Jump Start # 1146

NOTE: I apologize for the delay in sending out this Jump Start. The internet server in my area is down and I had to send this from another location.

Luke 18:1 “Now He was telling them a parable to show that at all times they ought to pray and not to lose heart.”

This chapter of Luke contains two back to back parables about prayer. The first parable, the persistent widow, emphasizes faith and “continually coming” to God in prayer. The second parable, the two men who went to the temple to pray, shows the importance of humility and attitude in prayer.

God wants us to pray. We must pray right. Prayer is not a place to try to impress God. It’s not bragging time. Nor is God to be viewed as the magical genie in the sky who comes at our every beckoning. God isn’t working for us, it’s the other way around.

Our verse today, sets the tone for why Jesus told these two parables. It explains the situation. Pray at all times and do not lose heart. The expression “lose heart,” is where we get the idea of discouragement. We say, ‘Our hearts are not in it.’ When the spies reported back to Israel about the promise land, ten of the spies had a negative and scary report. The text states that the hearts of Israel “melted.”  Other expressions, “I’m sick in heart,” “I don’t feel like it,” “I don’t have the heart to go on,” all reflect the idea of discouragement. The very word, ‘discouragement,’ reflects a lack of ‘courage,’ thus, dis-courage.

It’s easy to see discouraged folks. They look tired and beat up. They are weary on the inside. Passion is missing. The weary mom is so tired of messes and fussing. She’d like a break but that won’t happen. The discouraged worker shows up closer and closer to starting time. He doesn’t want to be there. He works like a zombie longing to find another job but he can’t. The discouraged church member starts skipping services, and all he sees is problems. He sees cliques. He sees this isn’t being done and that isn’t being done. Deep inside of him, he is ready to toss in the towel and quit. The same feeling happens in some marriages. One mate feels that the other is ignoring them and that they are living separate lives. Their relationship is like ships passing each other at sea, going different directions to different destinations.

Discouragement leads to bitterness and depression. Things do not get better, they get worse. I’ve found that most people do not stay discouraged. They opt to make changes. Some of them are radical and the wrong choices, such as the mother who abandons her family, or the guy who simply quits his job and he has nothing now, or the marriage partner that leaves a rambling note and doesn’t return in the evening or the church member who just stops coming. Discouragement is misery. Most folks don’t stay miserable. They will seek solutions, often, wrong solutions. They toss aside all they know and believe in, just to find peace and happiness. Discouraged preachers are a mess to listen to. Often instead of preaching, they whine. The ‘woe is me,’ club is a sad club to belong to.

This passage is God’s antidote for discouragement. It is to take place before discouragement sets in. It is a pattern and a way of life. It’s all about praying to God. At all times we ought to pray. Prayer always fits in. There may be some occasions where it is not appropriate to burst out in a song. You certainly can’t preach everywhere. But pray, absolutely. You can pray without even opening your mouth. You can pray out loud or silently. You can pray in emergency rooms, funeral homes, in the car, at work, in school. The court system may have removed public prayers from school, but they haven’t removed prayers all together. Teachers and students ought to and are praying each day. There is an old saying, “As long as there are tests in school, there will always be prayer.” I well remember those days.

Praying helps keep the heart strong. Praying drives away the discouragement. The answer for that weary mom is prayer. The discouraged worker needs to pray. The church member who is starting to drift needs to pray. Pray about the situation. Pray that God will open your eyes to see things. Count your blessings and be thankful that you have someone who can do something. Pray for lessons learned. Pray for patience.

What this does is invite God into our lives. We do not struggle alone. That is one of the greatest factors that lead to discouragement, feeling that you are in this all by yourself. Sometimes the discouragement is intensified because others ought to be helping but they are not. That discouraged mom feels more bitter because her husband won’t help out with the kids or the house. He sits watching sports each night oblivious to all the things he could do to help out. She’s alone in this journey and that makes her feel especially discouraged. Invite God into the situation. Pray about things.

Prayer not only invites God in to your world, but it opens the door for the goodness and the greatness that is available through God. God can do what no one else can. Praying can open our eyes and make us see a new perspective about things. Prayer can help us count our blessings and be thankful. The weary mom, after praying, can’t catch her breath and be thankful that she has children. There are many who do not. She can be thankful that her children are healthy, many are not. Praying has a way of changing how we see things. It gets the “woe is me,” out of us.

I particularly like the expression in our verse, “at all times” pray. All times. Good times and bad times. Day time and night time. When I really need God and when things are going well. When I’m home and when I’m on the road. Pray in worship and pray when alone. All times. I think if we applied the “all times” more times, we’d find ourselves less discouraged and in less trouble. It’s hard to be praying and doing wrong at the same time. They are opposites and either you’ll stop the wrong and pray more or you’ll stop the praying and do more wrong.

It’s easiest to pray when times are bad. Wars bring out all kinds of prayers. An old expression from WW II is that there are no atheists in foxholes. Economic hard times brings out prayers. Droughts bring out prayers. Sickness, death, trouble, those are the times folks pray. But all times also includes “good times.” Times when things are up. Health is good. Job is loved and profitable. Kids are doing well. Church is awesome. Good times. Happy times. Those too, are praying times.

Don’t be eaten up with discouragement. Be praying. Don’t throw in the towel. Be praying. Be thanking God. Be seeking God. Be humble before God. All times, that includes today.

Roger

Jump Start # 1145

Luke 10:31 “And by chance a priest was going down on that road, and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side.”

  Our VBS continues at the home congregation. This evening, we look at the story of the good Samaritan and discuss serving. The heart of a servant is the heart of Jesus. Our passage, taken from the parable of the good Samaritan, is part of Jesus’ answer to a lawyer’s question about inheriting eternal life. The lawyer wasn’t an attorney like we use the word. He was trained to be an expert in God’s law. The law that he knew was the Old Testament. He is a religious person not one who deals with contracts, wills and lawsuits. He asks Jesus what he should do to inherit eternal life. That question alone, coming from one who is an expert in God’s law, is rather smart elect. Jesus makes him reveal what he knows. What’s in the law, Jesus responds. He answered by quoting the Bible. Good answer. Loving God and loving your neighbor. Right answer, according to Jesus. However, he wasn’t done with Jesus. He seemed to be showing off. He comes across not sincere, but with an agenda. He wants to show Jesus that he knows more about the law than Jesus does. How wrong he is. The text says, “wishing to justify himself, he said to Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbor?’”

Really? You are a LAWYER and you do not know the answer to that question? Jesus could have destroyed him intellectually right then and there. He didn’t. He tells the parable of the good Samaritan. It ends with Jesus asking him, “Who proved to be the neighbor?” Jesus then adds one additional step, “Go and do the same.” Quit talking so much and start doing. Long on arguments and short on actions, get busy.

We know this parable as “the good Samaritan.” The text never calls it that. I suppose we could also call it the parable of the bad priest or the parable of the neglectful Levite. Those titles are just as fitting. In the story, so real to the audience, a man traveling alone, down the winding road from Jerusalem to Jericho is jumped by a band of robbers. They do more than steal, they beat him and nearly kill him. He is left along side the road wounded. Luke, the doctor, uses the expression, “leaving him half dead.” Then follows our verse. A priest going down the same road comes upon the wounded man. The injured man must have thought God has answered my prayers. Help has arrived. I am now safe. Here comes a priest. Here comes a man of God. The Lord sent me a priest to rescue me.

What is revealing about our verse is that the priest saw him. It wasn’t that he was reading a book as he was walking and never saw him. It wasn’t that the injured man was unconscious in a bush in a ditch and he never saw him. Luke tells us that he saw him. He saw him and passed by the other side. “The other side,” indicates that he crossed over to the other side of the road. Sometimes when driving, we come across road kill. We pass around it. That’s what the priest did. He was the first to pass by road kill, except in this case, it wasn’t dead, and it wasn’t an animal, but a person.

Commentators for centuries have tried to get inside the thinking of this priest. Why would a priest walk away and do nothing. There is no indication that when he arrived at Jericho that he sent word back. He did nothing. Like the rich man a few chapters later, with sickly Lazarus at his gates, he did nothing.

Some have suggested that he may have thought that this was a trap. Possibly the hurt man wasn’t really hurt. Maybe fellow thugs were hiding and waiting to pounce upon anyone who stopped. That is pure speculation.

Others have suggested that if the robbed man was truly dead and the priest touched him, that would make him unclean. Possibly. However, the priest wasn’t going to Jerusalem, he was traveling away from Jerusalem. His service was over. It didn’t matter. Besides, doesn’t God place a higher value over compassion and heart than sacrifice? The broken and contrite heart moves God. Going to sacrifice while you have odds with your brother doesn’t fly with God. Jesus, in his sermon, said to settle things with your brother first. The right thing to do was to help the injured and then deal with your “uncleanness.”

My take on this priest is that he was heading home. Jericho was the center for many priests. He had served and now he was done. Why stop? Why help? He has already served God. There was nothing in it for him. He didn’t have to. It wasn’t his job. He was off duty, we might say. This drives at the real problem. This reveals what Jesus saw in these questions from the lawyer. A mechanical, heartless service to God. Being a priest was a job for this one. He didn’t have the heart of a servant. Once he was finished in the temple, he was finished. Don’t ask him for anything else. Why stop? I have served.

We can be like that as well. Thinking that what we do in church services is all that is required, we can close our eyes, and our hearts to the needs of others, often in our home and in our neighborhood. After church services, it’s my time, we may think. It’s nap time. It’s sports time. Go visit someone and have a prayer? Already had prayers in church. Go have a Bible study in the afternoon? Why? Already went to Bible study in the morning. Stick around after services and sing some more? Why. We already sang. It’s time to go home. It’s time to eat. It’s time for TV.

I heard a preacher once arrogantly announce from the pulpit that his day off was on Monday. He said publicly, if you have surgery, I’ll be there on Tuesday, but not Monday. Don’t call him on Monday. If there is a funeral on a Monday, he won’t be available. Monday was his day off and he meant it. I probably shouldn’t have said it, but on the way out I told this preacher that I hope Jesus doesn’t come on a Monday. He didn’t smile. Neither did I.

The arrogant lawyer was looking for loopholes. Jesus was looking for servants. The lawyer wanted to trap Jesus. Jesus nailed the lawyer. Service doesn’t recognize time, nor days off, nor vacations, nor after hours or such things. That is not the language of servants. The heart of a servant doesn’t matter if you are walking towards Jerusalem or away from Jerusalem. If you can do something, a servant will.

This parable reminds us that those who knew God’s law, such as this lawyer, didn’t know God. And those who got paid to serve in worship, as this priest did, didn’t get it. Sometimes those that stand in front of a congregation are not the best examples. We’d expect them to be, but this priest illustrates that some who serve do not have the right attitudes, heart or compassion.

How different Jesus proved to be. He came. He saw Israel, He saw us, destroyed by sin and stopped and helped us. The Lord wasn’t like the priest. The Lord wasn’t like this lawyer. The Lord cared. The Lord gave. The Lord saved us. If it was up to the priest or the Levite, this injured man would have died.

I wonder if the priest thought about that injured man any more. Did he feel guilt for doing nothing? Did he have a sleepless night thinking about that man? Did it cross his mind that it could have been him that was robbed and left? You wonder, did he not care?

The priest in many ways was about as heartless as the thieves. They didn’t care for life. They took. They injured the man. And they left him. The priest did about the same thing with his neglect. Now he would never see himself as cold and abusive as the thieves, but he was. He would have thought that he was better than thieves because he was a man of God. He went to the temple and worshipped. His heart proved that he was not a neighbor. His heart revealed that he did not love his neighbor.

I have sat in Bible classes and heard folks kicking around whether or not they ought to stop and help someone along side the road. Arguments, fear and all kinds of talk is given. Talk, talk, talk. And there sits a little widow, with her walker, who after services, struggles to open her car door to get in. Where are the Samaritans? Where are the helpers? I felt sorry for her. I ran and opened her door and she gave me the sweetest kiss on my cheek. I don’t think anyone had ever done that before. Did someone miss the point of this parable? Serve. Prove. Show you care. Talk is cheap. Doing demonstrates. Help those who you can. Have the heart of a servant. Quit talking and start doing.

I wonder if that lawyer ever got it. I wonder if I get it? Makes you think.

I can’t wait for tonight’s lesson. It will be a good one, taught by one who knows how to serve, one of our shepherds. I’ll have my Bible, my pen, and most importantly, my heart open. Wish you could be there with us.

Roger

Jump Start # 1142

Luke 15:12 “The younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of the estate that falls to me.’ So he divided his wealth between them.’”

  The choice of words is interesting. What we say and how we say things can be helpful or they can open the door to all kinds of trouble. Our verse today, taken from the parable of the prodigal son, is an interesting example of the choice of words.

The younger son came demanding. He was through with home life, his father and the lifestyle that he was being raised in. He wanted out and he wanted out now. Give me the share of the estate that falls to me were his words. Bold and brazen today, offensive in that culture. He couldn’t wait until his father’s death. He wanted his now. He would have received one-third of the estate and his older brother would be in line to receive two-thirds. He wanted his father’s stuff, more than he wanted his father.

The text states that the father divided his wealth between them. Both received. Both benefited. The word “wealth” is what catches our attention today. The KJV uses the word “living.” We often use that concept to describe our jobs, “We are making a living.” The Greek word used here is “bios.” We know biology– the study of living things. Biosphere refers to the environment that sustains life. The father divided his life between the two sons.

Interesting that the word for possessions was not chosen. It was the word for life. What the father was dividing was not merely stuff, it was life, his life. He had poured years and years and another term we use, “sweat equity” into acquiring his wealth. Back then, most of his wealth would have been in land and then in sheep. Today, we buy land. We own a piece of property. Back then, the land owned you. Land was special. It was passed down from generation to generation. Many farms in this country were once that way. Some of this carried over from Israel getting an inheritance, land. Each tribe was given a portion in the promise land. The father, divided his life, his land. The younger son sold his and left with money. He didn’t take sheep down the road with him. He left alone with big dreams of big times. He came home alone with nothing but regrets and guilt.

The father divided his bios, his life, between them. That is just an amazing thought and choice of words. Consider some ways we can look at this:

• As parents we give our lives to our children. It’s not the stuff that we give them, it’s us. Our time, our hearts, our devotion, our concerns, and certainly our prayers. Our life is given to our children. This is the greatest blessing we have to give them and this is the greatest advantage that they will have. They have been given us. Our wisdom, our love, our dedication to the Lord, shared and given to our children. They will start off on life miles ahead of others their same age. Others will flounder, trying this or that, some things habit forming, some things harmful, bouncing around fads, ideas, and churches that are more interested in good times than God. Some of these people will make it, many don’t. Some will turn to the Bible and find God, many won’t. Our children start off with more than a good education, they have been given us. We have shared our lives with them. They have a foundation about God and truth and righteousness. We have shared our lives.

• As followers of Christ we give our lives to our church family. We pour hours into worshipping together, being with one another, growing, sharing, shaping, forgiving, and helping each other. Literally life is shared among each other. After a funeral the other day, many of the church family was standing in the cemetery and we were sharing where each planned to be buried some day. I once wanted to be buried where my mom is at, but that’s so far out in the sticks, that none of my kids could ever find it. I said that I thought I just be buried in the church parking lot. I’ve spent so much time at the church building that it’s like home to me. Life. We give our life to what we believe in and what interests us. This is why some folks will pour hours and hours into projects, hobbies, and other things. It becomes a part of them. This is the way our spiritual life ought to be. We ought to give our life to it.

The opposite of giving your life or bios, is wasting your life. That happens. We waste time. We waste money. We waste effort. We waste life. Some excel in wasting life. Some must think that they are a cat and have multiple lives. They don’t. One life. One life to live. One life to give or one life to waste. This is an interesting way of seeing things. There is a commercial on TV about the dangers of smoking. A young lady goes into a convenience store to buy a pack of cigarettes. She doesn’t have enough money. She pauses and then pulls off a piece of her face and lays it on the counter. The ad tells the horror of smoking that it causes wrinkles and other bad things. The thought is profound and is fitting to our thoughts today. All that we do costs us some of our life. We have only so much life. Would we at the movie theatre think about paying two hours of our life to watch a movie? We do. We just don’t see it that way. All that we do costs “life” or bios. Seeing things that way ought to help us with our priorities and keeping us on the essential things in life.

The father divided his life. What is interesting about this is that he had already given his life to his sons. Now they were getting more. Today you are giving your life: to others, to hobbies, to work, to family, to God. The greatest sacrifice and the greatest gift you have to give is yourself. Give life. Divide life. Share life.

Remember Jesus did. The hymn, “I gave My life for you, what hast thou given to Me?” asks a fair question. Have you given “bios” to God? Have you given your life to God?

Roger