Articles

THE SUN IS SHINING ON THE OTHER SIDE

Below I have retold one of my favorite stories of the Revolutionary War. Previously, I shared this story on the day of one of our church’s Annual Freedom Services to thank God for His providential hand in the founding of our country; however, this time I share it because I kept thinking of this Scripture: “There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.” (1Co 10:13). “God…will…make a way of escape.” No doubt, some are currently enmeshed in awful trials and tests, in the worst of circumstances, and under the fierce sustained attack of the enemy. It appears defeat is inevitably imminent. But, God has promised to make a way of escape. Take heart from this story from the war that won us the freedoms we celebrate on July 4th.: It was the first great battle of the Revolutionary War; it was also a crushing defeat for our rag-tag Continental army. General Washington and his troops had retreated and were in a dire predicament: They were trapped with the town of Brooklyn and the British army in front of them and the East River to their backs. Both armies were waiting for the wind to change from the northeast—one with horror and the other with anticipation of finishing off these rebels of the Empire. When the wind changed, the British warships would be able to sail up the river and bombard the Continental soldiers into oblivion or to total surrender. Had that happened, we would not be celebrating freedom this July 4th. There simply would be no United States of America. But, the wind did not stop blowing. The conditions worsened with the skies growing ever darker, the temperature plunging, and the rains falling. An assessment of the situation concluded that, if our army stayed put, annihilation was inevitable. The only possible but improbable option for the Continental Army was to retreat over the East River to Manhattan Island. If the storm lifted during the retreat, the British army on its front would notice and immediately attack. As the British ships moved up the East River behind colonial troops, closing off any escape attempt, the pincher movement would destroy our colonial army. The colonies would revert to the rule of tyranny. Even as the next day dawned, the storm continued. All that day in inclement conditions, arrangements were made for escape. Boats were collected. The time came to begin the retreat across the river. At that very moment, the rain stopped and the winds died making escape possible. Under the cover of the darkness of night, the hodgepodge flotilla of small, overloaded boats began ferrying the many soldiers over the river. The boatmen worked feverishly all night, but there were just so many soldiers. By daybreak, when the British would have been able to observe the retreat and attack, a prodigious part of the army was still stranded on the Brooklyn shore. But, just as the night that had concealed them was lifting, a heavy fog fell. It was as difficult to see in the morning as it had been in the night. Even as the sun climbed higher and higher and should have burned off the fog, the fog held on, enshrouding the retreat. Amazingly, just a short distance away on the other side of the East River where the Continental troops were disembarking on the bank of New York, less than a mile away, there was no fog. The sun was brightly shining. Just minutes after the last of America’s troops had escaped from Brooklyn and marched into New York, the fog lifted. The red-coated enemy could be clearly seen on the opposite shore surprised and disappointed. With the clearing weather, the British had charged the Continentals’ defensive line only to discover that all of Washington’s army had vanished to fight another day. Nine thousand American troops escaped without the loss of even one life. It is very difficult NOT to see a Providential orchestration of their escape, and, consequently, of the freedom of the United States. It simply wouldn’t have happened without Divine intervention. Likewise, none by their own ability or efforts walks away from the bondage of sin, Satan, and this world. God, through Christ’s work, orchestrates the escape. And not just from those sorts of situations. For those who trust Christ, God also orchestrates the escape from trials and temptations and various other types of untenable, stressing, and harrow of places. With God, the escape from test and trial isn’t always and only rarely a short-cut chute. It’s not Mario or Luigi facing a long stretch of attacking enemies and obstacles but is directed by a player to a secret door through which he can go and escape what was ahead. The escape in the Mario game is a bypass of what is ahead. The escape God makes isn’t a bypass. It is a way out. It’s not an escape from having to go through what is difficult. It is an escape when you are going through what is difficult. But it’s not so much a take-you-out-so-you-don’t-have-to-face-trouble kind of escape. It is a take-you-through-and bring-you-out-the-other-side escape. It is not that, as a believer, you find yourself walking a dark, arduous path through a deep valley when God taps you on the shoulder, points to the sheer cliff wall along the path through which He pushes an opening with His finger enabling you to step through, out of the dark valley onto a mountain top in bright sunlight. With God, many times it’s more like this: Though you may have to walk the whole length of the valley, suffer the whole range of the disease, endure the whole, lasting weight of grief, or fight a continuing battle, God will bring you out the other end. You will escape the valley. You will, in the end, come out victorious. God is faithful! God made an escape for the Continental Army. He will make one for you too. And the sun is shining on the other side. Pastor Clifford Hurst

WHY WOULD YOU EXPECT ANYTHING, YOU HYPOCRITE?

For almost forty years I have been happily married. I have no interest in dating. But, as I was reading the newspaper, a headline caught my attention. I read it and swiped to the next page; but, as the page disappeared, transmogrified into the following, one of the enumerated points caught my eye. I swiped back to the previous page. The headline was, “What You Are Doing Wrong In Dating—And How To Fix It.” The point was number 3. “You’re not holding yourself to the standard of the person you’re looking for.” Immediately, I thought of a reality I have encountered again and again while pastoring. “That’s exactly it,” I thought as I read the explanation of that point. Basically, it said, “You want someone that stays fit and trim, but do you exercise to stay fit and trim?” “You want someone that reads fifteen books a year, but do you read any books?” The reality is, the writer was calling such a person a hypocrite. In other words, she was saying to the date-hunter, “You expect from others what you yourself do not offer, you hypocrite.” Some folks expect to be visited when sick in the hospital. But when others are sick in the hospital, they do not visit them. Folks expect to be included in a social gathering. But they do not invite those same folk to their social gathering. Folks expect others to take the initiative to include them in their activities, but they include no one in theirs. Folks expect others to encourage them, but they seek to encourage no one. Folks expect others to pray for them, but they pray for no others. Speaking of being happily married, this reminds me of what my wife, a pastor’s wife, did once. Before church one Sunday evening, she was going around the sanctuary shaking hands with folks greeting them with her warm smile and friendly words. She shook one elderly man’s hand and greeted him. He was poutingly piled up on the pew frowning gloweringly. Ignoring her welcoming words, the crotchety old curmudgeon croaked out, “This is the most unfriendly church I’ve ever been in. Nobody comes by and shakes my hand.” My wife had had enough of this frequently encountered attitude. That Sweet Thing cut his complaining short with “Well, Brother, you’ve been going to this church for five years, and I have never seen you make any effort to go around and shake anybody else’s hand and be friendly.” Touche, Babe! She stuck him and nailed it. (Mixed metaphor intended). Bottomline: He expected from others what he himself did not give them. He expected others to be to him what he never was to them. There are other things wrong with his complaint too. If he had been there for five years, he would have been a part of the Church he criticized. But that is how it works. To criticize the family of God, one has to separate himself from it. He has to make out the people of the church as a separate entity. What my wife was saying was, “You are a part of the Church you are criticizing. Thus, you are really criticizing yourself. If our church isn’t friendly, it is because you are not friendly.” And, of course, such criticism is rarely accurate. Truth is, many folks had initiated a conversation with this man. Many had every service shaken his hand. And his accusation ironically belied the fact that his hand was being shaken simultaneously to his saying no one shook his hand. Another brother who had attended quite a few years left. I phoned him to ask him why, “Well, that church doesn’t worship fervently and demonstratively enough.” (We are Pentecostal. He used the expression “shout enough.”). I protested, “But, Brother, you never worship that way!” The hypocrisy of such carping is thick. If you’ll indulge me, let me give you the recipe for contentment with the church, contentment with your home, and contentment with life: Seek to be to others what you expect them to be to you. Since we started with an analogy from dating, let me end with one: Back when I was a young minister, I used to do workshops and seminars on dating and marriage. I remember so often emphasizing this point: “I know you want to find the right person for you. The right person to marry. But, quit trying to find the right person. Focus on being the right person and you will—by doing that--find the right person. If more would seek to be what they should be to others, if they would seek to be what they expect others to be to them, they might find that the others aren’t quite as bad as they thought. In fact, they will find them far better. Their previously unfulfilled expectations will be met or substituted for the ones they should have. However, if you are not to others what you expect of them, why would you expect anything of them, you hypocrite*? --Pastor Clifford Hurst *Such strong language is a reference to the analogy above from the article on dating. P.S.: Oh, by the way. If you expect folks to like your posts, you will like mine. If you don’t, don’t ever complain—if even to yourself—that others don’t like yours. Just joking. But, since, I’m rambling on, if you claim you have done and done to others and it has all been to no avail and your efforts have been unrequited, first, take another look. Perhaps, there is more coming your way than you have given credit for. And, if not, you are still in better shape than those who never reach out to others--until you complain about others not reciprocating your efforts.

HE TOUCHES THE PAIN

Southern Gospel Saturdays are what I call them. As many do, I like to listen to music during personal prayer times. I listen to an eclectic plethora of songs across the days of the week. On Saturday, it’s Southern Gospel. Sometimes the algorithm throws in some Country Gospel music. I never heard of the singer, Iris DeMent. Or the song, “He Reached Down”. * But last Saturday, just as I was praying for some families enduring unbearable grief of an unimaginable tragedy, Iris, the writer, began to sing this song: Well, he reached down, he reached down He got right there on the ground He reached down, he reached down And he touched the pain Sometimes a song captures profound theology. This one does. He touched the pain. Two verses are a retelling of stories from the Gospel. From these the conclusion in the chorus is drawn, “He touched the pain.” The first story is about the man on the Jericho road who was ambushed by thieves who beat him within an inch of life, robbed him, stripped him, and left him to die. The priest and the Levite heard his groans, saw his suffering, and passed him by. Not the Samaritan. He climbed into the ditch with the bludgeoned and bleeding man. He dressed his wounds. He picked him up and carried him to an inn for convalescent care. “He reached down, he reached down, and he touched the pain.” The second: The scribes and the Pharisees, seeking to entrap Jesus, dragged a woman caught in adultery and threw her at Jesus' feet trying to get Him to condemn her or condemn Himself by not condemning her. He turned a spotlight on their own sin, “Whichever one of you that is without sin, let him cast the first stone to kill her.” Her accusers melted away. Only the weeping, guilty, shamed woman, bowed in the dust of the street, and Jesus remained. Then Jesus spoke, “I don’t condemn you either. Go and sin no more.” And with those words, “He reached down, He reached down and touched the pain.” Another story, not included in the song, is the story of the leprosy-eaten man who came to Jesus asking Him to cure him. A leper. An ostracized outcast. An untouchable. “Lord, if you would, you could heal me.” Jesus moved with compassion, reached for His hand, and—to the gasps of the crowd--touched the leper. Right on his leprosy. “He reached down, He reached down and touched the pain.” This is mindboggling. Jesus touched the leprosy. But think: If Jesus, moved with compassion of the man’s outward physical condition, reached out and touched the awful, putrid, outward effects of disease, will not He who can perceive thoughts, read minds, and see the inner turmoil, just as likely, if not more so, reach out and touch the inward suffering? Will He not touch the pain? That leper did not have leprosy because he was a bad person. Leprosy was not, as we can tell, a punishment for doing wrong. Some things come upon people for no fault of their own. Sickness. Tragic loss. Abandonment. Sexual abuse. Betrayal. But. as certainly has Jesus touched the leprosy on the skin of the leper, He will touch the pain in a person’s heart. Jesus touched the pain of the man beaten on the Jericho road knowing He Himself would be beaten at His crucifixion. Jesus touched the guilt and shame of the adulterous woman knowing He would bear her guilt and shame in the sufferings of the cross. Jesus touched the leprosy knowing the coming pain when the Lord would lay on Him the iniquity of us all. The Beaten touched the beaten. The Guilt-bearer touched the guilty. The Sin offering touched the leprosy that symbolizes sin and all its consequences. No one has suffered pain like Jesus did on the cross. When He touches our pain, it is Pain that is touching the pain. This is the great truth--Jesus is the Wounded Healer. The Wounded heals our wounds. The Sufferer takes our suffering. The Burdened unburdens us. The Hurt assuages our hurt. Pain touches our pain. Hanging suffering on the cross, “He reached down, He reached down and touched the pain. “ Pain touched pain. It is an enigma, but it is in Pain’s touching our pain, that comfort and healing take place. "By His stripes, we are healed." That’s what happens when Pain touches pain. Jesus reaches down and touches the pain. Yours. Whatever caused it. However deep. However long. However senseless. He reaches down, He reaches down, and touches the pain. --Pastor Clifford Hurst

YOU ARE A GIFT TO JESUS

It will matter to but few, but I must attach a spoiler alert to this blog. This below comes straight from Sunday morning’s message I will preach later today. I was so stunned by an amazing truth as I prepared an exposition of a section of Jesus’ High Priestly Prayer in John 17, that I set aside the blog I was working on to jot this down. Never do I fail to be amazed at the truths that I have missed in the Bible, though I have been reading and studying it for over fifty-five years. Here is one of those truths. And it is incredible. And it has such ramifications: We get it, or should get the Good News that Jesus is the Father’s gift to us—“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son.” It is stunning! The Father gave His Son to us to save us. Jesus is the Father’s gift to us. But—here’s the truth I missed, Jesus as He prayed revealed that it’s not just that Jesus is the Father’s gift to us, we are the Father’s gift to Jesus! Think about that. Don’t believe it? Here it is. Here is what the disciples heard Jesus say about them as they listened to Him pray to the Father: “I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world: thine they were, and THOU GAVEST THEM ME, and they have kept thy word.” (Joh 17:6). The disciples heard Jesus say that the Father had given them to Him. They were the Father’s gift to Jesus. There’s no way they could not at that moment have felt loved. Valued. Treasured. Not for anything about them. They knew they were frightened. Flawed. Failing. Foible ladened. Yet, the Father had given them to Jesus! They were a gift to Jesus! They were valued both because of Who had given them and because of to Whom they were given. Gifts may not have a lot of intrinsic value. But, if they are given by someone of importance, or to someone of importance, they are valuable because of that. Recently, I heard a pastor friend of mine exhorting his congregation using, as an illustration, a guitar he had. He said, “I wouldn’t take a million dollars for it. Why?" He answered his question. "Because my father gave it to me.” It was valuable because of who had given it. A father gave a guitar to his son, and its price became more than a million dollars because of how much the son valued it. The Father gave the disciples (and by proxy every believer ever) to the Son. That makes them, to the Son, of inestimable value. Wow! Believer, You are the Father’s gift to Jesus! There is something else amazing about this: Jesus is the Father’s gift to us. But the Father had to pay an exorbitant price to give us that gift. And the Son had to pay the ultimate price to receive us as a gift. Think of the contrast: We had to pay nothing to receive Jesus as the Father’s gift to us. However, Jesus had to pay the high price of His death to receive us as the Father’s gift to Him. The Father pays for Jesus to be His gift to us. Jesus pays for us to be the Father’s gift to Him. In both cases, it is we, and not the Father or the Son, who are the beneficiaries. In both cases, God pays and we benefit beyond imagination. Not to mention we can walk about life thinking, “I am God’s gift to Jesus.” We have this expression to describe someone intoxicated with self-importance: “He thinks he is God’s gift to humanity.” That type of hubris is nauseatingly repugnant. But there is only a humble gratitude and a meaningful affirmation in hearing and repeating, “I am God’s gift to Jesus.” We know we are a gift for nothing we have done and for everything He has. So, those of my dear flock who read this today and listen to this morning’s message will have to hear it twice. But—and it is worth hearing twice--an amazing, mindboggling truth for each believer is this: You are a gift to Jesus. --Pastor Clifford Hurst

THE MOTHER HEART OF GOD (The God Heart Of A Mother)

Although it is a basic truth revealed in Scripture, if I say it, it will sound like heresy, like modern gobbledygook. Especially with the bruhaha over gender dysphoria. But here it is: God has a mother’s heart. Or, perhaps better, a mother has God’s heart. We think of the genders, male and female, primarily according to biological characteristics and distinctions. Yet, contrary to modern, nonsensical thinking, the characteristics of male and female go far beyond objective biological differentiating traits. But not in the way the woke propose. Many act as if only the male were created in the image of God. But, so was the female. “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.” (Gen 1:27). This is not purporting the God-is-gender-neutral blather. Nor that God is bi-gender. This is the revelation that all that is noble, praiseworthy, in the human race, whether particular to a male or to a female, is the reflection of the image of God The very best of both male and female is that of them that was created in the likeness of God. Male and female are the way they are because God is that way. We marvel at the legendary love, concern, and kindness of a mother’s heart. Where did she get that kind of heart? God created her with it when He created the first mother in His image. I’m not saying God is female or feminine, but all that is noble, amazing, and wonderful about a mother’s heart came from Him. It was first in Him. The mother’s heart is in the image of God’s heart. Note this one example of God’s “mother” heart. The prophet Isaiah writes it down. But it was God Himself showing us His heart. “But Zion said, The LORD hath forsaken me, and my Lord hath forgotten me. Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee. Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands; thy walls are continually before me.” (Isa 49:14-16) A mother’s heart is like God’s heart. And God’s, like a mother’s. And what’s a mother’s heart like? A mother’s heart is one of Unconditional Love: We quip of a homely child, “He has a face that only a mother can love.” A mother loves the handicapped, the dirty, the naughty, the rebellious child. It is innate. Her child may be on death row for a heinous crime, forsaken by all others, but his mother loves him still. A mother’s heart is one of Un-comparable Sensitivity To Needs: As the Jewish proverb says, “A mother understands what a child does not say.” However much a child tries to hide it, a mother knows when her child is troubled. A father does not even notice when his child’s shoes are so worn his toes are hanging out. A mother is aware that a child will need new shoes six months from now. A mother’s heart is one Uncritical Ease At Being Pleased: A young child bursts through the backdoor from the yard outside with a fistful of wildflowers mixed with wild onions and ugly weeds crying, “Here, Momma, I picked these for you!” The mother cries out in delight, thanking the child profusely while remarking on how beautiful they are and effusing gratitude for the child’s thinking of his mother. A mother’s heart is one of Unequaled Defense and Protection: You don’t mess with a mother Grizzly Bear’s cub. That is fatally foolish. And you don’t mess with a mother’s children—no matter how old they are. You don’t hurt them, say something bad about them, or make fun of them. Not, unless you want their mother’s hands around your throat. A mother’s heart is one of Unmatched Ability To Comfort: When something really hurts, whether a skinned knee or broken heart, no one can comfort like Mom. A mother’s heart is one of Unfailing Support: Even if she has doubts about her child’s ability for a venture, a mother supports, encourages, and backs his efforts. If he does fail, she will be there to comfort him. She will support, back, reinforce, spur on, express confidence, affirm, and bolster her child and his endeavors, dreams, and plans, in any way she possibly can. She is behind him. All the way. A mother’s heart is one of Unreserved Sacrifice: If anything is legendary about a mother’s heart it is this. She sacrifices her body to discomfort and pain just to give birth to a child. She sacrifices sleep, time, career, hobbies, and personal space to nurture and nourish him. She gives the child the last piece, her piece, of pie, her hours, weeks, and years. She gives up the new dress, the new car, and the new furniture so her child’s teeth can be straightened. I have only given a few characteristics of the mother’s heart and how it is created in the image of God’s. I have shared examples of a mother’s heart but have left the parallel to God’s heart to the reader. Until this last: Not even a mother has so unreservedly sacrificed for her children as God has for us. Think of the cross. If you have seen your mother in the descriptions above, you can be thankful for her, and, then, you can say, “God, You have a heart like that--only more so.” God has a mother’s heart. Or, rather, a mother has God’s heart. --Pastor Clifford Hurst

PEACE WITH VICTORY

“Peace without victory.” It is astonishing how brilliant people can postulate such abjectly idiotic ideas. It is more astonishing that they and those who follow them think their ideas will work. Before the U.S. entered WWI, President Woodrow Wilson, a truly brilliant man and a speaker extraordinaire, while trying to play diplomat to the warring European countries, trying not to take sides, trying not to get the U.S. embroiled in the war, promoted a hitherto unknown concept and political philosophy. What the warring European countries should seek and could obtain and have was "peace without victory." “Peace without victory.” How does that work? Basically, opponents stop battling, stop trying to defeat their opponent, stop trying to win the war, and accept that both sides are losers—or, at the least as it was more delicately put, cease the fighting and refuse to insist on a clear winner or to punish a predicted loser. More important than winning the war was simply becoming friends. This approach would bring kumbaya peace to the previously warring nations and be an influencing example to all other nations not to go to war. This approach to ending a war would bring peace without victory. Woodrow Wilson believed that a lasting peace could only come if nations gave up the idea in the war that any nation should triumph over another. He proposed this peace without victory, but, no warring nation accepted his plan nor embraced his political theory. His theory died when German U-boats killed more Americans at sea and the US entered the conflict. He tried to revive his “Peace without Victory” with his League of Nations. Unsuccessfully. However, the concept is alive and well contemporaneously. Every time I read WWI history, as I’m doing now, I am stunned by the similarities between the pre-WWI era and our times today. Daily, reading about Wilson’s peace without victory proposal at night, I was reading in the morning news of folks saying that Israel should be satisfied in its war with Hamas. It had landed enough blows. It had killed enough of the terrorists. When Iran launched hundreds of missiles against Israel the pressure was put on Israel not to retaliate. “Israel, you launched missiles against Iranian officers in Syria; Iran has launched missiles against you.” Both of you should be satisfied. Quit firing. Peace without victory. In its current war with Hamas in Gaza, the cease-fire demanded of Israel by most of the world is but a code word for “Peace without victory.” If only there were such a thing. There is not. Seeking victory DOES bring horrible causalities—and nothing is as horrifying as civilian casualties. I do not minimize that harsh reality for either side nor do I enter into the debate at that point. Here are just two things to consider: 1. Is it not possible there have been far more civilian causalities over the long haul by seeking peace without victory than by seeking swift, decisive victory? Is that not what happened at the beginning of WWII? Understandably, the nations did not want war. They had just been through the War of Wars hardly over twenty years earlier. Whatever that man Hitler was doing, they just wanted peace. Perhaps, they sincerely believed, they could have peace without victory. To seek it, they tried denial. And appeasement. In the end, there were 50-55 million civilian casualties in WWII. Would there not have been far less if the allied nations had crushed, instead of trying to appease, Hitler when he made his first land grab? 2. In the current conflict, there is one side that is on the record that they do not want peace without victory. They do not want a two-state solution. They want to totally and completely crush the other. And this side who wants to totally annihilate their opponent is not Israel. Every time Israel's opponents—in the Middle East or in Dearborn, Michigan--chant, “From the river to the sea,” they are calling for the genocide of Israelis. Deniers of this need only to trace this slogan cry to its origins. Neither do chants of “Death to America; Death to Israel” sound like a desire for Peace without Victory. They only reveal their intent to crush and destroy Israel. Reduce it and its people to oblivion. Their calls for a cease-fire, are not compassionate calls of concern for their own; they are opportunistic efforts to gain time to regroup and rearm. Woodrow Wilson believed that there could only be lasting peace in the world if people would only accept that it came without victory. That is not the reality of this messed-up world. Peace without victory just isn’t going to happen. This is also true of the unseen world, the spiritual world. There is no peace without victory. Make no mistake. From the time that God set foot on planet Earth as the Human Jesus Christ, Satan and his every cohort—seen and unseen—tried to stomp Jesus into complete defeat. Satan thought He had succeeded. As Jesus was hanged beaten, bleeding, and nailed to the cross, Satan began to celebrate victory over the Son of Man. But the all-time, greatest irony of the universe is this: As it turned out, the Cross was not Satan’s stomping Jesus into defeat but the just opposite. Jesus crushed Satan there. And all dark powers. And, because of this decisive victory, peace was won. A peace that would come to millions of people. Peace through Victory! There would have never been this peace had Jesus not vanquished Satan, sin, and death that day! The cross was victory! And because of that victory, there is peace. Today, you can have peace with God. You can have peace of heart and mind. You can have peace with others. You can have peace when facing death. Why? Because there is Peace through victory. And Jesus won that victory on the cross. He didn’t work out a temporary cease-fire. He did not negotiate an ostensible suspension of hostilities. He defeated the enemy. He put His foot on His head. And, because of that victory, there is peace. And, one day at Christ’s enemy-vanquishing return, there will be peace on earth. See, there is only Peace with Victory. --Pastor Clifford Hurst

WHO GETS THE GRACE?

Perhaps, it was from being attacked over being “a legalist” that I was awakened in the dead of night this week by a story Jesus told. The one about the Pharisee and the publican. The story of the self-righteous, glory-seeking, law-contriving, and law-enforcing Pharisee and the extorting, cheating, lying, people-ruining tax collector. People who Quixotically deem themselves lone champions of sola gratia, salvation by grace alone--I’m talking about the ones who are on a self-proclaimed crusade against perceived legalism--love Jesus' tale of the Pharisee and the Publican. I do too. But for a different reason. They think this tale is a gotcha for those they label legalists. However, it is really a gotcha for them as they try to gotcha those they accuse. You remember the story: Two men went into the Temple to pray. The Pharisee positioned himself in a conspicuous place, posed sanctimoniously, and prayed smugly with a volume that commanded the attention of all but God: “O, God, I am so grateful I am not your run-of-the-mill, sinful guy. I am unlike other people who are filthy, rotten law-breakers, like, take for instance, that low-down tax collector over there. God, I’m sure you’ve noticed those big tithes I’ve been paying. And, God, I skipped breakfast to fast before coming to pray—just in case you didn’t notice.” Meanwhile, as he pompously pontificated, the publican slumped in the shadow of the wall most distant from the Holy Place, alternately covered his bowed face in his hands and beat upon his chest in distress as he pled with God, “Please, forgive me; be merciful to me for I am a filthy, rotten sinner—what he said,” he had heard the Pharisee refer to him. Jesus, applying His story, made it clear only one of the two left the Temple right with God that day. Only one got the grace. And it wasn’t the Pharisee. The lampooners of those they label legalists rightly point out the Pharisee’s egregious mistake. He condemned himself and spotlighted his hypocritical self-righteousness by saying, “I thank God I am not like the publican.” Yet, they do not see their own hypocrisy. As they condemn the Pharisee for saying, “I thank God I am not like the publican,” they are at that moment saying, “I thank God I am not like that Pharisee.” Using Jesus’ story to attack those they have arrested, tried, and hung as legalists, they pedagogically preach, “See, salvation is all about grace. The Pharisee’s works counted for nothing. The publican was wicked and deserved no quarter, no salvation, no mercy, nothing from God. He deserved only judgment. It was the publican who got the grace, left forgiven, justified, in the saving grip of God. The Pharisee, the legalist, left condemned.” And, of course, they are correct. But some one can be right and still wrong. Those who rail against perceived legalists and shout at them, “Don’t you know that salvation is all about grace,” have nothing of the repentant publican’s attitude and everything of the pompous Pharisee’s. Again I concede that they rightly condemn the Pharisee for saying, “I thank God I am not like that publican.” But in telling the tale, ironically, they say, “I thank God I am not like that Pharisee.” Only they are. They have the same pride. These remind me of the reality we see in our culture today. None are as intolerant as those who preach tolerance. None are as racist as those who are always insisting that whites as a class are racist. None are as narrowminded as those who call conservatives narrowminded. And none as graceless as those who overweeningly proclaim it's all about grace. They show no grace to those they deem are not about grace. They assail the “legalist” as being proud and self-righteous. But in attacking their straw man of legalism, they are, in reality, boasting of their ultra knowledge, their perspicuity, their prophetic word, and their spiritual superiority. You may say, “You are judging them.” It’s not judging. It is observation. It is no different from being overwhelmed by the odor of someone leaving an Italian restaurant who has stopped you to chat and gets in your face. You cannot but note that he reeks of garlic. Whether you tell him or not. When these begin their tirade against those they erroneously call legalists, their words reek of self-assured hubris. Legalism is wrong. Salvation is by grace alone. Plus nothing. But the truth is, they are not really against legalism and for grace. They are for themselves. Trying to show their smarts, they reveal their ignorance. They do not even really know what a legalist is. This one has accused me of being a legalist. (I have gotten personal But this isn’t about the personal. It’s about a point.) Archives of thousands of sermons I have preached are publicly accessible. Records of hundreds of pages of writing too. My message is that salvation is by grace alone. (I also preach, as the NT makes clear, that grace is not alone. It brings something when it comes. Tit. 2:11-12.) What a legalist is, I’m not. Not Biblically. Not theologically. Not in practice. Not in this or any parallel universe. If you listen to these self-proclaimed only true preachers of the Gospel, their focus on grace is not really on grace at all. It is not on the God who has shown grace, nor on how we recipients are unworthy of grace. Their focus is on themselves. They have a leg up on everyone else in their grasp and understanding of salvation's being all about grace. They, in their minds, are the strongest advocates of grace. They have spotted legalism, and they are the only capable decriers of it. They get it about grace when those lowly legalists (by their labeling) don’t. If you have endured reading this far and the nascent thought is now emerging in your mind that I have been rather graceless in haranguing those who gracelessly aggrandize themselves while pretending to glorify grace, I would beg to differ. None of us deserve grace, and I have shown them far more grace than they deserve. Or would recognize. You, see hypocrites cannot be shown grace. No more than you can water artificial flowers. They are incapable of accepting it. As long as they play the part of the hypocrite. They don’t get the grace. However, I will confess to this: The Pharisee thanked God he was not like the publican. My accuser thanks God he is not like the Pharisee. And I have thanked God I am not like my accuser. Who has thanked God He is not like the Pharisee. Who has thanked God he is not like the publican. In this confession I also submit, that of the four, I pray that God gives me a heart like the publican’s. One that prays, God, have mercy on me. See, the publican is the only one in my tirade that gets the grace. And that’s what I want. Grace. ---Pastor Clifford Hurst

JESUS COULD COME BEFORE TOMORROW’S ECLIPSE

Tomorrow is the big eclipse. Many are taking it as a harbinger of the Return of Christ. They have elaborate teaching to prove it. I do not like to be a wet blanket to expectations of Christ's Coming. I just think it best that expectations be grounded in what Scripture actually says and not some elaborate extra-biblical patched-together theory. I taught on this Wednesday night in depth as it relates to the coming eclipse. I am not going to repeat that here, but just think of two realities about tomorrow’s eclipse: 1) It is a NATURAL phenomenon. Any possible eschatological references to an eclipse in Scripture, as in the Cosmological Cataclysms declared by Isaiah, Joel, Jesus, Peter, and John, are apocalyptic SUPERNATURAL phenomena. 2) The eclipse on Monday will not be seen in Israel or any of the Middle East. How does an eclipse in this hemisphere, in America, relate to end-time events tied to prophesies for Israel? The reality of what happens when we get jaded by false expectations and dashed hopes based on extra-Scriptural “theories as noted in this blog I wrote eight years ago should serve as a warning of taking the memes, podcasts, teachings, etc., that sensationalize terrestrial and/or celestial events and occurrences such as eclipses over the word of Jesus and of Scripture. That Jesus has said He could come at any time should be enough to believe Jesus could come even BEFORE the eclipse tomorrow. Something I said some years ago resurfaced out of nowhere today and kept pummeling me over and over again. At that time years ago, I had felt compelled to preach on the Second Coming of Jesus. Part of my burden for that message came from sensing within the church and within me a waning expectation for Christ’s return. My statement was, “It should be alarming to us that the closer we get to the coming of the Lord the less expectation we have for it.” I could not escape making a confirming observation even as I preached that message. In the late seventies and early eighties, as a raw and lacking beginner, I would preach on the Coming of the Lord, and there would frequently be a response of shouting or praise or a general movement towards the altar by those gripped with the need to get things right. Decades later, as I preached, there seemed only obligatory interest and barely any discernable movement. I do not fault the people. The decline was in my heart as well. The diminishing expectation for Jesus’ return had diffused across the whole of American Christianity. This observation does not deny that there were enclaves and exceptions of individuals and groups that were burning with anticipation for His coming. But as a whole…well, just take Christian music for example: If you are old enough, have you ever stopped to compare the number of songs written and popular in the 70’s and 80’s that focused on Jesus’ coming compared to how few that do so today? These July evenings remind me of the days of my youth when a highlight of an evening was to get together with friends for an ice-cold watermelon in a host’s backyard. As the light faded and the katydids grew noisy and we munched on the sweet meat of the melon, the conversation would soon turn to the coming of the Lord. We would discuss for hours about Christ’s coming, the Tribulation, the Antichrist, the Bride. Then, the Iran hostage crisis of 1979 struck. People were concerned. Would the whole keg of the Middle East explode? I remember in the public school I attended, classmates gathered in a group, and we talked about the coming end of the world and Jesus’ return. Oh, people did get carried away. The date-setters preached their heresy. The chart-makers had it all figured out; except they didn’t. The nut cases gathered followers and led them off to a communal. The faithful were built to a crescendo of expectancy by worsening world events and announcements by preachers and teachers that Jesus was about to come. Only He didn’t. And things became even worse. And worse. Believers became desensitized to any suggestion that the growing darkness and danger of our world were harbingers of Christ’s return. Too many times they had thought they were on the cusp of the Coming. Then, believers grew to expect the growing evil and to not expect Christ’s coming. Somehow when the expectancy that they were leaving this world to join Jesus in His return diminished, there was a growing acclimation to and adoption of this world in the church. That in itself further deadened any expectancy for Jesus’ Coming. However things have played out, Jesus is still coming again, and we are closer now than we’ve ever been. As the old song says, “Come, Oh, Holy Spirit, all our hopes renew.” The closer the Coming gets, may our expectancy grow stronger, not weaker. --Pastor Clifford Hurst

A NIGHTMARE ABOUT AMERICA

Other people’s dreams, I know, are boring. We like to share our own but struggle to endure making it through someone else’s narrating his. Conceding that, I want to share a dream I had around fifteen years ago. Why it has come back to me this past week, I’m not sure. It may have been the news footage of armed national guards standing in the subway tunnels of NYC. They had been called in to deal with the increasing violence there. My dream, which came in three parts, was one of those where you are awakened by it, awakened extremely troubled and shaken to the core. Sweat on the brow. Pounding heart. Here it is: Part 1: Like a newsreel that suddenly starts rolling without any introductory remarks or tease, I saw a constant barrage of missiles filling the air. It was not unlike when the prophet Joel saw the skies darken with the advance of locust armies. Only these were not bugs they were bombs. My mind’s eye was hovering above our Atlantic shoreline. From beyond the distant horizon where sea met lowering sky rained these missiles fired from a distant land. America was under attack. There was some consolation in that the missiles had been launched from such a faraway place they barely made it to our shore. A faraway place, hmmm, where could that be? Coming so far, many fell in the shallow surf or upon the beaches, however, some made it to and fell on our major port cities along the coast. That the interior of our land wasn’t reached by the barrage brought no solace. I sensed this was only the beginning. That this was just a start. That more was yet to come. There was. Much more. Part 2: Suddenly “they” were here. After a cessation of indeterminable length--but it couldn’t have been long--suddenly, without my having seen them arrive, the sea was filled with battleships, destroyers, and carriers. Then, quantumly, landing craft, in a dark line on the comparatively white sands, were beached upon the shore, up and down as far as I could see. Their ramps were down, and they were disgorging themselves of swarms of tanks, armored vehicles, and heavily armed, running men. Running inland. Into America. Part 3: That second scene abruptly ended. In the last, I saw our interior major metropolises. Armies were marching down our subdued, trafficless streets. Rank after rank. They were marching in one of those parades whose purpose is to display a nation’s military might. Like you’ve seen in a certain Far East, communist country. You know, when each troop in rank after rank is in perfect sync with every other, marching in that straight-leg style. They filled and marched along every street. Miles of them. They passed by seemingly endlessly. They were not just here, they were in control. Besides the stomp of marching feet, there was only silence. Deep silence. Except for the rustling of loose litter blowing at the edges of the streets. The oddest thing about this invasion is that there was no resistance from Americans. When the missiles were raining down. No resistance. When the beachheads were made and our shores stormed. No resistance. Then, as the marching soldiers entered our cities and began their march down their streets, no resistance. It had been too late for resistance. America was vanquished. And occupied. America was no more. All without her exerting the slightest existence. I put little value in the oracular value of my dream. But, then again, my dream does not so much predict what will one day happen as it points to what is already happening. My dream is an analogy. Perhaps, of our condition politically. But for sure familialy, religiously, educationally, and socially. No one is much concerned when an occasional ideological missile comes from some distant place, from beyond the horizon of the familiar, the customary, the expected—from another country. No one is alarmed enough to offer any resistance when there is a visible inroad made to the institutions on the fringes—the liberal universities, the polar extremes of our political parties, the large number cable/satellite stations, the you-have-to-do-a-search-to-find YouTube channel. But then, suddenly the new, the dark, the twisted, the destructive is everywhere. It’s filled our cities. And homes. And hearts. Part One: This March marks for me forty-five years in ministry. For most of them, I have noticed these incoming missiles of different ways of thinking lobbed at the church. At times, I have addressed the unorthodox theology that appeared in an occasional book, popular preacher, and new hermeneutic. I was met with, “Why do you want to teach about that. I’ve never heard of it. I’ve never heard of a church where it is taught,” and such like. Part Two: Then, there were preachers and churches everywhere within Evangelicalism that had adopted and adapted these new, corrupting teachings and practices. “Well,” I’ve heard deniers say, “those are only outliers. They were never true churches or true teachers to start with.” Really? Part Three: Then, why, are they now everywhere? They have filled our forums, denominations, institutions, and churches. And, thank God for those who do, but there has been little resistance. Not in the aggregate. This same three-part progressive advancement of forces inimical to the Christian-Judaic view has played out in society, schools, government, entertainment, media, etc. And home. And church. And as in my dream, there is not much resistance. A few try. They are quelled and squelched. Not by the enemy. But by their own. By America. I’ve insisted I give no weight to dreams. Not even to my dreams. But what is presently happening in America is no dream. It’s a nightmare. --Pastor Clifford Hurst