I preached Wed. from Is. 55:6-11, with 3 points: Seek the Lord while He may be found, God’s purpose, and the peace and joy in knowing God’s purpose.

I have been reading "The Herodian Period" from Avi Yonah’s “The world History of the Jewish People”. I have been reading this off and on since our return from Israel. I took a section from the book describing the economy of Judea during the Herodian Period which spans from Herod the Great who slaughtered the babies of Bethlehem towards the end of his reign to Agrippa II who heard Paul’s defense on the eve of his departure to Rome and his death. I was using the book’s description of the different manners of labor during the Herodian Period. Tradesmen, were unique, with the trades usually being passed down from father to son, as in the case of Jesus, carpenter and son of a carpenter. The large majority of people were farmers, about half farming to feed the family and the other half farming for profit enabling them to buy things and use the services of the tradesmen. There was also a small group of highly placed people who owned large estates employing laborers and allowing some laborers to rent farmland. Most of these people would never leave the land they were farming. These were the people that the gospels were written for.

Let me see if I can tie this in on the written page. Seek the Lord and be refreshed. Forgiveness refreshes, the church refreshes pastors, pastors can refresh the church and friends can refresh people who are struggling. This idea of refreshing leads to a desire to know and do God’s will. A concordance search of “the will of God” gives us some interesting cross references. In I Thes 4:3 we have the will of God defined as to be moral. In I Peter 2:13-17 and 1 Tim 2:1-6 we have two admonitions to live submitted lives to the authorities in power combined with two universals about God’s will. In the Timothy verses the description of God is: “who desires everyone to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth”. In Peter you find the similar tie in verse in 1 Peter 3:9 where God is said “not wanting any to perish but desiring that all come to repentance”.

The point of this is that the gospel is preaching to mainly a bunch of farmers who will most likely spend their lives right where they are. God will build His church among these people and they will be encouraged to live good lives in submission to the powers that be and in doing so are part of God’s plan to win the world. The thought of the sermon is to bring dignity to church folks who love God, work jobs and live decent lives and God uses them to reach the world.

So every life becomes: 2 Cor 3:2-3 You are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read by all men; 3 clearly you are an epistle of Christ, ministered by us, written not with ink but by the Spirit of the living God.

This knowledge of being in the will of God, each of our lives being a hand written letter to others, allows us to have peace and joy in living our lives. The final definition of the will of God used was: 1 Thess 5:16-18 Rejoice always, 17 pray without ceasing, 18 in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God  in Christ Jesus for you.

The church always brings dignity to all of its members.

I was talking with one of the teachers at school. He was describing his position on abortion. He opposed it, but was in a quandary about how he felt about abortion in the unique cases of rape or the health of the mother. I mentioned the facts around Beethoven's birth. That helped him somewhat. As he continued talking to the students in the room he came back to be addressing me as a pastor this time. I was under the influence of a book by James Reid published in 1939 called "Why Be Good". I answered that sacrificial love is always better than selfish love. This all happened as President Obama reasserted the Democratic preference for wider availability of abortion options worldwide. The teacher came back that afternoon and gave me a sincere thank you, saying he knew abortion was always wrong but he was never able to give others or himself an acceptable answer. Sacrificial love is that acceptable answer in all cases. Here are some notes from the book:

He wrote this on the eve of WWII. He is hoping to see a return to Christian civility that will influence the nations. As a British citizen he, as most of his compatriots, saw WWI as a watershed moment never to be repeated. He would be extremely disappointed.

Here is his definition of goodness: “It is what our souls see to be good; and the only reason why we choose it and follow it is in that fact.”

“If goodness is to become the guiding principle of life, it must be seen in its true place, as the way of life that follows from a right relationship between us and God. What we call goodness cannot be separated from the view of life as fellowship with God in an eternal order into which He brings us in Christ. Only as we come into our place in that fellowship can we find the principles which guide our lives,…”

“A ship without a pilot, flying with all sails set before every wind that blows, may be a very glorious sight, but there is only one end to that kind of voyage.”

“…having won the freedom to do what they wish and to have no master save their mood, they are full of contrary moods and do not know what they wish to do. We have come to see that Huxley was right when he said that ‘a man’s worst difficulties begin when he is able to do as he likes.’”

Speaking of sex: “It is the strongest instinct we have and it has most power of producing strain and unhappiness when there is no knowledge of how it should be regulated.”

“The pre-requisite of being master in the house of our life is to believe that our impulses and desires are finally in our own control, and the man who gives up this claim to freedom and believes that he must succumb to the impulse which makes most appeal to him at the moment will soon cease to have any personality at all”.

“Witreg is perfectly right, ‘Since Christ came into the world, there has no longer been a world without Christ; He entered into it life a dye, the stain of which no amount of washing will remove; like a drop of God’s blood which remains ineffaceably there.’”

“A life without purpose comes to be not worth living. And there are countless people who find it meaningless. They hurry from one excitement to another trying to get a kick out of life. But in vain.”

“The only definition of goodness for each of us in the long run is that it is what we feel we ought to do or to be. What is the origin of this sense of obligation? Why is it that people in various ages, and in widely separated spots on the earth, have felt the compulsion to live in one certain or to follow certain rules which are virtually the same?”

“It blurs the distinction between various kinds of pleasure. For pleasure may be had on different levels. The prodigal in the far country had one kind of pleasure; and back home again, reconciled with his father and intent on service, he had another kind of pleasure.”

“Man is also a creature of will and purpose. He can make plans and carry them through. …He can order and direct his own life to some definite end of his ambition.”

Speaking of the Sermon on the Mount: “It is more like a series of dramatic illustrations flung out of His glowing mind of the kind of way in which a man will act who has His spirit of goodness; and the effort to take some of these illustrations literally and make them rules of conduct is futile.”

“Modern translations of the New Testament have gone back to the word love, which is the real rendering of “agape”. But when the Bible was translated into Latin, the word for love had been so corrupted with vicious and degrading associations that it could not be used, and the translators used the Latin word caritas, which those who made the Authorized Version in 1y611 translated charity. The fact that we have been able to go back to the word love shows how the influence of Christianity has cleansed it.”

…personality in His sense, which is manhood and womanhood at its best, is the capacity for right social relationships and conduct. It is the growth in us of the true goodness which is love.”

“To be good is to do the things which, if we possessed His spirit, we would do.”

“The place of religion in the world has been to fertilize all the energies of the human mind and spirit”.

For life at its best, as Jesus say, and He is supported by the best psychology., is love. To be released from ourselves into the love of others is the way of mental and spiritual health. It is the secret of true freedom.”

“The right management of personal relationships is the most important and the most difficult part of the art of life.”

“To make what in life and in novels is so often called love a pretext for sex relationships is to clutch at the shadow and miss the substance. It is this sanctity of love as a spiritual union which is the real safeguard of home and of all that it can bring to husband and wife.”

“As Mr. Julian Husxley says, ‘To love one woman fully is to wish not to love any other woman fully.’”

“The true aim of parental care is so to train the children that the early dependence will give way to a companionship in which affection is strong because it is free, and all are united in a fellowship which shares the same loyalty,…”

“The way out of all of these troubles is through a love which is big enough to be unselfish, strong enough to trust, and is free from all unworthy anxiety, because it is leaned from Christ. This love seeks to guide through frankness and persuasion.”

His definition of home: It is for the development, through those intimate relationships where we can be our unfettered selves, of the character that will enable us to be members of the larger community.”

“The only advances the world has known have come through the inspiring power of personality. We cannot get away from this, whatever be the structure of society. One soul lights up another, like flame kindling flame. As the spirit of Christ, though our loyalty to Him, takes possession of us we become kindling points of that spirit in others.”

“It is because His spirit has permeated our traditions and our ideals that our civilization is as good as it is. It is still true, and may be stated without fear of contradiction, that the best type of men in our own country are Christian men, and that all the great steps in social reform and the elevation of the social and individual conscience have come through Christian faith. The fact that there are mangy good people who make no religious profession is easily accounted for. They are living on inherited spiritual capital, and that capital has been provided by those personalities whose lives were controlled, directed, and inspired by Christian faith.”

“They are kept going on the level of decency and respectability by ideals which have been created by faith but are no longer inspired by it. The deeper springs of character have not been set going; and this can be done only by religion.”

“For those who think that Jesus came merely to show us what goodness is and to bid us practice it, are missing the whole point. He came, and He gave His life, to reveal to men the nature and reality of God.”

“Many people fail to understand that religion is not merely a theory about God; it is an experience of God. It is not that we assume His existence, His love and then try to live in the light of this assumption; it is an experience by which we become conscious of God working in our life, inspiring and comforting. It is a fellowship with God as real as fellowship with a friend in which mind and spirit act and react on one another.”

“A pessimist is a man who sees the hard and tragic facts of life, unlit by any religious faith.”

“The modern world with all its activities is for many people a vast machinery of escape from ourselves and from the God who is trying to make Himself known to us.”

“It is the restoring of a fellowship with God in which nothing henceforth stands between His love and us. But the result of the restoration is that a new force enters our life, and through us, our world. God comes into it through this fellowship, in the new life which he creates and inspires with all the activity to which it leads. There is a new situation in which the very past itself can be transformed, and the consequences that remain are made to serve God’s purpose in our lives.”

I picked up a copy of "The Garden of Emuna" by Rabbi Shalom Arush while observing the men pray at the Western (wailing) wall in Jerusalem. Many of the thoughts in the book could just as easily been written by an evangelical Christian writer. Have faith, believe God, repent, study scripture; are all themes in the book.

What is communicated is the need to be in Israel to really live a life of faith. The more orthodox your lifestyle the more easily you can accomplish tikkun (soul correction). According to the author this soul correction can take place over several lives on this earth. He uses the illustration of a baby dying at 3 months to explain why we should not be upset but understand that the soul needed 3 months exactly to accomplish its correction. I am not sure if his deeper beliefs are orthodox or not. The idea of soul correction seems to be a common thread through Kabalistic teachings.

Reading the book and viewing the similar writings of faith without salvation by grace was interesting. Apparently the book has sold over 600,000 copies. The natural questions of how these lives of faith touch God run through my mind. It is still attempting to accomplishing something through our efforts. Watching the men pray, same rocking, same swaying, no individual styles. One man texting. But, in general there was some enthusiasm. Location seems to be very important to the Jews. We visited David’s supposed tomb which was a special location for prayer. When Joan and I walked through the Orthodox section of Jerusalem it seemed that there was some excitement in the air as men rushed to and from as if between university classes. I can see from the book that the highest status for an Orthodox Jew is to be able to devote oneself to the study of the Torah.

While in Jerusalem we took the tunnel under the Arab houses to see the original stones of the Western wall. Always, according to Nola, there are women praying at one particular spot that is believed to be perpendicular to the location of the holy of holies. I read of the young Israeli soldier running through the alleys and houses of East Jerusalem to finally come face to face with the Western Wall. All of the houses have been cleared away to give access to the wall for prayer.

We were able to walk up a walkway overlooking the Western wall right up on the temple mount. We saw the El Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock. There is writing on the Dome that I was told says “Allah has no friends”. I did a google search of the phrase and came up with two obscure hits.

Being there and trying to think Jewish after reading this book will be a long time coming.

I prepared for a new year’s eve sermon by re-reading The Christian's Secret of a Happy Life by Hannah Whitall Smith. She was a Quaker minister who wrote a book in response to a friend’s comment about how miserable Christians seemed to be. I started the sermon off with the results of an Amazon search in books for “The Joy of…”. I got over 450,000 results. I listed some of the many results leading to a book “The Joy of Complete Surrender”, by Jean-Pierre de Caussade. This tied in with Hannah’s recipe for a life of joy: surrender and trust. We had a regular service starting at 8 instead of 7 followed by fellowship and food. We then had a testimony service that brought us right to midnight with a happy birthday following Harold’s testimony before midnight and a happy birthday for Maida after the stroke of midnight. It was a great time.

Here are a few quotes from Hannah’s book.

It starts with this quote:

“No thoughtful person can question the fact that, for the most part, the Christian life, as it is generally lived, is not entirely a happy life. A keen observer once said to me. ‘You Christians seem to have a religion that makes you miserable…You cannot expect outsiders to seek very earnestly for anything so uncomfortable.’ I saw in a flash, that the religion of Christ ought to be, and was meant to be, to its possessors, not something to make them miserable, but something to make them happy; and I began then and there to ask the Lord to show me the secret of a happy Christian life.”

“…which is that when we trust, the Lord works, and that a great deal is done, not by us, but by Him. Actual results are reached by our trusting, because our Lord undertakes the thing entrusted to Him, and accomplishes it.”

“He disciplines and trains by inward exercises and outward providences.”

“…is that by an act of faith we put ourselves into the hands of the Lord, for Him to work in us all the good pleasure of His will, and then, by a continuous exercise of faith, keep ourselves there.”

“The greatest burden we have to carry in life is self; the most difficult thing we have to manage is self. Our own daily living, our frames and feelings, our especial weaknesses and temptations, our peculiar temperaments, our inward affairs of every kind, --these are the things that perplex and worry us more than anything else, and that bring us most frequently into bondage and darkness.”

“Your part is simply to rest. His part is to sustain you; and He cannot fail.”

Speaking to a doctor: “Suppose, in going your rounds among your patients, you should meet with one man who entreated you earnestly to take his case under your especial care in order to cure him, but who should at the same time refuse to tell you all his symptoms or to take all your prescribed remedies, and should say to you, ‘I am quite willing to follow your directions as to certain things, because they commend themselves to my mind as good, but in other matters I prefer judging for myself, and following my own direction.’ …It is necessary, then, for doctors to be obeyed if they are to have any chance to cure their patient?....God must have the whole case put into His hands without any reserves, and His directions must be implicitly followed.”

“But it really would seem as if God’s own children were more afraid of His will than of anything else in life, -- His lovely, lovable will, which only means loving-kindnesses and tender mercies, and blessings unspeakable to their souls!”

“…in order to enter into this blessed interior life of rest and triumph, you have two steps to take, --first, entire abandonment; and second, absolute faith.”

“The virtue does not lie in your believing, but in the thing you believe. If you believe the truth, you are saved; if you believe a lie, you are lost. The act of believing in both cases is the same; the things believed are exactly opposite, and this it is which makes the mighty difference. Your salvation comes, not because your faith saves you, but because it links you to the Saviour who saves; and your believing is really nothing but the link.”

“All discouragement is from the devil.”

I included thoughts about our entire lives being an expression of worship to God, thus the "Joy of..." theme.