Upper Path Valley Presbyterian Church

 I Saw the Lord- Part 8 "A Move of God
March 23, 2008
Rev. Meagan Boozer


Just a couple of weeks ago, I was having breakfast with a friend, and some people came into the restaurant who know our family.  They asked about our son, Douglas, since they have a son who graduated with Doug.  We asked some questions back and forth about how things were going for the boys, and then the man said, “I hear Doug and his friends are pretty religious.”  I didn’t quite know how to take that, but I responded with something like, “they are very committed Christians.”

            Would you say that a group of young men who are involved in weekly Bible study at PennState, who attend church every Sunday, who are giving up 2 months of their summer to do missionary work, are religious?  Would you say that we are all religious because we’re here today – or were here more than 2 Sundays in the last month? 

            What if today’s the day I leave my body behind and go to Heaven.  What if the gatekeeper says something like this:  “I have one question to ask you before letting you go in.  If you get it wrong, well, too bad for you.”  “Okay,” I say.  “Ask away!”

            Here’s the question:  “Why should I let you into this glorious place of peace, purpose, and eternal adventure in the Kingdom of God?”

What if I answered very proudly, “Well, I was very religious.”  I can tell you right now, that it would be the last hopeful answer I would ever give.

            Jesus, who has always been fully God, came to earth in the form of a Jewish baby being fully God and fully human at the same time, (truly a supernatural miracle) grew up in the midst of religious people.  He went to the temple every time he was supposed to be there.  He studied the Torah (the early books of the Old Testament).  He knew the history of his people, and he knew of the prophets and their prophecies.  He quoted many of them in his teaching.  Some would say he was very religious.

            But, here’s the truth:  Jesus came to break down the walls that “religious” people tried to build.  God gave us laws – ways to live our lives in the fullness of joy.  But the “religious” people, the Pharisees of the day, made more laws, and built walls made of laws, and more laws, and even more laws to keep people so busy they didn’t have time to know God.  The religious people were judgmental people.  It was “their way or the highway.”  And the sad thing was, they were convinced “their way” was “God’s way.”  Jesus came to break down those walls.  Here’s how he addressed the religious leaders of his day (Matthew 23:13-15):  “How terrible it will be for you teachers of religious law and you Pharisees.  You are hypocrites!  For you lock people out of the kingdom of heaven.  For you do not go in yourselves, and when others are going in, you stop them!  You cross sea and land to make a single convert, and then you make the new convert twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.”  He was not Mr. Popularity with the unrighteous religious leaders of his time!

            Our granddaughter Riley is four now.  She likes to stack things, as most children do.  Just last week she was stacking some blocks to make a high tower.  Can you guess what her 20 month old brother did as soon as he saw the tower?  Down they went!  I remember being out at Dawn & Drew Johnson’s house a little while ago.  Gabe loves to set up his farm set with fences and horses and cows.  He is really careful about how he does it.  Can you guess what younger brother Clay likes to do to those farms?  He wants to knock it all down!  Gabe gets mad, Riley gets mad, and the hard-hearted religious leaders got mad, too!  But that didn’t stop Jesus, because that is what he came to do – to knock down walls, including the walls religious people put up, that keep people away from knowing and loving and serving and glorifying God with freedom and joy.

            This past week, our Lenten Study, “I Saw the Lord” had us reading several chapters in the book of Nehemiah as we finished out the series.  Nehemiah – what a leader!  Many Christian businessmen use Nehemiah’s leadership example as a model for their own servant leadership style.  There’s a Nehemiah non-profit Corporation that specializes in helping people find affordable housing .  There’s a Nehemiah Re-construction Company in Atlanta.  Their motto:  Restore, Re-side, Renew.  In Chicago, there is Vision Nehemiah.  Their mission: To ignite a network of churches committed to purposeful ministry that evangelizes the unsaved, establishes believers, and equips leaders in each of Chicago's 77 neighborhoods by the year of 2020 – All inspired by Nehemiah – what a leader!

It was approximately 450 B.C.  Nehemiah was a Jewish exile, whose ancestors had been deported from Jerusalem along with hundreds of thousands of others in the invasion of the Babylonians.  Nehemiah was of such strong character, that he ended up being given a place of high responsibility in the kingdom of the Persian King Artaxerxes.  His work was stellar – and he earned the respect of the King.  One day, the King noticed that Nehemiah looked “downcast,” and he asked him why.  Nehemiah told him how he wanted to go to the holy city of Jerusalem and rebuild the city walls.  The temple had been rebuilt by people permitted to return to the city, but the walls of the city were in shambles.  The King gave Nehemiah both the time and the resources to go and rebuild the walls.