War in the Household

Jeremiah 23:23-29; Psalm 80:1-2, 8-19; Hebrews 11:29-12:2; Luke 12:49-56

About twenty years ago, I went on a sales call in the Atlanta area. My customer was a machine shop owner who had recently acquired a new cutting laser. I walked into that shop, met the owner, was handed some safety equipment, and the owner proceeded to show me how his new piece of equipment worked.

The laser was mounted above a half-inch thick piece of steel plate. When it was turned on, the laser began to move back and forth over the place in an intricate pattern. After about 30 seconds, a flower-petal shape of the steel plate fell down and hit the floor. The laser clicked off for about two seconds, then came back on. Thirty seconds later, a foot to the left, another flower-petal shaped piece of steel plate hit the floor. And this repeated for the next ten minutes. At the end of ten minutes, about twenty flower-petal shapes had been cut out of the steel plate, and the plate looked like a piece of dough from which flower-petal shaped cookies had been cut with a cookie-cutter.

The owner wanted me to provide him with some sensors to make the laser movement even more precise than it was already, which I happily did. But it struck me how something as physically insubstantial as a beam of light could cut right through that steel plate, with no shavings or lubricating oil spray like a cutting tool would require, none of the large melted blobs that a blowtorch would use, and it worked continuously – only pausing to move from one cut to another. And this was in the mid-1990’s. Something as insubstantial as a beam of light was cutting steel.

And so it does not surprise me when Jeremiah the prophet reports the Lord has said,  “Is not my word like fire,… and like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces?”

Something as insubstantial as a word can cut and burn and destroy the hardest materials. Even the words of one human to another can destroy someone emotionally, can lead a person to despair, can lead a person to murderous anger. A few words chosen carefully and spoken in malice can separate a man and wife, a father and son, a mother and daughter. The speech of a gossip can destroy a family, can wreck a career, can devastate a church. But a few well-chosen words can also separate a woman from her sin, a man from his shame, a boy or girl from a feeling of failure. And these are human words. How much more intense is the Word of God?

In Jeremiah’s report of the Words of God today, God is upset that people don’t recognize that He is both right here – and everywhere else. People speak of dreams that God has supposedly given them – and ignore the true prophets who speak the words of God to the people. Why does this happen?

For some reason, when we begin to touch upon the things of God, people want to turn off their minds and operate completely without touching facts, without reality, overwhelmed by emotion. For some reason – and this goes back into ancient times – everyone believes that they must turn their lives over to experts on everything in their lives except when it comes to God and God-things. When it comes to God, everybody has an opinion which is based upon their feelings. And the less people read the Bible, the more they like their own opinions about God.

This isn’t really true in most parts of life. If someone has a problem with an automobile, something a lot of people have personal experience with, they still study their car engines or they ask an expert car mechanic for advice. If you need someone to put your shoulder back together, you don’t ask your wife to sew it up, but you go to an orthopedic surgeon. If you want a brick fireplace, you don’t lay the bricks yourself. Instead you call in a skilled mason. But whenever a question comes up about God – everybody has an opinion because deep down, most people – especially those who never read their Bibles – most people believe that God isn’t really real, but is a matter of opinion. And they create in their minds the God they want.

And this is what God says. God tells us that people who relay God’s word on the subject are to be trusted, but people who just tell us their own experience, their own visions, their own opinions aren’t to be followed. You don’t need to go to seminary to talk to people about God, but it is really important to use God’s word about God when you want to talk about God!

Go into the field and take some wheat. There are two parts to the wheat. There is the long straw and there is the grain. Both are part of the wheat. Both are found together. Both can be called wheat. Cows can eat either part – and will! Cows can eat the straw. Cows can eat the grain. Cows can eat them both mixed together. But people need the grain!

God says that the straw is what people have to say about God’s word and the grain is the word of God.

In poor countries, everything gets used and reused. In poor countries… some of you may remember the story told by Pearl S Buck about how the Chinese lived a hundred years ago, the novel “The Good Earth”. The Chinese harvested the wheat. They cut down the wheat by hand with sickles and with scythes. They took the wheat and they separated the grain from the straw by hand threshing it. But they kept the wheat. They kept the chaff, the part of the head that surrounds the grain. They kept the grain.

They put the grain in bowls to eat during the next year. They baled the straw and the chaff, and they stacked those bales. Why did they keep those bales of straw? They didn’t have any cattle, they didn’t have any horses, they didn’t have any livestock except a pig and it would eat almost anything. They kept the straw in bales because there was no wood. They burned the straw during the year to make their cooking fires. They were so poor they had no gas, they had no coal, they had no wood, but they had the straw, so they burned the straw to cook their food. The mother fed straw to a fire to boil soup.

God’s word is the grain. What people’s opinions are about God’s word is the straw. It’s only fit to be burned up so you can eat the good Word of God that is the grain!

And in fall, when it was good and dry, before the snow fell, but after the harvest, the ancient people, Pearl S Buck’s Chinese of a hundred years ago, they set a fire in the fields and they carefully burned the wheat stubble that was on the ground because it became ashes and those ashes along with the ashes from their cooking stove and the manure from their pig, when mixed into the soil gave it nutrients and the heat of the fire killed weed seeds and bacteria and so they could then plant the new wheat to grow in good, fertile soil so the new wheat would grow fruitful and bear another harvest and so fire was good! Fire purified the ground and fire fertilized the ground. It was good to destroy the worthless with fire.

Fire.

Jesus said,  “I have come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!

In the old societies, after the harvest, the waste was destroyed by fire so the ashes could become fertilizer for another good harvest. And Jesus said He had come to bring fire on the earth and He wished it were already kindled, that the fire was already burning, that those who were not part of the harvest were already gone, burnt to a crisp! He wanted the fire of the Holy Spirit to take over the earth! So why didn’t Jesus destroy the earth with fire?

He said. “ But I have a baptism to undergo, and what constraint I am under until it is completed!” There were things Jesus wanted to do, there were things Jesus wanted to say, there was so much but Jesus could not do it until He underwent his baptism but Jesus had already been baptized at the Jordan by John so what was He talking about? If Jesus had been baptized at the Jordan River in water already, what baptism did He still need to undergo? I’ll tell you – Jesus had to be baptized in His own blood, the way every Christian needs to be baptized in both water and the blood of Jesus.

The water puts us right with God, but we have to take on Jesus’ blood. He shed His blood for each of us for the forgiveness of sin. We have to accept His blood, to wallow in His blood, to get it all over us because His blood is eternally life-giving, His blood is eternal, His blood is saving. In your mind and in your spirit, let the blood of Jesus be sprinkled over you, let it be poured over you, lay down in the blood and immerse yourself in His blood and understand how it is the Holy Blood of Jesus that is your only hope because He is our only hope.

Jesus is the Word of God. He is the grain. He is the bread of life. He spilled His blood for us! He gave His Body for us! He gave everything for us that we might be able to become like Him and live eternally with the Father in Heaven.

But we would just as soon stay away from that blood. Blood’s too messy! It’s too contaminated. And you know? We know that blood in this world carries danger. Blood has parasites, blood has disease, blood is bad stuff. But not this blood. Not the blood of Jesus. This is the pure blood from the sinless lamb of God. This is the blood that gives eternal life. This is the blood that gives salvation. This is different.

We would just as soon stay away from that grain. We’d rather play with the straws than eat the bread of God’s Word directly. We get freaked out with the thought that Holy Communion is eating Christ’s body, drinking Christ’s blood, some people have likened it to cannibalism.

But that body is the grain-bread. That body is God’s Word – Jesus Christ is the Word that dwelled with God. From John 1 “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

And He came to earth as a peaceful little baby sleeping in a manager. Silent Night, Holy Night. But He grew up. Thirty-some years later, He says: "Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division.  From now on there will be five in one family divided against each other, three against two and two against three.  They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.”
Jesus told us that He was going to divide the world. Jesus told us that He was going to divide families. Jesus told us that He had come to bring fire onto the earth!

We look around at the world today and we see that division. A third of the world is Christian. A quarter of the world is Moslem. A fifth of the world is Hindu. All the other religions and philosophies fill in the remaining quarter of the world. And in this country, about a quarter of the people go to church on typical Sundays, perhaps a third of the people are practicing Christians – the difference is that some people simply can’t come to church but would like to come. About a sixth of the people claim to be non-Christian or some other religion.

And half the people claim to be Christian but there’s no evidence of it in their lives, they don’t read their Bibles, they don’t talk about Christ except to cuss, they don’t pray, they don’t show the fruits of the Spirit, for they are of the OPINION that they are good enough to be saved without attending church because they say they believe in God but don’t want to be part of His Son’s Body. Honestly, it is usually because they don’t know any better, because they’ve listened to the false prophets that speak through Hollywood, that speak on television, that tell them that they can be spiritual, eating the straw but not worrying about God’s grain-word. But if you eat straw and no grain, you die.

And so, Jesus says that He’ll divide families. Some eat straw, some eat grain. I have members of my extended family that have wandered far, far off the path of following Christ, although they’ll tell you they believe in God. They’ve gone off and followed their own pursuits; Some of those pursuits have been very harmful to them, but they follow those pursuits because the world has told them that this is the proper and good and right way to behave. Others have not done anything the world would see as wrong – but they prefer their own pursuits to reading and listening to God’s Word.

We all have family members like that. People who are excellent, smart, wise people about most things, but they can’t see God at work. They don’t choose to see God at work. They are focused on other things.

 [Jesus] said to the crowd: “When you see a cloud rising in the west, immediately you say, ‘It’s going to rain,’ and it does. And when the south wind blows, you say, ‘It’s going to be hot,’ and it is.

The people of Jesus’ day were very practical about most things. But Jesus had a few words for them – and for us.

Hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of the earth and the sky. How is it that you don’t know how to interpret this present time?
The Messiah had come to earth and they did not know it. The last decades of Israel were upon them, Jerusalem would soon be destroyed, and they did not recognize the signs. Jesus will be returning some day and the people today make no preparations. They don’t eat their grain; they don’t read the Word of God.

And so, there is war on earth.

In case you haven’t noticed, we are in the midst of a war between the followers of Christ and the radical followers of a particular branch of Islam. In America, we are in a cultural war between the followers of God’s Word, and those who say “do what is best in your opinion”. On Facebook….I’m glad that most of our political discussions are on Facebook, because I’m convinced that is why this election hasn’t disintegrated into mass violence already. Of course, the techies are probably busy creating a way to reach out through your computer screen and punch someone.

The division is here. The fire that Jesus talked about is here…households are divided, countries are divided, the world is divided. There are those who desire the true grain-Word of God – and those who settle for straw, like cattle. That straw might be a chemical they prefer, it might be money that they pursue, it might be a desire for another’s body, it might be vain pursuits like fashion, like celebrity, like following celebrities. Whatever it is, if it is not grain, but is instead straw, they are soon empty inside and need more to eat. And a diet of straw kills people. It is only fit for cattle.

And our fascination with straw is not limited to people outside the church. What straw do you munch on? How much grain have you eaten recently? When was the last time at home you sat and read a book of the Bible yourself and let it fill you with a life-changing warmth?

The writer of Hebrews talks of all the people who had a deep faith in God and what they endured that they might one day see Christ in the flesh. Those who were persecuted and those who were mistreated. But they had faith, because they had heard the true Word of God, they had eaten grain. Through their actions, they gave a witness to the truth that Jesus Christ brought.

It is such a sad thing that American Christians have often reduced our faith to merely a system of morals and ethics. It is so much more than that, for following Christ is the key to life itself.

When Andy was born, he was born C-section, so Saundra spent some time in the hospital. A man who had been a doctor in his home country of the Sudan was acting to draw blood at the hospital in Atlanta when Andy was born. Saundra talked with him; He told how he had seen the Christians rounded up by enemies, and chained together, they marched off, singing hymns and songs of praise, joyful that they would soon be counted among the witnesses, which in Greek is the word martyr. The man – at that time a 10-year-old boy – said something changed inside him that day, for he knew that what they believed MUST BE TRUE because of their joy, their attitude, their martyr-witness. And so he became a Christian and eventually came to the United States. That group of witnesses made a difference in that boy’s life. And they never told him what was moral or ethical. They just showed him what led to life.

As the writer of Hebrews wrote:

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us,  fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God."

Shall we throw off the world that hinders us and the sin that so easily entangles us? Shall we, with joy, run in the marathon of life, eating the wonderful grain of the Word of God, being filled, following closely upon the heels of Jesus? Shall we stand before Him at the right hand of the throne of God? Or will we simply be burnt to a crisp with the rest of the straw, the empty straw that will kill us like cattle who are slaughtered by Satan?

As Asaph the Psalmist asked in our Psalm:

Restore us, Lord God Almighty;
make your face shine on us,
that we may be saved.