Rock Steady

ROCK STEADY

Mount Hope UMC

Sunday, July 28, 2019

Colossians 2:6-19 The Message (MSG)

From the Shadows to the Substance

^6-7 My counsel for you is simple and straightforward: Just go ahead with what you’ve been given. You received Christ Jesus, the Master; now live him. You’re deeply rooted in him. You’re well constructed upon him. You know your way around the faith. Now do what you’ve been taught. School’s out; quit studying the subject and start living it! And let your living spill over into thanksgiving.

^8-10 Watch out for people who try to dazzle you with big words and intellectual double-talk. They want to drag you off into endless arguments that never amount to anything. They spread their ideas through the empty traditions of human beings and the empty superstitions of spirit beings. But that’s not the way of Christ. Everything of God gets expressed in him, so you can see and hear him clearly. You don’t need a telescope, a microscope, or a horoscope to realize the fullness of Christ, and the emptiness of the universe without him. When you come to him, that fullness comes together for you, too. His power extends over everything.

^11-15 Entering into this fullness is not something you figure out or achieve. It’s not a matter of being circumcised or keeping a long list of laws. No, you’re already in—insiders—not through some secretive initiation rite but rather through what Christ has already gone through for you, destroying the power of sin. If it’s an initiation ritual you’re after, you’ve already been through it by submitting to baptism. Going under the water was a burial of your old life; coming up out of it was a resurrection, God raising you from the dead as he did Christ. When you were stuck in your old sin-dead life, you were incapable of responding to God. God brought you alive—right along with Christ! Think of it! All sins forgiven, the slate wiped clean, that old arrest warrant canceled and nailed to Christ’s cross. He stripped all the spiritual tyrants in the universe of their sham authority at the Cross and marched them naked through the streets.

^16-17 So don’t put up with anyone pressuring you in details of diet, worship services, or holy days. All those things are mere shadows cast before what was to come; the substance is Christ.

^18-19 Don’t tolerate people who try to run your life, ordering you to bow and scrape, insisting that you join their obsession with angels and that you seek out visions. They’re a lot of hot air, that’s all they are. They’re completely out of touch with the source of life, Christ, who puts us together in one piece, whose very breath and blood flow through us. He is the Head and we are the body. We can grow up healthy in God only as he nourishes us.

            In our Old Testament reading, God tells Hosea to marry the harlot Gomer.  Gomer is identified as a Canaanite cult prostitute who would have performed her acts as part of the worship of the Canaanite fertility gods, Baal and Astarte.  Because the narrative never gives Gomer an opportunity to speak, it is possible that because she was a Canaanite, Hosea may have considered her a harlot.  Whatever the case was, God told Hosea to enter into a marriage contract with her and produce children and had him name the children Jezreel, a boy whose name symbolizes the punishment of the house of Jehu for blood shed in Jezreel.  It was here that Jehu, great grandfather of King Jeroboam ben Joash, killed King Joram ben Ahab of Israel, his mother Jezebel and other family members which had ruled Israel.  Hosea saw the alliance between the house of Jehu, Assyria and Egypt as a rejection of God.

            Hosea and Gomer had a girl they named Lo Ruhamah, which means “no mercy” in Hebrew.  She was so named because God would show no mercy to Israel but God will deliver Judah from its enemies.

           

            They then had a boy who was named Lo Ammi, which means “not my people” in Hebrew.  He was named because God was withdrawing himself from the disobedient people of Israel.  Yet, God will restore his relationship once the punishment is over.

            This past week I was reading devotions by Arie Leder who was writing on the disobedience of the Judges.  If you are a regular attendee of Bible Study on Wednesday evenings, you know that after Moses and Joshua, Israel went back to their old ways of disobedience and sin and God would seem to withdraw from them and they would suffer.  When they could no longer take their punishment, they would beg God to send them another leader, a king.  God eventually established the period of the Judges, but the people continued to do what they thought was right in their own eyes.

            The last Judge was Samson.  Samson was set apart as a Nazarite before his birth.  God told his parents that he would be set apart and that he was never to have wine or cut his hair.  We know that Samson’s strength was in his hair.  Samson’s problem though was his eyes.  He lusted after the flesh and his first detour from God’s will for him was that he killed a lion with his bare hands and after bees made a hive in the lion, Samson put his hand into the lion’s carcass and ate the honey.  This was a sinful act which caused him to become unclean.  But Samson not only ignored that he had done this, he gave some of the honey to his parents who had no idea where it came from.  So, he caused them to become unclean and in a state of sin and they didn’t even know it.

            Then a Philistine woman caught Samson’s eye and he begged his parents to marry her, despite the fact that the Philistine’s were enemies to the Jews.  He married her and her people enticed her to try and trick Samson to find out the source of his strength, he gave her people a riddle and he gave her the answer to the riddle which she gave to her people.  When he found she had been unfaithful to him, he killed 30 men and gave their clothing to the men who had solved his riddle and left his wife and returned to his parents.

            Samson had a serious issue with uncontrolled lust.   After at least one other tryst with a prostitute, he met and fell in love with Delilah.  The Philistine rulers enticed her to ask Samson for the source of his strength.  After several requests and false responses by Samson, he finally gave her the correct answer.  Delilah cut Samson’s hair and allow the Philistine leaders to capture him, gouge out his eyes and put him in prison.   In all of this, God withdrew his favor from Samson because of his disobedience to his Nazarite duties and his sins.  But while imprisoned Samson’s heart was changed and he asked God to give him one more chance. 

            The Philistines wanted to show the people how they had brought the strong Samson down to nothing so they brought him to the Temple to be made fun of.  Over 2,000 Philistines were there to see the show.  But Samson’s hair had grown back and he pretended to be weak and asked the Philistine guards to allow him to lean against the columns of their Temple.  Even though he had no eyes, his strength brought the columns down that held the Temple up and he killed over 2,000 Philistines that day, and he killed himself.

            Throughout history, there have been kings and kingdoms that have arisen and fallen.  During recent history we saw the rise of slavery that came into being through so-called Christians who leaned on certain Bible scripture that told them it was legal and approved by God to go to a foreign country and steal black people and bring them to this country to build it up for them so they could live in the lap of luxury.  Slavery didn’t last because it was built on what the people thought was right in their own eyes and on the hatred and greed of the slave owner and this government.  When people rose up and petitioned President Lincoln against the greed that fed it, God intervened and a war was fought to end the greed that fed it and it led to the abolishment of slavery.  But the discrimination of the black man and woman did not end.  We didn’t get our 40-acres and a mule.

            In the 20^th century prior to the first World War, several tyrants rose to prominence.  We saw a cleric named Rasputin so entice the members of the Romanoff family that it helped fuel the Russian Revolution that brought the rise of leaders like Roberto Mussolini, Josef Stalin and later Adolph Hitler.  All of these men came into leadership because the people did what they thought was right in their own eyes.  As a result, Christianity was abolished and the Communist party was born.

            During the 60’s because of racial hatred and bigotry in this country, a woman refused to give up her seat on a bus one day and the cry of “Let My People Go” rose once again and the Civil Rights Movement was born.  There were riots in LA and Detroit, black and white people marched in places like Birmingham and Selma, children were killed in a church bombing, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated and President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

            For the years that followed, despite who was in the White House we thought God had established a new era in the history of America.  We truly believed in what our money said that “In God we Trust”.  We trusted so much in our money and the gains we made in corporate America and in our denominations and our government that we exalted when the young black Senator from Ohio, Barack Obama, ran for and was elected President in 2008.  We thought for sure that the election of the first African American President was confirmation that our country had finally overcome its racial prejudices.  But not long after he took the oath of office in 2009, the ugly head of racial hatred raised its head once more when a real estate mogul from New York began to question President Obama’s right to office because his father was an African and his mother was a white woman from Hawaii.  The “birther movement” began and continued even into President Obama’s second term.  We thought our enemy was Al Queda and Isis, but we found our enemy was our next door neighbor, our teachers, our pastor, because after President Obama’s two terms were over, the Electoral College, not the people, elected the real estate mogul from New York whose campaign promise to “Make America Great Again” meant to role back every advancement the country had made in several presidential administrations, including that of welcoming foreigners into this land.  Not just any foreigner, but now brown foreigners.

            Just like Israel, we have not been obedient to God.  We have sinned as a country, church.  So, why is this sermon entitled, “Rock Steady”?  I’m gonna tell you why.

            Just like Israel, just like Samson, just like our grandparents during slavery, just like some of our parents or us during the Civil Rights Movement, we will be the voice of the people who cry out to God about our current social and political climate.

            Eugene Peterson’s Message Bible entitles the Colossians Scripture “From the Shadows to the Substance”.  I think this adequately fits the message Paul is sending not only to the Colossians, but to us today.

            Church we stand at a crossroads.  We can choose to do what we think is right in our own eyes or we can choose to do what we know is right according to what God has told us.  We can choose to walk in our own strength, or we can walk in the strength of God’s Word.  We can choose to listen to every wind of doctrine whether Republican, Democratic or Independent, or we can choose to listen to the voice of God.  We can choose to follow the leaders of this world, or we can choose to follow the one who will lead us to life everlasting.  It’s your choice, church.  Choose this day who you will serve!  As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord!

            We have Jesus, and as the song says, that’s enough! We don’t need to be dazzled with big words and intellectual double-talk that speak to empty promises and virtual reality.  All the fullness of God is in Jesus Christ.  As the scripture says, “it’s not a matter of being circumcised or keeping a long list of laws.”  The only circumcision we need is the circumcision of our hearts that they be wholly turned to Jesus.  We were circumcised spiritually at our baptism.  All our sins were forgiven, the slate wiped clean.  We are now walking in the newness of life and no devil on earth or in hell can step on the Jesus in us.

            So, hold fast to the faith you have found in Jesus!  Be like a tree planted by the water – don’t let the world mislead you and protect your eyes from the enticements of the world.  We are in the world, but we are not of the world.

            Lastly, don’t allow anyone to make you subservient to them or make you feel less than the kings and queens you are.  You were made a royal priesthood, a peculiar people, you are more than conquerors in Jesus Christ who loves you.  No weapon formed against you can ever prosper.  No matter how dark the night or how strong the storm, like the song says, “sometimes in this life you're gonna be tossed by the waves and the currents that seem so fierce, but in the word of God I've got an anchor; and it keeps me steadfast and unmovable despite the tide.”  Quite often I see a quote that comforts me during the storms in my life: “God why did you take me through troubled waters?  God replied, Because, your enemies can’t swim.”  Don’t question your season, hold onto the Rock of your salvation because you’ve got to be sure, be very sure that your anchor holds and grips the Solid Rock; the steady and immovable Rock – that Rock is Jesus!