Audio Sermon/Podcast Version
One of those is Holy Communion, which we practiced last week. Another means of grace is generosity with our finances, which is particularly appropriate this time of year. Let me set a goal, a way of allowing God to bless us, a way by which we might learn more deeply what God would have us do with the money God has blessed us with.
As we buy presents this year, we will spend $10 here, $10 there. In some cases, we may spend even a $100 for a present or a set of presents. Let me suggest that when ever we spend a certain amount on presents for loved ones, we set aside half that amount for a donation to help the neediest people in West Virginia. So, for example, if we buy a $100 present for our niece or nephew, we set aside $50 for the needy. And then, when Christmas rolls around, we will collect the money in a special collection which will be sent to the ten Methodist Mission projects around West Virginia in early January to get them off to a good start this year. The money will go to provide food, clothing, budget training, and children’s programs. If we all jump into this, I suspect that we can raise several thousand dollars between our two churches. Remember – Christmas is not our birthday. It is a time for remembering Christ and sharing the gospel. It is a chance to let God show us that giving to the needy helps you come closer to God.
One of the types of people we pastors run into is the person who likes to play word games, who likes to argue just for the sake of arguing, who looks at God’s issues of eternal life and death as just a fun mental game. This is the person who asks you, “If God is all-powerful, can God make a rock so heavy God can’t lift it?” Or “Can God change His mind?” Or, “If God knows everything, can God create a puzzle He can’t solve?”
And, of course, the answer is that God can do all these things – if God wants to, because God created logic, and God can create any form of logic that God wants to – including the ability to resolve paradoxes that are impossible for humans stuck in Aristotelian logic to solve. It’s like playing God a game of checkers – you forgot before you decided to play that God created the board and can rearrange the board if God wants to. God can even win at tik-tac-toe all the time, even though I could play tic-tac-toe in a way that you could never win. If you are a good player, we’d draw most of the time – but God can win, if only because God can outlast us.
Jesus ran into a handful of these jokers one day in our reading from Luke 20:27-38. They were Sadducees. (Audio Gospel)
To find God, we must leave the world’s ideas of success behind and spend time seeking God through the story of His Son.
One of those is Holy Communion, which we practiced last week. Another means of grace is generosity with our finances, which is particularly appropriate this time of year. Let me set a goal, a way of allowing God to bless us, a way by which we might learn more deeply what God would have us do with the money God has blessed us with.
As we buy presents this year, we will spend $10 here, $10 there. In some cases, we may spend even a $100 for a present or a set of presents. Let me suggest that when ever we spend a certain amount on presents for loved ones, we set aside half that amount for a donation to help the neediest people in West Virginia. So, for example, if we buy a $100 present for our niece or nephew, we set aside $50 for the needy. And then, when Christmas rolls around, we will collect the money in a special collection which will be sent to the ten Methodist Mission projects around West Virginia in early January to get them off to a good start this year. The money will go to provide food, clothing, budget training, and children’s programs. If we all jump into this, I suspect that we can raise several thousand dollars between our two churches. Remember – Christmas is not our birthday. It is a time for remembering Christ and sharing the gospel. It is a chance to let God show us that giving to the needy helps you come closer to God.
One of the types of people we pastors run into is the person who likes to play word games, who likes to argue just for the sake of arguing, who looks at God’s issues of eternal life and death as just a fun mental game. This is the person who asks you, “If God is all-powerful, can God make a rock so heavy God can’t lift it?” Or “Can God change His mind?” Or, “If God knows everything, can God create a puzzle He can’t solve?”
And, of course, the answer is that God can do all these things – if God wants to, because God created logic, and God can create any form of logic that God wants to – including the ability to resolve paradoxes that are impossible for humans stuck in Aristotelian logic to solve. It’s like playing God a game of checkers – you forgot before you decided to play that God created the board and can rearrange the board if God wants to. God can even win at tik-tac-toe all the time, even though I could play tic-tac-toe in a way that you could never win. If you are a good player, we’d draw most of the time – but God can win, if only because God can outlast us.
Jesus ran into a handful of these jokers one day in our reading from Luke 20:27-38. They were Sadducees. (Audio Gospel)
There were four major groups of Jews at the time of Jesus – The Pharisees, who were focused upon a strict interpretation of the Law of Moses, acting right and doing right. The Pharisees liked to twist you up, because no matter who good you were, they could always find another way to show you that you’d been sinning. You were always working so very hard to be a good Jew if you listened to the Pharisees. The Pharisees seemed to hate ordinary people because ordinary people sinned so much. Have you ever been in a church with modern day Pharisees?
The second group were the Zealots, to whom begin Jewish was a patriotic issue. The Zealots hated the Romans and people who helped the Romans in any manner. For them, Jewishness was wrapped up in the nation and national symbols. For them, Jewish holidays were first and foremost national holidays. Have you ever been in a church where the American flag and Christianity were too tied up together?
The third group were the Essenes, who were focused upon a personal relationship with God. They had a community by the Dead Sea where the would retreat to and study scripture, withdrawing from the world around them. They hated the other groups because they paid too much attention to the world. Today, we have similar Christians, people of various denominations who become monk-like or nun-like and go off on retreat every few months, people who withdraw from the world as much as possible.
And then, there were Sadducees. The Sadducees were concerned with proper worship, for they were the group that controlled the Temple. Bring your lamb for sacrifice on the proper days, your wheat and barley for sacrifice. The Sadducees were most upset at people who stayed at home on the festival days, who did not come properly prepared to the sacrifices, who tried to cheapen their sacrifices. We have Christian groups today where proper worship is the most important thing, don’t we? And the Sadducees believed that only the first five books of the Bible were sacred, and because of this, they did not believe in a resurrection. That was why they were sad, you see.
A group of Sadducees began to question Jesus with one of those logical traps like I mentioned at the start of this talk. In this case, following Jewish law, when a man died, his brother married the widow. He died and the next brother married her, etc, etc. until seven brothers had taken turns marrying the woman. Then, they were all dead and were supposedly resurrected, and so the question was “Whose wife was she?” This, according to the Sadducees, proved that there can’t be a resurrection.
You can almost see Jesus looking at them with a grin on his face, as if to say, “You guys don’t give God much credit, do you?”
34 Jesus told them, “The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage.
Marriage, he said, is an earthly custom. You can almost see him thinking, “do I explain to them that it’s only because life is so tough on earth that women need husbands and men need wives?”
But Jesus just goes on and tells them:
35 But those who are counted worthy to take part in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage.”
Marriage is not needed in the resurrection. Why?
36 For they cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are sons of God, since they are sons of the resurrection.
Once you are resurrected, you can’t die! Marriage is a way to keep people living longer on earth because it is so hard to work a farm with wooden tools in a land with poor soils without much water with unimproved seeds. If you can’t die, you don’t worry so much about these things. Modern day people, consider what you would stop doing if you weren’t worrying so much about dying?
What would you stop doing if you knew you live forever?......
But what about love? Jesus asks us to love all people. If we lived in a world where people truly loved each other, there would be no need for a special person to love, because we’d all love each other, feel secure in that love, and wouldn’t need the special relationship with a wife or husband, because all relationships would be special. Marriage would not be necessary because the entire Body of Christ would be part of us all. But Jesus is mainly concerned here with proving the resurrection against those who would play logic games with words and laws.
So Jesus goes back to the Book of Exodus, the second book of the Bible, a book the Sadducees accepted as holy scripture. Jesus said:
Moses even indicated in the passage about the burning bush that the dead are raised, where he calls the Lord the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.
Jesus is focusing here on the tense, which is the present tense. The Lord is the God of Abraham and is the God of Isaac and is the God of Jacob. Moses didn’t say, “The Lord WAS the God of Abraham and then was the God of Isaac and then was the God of Jacob.” No, he speaks as if they are all alive – Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob – at the same time, even the same time as Moses.
And Jesus concludes:
He is not God of the dead but of the living, because all are living to Him.”
God exists outside of time. But what does that mean?
Let me use the example of a modern video game. Many of the better modern video games record every move of the game. Then, at the end of the game, players and friends can go back and watch the game again at any part of the game. Players who were in one region of the game can even watch a totally different region of the game’s action. If the original run of the game is normal time, we can say that the players and friends who watch the re-runs of the game are “outside of time”, for they can watch any part of the game from any different viewing angle.
Perhaps this is how God is situated versus our Universe. Since God can see any part of time or space, God is outside of our normal time and space, able to insert Himself into any location in the Universe, from the moment of Creation to the end of the age. For God, the entire Universe is known, from beginning to end. For God, we are all living to Him constantly.
The second group were the Zealots, to whom begin Jewish was a patriotic issue. The Zealots hated the Romans and people who helped the Romans in any manner. For them, Jewishness was wrapped up in the nation and national symbols. For them, Jewish holidays were first and foremost national holidays. Have you ever been in a church where the American flag and Christianity were too tied up together?
The third group were the Essenes, who were focused upon a personal relationship with God. They had a community by the Dead Sea where the would retreat to and study scripture, withdrawing from the world around them. They hated the other groups because they paid too much attention to the world. Today, we have similar Christians, people of various denominations who become monk-like or nun-like and go off on retreat every few months, people who withdraw from the world as much as possible.
And then, there were Sadducees. The Sadducees were concerned with proper worship, for they were the group that controlled the Temple. Bring your lamb for sacrifice on the proper days, your wheat and barley for sacrifice. The Sadducees were most upset at people who stayed at home on the festival days, who did not come properly prepared to the sacrifices, who tried to cheapen their sacrifices. We have Christian groups today where proper worship is the most important thing, don’t we? And the Sadducees believed that only the first five books of the Bible were sacred, and because of this, they did not believe in a resurrection. That was why they were sad, you see.
A group of Sadducees began to question Jesus with one of those logical traps like I mentioned at the start of this talk. In this case, following Jewish law, when a man died, his brother married the widow. He died and the next brother married her, etc, etc. until seven brothers had taken turns marrying the woman. Then, they were all dead and were supposedly resurrected, and so the question was “Whose wife was she?” This, according to the Sadducees, proved that there can’t be a resurrection.
You can almost see Jesus looking at them with a grin on his face, as if to say, “You guys don’t give God much credit, do you?”
34 Jesus told them, “The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage.
Marriage, he said, is an earthly custom. You can almost see him thinking, “do I explain to them that it’s only because life is so tough on earth that women need husbands and men need wives?”
But Jesus just goes on and tells them:
35 But those who are counted worthy to take part in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage.”
Marriage is not needed in the resurrection. Why?
36 For they cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are sons of God, since they are sons of the resurrection.
Once you are resurrected, you can’t die! Marriage is a way to keep people living longer on earth because it is so hard to work a farm with wooden tools in a land with poor soils without much water with unimproved seeds. If you can’t die, you don’t worry so much about these things. Modern day people, consider what you would stop doing if you weren’t worrying so much about dying?
What would you stop doing if you knew you live forever?......
But what about love? Jesus asks us to love all people. If we lived in a world where people truly loved each other, there would be no need for a special person to love, because we’d all love each other, feel secure in that love, and wouldn’t need the special relationship with a wife or husband, because all relationships would be special. Marriage would not be necessary because the entire Body of Christ would be part of us all. But Jesus is mainly concerned here with proving the resurrection against those who would play logic games with words and laws.
So Jesus goes back to the Book of Exodus, the second book of the Bible, a book the Sadducees accepted as holy scripture. Jesus said:
Moses even indicated in the passage about the burning bush that the dead are raised, where he calls the Lord the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.
Jesus is focusing here on the tense, which is the present tense. The Lord is the God of Abraham and is the God of Isaac and is the God of Jacob. Moses didn’t say, “The Lord WAS the God of Abraham and then was the God of Isaac and then was the God of Jacob.” No, he speaks as if they are all alive – Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob – at the same time, even the same time as Moses.
And Jesus concludes:
He is not God of the dead but of the living, because all are living to Him.”
God exists outside of time. But what does that mean?
Let me use the example of a modern video game. Many of the better modern video games record every move of the game. Then, at the end of the game, players and friends can go back and watch the game again at any part of the game. Players who were in one region of the game can even watch a totally different region of the game’s action. If the original run of the game is normal time, we can say that the players and friends who watch the re-runs of the game are “outside of time”, for they can watch any part of the game from any different viewing angle.
Perhaps this is how God is situated versus our Universe. Since God can see any part of time or space, God is outside of our normal time and space, able to insert Himself into any location in the Universe, from the moment of Creation to the end of the age. For God, the entire Universe is known, from beginning to end. For God, we are all living to Him constantly.
How about angels?
There are many people in this world who believe that when we die, our soul floats up to Heaven, where we are given wings and become angels. This, my friends, is a myth, a fairy tale, a lie. It is Hollywood fantasy, a mistaken understanding of death that is part medieval Catholicism, part ancient Jewish myths, and part Christian Science belief modified for the benefit of those who make money off of movies.
No human ever becomes an angel. Angels are the created servants of the House of God. We are God’s children, and while the angels protect us and guide us today, they are the servants. When we reach our maturity, they shall serve us also. It is this future servitude that may explain why Lucifer, the greatest of the angels, fell in rebellion to God and became Satan, the enemy of God and humans.
Flitting around in the sky on angel’s wings is a fun fantasy.
But this ignores the reality of the real resurrection. For the standard belief of Christians since the earliest days is that we are resurrected. It is not just our spirits who come alive again, but our bodies also. For just as there are three parts to God – God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit – there are three parts to every human – our soul, our body, and our spirit.
In baptism, our spirit is taken over by the Holy Spirit, and this gives us the potential for eternal life with God. When we die a natural death, our body decays, our soul sleeps for a time, and the Holy Spirit stays with us, like a pilot light burning, until it is time for the general resurrection. And at that time, the creative power of God the Father, directed by the wisdom of Christ who is God the Son, and pulled together by the Holy Spirit, pulls us together again from all the atoms and molecules of the Universe and we shall walk again in the flesh in front of Jesus Christ, just as Job declared in Job 19:
But I know my living Redeemer,
and He will stand on the dust at last.
Even after my skin has been destroyed,
yet I will see God in my flesh.
I will see Him myself;
my eyes will look at Him, and not as a stranger. (HCSB)
Who was Job? His story is told in the Old Testament Book of Job. He was a man who loved God, who cared what God thought of him and his family, whom God allowed Satan to torment by killing his family and destroying his wealth, all in one day. God even allowed Satan to give Job a skin infection which itched like crazy. For God wanted to teach Satan the lesson that some men will have faith to the end. And so Job’s four friends came to him, asking him how Job had sinned, how he had offended God. But Job maintained that he had not sinned. He held that God must have his reasons, that God must be good, but that Job had also been good. Job held onto the hope, the faith, that in the end,
But I know my living Redeemer,
and He will stand on the dust at last.
Even after my skin has been destroyed,
yet I will see God in my flesh.
I will see Him myself;
my eyes will look at Him, and not as a stranger.
The Book of Job records that God restored Job, with a larger family and even more wealth in the end. And Job faith was rewarded with words directly from God while he was alive.
But when and how will we see God in our flesh? Paul tells us in 2 Thessalonians 2:
Now concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered to Him: We ask you, brothers, not to be easily upset in mind or troubled, either by a spirit or by a message or by a letter as if from us, alleging that the Day of the Lord has come.
In other words, don’t fall for the people who are constantly saying that the end of the world is coming next June 21st or April 10th, or at the next election. (My son points out that the end of the world has been declared five times just in his life!) Paul tells us:
“Don’t let anyone deceive you in any way. For that day will not come unless the apostasy comes first and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction. He opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship, so that he sits in God’s sanctuary, publicizing that he himself is God.
A huge percentage of Christians must turn away from God. I know that studies show that the percentage of people in America claiming to be Christian has declined from 90% to 80% to 65% today. But this is mainly the result of people being raised in families who were Christian in name only, people who confused Christianity with politics, people whose parents claimed to be Christian but rarely or never attended church, people whose parents may have attended church but never had time for Bible Studies, people who thought that being a Christian meant you “believed in God” – and then kept God as a nice idea about a nice grandfather who gave you everything you wanted as long as you tried to be good, even if you had some strong issues you needed to work on.
There are many people in this world who believe that when we die, our soul floats up to Heaven, where we are given wings and become angels. This, my friends, is a myth, a fairy tale, a lie. It is Hollywood fantasy, a mistaken understanding of death that is part medieval Catholicism, part ancient Jewish myths, and part Christian Science belief modified for the benefit of those who make money off of movies.
No human ever becomes an angel. Angels are the created servants of the House of God. We are God’s children, and while the angels protect us and guide us today, they are the servants. When we reach our maturity, they shall serve us also. It is this future servitude that may explain why Lucifer, the greatest of the angels, fell in rebellion to God and became Satan, the enemy of God and humans.
Flitting around in the sky on angel’s wings is a fun fantasy.
But this ignores the reality of the real resurrection. For the standard belief of Christians since the earliest days is that we are resurrected. It is not just our spirits who come alive again, but our bodies also. For just as there are three parts to God – God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit – there are three parts to every human – our soul, our body, and our spirit.
In baptism, our spirit is taken over by the Holy Spirit, and this gives us the potential for eternal life with God. When we die a natural death, our body decays, our soul sleeps for a time, and the Holy Spirit stays with us, like a pilot light burning, until it is time for the general resurrection. And at that time, the creative power of God the Father, directed by the wisdom of Christ who is God the Son, and pulled together by the Holy Spirit, pulls us together again from all the atoms and molecules of the Universe and we shall walk again in the flesh in front of Jesus Christ, just as Job declared in Job 19:
But I know my living Redeemer,
and He will stand on the dust at last.
Even after my skin has been destroyed,
yet I will see God in my flesh.
I will see Him myself;
my eyes will look at Him, and not as a stranger. (HCSB)
Who was Job? His story is told in the Old Testament Book of Job. He was a man who loved God, who cared what God thought of him and his family, whom God allowed Satan to torment by killing his family and destroying his wealth, all in one day. God even allowed Satan to give Job a skin infection which itched like crazy. For God wanted to teach Satan the lesson that some men will have faith to the end. And so Job’s four friends came to him, asking him how Job had sinned, how he had offended God. But Job maintained that he had not sinned. He held that God must have his reasons, that God must be good, but that Job had also been good. Job held onto the hope, the faith, that in the end,
But I know my living Redeemer,
and He will stand on the dust at last.
Even after my skin has been destroyed,
yet I will see God in my flesh.
I will see Him myself;
my eyes will look at Him, and not as a stranger.
The Book of Job records that God restored Job, with a larger family and even more wealth in the end. And Job faith was rewarded with words directly from God while he was alive.
But when and how will we see God in our flesh? Paul tells us in 2 Thessalonians 2:
Now concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered to Him: We ask you, brothers, not to be easily upset in mind or troubled, either by a spirit or by a message or by a letter as if from us, alleging that the Day of the Lord has come.
In other words, don’t fall for the people who are constantly saying that the end of the world is coming next June 21st or April 10th, or at the next election. (My son points out that the end of the world has been declared five times just in his life!) Paul tells us:
“Don’t let anyone deceive you in any way. For that day will not come unless the apostasy comes first and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction. He opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship, so that he sits in God’s sanctuary, publicizing that he himself is God.
A huge percentage of Christians must turn away from God. I know that studies show that the percentage of people in America claiming to be Christian has declined from 90% to 80% to 65% today. But this is mainly the result of people being raised in families who were Christian in name only, people who confused Christianity with politics, people whose parents claimed to be Christian but rarely or never attended church, people whose parents may have attended church but never had time for Bible Studies, people who thought that being a Christian meant you “believed in God” – and then kept God as a nice idea about a nice grandfather who gave you everything you wanted as long as you tried to be good, even if you had some strong issues you needed to work on.
In other words, these folks that have finally announced they are not Christians are simply telling the truth for once, for many have decided that their political beliefs are stronger than their adherence to standard Christian belief. For deep down, they have felt that Christianity is all about being a good person, whatever society meant by that, and now that society has moved from standard Christian belief, they have too. For they were never truly believers in the death and resurrection of Christ to begin with. They never grasped the central importance of that story.
On the other hand, the "great apostasy" is when people who are dedicated Christian believers will turn away from Christ because they will see a man or demon who claims to be Christ sit in a new Temple and declare that he himself is God, and he will not be Jesus Christ.
Paul tells us more, though:
But we must always thank God for you, brothers loved by the Lord, because from the beginning God has chosen you for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and through belief in the truth. He called you to this through our gospel, so that you might obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, brothers, stand firm and hold to the traditions you were taught, either by our message or by our letter.
Salvation is not a simple belief in a god. Salvation begins with the belief that Jesus Christ is the Son of God Himself, God walking upon the earth in a complex manner. Salvation begins when we understand that Jesus died to pay the penalties for all of our sins, that His death was His choice and sacrifice, that his resurrection proved He was and is God as He claimed. Salvation continues as we receive the Holy Spirit at baptism and that Spirit leads us along the path of holiness to sanctification, our setting aside to holiness.
The Gospel, the good news of the story of Jesus Christ, is how we are called to salvation. And we are saved to obtain the same glory that our Lord Jesus Christ has, a glory where people point to us and say “Christ lives in him” or “Christ lives in her”.
On the other hand, the "great apostasy" is when people who are dedicated Christian believers will turn away from Christ because they will see a man or demon who claims to be Christ sit in a new Temple and declare that he himself is God, and he will not be Jesus Christ.
Paul tells us more, though:
But we must always thank God for you, brothers loved by the Lord, because from the beginning God has chosen you for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and through belief in the truth. He called you to this through our gospel, so that you might obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, brothers, stand firm and hold to the traditions you were taught, either by our message or by our letter.
Salvation is not a simple belief in a god. Salvation begins with the belief that Jesus Christ is the Son of God Himself, God walking upon the earth in a complex manner. Salvation begins when we understand that Jesus died to pay the penalties for all of our sins, that His death was His choice and sacrifice, that his resurrection proved He was and is God as He claimed. Salvation continues as we receive the Holy Spirit at baptism and that Spirit leads us along the path of holiness to sanctification, our setting aside to holiness.
The Gospel, the good news of the story of Jesus Christ, is how we are called to salvation. And we are saved to obtain the same glory that our Lord Jesus Christ has, a glory where people point to us and say “Christ lives in him” or “Christ lives in her”.
It has happened throughout the ages to other men and women who chose to follow Christ ever so closely, who sought the means of grace where they could learn about Jesus, where they could receive blessings from God, where they deliberately tried the uncomfortable so they could lean to rely more upon God than upon their employers, their government, even upon their families. They gave away their last money and God restored it to them. They spent valuable time praying instead of doing and God granted their prayers. They sacrificed their spare evenings to visit friends in the hospital and were blessed with the inspiration that comes from watching someone closer to God than themselves.
- The Christianity that Jesus taught calls us to has a standard of behavior more stringent than any Pharisee asked for, for our standard of behavior includes our thoughts, yet Jesus always forgives us when we mess up.
- The Christianity that Jesus taught calls us to make sacrifices more intense than any Sadducee ever thought about making, for we don't sacrifice lambs or goats or cattle, but sacrifice our lives for others.
- Jesus’ Christianity calls for a patriotism more intense than any Zealot, for it is the patriotism for God's Kingdom that calls for the defeat of all evil, and the love of all good, no matter the country of origin.
- And Jesus’ Christianity calls us for a closer walk with God than any Essene had, for it calls for us to accept God’s Holy Spirit inside us, listening to that still small voice every day, indeed, every hour.
And Jesus loved all people. All people. He asks us to find God and love God – as well as all people.
To find God, we must leave the world’s ideas of success behind and spend time seeking God through the story of His Son.
- We must go beyond the front porch of Christianity and follow Jesus into His home made from fine scripture and the gossamer strands of prayers said.
- We must follow Jesus into the workshed behind the house where He has made you the fine chair made from the tree of life.
- We must follow Him into His garden where He has set up the special view of the white dove’s nest and the blood-red poppies that only His closest friends are shown.
- We must try on the crown of thorns and carry the cross to feel the pain and the weight that He felt and carried so we can enjoy his fish cooked over red-hot coals on the lakeshore, and listen to Him talk about the joys of fishing for men and women.
- We must deeply understand the joy of sacrifice for others that made Him go to the cross, the great sadness of the first garden, and the joy and wonder of the resurrection that He experienced that first Easter morning.
- We will not learn these things here on the front porch of His home. We must enter His home of our own choice, our desire to learn more of God, our wish to know the deepest secrets of Jesus.
But this is a choice. Those who choose to follow Jesus completely will find they cannot turn back. As if we would ever want to turn back from the greatest beauty in all creation.
And so, expect Christ one day. Expect the physical resurrection of your body one day. You will walk once again and see God in your flesh. But also expect a great impostor of Christ one day. Learn to listen to the Holy Spirit and read your Holy Scripture, that you may become sanctified and not deceived.
And so, expect Christ one day. Expect the physical resurrection of your body one day. You will walk once again and see God in your flesh. But also expect a great impostor of Christ one day. Learn to listen to the Holy Spirit and read your Holy Scripture, that you may become sanctified and not deceived.
Practice your Christianity by loving others, doing acts of loving kindness, by giving to others, and most of all, by teaching others the Good News about Jesus Christ.
And you will obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ, oh saint of God. Let the love of Christ and others fill your heart and life, beginning today. Become the Body of Christ, and say once more, as Job did:
But I know my living Redeemer,
and He will stand on the dust at last.
Even after my skin has been destroyed,
yet I will see God in my flesh.
I will see Him myself;
my eyes will look at Him, and not as a stranger.
My heart longs within me.
And you will obtain the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ.
And you will obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ, oh saint of God. Let the love of Christ and others fill your heart and life, beginning today. Become the Body of Christ, and say once more, as Job did:
But I know my living Redeemer,
and He will stand on the dust at last.
Even after my skin has been destroyed,
yet I will see God in my flesh.
I will see Him myself;
my eyes will look at Him, and not as a stranger.
My heart longs within me.
And you will obtain the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ.
