Upside Down Christmas
Preaching
THE WESLEYAN PREACHING ANNUAL 2001--2002
We spent much of the summer of 1994 "Down Under" in Australia and New Zealand. Naturally, in New Zealand, "down under" is up, since, when you're in New Zealand, you're up and we, on the wrong side of the world, are down. I said I spent summer there - July and August - but there, July and August are the dead of winter, not summer. There, people in the cold South, speak of the conservatism of their tropical "deep north."
It's all very upside down.
Down there, in New Zealand, or up there, or wherever, thumbing through their church's new hymnal, I discovered a Christmas carol, "Upside Down Christmas." In New Zealand, Christmas is the middle of their summer. Christmas is the day everyone goes to the beach. You can't sing, "In the Bleak Midwinter" lying on a bright beach in Auckland. Listen to the carol:
Carol Our Christmas
Carol our Christmas, an upside down Christmas;
snow is not falling and trees are not bare.
Carol the summer, and welcome the Christ Child,
warm in our sunshine and sweetness of air.
Carol our Christmas, an upside down Christmas
snow is not falling and trees are not bare.
Carol the summer, and welcome the Christ Child,
warm in our sunshine and sweetness of air.
Sign of the gold and the green and the sparkle,
water and river and lure of the beach.
Sing in the happiness of open spaces,
sing a nativity summer can reach!
Shepherds and musterers move over hillsides,
finding, not angels, but sheep to be shorn;
wise ones make journeys whatever the season,
searching for signs of the truth to be born.
Right side up Christmas belongs to the universe,
made in the moment a woman gave birth;
hope is the Jesus gift, love is the offering,
everywhere, anywhere here on the earth.
(From the Church of New Zealand Hymnal.
Music by Colin Gibson, words by Shirley Murray.)
Odd, we come to Christmas thinking of the season as the time that sets everything right. Christmas is the time to come home, to return to that time in our memories when all was warm, and good and right, when everything that's come upside down in our lives is set, at least for a couple of days in December, right side up.
Yet in the Bible, Christmas was that time when everything was turned upside down. It wasn't about a loving, family--value mother caring for a conventional child. It was about Mary, an unwed mother, expectant in a most unconventional, upside down way. The message came not through the official, governmentally sanctioned communication channels; it was delivered in song by angels. The good news came not to the learned and the powerful; shepherds working the night shift first got the gospel. Not to the biblical scholars pouring over the sacred texts in Jerusalem; but to Magi, gentile outsiders, pagan astrologers, appeared the star, to outsiders rather than insiders. The babe whose birth we sing lay in a cattle feed trough, not an expensive pram.
When Mary got the news from the angel, telling her that she was going to have a baby, Immanuel, Messiah to bless the world, she sang a Christmas carol. Listen to what Mary sang. It could be called "An Upside Down Christmas":
And Mary said: "My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has been mindful of the humble state of his servant. From now on all generations will call me blessed, for the Mighty One has done great things for me - holy is his name. His mercy extends to those who fear him, from generation to generation. He has performed mighty deeds with his arm; he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts. He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty" (Luke 1:46--53 NIV).
Mary sings of a world turned upside down, of those who are high and exalted being brought low, of those who are poor and hungry being filled, all by the advent of a baby. Mary got her life turned upside down by that angel Gabriel. And then she sang of a child in her womb who was going to dislodge, disrupt, disturb. Later, one of the charges against the Christians, followers of the babe, was, "These people are turning the whole world upside down" (Acts 17:6). So think of Christmas as a time when God began turning things upside down. And consider the possibility that maybe, just maybe, because your world, rightside up, may not be all that it could be ... and consider the risk that you take by coming before the babe at Bethlehem. Consider the risk of a rightside world - or at least what we in our Northern hemispherical prejudice call "rightside up" - being turned upside down. Our Bible is full of stories of folk, folk like Mary, who had their world turned upside down, inside out when they came face--to--face with God.
They had met their sophomore year at one of our information meetings for the Spring Student Mission Team to Honduras. At Duke University, we've been sending three mission teams to this the second poorest country in the Western Hemisphere for some time. Few students go down to Honduras on one of these teams and return as they came.
He excitedly told me that, after they met that night, they had been going out together and things seemed great between them.
"We're going to Honduras together and, who knows," he said, "where it might lead for the two of us?"
So that day, around Christmas time, when I saw him walking dejectedly across campus, I asked, "What gives?"
"Marianne isn't going to Honduras," he said gloomily.
"I'm sorry. I wonder why," I said. "She can't afford the time?"
"No," he said, "Marianne said that her older sister, Clarinda, went down there and it changed her. Made her Mom and Dad furious. Clarinda said she got born again down there. Marianne said she got turned upside down."
Smart young woman, I say, to know that proximity to this manger is a dangerous place to be. Here's a God who loves to invert.
"Oh come, let us adore Him," we sing. We come expecting to meet what we have always thought before we came here. We come, expecting the fulfillment of all our desires, the confirmation of all our prejudices and preconceptions. See? The baby Jesus has a face just like our face. He is cuddly and cute, what harm could there be in a baby?
I must warn you to take care as you gaze into the manger. Beware coming too close to this savior. There is a risk. Merry Upside Down Christmas!
William H. Willimon
Maundy Thursday Noon 1 Corinthians 11:23; John 13:1, 2
The Evil Among Us
Recently, The New Yorker published an essay which concluded that the last victim of Hitler is meaning. We simply have no intellectual capacity to account for such atrocity. When Time devoted an issue to Susan Smith's murder of her two toddlers, it duly noted that Smith was sexually abused by her father, abandoned by her young husband, depressed, suicidal, but the headline still asked, "How Could She Do It?"
Why such darkness among us?
Andrew Delbanco begins his book, The Death of Satan:
A gulf has opened up in our culture between the visibility of evil and the intellectual resources available for coping with it ... The repertoire of evil has never been richer. Yet never have our resources been so weak. We have no language for connecting our inner lives with the horrors that pass before our eyes in the outer world ... We no longer have a conception of evil as a distributed entity with an ontological essence of its own ... Yet something that feels like this force still invades our experience, and we still discover in ourselves the capacity to inflict it on others.
Daniel Goldhagen's controversial book, Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust and my own displeasure with Goldhagen's thesis that there was something uniquely, indispensably German which provides the single, causal explanation for Nazism's cruelties. A host of scholars have responded that Goldhagen distorts the Holocaust, unintentionally degrades its terror by his single explanation. Evil, great evil cannot be so simplified without lying about the evil we're trying to explain.
Now, Stephen King has an answer. Evil has a face, a personality, exists and stalks the earth waiting to pounce. In almost all of King's 46 massive novels, normal folks, just going about their business are jumped by horrible, bloody evil. His Desperation begins with innocent vacationers in the Nevada desert who just happen to wander in to a deserted town where a demon has been roaming about for years just waiting for a tourist to devour. In all of King's novels, evil is random, pointless, unavoidable and, above all, external. As Rabbi Kushner explained it to us pop--psychologically, "Some things happen for no reason," because there are these, in Kushner's words, "pockets of chaos" which just bubble up from time--to--time, wreaking havoc.
Surely one reason why Stephen King, at one point a few years ago, had five novels on The New York Times best--seller list is that King satisfies our yearning to believe that evil, terrific evil must have its source somewhere other than in the human soul.1 See? Evil is supernatural, external, random, unavoidable and not of our devising. King describes Desperation as "a deeply Christian book," presumably because it has the guts to depict the potential cruelty and evil in the world.
But it is not. Not Christian, that is. It is a fairy tale we would like to believe. King tells us the Thing Under the Bed is real, it may get you, or it may not. The main thing to remember: The Thing is not you. Humanity is thus absolved of responsibility. Evil may be real, but it is not of this world, we are its victims, never its perpetrators. King's answer to our most perplexing question about evil, namely, why do reasonable people like us sometimes choose evil over good, lies entirely in demonic possession. The old "the--devil--made--me--do--it" defense.
And yet, my friends, not today, not Maundy Thursday. We gather and face the worst evil to be imagined, namely, the betrayal and murder of God's only Son. We shall this day, this night stare evil in the face and its face shall be revealed as our face, my face, your face. In Paul's succinct recitation of the faith delivered to him, he names it: "For I received from the Lord what I also handed onto you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread ..." (1 Corinthians 11:23). On the night that the Lord Jesus was betrayed. Tonight. Our night. Our night to show our stuff, to live up to our commitments, to show what we are made of. In a way we did. We all forsook him and fled. Look no further for your source of evil. The line between good and evil cuts right through the human heart. The whole story is told by Paul, by Luke, Mark, Matthew as well without reference or recourse to external, demonic explanations. Earlier, at the beginning of Lent, we needed Satan to speak of the temptation of Jesus but now, at the end, in the upper room, no Satanic explanation is required. Evil has an ordinary, every day, human face upon it, our face. Our myriad of little betrayals, and compromises, and infidelities have coalesced here, this night on which he was betrayed by his own disciples.
John, alone among the gospels, tells the tale a bit differently. For his gospel, only a devil could dream up such betrayal of the Son of God. John says, "Now before the festival of the Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come ... The devil had already put in into the heart of Judas son of Simon to betray him" (John 13:1, 2).
"The devil put this into the heart of Judas"? I wish our culpability could be exorcized so easily. No. Tonight we'll need a Savior who is not only able to defeat Satan, but also who is able to forgive us. Amen.
William H. Willimon
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1. Susan Wise Bauer, "Stephen King's Vision," (Books and Culture, March/April 1997), p. 15. I am indebted to Susan Wise Bauer's thoughtful essay, "Stephen King's Tragic Kingdom," (Books and Culture, March/April 1997, pp. 14--17) for much of the material of this sermon.
Maundy Thursday Evening Mark 14:12--52
The Precariousness Of Goodness
The disciples! What a bumbling bunch of buffoons! "Jesus, we'll be there for you when the going gets rough!" they all declared. "You can count on us, Jesus! We're behind you all the way!"
Sure. Scarcely had the hymn ended, in the darkness, a few soldiers, a couple of swords, and that, as they say, was that. They fled. Mark says one fled so fast he ran naked (14:51--52). Peter, "the Rock," crumbled before the accusing maid. We will hear no more of these disciples this bloody, dark weekend as their bit part in the play is over.
W.H. Auden, in his "oratorio," For the Time Being says that if God really has come in the flesh, as a human, then God is now going to expect every human to live a perfect life. Every time we stumble, God will say, "Look, I tried it, I lived where you live, and it didn't bother me! Why can't you be perfect?"
The corrective for Auden's misunderstanding is tonight's story. Our goodness is precarious. He knows full well that we are not finally faithful, forbearing, bold. We are pitiful in our pretensions of moral perfection. Look at us. One moment declaring our firm faith, a moment later scurrying like rats into the dark. Did you not hear the terrible words, "And they all forsook him and fled" (14:50)?
I remember asking a wise old pastor what he had learned about us in his thirty years of ministry. "I have found that people are more victims than villains," he replied.
It's not large, organized, impressive evil that catches our attention in this story of Maundy Thursday. It's the little, banal, ordinary betrayal of people, like the disciples, whose actions do not match their intentions. The soldiers and their swords, Pilate's trial, this sort of official cruelty is common but not too near where we live. It's the scattering of the disciples that gets too close for comfort. This is we ... Not large, major evil. Just little, understandable acts of cowardice and betrayal, as Jesus said of us in Gethsemane. The spirit is willing but our flesh is weak (14:38).
We have a wonderful expression that we use whenever we hear that one of our number has fallen, messed up, gotten caught, been found out, uncovered, indicted.
"There, but for the grace of God go I," we say. And well we should. Except for the grace of God, we have no claim to goodness or courage in ourselves. We are able to stand ourselves only by the grace of God. Our goodness is not simply unimpressive. It is precarious.
When I first met him, we had not been talking ten minutes before he let it be known how deeply he resented, no despised his father. When he was in high school, his father left him and his mother, ran off with some Random, lost his business in the process. He spoke of his father as a weak, unprincipled moral failure worthy of the opprobrium of this, his nineteen--year--old son.
I remembered this when, three years later, as a senior, he told me how he had been caught cheating on an exam. He had vainly tried to cover up his dishonesty and had descended to even greater difficulty. Only through the intervention of his old man had he been spared complete disaster.
"Did you say your father helped you?" I asked. "Feel a bit closer to the weak old wretch, do you?"
There, but for the grace of God.
So much divides us - race, gender, ability, talent. But tonight, at this table for sinners spread, we are one. We couldn't get together on good doctrine, universal ethical principles, or whether AT&T is better than MCI or Sprint, but when the soldiers came for Jesus, we all joined as one and together fled into the darkness.
That, I feel, is a major reason why there are so few gathered here tonight. There are few not only because it's weird to worship at night but because it's painful to hear a story like this one and realize that it's about us. Our goodness is so precarious.
And it is to such as us that he promised the Kingdom of God. He sat with us at table, endured our pitiful pronouncements of fidelity, our rather silly claims of courage. Even as they led him away to die, he promised us a place in his kingdom. My broken body, he said, my shed blood, for you.
On this night, this night of nights, our precarious goodness was trumped by his persevering, persistent grace so that we might venture out from our well--deserved darkness, more sheepishly toward his table knowing, there by his grace we go.
William H. Willimon
Good Friday Mark 15:19--32
The Last Temptation Of Christ
"Those who passed by derided him ... 'If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross.' So also the chief priests, with the scribes and elders, mocked him, saying, 'He saved others; he cannot save himself ... He trusts in God; let God deliver him now....' "
This day, this dark day, the battle raging around Jesus from the beginning breaks open in full strength. As he hangs on the cross, the world mocks him.
"If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross!"
The voices are those of the religious leaders, the scholars, the crowd, and the thieves on their crosses. But you have heard the words before. Remember? On the first Sunday of Lent, at the beginning of Jesus' ministry, Satan, mocks him. No sooner had Jesus arisen from the waters of baptism, the divine voice still ringing in his ears - "You are my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased" - than he hears another voice.
"If you are the son of God, command these stones to be bread. If you are the Son of God, cast yourself down and let the angels save you. If you are - maybe you can't believe it yourself - if you are, then do something to prove it to yourself. Isn't this what religion is for, to turn stones to bread? Power ... to do good. Their parking lot is full on Sundays; it must be the power of God. Since I took Jesus into my life; I feel complete joy and peace always. Power.
If you are the Son of God, why hasn't everyone followed you? If you are the Son of God, then what are you doing hanging from that cross?
You have heard the mob's mocking before, in the voice of Satan, the voice of reason, of common sense and popular opinion, "If you are ... then ..." Duccio painted Jesus' temptation with a dark horned and hoofed figure taunting Jesus, Satan the Accuser. Often Satan's voice is heard from within quietly. Do you wonder if it were so for Jesus that Friday at noon?
There is the voice of God, "You are my Son, my beloved." But in the wilderness, or on the cross, there is another voice, "If you are the Son of God, then ..."
"College can be such a difficult time for young Christians," she said. Concerned mother that she was, she feared for the spiritual wellbeing of her daughter when she went off to college. Such temptation in college!
But as she spoke I thought to myself, "It's not college that tempts us. It's life. The most deadly temptations are not in some college dorm on Saturday night, or in some iconoclastic classroom on Monday, but in the hospital room, on Friday, when the cancer won't heal. It is the late night phone call all parents fear, or the marriage that will not work, or the noonday demons of despair. That's when there is a voice, and maybe it's your own, whispering, "If you are a Christian ... then ..."
"If you are a follower of Jesus, then what are you doing hanging here, limp, impotent, powerless, in pain?"
You know what they expected. Jesus is called "Messiah." Messiah, that is the long--expected figure who will arise in Israel, gather an army, rout the Romans, establish a new and just government, and rule forever. Power. Effectiveness. Success. This is the backdrop for their mocking, "If you are the Son of God ... then where's your troops?"
Whoever heard of a crucified Messiah? As Tom Wright puts it, "It's failed Messiahs who end up on a cross." It's failed religion that doesn't produce results when results are desperately needed. I cried out to God in my distress and yet I just hung there.
I'm saying that the voices, the mocking, "If you are the Son of God ... then ..." was a cry not only from the sneering crowd but even within Jesus' own heart. If he was to share our full humanity, if he was to be tempted as we are tempted, then he could not have been immune from the question. Thus he prayed, "Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me." Then, toward the end, with his last ounce of life, having drunk the cup of suffering to the dregs, his awesome, terrible cry, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"
Thus even Jesus was tempted to ask, as he hung there: Did I misunderstand the voice at my baptism? Was the way I walked, and the things I taught, the path of God, or only my self--delusion? Surely, in his utter misery, he was tempted to ask, "If I am the Son of God ... then, my God, why?"
And we must ask as well. Is Jesus on the cross a failure, a poor, deluded, if well--meaning prophet, or was he a success? Was the cross just one more example of innocent suffering, precursor of Dachau and Bosnia and all the other Golgathas of history?
The crowds, it appears, knew for sure what we have here. A Messiah on a cross, as Tom Wright put it, is a failed Messiah.
But what was it for Jesus? I say it was his last, and perhaps greatest temptation - here at the end to abandon all that he had given himself to, at last to admit that what he thought was the voice and will of God was only delusion and wishful thinking. Like Job, he could have cursed God and waited for sweet death.
He does neither. He just hangs there, as his last ounce of life is squeezed from him through the worst form of torture ever devised, drop by drop, by agonizing drop.
Deep within C.S. Lewis' The Screwtape Letters, letters of a seasoned devil to his apprentice devil, the devil admits that one of the most terrifying things for a devil is to find a human being who, amid terrible torment, with no will left to love or please God, still intends to do God's will - that great darkness when the assaulted believer "looks around upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys" (italics mine). No evidence, no real desire to please God, feeling forlorn, forsaken, and all evidence to the contrary, still obeys. That is what Satan most fears.
That's why we call this Friday good. He was tested, tempted in every way, down to the depths. Yet he did not succumb to the demands of the crowd or even the pleas within himself. He remained obedient, commending his spirit into the hands of God, showing us the way into and through the darkness, toward the God who, though he slays, is still followed in trust, even into the darkness, not out of knowledge of what is going on in the pain, but rather out of trust that God is working in the pain, in the darkness, even there.
This Friday, as he just hangs there saying nothing, doing nothing, is his last and greatest act of divine defiance. This defeat was his greatest victory. And through his stripes are we healed.
William H. Willimon
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I am indebted to Tom Wright, The Crown and the Fire: Meditations on the Cross and the Life of the Spirit (Eerdmanns: Grand Rapids, 1992, pp. 3--7) for the form and basic thrust of this sermon.
The Day Of Resurrection - Easter Morning 1 Corinthians 15
Christ Arose
Introduction
One of the great events in history is the resurrection of Jesus Christ. If Christ had failed to conquer the grave, He would have long ago been forgotten. Without the resurrection, Christianity would be nonexistent. Every truth the Christian Church teaches and believes is validated by the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Paul said, "If Christ be not raised, we are of all men most miserable" (1 Corinthians 15:17a, 19b).
I. If Christ did not rise, He was an imposter.
If Jesus of Nazareth did not rise from the dead, He was a lying, egotistical blasphemer. Unless he fulfilled all of His claims, He was a miserable failure not worthy of our admiration, much less our discipleship. If He did not rise from the dead, He was not the Son of God. If Christ is dead, He is just a man. His greatest claims were meaningless rhetoric.
If Christ did not rise from the grave, His ministry was in vain. He made no attempt to create a sophisticated organization. Neither did He leave a highly trained CEO to organize His followers. He did not leave huge sums of money for His disciples to use in perpetuating His legacy. Following His crucifixion, His faithful followers hid behind closed doors in fear.
In 1 Corinthians 15:17 (NIV) Paul said, "And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins." If Christ is dead, there is no atonement for our sins. If He is not alive, we have no hope beyond the grave and no comfort in the hour of bereavement. If Christ has deteriorated to dust and ashes, we have no hope of reconciliation with God the Father. Without a living, resurrected Christ, we are forever lost.
If Christ did not rise, he was an imposter and His Church does not exist. The irrefutable fact is the Church of Jesus Christ is alive and well. The same Spirit that was in Christ empowers us to follow Him wherever He leads.
II. If Christ did not rise, what did happen?
Numerous unbelievers have tried to theorize what might have taken place when Jesus was buried. Some have declared that the story of the resurrection was a fraud, simply a story made up by His disciples to save face. But one by one the disciples willingly laid down their lives and died for the cause of Christ. Who could believe that so many would go through such great suffering and die horrible deaths for a lie? They could have saved their lives and escaped some terrible beatings by changing their message. The fact is none of them recanted.
Others have proposed that the disciples hid the body of Christ. But the Roman guards made certain that His grave was well protected at all times. At the time of His burial and resurrection, history reveals that no one ever made this accusation. The disciples were far too timid at this point in time to attempt such a daring plan.
Over the decades, some have suggested that Jesus was not dead but that He was in a coma from which He regained consciousness. The Roman soldiers were experts in death, and they never questioned the fact that He was dead. Even if He had been in a coma, He would have suffocated, for the tomb was sealed. At that time no one ever questioned the fact that He was dead.
Some have proposed that when Jesus appeared to crowds and groups of people after His resurrection, these were visions and not really the resurrected Christ. But on one occasion, five hundred people saw Him outside in broad daylight. The disciples saw Him, talked with Him, and ate with Him on various occasions. They also attested to His resurrection with their lives. When 3,000 people were converted two months after the resurrection on the day of Pentecost, they did not question the resurrection because they had been there and knew it was true.
III. If Christ did not rise, what does it mean?
In spite of all the historical and spiritual evidence, why is it that some still refuse to believe? It is because when you believe in the resurrection of Christ, you must believe all that He taught. By rejecting the resurrection, it becomes easy to reject all that He taught. If you deny the resurrection, you deny Christ. If you deny Christ, you must reject Christianity.
This is the reason the Jews rejected the resurrection. They knew if they believed in the resurrection, they would have to accept that Jesus was and is the Messiah.
If you believe that Jesus is the Son of God and that He rose from the dead, it is imperative that you embrace Him as your personal Savior and Lord. You must repent of your sins, surrender your will to Him, and walk in the light of His Word. By doing so, you can have eternal life.
Conclusion
By believing in the Lord Jesus Christ you can have a personal resurrection from sin and death. You can receive hope of eternal life. Because He lives, we also can live forever by believing on His name. "Up from the grave He arose, With a mighty triumph o'er His foes; He arose a Victor from the dark domain, And He lives forever with His saints to reign. He arose! He arose! Hallelujah! Christ arose!"
Thomas H. Hermiz
The Day Of Pentecost Acts 2:1--4
The Effects Of Pentecost
Introduction
The scriptures do not record one conversion between the crucifixion of Christ and the Day of Pentecost. The followers of Christ were in a state of despair and inactivity following the crucifixion. It appears that for two solid months very little happened of spiritual significance. However, after they were filled with the Spirit on the Day of Pentecost, they literally charged out from behind closed doors to boldly preach the resurrection of Christ. Not even the resurrection of Christ had this kind of effect on the early believers. It took the infilling with the Holy Spirit to break them out of their fear and timidity. Once they were filled with the Spirit, the two months of spiritual drought turned into a spiritual deluge. In one day 3,000 people were converted. When the Spirit of God is allowed His rightful place in our lives, there will be vitality and power - not cheap, man--produced energy, but genuine spiritual power and vitality.
Historically, Pentecost will not be repeated; but personally and experientially it can be and must be repeated (v. 39). Everything that the infilling with the Holy Spirit accomplished in the hearts of the believers on the Day of Pentecost is available to us today. There has not been any change in the ministry and power of the Spirit in today's world.
The greatest need in the Church today is to rediscover the power and purity of a fresh, up--to--date, personal Pentecost. This alone will revolutionize an institution that too often is sadly lacking in vision and effectiveness.
Study with me three effects that the infilling with the Holy Spirit had on the New Testament Church.
I. It affected their minds.
Prior to being filled with the Spirit on the Day of Pentecost, they were carnally and worldly minded. Once they received the infilling, they became spiritually minded. They were now blessed with the mind of Christ.
Prior to Pentecost, they were driven by the self--centered desire to occupy lofty positions of power in the kingdom. They were concerned about who would be seated on the right and the left hands of Christ, motivated by selfish ambition.
After Pentecost, there was a dramatic and dynamic change in their mind--set. Instead of being self--centered, they became Christ--centered. Their deepest desire was to lift up and exalt the name of Jesus. No longer were they driven to seek status and prestige. Their concern centered on the plight of perishing souls.
Carnal--mindedness still looms as an enormous problem in the church today. Paul said, "For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Because the carnal mind is emnity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be" (Romans 8:6--7).
Evidences of the carnal mind can be seen in people who are more interested in positions of power within the church than in the power of a Spirit--filled life.
Another evidence is the lack of passion for the evangelization of our world. When one has the mind of Christ, he will be concerned about the lost.
The rebellion against an unconditional surrender of one's all to Christ is another evidence of the carnal mind.
The good news is we can be changed. Just as those in the upper room were changed, we also can be changed. We must surrender our God--given rights back to Him and tarry until we have received the infilling with the Holy Spirit. Do not settle for a cheap substitute, but be filled with the Spirit. The result will be deliverance from a carnal mind and the receiving of the mind of Christ.
II. It affected their hearts.
In Acts 15:8--9, when Peter talked about the Gentiles being filled with the Spirit, he declared that their hearts were "purified by faith."
One of the manifestations that accompanied the infilling with the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost was the sound of the mighty rushing wind. When the wind blows, it purifies the atmosphere. It drives away the smog and the heavy, polluted air.
Today, we desperately need the refreshing, cleansing winds of the Spirit to purify the atmosphere in our hearts and in our churches. Too many believers are still living under the bondage of bitterness and rebellion. Unholy attitudes fill their hearts with unbelief. They are in need of the deeper cleansing of the blood of Christ. It is the work of the Holy Spirit to bring about the cleansing that purifies our hearts by faith.
We hear a lot of talk today about the power of a Spirit--filled life. Unfortunately, we do not hear enough about the purity of a Spirit--filled life. It seems to me that the purity must precede the power. Allow the winds of the Spirit to bring purity to your heart.
III. It affected their speech.
When those in the upper room were filled with the Spirit, they received a new power to proclaim the resurrection of Christ. Starting from a weak, fearful, timid band of believers they became a dynamic force for God that could not be stopped by the world, the flesh, or the devil. They were beaten and thrown into prison, but only death could silence them. They had a message to proclaim. Through the enabling power of the Holy Spirit, they literally turned the world upside down. Christianity spread as if it were contagious.
We must be captured by this kind of internal motivation until we are willing to die for Christ rather than deny Him with our silence. Too often we fail to be the dynamic witnesses God intends us to be because of the fear of rejection. We want the approval of others, and we want to always look good.
If we will empty ourselves and become filled with the Spirit, there is deliverance from a cowardly spirit. The Holy Spirit can give us the courage we need to be witnesses for Christ.
Conclusion
We have many beautiful churches and impressive programs, but until we have been filled with the Spirit, we are not equipped to do the work of God. The reason many have not been filled is because they do not have a passionate desire to be filled. The Word declares that they who hunger and thirst after righteousness shall be filled (Matthew 5:6).
Thomas H. Hermiz
The experience of Entire Sanctification has
enabled me to reach a place of heart purity and
spiritual maturity I never dreamed possible.
It's all very upside down.
Down there, in New Zealand, or up there, or wherever, thumbing through their church's new hymnal, I discovered a Christmas carol, "Upside Down Christmas." In New Zealand, Christmas is the middle of their summer. Christmas is the day everyone goes to the beach. You can't sing, "In the Bleak Midwinter" lying on a bright beach in Auckland. Listen to the carol:
Carol Our Christmas
Carol our Christmas, an upside down Christmas;
snow is not falling and trees are not bare.
Carol the summer, and welcome the Christ Child,
warm in our sunshine and sweetness of air.
Carol our Christmas, an upside down Christmas
snow is not falling and trees are not bare.
Carol the summer, and welcome the Christ Child,
warm in our sunshine and sweetness of air.
Sign of the gold and the green and the sparkle,
water and river and lure of the beach.
Sing in the happiness of open spaces,
sing a nativity summer can reach!
Shepherds and musterers move over hillsides,
finding, not angels, but sheep to be shorn;
wise ones make journeys whatever the season,
searching for signs of the truth to be born.
Right side up Christmas belongs to the universe,
made in the moment a woman gave birth;
hope is the Jesus gift, love is the offering,
everywhere, anywhere here on the earth.
(From the Church of New Zealand Hymnal.
Music by Colin Gibson, words by Shirley Murray.)
Odd, we come to Christmas thinking of the season as the time that sets everything right. Christmas is the time to come home, to return to that time in our memories when all was warm, and good and right, when everything that's come upside down in our lives is set, at least for a couple of days in December, right side up.
Yet in the Bible, Christmas was that time when everything was turned upside down. It wasn't about a loving, family--value mother caring for a conventional child. It was about Mary, an unwed mother, expectant in a most unconventional, upside down way. The message came not through the official, governmentally sanctioned communication channels; it was delivered in song by angels. The good news came not to the learned and the powerful; shepherds working the night shift first got the gospel. Not to the biblical scholars pouring over the sacred texts in Jerusalem; but to Magi, gentile outsiders, pagan astrologers, appeared the star, to outsiders rather than insiders. The babe whose birth we sing lay in a cattle feed trough, not an expensive pram.
When Mary got the news from the angel, telling her that she was going to have a baby, Immanuel, Messiah to bless the world, she sang a Christmas carol. Listen to what Mary sang. It could be called "An Upside Down Christmas":
And Mary said: "My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has been mindful of the humble state of his servant. From now on all generations will call me blessed, for the Mighty One has done great things for me - holy is his name. His mercy extends to those who fear him, from generation to generation. He has performed mighty deeds with his arm; he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts. He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty" (Luke 1:46--53 NIV).
Mary sings of a world turned upside down, of those who are high and exalted being brought low, of those who are poor and hungry being filled, all by the advent of a baby. Mary got her life turned upside down by that angel Gabriel. And then she sang of a child in her womb who was going to dislodge, disrupt, disturb. Later, one of the charges against the Christians, followers of the babe, was, "These people are turning the whole world upside down" (Acts 17:6). So think of Christmas as a time when God began turning things upside down. And consider the possibility that maybe, just maybe, because your world, rightside up, may not be all that it could be ... and consider the risk that you take by coming before the babe at Bethlehem. Consider the risk of a rightside world - or at least what we in our Northern hemispherical prejudice call "rightside up" - being turned upside down. Our Bible is full of stories of folk, folk like Mary, who had their world turned upside down, inside out when they came face--to--face with God.
They had met their sophomore year at one of our information meetings for the Spring Student Mission Team to Honduras. At Duke University, we've been sending three mission teams to this the second poorest country in the Western Hemisphere for some time. Few students go down to Honduras on one of these teams and return as they came.
He excitedly told me that, after they met that night, they had been going out together and things seemed great between them.
"We're going to Honduras together and, who knows," he said, "where it might lead for the two of us?"
So that day, around Christmas time, when I saw him walking dejectedly across campus, I asked, "What gives?"
"Marianne isn't going to Honduras," he said gloomily.
"I'm sorry. I wonder why," I said. "She can't afford the time?"
"No," he said, "Marianne said that her older sister, Clarinda, went down there and it changed her. Made her Mom and Dad furious. Clarinda said she got born again down there. Marianne said she got turned upside down."
Smart young woman, I say, to know that proximity to this manger is a dangerous place to be. Here's a God who loves to invert.
"Oh come, let us adore Him," we sing. We come expecting to meet what we have always thought before we came here. We come, expecting the fulfillment of all our desires, the confirmation of all our prejudices and preconceptions. See? The baby Jesus has a face just like our face. He is cuddly and cute, what harm could there be in a baby?
I must warn you to take care as you gaze into the manger. Beware coming too close to this savior. There is a risk. Merry Upside Down Christmas!
William H. Willimon
Maundy Thursday Noon 1 Corinthians 11:23; John 13:1, 2
The Evil Among Us
Recently, The New Yorker published an essay which concluded that the last victim of Hitler is meaning. We simply have no intellectual capacity to account for such atrocity. When Time devoted an issue to Susan Smith's murder of her two toddlers, it duly noted that Smith was sexually abused by her father, abandoned by her young husband, depressed, suicidal, but the headline still asked, "How Could She Do It?"
Why such darkness among us?
Andrew Delbanco begins his book, The Death of Satan:
A gulf has opened up in our culture between the visibility of evil and the intellectual resources available for coping with it ... The repertoire of evil has never been richer. Yet never have our resources been so weak. We have no language for connecting our inner lives with the horrors that pass before our eyes in the outer world ... We no longer have a conception of evil as a distributed entity with an ontological essence of its own ... Yet something that feels like this force still invades our experience, and we still discover in ourselves the capacity to inflict it on others.
Daniel Goldhagen's controversial book, Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust and my own displeasure with Goldhagen's thesis that there was something uniquely, indispensably German which provides the single, causal explanation for Nazism's cruelties. A host of scholars have responded that Goldhagen distorts the Holocaust, unintentionally degrades its terror by his single explanation. Evil, great evil cannot be so simplified without lying about the evil we're trying to explain.
Now, Stephen King has an answer. Evil has a face, a personality, exists and stalks the earth waiting to pounce. In almost all of King's 46 massive novels, normal folks, just going about their business are jumped by horrible, bloody evil. His Desperation begins with innocent vacationers in the Nevada desert who just happen to wander in to a deserted town where a demon has been roaming about for years just waiting for a tourist to devour. In all of King's novels, evil is random, pointless, unavoidable and, above all, external. As Rabbi Kushner explained it to us pop--psychologically, "Some things happen for no reason," because there are these, in Kushner's words, "pockets of chaos" which just bubble up from time--to--time, wreaking havoc.
Surely one reason why Stephen King, at one point a few years ago, had five novels on The New York Times best--seller list is that King satisfies our yearning to believe that evil, terrific evil must have its source somewhere other than in the human soul.1 See? Evil is supernatural, external, random, unavoidable and not of our devising. King describes Desperation as "a deeply Christian book," presumably because it has the guts to depict the potential cruelty and evil in the world.
But it is not. Not Christian, that is. It is a fairy tale we would like to believe. King tells us the Thing Under the Bed is real, it may get you, or it may not. The main thing to remember: The Thing is not you. Humanity is thus absolved of responsibility. Evil may be real, but it is not of this world, we are its victims, never its perpetrators. King's answer to our most perplexing question about evil, namely, why do reasonable people like us sometimes choose evil over good, lies entirely in demonic possession. The old "the--devil--made--me--do--it" defense.
And yet, my friends, not today, not Maundy Thursday. We gather and face the worst evil to be imagined, namely, the betrayal and murder of God's only Son. We shall this day, this night stare evil in the face and its face shall be revealed as our face, my face, your face. In Paul's succinct recitation of the faith delivered to him, he names it: "For I received from the Lord what I also handed onto you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread ..." (1 Corinthians 11:23). On the night that the Lord Jesus was betrayed. Tonight. Our night. Our night to show our stuff, to live up to our commitments, to show what we are made of. In a way we did. We all forsook him and fled. Look no further for your source of evil. The line between good and evil cuts right through the human heart. The whole story is told by Paul, by Luke, Mark, Matthew as well without reference or recourse to external, demonic explanations. Earlier, at the beginning of Lent, we needed Satan to speak of the temptation of Jesus but now, at the end, in the upper room, no Satanic explanation is required. Evil has an ordinary, every day, human face upon it, our face. Our myriad of little betrayals, and compromises, and infidelities have coalesced here, this night on which he was betrayed by his own disciples.
John, alone among the gospels, tells the tale a bit differently. For his gospel, only a devil could dream up such betrayal of the Son of God. John says, "Now before the festival of the Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come ... The devil had already put in into the heart of Judas son of Simon to betray him" (John 13:1, 2).
"The devil put this into the heart of Judas"? I wish our culpability could be exorcized so easily. No. Tonight we'll need a Savior who is not only able to defeat Satan, but also who is able to forgive us. Amen.
William H. Willimon
____________
1. Susan Wise Bauer, "Stephen King's Vision," (Books and Culture, March/April 1997), p. 15. I am indebted to Susan Wise Bauer's thoughtful essay, "Stephen King's Tragic Kingdom," (Books and Culture, March/April 1997, pp. 14--17) for much of the material of this sermon.
Maundy Thursday Evening Mark 14:12--52
The Precariousness Of Goodness
The disciples! What a bumbling bunch of buffoons! "Jesus, we'll be there for you when the going gets rough!" they all declared. "You can count on us, Jesus! We're behind you all the way!"
Sure. Scarcely had the hymn ended, in the darkness, a few soldiers, a couple of swords, and that, as they say, was that. They fled. Mark says one fled so fast he ran naked (14:51--52). Peter, "the Rock," crumbled before the accusing maid. We will hear no more of these disciples this bloody, dark weekend as their bit part in the play is over.
W.H. Auden, in his "oratorio," For the Time Being says that if God really has come in the flesh, as a human, then God is now going to expect every human to live a perfect life. Every time we stumble, God will say, "Look, I tried it, I lived where you live, and it didn't bother me! Why can't you be perfect?"
The corrective for Auden's misunderstanding is tonight's story. Our goodness is precarious. He knows full well that we are not finally faithful, forbearing, bold. We are pitiful in our pretensions of moral perfection. Look at us. One moment declaring our firm faith, a moment later scurrying like rats into the dark. Did you not hear the terrible words, "And they all forsook him and fled" (14:50)?
I remember asking a wise old pastor what he had learned about us in his thirty years of ministry. "I have found that people are more victims than villains," he replied.
It's not large, organized, impressive evil that catches our attention in this story of Maundy Thursday. It's the little, banal, ordinary betrayal of people, like the disciples, whose actions do not match their intentions. The soldiers and their swords, Pilate's trial, this sort of official cruelty is common but not too near where we live. It's the scattering of the disciples that gets too close for comfort. This is we ... Not large, major evil. Just little, understandable acts of cowardice and betrayal, as Jesus said of us in Gethsemane. The spirit is willing but our flesh is weak (14:38).
We have a wonderful expression that we use whenever we hear that one of our number has fallen, messed up, gotten caught, been found out, uncovered, indicted.
"There, but for the grace of God go I," we say. And well we should. Except for the grace of God, we have no claim to goodness or courage in ourselves. We are able to stand ourselves only by the grace of God. Our goodness is not simply unimpressive. It is precarious.
When I first met him, we had not been talking ten minutes before he let it be known how deeply he resented, no despised his father. When he was in high school, his father left him and his mother, ran off with some Random, lost his business in the process. He spoke of his father as a weak, unprincipled moral failure worthy of the opprobrium of this, his nineteen--year--old son.
I remembered this when, three years later, as a senior, he told me how he had been caught cheating on an exam. He had vainly tried to cover up his dishonesty and had descended to even greater difficulty. Only through the intervention of his old man had he been spared complete disaster.
"Did you say your father helped you?" I asked. "Feel a bit closer to the weak old wretch, do you?"
There, but for the grace of God.
So much divides us - race, gender, ability, talent. But tonight, at this table for sinners spread, we are one. We couldn't get together on good doctrine, universal ethical principles, or whether AT&T is better than MCI or Sprint, but when the soldiers came for Jesus, we all joined as one and together fled into the darkness.
That, I feel, is a major reason why there are so few gathered here tonight. There are few not only because it's weird to worship at night but because it's painful to hear a story like this one and realize that it's about us. Our goodness is so precarious.
And it is to such as us that he promised the Kingdom of God. He sat with us at table, endured our pitiful pronouncements of fidelity, our rather silly claims of courage. Even as they led him away to die, he promised us a place in his kingdom. My broken body, he said, my shed blood, for you.
On this night, this night of nights, our precarious goodness was trumped by his persevering, persistent grace so that we might venture out from our well--deserved darkness, more sheepishly toward his table knowing, there by his grace we go.
William H. Willimon
Good Friday Mark 15:19--32
The Last Temptation Of Christ
"Those who passed by derided him ... 'If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross.' So also the chief priests, with the scribes and elders, mocked him, saying, 'He saved others; he cannot save himself ... He trusts in God; let God deliver him now....' "
This day, this dark day, the battle raging around Jesus from the beginning breaks open in full strength. As he hangs on the cross, the world mocks him.
"If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross!"
The voices are those of the religious leaders, the scholars, the crowd, and the thieves on their crosses. But you have heard the words before. Remember? On the first Sunday of Lent, at the beginning of Jesus' ministry, Satan, mocks him. No sooner had Jesus arisen from the waters of baptism, the divine voice still ringing in his ears - "You are my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased" - than he hears another voice.
"If you are the son of God, command these stones to be bread. If you are the Son of God, cast yourself down and let the angels save you. If you are - maybe you can't believe it yourself - if you are, then do something to prove it to yourself. Isn't this what religion is for, to turn stones to bread? Power ... to do good. Their parking lot is full on Sundays; it must be the power of God. Since I took Jesus into my life; I feel complete joy and peace always. Power.
If you are the Son of God, why hasn't everyone followed you? If you are the Son of God, then what are you doing hanging from that cross?
You have heard the mob's mocking before, in the voice of Satan, the voice of reason, of common sense and popular opinion, "If you are ... then ..." Duccio painted Jesus' temptation with a dark horned and hoofed figure taunting Jesus, Satan the Accuser. Often Satan's voice is heard from within quietly. Do you wonder if it were so for Jesus that Friday at noon?
There is the voice of God, "You are my Son, my beloved." But in the wilderness, or on the cross, there is another voice, "If you are the Son of God, then ..."
"College can be such a difficult time for young Christians," she said. Concerned mother that she was, she feared for the spiritual wellbeing of her daughter when she went off to college. Such temptation in college!
But as she spoke I thought to myself, "It's not college that tempts us. It's life. The most deadly temptations are not in some college dorm on Saturday night, or in some iconoclastic classroom on Monday, but in the hospital room, on Friday, when the cancer won't heal. It is the late night phone call all parents fear, or the marriage that will not work, or the noonday demons of despair. That's when there is a voice, and maybe it's your own, whispering, "If you are a Christian ... then ..."
"If you are a follower of Jesus, then what are you doing hanging here, limp, impotent, powerless, in pain?"
You know what they expected. Jesus is called "Messiah." Messiah, that is the long--expected figure who will arise in Israel, gather an army, rout the Romans, establish a new and just government, and rule forever. Power. Effectiveness. Success. This is the backdrop for their mocking, "If you are the Son of God ... then where's your troops?"
Whoever heard of a crucified Messiah? As Tom Wright puts it, "It's failed Messiahs who end up on a cross." It's failed religion that doesn't produce results when results are desperately needed. I cried out to God in my distress and yet I just hung there.
I'm saying that the voices, the mocking, "If you are the Son of God ... then ..." was a cry not only from the sneering crowd but even within Jesus' own heart. If he was to share our full humanity, if he was to be tempted as we are tempted, then he could not have been immune from the question. Thus he prayed, "Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me." Then, toward the end, with his last ounce of life, having drunk the cup of suffering to the dregs, his awesome, terrible cry, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"
Thus even Jesus was tempted to ask, as he hung there: Did I misunderstand the voice at my baptism? Was the way I walked, and the things I taught, the path of God, or only my self--delusion? Surely, in his utter misery, he was tempted to ask, "If I am the Son of God ... then, my God, why?"
And we must ask as well. Is Jesus on the cross a failure, a poor, deluded, if well--meaning prophet, or was he a success? Was the cross just one more example of innocent suffering, precursor of Dachau and Bosnia and all the other Golgathas of history?
The crowds, it appears, knew for sure what we have here. A Messiah on a cross, as Tom Wright put it, is a failed Messiah.
But what was it for Jesus? I say it was his last, and perhaps greatest temptation - here at the end to abandon all that he had given himself to, at last to admit that what he thought was the voice and will of God was only delusion and wishful thinking. Like Job, he could have cursed God and waited for sweet death.
He does neither. He just hangs there, as his last ounce of life is squeezed from him through the worst form of torture ever devised, drop by drop, by agonizing drop.
Deep within C.S. Lewis' The Screwtape Letters, letters of a seasoned devil to his apprentice devil, the devil admits that one of the most terrifying things for a devil is to find a human being who, amid terrible torment, with no will left to love or please God, still intends to do God's will - that great darkness when the assaulted believer "looks around upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys" (italics mine). No evidence, no real desire to please God, feeling forlorn, forsaken, and all evidence to the contrary, still obeys. That is what Satan most fears.
That's why we call this Friday good. He was tested, tempted in every way, down to the depths. Yet he did not succumb to the demands of the crowd or even the pleas within himself. He remained obedient, commending his spirit into the hands of God, showing us the way into and through the darkness, toward the God who, though he slays, is still followed in trust, even into the darkness, not out of knowledge of what is going on in the pain, but rather out of trust that God is working in the pain, in the darkness, even there.
This Friday, as he just hangs there saying nothing, doing nothing, is his last and greatest act of divine defiance. This defeat was his greatest victory. And through his stripes are we healed.
William H. Willimon
____________
I am indebted to Tom Wright, The Crown and the Fire: Meditations on the Cross and the Life of the Spirit (Eerdmanns: Grand Rapids, 1992, pp. 3--7) for the form and basic thrust of this sermon.
The Day Of Resurrection - Easter Morning 1 Corinthians 15
Christ Arose
Introduction
One of the great events in history is the resurrection of Jesus Christ. If Christ had failed to conquer the grave, He would have long ago been forgotten. Without the resurrection, Christianity would be nonexistent. Every truth the Christian Church teaches and believes is validated by the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Paul said, "If Christ be not raised, we are of all men most miserable" (1 Corinthians 15:17a, 19b).
I. If Christ did not rise, He was an imposter.
If Jesus of Nazareth did not rise from the dead, He was a lying, egotistical blasphemer. Unless he fulfilled all of His claims, He was a miserable failure not worthy of our admiration, much less our discipleship. If He did not rise from the dead, He was not the Son of God. If Christ is dead, He is just a man. His greatest claims were meaningless rhetoric.
If Christ did not rise from the grave, His ministry was in vain. He made no attempt to create a sophisticated organization. Neither did He leave a highly trained CEO to organize His followers. He did not leave huge sums of money for His disciples to use in perpetuating His legacy. Following His crucifixion, His faithful followers hid behind closed doors in fear.
In 1 Corinthians 15:17 (NIV) Paul said, "And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins." If Christ is dead, there is no atonement for our sins. If He is not alive, we have no hope beyond the grave and no comfort in the hour of bereavement. If Christ has deteriorated to dust and ashes, we have no hope of reconciliation with God the Father. Without a living, resurrected Christ, we are forever lost.
If Christ did not rise, he was an imposter and His Church does not exist. The irrefutable fact is the Church of Jesus Christ is alive and well. The same Spirit that was in Christ empowers us to follow Him wherever He leads.
II. If Christ did not rise, what did happen?
Numerous unbelievers have tried to theorize what might have taken place when Jesus was buried. Some have declared that the story of the resurrection was a fraud, simply a story made up by His disciples to save face. But one by one the disciples willingly laid down their lives and died for the cause of Christ. Who could believe that so many would go through such great suffering and die horrible deaths for a lie? They could have saved their lives and escaped some terrible beatings by changing their message. The fact is none of them recanted.
Others have proposed that the disciples hid the body of Christ. But the Roman guards made certain that His grave was well protected at all times. At the time of His burial and resurrection, history reveals that no one ever made this accusation. The disciples were far too timid at this point in time to attempt such a daring plan.
Over the decades, some have suggested that Jesus was not dead but that He was in a coma from which He regained consciousness. The Roman soldiers were experts in death, and they never questioned the fact that He was dead. Even if He had been in a coma, He would have suffocated, for the tomb was sealed. At that time no one ever questioned the fact that He was dead.
Some have proposed that when Jesus appeared to crowds and groups of people after His resurrection, these were visions and not really the resurrected Christ. But on one occasion, five hundred people saw Him outside in broad daylight. The disciples saw Him, talked with Him, and ate with Him on various occasions. They also attested to His resurrection with their lives. When 3,000 people were converted two months after the resurrection on the day of Pentecost, they did not question the resurrection because they had been there and knew it was true.
III. If Christ did not rise, what does it mean?
In spite of all the historical and spiritual evidence, why is it that some still refuse to believe? It is because when you believe in the resurrection of Christ, you must believe all that He taught. By rejecting the resurrection, it becomes easy to reject all that He taught. If you deny the resurrection, you deny Christ. If you deny Christ, you must reject Christianity.
This is the reason the Jews rejected the resurrection. They knew if they believed in the resurrection, they would have to accept that Jesus was and is the Messiah.
If you believe that Jesus is the Son of God and that He rose from the dead, it is imperative that you embrace Him as your personal Savior and Lord. You must repent of your sins, surrender your will to Him, and walk in the light of His Word. By doing so, you can have eternal life.
Conclusion
By believing in the Lord Jesus Christ you can have a personal resurrection from sin and death. You can receive hope of eternal life. Because He lives, we also can live forever by believing on His name. "Up from the grave He arose, With a mighty triumph o'er His foes; He arose a Victor from the dark domain, And He lives forever with His saints to reign. He arose! He arose! Hallelujah! Christ arose!"
Thomas H. Hermiz
The Day Of Pentecost Acts 2:1--4
The Effects Of Pentecost
Introduction
The scriptures do not record one conversion between the crucifixion of Christ and the Day of Pentecost. The followers of Christ were in a state of despair and inactivity following the crucifixion. It appears that for two solid months very little happened of spiritual significance. However, after they were filled with the Spirit on the Day of Pentecost, they literally charged out from behind closed doors to boldly preach the resurrection of Christ. Not even the resurrection of Christ had this kind of effect on the early believers. It took the infilling with the Holy Spirit to break them out of their fear and timidity. Once they were filled with the Spirit, the two months of spiritual drought turned into a spiritual deluge. In one day 3,000 people were converted. When the Spirit of God is allowed His rightful place in our lives, there will be vitality and power - not cheap, man--produced energy, but genuine spiritual power and vitality.
Historically, Pentecost will not be repeated; but personally and experientially it can be and must be repeated (v. 39). Everything that the infilling with the Holy Spirit accomplished in the hearts of the believers on the Day of Pentecost is available to us today. There has not been any change in the ministry and power of the Spirit in today's world.
The greatest need in the Church today is to rediscover the power and purity of a fresh, up--to--date, personal Pentecost. This alone will revolutionize an institution that too often is sadly lacking in vision and effectiveness.
Study with me three effects that the infilling with the Holy Spirit had on the New Testament Church.
I. It affected their minds.
Prior to being filled with the Spirit on the Day of Pentecost, they were carnally and worldly minded. Once they received the infilling, they became spiritually minded. They were now blessed with the mind of Christ.
Prior to Pentecost, they were driven by the self--centered desire to occupy lofty positions of power in the kingdom. They were concerned about who would be seated on the right and the left hands of Christ, motivated by selfish ambition.
After Pentecost, there was a dramatic and dynamic change in their mind--set. Instead of being self--centered, they became Christ--centered. Their deepest desire was to lift up and exalt the name of Jesus. No longer were they driven to seek status and prestige. Their concern centered on the plight of perishing souls.
Carnal--mindedness still looms as an enormous problem in the church today. Paul said, "For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Because the carnal mind is emnity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be" (Romans 8:6--7).
Evidences of the carnal mind can be seen in people who are more interested in positions of power within the church than in the power of a Spirit--filled life.
Another evidence is the lack of passion for the evangelization of our world. When one has the mind of Christ, he will be concerned about the lost.
The rebellion against an unconditional surrender of one's all to Christ is another evidence of the carnal mind.
The good news is we can be changed. Just as those in the upper room were changed, we also can be changed. We must surrender our God--given rights back to Him and tarry until we have received the infilling with the Holy Spirit. Do not settle for a cheap substitute, but be filled with the Spirit. The result will be deliverance from a carnal mind and the receiving of the mind of Christ.
II. It affected their hearts.
In Acts 15:8--9, when Peter talked about the Gentiles being filled with the Spirit, he declared that their hearts were "purified by faith."
One of the manifestations that accompanied the infilling with the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost was the sound of the mighty rushing wind. When the wind blows, it purifies the atmosphere. It drives away the smog and the heavy, polluted air.
Today, we desperately need the refreshing, cleansing winds of the Spirit to purify the atmosphere in our hearts and in our churches. Too many believers are still living under the bondage of bitterness and rebellion. Unholy attitudes fill their hearts with unbelief. They are in need of the deeper cleansing of the blood of Christ. It is the work of the Holy Spirit to bring about the cleansing that purifies our hearts by faith.
We hear a lot of talk today about the power of a Spirit--filled life. Unfortunately, we do not hear enough about the purity of a Spirit--filled life. It seems to me that the purity must precede the power. Allow the winds of the Spirit to bring purity to your heart.
III. It affected their speech.
When those in the upper room were filled with the Spirit, they received a new power to proclaim the resurrection of Christ. Starting from a weak, fearful, timid band of believers they became a dynamic force for God that could not be stopped by the world, the flesh, or the devil. They were beaten and thrown into prison, but only death could silence them. They had a message to proclaim. Through the enabling power of the Holy Spirit, they literally turned the world upside down. Christianity spread as if it were contagious.
We must be captured by this kind of internal motivation until we are willing to die for Christ rather than deny Him with our silence. Too often we fail to be the dynamic witnesses God intends us to be because of the fear of rejection. We want the approval of others, and we want to always look good.
If we will empty ourselves and become filled with the Spirit, there is deliverance from a cowardly spirit. The Holy Spirit can give us the courage we need to be witnesses for Christ.
Conclusion
We have many beautiful churches and impressive programs, but until we have been filled with the Spirit, we are not equipped to do the work of God. The reason many have not been filled is because they do not have a passionate desire to be filled. The Word declares that they who hunger and thirst after righteousness shall be filled (Matthew 5:6).
Thomas H. Hermiz
The experience of Entire Sanctification has
enabled me to reach a place of heart purity and
spiritual maturity I never dreamed possible.
