Monday Morning Music Ministry

7-8-24

Sin. It might have different names (or euphemisms or disguises) but it is something – a challenge, a problem, an incipient cancer – about which all humans are aware. All peoples in all ages in all ways have dealt with it; almost always censoriously, of course, because our core instincts have recognition of right and wrong. When societies stray from these inherent beliefs – and rules that follow – they deteriorate. And fall.

A corrupted respect for sin’s effects has not prevented entire cultures from occasionally – in fact, more than occasionally – dismissing its dangers, lying to themselves. We see it in history. We see it today. We see it in our midst.

That’s “human nature.” People of both the Christian and non-Christian traditions, societies calling themselves religious, and even aggressively pagan or secular cultures, fall prey to sinfulness. Usually they nominally are opposed to what we call sin.

But, you know, you can be against things like boredom and forgetfulness and even cancer, too, but these things visit us all anyway. I frequently parry arguments from secularists and agnostics and atheists about sin (and other aspects of reality like fatal diseases or natural disasters or school shootings) – variations of “How can a loving God permit such things?”

I always remind myself that people who complain in such fashion are (even subconsciously) not arguing that there is no God; they are, in effect, confessing an inability to understand His ways. One of many answers, of course, is that God could have created a world of robots with no free will; where there would be no reason to challenge and be challenged, to “advance” and better oneself; where impulses of love and charity would be needless. Boring?

In a larger sense, a world where there is no such thing as sin would be a world where forgiveness, redemption, and salvation would be unknown qualities; where songs like “Amazing Grace, How Sweet the Sound” would be useless and confusing; where the desire to embrace joy would be, well, superfluous.

This is all academic, if not rhetorical, because such a world does not exist. In the meantime – excuse me while I thank God – uncountable lives through history have been ennobled by artistic expression that praises God; music that exalts God; charity that serves God. Ah, how about all the hatred and killings and wars in the name of religion, those secularists and agnostics and atheists ask. Thank you for the distinctions, I reply: they have been in the names of religion, not God – two very different sources of love and hate. Now go to your rooms.

So… there is the problem of sin. And sin is not yielded to, by definition, except by temptation. In the 1970s the TV comedian Flip Wilson made people howl with laughter when one of his characters would scream, “The devil made me do it!” Humor’s foundation is a sense of recognition, and in this case it is not true that the devil makes us do anything. We can recognize that the devil may tempt (one of his job descriptions) but cannot make us do anything.

The recognition comes with acknowledging that we blame the devil – or a thousand other “tempters” – but seldom ourselves. “Everybody does it.” “It’s no big thing.” “Who does it hurt?” and so forth.

That part of the Lord’s Prayer, “Lead us not into temptation,” has always stumped me somewhat. The Bible assures us elsewhere that God will never tempt us beyond that which we cannot endure (I Corinthians 10:13) and outside what is common to mankind. So, right before petitioning God to deliver from evil, why suppose that God would “lead us” into temptation; and therefore pray to be delivered from that situation? In the meantime – please give us “daily bread” and forgive us our trespasses…

Yes; why?

Speaking very personally, I regard Biblical conundrums like this not as flaws nor contradictions nor spiritual “gotchas.” There are some points – for instance, when the Rapture will take place – where I think God wants us to think and pray and think and pray some more, to keep us on our toes. Thinking and praying about sinning, it is useful to note that in one sense the entire Bible is a family album of sinners. Take a look – murderers; cheats; whores; adulterers; liars; betrayers… and those are just the heroes.

Well… take heart, sinners. That fact is a message that you are not alone. More importantly, do not enter the realms of self-condemnation. Do not hide your faces from God. Do not act like all is lost – least of all, that YOU are “lost” without hope. God hates sin, but loves the sinner. And He loves repentance and redemption most of all.

Among the Bible’s great sinners (don’t be surprised at the list), Job learned humility and obedience; Jonah learned grace; Abraham learned to be willing to sacrifice; Moses learned responsibility; David learned about confession and the need for forgiveness; Elijah learned to seek Heavenly guidance; Peter learned what the Holy Spirit could provide.

… all these people – every one a sinner – and so many names in the Bible, we properly regard as saints. And they are.

And we can be on that honor-roll, too. We were all sinners; and all may be redeemed. Remember that Christ died for us… “while we were yet sinners.” The sweetest thing in life, as we interact with friends, even strangers, is to greet and be greeted as “former sinner!”

God, our loving Father, does not lead us into temptation. In fact… neither does the devil. We lead ourselves; we yield because, basically, we want to; nothing compels us. We can resist – and when we need a little help, that’s why the Holy Spirit was sent. One of His Biblical names is The Helper.

No temptation, no sin, is greater than the great One who lives in our hearts. Lead yourself not into temptation.

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Click: Temptation

1-5-15

Life has been likened to a game through the ages by saints and sages, by poets and even pastors. We are warned on one side against a game of “eat, drink, and be merry,” because one day we die. Or sometimes we properly are reminded that like some sports, life can be a very grim game indeed. Me? Sometimes I see life as a grand chessboard. Unfortunately I see myself a checker, not a chess piece. Gulp.

Today we think of our lives as vast jigsaw puzzles, not at all illogical.

See how the pieces fit: babyhood, youth, adolescence, nonage, adulthood, dotage. They usually fit together well, although some of us, putting this puzzle together, really have to search for the piece that depicts maturity. But into each life also come pieces that represent curiosity, hope, disappointment, joy, sadness, grief, happiness, greed, ambition, pride, modesty, temptation, sin, desires, charity, unforgiveness and forgiveness, envy, intellectuality, faith…

Have I left any pieces out? Surely. But I have not only described life’s jigsaw puzzles of me and you, but everyone who has, or has had, a pulse, on this earth. Those pieces, in my analogy, will be of different shapes, some of mine larger than yours; some of yours smaller than his or hers. We all, when complete, form different pictures.

And we know, don’t we, that even the kindly old lady down the street has had bouts with envy or pride. “There is not one amongst us in whom a devil does not dwell,” Theodore Roosevelt once wrote to the poet Edwin Arlington Robinson; and we note he metaphorically used a lower-case “d” in “devil.” He continued, “It is not being in the “dark house,” but having left it, that matters.”

In the same way as the kindly old lady we all know, or TR’s Everyman, there are awful folks and hardened criminals who have tender spots, and are capable of conversions. Think of Ebeneezer Scrooge; of St Paul who, as Saul, persecuted Christians; of John Newton, slave-trader who saw the light and write the words to “Amazing Grace”…

But I want to suggest that no life, no matter how long, or how many pieces make up the picture, is or complete without a piece I did not list above. Did you catch that? Can I give you a hint? – it is shaped like an “L.” Ah! There are a couple holes in the jigsaw puzzle of completed lives.

See the missing piece, shaped like an “L,” for Love.

We have all experienced love, even the most miserable amongst us. We have expressed it and shared it – given it away – some of us more than others. But it is a common and irresistible force. To humans it is mysterious because, as serene as it should be, it can also bring heartache and disappointment. It can be the basis of charity but also frustration of broken dreams.

There is a reason that 95 per cent of songs have love lyrics. Even “You Ain’t Nothin’ But a Hound Dog” is a love song, about dashed dreams. So are the melancholy lieder of Franz Schubert, and the many grief-toned piano sonatas of the perpetually lovelorn and frustrated Beethoven.

OK… that “L” piece fits there. One more hole in life’s jigsaw puzzle. It looks like an L-shape could fit there, but a little differently. Maybe, turned around a little bit, it looks like a “J.” Yes, J for Jesus. Now our life’s jigsaw puzzle is a complete picture.

Those similar-looking pieces, L and J, in fact make any life complete – especially puzzled lives, to reinforce my metaphor! They are the most important of our lives’ components. Indeed, we are not complete without them. We occasionally might flatter ourselves that we are pretty good puzzle-masters; and perhaps so, occasionally. But we are not puzzle-makers, and cannot be. God plays that role.

I sometimes wonder if Love did not exist, could we imagine it? Like a color that might exist but we’ve seen; or a seventh sense: hard to imagine what we cannot imagine. God’s Love, expressed in the Person of Jesus. He loved us so much as to create us and place us on this beautiful earth; loved us so much as to be forbearing as we humans have sinned and rebelled generation after generation; loved us so much as to share the Truth, offer forgiveness, to open Heaven’s gates…

… loved us so much as to lower Himself to the form of a human, His Son, to share our sorrows, show us the Way, and to offer healing and salvation to those who believe on Him; loved us so much as to remain amongst us in the form of the Holy Spirit, to guide, comfort, and empower us. To have His Son take our sins, our deserved punishment, upon Himself – could we imagine such love? And all this, while we were yet sinners?

Surely this love – our puzzle-piece “L” and the similar-shaped “J,” signifying Love and Jesus – can make the puzzles of our lives complete, whole… making sense.

Look at either one, and if you really can’t understand them fully, just accept them and fit them into your life’s picture. Each one is a piece that passes understanding.

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“The Love of God” is a traditional hymn performed here by the three brothers Aaron, Nathan, and Stephen Nasby, The “NCrew,” their band called Eli Eli. It is a hymn that comes as close as any to defining the indefinable, indescribable unspeakable mystery that is God’s love. There is a legend that a madman in an asylum once heard the song through his barred window and wrote the words of the third verse on his wall. Somehow the plausibility of that story reflects the love, the peace, that passes understanding.

Click: The Love of God

10-31-11

Oft times, when we are in deepest state of anguish before the Lord, or attempting to draw closer and closer, and closer, to Him, we cry out for Him to examine our hearts.

There are times – precious few, in some of our cases – when we feel, not prideful or self-righteous, but close to Jesus in love and devotion. We want Him to search our souls, to see that we love Him as we never have, that our repentance is real and our dedication is pure. We can never reach these spiritual levels apart from the Holy Spirit, and we ask the Spirit to bring us to the Throne of Grace and address God in these ways.

At these passionate moments we feel like inviting God to plumb our innermost thoughts… but at the same time we dare ourselves to be worthy.

We must always be mindful that our righteousness is like dirty rags to a Holy God. We must be secure that we will never exhibit a “shadow of turning.” Matthew Henry once cautioned: “The heart, the conscience of man, in his corrupt and fallen state, is deceitful above all things. It calls evil good, and good evil…. the heart is desperately wicked; it is deadly, it is desperate…. We cannot know our own hearts, nor what they will do in an hour of temptation.… Yet whatever wickedness there is in the heart, God sees it. Men may be imposed upon, but God cannot be deceived.”

So we must proceed carefully! The spiritual pitfalls do not make this spiritual attitude toward God spiritually futile. Holiness and purity must be our goals. But awareness of the inclinations of human nature should keep us in the Word, and reliant on the Holy Spirit.

“I the Lord search the heart and test the mind, to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds.” – Jeremiah 17:10

The real truth is that God is searching our hearts always, and testing our minds, anyway. So an attitude of inviting God “in” is useful, and humbling, and spiritually disciplining.

But it is probably better that we devote ourselves, first, to our knowing God’s heart.

It is more important to our faith than God knowing our hearts.

Understanding God’s heart, and ways, and will, is essential before our own hearts can approach any state of preparation to invite God’s examination. Without seeking His heart we cannot know how to reach that point. Without knowing His heart we cannot find our own, to have that Closer Walk with Him.

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Click: Just a Closer Walk With Thee