with God.

Many of us have finally come to realize that we can have a change imposed upon us from the outside, and we'll conform. We can be told to do this, and we'll conform.

But unless we, if I can use this little piece of jargon, unless we buy in, we're really not going to believe it. And it certainly won't begin to be written on our heart, and the change will not be permanent. We'll comply until we get our own way, or we get a chance to do it our way, or make a change. How many examples of this have we seen over the years? On doctrine, if people don't come to love the truth, it will not become a part of their life.

They can come through the door and sit in the seats for years and years and years. But if it doesn't become a part of their life, it's just a matter of going through the motions. When the opportunity comes to move away from the teaching, they will do it, and they will do it very quickly. This process of obeying from the heart leads us on to what Paul says here in verse 18. For having been set free from sin, you become slaves of righteousness.

I speak in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh, for just as you presented your members as slaves of uncleanness and of lawlessness, leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves of righteousness, for holiness. Where we may have been compelled into one form of slavery because of being trapped and part of circumstances, the environment.

Conversion changes our mind, changes our heart to where we willingly become a slave to righteousness. And we will lay our life on the line for God, His truth, His word, His way of life, His work, even to what we are called to be a part of. And in the process, we will be slaves of righteousness for holiness. Something that is holy and good. Something that is set apart, sanctified for righteous, godly use and purpose. In today's world, there is something missing. This essence of holiness is missing from today's world. That there are some things that are sacred, that are holy, set apart for special times and use, especially so much in our Western world, is just not understood. And it impacts everything from morality, virginity, sexual conduct, our treatment of our own body, our own life, whether one would inject it with drugs or abuse it with alcohol, without a sense of understanding that the body itself is a temple of the Holy Spirit. But there's a crude, profane quality to life, a culture of death, as it's been called by others, that is so much a part of things today. And there's not a sense of holiness.

And that is a part of the big gulf that divides the East from the West, or at least the Islamic world in one sense, from that of the Christian world or the Western world. Not that they have the corner on holiness. I'm not saying that they do, but it's part of what is the divide in terms of understanding and misunderstanding that is so deep between the two ways that someone would die for what their belief, you know, again, in a crazy wrong way, but they will do that for their belief. That idea, at least, in that sense, is alien to us in the world, in the West. We would not die for our belief today.

Not that we should go blowing ourselves up in that sense, but we can't relate to a mindset that will do that. And yet, that's just a part of the problem that is there. The sense of holiness is missing so much in our world today. What kind of changes do you want? What kind of changes would you like to make in your life? What kind of changes do you really need?

Is it to lose weight?

This is the time, I guess, to make our New Year's resolution kind of a New Year's period for us.

You know, there's lots of physical programs available to help you do that. Jenny Craig, Nutrisystem, Weight Watchers, Shapes, Curls, Bins, whatever they're called.

So many programs, and they come out every January and make a lot of money for a few months. And they do work, and they help. There's many ways that that can be done. Maybe it's to get out of debt. Maybe it's to make more money. I mean, that's making more money is one way to get out of debt, as long as you can manage the more money that you have. Maybe a second job. Just waste it out of debt. You can live by cash only. You can tear up the credit cards. You can live within your means. Spend only what you have. Don't borrow. Don't borrow on a credit card or anything like that. There are programs, lots of good solid programs, full of tips and information to get that done.

A person that wants to change from alcohol abuse and drug abuse, there are a lot of good programs from Alcoholics Anonymous, various detox programs of various length, cost, and effectiveness that facilitate and help people to do that. Using all of those helps, whether it's reading a book, sending through a three-day seminar, or a 30-day detox program, will eventually at some point involve helping a person overcoming a problem, making a choice, and it will help to do that. But inevitably, you will come to a point where some behavior changes have to be made. We ought to make decisions to behave in a different way.

But you know, there are other issues when it really comes to the changes that God talks about. God doesn't deal so much with weight or debt or those things in the Scriptures. The things that He talks about in terms of changes, to turn over to Colossians 3, He gets specific in this area, this particular section. Colossians 3.

Verse 1, He says, If you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, for Christ is setting at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth. We were all raised with Christ in that we were raised out of a watery grave at baptism.

And again, we recommit to that through the Passover service. He said, He died for us, and our life is hid with Christ in God. Verse 4, When Christ, who is our life, appears, then you will appear with Him in glory. And then verse 5, He gets real specific. This is where the rubber hits the road and He starts to stomp on our toes. Therefore, put to death your members, your problems, the things you need to change which are on the earth, fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. Because of these things, the wrath of God is coming upon the sons of disobedience, in which you yourselves once walked when you lived in them. Which we did. He says, But you yourselves are to put off all of these, anger, wrath, and malice, and blasphemy, filthy language out of your mouth. Don't lie to one another, since you put off the old man with his deeds, and you put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of him who created him. So this is where He gets to some spiritual issues that require God's help.

That require the help of the Holy Spirit to really put those things off to where they then are erased from our life, because we have written upon our mind and our heart, by the law of God, with His... the Holy Spirit has written that on our minds and heart, and it is embedded there, and we obey from the heart. That's that big sheet of paper, the big sheet of freshly fallen snow, that we have the opportunity to slide on, to live on, to play on, and to write in our life, and have that written upon our mind and upon our heart.

What is it that we looked at this year coming up toward the Passover service?

What did we see? All of us should have identified something in a moment or a period of time where we had some reflection. What did we see? What's happening in your life right now? We could take just a minute here to maybe do something along that line. What's happening in your life? What's going on in your life? At any given time, a snapshot among God's people is going to show sickness, people struggling with illness, debilitating illness, heart disease, cancer, aging. Just the aging process. I started late last spring. I started putting together some material. I wanted to do a sermon, I thought, on aging. I'd seen a number of articles about it and even picked up a book or two and read a few chapters in it. This might be a helpful sermon to give for the congregation because I look out and some of us are not dying our hair anymore. I had quite a bit of material, spent some time on it over a few weeks. Then one night, I just kind of looked back at it and said, you know what? I don't know that I'm ready to give this sermon. I've got to be ready to deal with my own aging completely and to be able to give what I hope would be an effective sermon on that. But we are aging, aren't we? I don't have to tell you that. Those of you that don't think you're aging, you are. You just haven't reached the point that in your mid-50s or 60s where the things are beginning to catch up to you, you realize the hard way that you can't do those things anymore. Across the spectrum of God's people, there is that. There's transitions.

Kids are leaving the nest, thinking about marriage.

Parents are becoming grandparents. That's a transition, isn't it? Retirement's another transition. Marriage. And at any given time, a segment of us here and there, those are issues that are working through our lives. And they're teaching us various experiences. We're learning a lot as we go through them, as we learn to let go of a child, as they begin to get serious about marriage, or as we deal with an aging parent, and it finally comes to our house. And we deal with our even our own age and our own health. Changes will be necessary to traverse those transitions. Changes in the way we think and look at ourselves, and quite frankly, changes in even how we relate to God, because we will need the help of God's Spirit to get through those things. In Philippians 4, Philippians 4th chapter, Paul gives a key for that in verse 6.

He says, Be anxious for nothing. Be anxious for nothing. Don't worry over much. We're all going to worry, but to the point where it can create stress, anxiety, leads to other problems, that's not good for us. Be anxious for nothing but in everything by prayer and supplication. With thanksgiving, let your request be made known to God.

As we worry through those times of transitions that are taking place within our life, don't be anxious overly much. But he says, in everything, and that means everything going on in our life. Not just the things we choose, not just a part, not just the things we're asked to pray about at church or when a prayer request comes out for someone who's sick. Everything. Everything that's taking place. That would require some thought. That would require us to spend a little extra time thinking it through and talking it through with God. But he says, in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests, let your thoughts, your desires, let it be known to God. And sometimes, if it's really a stressful situation, you just might even spend some time yelling at God. Sometimes Debbie and I will be talking through or working through a certain issue or emotions are worked up and we'll take it to God and she'll come back or I'll come back and say, yeah, I yelled at God about this this morning. And we lived through it. Lightning didn't strike. I think God wants to see us get passionate and worked up over certain things and take it to Him with that type of spirit and thought. The more we take it to Him, sometimes the less we'll take it to others and one another, that may not always be as profitable. But transfer it. Move on. Transfer it to Christ and move on with life and let Christ live His life in us and deal with our problems and moving on. In James chapter 3 is a section that as much as any other section probably really gets to this matter of the heart and works to this foundation of change that Hebrews 8 speaks to. James the third chapter. James is a practical book of wisdom and dealing with things. And in this one section here, beginning in verse 13, I think James really gets to this matter of the the heart being changed by God's Spirit working in us to where we begin to finally put off some of these things that are specifically mentioned here or others we might fill in the blank with. In verse 13, he says, Who is wise and understanding among you? Let him show by good conduct that his works are done in meekness of wisdom. Meekness of wisdom. Now, the commentaries bring out that this meekness of wisdom is poorly translated into the English because there's no English word really to convey the meaning from the original Greek here as to what it is talking about. This is not a meekness even in the sense of what Christ spoke of in the Sermon on the Mount. This is not a weak approach. This is not something that is just letting down. The expositor's commentary says that a better translation might be gentleness. A humility that comes from wisdom, but it's talking about a gentleness that doesn't adequately come across in the English from the Greek. It comes from this word that is translated here, humilat...

meekness. It comes from a Greek word called prautes. P-R-A-U-T-E-S. Prautes. And you'll need to remember that. That's not important. What you do need to remember is what it expresses. It expresses a gentleness under control, a power that is under control through gentleness. And it can be used to describe a horse that has been broken to the bridle and is under control. And yet there is a great deal of power there. But it is channeled. It's funneled, and it's under control. A horse is a very powerful, strong animal.

And when it is broken or brought to a point where then it's channeled and its energy is focused on its purpose and usefulness, it's been trained to submit to the bridle. There's not a resignation. There's not weakness there. It is speaking to a gentleness that is under power. And that gentleness is strength under control, the control of the Spirit of God. This is what he's talking about here. To get to that point where we still have passion, we still have zeal, we still have our energy for accomplishment, passion about various aspects of life, the church, the people, the work of God, the preaching of the Gospel, the fellowship of the brethren. There's passion, there's interest, there's zeal, there's concern. But it is channeled. It's under control, and there's a wisdom about that as that power is generated. And that's what Paul or James here is getting to. That if we're wise in understanding, if there are enough of us standing up within the midst of God's church, then show our good conduct and the goodness of our works to be done in the meekness of wisdom, in this gentleness that is under control. Too often, as verse 14 says, there is the opposite. He says, if you have bitter envy and self-seeking in your heart, which is really talking about selfish ambition, as the margin will bring out, and that's about as plain as it needs to be, a selfish ambition. If you have that envy and selfishness where you, your will, or the will of your group, your party, your section, your team, or you, that's what's most important, and you're going to get for you and yours. It leads to this envy. It leads to this selfish ambition, and it leads to the strife that he's talking about here, because it's in your hearts. Look at verse 14. He says, if you have that in your heart, do not boast and lie against the truth. This wisdom does not descend from above, but is earthly, sensual, and demonic. He labels it exactly in its source and lays it there as of this world, and the spirit of this world. He says, there were envy itself, seeking exist, confusion, and every evil thing are there. So James kind of beats it down pretty small here, and like I said, this one section has been a good one over the years to go back to for me periodically, to be reminded of a few things, because he distills it down into me and connecting it to what is described about the process of the New Covenant, where God's law is being written on our heart and in our minds.

This is a practical example of what God is wanting to do with us and what we should begin to see develop over a period of time in our midst among us, where more of us stand up, more of us collectively work together as wise and understanding within the congregation, within the larger church of God, to where there are more works of wisdom being done, more things being done out of the gentle spirit of wisdom that is described here, where there is power, where there's strength, where there's energy, commitment, dedication. All of the traits that have for decades defined the church of God, continuing to grow and to develop, but harnessed even better and designed to build and to develop unity, harmony among people without envy, self-seeking, or confusion. Those are the wrong fruits. Verse 17 then goes on, the wisdom that is from above, the wisdom that verse 13 speaks of, is first pure, peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy. Sometimes you read a section and one phrase will jump out a little bit more than the others do, and to me, willing to yield, kind of leaps out at me, is a lesson that I've learned over the past year.

If you're going to have peace with somebody, you have to be willing to yield on certain things.

When, again, we're not talking about compromise with faith, compromise with God's law, doctrine, or anything like that, but our own envy, our own self-will, at times we have to come to a point where we realize, hey, this is better to yield. For the sake of peace, just between me and you, I'll yield on this point. And you know what? You find out, life goes on. You have not been diminished one bit. You've not lost anything. You've not lost any ground. You've not lost any stature. It works. It works. To have that spirit and that approach at times and give thanks to God and count it His grace when it comes to our mind, and we finally realize, after knocking our head against the wall and with people and situations, I don't have to do this anymore this way. We don't have to... it's one person I don't have to have an argument with. I'll yield on this point. Try it sometime. It does work. It works because it's God's way. And when it begins to be written on your heart more often, it becomes your natural response rather than self-seeking or self-aggrandizement.

And the fruit, then, of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace. You can't raise a crop of righteousness in a climate of bitterness and self-seeking.

Righteousness only grows in a climate of peace, where there are people who are expressing and demonstrating this meekness of wisdom of verse 13. That's where you will find a harvest of righteousness. May that be the ever-growing seeds that have been planted in some of our lives at this time of the year. May what we have reflected on through the Passover, the days leading up to it, these days of Unleavened Bread that we are now in for all of us, result in some seeds being planted in our lives, in our families, in our congregations, in the larger Church of God. That will begin to grow and to develop into a harvest of righteousness. If they are, if those little seedlets have been dropped, then let's nurture them where we can. Because then we will at some point come to see that we've got a big sheet of paper to draw on, and a day full of possibilities. And it's a good life, and it's a good world within the Church of God. And then we can go exploring in the right way. Have a good Holy Day season. We'll see you next Monday.