CYPRESSWOOD CHURCH OF CHRIST

August 21, 2005

FAMILY MATTERS TO PRAY ABOUT:

Our congregation                                                                 All our students

Various friends, relatives and co-workers                        James, David and Leon in the military

Our nation, military and leaders                                         Traveling: Shalania to Minnesota and Mel to

                                                                                                Austin

WHERE HEAVEN AND EARTH MEET

“And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever -- the Spirit of truth” (John 14:16-17).

Over the years, many members of the church look at God through deistic eyes.  One form of deism is that God started the universe and finished His work in Christ, sent the Holy Spirit to inspire the authors of scripture and the New Testament in particular, and then the Holy Spirit left and we have all we need, God’s inspired word.  This has lead to some ideas of concern.  One view  is that prayer is a command but no matter how much we pray, nothing will change.  One can pray for a safe trip but if he dies in a car wreck, that is the way it is suppose to be.  Another is that God has given us a mind to reason; pray to open and close meetings but we will figure out how to do things.  This view is more the good old American idea of pulling oneself up by one’s own bootstraps or the song “I did it my way” philosophy than Bible.  A third idea is that God is out there watching, and in the end will judge humanity, but is uninvolved in life in this world.  While the Hebrew scriptures sometimes speak of what we call natural events such as earthquakes, drought, and storms as God’s doing (and that God wants us to know He does them), we speak of them as just a familiar activity in nature, nothing more.  While some show great concern over how we worship and what we do in worship, it often appears that in the end it is just accomplishing five acts to be obedient with no thought of one’s heart condition nor the influence of life on worship. 

I recently read an article by N.T. Wright, one of the world’s leading conservative theologians.  The article is entitled “The Holy Spirit in the Church” (www.fulcrum-Anglican.org.uk//events/2005/interchurch.cfm).  In it he discusses God’s work among His people from Israel in Egypt to the Spirit in the church. This caused me to do some thinking on this subject and I appreciate his ideas.

When God created the world and put Adam and Eve in the Garden, there was perfect harmony.  We see God and humans in fellowship, God’s intended purpose.  “Then the man and his wife heart the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day” (Genesis 3:8).  While this happened after the first couple sinned, this appears to be a common practice by God.  But the couple sinned and were cast out of the Garden, and the fellowship was broken.  God then initiated His eternal plan, created before creation (see 1 Peter 1:20), to redeem humankind from sin and restore fellowship between Himself and His creatures.  He did not leave His creatures on their own.  At times He is said to come and see what was happening (not that He did not know what was going on).  We see this in the days of Noah (Genesis 6), at the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11), and the cities of the plain (Genesis 18-19). 

There are glimpses of the desire of fellowship between God and man.  Enoch walked with God and was taken by God (Genesis 5:21-24).  Enoch was probably the closest to God in relationship after the Garden and shows us the heart of God.  Several other events help to see that God wants fellowship.  Moses is sent to Egypt to bring Israel out of bondage or slavery.  Part of the message that Moses would present to Israel was that God would be among them.  When they leave Egypt they are lead by God in the form of the pillars of fire and cloud.  Lead to Mt. Sinai, where the Law or Torah is given, more glimpses are given to us into the idea of redemptive fellowship.  The most obvious is God speaking to the people at the foot of the mountain.  The Israelite camp is organized with twelve tribes on each side and the Tabernacle with the Ark of the Covenant in the middle.  When the Tabernacle was completed, God came down and dwelt in it, showing His desire to be among them (see Exodus 29:44-46, et al).  He would lead them through the Wilderness for forty years, providing for them in His gracious ways, though often they were ungrateful in many ways.

During the time at the mountain, there is an example of the type of fellowship God desires.  After confirming the Covenant and offering appropriate sacrifices, God invites Moses, Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy elders to come up to Him on the mountain (Exodus 24:9-11).  Two times the text says they saw God, and they did not die, but rather sat down and ate in His presence.  Would this not show the real intent of the type of fellowship God desires with His people?

We are all familiar with David, king of Israel, a man after God’s own heart (1 Samuel 16:7).  Sometime during the latter part of his life, David had a desire to build a dwelling place for God, represented in the Ark of the Covenant.  God told him that He did not need a permanent place because He had traveled with Israel since Mt. Sinai.  God would not allow David to build the Temple; that was left to his son Solomon. When the Temple was completed, we see the same thing that we saw at Mt. Sinai.  God came down and filled the Temple (2 Chronicles 7:1).  Once again, we see God among His people, active in their lives.

We now come to what we now call the first century.  God once again comes into the world, but this time as a man named Jesus.  Matthew tells us that He will be called Immanuel, which means God with us (1:22-23).  John tells us that “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us” (John 1:1, 14).  Paul comments on this by saying that Jesus did this voluntarily and in humility, sharing in humanity (Philippians 2:5-8; see also Hebrews 1:1-3; 4:14-16).  As we know, Jesus came to complete God’s redemptive plan of humankind and to bring us into fellowship that He intended at the beginning.  The night before Jesus died He told His disciples that He would not leave them alone, but would send One who would be with them and remind them of Jesus (John 14-16).

In Acts 1:8 after the resurrection, Jesus reminds them once again that they would receive the power of the Holy Spirit.  In Acts 2, this is fulfilled in the form of a mighty wind and tongues of fire.  Wright makes an interesting connection here.  Jesus died on the Passover.  In Israelite history, the Passover came first.  Then fifty days later on the day of Pentecost, the Spirit is given.  Pentecost in Jewish thought is the day the Torah was given at Mt. Sinai.  Wright says that this is “God’s gift to his people of the way of life by which they will be able to demonstrate that they really are his people.”  He goes on to say: “Now, fifty days later, Jesus has been taken into ‘heaven’, into God’s dimension of reality; but, like Moses, he comes down again, to ratify the renewed covenant and to provide that way of life, not now (as Paul says) on tablets of stone but to be written on human hearts, by which the followers of Jesus may demonstrate, in gratitude, that they really are his people.”

God has not left us alone; His Spirit comes to His people both individually and in the church.  Like the past, this is where heaven and earth meet (Wright’s phrase).  And that is what we have seen in Biblical history.  What are the implications of this?  More on this next week.

                                                                                                                George B. Mearns