Aiming at foolish target and still missing

Here is your quiz for the week:  What does Duck Dynasty, The Air Force’s’ ATP long-range targeting pod, and faith all have in common.  They are interested in and affected by targeting!  The Duck Dynasty guys are all about hunting, shooting and blowing things up.  Those guys pride themselves on being crack shots who always hit the target.  And, the new ATP targeting pod contains the very latest video data links, dual-mode laser markers, and a high definition mid-wave forward looking infrared (FLIR) for automatic tracking and laser designation of targets with real-time imagery that’s presented on cockpit displays.  Again, all about hitting the target. These two make sense, but faith?  This is the one you’re probably scratching your head over, but it is actually the most important.  

With our advance targeting systems it’s nearly impossible to miss the bull’s-eye.  When the computer laser-lock is on a marked or “painted” target, it will be guided to and hit the target being marked.  There will be no miss – the target will get hit.  The problem arises when the wrong object is being targeted!   This Sunday, in our current series on sin, “If God is so good, why do I feel so bad?” we will explore another aspect of sin which makes life not only frustrating, but confusing.  It’s how we aim at foolish targets with our lives, and even then, we miss!   

 In Romans 3:23, Paul says that “we all sin,” we all miss the target - by a long shot! But, it’s not for lack of trying. We just set our sights in the wrong direction and even then, we still miss!  The biblical writers - no matter what image they use to express it - say again and again that sin is more than just missing the target, sin is choosing the wrong target in the first place.  And in some cases, in our misguided targeting, we’re wandering off the path just to rebel against God simply because He is stronger than us. 

 

Ultimately, this poor targeting, poor aiming, and continually missing the mark is an offense to God.  It’s why we feel so bad.  The reason we are not the way we are supposed to be, is that we’ve been aiming at the wrong targets.

 In Cornelius Plantinga Jr.’s book “A Breviary of Sin,” he says this very plainly, “Aiming and shooting at wrong and foolish targets is just silly – folly.  And, when we hit one of these self-contrived, self-devised targets of our own making, we take the further self-defeating and God-denying step of acknowledging or grading the mission as ‘accomplished.’” In other words, sin is both wrong and dumb! 

 

He goes on to say, “Human desire, deep and restless and seemingly unfulfillable, keeps stuffing itself with finite goods, but these cannot satisfy.  If we try to fill our hearts with anything besides the God of the universe, we find that we are overfed but under nourished, and we find that day by day, week by week, year after year, we are thinning down to a mere outline of a human being.”

This happens all the time.   “People hungry for love, people who want to ‘connect,’ will often open up a sequence of shallow, self-seeking relationships with other shallow, self-seeking persons and find that at the end of the day they are emptier than when they began.” 

 
As Richard Lovelace remarks, to flee from God to some far country and search for fulfillment there is to find only a “black-market substitute.” “Instead of joy, the buzz in your temples from four martinis; instead of self-giving love, sex with strangers; instead of a parent’s unconditional enthusiasm for you as a person, only the professional support of a fashionable therapist who will indeed pump up your ego whenever it loses pressure but only while the meter is running. This type rebellion against God and flight from God removes us from the sphere of blessing, cutting us off from our only invisible means of support.”  

Now that we know, what do we do? We will expand on this conversation Sunday morning – if you can correctly target Markham Woods! 

This week, we continue with part III of our Lenten Series “If God Is So Good, Why Do I Feel So Bad? – We Are Not The Way We Are Supposed To Be!”  No more ticks this week as Pastor Karen will be giving the next message in the series which looks at the idea of sin as a “Lack of Spiritual Hygiene.” 

 

So for this week’s “Sermon Extra” I would like to share with you an invitation to something that may actually change your thinking and feeling about Jesus.  Many of you followed along with us in the last series “WWRJD?” or, “What would Rabbi Jesus Do?”  The content of those messages added a depth and richness to our understanding of who Jesus is, how he taught, and what His message really meant.  All of those concepts and idioms come together in on meal – the Seder.

 

On Wednesday, April 2, during our Lenten dinner & devotion series, we will actually participate in a dinner with Jesus – A Seder with the Savior.  Rev. Israel Cohen will lead us in a participatory presentation of “Messiah in the Passover.”   Israel was with us six years ago and deeply changed - in a significant way -my understanding of Jesus as Messiah.  If you attend, I can promise you will never see the Last Supper (Passover), Communion or Easter the same. 

 

 

We gather at 6:00 in our fellowship hall for dinner and then the Seder with Jesus in the Passover!  Please call the church office 407-333-2030 for detail and to rsvp.

Did you ever have to do a “tick check?”  I remember doing many a tick check with our kids after hiking in the woods.  I love camping but I hate those little blood sucking ticks that latch on and dig into our bodies – yuck!  They are little parasites that thrive off us and interestingly enough, they have more than a few similarities to sin.

 But, sin is not alive!  But it looks alive.  It has certain characteristics which make it look like a being of sorts, but it is neither a person nor is it really alive.  In fact, it’s a life drainer.  Paul says in Romans chapter 7, that sin is like a living “evil” entity that is attacking his body. He even says, that “sin killed me.”  It seems that sin is something that attacks us from within, like a virus or parasite.  It need us, lives off us, and just like the yucky tick, drains life from us.  And the kicker is, once dug in, it never wants to leave. 

 

This Sunday we continue in our Lenten Sermon Series, “If God is so good, why do I feel so bad.”  In part II, we discuss sin as “a parasite with a failure to launch – ever.”  One answer to the “why do we feel so bad” question, is that the “parasitic nature” of sin accounts for the fruitfulness of sin.  In short, as funny and strange as it might sound, sin needs our good so it can do bad!  This may help offer at least one answer to another age old question, “Why do bad things happen to good people?”

 

But, we don’t have to beat ourselves up thinking we are just worthless human beings.  We are not bad; we’ve just got the bug.  And, the reason we are so attractive to the parasitic bug of sin is because we were created good. 

 

So, it makes no sense to blame the doctor (God) for us having a parasite; the doctor is the one who can offer the cure.  And even though it may not always show, and we may not always feel it, there is a glimmer of good in us and a great physician who want to nurture us to fullness. 

 

You can hear the rest of the story this Sunday March 16 during our worship services.

 

If God Is So Good--Why Do I Feel So Bad?

Lenten Sermon Series 2014

“If God is so good, Why do I feel so bad?”

We are not the way we are suppose to be

For the next five weeks we will be tackling one of the most difficult concepts for the secular world to acknowledge and one of most often avoided subjects within the Christian faith.  Although it is essential in understanding the foundation of our faith, is the reason behind God’s loving activity as recorded in His word, and without a grasp on the subject we will never fully understand and appreciate Jesus’ actions on the cross – we just can’t stand to hear about the “S” word -- sin.

To better understand sin is to better understand our world and ourselves – in essence, make sense of things.  For the purposes of clarity, we need to understand sin apart from Bible-thumping, fire and brimstone-slinging, finger-pointing caricatures of the faith.  To do so will remove uncomfortability and blame, and replace them with a question -- why?  

Why do we sin and what is it really?  

Further, beyond the breaking of codified laws, what does sin really do to us, to our family, our friends, and our relationship with God. And in the end, we will discover the truth; that although we are not the way we are supposed to be, there is hope.

As we explore the politically incorrect “S-word” we come to see sin as:

March 9,      Part I - “The most politically incorrect word”

March 16,     Part II – “A parasite with a failure to launch ever”

March 23,     Part II – “An ego-separator with bad spiritual hygiene” 

March 30,     Part IV – “Aiming at the foolish targets and still missing”

April 6,         Part V – “Phantom wisdom that is never right”