Wilderness Wanderings
“I hope in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy to you soon, that I also may be cheered when I receive news about you. I have no one else like him, who will show genuine concern for your welfare. For everyone looks out for their own interests, not those of Jesus Christ. But you know that Timothy has proved himself, because as a son with his father he has served with me in the work of the gospel. I hope, therefore, to send him as soon as I see how things go with me. And I am confident in the Lord that I myself will come soon” (Philippians 2:19-24). In our text for today, Paul is doing something...
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A Sunday Sermon edition of Wilderness Wanderings! The text is 2 Kings 5:1-16. Dive In discussion questions are below for further reflection! To see this sermon in the context of the worship service it comes from, find it . Or, head to our website to connect with the worshiping community of Immanuel CRC: Dive In Questions: What question from 2 Kings 1 lies in the background to this chapter? What is unique about the young servant girl? Why is she a true Israelite? How does she stand in contrast to both Naaman and the king of Israel? What might God ask you to give up if...
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And then I will be able to boast on the day of Christ that I did not run or labor in vain. But even if I am being poured out like a drink offering on the sacrifice and service coming from your faith, I am glad and rejoice with all of you. So, you too should be glad and rejoice with me (Philippians 2:16b-18). We are still following Paul’s reflections on ‘working out our salvation with fear and trembling’. This phrase does not mean nervous apprehension with which the guilty face a judge. Rather, it expresses the awe that we experience in the presence of God. Now we discover that this...
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"Do everything without grumbling or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, ‘children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation.’ Then you will shine among them like stars in the sky as you hold firmly to the word of life" (Philippians 2:14-16a). There are times I wonder–and maybe some of you have too–whether God might not have picked a more effective strategy for building his kingdom than this rag tag group of people called the church. Whenever I ask this question, I return to the writing of one of my favourite theologians–a missiologist and missionary in...
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Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose” (Philippians 2:12-13). This is a text I cherish. For three reasons. One, it does not place responsibility for the spiritual growth of the congregation on the pastor. Certainly, pastors have a responsibility, but it is not primary, it is not even secondary. At best our responsibility is tertiary. This helps me sleep. Two, and...
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"Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father" (Philippians 2:9-11). One of the reasons I love the Christ poem that we have been looking at in Philippians 2:6-11 over the past couple of days is the way that it draws together ideas from across Scripture to demonstrate the significance of who...
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A Sunday Sermon edition of Wilderness Wanderings! The text is 2 Kings 2:1-15. Dive In discussion questions are below for further reflection! To see this sermon in the context of the worship service it comes from, find it . Or, head to our website to connect with the worshiping community of Immanuel CRC: Elijah takes Elisha on a journey. What do these places represent for Israel? Idolatry is difficult to sort out in our own hearts. It is most often about trust. Who do you trust? If we trust in God, we learn to obey him. But obedience can be costly. Has it...
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And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross! (Philippians 2:7-8) This hymn doesn’t say that Jesus humbled himself for us. It just says that he humbled himself. If his humbling was before or for anyone: it was for God the Father, the only other person mentioned. Jesus responded to the Father by giving up everything and making himself nothing. There are a few downward steps that Jesus takes. He lets go of his divine right to use his divine status and power. This is the very opposite move to that of Adam and Eve who grasped...
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[Christ] “Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness” (Philippians 2:6-7). Today, I’m going to begin by painting a picture for you. If you visited Philippi, as Paul did, in the late 40s AD, you would have seen a brand-new forum, a monumental square surrounded by various public buildings sheltering the civic life of the colony, a temple for the imperial cult, a marketplace, and more. You would also have seen a very long...
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In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus… (Philippians 2:5) Yesterday, Kyra said, “The kind of like-mindedness that Paul advocates for is the kind that comes, not from uniformity, but from the willingness to give priority to the needs of others and sacrifice one's own.” And as she said, ‘that’s awfully hard to do.” But how do we do it? Paul answers that question in our text, “have the same mindset as Christ Jesus”. Jesus lays down for us the two greatest commandments: Love the Lord Your God with...
info_outline“And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years. She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse. When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, because she thought, ‘If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed.’ Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering. At once Jesus realized that power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and asked, ‘Who touched my clothes?’ ‘You see the people crowding against you,’ his disciples answered, ‘and yet you can ask, 'Who touched me?’’ But Jesus kept looking around to see who had done it. Then the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell at his feet and, trembling with fear, told him the whole truth. He said to her, ‘Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering’” (Mark 5:25-34).
This week, we are continuing to work through themes related to suffering and healing in connection with the New Hope program and hearing stories about our siblings in Christ in the global church. If you haven’t been following along with this series, feel free to look back to last Wednesday’s podcast intro which will provide some context.
“Go in peace,” Jesus said to the woman in front of him, “and be freed from your suffering.” I read these last words and look up, and I see the woman’s shoulders shaking with suppressed sobs. The silent tears rolling down the young man’s cheeks. Tears fill my own eyes. God is doing something in this room, and to say anything else, to add anything to Jesus’ own words seems somehow wrong.
It is week four of the New Hope program, it’s February of 2024, and I am gathered in a room full of my friends, most of them Sudanese refugees living in Egypt, those forced to flee when the war broke out again in Sudan in April 2023. A war that most of the world had, at this point, largely ignored for the better part of a year. A war which had resulted in more than 150,000 deaths of civilians through a combination of bombings and massacres but also malnutrition and disease resulting from lack of access to basic life necessities. The woman across from me, weeping, had escaped from Sudan and into Egypt the previous spring, having been held at gunpoint by officials, separated from both her older brother and the man she had intended to marry just weeks after the war broke out. The young man with tears running down his face escaped with his aunts, but neither of them have been able to re-establish contact with any other loved ones who remained in Sudan–at least as far as they know–since the beginning of the war. They face discrimination daily in their lives in Cairo, treated as outsiders by most they encounter.
The group has just walked through the story of the bleeding woman and her encounter with Jesus through a visualization activity which ends with an invitation for the listener to do as the woman did, to tell Jesus the whole truth. To tell him their story. We paused for silence. Then the words of Jesus, “Daughter, son, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.” They hang in the air in the room. “Amin, amin, amin,” a woman’s voice says through tears, as though with the voice of the woman in the story herself, “bashkorak ya rob.” Or, in English, “Amen, amen, amen, thank you God.”
In my mind, there isn’t any kind of exegetical work or systematic theology (necessary though those things are) that does a better job of explaining what Jesus does than what happened in that room that day. I think the invitation for us, in reading this story, is much the same as it is for New Hope participants. To walk through the story and allow it, allow Christ, to encounter us as we are.
So who are you in the story today? Are you the woman, struggling desperately forward, believing that to touch Jesus will mean your healing? Are you the disciples, skeptical of Jesus’ encounter? Are you in the crowd of onlookers, watching in wonder or judgment? Are you being given the opportunity to, like Jesus, extend belonging and mercy to someone in pain and fear, desperate to believe who he is, desperate for transformation? No matter where you are in the story, it is for you, as are Jesus’ words–to claim as your own and to offer to others: “Daughter, son, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.”
So as you journey on, go with the blessing of God:
May the peace of the Lord Christ go with you: wherever he may send you. May he guide you through the wilderness: protect you through the storm. May he bring you home rejoicing; at the wonders he has shown you. May he bring you home rejoicing once again into our doors.