A Tale of Two Kingdoms

 “The wise in heart are called discerning, and pleasant words promote instruction. Understanding is a fountain of life to those who have it, but folly brings punishment to fools. A wise man’s heart guides his mouth, and his lips promote instruction. Pleasant words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones.

Proverbs 16:21-24 NIV

As 2022 got underway, at church we were in a series titled “Wisdom for Life”. Going through the book of Proverbs. Two weeks in a row, Pastor Sarah Zaske hit line drives straight at the enemy’s head with the truth and wisdom of God’s Word. I’ll link both messages below. It was after the second of these messages, that I found myself on deck to lead our Tuesday, Open Arms Food Pantry ministry team’s devotional/discussion time. What follows is what I shared with the group.

Pastor Sarah’s challenging question to us about “Whose Kingdom are you building?” Reminded me of an old political joke. I think it is a good analogy for the - Truth & Lies wisdom she shared.

The Joke
A politician dies and finds himself at the pearly gates with Saint Peter. Peter welcomes the politician and tells him there is a problem… They don’t, know what to do with him. Peter, continues saying, “Not to worry though. We have a process for handling these kinds of situations. You must stay 24 hours in each place and after that you can choose if it will be Heaven or Hell for you. The politician says, “Why can’t I just choose now, I am here so I might as well stay.” Peter politely tells him, “You have to follow our process, where would you like to spend your first 24 hours?” The politician says might as well start with Heaven.” Peter opens the gate and allows him to enter. Walking through the gate the politician finds it is beautiful and peaceful. He sees a few friends there and enjoys the outstanding food available. People are happy, so happy they sing all day and work seems more like recreation than labor. When the 24 hours is up the politician return to the gate to meet Peter. Peter asks how his experience was and the politician replies, “He really enjoyed it, I’d like to stay please.” Peter reminds him the process must be followed and escorts him to the elevator that will take him to Hell. When the doors of the elevator open the politician is greeted by Satan himself. Satan, dressed to the nines in black tie and stretched out beyond Satan is a golf course more beautiful than anything the politician could imagine and in the middle of it sat a palatial clubhouse. Satan said, “Come on the party is just starting.” Arriving at the clubhouse, the politician found a lot more of his friends were there. Everyone was dressed elegantly, food was amazing, drinks flowed continually, the music was loud, and the party went on for the entire 24 hours. When it was time, the politician was escorted back to the elevator so he could meet with Peter. Peter greets him and asked what he thought. The politician responded, “It was really great, I enjoyed myself.” Peter tells the politician, “Time to decided where you are spending eternity.” The politician thinks for a moment and answers that he as decided Hell is the place for him. Peter replies, as you wish and escorts him back to the elevator. The politician is quite excited to rejoin his friends and the party. The elevator doors open and there stands Satan, looking like the monster he truly is. The golf course and clubhouse are gone, replaced by mountains of smelly, hot, and burning garbage. The politician’s friends are scavenging through the mess. The politician demands to know, “What happened? I was just here, and it was beautiful.” Satan replied, “yesterday we were campaigning. Today, you voted.”

Isn’t that a great picture of worldly lies, how we so easily fall for them and the consequences of believing them?

That Sunday, Pastor Sarah talked about the Kingdom and how our words need to match the kingdom we are a part of. What captured me about that statement is that this whole series from Proverbs is showing us a picture of the character of the worldly kingdom, ruled by the enemy and the kingdom of God, ruled by Jesus.

Worldly Kingdom                        God’s Kingdom
Foolish                                        Wise
Proud                                            Humble
Envious                                        Content
Deceptive                                    Honest

What else can we add to the lists? What would you add to the lists?

What a contrast. How easily we jump back and forth between these kingdoms. How easily, we walk along the wall dividing the two, looking for something that we think will make us happy.

In 2017, not unlike now, I found myself struggling with what I saw happening in the world and on social media (there is nothing new under the sun). In a devotion I wrote at the time, based on the above passage from Proverbs, I talked about how we need to engage our brains and speak with wisdom and that we need to seek out the truth, rather than just believe everything we see or hear.

In 2016, during Lent I wrote about the importance of listening to Jesus and ended up with a list of things we should be listening for in order to live well in God’s family. Some of the things are truths we can stand on as we seek truth in this world and gain wisdom.

“Follow me.” (John 1:43)
“Don’t turn my Father’s house into a super Wal-Mart” (John 2:16)
“To see the kingdom of God you must be born again – spiritually.” (John 3:3)
“I know everything about you – so you might as well be honest with Me.” (John 4:17-18)
“If you are without sin – go ahead and throw that stone.” (John 8:7)
“I command you to love each other as I have loved you” (John 15:12)
“In this world you will have trouble (with a capital T) but don’t worry because I have overcome the world: (John 16:33)
“Love God and love others” (Mark 12:30-31)
“Forgive and you will be forgiven” (Luke 6:37)
“I AM the way and the truth and the life. No one come to the Father except through me” (John 14:6)
“I AM the resurrection and the life – believe that and you will live forever. Do you believe?” (John 11:25-26)

In the group discussion questions for the Sunday message this devotion is inspired by, is a list of 6 reasons people lie:

1. Personality disorder, pathological liar, compulsive
2. Preserve one’s self image
3. Protect someone’s feelings
4. Promote ourselves, boost our reputation
5. Pacify pending conflict
6. Personal gratification in the moment.

How do you see these play out in our culture? Which one do you see most? Which ones are you most likely to see in your own life?

As followers of Christ, we are to be building His kingdom. The words we speak and the actions we take should build up, not tear down. They should bring light to a dark world. We must seek His truth in every aspect of our lives. “Whose kingdom are you building?”

A Prayer
Father, thank you that in the seriousness of life and the weight of your truth, that humor can illustrate your truth, at a time when we need the medicine of laughter. May the words on this page causes who ever reads them. To stop and really consider what kingdom they are building and cause them to seek Your truth and the saving grace offered by Jesus our Lord and King. Amen

January 23, 2022 Message: https://youtu.be/Rn-MO0E9qhQ
January 30, 2022 Message: https://youtu.be/kJhHkrq3j_g

Galaxy Maker

“Then God said, ‘Let lights appear in the sky to separate the day from the night. Let them be signs to mark seasons, days, and years. Let these lights in the sky shine down on the earth.’ And that is what happened. God made two great lights – the larger one to govern the day, and the smaller one to govern the night. He also made the stars. God set these lights in the sky to light the earth, to govern the day and night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good.”
Genesis 1:14-18 NLT

To be honest I don’t know who besides me may need these words of truth and encouragement, but God has put them in my mind, so I am writing them down and trusting they will get to whoever needs them. Here we are just past the halfway point in January 2022. The pandemic is still giving the world fits, people are still grumbling about politics and political leaders all over the world and a lot of people are NOT on their best behavior. This is where an article from Carey Nieuwhof appeared in my email at work. It was an interesting article about disrupting trends in 2022 that will affect all of us including church. At the end of the article was a notice of a podcast series that would dive deeper into the topics in the article. Surprise, I went looking for the podcasts and the first one sparked this devotion. For those who may not know Carey Nieuwhof is a pastor, speaker and author. His guest for this particular podcast was pastor, author, speaker Mark Sayer. I know, get on with it already.

Two things in particular stood out for me in this conversation, both from Mark Sayer. The first was something to the effect of this weird time that we find ourselves in is a reset of sorts not back to what we understand as normal, but to what normal really is. That normal is us humans being confronted by the greatness of the world around us and how small we are in it. That normal takes us back to a time where people understood there was something, someone bigger than us and that we needed that someone, just to survive. The second, followed and was the response to a question. It went something like, moving forward the church needs to stop being a star maker (referring to the rise of “rock star” pastors) who just like cosmic stars often fall. Instead, the church needs to become galaxy makers. Something like that – I’ll put the link to the podcast at the end and you can have a listen.

It's this idea of being a galaxy maker that serves as the starting point for what you are reading now. The passage of Scripture above is about when God created the sun, moon and stars – not the sun, moon and a star but lots of stars, a galaxy full of stars. He gave them purpose as well – to be signs that mark the seasons, days and years and to separate day from night and light from darkness. In researching to learn more about stars, I also discovered that all the different types of stars work together to create the elements that give our planet the exact right atmosphere for us to live. What a great purpose the galaxy and everything in it has.

Now we humans love stars – the cosmic kind and the human kind. We have all sorts of stars on the planet. Sports stars, music stars, movie stars, TV stars, corporate stars, political stars and yes even church stars. Think about it for a bit and you can probably come up with names that fit those categories. I will assume that many of us when we were younger perhaps dreamed of being some sort of star. Cosmic stars have life spans just like we do and some of them when they are dying fall. The stars here on earth are also prone to falling, not at the end of their lives – but because of… oh say, pride, power and selfishness. So what if in our world the church and all the other segments of our society that produce stars instead produced galaxies? What if we recognized that we each have a purpose on this planet and that all of our purposes are meant to work together so we can live and thrive. What if we as followers of Jesus that part of our purpose is to shine the light of God’s truth and grace to hold back the darkness of this world so the light can get in. What if we became an earthly galaxy? Now don’t get me wrong we need leaders, we need leaders who create a gravitational pull that lifts others to their purpose and place in the galaxy of our society.

Psalm 147:4 says “He counts the stars and calls them by name.” HE knows each one of our names and HE’s calling each of us to our purpose and place in His kingdom, a kingdom of light. In Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians he writes, “The sun has one kind of glory, while the moon and stars each have another kind. And even the stars differ from each other in their glory” (1 Corinthians 15:41). The sun, moon and stars have their own kind of glory, yet they all work together to fulfill their purpose. So it is with us as well, that's what I think anyway. We’ll each have our own kind of glory and we should all be working together to fulfill the Kingdom purpose we have been given. In another of Paul’s letters he says, “Do everything without complaining and arguing, so that no one can criticize you. Live clean, innocent lives as children of God, shining like bright lights in a world full of crooked and perverse people” (Philippians 2:14-15).

When I was young for a bit I dreamed of being a star, but it didn’t take me long to figure out I didn’t have the stuff to be a “star”. These days I don’t want to be a star, I am quite happy to be a point of light among a galaxy filled with points of light – just trying to make my little part of it a better place. I’m still working on what that means for my life, Luckily I serve a God who is more than happy to give me wisdom and guidance and to be the bright light for me to follow. What about you? Are you still trying to be a star of something? How about asking the Galaxy Maker what he wants of you and see where that journey takes you? I think it will take you to somewhere way better than earthly stardom – it’ll take you to an eternity filled with light.

A Prayer
Father – what an amazing and miraculous galaxy you made for us, it reveals much of who You are if we look with open hearts and minds. Help us desire for our lives the things You desire for them. Help us to find our purpose in Your kingdom. If we are called to “stardom” give wise and humble hearts that desire to lift others up. If we are called to just be a point of light among a galaxy filled with points of light, grant us the wisdom to thrive, finding contentment and joy while also lifting others up. In the name of Jesus who knows the name of every star and all of our names as well – amen.

Podcast: https://careynieuwhof.com/episode469/