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GETTING A BRAIN TRANSPLANT #2
HALF-TRUE HOLIDAY CARDS FROM HALLMARK
For about four years now, we've been doing a rather
risky thing here on this radio program. Each December, if you've been
listening, you've heard a week of broadcasts with this title: God's Christmas
Cards. You hear me — Lonnie Melashenko — reading God's Christmas card
to someone like Susan Smith, that young mother who drowned her two sons.
God's Christmas card to politician Pat Buchanan. God's holiday greeting,
and divine message, to President Clinton.
And, as you can understand, we've gotten a few "New Year's Day"
response cards, or letters — rather critical ones — from listeners. And
they make a good point. How can we, here at the Voice of Prophecy, possibly
presume to know what God might say to an Ellen DeGeneres. Some people
in our audience were very unhappy that we had "(quote) God"
saying some rather kind and affirming things to pop singer Madonna back
in late 1996, right after Evita and the birth of her little baby girl.
Would the real God actually have gracious and welcoming words to the Material
Girl, the author of the $50 book, Sex, the self-adoring heroine of the
Blonde Ambition tour?
Our theme line for this week comes from First Corinthians 2:16, where
Paul says this about Christian believers:
"But we have the mind of Christ."
Well, that's a wonderful goal. But the simple truth
is that we don't really have the mind of Christ, the understanding of
God. Let me say very plainly the most redundant and obvious thing in the
world: I don't know all the things that Jesus knows and that God knows.
Back in 1995, after the first O. J. Simpson verdict came in, we sent a
Christmas card from "(quote) God" to Fred Goldman. And we made
the point in that radio program that God, of course, knows exactly what
happened on June 13, 1994, the night Ronald Goldman and Nicole Simpson
were butchered. God knows who committed that double-murder crime, but
I certainly don't. I was only "playing" God here on the radio.
So in that sense, we certainly were pretending, putting words into our
heavenly Father's mouth that might or might not belong there.
A writer I really admire and appreciate, Pastor Lee Strobel, is a vital
part of the successful team at Willow Creek Community Church with Pastor
Bill Hybels. Even before we began our long-running series, God's Christmas
Cards, he wrote a book entitled What Jesus Would Say . . . to people like
Michael Jordan, President Clinton, Donald Trump, even Bart Simpson. And
Strobel makes the same confession that we have to make here. Because he
doesn't have — perfectly or completely — the mind of Christ. What exactly
would Jesus say to Madonna? He doesn't know exactly, and we don't know
exactly either. And he points out the difficulty in even trying to guess.
People in the day of Jesus, he observes, never could seem to predict "the
mind of Christ." Here's what he writes in the preface to his book:
"Jesus was always saying the unexpected.
Just when His followers thought they had Him figured out, He'd open His
mouth and amaze them once more. . . . People were flabbergasted when He
said they should love their enemies. They were aghast when He said to
turn the other cheek when someone crossed them. They were intrigued by
His parables and mesmerized by His descriptions of God's kingdom. His
listeners were awed by His wisdom, inspired by His morality, and melted
by His love."
And so we do these Christmas radio programs, and Lee
writes his books, and they're bound to be filled with mistakes. Because
we don't fully know the mind of Christ. However, let me make a point in
Lee's defense and in my own too! Because I do know some things Jesus would
say — for one simple reason. And that's this: He's said them so many times
already.
You see, I can play God on the radio, and in perfect confidence have God
say to Madonna: "My child, I love you." Because in John 3:16,
God does say that He loves all the citizens of this planet. That's not
conjecture; God does love Madonna! I can have God tell convicted killer
Timothy McVeigh that He'd like to have him in the kingdom of heaven. And
I know I'm right when I say that, because God Himself says in II Peter
3:9 that He's not willing for Timothy McVeigh to perish, but that He longs
for him to come to repentance. Friend, God already said that! It's on
the record, indelibly recorded for our instruction and understanding.
I can know that I'm right when I have God saying to McVeigh, "I'd
love to let Calvary be your atonement; I'd love for My Son's blood to
cover up your sin, those 168 deaths. My grace is sufficient for you."
I can know without any doubt that God would encourage even heart-broken
Fred Goldman to forgive, to let go of his anger and rage. I can have "the
mind of Christ" regarding that question, because Jesus told His own
disciples to forgive, even up to 490 times. He tells us to release all
judgment to Him. He tells us that God, the righteous Judge, is able to
mete out justice and repay all evil. I don't have to make up a story line
for a Christmas card like that one, because I have all the archival records
in God's own handwriting.
Maybe that helped Pastor Lee Strobel when he sat down to try to write
out what Jesus would say to a David Letterman, to a fictional "Murphy
Brown." Here's a bit more from the preface to his book:
"I don't have any supernatural revelations
from God on what might be said to these people. These are merely my suggestions
— based on the overall thrust of Jesus' teaching and on principles drawn
from how He interacted with individuals in the pages of Scripture."
Friend, why do you think we're encouraged to read our
Bibles? Because these are the transcripts of Jesus' mind, His thoughts,
His attitudes! This is how we can understand His heart of love. You might
remember that hugely practical verse found in Philippians 4:8, where we're
told what kinds of things we should be thinking about and focusing on
every day. Notice — here's that list again:
"Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever
is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever
is admirable — if anything is excellent or praiseworthy — think about
such things."
I like that same positive laundry list as revamped
in The Message, a recent Scripture paraphrase. See what you think:
"I'd say you'll do best," Paul writes,
"by filling your mind and meditating on things true, noble, reputable,
authentic, compelling, gracious" — now notice this — "the best,
not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things
to curse."
In other words, the things of Jesus. The thoughts
and deeds and sermons and teachings of Jesus Christ. What should we think
about? The mind of Christ. What should we focus on? The mind of Christ.
What do we want up there in our own brains, in our hearts? The mind of
Christ.
Pastor Morris Venden likes to observe how something very miraculous happened
in the life of a young kid named John. John the disciple of Jesus. There
in the beginning, this young man was a hothead. A showoff. He wanted the
top spot in Jesus' cabinet; he wanted to call down fire from heaven. He
wanted to put sugar in the gas tanks of the Pharisees' limousines. And
then, at the very end of his life, he's writing things in First John and
Second John and Third John like: "Beloved, let us love one another."
Which probably caused old acquaintances to say to him, "Man, John,
you've changed!" And John probably responded, "Huh? What? I
have?" He didn't see it in himself, but he now had the mind of Christ.
Three-and-a-half years of walking with Jesus, and then a lifetime of thinking
about Him, and praying to Him, and preaching about Him will do that to
a man.
I hope that if time lasts, and if this radio program keeps digging away
at the things of God's kingdom, that each year our Christmas Card series
will more and more and more closely align to what God would really say.
I know that in ‘94, and then ‘95, and ‘96, and ‘97, and in the five programs
we planned for 1998, that we miss a lot. I don't play the role of God
very well; I just have, as Paul puts it, a PORTION of the mind of Christ.
But friend, I'd like to grow in my knowledge of Jesus, and I know you
do too. I'd like for my Christmas cards to get more and more accurate
every year that passes, and I'm sure you'd like for your own life, your
own witness, to be increasingly marked by this wonderful Bible goal: to
have "the mind of Christ."
Having said that, I think we're all going to have to just fall to our
knees in the New Jerusalem many, many times as we realize that the goodness
and the love of Jesus so far outstripped our comprehension. I'll probably
want to burn all of these Christmas cards, and erase the tapes we mail
out to the radio stations, because they'll be such a pale shadow of how
much Christ loves us. Pastor Adrian Rogers once remarked with some bemusement
how theologians and Bible students get all excited in debating this or
that point of truth. We're so sure we're right; we're so positive that
we've nailed down some concept. And he observes, rightly, how we're trying
to hold the ocean of God's love and wisdom in our thimble-sized minds.
That's good, isn't it . . . and painfully accurate.
Still, I've got time here to grow in Jesus, and friend, so do you.
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