I want to start off this morning by showing you a few images. Lets start off with an easy one… How many pieces of wood are there in this picture? All right, here is another one… Does anyone remember the magic eye books? Look at this image… Does anyone else see anything besides a blue pattern? What do you see? Finally, one more image… Many of you may remember The final image you are going to see is a dress… You may remember this dress. It showed up on many of your facebook feeds a few years ago. Along with it came the question… what color is it? So I’m going to ask you all… What color is the dress? People can see the same images differently. Some of us see 3 boards some of us see 4, some of us see a shark, some of us just see a blue pattern, some of us see a gold dress, other see a blue one. We all view life around us through our own unique perspectives.
Sometimes we consciously choose to see things a certain way, for instance when we are watching our kids or grandkids play sports we may choose to think they never commit a foul, or that they are the best player on the team, or that they are the cutest and smartest. Sometimes we don’t choose. Or at least we don’t admit we are choosing to see things from a certain perspective. We see this in politics all the time. When our guy is in the white house he can do nothing wrong… When it’s the other guy everything is wrong, everything is the worst its ever been… 2 We all do this… We all wear blinders that keep us from seeing certain truths about ourselves and the world around us.
This is actually a big problem… Warn People, blind spots for a reason. Turn if you will to 2 Chronicles 1 and 2. If you can, remember back to when I spoke last… During that sermon we talked about the probable context of the book of Chronicles. Chronicles was probably written to inspire the people who were coming back to Israel from exile in Babylon to build the Temple and began to worship God there. The writer does this through giving the people the glorified history of Israel. David was great. He was wealthy. He was victorious in Battle. He loved God will all his heart.
As Carl talked about, the author of Chronicles whitewashes the transition from David to Solomon, Leaving out all the fighting and murder that we know took place based on the book of Kings. This habit of selective editing and hyperbole continues throughout the book. Look with me at verses 14-17…
Here the author emphasizes the great wealth of Solomon. He was so wealthy that the author has no choice but to use metaphors in describing his wealth, that is he has to compare it to something his readers would have understood in their day. 3 In verse 15 he says, “the King made silver and gold as common as stones” The Israelites understood stones. When you go Israel, which you should all do, you will discover how many stones there are. It is an incredibly rocky landscape. So the author is saying by way of hyperbole and metaphor that Solomon is now unbelievably rich and because of his great wealth he now has the ability to build the Temple. This is important to the passage we are going to read today.
Lets read starting in verse 1 of chapter 2. Read the text… These verses have a poetic structure to them. It has two sets of parallel verses, like a song. The first and last verses of the passage parallel each other, verse 1 and verse 18. In both of these verses we are told that Solomon used forced labor to build the Temple. The first group of Laborers were Solomon’s own people and the second group were the immigrants in the Land, that is the people who weren’t Israelites who lived in the land. They were the relatives of the people who had been conquered at various times by the Israelites, starting with Joshua and continuing up until the time of David. Verses 2-10 and 11-17 then contain the next set of parallel verses.
2-10 is Solomon’s letter to the King of Tyre, which was a large port city North of Israel, requesting both wood for the Temple and a craftsman to help with the construction of the Temple. In exchange Solomon agrees to give him an extraordinary payment… 4 1,000,000 gallons of grain 1,000,000 gallons of barley 100,000 gallons of wine 100,000 gallons of olive oil Again we see the author affirming the great wealth and prestige of Solomon. Verses 11-17 then record the response of Hiram the King of Tyre. He agrees to provide the lumber as well as a man named Huram-abi, interestingly this man is mixed race, his mother was Jewish and his father from Tyre in exchange for the payment Solomon offered. He agrees to send what Solomon requested only after he received the payment… Hiram was a wise business man in his own right. From this text then we move one step closer to the great task which is the center at the book of Chronicles, the building of the Temple.
Solomon needs wood and someone to decorate, he gives a great amount of goods to the King of Tyre to get what he needs… Oh and he enslaved 150,000 of his own people and 150,000 immigrants in order to build it. Wait, what was that? Oh, yeah Solomon enslaved 300,000 people to build the temple!! And not only was he enslaving them, 1 kings tells us that he sent his own people, Israelites to the mines. Can you imagine what backbreaking, dangerous work that was? He sent them there because that is the only kind of work you can get a slave to do. If you are forcing someone to work against their will, for no pay, you can’t have them do anything to technical, just brute force labor. 5 Interestingly, there is good evidence that the immigrants enjoyed a little less grueling work. It is recorded elsewhere that at least after helping with the construction of the Temple they ended up working in the Temple and not in the mines, although there is also some evidence that one of the roles they had at the temple was that of temple prostitutes.
The main difference between the Israelites slaves and the immigrant slaves was that if the Israelite ones managed to survive working in the mines till the end of the construction of the Temple they were able to go home. Their slavery was only temporary, the immigrants were slaves to the king until their death.
In the midst of this great work Solomon is doing for God there is also a great sin!! A monstrous sin!! A sin that violates everything God wanted to do in the world through Israel and through us. The Israelites were former slaves, freed by God himself and now their king was taking slaves himself.
We have talked before about how God’s role for his people has always been to bring more of God’s rule to the earth. His kingdom. God has always wanted his people to contribute to bringing more of the peace and justice that already exists with God in the heavens to the earth… Slavery is a violation of all of that. It is violation of human dignity.
And here is the other thing, Solomon had the money to pay them!!! We read earlier that during the time of Solomon gold was as common as rocks… and Solomon still refused to pay them… Why? Why did Solomon enslave people? 6 He didn’t know it was wrong. His father David had done it. His ancestors had done it. All the nations around him practiced it. They had done if for centuries. His culture, that is his own experiences, his own people and the institutions around him had made him blind to this huge sin in his life. He was blind…
And not only was he blind to it there is a real possibility that the author of chronicles was blind to this too. As we have seen usually the author leaves out the stuff that makes Solomon or David look bad. So Why did he include the record of Solomon forcing slaves to build the temple? It might be because he didn’t think it was wrong for Solomon to do this… Many people think Chronicles was written by Ezra, the priest who helped to rebuild the temple after the exile. Ezra chapter 2 lists the people who lived in Israel at the when the temple was rebuilt. You don’t have to turn there but included in that list is a group of people called temple servants who were probably the ancestors of the immigrant slaves in this passage. Apparently, the slavery that was started at the very least during the time of David had continued through every Israelite king and up to the time of the rebuilding of the Temple. The practice is never condemned in either Chronicles or Ezra. Jeremiah is the only prophet who speaks directly against it. 7 So in all likelihood both Solomon and the author of Chronicles didn’t even know slavery was wrong. They were so blinded by their experiences, their friends, the traditions of those around them… They were both blind to their sin…
Let me read you something… What then shall we Christians do with this damned, rejected race of Jews? First, their synagogues should be set on fire, and whatever does not burn up should be covered or spread over with dirt so that no one may ever be able to see a cinder or stone of it. And this ought to be done for the honor of God and of Christianity in order that God may see that we are Christians, and that we have not wittingly tolerated or approved of such public lying, cursing, and blaspheming of His Son and His Christians. Secondly, their homes should likewise be broken down and destroyed. For they perpetrate the same things there that they do in their synagogues. For this reason they ought to be put under one roof or in a stable, like gypsies, in order that they may realize that they are not masters in our land, as they boast, but miserable captives, as they complain of incessantly before God with bitter wailing. Thirdly, they should be deprived of their prayer-books and Talmuds in which such idolatry, lies, cursing, and blasphemy are taught. Fourthly, their rabbis must be forbidden under threat of death to teach any more... Fifthly, passport and traveling privileges should be absolutely forbidden to the Jews… Let them stay at home... Some troop ought to ride against them, for they will learn from this pamphlet what the Jews are and how to handle them and that they ought not to be protected. You ought not, you cannot protect them, unless in the eyes of God you want to share all their abomination... 8 To sum up… if this advice of mine does not suit you, then find a better one so that you and we may all be free of this insufferable devilish burden - the Jews...
Do you know who wrote that? A Nazi in the 1930’s? No, Martin Luther… In pamphlet he wrote horrifyingly titled, the Jews and their lies. The is the same martin Luther who rightfully challenged the Catholic church, translated the Bible into the language of the common person, and essentially started the protestant church, which our church is a direct descendent of. He did amazing things for God and He hated Jews. The really sad thing is that 400 years later Luther’s writings were used in Nazi rallies and in Nazi propaganda in order to stir up hatred for Jewish people. Luther was blind to his own sin, just like David, just like Solomon, just like the writer of Chronicles, just like almost everyone.
The good news is that God can use people who are broken to do great things for him the bad news is that God can use broken people to do great things… It cuts both ways doesn’t it…
On the one hand its encouraging… I don’t have to be perfect for God to use me. History is ripe with people who were a mess that God used. Don’t let anything you are struggling with keep God from using you. He loves you, He cares for you and he sent Jesus to die for you, to cover your sins, to make you clean, to reconcile you to himself. Even if you never change, God will not be disappointed in you. He loves you as you are…
9 On the other hand this passage is a warning to all of us, especially those of us who think we are doing pretty well. Those of us who might be doing really good things for God… it’s a warning that there are probably things in our lives that are sinful that we don’t even realize. We have accepted them… just like Solomon. Why? I think mostly because just like Solomon we have accepted lies from our culture as truth. Culture is made up of unspoken assumptions, expectations and values of a community.
When I lived Germany one of the first things I noticed was that if I was walking down the street people would rarely look at you and if they did look at you they would almost never smile. The niceties we have in America are not part of German culture. If you sit on a bus you generally stay to yourself. They don’t value small talk like Americans do. Many Germans value honesty over flattery. This isn’t a good or bad thing, its just different. Most differences in cultures are harmless. They are just preferences, neither better nor worse than any other. However, all cultures, like all people are flawed and broken. Solomon lived in a culture that accepted slavery Luther lived in a culture that embraced anti-semitism. Its no surprise that they embraced practices which were approved by their culture.
10 So what do we do if are serious about rooting sin in our lives that we don’t even know about? We have to begin by asking what wour culture values and identify where God’s values, his kingdom, come into conflict with our culture. So what does our culture value?
More than anything, our culture values the individual. From an early age we are taught that we can do whatever we want. You want to be an astronaut. You can do it. You want to be a pro football player, you can do it. You create your own destiny. We honor people who pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Who make something out of nothing. We value people who start their own companies, who are entrepreneurs. Who in the words of Frank Sinatra, did it my way. In our culture the individual is King.
However, in God’s kingdom, individuals aren’t kings and queens, God is. We aren’t autonomous. We are accountable to God and to our brothers and sisters in Christ. Our individual identities are subsumed by our corporate identity. I am a Christian before I am Chad. To be a Christian is to be a member of the body of Christ. We are not isolated individuals but one body. We are not free to do whatever we want.
11 In the epistles, that is the letters of the Apostles that are recorded in the New Testament, almost every command is a plural command. Paul, and Peter, and John are almost always addressing a group of people. When Paul says to the Corinthians church, Pursue love, he isn’t saying hey you chad, persue love, he is saying hey Christians, hey Sumas advent Christians church, all of you pursue love, together. God’s word wasn’t given to me but to us. We also learn from scripture that we are responsible for others as well as ourselves. God takes community seriously.
We have been talking a lot lately about Israel being kicked out of the land and taken into exile. Does anyone know why they were kicked out of the land? Two reasons according to the prophets… idolatry and injustice towards the poor. God didn’t say, hey those poor people, they have made some poor life choices and deserve to suffer the consequences. He held all of Israel accountable for their plight. We are blind to how much radical individualism, as learned from our culture, has infected us… it is one of our blindspots as Christians. Not only do we value individual freedom in our culture we also value material possessions. We like stuff. We like to have stuff. We like to keep stuff… We get very angry when people or the government try to take our stuff.
12 Luke tells the story of a rich man who came to Jesus and asked him what he needed to do to gain eternal life. He told Jesus that he had kept all the commandments… And what is Jesus’ response, sell everything you have and give the money to the poor. He declined to do this and Jesus comments to his disciples about how hard it is for a rich man to enter the Kingdom… Isn’t it amazing that when we hear this story we don’t think maybe we should get rid of some stuff.
I have been in church my whole life and never once have I heard a pastor ask their audience to give all their possessions away at the end of the service… Instead we spiritualize everything, we say stuff like it’s fine to be rich, God just cares about my attitude towards my stuff, the important thing is that I would give stuff away if I was called to give it away. Did you ever notice that in our culture God rarely calls anyone to give everything away? Let me put it another way, Can you we imagine a way that God could speak to you that would convince you that you were supposed to give everything you had away? Probably not… I know I can’t. Is it possible we have come to reinterpret scripture in a way that affirms what our culture teaches us regarding possessions? I think its clear that we have a blind spot when it comes to money and material possessions…
13 Finally, our culture also values personal safety… We are terrified of anything bad happening to us… and do everything we can to protect ourselves. This is why we setup ridiculous signs next to vending machines and waterfalls… Our obsession with personal safety had led us to a culture of fear… We fear anything that might threaten our safety and security. This obsession has horrible repercussions in our society. I will just give one example but there are many more…
Did you know America has the highest incarceration rate in the World? We jail more people than Russia or China. Let that sink in. China, a communist country has less people in jail. Russia, a country run by a tyrant, who can jail people on a whim has less people in jail… Our incarceration rate is higher than Russian’s was during communism. That’s nuts… So why is this happening? Because our culture is obsessed with personal safety and security. We think putting people in jail makes us safer even when know that putting nonviolent offenders in jail makes them more likely to become violent. It also separates them from their families, taking fathers and mothers away from their children, something which we know contributes to their children being in poverty or committing crimes themselves.
14 The only logical reasons for our society doing this is because we are ruled by fear and obsessed with punishment. As Christians we should be neither. We believe there is a loving God who is in control of all things. Our lives are in his hands, we have no reason to fear. We also have a God who has forgiven us… and commands us to forgive others… He does not demand that the guilty be punished…
Is it possible the reason Christians have not challenged the criminal justice system in our culture is because we have come to embrace what our culture values instead of what God values? We are more concerned for our safety, than grace, mercy, and justice.
I think because I am the young guy around here I get asked a lot why young people leave the church… You want to know why? Here is one reason, because young people see these blind spots. They see them and ask, how can those people call themselves Christians when they support such and such…. If that is what a Christian is, I want no part in that. They are able to see our blind spots because they have grown up in a different culture than most of us, a culture that has its own blind spots as well… but their blind spots are different… They see the shark when all we might see a blue pattern…
Solomon enslaved his people. The author of Chronicles gave passive endorsement to slavery. Martin Luther was an anti-Semite. 15 God used all of these people to do great things while at the same time they were committing horrible sin. is a warning to us.
The Chances are we are doing the same thing… Truly, God is using this church to do great things in our community but this is good chance we are ignoring certain commands of Christ because they conflict with the underlying values of our culture. And the chances are we don’t even realize it.
What is God telling us as a community? What sin and shortcomings are we blind to here at Sumas Advent Christian Church? What are we doing here that is keeping God’s love and peace from coming to our community. Is it our excessive individualism… our materialism… or our obsession with safety and security… Lets pray
This is actually a big problem… Warn People, blind spots for a reason. Turn if you will to 2 Chronicles 1 and 2. If you can, remember back to when I spoke last… During that sermon we talked about the probable context of the book of Chronicles. Chronicles was probably written to inspire the people who were coming back to Israel from exile in Babylon to build the Temple and began to worship God there. The writer does this through giving the people the glorified history of Israel. David was great. He was wealthy. He was victorious in Battle. He loved God will all his heart.
As Carl talked about, the author of Chronicles whitewashes the transition from David to Solomon, Leaving out all the fighting and murder that we know took place based on the book of Kings. This habit of selective editing and hyperbole continues throughout the book. Look with me at verses 14-17…
Here the author emphasizes the great wealth of Solomon. He was so wealthy that the author has no choice but to use metaphors in describing his wealth, that is he has to compare it to something his readers would have understood in their day. 3 In verse 15 he says, “the King made silver and gold as common as stones” The Israelites understood stones. When you go Israel, which you should all do, you will discover how many stones there are. It is an incredibly rocky landscape. So the author is saying by way of hyperbole and metaphor that Solomon is now unbelievably rich and because of his great wealth he now has the ability to build the Temple. This is important to the passage we are going to read today.
Lets read starting in verse 1 of chapter 2. Read the text… These verses have a poetic structure to them. It has two sets of parallel verses, like a song. The first and last verses of the passage parallel each other, verse 1 and verse 18. In both of these verses we are told that Solomon used forced labor to build the Temple. The first group of Laborers were Solomon’s own people and the second group were the immigrants in the Land, that is the people who weren’t Israelites who lived in the land. They were the relatives of the people who had been conquered at various times by the Israelites, starting with Joshua and continuing up until the time of David. Verses 2-10 and 11-17 then contain the next set of parallel verses.
2-10 is Solomon’s letter to the King of Tyre, which was a large port city North of Israel, requesting both wood for the Temple and a craftsman to help with the construction of the Temple. In exchange Solomon agrees to give him an extraordinary payment… 4 1,000,000 gallons of grain 1,000,000 gallons of barley 100,000 gallons of wine 100,000 gallons of olive oil Again we see the author affirming the great wealth and prestige of Solomon. Verses 11-17 then record the response of Hiram the King of Tyre. He agrees to provide the lumber as well as a man named Huram-abi, interestingly this man is mixed race, his mother was Jewish and his father from Tyre in exchange for the payment Solomon offered. He agrees to send what Solomon requested only after he received the payment… Hiram was a wise business man in his own right. From this text then we move one step closer to the great task which is the center at the book of Chronicles, the building of the Temple.
Solomon needs wood and someone to decorate, he gives a great amount of goods to the King of Tyre to get what he needs… Oh and he enslaved 150,000 of his own people and 150,000 immigrants in order to build it. Wait, what was that? Oh, yeah Solomon enslaved 300,000 people to build the temple!! And not only was he enslaving them, 1 kings tells us that he sent his own people, Israelites to the mines. Can you imagine what backbreaking, dangerous work that was? He sent them there because that is the only kind of work you can get a slave to do. If you are forcing someone to work against their will, for no pay, you can’t have them do anything to technical, just brute force labor. 5 Interestingly, there is good evidence that the immigrants enjoyed a little less grueling work. It is recorded elsewhere that at least after helping with the construction of the Temple they ended up working in the Temple and not in the mines, although there is also some evidence that one of the roles they had at the temple was that of temple prostitutes.
The main difference between the Israelites slaves and the immigrant slaves was that if the Israelite ones managed to survive working in the mines till the end of the construction of the Temple they were able to go home. Their slavery was only temporary, the immigrants were slaves to the king until their death.
In the midst of this great work Solomon is doing for God there is also a great sin!! A monstrous sin!! A sin that violates everything God wanted to do in the world through Israel and through us. The Israelites were former slaves, freed by God himself and now their king was taking slaves himself.
We have talked before about how God’s role for his people has always been to bring more of God’s rule to the earth. His kingdom. God has always wanted his people to contribute to bringing more of the peace and justice that already exists with God in the heavens to the earth… Slavery is a violation of all of that. It is violation of human dignity.
And here is the other thing, Solomon had the money to pay them!!! We read earlier that during the time of Solomon gold was as common as rocks… and Solomon still refused to pay them… Why? Why did Solomon enslave people? 6 He didn’t know it was wrong. His father David had done it. His ancestors had done it. All the nations around him practiced it. They had done if for centuries. His culture, that is his own experiences, his own people and the institutions around him had made him blind to this huge sin in his life. He was blind…
And not only was he blind to it there is a real possibility that the author of chronicles was blind to this too. As we have seen usually the author leaves out the stuff that makes Solomon or David look bad. So Why did he include the record of Solomon forcing slaves to build the temple? It might be because he didn’t think it was wrong for Solomon to do this… Many people think Chronicles was written by Ezra, the priest who helped to rebuild the temple after the exile. Ezra chapter 2 lists the people who lived in Israel at the when the temple was rebuilt. You don’t have to turn there but included in that list is a group of people called temple servants who were probably the ancestors of the immigrant slaves in this passage. Apparently, the slavery that was started at the very least during the time of David had continued through every Israelite king and up to the time of the rebuilding of the Temple. The practice is never condemned in either Chronicles or Ezra. Jeremiah is the only prophet who speaks directly against it. 7 So in all likelihood both Solomon and the author of Chronicles didn’t even know slavery was wrong. They were so blinded by their experiences, their friends, the traditions of those around them… They were both blind to their sin…
Let me read you something… What then shall we Christians do with this damned, rejected race of Jews? First, their synagogues should be set on fire, and whatever does not burn up should be covered or spread over with dirt so that no one may ever be able to see a cinder or stone of it. And this ought to be done for the honor of God and of Christianity in order that God may see that we are Christians, and that we have not wittingly tolerated or approved of such public lying, cursing, and blaspheming of His Son and His Christians. Secondly, their homes should likewise be broken down and destroyed. For they perpetrate the same things there that they do in their synagogues. For this reason they ought to be put under one roof or in a stable, like gypsies, in order that they may realize that they are not masters in our land, as they boast, but miserable captives, as they complain of incessantly before God with bitter wailing. Thirdly, they should be deprived of their prayer-books and Talmuds in which such idolatry, lies, cursing, and blasphemy are taught. Fourthly, their rabbis must be forbidden under threat of death to teach any more... Fifthly, passport and traveling privileges should be absolutely forbidden to the Jews… Let them stay at home... Some troop ought to ride against them, for they will learn from this pamphlet what the Jews are and how to handle them and that they ought not to be protected. You ought not, you cannot protect them, unless in the eyes of God you want to share all their abomination... 8 To sum up… if this advice of mine does not suit you, then find a better one so that you and we may all be free of this insufferable devilish burden - the Jews...
Do you know who wrote that? A Nazi in the 1930’s? No, Martin Luther… In pamphlet he wrote horrifyingly titled, the Jews and their lies. The is the same martin Luther who rightfully challenged the Catholic church, translated the Bible into the language of the common person, and essentially started the protestant church, which our church is a direct descendent of. He did amazing things for God and He hated Jews. The really sad thing is that 400 years later Luther’s writings were used in Nazi rallies and in Nazi propaganda in order to stir up hatred for Jewish people. Luther was blind to his own sin, just like David, just like Solomon, just like the writer of Chronicles, just like almost everyone.
The good news is that God can use people who are broken to do great things for him the bad news is that God can use broken people to do great things… It cuts both ways doesn’t it…
On the one hand its encouraging… I don’t have to be perfect for God to use me. History is ripe with people who were a mess that God used. Don’t let anything you are struggling with keep God from using you. He loves you, He cares for you and he sent Jesus to die for you, to cover your sins, to make you clean, to reconcile you to himself. Even if you never change, God will not be disappointed in you. He loves you as you are…
9 On the other hand this passage is a warning to all of us, especially those of us who think we are doing pretty well. Those of us who might be doing really good things for God… it’s a warning that there are probably things in our lives that are sinful that we don’t even realize. We have accepted them… just like Solomon. Why? I think mostly because just like Solomon we have accepted lies from our culture as truth. Culture is made up of unspoken assumptions, expectations and values of a community.
When I lived Germany one of the first things I noticed was that if I was walking down the street people would rarely look at you and if they did look at you they would almost never smile. The niceties we have in America are not part of German culture. If you sit on a bus you generally stay to yourself. They don’t value small talk like Americans do. Many Germans value honesty over flattery. This isn’t a good or bad thing, its just different. Most differences in cultures are harmless. They are just preferences, neither better nor worse than any other. However, all cultures, like all people are flawed and broken. Solomon lived in a culture that accepted slavery Luther lived in a culture that embraced anti-semitism. Its no surprise that they embraced practices which were approved by their culture.
10 So what do we do if are serious about rooting sin in our lives that we don’t even know about? We have to begin by asking what wour culture values and identify where God’s values, his kingdom, come into conflict with our culture. So what does our culture value?
More than anything, our culture values the individual. From an early age we are taught that we can do whatever we want. You want to be an astronaut. You can do it. You want to be a pro football player, you can do it. You create your own destiny. We honor people who pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Who make something out of nothing. We value people who start their own companies, who are entrepreneurs. Who in the words of Frank Sinatra, did it my way. In our culture the individual is King.
However, in God’s kingdom, individuals aren’t kings and queens, God is. We aren’t autonomous. We are accountable to God and to our brothers and sisters in Christ. Our individual identities are subsumed by our corporate identity. I am a Christian before I am Chad. To be a Christian is to be a member of the body of Christ. We are not isolated individuals but one body. We are not free to do whatever we want.
11 In the epistles, that is the letters of the Apostles that are recorded in the New Testament, almost every command is a plural command. Paul, and Peter, and John are almost always addressing a group of people. When Paul says to the Corinthians church, Pursue love, he isn’t saying hey you chad, persue love, he is saying hey Christians, hey Sumas advent Christians church, all of you pursue love, together. God’s word wasn’t given to me but to us. We also learn from scripture that we are responsible for others as well as ourselves. God takes community seriously.
We have been talking a lot lately about Israel being kicked out of the land and taken into exile. Does anyone know why they were kicked out of the land? Two reasons according to the prophets… idolatry and injustice towards the poor. God didn’t say, hey those poor people, they have made some poor life choices and deserve to suffer the consequences. He held all of Israel accountable for their plight. We are blind to how much radical individualism, as learned from our culture, has infected us… it is one of our blindspots as Christians. Not only do we value individual freedom in our culture we also value material possessions. We like stuff. We like to have stuff. We like to keep stuff… We get very angry when people or the government try to take our stuff.
12 Luke tells the story of a rich man who came to Jesus and asked him what he needed to do to gain eternal life. He told Jesus that he had kept all the commandments… And what is Jesus’ response, sell everything you have and give the money to the poor. He declined to do this and Jesus comments to his disciples about how hard it is for a rich man to enter the Kingdom… Isn’t it amazing that when we hear this story we don’t think maybe we should get rid of some stuff.
I have been in church my whole life and never once have I heard a pastor ask their audience to give all their possessions away at the end of the service… Instead we spiritualize everything, we say stuff like it’s fine to be rich, God just cares about my attitude towards my stuff, the important thing is that I would give stuff away if I was called to give it away. Did you ever notice that in our culture God rarely calls anyone to give everything away? Let me put it another way, Can you we imagine a way that God could speak to you that would convince you that you were supposed to give everything you had away? Probably not… I know I can’t. Is it possible we have come to reinterpret scripture in a way that affirms what our culture teaches us regarding possessions? I think its clear that we have a blind spot when it comes to money and material possessions…
13 Finally, our culture also values personal safety… We are terrified of anything bad happening to us… and do everything we can to protect ourselves. This is why we setup ridiculous signs next to vending machines and waterfalls… Our obsession with personal safety had led us to a culture of fear… We fear anything that might threaten our safety and security. This obsession has horrible repercussions in our society. I will just give one example but there are many more…
Did you know America has the highest incarceration rate in the World? We jail more people than Russia or China. Let that sink in. China, a communist country has less people in jail. Russia, a country run by a tyrant, who can jail people on a whim has less people in jail… Our incarceration rate is higher than Russian’s was during communism. That’s nuts… So why is this happening? Because our culture is obsessed with personal safety and security. We think putting people in jail makes us safer even when know that putting nonviolent offenders in jail makes them more likely to become violent. It also separates them from their families, taking fathers and mothers away from their children, something which we know contributes to their children being in poverty or committing crimes themselves.
14 The only logical reasons for our society doing this is because we are ruled by fear and obsessed with punishment. As Christians we should be neither. We believe there is a loving God who is in control of all things. Our lives are in his hands, we have no reason to fear. We also have a God who has forgiven us… and commands us to forgive others… He does not demand that the guilty be punished…
Is it possible the reason Christians have not challenged the criminal justice system in our culture is because we have come to embrace what our culture values instead of what God values? We are more concerned for our safety, than grace, mercy, and justice.
I think because I am the young guy around here I get asked a lot why young people leave the church… You want to know why? Here is one reason, because young people see these blind spots. They see them and ask, how can those people call themselves Christians when they support such and such…. If that is what a Christian is, I want no part in that. They are able to see our blind spots because they have grown up in a different culture than most of us, a culture that has its own blind spots as well… but their blind spots are different… They see the shark when all we might see a blue pattern…
Solomon enslaved his people. The author of Chronicles gave passive endorsement to slavery. Martin Luther was an anti-Semite. 15 God used all of these people to do great things while at the same time they were committing horrible sin. is a warning to us.
The Chances are we are doing the same thing… Truly, God is using this church to do great things in our community but this is good chance we are ignoring certain commands of Christ because they conflict with the underlying values of our culture. And the chances are we don’t even realize it.
What is God telling us as a community? What sin and shortcomings are we blind to here at Sumas Advent Christian Church? What are we doing here that is keeping God’s love and peace from coming to our community. Is it our excessive individualism… our materialism… or our obsession with safety and security… Lets pray
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