Buzz King: Grace & Joy thru Scripture

We look at the horrors that await today's children: violent TV, captivating and addictive video games that teach hatred and immorality, and social media designed to corrupt them.  We make a comparison to an ancient church.  In Revelation, John of Patmos makes prophetic pronouncements to seven churches active at his time.  One of them is to the church at Pergamum.  He calls it the home of Satan's throne. Today live in the home of Satan's throne.

There is a major misconception that the Bible teaches predestination, that those who will spend eternity with God have been chosen in advance.  We look at Romans, Chapter 9, and consider just what this chapter truly says.  We learn, among other things, that what we do on this earth while we are alive very much matters.

There is much to learn from the Bible - even from what is considered the most difficult to interpret book of the New Testament - Revelation.  We look at the letters the author of Revelation, John of Patmos, wrote to seven churches active in his day.  They were all clustered in Asia Minor, today Turkey.  We consider the question: Which of the seven churches of Revelation most resembles our own personal church today?

We should worship a God who made us in his image, not a god we make in our image.  Paul reinforces this when he speaks before the council in the pagan city of Athens.  He diplomatically approaches these powerful people, gradually introducing them to the notion of the one, true God.  We learn from him how we should address others if we wish to win them over to a life of faith.

Jesus' kid brother told us that if we are steadfast under trial, we will receive the crown of life.  He clearly didn't think that any true God would never let us suffer at all - which is what many atheists argue today.  It's said that if there really was a God, there would be no hunger, no homelessness, no disease.  But we see that in truth when we suffer, we gain empathy for others and we are greatly empowered.  Challenges in life help us grow stronger as believers and as humans.

I recently came across a man who was preaching on a street corner.  He was abused verbally, but I found his teaching to be perfectly sound.  He was a man who had made a big change in his life, fully embracing the modest and dedicated life of a true believer.  We look at this man, and at our lives as believers, in the context of Acts, where Peter and the other apostles are judged by the Sadducees and the Pharisees.  Peter declares: "We must obey God rather than men."  

We're a week out from Easter.  Jesus has risen and is walking the earth for 40 days.  He has chosen individuals to act as witnesses to his resurrection and to his Word - that that means us.  Through the story of Cornelius, the first gentile to follow Christ, we learn our true purpose.  We've got another 30 days or so to answer our call...

It is Easter, and not Christmas, that captures the essence of what it means to be a believer.  We look at the resurrection and why this is the one Christian belief that non-believers do their very best to argue away.  But there is no scientific explanation: the truth is that we, as the faithful, simply have the gift of believing in something that only our intuition and our faith tells us is true.  And Easter ushers in a kingdom that, unlike all other kingdoms, has no end.

On Palm Sunday, we go along with Jesus on his journey from Jericho to Jerusalem, beginning on foot and ending on a donkey.  We see that Jesus disappoints the crowd who shout "Hosanna!", meaning "Save us," - and they mean "Save us NOW".  Indeed, Jesus arrived via Roman roads to usher in a spiritual, not a physical, kingdom.

We look at King Josiah of Israel, a person who is not well known among Christians, perhaps because we have to piece his story together from multiple books of the Old Testament.  However, he has perhaps had a very dramatic impact on our faith.  Helping the People of God hone their notion of monotheism, which is, of course, at the heart of Christianity, was a major mission of his.  For us today, we see how Josiah has helped us come to know our God.

In 1st Peter and in Romans, the authors quote Isaiah, where it is predicted that a cornerstone will one day be laid in Zion.  This cornerstone in Jesus. There have been a number of Christian revivals in U.S. history.  Today, those of us who are holding to our faith are serving as a critical foundation for the church.  We need to be like the early believers, like Paul, like the Apostles, who saw nothing in between being a nonbeliever and being a spreader of the faith.  They did not settle for simply believing: they were the foundation laid upon the cornerstone of Jesus - they were builders, not just members era of the church; they were evangelists.

I met a man who has a problem with addiction, in particular, gambling.  When he feels the urge hit him, he gets in his car and drives a route in Denver that takes him past a number of place where homeless people are encamped.  He hands out food, clothing, blankets.  He is like the fig tree in Luke 13, the tree that would not bear fruit.  This man allowed God to cover him with grace so that he could turn his addiction on its head and bear beautiful fruit.

In the third Chapter of Zechariah, he has a vision of a trial scene: God is the judge, Satan is the accuser or prosecutor, and Joshua is the first person chosen to be the High Priest for the reconstruction of the Temple in Jerusalem.  Joshua is the accused.  We do not know what he is accused of, but we do know he is found innocent: he (symbolically) goes from being covered with dung to being dressed in fine clothes.  We, too, can be cleansed by God: we can be covered with human excrement and then be transformed into the blameless.

Our daughter, when she was perhaps 6, made a bookmark in school.  Isabelle put three stickers on it: a leaf, a deer, and a tree.  She wrote on it "Safe the trees".  In Psalm 24, we learn that God owns the Earth, and all on it, including us.  We take a fresh look at our responsibility, as believers, to care for all that God has created - especially us...

In the first chapter of Nehemiah, this average man who is not a priest and was not a prophet, offers up a prayer to God.  It is motived by his discovery that despite the Babylonians having been conquered by the Persians, and despite the fact that the descendants of the exiles have returned home, the walls of Jerusalem are still in terrible shape.  The city is exposed to attack.  He is going to Jerusalem, his journey starting from the capital city of Persia; he will rebuild the walls, enact economic reforms, and aid the poor.  His prayer is a request of God to bless him on his many-year mission.  He teaches us the proper way to fast, and in fact, the proper way to perform any act of self-denial.  He teaches us how to honor God instead of ourselves.