The Dream of God
09/03/2006 - The Dream Fulfilled: What Jesus Said
This summer John Balmer conducted five pastoral training institutes in Central and East Africa. In fact, John and his wife, Jennifer, hope to be here next Sunday to give us a brief update on how those institutes went. One of them was held in the country of Rwanda. One hundred forty-five pastors came to that institute which we as a church helped to sponsor.
You may recognize the name Rwanda from the movie not long ago called Hotel Rwanda which was based on the horrific genocide that took place there twelve years ago. From April 7, 1994, to July 4, a period known as the 100 days of Apocalypse, it's estimated that over one million Rwandans were massacred. That's 10,000 people a day over 400 an hour who were shot and killed or hacked to death with machetes. Most of those slaughtered were from the Tutsi tribe murdered in cold blood by extremists from the Hutu tribe whose goal was to completely exterminate them.
During that reign of terror some people fled to church buildings hoping to find safety and refuge only to be slaughtered, sometimes by the pastors themselves. Families lost children, children lost parents. No one was unaffected by the tragedy of the genocide.
In one of his emails from Africa John described his visit to the memorial museum in the capital of Kigali where over 300,000 Rwandans are buried in wooden coffins and stacked ten deep on top of each other in vaults. Each casket has the bones of 50 different people many of them never identified. In fact, twelve years later they're still finding bones all over the country.
Many of the pastors who came to the institute, John said, continue to struggle with open wounds of hatred that may never heal and with the need to forgive those who did such horrible things.
If you do any reading on what happened in Rwanda the word used most often to describe the atrocity is "hell." The situation in Rwanda was hell on earth. In fact, on the cover of the May 16, 1994, issue of Time magazine there was a quote by a missionary who says, "There are no devils left in hell. They are all in Rwanda."
The genocide was not part of the dream of God. It was a nightmare and goes against everything that God loves and values. In fact, when people use the word "hell" that's often what they mean. Hell is a place where God is not. And hell on earth is a situation void of how God wants things to be … famine, hatred, prejudice, oppression, loneliness, despair, death, slaughter, injustice … all that is hell on earth.
But the desire of Jesus is that his followers, you and me, live in such a way that we bring heaven to this earth, not hell. That's the dream of God for his people. That's what Jesus means when he says you are the light of the world and the salt of the earth. So this morning we pick up where the story left off last week as we continue our series called The Dream of God: Bringing Heaven to Earth with a teaching I've called the"The Dream Fulfilled: What Jesus Said."
Every good story has a hero. And the hero of God's story steps onto the stage today. And his name is Jesus of Nazareth, the carpenter's son. He's the one the prophets were speaking about and waiting for as Tim talked about last week. And today I want us to see how Jesus viewed his role in this great dream of God and how that relates to our role in God's dream of bringing heaven to earth.
Remember it was Jesus who said, "Our Father who art in heaven, holy is your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done. On earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever. Amen." The kingdom of God is both now and net yet. Not yet in its fullness, but now present through its followers.
All through Scripture, this grand story that we find ourselves in, we've seen that it's always been God's desire that his will be done on earth as it is in heaven. In the garden heaven and earth overlapped. God walked in the garden during the cool of the day with Adam and Eve. And for a time it was good. In fact, God said it was very good.
Years later after Adam and Eve's big mistake when God formed the nation of Israel under Moses he gives detailed instructions for them to build a tabernacle, a tent so that he can live in the midst of his nomadic people. It was a special, mysterious place where heaven and earth intersected.
Once Israel was established in the Promised Land David's son, Solomon, was given the privilege of building God a house, the Temple in Jerusalem, so that God could permanently live among his people. It was in the Temple that the Shekinah glory of God dwelt. Yet because of Israel's rebellion the temple was destroyed in 586 B.C. and the people of God were scattered, evicted from their land and held hostage in Babylon the land that will become symbolic in Scripture for everything God is not.
And again it looks like the dream of God's kingdom coming to this earth is dead. In fact, 400 years go by between Malachi 4:6, the last verse of the Old Testament, and Matthew 1:1, the first verse of the New Testament. Four hundred silent years. No kings. No prophets. No voice from God.
Until an angel whispers to an unsuspecting, unmarried teenage girl named Mary in Luke 1:28, 30-33, Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you …. Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with God. You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever. His kingdom will never end."
Jesus, whose name in Hebrew, is Joshua which means "God saves" is the hero of the story. He's the one whose kingdom will never end. He's the one that God spoke of in the garden after the Adam bomb exploded when he said to the serpent, I will put hatred between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; HE will crush your head, and you will strike HIS heel. Jesus is the one who will crush Satan's head.
Jesus is the one that God had in mind when he said to Abraham in Genesis 12:7, To your SEED I will give this land. Commenting on that promise the apostle Paul says in Galatians 3:16, The Scripture does not say "to seeds," meaning many people, but "to your SEED," meaning one person, who is Christ.
Jesus is the one that God was thinking of when he said to Moses in Deuteronomy 18:18, I will raise up for them aprophet like you from among their people, and I will put my words in that PROPHET'S mouth. My PROPHET will tell them everything I command. Jesus is the prophet God was talking about and a few weeks ago we looked at the amazing parallels between the life of Jesus and the life of Moses.
When David said to God, "I want to build you a house. God said, "No. I appreciate that David, but I want to build you a house, a dynasty. And a descendant of yours will sit on the throne forever." That throne sitter is Jesus, born in Bethlehem, in the same little village as David, from the same blood line as David.
Jesus is the one the prophets spoke of when Isaiah said in Isaiah 7:14, The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a SON, and they will call him IMMANUEL, which means "God with us." And then again in Isaiah 11:1-2, A SHOOT will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a BRANCH will bear fruit. The Spirit of the LORD will rest on HIM—the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the Spirit of counsel and of might, the Spirit of the knowledge and fear of the LORD—and he will delight in the fear of the LORD.
Jesse was David's father. And even though the dream of David's descendant sitting on a throne looked dead, dead as a stump in the ground, God said, "I'll bring new life out of that dead stump." And his name would be Jesus.
Woven all through this grand story of God with all its ups and downs and detours and U-turns and apparent dead ends is the hope of a hero, a rescuer, a Savior who will finally bring God's kingdom to this earth. And so it goes with our lives. We have our own ups and downs and detours and U-turns and apparent dead ends in life.
In the span of two weeks this August the phone rang four times in our house telling us that someone had committed suicide. Some I knew well, some I only knew of. But after every call there's the same shock and the same sick feeling. Life is hard church, but never give up hope in the hero who will finally wipe away every tear from our eyes.
It's in Jesus of Nazareth, the God-Man, where heaven and earth come together once and for all. The place where God's space and our space intersect and interlock is no longer the tabernacle in the wilderness or the Temple in Jerusalem, but in a person.
The apostle John put it this way in John 1:1, 14, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. Or as one translation puts it, "The word became flesh and moved into our neighborhood."
Who would have thought that the hero of the story would be God himself? But he is. He enters all the ugliness and darkness and pain of this earth and yet says in John 8:12, I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.
Then he turns to his followers, to you and to me who are all part of this story, and says in Matthew 5:14, 16, You are the light of the world …. Let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.
Jesus sneaks onto the stage of this drama in relative anonymity, born in a stable to peasant parents and lives under the radar for the first thirty years of his life working as a carpenter in his father's business in the Roman occupied town of Nazareth. He grows up going to synagogue hearing about the dream of God and the hope of his kingdom.
Then he steps out of the shadows and into the Jordan River where he's baptized by his cousin, John, and starts preaching, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." Repent, which means change your way of thinking, the kingdom of God, this dream of God that you thought was dead is alive and available right here, right now to anyone and everyone who wants in.
And so Jesus spends three years communicating that message through stories and parables and symbols like light and salt and seeds and weeds. He does signs and wonders not to wow people, but to bring a little bit of heaven to earth, to show us what his kingdom is like. He heals the lame, gives sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, life to the dead. The King is present in the mess and chaos of everyday life on earth, bringing healing, sight, perception, liberation, wholeness, wholesomeness, movement, health, fullness, nourishment, sanity, and joy.
But his message threatens the status quo and is resisted most often by those who are successful and well to do, the oppressors of his day. Instead, he's embraced by prostitutes and tax collectors and drunks and those who were well outside the mainstream of organized religion. In fact, his greatest critics are those who considered themselves to be very religious. The kingdom of God is at hand, he says, and available to all those who humble themselves and become like a little child again.
What we need to understand is that in the context in which Jesus was living his primary message was not "believe in me so that someday you can go to heaven when you die." That was a foreign concept to his Jewish audience. His message was believe in me so that you can become part of God's kingdom and live out his values in this world right here and right now. You are the light of the world. You are the salt of the earth. You are to bring heaven to earth. So go and make disciples of all nations, advance my kingdom everywhere, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.
That was the primary of message of Jesus contained in the gospels. That's not to say that there isn't a glorious future that's in store for every Christ follower. There is. The best is yet to be. That's not to say that when we die we don't go immediately into the presence of the Lord. We do. That's the hope that every believer has. But the danger of believing that Jesus just wants to save us from hell in the future can cause us to miss what Jesus has for us right here, right now. He wants us to follow him so that the light he brings can overcome the darkness.
Matthew 25, one of Jesus' own parables, gives us a clue as to what that is. If you'd like to read along with me it's found on page 702. Look at Matthew 25:31-46, (blank slide)"When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory. 32All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left. 34"Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. 35For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.' 37"Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?' 40"The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.' 41"Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. 42For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.' 44"They also will answer, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?' 45"He will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.' 46"Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life."
For Jesus, following him doesn't mean escaping the world and turning our back on its pain. Instead, it means entering into the world, like he did, with all its pain and hurt to help make it a better place, right here, right now. That starts in our homes, with our friends, with our church community, in our neighborhoods, in our schools, in our jobs, in our work. In this story that means feeding the hungry and clothing the needy, taking care of the sick and visiting the lonely. Jesus wants his followers to bring heaven, not hell, to this earth. That's always been God's intention for his people from the very beginning. It's interesting to me that those who do that are surprised that they are being rewarded for their efforts. That tells me that there again is a certain humility that marks Christ followers.
I like the way Rob Bell puts it in his book Velvet Elvis, "The entire movement of the Bible is of a God who wants to be here, with his people. The church is described as being the temple of God. And how does the Bible end? With God 'coming down' and taking up residence here on earth. True spirituality then is not about escaping this world to some other place where we will be forever. A Christian is not someone who expects to spend forever in heaven there. A Christian is someone who anticipates spending forever here, in a new heaven that comes to earth. The goal isn't escaping this world but making this world the kind of place God can come to. And God is remaking us into the kind of people who can do this kind of work."
This week marked the one year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. And in the midst of that hell on earth people from all over the country including Valley View have rallied to feed the hungry and clothe the needy and bring a little bit of heaven to the hell of the Gulf Coast. That's the heart of Jesus. That's the mission of Christ.
In the midst of the genocide in Rwanda a quiet, ordinary man emerged who did his best to bring a little bit of heaven into the hell of that situation. His name was Paul and he managed a five star hotel in the capital city of Kigali. He was a Hutu and with the encouragement of his wife, Tatiani, who was a Tutsi, at the risk of their lives they opened the doors of that hotel to 1,200 refugees so that they could escape the carnage to live another day. Sounds very much like Jesus when he said, I was a stranger and you invited me in.
The trailer of the movie Hotel Rwanda says, "When a country descended into madness and the world closed its eyes he opened his arms and created a place where hope could survive." That sounds a lot like Jesus to me too and like the call he makes to all his disciples to follow him and bring heaven to this earth. As a church and as individuals and as groups acting together let's follow Jesus by being part of the solution to this world's pain. Let's bless each other and those around us with the hope of a hero who has come, and who is, and who will come again.