What Love Really Means

What Love Really Means - J.J. Heller


Have you ever heard anyone ask if it was too late for them to go to Heaven? Have you ever asked that question yourself? Do you think that you have past the point of no return? J.J. Heller in the above song gave the answer to that question, although I admit that it may have not been the aim or motivation for writing her song. For those who have never heard the song, or just don't wanna click the provided link, I'll explain. This song is about people who are left behind, abandoned, or forgotten, who are searching for true love. The first one a child, the second one a wife who's husband has left her, and the third an inmate on death row awaiting his execution. The death row inmate in this song does as follows:


He utters a cry from the depths of his soul
'Oh Lord forgive me! I wanna go home!'


The song then continues on


The he heard a voice, somewhere deep inside.
It said: 'I know you've murdered, and I know you've lied.
I've watched you suffer all of your life.
And now that you'll listen, I'll tell you that I...
I will love you for you
Not for what you have done or what you will become.
I will love you for you
I will give you the love,
The love that you never knew.


Heller demonstrates here what is essentially a deathbed conversion. This is where someone accepts Jesus Christ either at the point of death, or faced with the serious possibility of death. Believe me, I am not under the impression that what is said in music, even Christian music, is necessarily true. The Bible tells us to check the claims of others against what is in the scripture.


When Jesus was crucified, he was crucified with two robbers, one on each side (Luke 23:32). When they were at the point of death, one of the robbers shouted at Christ saying "Aren't you the Christ? Save yourself and us" (Luke 23:39). The other one responded telling him that they were criminals being punished as they deserved. However, Christ was being executed and He had done nothing wrong. At this point, the second robber looks over at Christ and says "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom." To which Christ replies "I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise" (Luke 23:40-43).


The man next to Jesus who turned to Him (both literally and spiritually) was a robber, and the man in the song was a murderer. Both of them at the point of execution. Both of them living a life without Christ. Both of them saved by Christ in the last minutes of their lives. However, they had an advantage over the rest of us. They knew they were about to die. For those of you not reading this blog from a cell on death row, you are probably sitting in a comfy chair at home or at work in relative safety with no rational fear of immediate death. In other words, you don't know when or how you will die. Most people hang on to the fact that they will die peacefully at a ripe old age surrounded by loved ones. While death may happen then, it didn't happen like that for my 17 year old brother who got into a car accident on his way home with dinner. It didn't happen that way for my 19 year old neighbor who was the target of a roadside bomb in Afghanistan. 


The point of it all is this: It is not too late for you. You can accept Christ at any point of your life and be saved. Be you a death row inmate, or sitting in your kitchen, or even at your office. If you have a genuine conversion, you are saved.


Amen.

Obligatory Valentine's Day Post

This past week, our deacon/soon to be priest gave the sermon. He was talking about the relationship between husband and wife as it applies in Ephesians 5:21-32. He did a very good job, and I thought I would add my own little comments.

Ever since this was written, it has been hotly debated. If I had it my way, there would be view after view and comment after comment on this blog about it. Well, one can only dream. Anyway, I digress.

Part of the first section (22-24) deals with how wives should treat their husbands. It says that wives should submit to their husbands, just as they would to Christ, because the husband is the head of the wife. This passage has been used to justify many different things. I get the image in my head of the guy sitting in a recliner, drinking a beer, watching football, and demanding that his wife make him a sandwich. This is not what the passage is instructing us (husbands) to do. 

Some people use this passage to say that wives should blindly follow their husbands, as in get them the sandwich without any delay. This would only be true if we were to blindly follow Christ, which we are not. We're not? You ask. We are not called to blindly follow Christ, in a sense that we are slaves. Slaves, by definition, serve and Christ did not come to be served, but to serve. What Christ did for us, was out of love, and not a desire for us to blindly serve Him.

Funny I should say that. The people that use the above passage to justify clearly unbiblical actions did not read on. Verse 25 says that we (husbands) are to love our wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. Verse 28 goes on to say that husbands are to love their wives, and that he who loves his wife, loves himself. In the same manner, it could also be said that he who disrespects, mistreats, abuses, or otherwise neglects his wife, does the same to himself. Verses 29 and 30 go on to say that a man feeds and cares for himself, just as Christ does for the church (church meaning us, as in people, not just husbands), for we are part of his body. Meaning, if husbands disrespect their wives, then we too are disrespecting Christ.

Ephesians goes even further saying that when two people are married, they are no longer two people, but one. Verse 31 says "a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh." This means that what was said in verse 28, that he who loves his wife, loves himself, is not meant to be taken figuratively, but literally.

What does all this boil down to? People are only reading certain parts of this passage, and justifying their actions based on that. What is truly being said is that we, as husbands and wives, are to submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. This is verse 21, the first verse of this passage. Kind of hard to ignore the truth of this passage, when you read other parts of the Bible as well.

Amen.

Immitiation is the Highest Form Of Flattery (More Learning From Ethan)

That up there is me and Ethan. I'm the taller one on the right. Other than that I have a goatee now, we both look pretty much the same. This is a common occurrence at our house, the two of us doing the exact same thing. If I sit, Ethan has to sit next to me. He follows me wherever I go.

A side story is that I always have five items on my person: A watch, my wallet, my keys, my cell phone, and a cross and chain my wife gave me as a wedding gift that I wear around my neck. I now have no excuse to forget my anniversary, or my initials for that matter.

The other day I was playing around with Ethan, and all these items were sitting on the footstool in our living room. He takes my necklace, puts it around his neck, and tucks it into his shirt just like I do. He took my watch, handed it to me, said "Help!" and held out his wrist. Because I love him dearly, I put my watch on him. I also clipped my wallet, keys, and cell phone to the elastic band of his pajama pants. (Side note: Yes, he did make a phone call on my cell phone, to his mommy.)

I automatically assumed that he does this because he wants to be just like his daddy, which is true. But the reason that he wants to be just like me is because he loves me. If you have been reading my posts, most notably Like A Child, you will know that Ethan has everything figured out, and that I have a lot to learn from him. From his example, I have learned a little bit more about how I should imitate my Heavenly Father.

It says in Ephesians 5:1-2 for us to "be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us." No, that doesn't mean we go around making commandments and turning water into wine. We are here to spread the message of the Gospel, just as the life of Jesus IS the gospel. In fact, one of the last things Jesus says before his ascension is telling us to spread the gospel, teaching all the world to obey what he has commanded us. Some people can do this globally. For the rest of us, it might just be a local thing.

My son imitates me, and someday his children will imitate him, and their children will imitate them. If I imitate Christ, then Ethan will grow up to imitate Christ as well. If you imitate Christ, and teach others to do the same, then they will learn to imitate Christ as well. In turn, they will teach others, who will teach others, and so on. The little local thing can turn into something larger pretty quickly.

So I leave you with this question: Who, or what, are you imitating?

Amen

The End Is Near

Well, if you live in the Midwestern United States like I do, then the apocalypse is upon you. The sky is falling, the streets are empty, and the stores have had record sales on bread, milk, and eggs. I too visited the local grocery store Sunday evening to get the essentials for surviving the storm of the century, which is a bold statement to make considering that the we are only eleven years into this century.

For those of you that don't live in the Saint Louis metropolitan area, I will explain what happens before a snow storm. Some weather person on the radio or TV says the word snow. At that time, the city goes into a panic and descends upon the local grocery stores to stock up for the end of the world. It doesn't matter how much snow is predicted, could be a foot, could be an inch. When snow falls, we prepare to be shut in for weeks.

Well, right now, the weather people have predicted two and a half inches of ice, and up to 20 inches of snow on top of that (I'll leave a comment with the actual totals, seeing as how this should post before all the snow falls). With this forecast, the good and bad people of Saint Louis have emptied the grocery stores, Home Depots, gas stations, and Wal-Marts, of bread, milk, eggs, salt, gasoline, and various odds and ends. The blizzard that is coming has been dubbed as the snowpocalypse, or snowmageddon. 

Fun names aside, what people are doing is just preparing themselves. Getting the things they need in case they can't get to the store, or anywhere else. We have been told pretty clearly that something is going to happen. 

Imagine constantly preparing for a snowstorm when you don't have any idea when the snowstorm is coming. Make sure you keep enough milk, eggs, bread, or whatever on hand. Don't stockpile, but have enough to last you for a while. Don't be like everyone else who tries to grab up all they can at the last minute. You never know, the stores may run out of what you need before you can get it, and it will be too late for you.

This reminds me of the Parable of the Ten Virgins. This is a cautionary story about not being prepared. It tells of ten women waiting for a groom during the night, and have lamps to light the way. Five of them race off with not enough oil, and the other five had plenty of oil. When the time came for the groom to arrive, the five who didn't bring enough oil asked the other five for some of theirs. They didn't get any because they're wasn't enough to go around. So they left and found more oil. While they were gone, the groom arrived, they went into the wedding feast, and the doors were locked. When the women arrived, they were not allowed into the feast.

The parable ends with Jesus warning "keep watch, because you do not know the day or the hour." We have been told that Jesus will come again. The problem is, that we don't know when He's coming. It could be tonight, could be next week, could be 500 years from now. We just don't know. If Jesus comes 500 years from now, the death of those living will come long before that, but we still don't know when our time on Earth will expire.

I know I've talked on this topic before, but it is not beneath me to make constant reminders. The fact is we need to keep prepared. If you don't know how to do this, please let me know. On top of that, please read your Bible. If you don't have one, Biblegateway.com, which is where I link all my scriptural references to, had the complete Bible online, in various different English and foreign language translations. Some things might not make sense, so ask about them. Keep going, I urge you. 

Make sure to pray constantly. Keep yourself in the Word.

Amen.

A Hand Chopping Eye Gouging Good Time For The Family

Catchy title, huh.


I was watching something on TV the other night, and a pastor was talking about the dangers of taking the Bible too literally. She asked the person she was talking to if he had ever looked at a woman when he shouldn't have. He responded that he had. She made the claim that since he looked at that woman in such a way, that Jesus commanded that he now take his eye out, because his eye had caused him to sin.


The passage that this pastor was most likely referring to was Matthew 18:8-9. In these verses, Jesus does indeed state that if our eye causes us to sin, to gouge it out and throw it away. Unfortunately this pastor on TV, along with many others, miss the point of what Jesus is saying entirely.


What this pastor is assuming is that this man's eye was the guilty party that caused him to look at this woman. To quote the famous philosopher, Larry the Cable Guy, "it's like blaming spelling errors on my pencil." It is something deeper that caused him to look at that woman.


Physically, the impulse was the woman passing by that caught his eye. This sent a signal to the brain, in which the brain then said back to the eye "LOOK AGAIN! LOOK AGAIN!" Since we look at things everyday without getting that response, the eye is not the guilty party, so it therefore must be the brain. 


Using this logic people who don't understand what the above passage is about would therefore think that we would have to cut out our brain. I'm not a doctor, but I think it safe to assume that you would die in the process, or at least shortly after removal of your own brain. 


Some people claim that it isn't your brain that really controls that sort of response, but your heart. Okay, so is Jesus now commanding us to rip out our hearts Aztec style because our heart causes us to sin? I think it would be kinda cool to rip out your own heart and look at it while it's still beating, unless of course you have ripped out your eyes already. 


Let's get serious now. Ask any middle school student what the heart does, they will tell you it pumps blood through your body. So therefore it was not this young man's heart that caused him to sin. The brain sends signals to all parts of your body, causing your heart to beat, hands to move, and eyes to look. For voluntary reactions like the latter two, there has to be some sort of stimulus for the brain to send that signal. So now the brain, along with the heart, and the eyes, are not causing anybody to sin. And you went and performed major surgery on yourself for no reason at all. Good luck getting your insurance to pay for any of it.


On the other hand, you have people who claim it was just in his nature to look at women in this way. And they're right. Some claim that we just can't help it. Well, that they're wrong about. Romans 8:6-8 says that our sinful nature is contrary to to the will of God. It also says that if we allow the Holy Spirit to live in us, it will give us peace. It also speaks of those "still under" the control of their sinful nature, meaning that a change could be made. It is the sinful nature of that man that causes him to sin. Using the words of Jesus in the way He intended, we could have to cast out our sinful nature, because that is what causes us to sin. 


Amen.

What's In A Name

I go by the first name Matt, but my full name is Matthew. To my knowledge, there are no other people in my family that are named Matthew, so it's not a family name. My middle name as well as my son's middle name, David, is a family name.

This leads people to ask why I got the name Matthew. I tell them I was named after an evil tax collector that had a change of heart. This part is true, I was named after Matthew, an apostle of Jesus Christ. For my little blog post this week, I'm going to talk about this evil tax collector with the change of heart.

Matthew, was born Levi, and was a tax collector for Herod Antipas, tetrarch of Galilee. Tax collectors in Matthew's day are much like tax collectors today, very disliked by the masses. The difference is how taxes were collected back in the day. The Roman government collected a tax on catches that fisherman made. It was the tax collector's job to first value the catch, then tax it accordingly. For example, a fisherman catches fifty dollars worth of fish, he would have to pay a tax of five dollars (arbitrary amounts used in modern day terminology). Now what Matthew, as well as many of the tax collectors of the day, would do was to say that a fifty dollar catch was actually worth $100 and then take $10 instead of the five. Then only give the five to the Roman tetrarch. This was generally accepted by the Roman government, as long as they got the money they asked for. Furthermore, the Jewish population treated their Roman occupants with disdain, and for a Jew to work for the Romans and steal from fellow Jews was a grave sin.


This all changed one day when Jesus came to him. Even though Matthew was despised by the people as a sinner, Jesus chose him to be one of his apostles. Later that day, Matthew invited Jesus in for supper. The Pharisees didn't like this one bit, as it was a faux pas to associate with someone of Matthew's ilk. Jesus responded by saying "I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners." This is exactly what Jesus did, he gave Matthew a calling. This calling was to follow Jesus during his life. After the death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus, Matthew still followed Jesus by taking the Gospel all around the known world.

Okay, I have never been a tax collector, I'm not one of the twelve apostles, and I never wrote anything bigger than a fifteen page undergraduate paper, much less a Gospel account. Not to mention that Matthew was born under the name Levi and changed his name after his conversion. Even with these glaring differences, when you boil it down, we are very similar. We both lived sinful lives apart from Christ. Even though we were both sinners, we were saved by the love of Christ. In addition, Christ has called us both to take His Gospel all over the world. The circumstances may be different, the mission is the same.

I guess there is something in a name after all. I just hope I'm not martyred. That would suck.

Holy Communion

I've had many conversations with different people about the nature of Holy Communion. Who should take it, who shouldn't, what does it mean. For the most part, the explanations that are given are as varied as the amount of people with opinions. Some people have spent the length of professional careers trying to determine the answers to these questions, and are no further to finding it out than the person who has spent a day.

If one wants the answer to these questions, they usually look to people with letters in front or behind their name, other experts, or the ever-knowing internet. However, I found one of the best answers from a high school senior who has accepted Jesus under a year ago.

This past Sunday, my wife had a cold and decided to stay home with our daughter, so I took my son to church, just the two of us. Instead of sitting alone, I decided to sit with our resident high school senior. I don't want to give away too much of his name, so I'll just call him Brent. Brent is a very new Christian, and was never brought up in church. After taking communion, I noticed that he walked slowly around our small sanctuary, looking at all the different pictures of the stations of the cross. For those that don't know, the stations of the cross are different pictures representing the final hours of the life of Jesus Christ, including the cross being placed on His back, Christ carrying the cross, and the death of Christ. When we sat down, I realized that Brent had most likely never been to a Good Friday service at our church, or anywhere for that matter, and quietly mentioned that on Good Friday, we go through each picture and explain what they each mean.

What he said caught me a little off guard. He told me he understood what they are. What he does is every time he takes communion, he looks at each picture in the station of the cross, which helps him keep perspective on just exactly what it means when he takes communion. He later went on to explain that he does not swallow the elements until after he looks at all the different stations of the cross. Often times his lips chap, and the wine remains in his mouth, stinging the inside of his mouth, bringing a little bit of pain.

You see, Brent realized what some people who have been in the church all their lives fail to realize. Communion is not something we do once every (insert time period of your choice here) because it means 'something important'. Communion is something we partake in because of the most awesome and horrifying gift ever given. When Brent goes from station to station, he sees depictions of one of the most brutal forms of execution known to man. Crucifixion was so brutal in fact, that the Romans made it illegal to crucify a Roman citizen, no matter the crime. Christ went through this, full knowing ahead of time that this would be the way He dies. But He did it anyway. He lived a sinless life, yet died in the same way as low-life murderers and thieves. He did this so that those who do not deserve to pass on to Heaven after death, may do so. His body was broken, His blood was shed, and He died a gruesome death, that you and I may have eternal life.

No matter how you take communion, with wine or grape juice. With a loaf of bread, wafer, or cracker. These things should not be the focus when you take communion. Our worship of Christ should always be at the center, and the remembrance of the ugly death yet beautiful sacrifice of Christ should be with you as well.

Amen.