Continuing the Message

This past Sunday in worship, God's people and I focused on the story of Sodom and Gomorrah.  You can read all about it in Genesis 18 and Genesis 19.  Also, if you check the blog entries, you can even find a link to the youtube recording of the message.

I did want to follow up on the message with one very important point.  We can look at events such as what happened to Sodom and Gomorrah, as well as all the different events that we see in life, where it seems as though God's justice and judgment come to visit us in this world.  You also don't have to look very hard to find preachers who find it pretty easy to declare, "such and such is God's judgment upon those people", especially when bad things happen to them.

It really calls for us to consider a question that is rather important, though.  What is God's inclination when it comes to dealing with the people of this world?  Really, when we think about it, there are two realities that will occur as people leave this world to go to their eternal destination.  They will either be with God in joy, or they will be separated from God forever in agony.  So the question we are really asking is this: Does God want people to be with Him, or does He want people to be separated from Him?

If we declare that God visits justice and judgment on our lives in this world, we are essentially saying that God wants to condemn.  But is that the way that God wants to deal with the people of this world?  If God simply wanted to condemn the world, would He have sent His Son to die, taking the sins of the world upon Himself?  That hardly seems to be the prevailing attitude of God, if He would do such a thing.

One of the prime teachings that Lutheran Christians especially focus on is that God's overwhelming desire is to save, rescue, and redeem the people of the world.  God doesn't want people separated from Him.  God wants people to be with Him forever, regardless of what they have done, regardless of the direction their lives took in this world.  He wants to forgive.  He wants to show compassion to them.  No, He doesn't overlook how they have gone contrary to His will, design, and Law, but in the grand scheme of things, God wants to restore them to Himself.

I think that this thought frames how we do everything we do as God's people.  Yes, it's easy to point out sins and faults.  It's far more difficult to show people that God wants them drawn to Himself, and that He forgives them, since so often, it causes us to face our fears and uncertainties.  Truth be told, sometimes we want "those people" to receive God's justice rather than God's compassion and forgiveness.  We don't want to face that ugliness in ourselves, and so we may come across as though God wants to condemn.

However, this vitally important teaching reminds us that, as God's people, we have a God who wants to rescue people, not visit His divine justice and vengeance upon them.  And as His messengers, that means that we give a great deal of thought to how we come across to others.  After all, if the image of Christ is being restored within us, that's what we want others to see, and not our desires to see them pay the price.

Different Ways of Learning

Way back in my college days, I took a couple of organic chemistry classes.  Anyone who has taken organic chemistry probably recalls the nightmares that organic chemistry presents.  The first class wasn't too bad.  It was about nomenclature, which is to say, it's about naming the different molecules and processes.  Overall, not too bad, especially if one has a decent memory.

The second class, though, proved to be something else.  This class was when all those names started to interact together.  I remember looking at some of the models and processes and wondering if my mind would explode.  The thing that perhaps hurt most was the way that the class was conducted.  Now, I'll admit that I'm a very hands-on learner.  I learn by trying out stuff and seeing how it works.  But my second organic chemistry class was a pure lecture.  In an auditorium seating a few hundred, the professor stood in front with a microphone and slide show to teach.  Needless to say, I struggled with that class.  (To this day, it's the only class I have ever dropped, simply because I absolutely could not grasp the material, at least, in the way it was presented.)

Different people learn in different ways.  Some people learn by hearing.  Some people learn by seeing.  Some people learn by interacting.  Some people learn by some combination of these.  We've all run across that person who got a lot out of a lecture, whereas you fell asleep.  There's that person that wants to read the directions all the way through before beginning the assembly, and then there's the person who wants to start putting it together without ever opening the directions. 

We learn in different ways, and that same thought should carry over to the preaching task.  Simply standing in front of everyone and delivering a sermon that resembles a lecture fails to take into account how people learn.  Yes, God's Spirit can and does still work through such an approach, but that same Spirit also works when other approaches are brought out in the preaching task.  A story may reach the heart of someone that a lecture would have put to sleep.  An object serving as a sign might catch the interest of that person who is easily distracted.  A short, memorable phrase repeated over and over may catch in the mind like a song lyric.  A brief skit may cause the listeners/watchers to engage the teaching in a more effectual way.

We're all created unique, which means that we learn in different ways.  Thanks be to our God, who demonstrates His creativity, and may He guide our wisdom to recognize that and make use of it.

Powerful Learning

How many of you have a story about when you really learned that you have fingerprints?  Well, I do.  It happened because I was a curious little boy.  You know how you can tell a child over and over again that something is hot, but for some reason, they don't really seem to catch on until they touch something that's hot and learn what hot really means?  Well, that's part of my story.

I grew up on a farm.  One thing you often find on a farm is a welder.  I had always been told that the metal was hot when it had just been welded on.  But one day, I must have decided that I needed to discover that for myself.  So I leaned down and picked up a piece of metal that had very recently been welded upon.  Needless to say, it was pretty hot.  I remember my fingers hurting (Thanks be to God that I only picked it up with the tips of my fingers.).  And as I looked down at my fingers to see the damage and to figure out why they hurt so much, I noticed something.  I had patterns on my fingers.  At first, I thought that they came from the metal.  So I watched over the next few days, but they stayed there.  Thus, I learned that I had fingerprints.

In a way, this story emphasizes the point I want to make today.  It's great when we learn from what others tell us.  However, more often than not, we seem to learn through experience.  That is, we have to experience something before we really learn it.  I learned how hot metal gets when I touched it, even though I had been told many times that it was hot.  For some reason, that just seems to be how we humans are.

In that same vein, we also learn when we have to come to the conclusions for ourselves.  In one way, I believe that is why Jesus so often spoke in parables.  When you have to think about the story and figure out the point, that's when learning is most effective.  Simply being told "this is what you need to know" so often doesn't seem to get through.  Sure, it does for some, but for many of us, we learn as we think things through.

Too often, preachers seem to lose sight of this.  We get up there and tell you what the problem is, how God has solved it, and what that means for you.  While helpful, I also believe that it is appropriate at times for God's people to have to come to the conclusion on their own.  Leave things hanging a bit.  Let them wrestle with what exactly it means or says.  I'm convinced that God's people, through the leading of God's Spirit, will often be led to what God is saying, and that will make it stick even more than if the preacher had simply stated it outright.

Agree?  Disagree?  Comments and thoughts are welcome.

"For You"

Last year, for one of my classes, I had to read an interesting book.  The book talked about the study of theology, and took the perspective that theology has one primary aim and goal. That goal is to bring what God has done in Christ Jesus to the individual, to bring that person into the saving arms of Christ Jesus.  In essence, the author said that theology isn't just the study and formulation of doctrines.  Instead, it is taking what God has said and then saying to people, this is FOR YOU.

I had to pause and reflect on a lot of what I had said and taught over the years after I finished reading that book.  As I look back on many of the messages that I have prepared and preached, I see that there are many times that I have talked about God, and about Jesus, but way too many times where I have failed to take the next step, to say that what God accomplished in Jesus was done FOR YOU, the people who were listening.  Sure, what I said may have been accurately in line with what the Bible says, but failure to make it personal is still failure.

I wonder how many people used to sit in pews, listening to sermons like so many of mine, hearing doctrinal dissertations rather than a message that was spoken to them, and then decided that what they were hearing simply wasn't for them.  I have to confess my part in that, and, since that class, have really tried to make sure that I make it clear each time I speak that God did what He did for every single person who is there and listening that day.  I don't want to get up and lecture ABOUT God, but want everyone there to hear and know that God was at work for them.  And now, each week, I reflect on the words that I prepare to speak to make sure that I make that obvious at least two to three times in each message.

As you reflect on the messages you hear from Christian pulpits, how often do you hear specifically that God has been at work, especially in Christ Jesus, for you?  In fact, this coming Sunday, count how many times the preacher indicates that God is at work for you.  And then, don't be afraid to say how you either heard it, or how you failed to hear it.  Praise the message if it was made clear that God was doing His work for you.  If that message failed to be proclaimed, then that preacher needs the reminder, more than ever, that God's word needs to be proclaimed in such a way as to assure every listener that God is at work for them.