And when these things begin to come to pass,
then look up, and lift up your heads;
for your redemption draweth nigh.
|
|
March 20, 2008:Traditions | Just a few more weary days and then... I'll fly away... And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh. |
| December 29, 2007:New Year's 2008 | ||
| November 3, 2007:How To Be Successful in Christian Ministry | ||
| October 23, 2007:Salmon |
| ||||||||||
| Love is Light William H. Haller |
|---|
The new adult quarterly combines 1 John and Revelation. The study of Revelation is done from a prophetical perspective, but assumes a preterist view that the prophecy was already fulfilled in the 1st century, based on the early churches experience with the Roman Empire. I don't share this view. The pastor has agreed to junk this quarterly. The current plans are to do this one lesson since you have studied it, and then proceed immediately with a more classical view of Revelation and Daniel. Since this is hard to do in 1 quarter, we will be taking the remainder of this quarter and the summer quarter on this subject. That allows us to skip a couple of weeks when I will be gone, along with doing a reduced lesson on our standard fourth Sunday lunches. It will also give us time off on Easter if we need it since that is frequently a vary sparsely attended class.
For those of you who want a reference, I suggest either Dake's God's Plan for Man or Dake's Revelation Expounded. The first covers topics from the entire Bible and is an excellent and very readable reference for any teacher. There are many, many pages, on Revelation and its prophecies. The second, presumably, just covers Revelation and prophetical links back to the Old Testament supporting it. I have the first, but haven't looked at the second. Both are available at www.dake.com in hardcover. You can get much of the same information via the Dake's Annotated Reference Bible. A certain number of his works are also available if you have a computer (but alas only if you are running a popular operating system.) The cross-linking of their computer product makes it very useful for study. If you, like I, don't like what you read in the teacher's quarterly this quarter but are afraid to try to teach Revelation without some help, these books make a good alternative approach.
Revelation completes the Bible. The Bible's time line stretches from Genesis 1:1, the beginning of time, to Revelation 22 the end of time. The Gospels portray the life of Christ. The rest of the New Testament deals with the early church, although many of the things they dealt with are issues for today as well. The first chapter of Revelation deals with the vision of Christ that John saw and is part of the early church experience. The next two chapters of Revelation deal with both the early church and the whole post early church time span. From Revelation 4:1 on, the book deals with post rapture events which will happen on this planet (and which I feel might happen very soon, by the way). The scripture is literally "the things which must be hereafter". Dake does a very good job of integrating the prophecies of the Old Testament with the book of Revelation.
But I digress... On to today's lesson. This one takes us back to the light and darkness theme found in certain lessons of the previous quarterly. In fact, 1 John 1 was referenced in certain of the lessons and the gnostics were mentioned then.
The authorship of 1-3 John is again brought into question by the quarterly authors, and I again reply that unbroken church tradition along with consistency between the books and the Gospel of John indicate that they were written by John the apostle. They aren't called the 1-3 General Epistles of Fred or Jeff for a reason. They were written by John.
The scripture reading for today is taken from the first seventeen verses of the second chapter of 1 John. John has just recounted the fact that he bare witness of the life of Christ in chapter 1. He ends the chapter with an admonishment that we are all sinners and that Jesus is faithful and just to forgive us of our sins when we confess them, and remove all unrighteousness from us.
The second chapter begins with a further warning not to sin, but if we or any man sins, Jesus Christ is our advocate with the Father and the propitiation for our sins, along with the sin of the whole world. We are then encouraged to walk as Jesus himself walked when He was living on the Earth. This then leads into the meat of today's lesson.
While Jesus was alive, he preached a good sermon which has come to be called the Sermon on the Mount. In it he repeatedly identified the current righteous standards of the day and then would follow it with a "but I say unto you" or equivalent statement that made it clear that He expected more of His followers than the Jewish law required. You can find this starting in Chapter 5 of Matthew if you need a refresher.
The quarterly writer feels that this portion of 1 John was addressed to the gnostics who didn't believe that Christ had really been born as a man, but that He inhabited a man for a time and left before the crucifixion. They also believed that knowledge was the way to salvation as opposed to faith, that flesh was evil and the spirit was good, didn't believe man had a free will, that you got close to God by denying yourself pleasure, and that the Old Testament (the Bible of the day) was not the product of God.
Whether this is who the comments were directed toward or whether there was simply no love between the brothers and sisters in Christ or no love for the people of the world, John is compelled to set them straight. He says that since Christ came into the world, there is light, and that that light has banished darkness. He says that if you hate your brother, you are in fact walking in darkness, even if you say you are walking in light. You are walking in darkness because hate blinds your eye.
A few weeks ago, the Superintendent asked if churches today were gated communities. I do think that there is some validity to the thought that our churches today do have gates. We don't intentionally close the gates in peoples faces, nor do we try to make people feel uncomfortable when they come in our doors. At least our church is pretty good about that, and I think that there are other churches in town that also do a good job at having an open door policy (even if I did have to give the pastor a hard time about the "open house" blurb he ran in the paper last fall and ask him if we were closed the rest of the time.
But the thing that the churches don't do a very good job of is going out into the highways and byways of life and compelling the people to come in. I know that I fail miserably in this. I can write sermons on the Internet and teach Sunday School. I've occasionally been in choirs. But I don't do very good at cold calling or going door to door. I don't know if it is just the change of society we have today versus 50 to 100 years ago, or whether it is the difference between people in the West versus the South, but it is just hard for me to do. It isn't that I hate people and want them to go to hell, and I don't think that most people feel that way. There is just a big sense of Western individualism that says you should take care of yourself and others should take care of themselves. That Spirit is really hurting the church.
While I don't think that door to door evangelism does much good, getting to know your neighbors and letting them get to know you would be a good start. We aren't really gated. We're just front door closed non sit on the porch types of people any more. Having both parents working basically kills the time that used to exist for social interaction. All of the work for keeping the house going gets compressed into that time any more. There are too many activities for all concerned, too much time that has to be dedicated to homework and school activities (because of course we want our kids to succeed and do better than we have), and other things to stay sane and take the time good relationships take anymore. At some point that needs to change. Society needs a change and the church is no different.
We need to seriously work on the perception of the church today. We come out against so many things and they come off as sounding like attacks against individuals. We must not stand in general against the sinners of this world. We must stand against the sin. It is a fine line that we must draw, but it is a very important distinction. In too many cases, the world looks at the church and sees bodies of people united against them and what they do rather than a body of people wanting to help them out from under their burdens of sin to find salvation in the blood of Jesus. Until we change the perceptions that people have of the church, this will be tough to do.
I get back to a fundamental need in the church to once again let the power of God begin to flow through the church and in the service, and through the people as they go about their daily walk between services. The power of God can do great things to give people a reason to want to come and see what church is all about. Having the witness of the power of God present in a service makes it more likely that when we speak against sin and the evil of the world that the people will see that there truly is a God that they better be paying attention to that evidently feels the same way. (Let's just be sure that what we are speaking against is actually something that God also is against and not some scruple that we have come up with ourselves!)
The last part of the lesson follows the last few verses of the text where John is warning that we should not love the world or the things of the world. Everything that is part of the world will pass away. Only what we have done for the Master will survive us to be the basis for our eternal and lasting rewards. We are told to flee the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. (Read Dake's notes p. 279 and 207).
What elements in the world lead us to unrighteousness? How is it better or worse today (or have things changed at all)? How is it possible that we keep walking in darkness when we know the way of light? What are the most effective means you have found to stay on the true path rather than letting the world entice you away? What role models are out there for our kids today and how are those role models different (or perceived differently today) than they were when we were growing up? John declares that the world has experienced light due to Christ's coming. Is the world getting lighter or darker today? Is the United States getting lighter or darker today?
We all need to do the will of God in order to abide forever. As we talked about last week, Jesus is the true vine. He provides our nourishment via the Holy Spirit. The Father prunes the parts of the vine that are diseased or non-productive to make His church better. We also need to get out our pruning shears to get rid of the non-productive parts of our life so that our fruit can grow better. God, through the Holy Spirit, continually tells us how we can improve. It is always best to take out our own pruning shears before God has to get His out. We just need to be sure we prune what the Holy Spirit is saying to prune rather than just hacking about smartly.
