Father in Heaven, thank you for our very being. Today Lord we humbly ask for your forgiveness for our countless times of missing the mark, and we thank you for the manifold blessing a life with you and in you bring. Please strengthen our soul to bear the battle of sin in our lives. Amen!
Every day we are faced with choices, decisions, options in the walk of life. We are literally bombarded with offers to better our lives, advertisements of help, and solicitations from strangers pleading you to let them make your life better. And it’s often confusing, many times enticing, and sometimes down right amusing to see what some people will do for a buck. Or should I say to get richer? Because inflation makes everything worthless, while at the same time distancing the junk we want and almost out of reach for us, which makes us want it more.
But life doesn’t need to be that Rat Race to mindlessness, greed, and insensibility. We have within us access to elevated ideas, hopes and behavior based on a different approach. There is a better way.
Today I am excited to talk with you, my beloved family and members of “The Way”. That term “The Way” by the way was what we Christians called ourselves back in the first century right after the Lord’s Ascension up to Heaven. To sit at the right hand of the Godhead.
Yes, we believe our Lord of the Godhead, our Father’s Throne, are an integral part of our lives. We are drawn into the Throne of Heaven through God’s Holy Spirit, and it leads us from the fake-dogmatic conclusions, counterfeit-insincere lifestyles, or bogus roads we have been travelling down many times in our lives, onto the “The Way of Holiness”. Hence today’s message title A Bogus Road or, “The Way of Holiness”.
Before we explore a couple of ideas about the; “The Way of Holiness”, perhaps it would serve us to look at some of the shallow, bankrupt, and ill-serving Bogus Roads, many of us have frequent flyer miles on. These are the things that the world (meaning anything but the Lord, His Spirit, and His word have led you to), things the world tell us are true and important in its sense of propriety.
Fake-insincere conclusions and Counterfeit- dogmatic lifestyles are bogus roads.
Now before anyone starts thinking that I am attacking anyone or anything specifically, please keep in mind on most Sundays, I am kicking my own backside up here and it’s painful. If anything, I would say, if the message hits close to home today (or any day), all I can say is; mores the better.
No, today I am not going to talk about wokeness, equity, our military, society, or government. I am not going to delve into addictions, compulsions, or our desire to sin much, and I’m not exploring justice, world hunger, or community values this morning. All of the above can be mitigated, repaired, and nurtured by our discussion today, if you choose to look beyond this moment. All that can be addressed and worked on by you, individually based on a couple of ideas for your reflection. Beginning with;
- Fake-insincere conclusions; For example;
Sometimes it’s when we grasp at or fumble over quick fix solutions instead of doing the hard work of looking deep within ourselves, we misfire. This happens when I jump to conclusions instead of thinking, and then praying.
You see, if my emotions, or those of the people around me are my sole compass in determining my heading in life, I’m already in error. Without being grounded in a Faithwalk that requires much more thought and prayer on my part, than the groupthink that often comes as a result of social and mental laziness of most group settings, how do we find correction? How do we know were going off center?
Many times, the conclusions that we talk ourselves into are the result of going along with the pack for the sake of harmony and group cohesion. Going along to get along. Before you know it, you are on a Bogus Road.
- Counterfeit-dogmatic lifestyles; are another way for us to find ourselves on the Bogus Road of life here are a couple examples;
The first and easiest way for me to go down that road is, stereotyping anything. That’s laziness on my part to cut to the chase by trying to avoid having to think out a subject. I can do this with people, places and especially material stuff. By first associating stuff with a good time, and then applying mental steroids on the fly. All of a sudden too much of a good thing has become the new me. With me asking myself, what ever happened to me? Like munching on Pistachios, drinking Dr. Pepper, or watching reruns of Gilligan’s Island. All of a sudden it’s a habit.
In my own case, I can enjoy something, someone, or a someplace so much, that on the fly I designate whatever it is to be my new permanent being of me.
Case in point, one year early in our marriage we went to a place on vacation, up in Oregon on the Coast. We loved it so much that we wanted to make it our special place to go, and have been going exclusively to the same place to stay in that area for over 27 years. There is nothing wrong with that but, what did I cut myself off from by only wanting to do the same thing every time.
Not so bad when it is a summer vacation, but when that same kind of reasoning evolves into dogmatic approaches to your whole life, you begin to see how you can end up on the wrong track. When I place one set of options above all others without even looking at the field, my own choices can easily become counterfeit to my best interest. And Wala, I’m back on a Bogus Road, relying on fake options and limiting my life.
These examples are emblematic of so much that is at risk in our individual lives, and for us combined as a people. I believe you will find a little of what we just spoke about in play with the larger challenges we face in our communities. Implying that the challenges we face today, are very much like the challenges we have faced throughout time immemorial. Reminding me of Today’s Call to Worship reading, where Isaiah who know a thing or two about a people caught up in themselves to the exclusion of remembering their place with God. Reading again from Isaiah 35:4-10
4 say to those with fearful hearts,
“Be strong, do not fear;
your God will come,
he will come with vengeance;
with divine retribution
he will come to save you.”
Many hear vengeance and retribution, then flick that switch. It’s the switch that allows you to filter out anything being said but you head bobs affirming you still kind of care. Well vengeance and retribution in my opinion is what God will take out on our sin, then cleansing you and I. Instead of fearing these things we need to be of assistance by refraining from being a part of the problem and leading people to the light of our God, instead of repelling them.
5 Then will the eyes of the blind be opened
and the ears of the deaf unstopped.
6 Then will the lame leap like a deer,
and the mute tongue shout for joy.
Water will gush forth in the wilderness
and streams in the desert.
7 The burning sand will become a pool,
the thirsty ground bubbling springs.
In the haunts where jackals once lay,
grass and reeds and papyrus will grow.
When we are in a relationship with the Lord, we have it within us to actually see (and no longer be blind) when others are trapped in the fake-dogmatic conclusions, counterfeit-insincere lifestyles, or bogus roads of life. That desert Isaiah described could be our souls parched from a lack of living water, now flourishing life. Continuing:
8 And a highway will be there;
it will be called the Way of Holiness;
it will be for those who walk on that Way.
The unclean will not journey on it;
wicked fools will not go about on it.
9 No lion will be there,
nor any ravenous beast;
they will not be found there.
But only the redeemed will walk there,
10 and those the Lord has rescued will return.
They will enter Zion with singing;
everlasting joy will crown their heads.
Gladness and joy will overtake them,
and sorrow and sighing will flee away.
The “Way of Holiness” is not a one size fits all, a: “you do as I say” boulevard. No, it’s a unique one-of-a-kind relationship you get to explore without a middleman like me mucking it up, telling you how to feel, or how to love.
The way of Holiness is being written by you and the Lord right now in your life. The more you turn over the writing to Him, the more you will actually write your life with Him. The freer you will be from all of those ravenous beasts that exists only to tare you down. They live to chase themselves, and not for the praise and glorification of God.
While on the Way of Holiness, the Road of God, you need not fear the unknown any more, for He will be with you, His rod and staff will comfort you, and goodness and kindness will pursue you. No chase you, and nurture you. And lead you to Him. As it led the Syrophoenician woman in today’s Message Reading in Mark 7:24-30 to the Lord;
24 Jesus left that place and went to the vicinity of Tyre. He entered a house and did not want anyone to know it; yet he could not keep his presence secret. 25 In fact, as soon as she heard about him, a woman whose little daughter was possessed by an impure spirit came and fell at his feet. 26 The woman was a Greek, born in Syrian Phoenicia. She begged Jesus to drive the demon out of her daughter.
27 “First let the children eat all they want,” he told her, “for it is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.”
28 “Lord,” she replied, “even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”
29 Then he told her, “For such a reply, you may go; the demon has left your daughter.”
30 She went home and found her child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.
A Syrophoenician is a person that is Syrian (northeast of Israel), and Phoenician (People who lived in northwest Israel), on the coast. She was in the city of Tyre, a harbor city with a long history even at the time of Jesus.
It was a place that Alexander the Great sieged for 7 months about 350 years earlier back when Tyre was an island. Alexander forced his army to build a causeway under enemy fire, over 700 yards out into the sea to connect the island to the mainland, before he conquered all. A marvel of antiquity.
Today it’s a big peninsula sticking out into the Mediterranean Sea, back then the feat was an epic task of ancient times, connecting the island to the mainland. But that Herculean effort fades in comparison to the woman who overcomes all social convention, all that she was, to ask the Lord for help. She was willing to leave the pagan idolatry, and misplaced hopes of her Syrophoenician people, the Bogus Road of her past, and walk on the Way of Holiness. A Faithwalk with the Lord.
And she was persistent in her efforts to save her daughter from her demonic condition. In the end the Lord says that her reply (her faith in essence), had saved her daughter. How much more are we blessed by a Faithwalk that resides with and in Him who not only has create all, He sustains all, and our Lord can redeem, restore, and save all who believe.
Our God crosses endless voids, repairs the destroyed bridges of life, and spans insurmountable gulfs of our misunderstandings, through our faith in Him.
Just think how Alexander’s army, and his vast empire faded away in time, along with his short drunken lifespan, but our God builds causeways of life everlasting.
As for the crumbs from the table, left by the Master’s children… Give me the crumbs of heaven over the place of honor anywhere else, with anyone, or anytime, and I will be forever grateful. We are talking Mana from heaven over a four-course meal of separation from God and bereavement.
By the way, our God doesn’t deal in crumbs, but in blessings manifold. To understand the difference though, one must depart the Bogus Roads of life, avenues of self-delusion that house the noxious vapors of envy, malice, selfishness, and ego. Your departure from that old life opens the door to a new life full of God’s wonders and joy.
Not a “and they lived happily ever after” Fairy Tale, but a real life that you get to own with God by living it with and in Him. The Way of Holiness provides reality, and living in the moment, not dwelling on a past you can’t change, or living in a future before it happens, that remains to be written with God.
My hope and prayer for you all this week as you explore your beautiful lives, that you get a chance to look at things the way they really are from a perspective wrapped in our Lord, which will open your eyes, ears, and heart to a life more robust, deeper and majestic.
Amen!