WHATEVER IT TAKES
MIKE CUNNINGHAM
MAY 18, 2008
Today I’m not going to waste anyone’s time by
preaching a sermon. Instead, at this point in our service, let’s just sing the
closing hymn. Then I’ll give the benediction and we can all go home. If you folks
prefer this change I can call a special congregational meeting, and in a couple
of weeks, we can vote on making it permanent via an amendment to our
constitution. It would read something like this:” “From this day forward, with
the exception of when visitors are present during the worship service, no
sermons are to be preached at
Before anyone concludes I’ve finally lost it,
allow me to try and explain. Recently it came to my attention I had insulted
you folks when I used a well known phrase in the opening remarks of my “Bird’s
Of a Feather Flock Together” sermon. In order to put those remarks in context,
the following is what I said, “I hope I’m correct in assuming that as far as
those of you who have been attending our church for at least six months are
concerned; for the most part I’ve pretty much been “preaching to the choir.” Obviously, I don’t expect anyone to
agree with everything I say. However, if you think some of my, or our churches
teaching is “over the top,” so to speak, I hope you would grant me the courtesy
of telling me.”
Now allow me to ask you these questions. Were
any of you insulted by what I just said? After putting the phrase in context, did
anybody become offended? At least one and possibly two people believed I
insulted you and you should have been offended. Here’s why. Speaking of you
folks, I was told: “They are already knowledgeable and don’t need to hear it
again in a sermon. It’s a waste of my time and yours. When I used the phrase,
“preaching to the choir” it was somewhat of an insult to my parishioners
because it means ‘I don’t think you’re listening, so I’m wasting your time by
preaching.’ By saying the same things over and over each week, I’m implying you
folks are not listening. Instead, while I’m preaching, you’re gazing out the
window or whatever.” Even if my life depended on it, and using my wildest
imagination, it was impossible to see how anyone could possibly arrive at such
a bizarre conclusion. When I pressed for an answer, this is what I was shown.
“Preaching to the choir” means the minister is probably wasting his/her time
preaching to people who show up every week. The minister would be better to
preach to people who show up less often. The minister doesn’t need to convince
the choir! And so it goes to preachers who preach hell, fire and brimstone to
those who attend, not spending much time to bring new people into the
congregation, He is “preaching to the choir” and thusly, he is accomplishing
nothing,” (1). Is anyone in favor of amending our church’s constitution?
John
21:15-17 (ESV) 15 When they had finished
breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, "Simon, son of John, do you love me
more than these?" He said to him, "Yes, Lord; you know that I love
you." He said to him, "Feed my lambs."
16 He
said to him a second time, "Simon, son of John, do you love me?" He
said to him, "Yes, Lord; you know that I love you." He said to him, "Tend my sheep." 17 He said to him
the third time, "Simon, son of John, do you love me?" Peter was
grieved because he said to him the third time, "Do you love me?" and
he said to him, "Lord, you know everything; you know that I love
you." Jesus said to him, "Feed my sheep.”
As I mentioned last week and as we saw a
moment ago, this is something which is a lot easier said than done. Whenever I
receive that kind of feedback which I welcome and sincerely appreciate, I can’t
help wondering what was so vitally important in that particular sermon that
Satan didn’t want some folks to hear or read. In the one in which the phrase
was used it was a matter of eternal
life for those who forgave everyone who had wronged them or eternal death to
professed Christians who won’t. Is it any wonder why Satan would do his utmost
to short-circuit that sermon?
And Jesus wants me to do my very best to serve
you folks that kind of much needed spiritual food, at least on a weekly basis. One
way or another, I must try to get it into you. But it’s often very challenging
as I explained in my Mother’s Day sermon. At least one person believes I
shouldn’t fabricate a story which folks buy into and believe is true,
regardless if it’s drenched with Scripture. I closed my Mothers Day sermon by
reading a portion of a letter from someone who may or may not be a figment of
my imagination. Here it is. “Hey
Pastor Mike. It’s me Douglas, again. That was real cool the way you worked my
letter into your sermon. Chloe thinks it was awesome. I’m still reading my
Bible and other good stuff besides. I have some more questions for you. Why did
God tell Moses to write something that God had to know wasn’t true? Why did God
have Moses come up with such a whopper that made Christians look like fools?”
Douglas goes on to explain and closes with, “Your friend, Douglas.”
Without going into all the details of the young
man’s letter,
Genesis
1:1-8 (ESV) 1 In the beginning, God created
the heavens and the earth. 2 The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over
the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the
waters. 3 And
God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. 4 And God saw that
the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the
light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there
was morning, the first day. 6 And God said, "Let there be an expanse in the midst
of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters." 7 And God made the
expanse and separated the waters that were under the expanse from the waters
that were above the expanse. And it was so. 8 And God called the expanse Heaven.
And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.
I assure you those ancient people understood
and believed everything Moses said to be factual. How about you? Do you feel
the same way about everything we just read as being literally true as the
Israelites did? The following is what those ancient people believed.
Genesis
1:1-8 1 “In the beginning, God created
the heavens and the earth. 2 The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over
the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the
waters. 3 And
God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. 4 And God saw that
the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the
light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there
was morning, the first day. 6 And God said, "Let there be a solid canopy
in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the
waters." 7 And
God made the solid canopy and separated the waters
that were under the solid canopy
from the waters that were above the solid canopy. And it was so. 8 And God called the solid canopy Heaven. And there was
evening and there was morning, the second day.”
I realize the following commentary I’m about
to offer may not be all that appealing to the spiritual appetites of some of
you. If that’s the case, don’t get all bent out of shape. Just treat it as you
would a vegetable which was served to you and you don’t care to eat. However, I
want you to know I have reason to believe some of you will relish it;
especially those who are seriously attempting to overcome a non-Christians’
firm conviction that the Bible is just a “fairy tale,” a poor lost sinner the
Lord wants you to do your very best to persuade otherwise.
“In his excellent commentary on Genesis, John
H. Walton writes: “As to the solidity of the firmament, [canopy] the historical
context is that all people in all parts of the world, including the ancient
Near East, from the beginning of history until 200 A.D. (and almost all peoples
after that until modern times) believed that the sky, the firmament was
rock-solid,”(2).
But God is the Creator; surely He knew
otherwise. Why would He inspire Moses to tell those ancient people some things
which thousands of year’s later science has proven to be untrue? No doubt God
knew what Moses was up against and He inclined the man to communicate very
important spiritual facts in a manner their Creator knew infallibly the
Israelites would understand and profit enormously by.
Walton reminds us: “We live in a world far
different from the world of the Old Testament. We must recognize the elements that
distinguish these two worlds and make appropriate adjustments to our
expectations. In our world, we believe reality is described most accurately in
scientific terms. Mythology in the ancient world played the role that
science plays in our modern world-it contained the explanation of how the world
came into being and how it worked.”
“The mythological approach attempted to
identify functions of the
natural world as a consequence of purpose.
The god’s had purposes, and their activities were the causes of what humans
experienced as effects. By contrast, our scientific approach identifies the functions of the natural world as
a consequence of structure and
attempts to understand cause and effect based on natural laws that are linked
to the structure, the composite parts of a phenomenon.”
“Much of the change in our world we attribute
to personal agents,” (such as our presidential candidates are all clamoring for
and promising.) But change is also attributed to natural causes, many of which
are labeled natural laws. A thunderstorm is explained in terms of atmospheric
pressure, convection and moisture. A dead battery is explained in terms of the
law of entropy. The ancient Israelites, in contrast, perceived only personal
causality. All change in the world was attributed to personal agents-to either
humans (and animals by personification) or the gods. Natural events, for
example, were manifestations of divine activity. Nature was not a causal agent,
but rather the effect of divine agency, (3).
In his recently published outstanding book,
Beyond The Firmament, Gordon J. Glover adds: “The generation of Hebrews that
received the Bible directly from Moses would have been more familiar with the
Egyptian creation myths. Moses, being educated in the best Egyptian schools would
have certainly been very familiar with all the wisdom of Egypt, including their
many creation accounts. According to the Egyptians, before there was even
heaven and earth, there was a primordial sea representing the state of chaos
and disorder. Chaos was associated
with the destructive forces of nature that primitive man constantly lived in
fear of,” (and perhaps many of those poor Burmese victims who are still reeling
from the devastation of the recent cyclone were). We don’t typically look at
nature as a delicate balance between order and chaos, but this is very common
in more primitive societies. Except for an occasional natural disaster in some
other part of the world (such as is occurring in
These were some of the things Moses was up
against when God appointed him to reveal profound spiritual facts to those Hebrews
who would one day become known as “The
Chosen People.” “The earth was
seen as a flat disc or a rectangular table top floating in a vast ocean. Heaven
was seen as a solid dome, or vault, which arched over the earth and supported
another body of water above the sky. The vault of heaven was supported by
pillars-thought to be great mountains-whose foundations were laid in the great
waters surrounding the earth. The waters above the sky were continuous with the
waters around and under the earth. The firmament, being a solid structure, had
doors on the east and west sides through which the sun, moon, and stars would
enter and exit each day. The rains were caused by tiny windows in the firmament
that let down some of the waters from above the sky,” (5).
“There is no question that the Biblical
firmament of Genesis was meant to be a literal solid structure supporting an
ocean of water above the heavens, just as the days of creation were clearly
meant to be 24-hour periods. Any interpretation of Scripture that tries to
dismiss the solid firmament and the waters above is simply taking the verses
out of context for the sole purpose of avoiding the “embarrassing” fact that
neither of these things actually exists. But if we properly understand the
actual point of Genesis, we shouldn’t be embarrassed by “the clear meaning of
the text.” These passages can easily be explained in terms of the ancient
Near-Eastern cosmology that serves as the unmistakable framework of the
creation narrative. By leaving these verses in their original context, we can
avoid the potentially embarrassing situations that often force us to dismiss
the text as merely figurative or symbolic,” (6).
“What Moses brings down from
“The Holy Spirit had no intention to teach
astronomy, and in proposing instruction meant to the common to the simplest and
most uneducated persons, He made use by Moses and the other prophets of popular
language, that none might shelter himself under the pretext of obscurity, as we
will see men sometimes very readily pretend an incapacity to understand, when
anything deep or recondite is submitted to their notice. Accordingly, as Saturn
though bigger that the moon is not so to the naked eye owing to his greater
distance, the Holy Spirit would rather speak child than unintelligibly to the
humble and unlearned.”
“This powerful principal of accommodation can
have other applications as well. I recently read of another very practical
example. The situation involved Western doctors trying to prevent the spread of
infection by midwives in a primitive culture. Rather than try to teach them
about bacteria and germs, concepts that had no familiar cultural context, the
doctors decided to use the natives’ own unscientific traditions to communicate
the knowledge necessary for their salvation. This instruction took the form of ritual
washing so that “demons” from the hands of midwives will not be transferred to
the baby or mother. The desired effect was achieved, even if by means of
fictionally incomplete or incorrect knowledge. Now ask yourself this: If these
natives are ever to advance their knowledge to the point of understanding the
actual material mechanisms by which infections are transmitted by unclean
hands, will they curse those Western doctors for not giving them factual truth?
Or will they appreciate the wisdom of those doctors, accommodating their
ignorance and meeting them in their time of need-so that despite their lack of
knowledge, they might still be saved? What a wonderful picture of how God deals
with us! (8).
Sometimes I feel like old Granny of “The
Beverly Hillbillies,” who, when speaking about their children used to say, “I
gotta git some vittles into them youngum’s, Jed;” especially when I have to do whatever it takes to get some
spiritual vittles into, as we used to say in Brooklyn, youse guys and goil’s, even
if I have to create a young man named Douglas to do it.
ENDNOTES
(1)answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20061119021645AA645qzlCy
(2) P. Seely, “The First Four Days of
Genesis in Concordist Theory and in Biblical Context,” Perspectives on Science
and Christian Faith 49 (1997): cited in, The NIV Application Commentary:
Genesis © 2001 by John H. Walton, pg.82, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan
49530.
(3) Ibid, pg.83.
(4) Beyond the Firmament: Understanding Science and the Theology of
Creation, © 2007 by Gordon J. Glover, Watertree Press LLC, P. O. Box 16763,
Chesapeake, Va. 23328, pgs. , 59-60. In my opinion, every pastor and those
entrusted into his pastoral care who take The Great Commission seriously ought
to saturate themselves with the often profound insight contained in the pages
of this Biblically sound, thought provoking, well documented, non technical, very
enjoyable read.
(5) Ibid. pg. 62.
(6) Ibid. pg. 67.
(7) Ibid. pg. 68.
(8) Ibid. pg. 79.
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