Peel Off Labels.

In this past Sunday’s sermon, Pastor Althea shared with us that scars can become unhealthy when we label them and hold on to them.

We have no reason to focus attention on past pains and injuries when Jesus Christ has come to save and heal us.

The Lord has promised us in Isaiah 43: Yes, you were once bound, but I have done away with your captors. Look! I am doing a new thing. Nevermind the old days; I am helping you now, making roadways in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. I am making your impossible dreams become stark reality. Watch Me do great things for My people. (See Isaiah 43:13-20)

Yesterday I suffered deep injury;

Yesterday I was steeped in iniquity;

Yesterday I was chained in captivity;

Yesterday is a distant memory.

Today, thank God, I am free.

(G.A.R.)

The Unpreached Sermon.

In service back on June 10th, several verses of Isaiah 43 were read. Included were verses 22 and 23. And though they were not expounded upon in the sermon that day, they are important verses to reflect upon.

“But you did not call for me, O Jacob; you did not long for me, O Israel. You did not bring me lambs for your burnt offerings; you did not honor me with your sacrifices. I did not burden you with offerings; I did not make you weary by demanding incense.”

Tithes and offerings to the Lord are a basic component of the Christian life. It is how we support ministers and ministries: even in the most corrupt ministries recorded in Scripture, there is never an instance of the Lord calling people to cease support of His workers. God has an interest in keeping the doors of His house open, and part of the means of doing that is through our giving.

When we consider all that God has done for us, the covenant of tithing is an incredible gift. Dr. Derek Grier recently described it using the analogy of a business partnership, and I will elaborate upon his analogy here. The senior partner (God) always gets 10% and the junior partner (say, Genise) always gets 90%. The senior partner provides total coverage and benefits, and the junior partner does the work that the senior partner has asked her to do. In light of this partnership agreement, how does the junior partner justify taking the senior partner’s portion for herself?

In Isaiah 43, God makes an indictment: He has not burdened us to give Him an excess of offerings, but our excessive sins have burdened Him. He is serving us continually with His life, but we are not serving Him with the most basic elements of the faith. That’s not what a partnership is supposed to be. We are called to do our share.

My prayer is that, in light of the countless benefits God has given us, we will in turn walk in obedience to God’s command to give to Him. As Pastor Sam shares from time to time, give your finest. Give your firstfruits. Give freely. And don’t give fraudulently.

Lord, thank You for the privilege of giving to You.

Vulture Culture.

“I am the Lord, your Holy One, the one who created Israel, your king.” (Isaiah 43:15)

“You say, ‘If we had lived in the days of our ancestors, we would not have participated with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’ For this reason I am sending you prophets and wise men and experts in the law, some of whom you will kill and crucify, and some you will flog in your synagogues and pursue from town to town…” (Matthew 23:30,34)

The Lord knows our hearts. Jesus openly condemned the Pharisees and scribes of His day for their heritage of killing the prophets of God. They were on a merry-go-round of sorts:

The Lord would send His unalterable word to a prophet.
The prophet would convey the word of the Lord to the people.
The leaders of the people would plot to threaten, jail, or kill the prophet.
The Lord would send His unalterable word to another prophet.
That prophet would convey the word of the Lord to the people.
The leaders of the people would plot to threaten, jail, or kill the prophet.
And so on.

Enter Bronx Bethany.

We, like the apostle Paul, are sometimes surrounded with those who are opposed to the work of God moving forward:

Demons. Unseen spiritual forces of evil which seek to undermine the word of God and make it of no effect. This is attempted through distraction, or through competing interests that take one’s focus away from doing the thing that God has said.

Vultures. Reverend Ronald gave us a powerful analogy of vultures as those who are not direct participants in the failure of a project, but who remain in the church and eagerly await its demise so that they can rejoice in its failure.

Isaiah 43:15 reminds us that it is the Lord who sets the agenda for His people. It is He who defeated the armies of ancient Egypt. It is He who promised fruitfulness for the barren; streams for the desert; roadways in the wilderness. It is the Lord who has instructed us to forget the good things of the past, so that we will have the capacity to receive the better things He has planned for our future.

The demon will say that other things hold more interest and deserve more attention than God’s agenda.
The vulture will say that not even God can supersede the past glory of our church.
The prophet will say, Increase your borders. Let down your nets for a great catch. Prepare for harvest.

What will you say?

…This Is New.

No one tears a patch from a new garment and sews it on an old garment. If he does, he will have torn the new, and the piece from the new will not match the old. And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the new wine will burst the skins and will be spilled, and the skins will be destroyed. (Luke 5:36-37)

There’s an old saying: “That was then; this is now.” But I’d like to put a new spin on the phrase. “That was then; this is new.” The new is superior not just in terms of chronological time, but also in terms of strength.

Jesus shares the above parable after responding to criticisms concerning fasting and prayer (or, rather, His disciples’ lack of engagement in those disciplines). It’s a challenging parable. We tend not to have a problem with head knowledge about the folly of sewing a new piece of cloth onto an old garment. But when the principle is transferred to our heart motives for why we engage in spiritual endeavors, it’s much more of a challenge to embrace this word.

There’s a bottom line to this parable: the new and the old cannot be successfully merged. It’s precisely what had been prophesied hundreds of years earlier, when Isaiah spoke as the oracle of God:

This is what the Lord says, the one who made a road through the sea, a pathway through the surging waters, the one who led chariots and horses to destruction, together with a mighty army. They fell down, never to rise again; they were extinguished, put out like a burning wick: “Don’t remember these earlier events; don’t recall these former events.” (Isaiah 43:16-18)

During the sermon, Reverend Ronald reminded us that Israel’s deliverance from Egypt was a profound watershed event. It was something that was told to children and grandchildren throughout the ages, so that they might remember the mighty works of God. It’s amazing that God would tell His people to forget about their deliverance from bondage.

But the forgetting has a purpose. It’s necessary to abandon the old. That abandonment process is our means of making room for the new things that God will do. That is, God will do amazing things that you don’t yet have room to receive, so you need to make room.

How do we make room? Let go of the old, even the old things that were good, and prepare for the new.

Why are we so reluctant to let go of the old?

That Was Then...

Your Latter Years Are Greater Than Your Former Years.

Our guest speaker, Reverend Ronald Benjamin, shared a small part of a sermon series that he’d preached at Metro West Church of the Nazarene. But though it was originally prepared for a church community many miles away, that sermon spoke to the present need of Bronx Bethany.

What is the need?
We need to move forward.

God confirmed the message throughout the entire weekend. I once again had the privilege of attending all three English-language services, and was able to see how God modeled the idea of moving forward into the “new thing” He has prepared for us. Let’s look at a couple of examples, using Isaiah 43:19 as a template.

Look, I am about to do something new. Now it begins to happen! Do you not recognize it? Yes, I will make a river in the desert and paths in the wilderness.

Saturday night service: Pastor Richie changed the order of service and did a new thing. Instead of opening the service with songs about God, we instead spent time in communion with God through prayer. Our prayer time was a river in the desert, satisfying our parched souls.

Sunday services: Our congregation had the joy of seeing several people do a new thing through a basic element of our faith: baptism. The baptismal candidates gave testimonies of God making a pathway in the wilderness: escaping the penalty of sin by salvation through Jesus Christ.

And, of course, the sermon did a new thing. We were given a familiar passage of Isaiah, but were given a new revelation: We are called to forget not just the bad things in our past, but also the good things. Reverend Ronald also referenced the apostle Paul’s letter to the Philippians: the accolades of our past are worthless in comparison to the future things God will grant us.

We’ll spend time this week unpacking different points from the sermon, but for today I’ll ask a question:

Are you willing to forget even the good things from your past?