Never Alone Again, by Pastor Ed Evans

Scripture: Mark 1:9-15

1:9  In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan.
1:10  And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him.
1:11  And a voice came from heaven, "You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased."
1:12  And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness.
1:13  He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.
1:14  Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God,
1:15  and saying, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news."

          The beginning of Lent finds us looking over the solitary, lonely shoulder of Jesus as He comes to John and asks to be baptized.  John, for his part, recognizes the glory of God in Jesus, and though stating that it is Jesus who should be baptizing him, yet for the sake of fulfilling what the Messiah requests, baptizes Jesus with water.  And then almost as if John expected it, for the scriptures indicate no surprise on John's part, there is a voice from heaven and recognition from God Almighty.  The very heavens have opened and the Holy Spirit of God has enwrapped Jesus as He embarks on the very purpose for His being there.  So much is He a part of the will of God that He was "driven" to go into the wilderness, staying there alone for forty days.

          It's a solitary purpose, a lonely purpose, and though the angels come and minister to their Lord, the Son of God, He must go through this confrontation with evil on His own, He must go to the cross, alone; He must die, alone.

          It is all according to God's own timetable, in keeping with His plans for mankind, for His Son.

          John the Baptist has set the stage for Jesus' arrival.  He has drawn a line in the sand between good and evil, brought to their attention the idea that there is a need for repentance, the need to recognize who and what they are, and make a decision between good and evil.  Then, suddenly, John is removed from the scene.  He has made his point among the people, he completed the task God set for him.  And right behind him, into that recognition that there is indeed good and evil among them, comes the Messiah.  Jesus comes with a message and with an answer, with a healing answer.

          But just because He is speaking the truth, just because He has answers and is the Son of God, doesn't mean everybody will listen, doesn't mean everyone will believe.

          Even though Jesus is more sociable than the rough-hewn John the Baptist, even though  He speaks of the love of God rather than the fear of God, even though His message is that, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news," there will be those who will not believe.

          Jesus will gather around Him 12 disciples.  They will travel the dusty roads with Him, they will hear His lessons and parables as He shares them with people.  They will watch and see as He heals people, counsels people, casts out demons.  They will see for themselves the miracles He performs in the name of God. 

          Yet, even in the human personage of the son of Joseph and Mary, as they touch His arm, bump up against Him walking along the dirt roads and the grassy hills, they are unable to realize that they rub shoulders with the God of the universe; incarnate deity walking along with them.

          Who is this person who speaks out of the wisdom of the ages, who teaches from the scriptures as no one has ever taught before, who dares to call the Sadducees and Pharisees and false priests for what they are, hypocritical burdens to God's own mankind?  He angers them so that they want Him gone, dead, away from them.  They would like to reach out and snatch Him away from the crowds, but something, something holds them back.

          While Jesus has said, "The time is fulfilled," yet it is not THE time, just yet.  And so even as they hate Him and plot against Him, Jesus continues on, sharing the love of the Father.  But His relationship with the Father is His own, alone.  So that even when He goes to pray with His disciples in the Garden of Gethsemane, He prays to the Father, alone.  And the disciples sleep.

          Finally, the moment arrives and the Father allows His capture.  Jesus, alone, is mocked, tried and found guilty of trumped up charges, alone, beaten and brutalized, alone, and the disciple Peter who said he would never disavow Jesus, denies Him.

          Bearing the marks and bloody cuts of the whip, head bleeding from the thorny crown they have pushed into His head, patches of His beard pulled out by the roots, He struggles through the jeering crowds on the cobble stone street, only just bearing up beneath the weight of the cross that will be the instrument of His death.  Finally, seeing He may not make it to the site of his death at Golgotha, a Roman soldier pulls a man from the crowd to help the battered Jesus carry the heavy timbers of the cross.  But then at Golgotha, Jesus is again alone.

          And it is alone, even between the two thieves, that He is crucified, nails driven through Him, a sword thrust into His side, until He gives up His life; "Father, into Your hands I commit My spirit," and He breathes His last.  Again, alone.

          It has been speculated, in song and narrative, that "ten thousand angels" would have moved at His command to rescue Him.  In Isaiah 37:36 one angel of the Lord killed 185,000 men in the Assyrian camp.  It would have been nothing, in the blink of an eye, for the angels who loved Him so to destroy all about Him and lift Him lovingly from that cruel cross.  But by His own determination, for you and for me, Jesus went to that cross alone; went to His death alone.

          Then, He was reunited with the Father through resurrection, setting aside time and space and death.  And He was no longer alone.  Upon His resurrection the Father ensured those for whom Jesus died that they would never be alone, but have the Holy Spirit with them always, guiding them in Jesus' name, for that was what the Son asked for in John 17:21, "that all of them may be one, Father, just as You are in Me and I am in You. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that You have sent Me."

          We have His promise -- and no one keeps promises like Jesus Christ -- His promise that He will never leave us.  Even as described in Galatians 2:20, "I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I but Christ lives in me..."

          Never alone, again.  Never alone.  See how He loves us.

          Thank You, Father.  Amen.

Week of Worship

Feb. 27- Mar. 4, 2012

Invocation:  Almighty God, Who created us and Whose we are, help us to number our days and to live them wisely.  Give us Your Holy Spirit to guide and strengthen us -- to the end that the world may be a better place because we have passed through it.  In the name of Jesus.  Amen.

Read: Psalm 37:1-11 

Daily Scripture Readings

Monday                Hosea 14:1-9

Tuesday               Micah 6:1-8

Wednesday          Matthew 12:22-37
Thursday              Luke 19:11-27

Friday                   Hebrews 13:1-16

Saturday               Ephesians 2:1-10

Sunday                 Hosea 2:14-20; 2nd Corinthians 3:1-6; Psalm 103:1-13; Mark 2:18-22

Reflection: (silent and written)

Prayers for the church, for others, for yourself.

Hymn: "Forth in Thy Name, O Lord"

Benediction:  My Lord, go with me into this day that I may show faith by my good deeds.  Amen.

It's All About God. Period. by Pastor Ed Evans

Scripture: Isaiah 40:21-31

40:21  Have you not known? Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth? 
40:22  It is He who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them like a tent to live in; 
40:23  Who brings princes to naught, and makes the rulers of the earth as nothing. 
40:24  Scarcely are they planted, scarcely sown, scarcely has their stem taken root in the earth, when He blows upon them, and they wither, and the tempest carries them off like stubble. 
40:25  To Whom then will you compare Me, or who is My equal? says the Holy One. 
40:26  Lift up your eyes on high and see:  Who created these? He who brings out their host and numbers them, calling them all by name; because He is great in strength, mighty in power, not one is missing. 
40:27  Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel, "My way is hidden from the Lord, and my right is disregarded by my God"? 
40:28  Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth.  He does not faint or grow weary; His understanding is unsearchable. 
40:29  He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless. 
40:30  Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted;
40:31  but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.

          Again and again I hear people asking the question, and see people posting the same question on internet message boards: "What has happened to us?  How can there be so much discord in politics, so much rudeness in society, in everyday living?  Those who worship Christ are being slaughtered and thrown in prison in nations all over the world.  What has happened to the Christian influence in America, in the world?"

          I'm tempted to respond that Satan is loose in the world, in our nation, in our cities, in our homes, and even in our churches.  But then, he has always been loose.  He was loose in Jesus' time, as well.

          What has changed?  Nothing.  Least of all the sin nature of mankind.  Those of us who have turned our lives over to Jesus Christ stand in the light of the gospel, and we see clearly the crude, devastating and bloody effects of sin in the world around us.  Those who have not accepted Christ stand in the darkness of this world, and they see nothing wrong, even though God has always said it is sin.

          In today's scripture Isaiah is speaking to those Jews in Babylon who were taken there under the power of others.  It's a message of hope, and it is often preached as a sermon of motivation.  But for us today, taken into a downward economy under the power of others, it should be read as a warning of the power of Almighty God, a reminder of who He is to those who know Him.

          But for those who do not have that kind of relationship with Jesus Christ, Isaiah's words may well sound like a threat, for they hold a mirror up to the unbelieving, to the wavering, to the unsure about the supremacy of God Almighty.  And some in the pews of Christ's church today will complain, "That doesn't sound like the love of the gentle Jesus we know.  That's too harsh."  But I submit they say that because they know only one facet of the Christ, of the Jesus, yes, who loves us, but also the Jesus who went willingly through the barbaric, bloody, and finally deadly crucifixion on the cross at Calvary; went through it because of His love for the Father, and for you and me.

          What then, shall we silence Isaiah when he sounds too harsh?  Shall we silence the Jobs among us who decry sin and disobedience to the Father?  Would we then feel better about the things we do in defiance of God, those things that make us feel good, for now?  Shall we instead all join hands and sing "I Believe I Can Fly," and ignore the reality that gravity insists on in this world?

          What we need instead is another Amos.  The prophet Amos wrote in about 750-760 B.C., sent of God to warn the forever wicked Northern Kingdom; sent of God to call them to repentance for their self-righteousness, their sins, their preference for worshipping wooden and stone idols rather than the Living God.  Today the idols we worship are more often made of glass and electronics, and those of flesh tend to be sports, business and entertainment heroes.

          Listen to what the words of Amos addressed and see if these sound familiar.  Amos was both devastated and sickened by the sins of the people, and he didn't half-step in calling out their evil transgressions of self-indulgence, violence, class hatred, indifference to human suffering, ostentatious religion, hatred of righteousness, insincerity, hypocrisy, superstition, filthy immorality, and more.  In warning against their sins before God, Amos was warning them that God was prepared to intervene and punish them, which came to pass as their enemies conquered them and carried them off to exile as slaves.

          Oh, for an Amos today.  For all of these sins, which are boldly present in our America today, bespeak apathy and complacency, otherwise they could not survive among a caring church of Christian worshippers.   Those who allow such illicit, harmful, damning behavior to continue are as guilty as those who indulge in it.

          Isaiah, in chapter 6, verse 5, when he saw the Lord God high and exalted, cried out "Woe is me!  For I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips..."

          Like Isaiah, we are a people of unclean lips, and we see and hear it all about us.  In our apathy and our complacency, we allow it to continue without comment.

          Years ago on a certain college campus an "Apathy Club" was formed.  It was advertised and a meeting place and date set.  No one showed up.  Not one soul.  Those who thought it was such a good idea, were too apathetic to attend.

          We can smile at that, and yet a fog of apathy and complacency has descended across the Christian church in this age.  It is usually expressed as "I couldn't care less," or "Live and let live," or, more often, when one's spiritual state is questioned, "I just don't know."  That latter, of course, also translates to "I don't care."  And there you find the basis for the perversion of worship today in what passes for the Christian church.  They do not know the Christ, they don't believe God means what He says in scripture -- the inspired word of God -- and they don't care.  As long as they can continue with their favorite sin and pretend to worship God, they don't care.  But Jesus made it crystal clear in John 14:17-18: “If you love Me, you will obey what I command. And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Counselor to be with you forever— the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept Him, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him. But you know Him, for He lives with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.”  Yes, it's an imperative ... "If you love Me, you will obey what I command..." but it is also a promise, a promise to believers from the Christ.

          The world we see today, the society in which we live and work and make our way, the governments which govern us at the various city, state and federal levels, have all left their originally intended purpose, and have become the mawkish tools of men and women for their own enrichment, their own good pleasure.  Without the God-given ethical basis upon which they were originally founded, it is no wonder they serve only a few, and no one is willing to sacrifice their promise of success to help those they were selected, elected and/or appointed to serve. 

          Without God we are but a caricature of what was intended.  God's creation has taken it upon himself and herself to design their own future, to feather their own nest, to take care of themselves first and everyone else can have what's left.  Mankind's judgment has superseded God's grace.

          But that is specifically what both Isaiah and Amos were warning against.  There is a God, and regardless of what we think, say or do during our short lifespan on this earth, He is still in charge.  In the end, the end we must all come to, even those who do not believe in Him will see Him ... at the judgment.

          Seek Him now.  He promises if you seek Him you will find Him.  He also promises the unjust will reap their own reward.  And for the record, no one keeps promises like He does.  Amen.

Week of Worship

February 5 - 11, 2012

Invocation:  Almighty God, creator and keeper of the world and all that is in it, help us, we pray, to know the duty You have assigned us and to so live our lives that the world may be a better place for all Your creations.  In the name of Jesus we pray.  Amen.

Read: Psalm 32

Daily Scripture Readings

Monday                Luke 14:7-14

Tuesday               Luke 9:57-62

Wednesday          Luke 14:25-34
Thursday              John 6:60-71

Friday                   Acts 4:32-37

Saturday               Romans 15: 1-13

Sunday                 Job 7:1-7; 1st Corinthians 9:16-23; Psalm 147:1-11; Mark 1:29-39

Reflection: (silent and written)

Prayers for the church, for others, for yourself.

Hymn: "Lord, Whose Love Through Humble Service"

Benediction:  And now as I leave this place of quiet to return to the duties which await me, go with me, my God; and keep me all the day long.  Amen.