Brown's Daily Word 1/17/15

    Praise the Lord for this Saturday.  Saturday is the Sabbath in the Jewish world.  In the Christian calender we are waiting for the Lord's Day, Sunday, Little Easter,  tomorrow.  We had some fresh snow fall yesterday.  Alice and I walked in the crisp, fresh snow for quite some time.  It was refreshing and cleansing in some way.    

    We will meet for worship tomorrow at 8:30 and 11:00 at Union Center and for Sunday School at 9:50.  We will meet at 9:30AM for worship at Wesley.  Beginning next Sunday, January 25, there will be a single service at 10:15 at Union Center and Sunday school will meet at 9:00.

    As we live in the afterglow of Christmas and Epiphany, I am reflecting on the efficacy of the Christ of Christmas in our world, in our hearts and in our lives.  It is written, "For the grace of God has appeared for the salvation of all men, training us to renounce irreligion and worldly passions, and to live sober, upright, and godly lives in this world, awaiting our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our  great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all iniquity and to purify for himself a people of his own who are zealous for good deeds.  Titus 2:11-14.  Grace has appeared, indeed. 

    “For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men.”  “Our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good.” 

    John Bunyan wrote, “O Son of God, grace was in all thy tears; grace came bubbling out of thy side with thy blood; grace came forth with every word of thy sweet mouth; grace came out where the whip smote thee, where the thorns pricked thee, where the nails and spear pierced thee.   blessed Son of God, here is grace indeed!  Unsearchable riches of grace!  Unthought-of riches of grace!  Grace to make the angels wonder, grace to make the sinners happy.”

    With his wonderful sanctified imagination, C.S. Lewis wrote about a bus that was leaving hell to take a tour of heaven.  While riding through the streets of gold, one of the guys in the bus saw an old friend walking through the streets of gold, and all of a sudden he jumped up and starts yelling, “It’s not fair, it’s not fair, he was a sinner all his life, it’s not fair.  I want justice, I want justice.”  One of the people walking through the streets of gold turned to his neighbor and said, “Poor guy.  He doesn’t know that we’re not here because justice has been imparted to us.  We are here because we have been given grace.”

    Some say that God’s grace is a New Testament development.  Yet, if we look closely, we see that in fact God has been pouring his grace upon humankind since Genesis 3, when God did not strike Adam and Eve on the spot, but let them live. That was grace.  After David sinned with Bathsheba and killed her husband, he prayed for grace and penned the words that have been teaching sinners to pray for millennia, “Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions.  Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin.”  God forgave David’s sins, and that is grace.

    The story of Mephibosheth in 2 Samuel 9 is a beautiful story of grace.  After David became king over Israel he asked, “Is there no one still left of the house of Saul to whom I can show God’s kindness?”  The Ancient Near Eastern culture would dictate that he kill everyone in Saul’s family.  David found out that there is one man, Mephibosheth, Jonathan’s son, who was crippled in both feet.  “Where is he?” David asked.  “He is in Lo Debar.”  Lo Debar can mean: No word, no thing, or no place.  Mephibosheth had nothing going for him.  He was in “no man’s land.” 

    David said to Mephibosheth, “Don’t be afraid for I will surely show you kindness for the sake of your father Jonathan.  I will restore to you all the land that belonged to your grandfather Saul, and you will always eat at my table.”  I am  touched  by Mephibosheth’s response.  “What is your servant that you should notice a dead dog like me?”  Yet, he experienced GRACE, because the king came and told him, “Sit at the table anyway.” 

    I have been pondering on this word "Lo Debar"    Lo Debar is not a permanent place.  It is a waiting place.  How long can we  wait?  Many of us  are waiting in Lo Debar.  I am reminded that King Jesus, our Lord, knows where we are.  Even Lo Debar becomes the place of grace.  Jesus the epitome of grace ready to pour grace upon us.  I love the story of Mephibosheth because his story is my story.  His story is your story.  Often sin cripples us and we become lame.  We are lame in our talk (we stutter, we have an accent); lame in our motives (we do the right thing for the wrong reason); and yet Jesus our King says to us, “Sit at My table anyway.”  That’s grace.  One day we will sit at the King’s table, and our feet will be crippled no more, because he will make all things new.  May we all who have received grace upon grace because of Jesus, live our lives this new year, maybe in this new season of our lives, propelled by grace of Jesus in such way that the people that we interact with, people that the Lord brings into our hearts and lives, may taste the GRACE OF JESUS.  

    The grace of the Lord teaches us, “To live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in this present age.”  In his book, "Paul and the Law", Frank Thielman of Beeson Divinity School, under  whom spent I few summer Schools in Birminham Alabama, writes, “Paul can even say that a primary result of salvation is that people might ‘live sober, righteous and pious lives in this present time.’”  So Help us Jesus. 

In Christ,

 Brown

http://youtu.be/475sVBRx88g

Brown's Daily Word 1/15/15

    Praise the Lord for the Month of January and new beginnings.  My wife celebrated her birthday on the 11th of this month.  Our granddaughter Ada will celebrate her 4th birthday tomorrow, January 16.  It is all of His grace and mercy.  It has been cold, yet it has been very fresh and invigorating.  It will be warming up by this weekend.  

    The Lord blessed us with a sweet fellowship and thought provoking Bible Study yesterday.  Praise the Lord for the new life we have in Him and because of Him.  We are called to celebrate this life in Jesus.  We are called to invite others to come to Jesus and receive this new Life by faith through grace.  

    We live in a fast-paced and furious world.  We live in a fleeting world.  We live in an often frightening world.  We are called pay attention to Jesus.  We are invited, "this is my well beloved Son Listen to Him".  Life is a matter of what we give our attention to.

    Simone Weil was a French Jewish woman who is widely recognized as one of the most brilliant and original minds of the 20th century.  She recorded a diary of her thoughts and observations, and in her chapter entitled, "Attention and Will," she is convinced our attention to life is much more important than our will.  The will only controls a few muscles, but attention changes our whole understanding of life.

    She describes her method of understanding of life, of images, of symbols, of events in history is not to try to understand them.  She advises us to look at them, to give our attention to them, to keep our attention on them until suddenly a light dawns and comprehension and understanding flows over us.  "Generally speaking, a method for the exercise of the intelligence consists of looking at, of pay attention to."

    Jesus took three of His disciples up onto the mountain with Him where they turned their attention toward Him.  On that mountain the light broke upon them and they began to see what is really there.  Previously they thought they knew what was happening in Jesus.  They had declared their allegiance to their own notion of the work of the Messiah, as in Peter's confession.  Then Jesus began to tell them about the suffering, rejection, and love that would not be received, about a grace that would be refused because the grace could not claim to be deserved, about a forgiveness that was not wanted if it was going to be offered to others, as well.  With this weighing upon their minds, these disciples turned their confused and frustrated attention upon Jesus.  The longer they looked, the more they saw what was truly there.  The more attention they focused on Jesus the more they learned and realized; the more they understood, the more they were blinded by the mystery that here in this life was the love and power of God at work.  On that mountain the more attention they gave Jesus the more they were overwhelmed by the power of God's glory in the mission of Jesus.  The attention on Jesus brought an understanding of how the Law of Moses and the words of the prophets were lifted up, fulfilled, completed and transformed by the grace and forgiveness presented by Jesus.  There on that mountain as they kept their attention on Jesus they heard with a divine authority that this Jesus truly spoke in the love and power of God's will, so they were to listen to Him.

    When we pay attention to Jesus and live in Him under His authority, we are surprised by " His Joy".   We get to encounter our Lord afresh and anew and to have "Jesus Moments".  The more attention we pay to Jesus and to those around us the more we come to share the attitude and love of God for others .

    The movie Dead Man Walking was the story of a nun who gives her attention to a death row inmate, and as she gives him her attention she develops an affection, a compassion for the inmate.  The more attention and comprehension of the man's life, the more understanding and forgiveness she has for him, and the more sympathy and grace she finds in her dealings with the man.  The more attention we give to Jesus, our Lord, the more we discover that in Him we have seen the fullness of God's love for all of us and that in Him we have seen the best of our selves; we have seen how we are to live at our fullest.  Where we give our attention to others, when we really give our attention, the Lord uses us to bring out the best in them by turning their attention to Jesus.

In Christ,

 Brown

http://youtu.be/9g4eqKDkDiw

Brown's Daily Word 1/14/15

    Praise the Lord for this new day.  We will get together for our Wednesday Evening gathering this evening at 6 PM with a special meal followed by Bible Study at 6:30 PM and the choir practice at 7:30 PM.  We will be looking at the Book of Joel.  It was very cold yesterday though it was sunny and brilliant.  Spring is not far away.  Praise the Lord for Jesus, who is the Son that was given.  He is the Child that is born.  He is the Prince of Peace.  "For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulders: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace." Isaiah 9:6

 

    Some time ago read about a painting that depicted " Peace".  At one county fair there was a contest for the best “peaceful” painting.  There were three finalists, three pictures of peace.  The first picture of peace was of a farm in Wisconsin.  We can on this wintry day imagine that farm in our minds, with its fences along the roadside all painted freshly white.  The barn was a bright red and the farmhouse had been recently painted red as well, with white trim freshly painted on all the windows.  The grass of the pasture was luscious green, with well-fed Holstein cows grazing on that tall grass, and small birds perfectly chirping their delightful songs as they flew above the cows, grazing there in peace.  This picture entered the contest but it didn’t win. 

 

    The second picture of peace was from a scene on Puget Sound at five thirty in the morning, with the sun slowly rising with its rose hues on the water, with no wind, and no airplanes and no boats, with only seagulls lazily gliding on the air, effortless.  This scene was and perfect, serene, and so peaceful.  Yet, it too did not win. 

 

    The third picture was that of a large, tall, magnificent waterfall, a cataract splashing its waters down on the rocks for at least two hundred feet.  Strangely or not so strangely, at the base of that waterfall were yellow arches from McDonald’s with all their trashing wrappers spilling over from the garbage can.  On the other side of the magnificent waterfall was a freeway, with thousands of cars endlessly roaring by.  On top of that high cliff where the waterfall originated, was a campground, and people were having a blast of a party and hundreds of empty soda cans came floating over that waterfall and into the pool below.  Meanwhile, there was jackhammer blasting away concrete at its base and electric power saws were whining away with new construction.  There was a tree which had grown very tall through the years, standing near that waterfall, and at the top of the tree, a branch reached out towards the water, and in that branch was a bird’s nest, and in that bird’s nest were three blue eggs and a mother robin was sitting on those eggs in that nest in the tree limb near the waterfall, with all the chaos around it.  The picture was entitled, “Peace,” and that picture of peace won the prize.  … 

    

    This is our understanding of God’s peace in Jesus, the Prince of peace.  God’s peace is not to run away from the chaos and the conflict all around us and inside of us.  Jesus's  peace within  and in the midst of it..  "When peace like a river attendeth my soul..."

 

     May Jesus the Prince pf Peace overwhelm us with His peace today.

 In Jesus.

   Brown

http://youtu.be/oZsZkB-HcyE

Brown's Daily Word 1/12/15

     Praise the Lord.  He is the Lord of History.  He is the King of all nations.  Praise the Lord for His Church.  He blessed us in His house yesterday.  The world is witnessing the rise of barbarism, brutalities, lawlessness, and the sense of deep human depravity that we have seen in Paris in last few days.  We are called to seek His peace; are called proclaim the peace that Christ alone offers.  Jesus reigns .  His light shines brightly.  The darkness has not comprehended it. "  Shine Jesus Shine".

"Shine on us".

    I preached from Genesis 1 and John 1 yesterday.  The creation event recorded in Genesis is amazing.  The Jesus Event -- the Christmas event recorded by John in John 1 is astounding.  The Christmas event portrayed in the Gospel of John is one that we cannot see or visualize or draw.  Painters cannot paint paintings about John’s Christmas story.  John’s Christmas story is abstract and philosophical.

    There is a website that I enjoy, entitled, "Illustrated Gospel" by Maurice Lamouroux. http://perso.wanadoo.fr/maurice.lamouroux/files/ill_e%20NT.htm

The French man who created this website must have had a Ph.D. in both the History of Painting and Biblical studies.  Maurice Lamouroux has assembled famous paintings of Biblical stories according to their Biblical theme.  The website takes the famous stories in the Bible, and assembles paintings from art museums around the world that picture those famous Bible stories.  On the theme of the birth of Jesus, Dr. Lamouroux has 500 paintings that depict Jesus’ infancy.  Those 500 paintings about Jesus’ birth are both visual and graphic.  The Christmas stories from Matthew and Luke are highly picturesque; they can be visualized and painted.  Then, the author of this website lists John 1:1-18, the Christmas story from the Gospel of John.  There is not a single painting of Jesus’ birth that is based on John 1:1-18.  No, not one.  Not one painter has been inspired to attempt to paint the Christmas story according to the Gospel of John.  John’s Christmas story is too abstract, too philosophical, and too mind numbing.  Dr. Timothy George of  Beeson Divinity School in Birmingham states that John does not deal with the baby stuff of Jesus found in Mathew and Luke but, rather, John goes straight to the Majesty and the Wonder of of it all in Jesus.  John attempts to portray the magnitude and the majesty of Jesus.

    John 1:  “The Word became flesh and lived among us, full of grace and truth, and we beheld his glory, the glory of the only Son from the father, and from his fullness, we have all received grace upon grace.” 

    This verse  is one of the most  beautiful lines in the Bible, a line that I have loved and lived with for decades.  “From his fullness, we all have received grace upon grace.”   I am personally aware that my life has been overwhelmed with all the grace that God has given to me personally, grace upon grace upon grace.  There is a Russian hymn that is entitled, “O Day Full of Grace,” and I am one of those people who have been immeasurable blessed by God’s giving and giving and giving.  But John’s Christmas gospel is so clear; that all of us have received grace upon grace upon grace.  All of us.
In Christ,
 Brown
http://youtu.be/G_eXpjYqmgo