Change My Heart

Genesis 9:8-17; Psalm 25:1-10; 1 Peter 3:18-22; Mark 1:9-15

Last weekend, on Saturday, Andy and I went to Morgantown so that he could attend “Merit Badge University”, a day-long event where he could take one of two dozen merit badges offered, which included one he needed to qualify for Eagle Scout. So we left the house around 7 AM with the temperature outside running in the single digits, and drove to Morgantown.

The merit badge course lasted all day. I spent my time eating breakfast, taking a nap, walking around a couple of buildings on campus to see how they’d changed since I was last there, and reading. It snowed. I read for hours. And I watched more snow fall and blow around the campus. You’ll remember that it poured down the snow that afternoon.

Finally, around 4 pm, the classes began to finish. Scouts came to check out. No Andy. 4:30 – no Andy. 5 pm, and still no Andy. Finally, the last class to finish showed up around 5:15, and there was Andy. He got checked out and we went outside to scrap the ice off our little gray Honda Fit and head for Quiet Dell as the sun set over Morgantown – and the snow poured down.

The drive home is normally about 45 minutes. But that assumes that you are traveling at 70 miles an hour most of the way. That night, the snow was still coming down, the ice was sitting on the roads, and the traffic was moving at about 40 miles an hour, sometimes moving at 25 miles an hour.

We drove through the darkness. I gripped the wheel with both hands with a death grip. Tractor-trailers flew past me and their bow wave of wind tossed us to the right. But the lane was narrow since the snow was blowing on the pavement, and I didn’t have much room to dodge. I gripped the wheel tighter.

As we went down the road, the salt spray coated the windshield. It seemed like I had to spray the windshield with cleaning spray every two or three miles. And the salt spray coated the headlights and the road grew darker and darker with each mile.

We approached Fairmont and there was a flare in the northbound lanes, the leftovers from an accident. Another mile – I asked Andy why all the flashing lights – “There is a big truck being pulled out of the ditch by an really big tow truck.”

We kept moving, trying to avoid the ridges of snow and ice on the road. I hate those ridges – when I lived in New Jersey I saw a car hit one one snowy night on the interstate – he was going the other way. His car hit the ridge of snow and it looked like something out of a high speed chase movie – the car’s left side spun upwards and the car became airborne, turning completely over in the air and sliding down the highway on the roof of the car, finally coming to a stop as another car hit the tail end hard in the side and sending the car spinning around a couple of times.

It cleared up – almost – for a few miles. Then, as we approached the six lane near Jerry Dove Drive, the snow on the road grew more intense, just as the traffic increased. Now, none of the lanes were clear – the roadway could not even be seen through the snow. Now, I was driving through the dark, with salt-covered headlights that were little more than marker lights on top of a snow-covered highway, ready to go into a spin at any moment.

I’ve experienced those spin-outs. Once, we went to Canton to retrieve some students that were flying in during a snowstorm and our van didn’t have much tread on the tires. Suddenly, I found myself going left, then right, then l-e-f-t all the way around and ended up in the medium strip in 8 inches of snow facing ongoing traffic. It was NOT a fun feeling. And that was during the daytime.

Now, I was passing Meadowbrook Road driving on an inch and a half of slushy, snow-and-ice with traffic beside me as I headed up the hill in the curve.

And then, I came up over the ridge at Route 50 and the people in front of me slammed on their brakes. I risked it and moved to the left quickly, crossing a ridge of snow and ice. A little left, a little right, but this time the tires caught and I went down the leftmost lane.

Five minutes later, we came to a stop at the bottom of the Quiet Dell exit. The long dark night of travel was over. I playfully spun out as I turned at the 7/11 and drove past the Bastins, and went into the lot. We were home!

I walked into the house, and there was my dear wife, warming dinner, and very relieved to see us safely home. She had been praying all the way.

Sometimes, it seems that our life is one long dark night of our soul, traveling down a slick, tricky road with tractor-trailers right beside us. Every mile you go, you wonder if you are going to be run over, go into a spin-out, slide off the highway, or end up in the ditch, needing to be towed out by God’s tow truck. And the only thing that seems to get you home are the prayers of those who love you.

We are entering the time of Lent, a period of time in the church calendar which is a 40-day time of preparation for the events of Holy Week. Our readings lead us toward Jerusalem, toward the teachings of Jesus in the Temple, and toward His sacrificial death on the cross which paid all the penalties which we have owed God for all the crimes we have committed against Him and His creatures. Today we start with Christ’s encounter with Satan during 40 days of testing in the wilderness for Jesus. Lent is often a dark time.

For we have all committed crimes against God. And those crimes – those sins – keep us away from God.

We have all disobeyed His commands to love Him and to love other people. In our lives we have harmed other people countless times through acts of violence, through words of violence, and through avoiding acts that would have helped others. We have disobeyed God in thought, word and deed.

Have you ever wished someone dead, even for a few seconds? Jesus points out that this is morally the same as killing them. Have you ever coveted something a friend has – a new car, a home, a new phone? This is morally the same as stealing. Have you ever desired a married woman or man you saw in person or in the movies? Jesus points out that your heart has committed adultery. God’s standards of behavior and moral goodness are very high – so high we cannot naturally achieve those standards. But let’s avoid God’s laws and look at human law.

Have you ever driven faster than the speed limit? If so, you have broken the law. You may not have been caught by the state police, but God’s ever-present all-seeing radar knows that you have broken that law, and that you are a lawbreaker.

And God knows that anyone who disobeys, anyone who is a lawbreaker, anyone who commits a crime and gets away with it will eventually commit a crime once again, and then another, and then another, each crime growing worse and worse as the criminal grows older. Can you imagine such a person after ten thousand years? Can you imagine their sneaky, cunning, conniving character?

God can – and does not want to associate with such a person. And so God tossed us out of the Garden of Eden when we became disobedient to God by eating the fruit, the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and we were tossed out of the Garden so we could no longer eat of the fruit from the Tree of Eternal Life, and we began to die. We who were born after the Garden episode also commit these crimes and we are allowed to die, just as Adam and Eve died, so that we won’t live around God and become those warped and twisted, evil-natured creatures that ten thousand years of getting our own way would turn us into.

But God provided us with a way to turn around. As Jesus said, “Repent and believe the Good News!”

If we will turn around, if we will repent – the word literally means to “re-think” – if we will rethink our relationship with God and choose to follow God’s commands, and particularly follow the commands of His Son, Jesus Christ – He will give us eternal life. Our commitment to follow Jesus Christ is all that is necessary for God to forgive us and begin to work with us instead of against us. And when we take the extra step of showing action by becoming baptized, God reaches down, washes away all of our sin history, and changes our heart so we will desire to be good as we begin our eternal life with God.

Why should He do such a thing? For you know and God must know that within a day we will break another of God’s commands and we will once again be disobedient to God.

Because God also knows that there is a vast difference between not caring what God thinks of you and trying to follow the commands of God’s Son. If you are truly trying to follow Christ, to become like Christ, to do the things Jesus commanded, then those same ten thousand years that would have destroyed you and warped you and given you a heart of stone can now become ten thousand years where you can learn and practice and follow Christ more and more, becoming holy and good and angelic in your thoughts, your words, your soul.

Over the last few couple of years, I have heard stories from you of certain saints who used to attend this church, saints that now dance with Jesus. There are the stories told of Oma Witty, who was such a joy to be around, Grandmother Sandy, who had such wisdom, and the British-born Irene Upton, whose laughter was contagious. Such saints are dearly missed, but we will see them again one day.

Those saints did not develop those wonderful personalities overnight. And those who knew them best would say that they still had areas to work on. But they were on the road to a spiritual perfection that we rarely see, improving every year in their ability to walk as Jesus would walk.

Yet, there are also people in this world today who are not on that road at all, and there are still more who are stuck at rest stops along the highway – or even in the ditch. You may be stuck in the ditch. If so, then join us in Sunday School, in Anita’s midweek study, in the confirmation class, or the Sunday evening class to get you back on the highway and get you moving toward the spiritual perfection that is our goal. But today, let’s look at those who were completely off the road, or are not on the road at all.

I know of a man who was directly responsible for imprisoning men and women for no other crime except the crime of telling people that Jesus Christ was the Son of God. Some of these men and women were later executed for this so-called crime. And this man was directly responsible for dragging these men and women from their homes after they were denounced by others. He was a religious fanatic – absolutely dedicated to serving his God and would not tolerate the least bit of disagreement over who that God was. He lived in the Middle East. You may know of him also, for he became famous. His name was Saul of Tarsus – known to us as the Apostle Paul.

As we know, one day Paul was walking on the road to Damascus to find and persecute some more Christians, when a blinding light hit him and a voice spoke to him. “Who are you lord?” Paul asked, and the voice replied, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.” Paul was taken to Damascus, received his sight back a few days later from a Christian who was scared to death of him, and began to preach that Jesus Christ was the Son of God. Paul repented – he re-thought his relationship with God.

A few years ago, there was another man who became famous. Jeffrey Dahmer was a serial killer and cannibal. He raped and murdered his 17 victims. Dahmer was finally arrested and put into prison.

A few months after his arrest, Dahmer asked for and received a Bible. After about two years,, Dahmer asked for and met with a Church of Christ pastor repeatedly. Eventually, Dahmer was baptized, continued to meet with the pastor weekly, and showed every sign of a complete conversion. Six months later, he was murdered in prison.

Today in the Middle East there are men who have decided that Christians are to be murdered, beheaded on public videos. And we wonder why the men of the so-called Islamic State do this. I will tell you, but it will not be the answer you may have thought.

I have pondered long and hard why the Islamic State has chosen the public executions that they have chosen. I first heard of these guys a couple of years ago when they were just another group fighting the Syrian government. They posted a video where one of their leaders took a Syrian prisoner, cut out his heart and ate it on camera. At this point I could see that this was true evil walking upon the earth.

Since then, they have massacred many of the Yazidi, the people of the mountain, who are an oddball religious sect who could actually be said to be Satan worshippers – or to be worshippers of a religion which is a mixture of Islam, Zorasterism, and look toward Enoch, one of the early patriarchs whom you will find in Genesis. Read the Wikipedia article on the Yazidi. It’s a strange religion, so, we think – “These ISIS guys are religious fanatics who only want Islam”.

Then, they murder several American and British journalists and we think “Oh, they don’t like the West – we’ve seen this before”, they consider us to be crusaders who have tried to control their countries, and we go on with our life.

But then they begin to do some different things. They murdered the Japanese and this is not normal, for the Japanese have never done anything to the people of the Middle East. Next, they burn the Jordanian pilot – a fellow Moslem – and the Jordanian air force strikes back.

And now, they have beheaded 21 Egyptian Christians in Libya. Why? Egyptians aren’t the hated Western enemy.

So they’ve killed by particularly brutal means some people that would be considered pagan, at least one Moslem who was fighting them, some Western Christians that they might consider “crusaders” – and Egyptian Christians. Why kill the Egyptians? Killing Christians is NOT part of the commands of Mohammed, except soldiers during warfare. And these were innocent workers, not soldiers.

And then I began to suspect the motives of the leadership.

Did you notice? Those 21 innocent Egyptians were each killed by a different man standing behind them. And while those innocent Christian martyrs – a Greek word which means “witnesses” - will be greeted by Jesus Christ and given beautiful white robes, hell has just begun for those executioners. They are the ones who truly need to be prayed for.

When a man or woman harms another man or woman, it harms their own soul. If you do something which you know deep in your heart is wrong, such as killing an innocent person or brutally harming another person, you will feel shame. And shame is a powerful way of maintaining control.

You see, those 21 executioners will now be loyal. They carry such shame at killing innocent men, that they will never again be able to associate with anyone outside of the Islamic State. They will follow any command, do anything they are asked to do. You see, in the Islamic State, they are greeted as heros. But anywhere else, people who find out who they are will greet them with horror. Because those men know what they have done is wrong in the sight of all gods, in all moral codes, they must put their hope in the so-called Islamic State and its assurances that if they continue the jihad, the struggle, that they will win paradise when they die in battle. It is the only hope they can see.

David, the writer of our Psalm wrote:

3 No one who hopes in you
will ever be put to shame,
but shame will come on those
who are treacherous without cause.

Shame. These men know shame. And outside of Christ’s love, they can never know forgiveness. There is nothing they can do to ever remove the damage that has been done to their souls – unless they come to know Jesus Christ and His Good News that God will forgive all.

And Christ is ready to forgive them. He forgave Saul of Tarsus. He has forgiven many other people who were guilty of terrible crimes throughout history. It is perhaps the core part of the Good News, that Jesus Christ and God will forgive you if you repent and decide to follow Him. God’s forgiveness rate is 100%.

What have you done in your life for which you feel shame? Here, in this place, we find forgiveness. You see, shame comes upon us when we feel that we have done something for which we will one day be punished, when we’ve done something that we personally feel is terrible, when we feel we have broken a moral code that we once swore never to break. We feel shame when we recognize that our moral code is lying in pieces around our feet, and when we feel shame, we see our personal image lying broken and stomped upon – by our own actions.

What have you done in your life for which you feel shame? We all experience this shame to one extent or another. The only people who have never experienced shame are the true sociopaths, the really scary people who have no moral code except “I want” and so it must be right, those who have hearts made not of stone but of inflexible steel. If you have a heart at all, it is a good thing when you say to yourself – or another – “I’m ashamed.”

Our shame affects us deeply. As we recognize our shame, there are two courses that we can take.

Some people attempt to work off their shame and guilt. These people work hard, killing themselves with hard work to try to pay for their crimes and guilt. They may do something directly for the people they’ve hurt – or they may simply try to become someone worthy. We saw this in the movie “Saving Private Ryan”. We find that the captain and the other men died to save Private Ryan, and he worked hard after the war so that their sacrifice would be “worth it.” Are you attempting to earn back the sacrifices someone made for you, perhaps a parent or a friend, to compensate them or someone else for all they once did for you which you did not appreciate at the time? Are you trying to pay back a debt that can never be repaid and you are ashamed that you cannot repay it? Perhaps you have outlived another person. Do you feel guilty that you are alive and they are not? Do you feel ashamed that they did good things for you and you feel that you did not do enough for them?

Other people go through the long dark night of the soul. They recognize their shame and a terrible sense of approaching punishment takes ahold of them. They retreat from the world into a darkness that is theirs to live in, a depression and sadness that comes when they believe their actions will naturally mean that they can have no joy in their world. The long dark night of the soul goes on for years, as they punish themselves for what they have done, and they cannot accept that joy should be part of their lives. Are you in that long dark night, punishing yourself, expecting at any minute to run off the highway of despair and it be the end of everything?

If you are ashamed of something you’ve done – or not done – in this life, then there is a three-step process for recovering from the shame. Perhaps you might want to bow your head.

First, admit the shame. Say to yourself and God “I’m ashamed of ….”and fill in the blank.

The second step is for you to apologize to God. “God, I’m sorry. I wish I hadn’t done it. Will you please forgive me?”

The third step, then, is to hear these words: “In the name of Jesus Christ, you are forgiven!” Take these words as the Holy Spirit speaking through me to you, for that is what these words are. You are truly forgiven by God. God loves you. Completely.

God forgave Paul of Tarsus of the terrible deeds he had done. Christ forgave Jeffrey Dahmer of the horrific deeds he did. And if they choose to come to Him, Jesus will forgive the men of the Islamic State for their deeds. But most importantly, God has forgiven you. God has forgiven you and welcomed you back into His arms. Christ will once again walk with you.

I’ve spent some time talking about how the victims of shame can break that control, how God’s forgiveness can set you free from that control. But I’d like to take just a minute to speak about leaders who would order the atrocities we’ve seen the Islamic State commit.

C.S.Lewis pointed out that when we see great evil, we must remember that the vast majority of the people involved in the evil are not evil themselves – they are just the greatest victims of the evil. Those Christians who are killed by the Islamic State die and go to Heaven, where they will meet with our first martyr, Christ Himself. – those who do the killing lose their souls. But what of those who set up the system?

Throughout history, we see that there is a great evil which moves from place to place around the world. Caligula, Nero, Attilla the Hun, more recently Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot in Cambodia, the initiators of the Rwandan genocide, the Yugoslavian genocides led by Slobadan Milosevic, and the evil in Uganda. Now, we see that the great evil is leading the Islamic State. It is at the top that the great evil persists, it is at the top that the lies about God and Christ are declared, it is at the top that the great deceiver works. The Bible tells us his name is Satan.

The demon that leads the Islamic State is moving us once again toward a great war. The attack on the Egyptian Christians has forced a response from the Egyptian president, a man who is not well liked by his countrymen, a man who teeters on the edge of being overthrown. Egypt is the prize, a country of a hundred million people, which can provide thousands of recruits for the Islamic State. Soon, you will hear the propaganda explaining why the Egyptian president is just a pawn in the back pocket of the “evil crusading West”, and then you will know that the troubles are upon us, when a new great war will be fought, the four horsemen will ride forth, and there will be war once again between the people of God on one hand – Christians and Jews – and the people who are led by hatred and shame on the other side, with many ordinary, peace-loving Moslems forced to make a difficult choice. And we will not escape being drawn into that war.

Pray, my friends. Pray as you have never prayed before that the evil be stopped now by God. Pray for our world and that the hearts of all men and women be changed to follow Jesus. Pray for Christ to return. Pray that God’s glory shine to everyone!

Over the next few weeks of Lent, those forty days – not counting Sundays – when we look inward to prepare ourselves for Christ – we will look inward. We don’t count Sundays because every Sunday is a celebration of the Resurrection, a miniature Easter celebration !

On Sunday afternoons at 2 pm, we will have the confirmation class, appropriate for anyone 12 years or older who wants to understand much deeper about what Christianity and the Methodist Church is all about. On Wednesday Evenings, at 6:30 Anita will be helping you get closer to God and be transformed through deep prayer – speaking to God and listening for God’s response through the Holy Spirit. Naturally, the Pioneer Clubs will continue. And on Sunday Evenings at 6 pm, we will be focused upon answering questions about how to share the Gospel with another and answer their questions about God, Jesus Christ, and Christianity.

Be forgiven – and leave the long dark night of the soul for the light and heavenly joy that comes with the love of Christ.