Longing for Our Homeland

PHILIPPIANS 3:20 – 4:1

INTRODUCTION

Do you ever feel like you just don’t fit in?

Do you ever feel like the things that most people are passionate about are just not very important to you?

A dying woman said to her pastor: “You hear in sermons about this world being a tricky, shallow place, but you never believe it until you stand at the door and look around just before you go out.”

Let’s not wait until we are ready to exit this world before we see it as it is.

You’ve heard the old hymn that goes—

“This world is not my home, I’m just a-passing through,

My treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue.

The angels beckon me from heaven’s open door,

And I can’t feel at home in this world any more.”

An American tourist visited the 19th century Polish rabbi, Hofetz Chaim. Astonished to see that the rabbi’s home was only a simple room, filled with books, plus a table and a bench, the tourist asked, “Rabbi, where is your furniture?”

“Where is yours?” replied the rabbi.

“Mine?” asked the puzzled American. “But I’m a visitor here. I’m only passing through.”

“So am I,” said Hofetz Chaim.

In St. Paul’s letter to his friends in the Greek town of Philippi, Paul warns his friends against the enemies of the Cross of Christ—that is, people who live lives in opposition to the gospel.

He writes of them, “Many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. I have often told you of them, and now I tell you even with tears. Their end is destruction; their god is the belly; and their glory is in their shame; their minds are set on earthly things.”

“Their minds are set on earthly things.” Some of us know what it is to have our minds set on earthly things—money, possessions, career, houses and cars, television, books, whatever…

Not that earthly things are necessarily bad; earthly things have their place. We need money and homes and food and clothes. And it’s good to have the things that make life pleasurable—for me, some of those things have been books and music and gardens and travel and friends.

We can—and should—use all we have of material possessions and interests and abilities to honor God and to be useful to other people whom God loves.

I used to use my interest in gardens to make a flower garden for my church.

My son-in-law loves cars. He uses his interest in cars to help people in his church who have trouble with their cars. He helps them with repairs, and sometimes helps them find good used cars.

I have a friend who loves to take pictures. He and some friends once had a ministry of taking free pictures for people who couldn’t afford real studio pictures. They advertised their services to single moms. The women would come with their children, and they had volunteer hairdressers and make-up artists. They would make the women and their children beautiful and take their pictures. Then they would print the pictures right on the spot and hand the pictures to the happy families.

But when we set our minds on the things of earth, they become little gods for us, and they cause us to forget our destiny—which is not in this world but in the world to come.

Remember the parable about the sower and his seeds: Jesus told about how some of the seed was choked out by the cares and riches and pleasures of life and couldn’t bear fruit.

And since we will soon depart from this world and enter the eternal one, our greatest care should be fore the things that will count in the world we will live in forever.

This leads us to the text for today:

In Philippians 3:20 Paul writes, “But our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. He will transform the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, by the power that also enables him to make all things subject to himself.

“Therefore, my brothers and sisters, whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm in the Lord in this way, my beloved.”

I. When Paul writes: “Our citizenship is in heaven,” he is contrasting himself and the believers to those whose minds are set on the things of earth. The emphasis would be on the “our.” He’s saying, “These people’s minds are set on the things of earth, but our citizenship is in heaven.”

A. Philippi was an unusual city because although it was in Greece—hundreds of miles away from Rome—it was not a Greek city. It was a colony of Rome.

The city had been re-founded by Rome after a great battle as a place where her soldiers could retire to.

So the city had Roman laws, and many of the people spoke Latin rather than Greek.

They had special privileges, such as not paying the taxes that the people in the Empire paid.

Phlippi wasn’t a big city—only about 10,000 people, less than a third the size of Marion.

But they were proud to be citizens of the greatest city in the world.

B. I want us to think about what it means that our citizenship is in heaven.

A citizen has certain responsibilities and privileges.

As citizens of our country, some  of our responsibilities are to obey the laws, vote, and pay our taxes.

And as citizens we have privileges: fire departments, hospitals, police protection, schools, water departments, and sewers.

As citizens of our heavenly homeland we also have responsibilities:

We are responsible to love and obey our Lord Jesus.

That means that we are to forgive our enemies and pray for them.

We are to be generous and holy in our lives.

We are responsible to love our neighbors and put their interests before our own.

We are to live in such a way as to bring honor to the Lord who redeemed us on the cross.

And we have privileges:

Our sins are forgiven; we are made friends with God. Jesus is our constant companion.

We have an assured future: a home in glory.

We know that whatever happens, God will always hold us tight and never let us go.

We have the privilege of prayer: we can bring to God all our concerns and be sure that he hears us and cares about us.

II. After he says that our citizenship is in heaven, Paul writes, “…and from there we are expecting a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. He will transform the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, by the power that also enables him to make all things subject to himself.”

A. Did you know that the Roman emperor called himself “Savior”? He was worshiped as a god, especially in Philippi because it was a Roman colony.

When Paul says, “We are expecting a Savior…” he is contrasting the Lord Jesus with the Roman emperor.

Before Jesus was born, the angel told Joseph what was to be the name of the Holy Child that was to be born to Mary. The angel said, “He shall be called Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins.” The name “Jesus” or in Hebrew “Joshua” was a very common boys’ name in New Testament times. And the name Jesus means “Savior,” or “the Lord is salvation.”

B. “He will transform the body of my humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory.”

I didn’t always think of my body as a body of humiliation, but as I grow older and experience more and more weakness and pain and the limitations my poor body, the more that expression, “The body of my humiliation,” resonates with me.

I am ready for this “body of humiliation” to be “transformed,” as the verse says, “to the body of his glory.”

Jesus also had a body of his humiliation. That is how he became our Savior. He was born as a helpless baby. He lived in a human body, with all of its weaknesses and limitations.

And he died in that body and bore the sin of the world in that human body.

But when he rose from the dead, he had “a body of glory.”

And the verse I read tells us that we will be transformed and be conformed to Christ’s body of glory.

I don’t know exactly what that means. I don’t know whether it means that we can spirit ourselves from place to place, or whether we can walk through closed doors. But I am sure that in our new bodies of glory we will sing and dance, and we will be through with pain and sorrow, and we will be beautiful.

In Matthew 13:43 we read what Jesus says about our destiny: “Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father.”

I don’t know whether that means that we will actually shine like stars, or whether he is saying in a picturesque way that we will be glorious and splendid and honored.

CONCLUSION

Years ago Charlotte and I were visiting her Uncle Lloyd and Aunt Betty.

Uncle Lloyd was very ill and not expected to live much longer. They had set up a hospital bed in the living room of their apartment.

The visiting nurse arrived, and Uncle Lloyd greeted her in a loud voice: “I want to go home!”

I thought, Oh-oh, Uncle Lloyd is out of his mind.

But the nurse knew better. She said, “No Lloyd, you can’t go home until the Lord calls you!”

I read of an African tribe that had converted to Christianity. When one of their believers died, they didn’t say, “He has departed” or “She has passed on,” they said, “He has arrived” or “She has arrived.”

A refugee from Hitler’s Europe tells of his boyhood when so many tales were told about America that he felt that all the family knew this country well. So settled was this knowledge and love of the land he had not yet seen that his mother said to him when he was leaving for America “You are going home; I am staying in a foreign land.”

A young man told his pastor: “You talk too much about heaven. We need to talk about how to make this world a better place. Talking about heaven makes people give up on this life and just wait for heaven.”

His pastor replied, “I partly agree with you. We need to live now, fully committed to loving others here on earth. But we don’t have to make a choice, because what we do now prepares us for the coming world.”

I would add to that that what makes this life so important is that the way we live this life will determine our happiness and the happiness of our neighbors for all eternity.

Every good deed anyone does in this world enriches life in the world to come.

That is what Jesus meant when he spoke of “laying up treasure in heaven.”

If we truly understand that this world is not our home but that our homeland is the world to come, we won’t just sit around; we will be useful, we will fulfill our task, we will live by heaven’s values; we will make ourselves ready by love and good works because that’s what Jesus expects of us…to be faithful until he comes.

That is why the next lines in Paul’s letter are these: “Therefore, my brothers and sisters, whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm in the Lord in this say, my beloved.”

Don’t give up. Don’t just sit around and wait for glory. That’s not the way to be ready for that next great event in our lives.

“Stand firm in the Lord.”

Keep on to the end of the road. Only in that way can we prepare ourselves for our new home in glory.

I read about a famous Christian man who refused to have his biography written in the days of his fame and when he was still alive. He said, “I have seen too many people fall out on the last lap of the race.”

A great saint said, “The road goes ever upward, even to the very end.”

In my hometown of Lawrence, one of the industries is the box factory.

On every truck that leaves that plant there is written across the back of it: “Jayhawk boxes—carry the load to the end of the road.”

I want that to be true of me, that I keep on to the end, still living for God, still keeping the faith when I depart this world and arrive in my True Home—The Holy City, The New Jerusalem, Paradise, The Better Land, The Father’s House.

Thankful All the Time

1 Thessalonians 5:18

INTRODUCTION

Thanksgiving is coming soon, and we will take time out to be thankful.

We’ll look back on our lives and remember the kindnesses of people to us, of their love and encouragement that gives us the strength to pursue our goals.

We’ll thank God for friends, for life, for comforts, for hope, for salvation, for the gifts of God’s grace.

But when Thanksgiving Day is over and Friday comes, will we go back to being the same people we were before? Will we forget about being thankful?

In this sermon I want to encourage you to become a permanently thankful person, a person whose life just overflows with thankfulness, not just one day in the year, but everyday.

In his letter to the Christian believers in the Greek city of Thessalonica, St. Paul wrote these words: “Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you” (1 Thessalonians 5:18).

I. We need to learn how to give thanks to God.

A. Every prayer we make should include thanksgiving.

Philippians 4:6: “Have no anxiety about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanks giving let your requests be made known to God.”

I’ve been thinking about my prayers, and I realize that almost all of my praying is asking for things.

What would you think of a child whose talk to his or her parents was almost all asking for things?

What would you think of a husband, all of whose conversation with his wife was asking her to do things for him?

God makes gracious promises to hear our prayers and open his hands to bless us.

We’re needy people and God wants us to come to him with our needs and the needs of others.

But prayer is much more than requests.

Prayer is the way we keep connected with God.

Here’s an old preachers’ story. On a normal day in heaven the angels are bringing basketsful of prayers to God.

Most of the angels’ baskets were overflowing.

But there was one angel who always had just a few prayers in his basket.

He was the angel who was assigned to bring the prayers of thanksgiving. But there were never very many of them. Most of the prayers from earth were just more requests.

B. In the Bible God talks to us, but in one book of the Bible it is believers who talk to God.

That is why the book of Psalms is so precious to us.

Read those prayers. Sometimes the psalmists just praise God, admire him, and speak of his wisdom, beauty, mercy, and goodness—like a lover telling his beloved how dear she is to him.

“O God, thou art my God, I seek thee, my soul thirsts for thee; my flesh faints for thee, as in a dry and weary land where no water is…” (Psalm 63:1).

Sometimes the psalmists complain; some psalms are cries of pain: “I am weary with my crying; my throat is parched. My eyes grow dim with waiting for my God” (Psalm 69:3).

Some of the psalms are full of questions: “How long, O God, will you forget me for ever?” (Psalm 13:1), “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from the words of my groaning?” (Psalm 22:1).

Many psalms are simply meditations in which the psalmist bears witness to what it means to belong to God: “God is my refuge and strength, a very present help in times of trouble…” (Psalm 46:1). “The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want…”

Some psalms are simply testimonies to God’s goodness: “Thou anointest my head with oil, my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life…”

Often psalmists do make requests; sometimes they beg God to help them in their troubles. Most of the psalms of complaint and questioning end with an expression of thanksgiving.

But I don’t think that there is any kind of prayer in the psalms that is expressed more frequently than the prayer of thanksgiving.

C. So every day, when you pray, try give thanks to God for something:

Thank God for people in your past who have loved you, blessed you, helped you, encouraged you, or inspired you by their example.

Thank God for opportunities you have had to serve, your successes, people you have been able to help.

Thank God, maybe, even for sorrows and troubles through which you have learned the important lessons that made you what you are.

Thank God for difficulties overcome, struggles in which you have found the strength to prove your loyalty to God.

Thank God for those who have been your mentors—parents, grandparents, teachers, pastors, mentors who showed you the way to God.

I often thank God for the authors of books that have been some of my best teachers.

II. But all of our thankfulness shouldn’t be directed only to God.

A. We also have a duty to express our thanks to people in our lives.

How often to we remember to tell other people how much we appreciate them?

How often do we write letters of thanks and appreciation? A handwritten letter, in an envelope with a stamp on it is something special nowadays.

At various times in my life I’ve received letters from people expressing their appreciation for what I have meant in their lives.

When I taught school, often I would write letters to parents telling they what a pleasure it was to have their child in my class.

I’ll bet some of those letters are still kept—50-60 years later!

I have saved some of the letters of appreciation that I have received that are precious to me. I have some of them here:

A birthday card signed by all the members of my 7th grade class.

A letter from the parents of one of my students expressing appreciation for what I had done for their son.

A letter from a former student thanking me for the encouragement I had given her years before.

A letter from an inmate in the State Prison expressing appreciation for a Bible study I had conducted inside the prison.

A letter from a PTA board expressing sorrow that I was being transferred from their school.

A 4-page letter from a Japanese student who had been a member of a Bible study I led some years before in his high school in Japan.

A letter one of our daughters-in-law sent just before her marriage to our son.

Knowing how much these letters have meant to me makes me realize how much letters I may write can mean to people to whom I owe a debt of gratitude.

B. All the blessings in my life come from God, but most of them come through other people.

I often remind myself that almost everything good in my life has come through someone else—someone’s example, someone’s teaching, someone’s patience…

People need to know that they are appreciated.

Have you noticed how many of Paul’s letters begin with something like this: “I thank God every time I remember you, constantly praying with joy in all of my prayers for you…” (Philippians 1:5).

So I suggest that when Thanksgiving comes, you thank not only God but also those through whom you have experienced God’s love.

One August when I was 19, after my freshman year in college, I spent a month in a little Bible school that met over a store building in south Chicago. There were only 15 or 20 of us.

One of our teachers was a man named Dudley Sherwood.

I was inspired by Mr. Sherwood’s teaching. He made Bible doctrine come alive for me. He inspired me to learn Greek.

He always took time to answer my questions. He became my friend.

Many years later I remembered what a blessing he had been to me, and I wrote him a letter telling him so.

He wrote me back, and I will never forget one line in that letter. He wrote, “I had always thought that that summer was spent to no great profit.”

I found this in a book I am reading:

A gifted executive, looking back on his career, realized how greatly his life had been influenced as a youth by a certain teacher. He traced her through the school, found that she was retired, and wrote her of his appreciation.

He received this reply:

“I can’t tell you how much your note meant to me. I am in my eighties living alone in a small room, cooking my own meals, lonely, and like the last leaf of fall lingering behind. You will be interested to know that I taught school for fifty years and yours is the first note of appreciation I have ever received. It came to me on a blue cold morning, and it cheered me as nothing has in years.”

A great psychologist and philosopher named William James wrote this: “The deepest craving of human nature is the craving to be appreciated.”

CONCLUSION

Let me leave you with these thoughts:

Thank God, on Thanksgiving Day and every day for life and for the blessings in your life.

Thank God for the people through whom those blessings came.

This is important, not only to the God who loves us, it is also important to you to draw you closer to God.

And don’t forget to thank also the people who are important in your life.

They need to hear what you have to tell them.

We all need to know that our lives have blessed others.

The Women in Jesus’s Life

Luke 8:1-3

INTRODUCTION

You’ve all noticed that in every church you’ve ever belonged to, there were more women than men.

Did you know that it’s always been that way?

Historians tell us that even in the earliest days of Christianity, women far outnumbered men in the churches in the Greek and Roman world.

Although women aren’t as prominent in the gospels and Acts as men, we have many, many names of women who followed and served God and helped spread the gospel.

I’m going to read you a text that I think you have never heard used in a sermon, but gives us a window into a feature about Jesus’s ministry that we might have missed.

It is in Luke 8:1-3:

Jesus went on through cities and villages,

preaching and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God.

And the twelve were with him,

and also some women who had  been healed of evil spirits and infirmities:

Mary, called Magdalene, from who seven demons had gone out,

and Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod’s steward,

and Susanna, and many others,

who provided for him out of their means.

I. Picture Jesus and his followers as they journeyed from town to town and village to village on their preaching tour.

A. This is at the beginning of Jesus’s ministry, and already it wasn’t just Jesus and twelve men.

Jesus had many disciples whose names we don’t know but who were with him, learning and serving.

We read that once he sent 70 disciples out on a mission trip.

Among these disciples there were many—I said many—women.

We read about them here. We have the names of several of them.

Three of them are named in the verses I read: Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Susanna.

These three were notable because they had been healed by Jesus. Mary Magdalene, we read had been cured of some very serious condition caused by seven demons who had tormented her.

It seems that Joanna and Susanna were also among those who had been healed by Jesus.

B. Because they owed so much to Jesus, they wanted to be with him—to learn and to serve.

But these three women weren’t the only women among Jesus’s disciples.

There were, according to Luke, “many others.”

I can imagine that these women disciples were important in three important ways:

1. They could testify to the grace of God in their own lives.

Christianity has always spread by personal testimony.

Some, such as the three we mentioned, had been healed of serious afflictions.

Others had found the joy of knowing sins forgiven and the promise of eternal life.

As they little group went from place to place, the members of the group would strike up conversations with the bystanders. Women would talk to women and men would talk to men about Jesus and the salvation they had found in him.

2. These women also served in the ways that women are good at. They shopped for groceries. They prepared meals, they washed clothes, they bandaged cuts. And, according to Luke, they also paid for the groceries out of their own resources.

I doubt that any of these women were rich, but they used what they had to supplo the needs of the group of disciples.

Isn’t it interesting that Jesus, who would feed 5000 men (plus women and children), with 5 loaves and 2 fishes depended on the generosity of friends like these women for daily needs for himself and his disciples?

3. But, most important, these women followed Jesus to listen and learn. They weren’t “groupies,” who just went along to get in on the action. They were serious disciples, and Jesus welcomed them and taught them the same as the men.

II. Historians tell us that this prominence of women in Jesus’s company was unparalleled in the ancient world.

A. According to Jewish custom in the time of Jesus, women didn’t appear in public with men.

Women didn’t converse with men in public—even with their own husbands!

Scholars tell us that although women were allowed in the synagogue, they couldn’t be disciples of a rabbi, unless the rabbi was their husband.

Girls received only enough education to teach them what was expected of them and what was forbidden. They didn’t learn theology or Bible.

Women sometimes supported rabbis out of their resources, but to leave home to travel with a rabbi was not only unheard of—it would have been scandalous!

You have probably heard of the prayer that was prescribed for all Jewish men to repeat every day: “Blessed are you that you have not made me a heathen, have not made me a woman, have not made me illiterate.”

There is no record of any other ancient teachers who were men and had women followers.

People who study ancient history are astonished at the prominence of women in the gospels, and how Jesus ignored the conventions of society.

Early in his ministry Jesus broke with Jewish custom when he visited with a Samaritan woman at a well—alone, just the two of them.

He asked her for a drink and drank out of her cup. And she was a Samaritan, and therefore unclean, and everything she touched was unclean. She was also a woman who had had six husbands and was living with a man who wasn’t her husband.

When the disciples returned, they were astonished that he was talking with a woman.

III. As I mentioned, this was also at the beginning of Jesus’s ministry—which would continue for two or three more years.

A. During the rest of Jesus’s ministry we read of many other women disciples

We read a couple of chapters on in Luke about the time when Jesus accepted hospitality at Martha’s house in Bethany.

It was called “Martha’s home,” I suppose, because Martha was the older woman and responsible for running the home.

But when there, Jesus surprised Martha by allowing Mary to sit at his feet and listen to his teaching while Martha got the meal.

This bothered Martha so much that she asked Jesus to send Mary in to help her.

Jesus objected—not because Martha was not doing what was good, but because Jesus wanted to make sure that both Martha and Mary knew that a woman’s place was not only in the kitchen, but also as a learner—just like the men disciples.

B. At the cross, we read in John’s gospel (19:25-26) that Jesus’s mother; his mother’s sister; Mary Magdalene; and Mary, wife of Clopas, and Salome were there. The only man John mentions as being present at the cross was “the beloved disciple,” whom we assume was John.

C. In Mark we read that as Jesus died, Mary Magdalene; Mary, mother of James the younger and Joses—who had followed him and ministered to him when he was in Galilee—and many other women who had come up with him to Jerusalem.

D. In Luke 24:10-12 we read we read the names of some more of the women who had been following, serving Jesus, and listening to him. No men were at the tomb yet, early on that Easter morning, but Mary Magdalene; Joanna; Mary, mother of James and Joses were there, “along with other women.”

I’ve listed 9 women who are named in the gospels as disciples of Jesus. Here are their names: Mary Magdalene; Susanna; Joanna; Mary, mother of James and Joses; Mary, our Lord’s mother; Salome; Mary, wife of Clopas; Mary and Martha of Bethany. And we read that “there were many others.”

When you read the gospels and picture Jesus on the roads and in the villages, the picture in your mind should include many women, women who were learning and bearing witness and serving and providing out of their means.

APPLICATION

You know from your experience in your churches how important the ministry of women has been.

In many of your churches, women never preached sermons.

Their only teaching was of children.

And yet you know also that women did a good share of the work that was required to keep the church alive.

You taught the Sunday school, kept the music ministry going, cleaned the church building, ran the potlucks, were the prayer warriors, offered hospitality, volunteered in benevolent causes, served God in your workplace, and took responsibility for passing the faith on to your children.

My purpose in preaching this sermon is to remind you how important your role has been in the life of your churches, families, and communities and to encourage you to continue on in your work for God.

Because there is no more important work in God’s vineyard than the work that you are uniquely qualified for.

And I hope that you will continue to find opportunities to serve God while you are at Village Place.

I used to volunteer with Aging Service taking people who couldn’t drive to appointments.

Often I took people from Village Place.

On Thursday, January 4th, 1996, I wrote an account of this experience in my journal.

I titled this entry, “St. Dorothy”:

“Today as a volunteer I drove an elderly African American lady to Iowa City for a dental appointment. Dorothy is a tall, dignified lady who dresses with flair. Today she was wearing a purple hat.

It was apparent that she is intelligent but also that she hasn’t had much formal education. She told me that she is taking courses in basic skills at the community college hoping to become a teacher’s helper. She mentioned jobs in her past: factory work, nurse aide, and caring for invalids.

Dorothy sings in her church choir and in another singing group that sings in nursing homes. She takes piano lessons. She volunteers several places besides her church. She takes satisfaction in her accomplishments.

Dorothy is cheerful although she has experienced tragedy. She told me that her husband, two children and a grandchild have “been killed.” But she expressed no self-pity. She said, “The Lord knows what he’s doing.” Although she has little money, she says the Lord has always taken care of her, and she expects him to keep taking care of her.

Some of you have, like Dorothy, have served God by serving others. I want you to know that God is pleased and that your work will endure.

But whatever your accomplishments are in the past, God still has something for you to do.

In the words of the old Sunday school song:

There’s a work for Jesus, ready at your hand,

‘Tis a task the Master just for you has planned.

Haste to do his bidding, yield him service true;

There’s a work for Jesus none but you can do.