He [Aaron] slaughtered the ox and the ram as the fellowship offering for the people. His sons handed him the blood, and he sprinkled it against the altar on all sides. But the fat portions of the ox and the ram—the fat tail, the layer of fat, the kidneys and the covering of the liver- these they laid on the breasts, and then Aaron burned the fat on the altar. Aaron waved the breasts and the right thigh before the LORD as a wave offering, as Moses commanded.

Then Aaron lifted his hands toward the people and blessed them. And having sacrificed the sin offering, the burnt offering and the fellowship offering, he stepped down." (Leviticus 9:18-22)

In our Sunday Evening Study of Leviticus last night, I was struck by the imagery at play in this passage. Aaron had just completed the opening round of sacrifices following his ordination and with the blood still wet upon his hands, he lifts them in blessing of the people of Israel. A vivid reminder that God's blessing is given via the sacrifice.

I encouraged the congregation to hold that image in mind as they received the benediction at the close of the service. It is only through the blood of Jesus (our once-for-all sacrifice) that we too are blessed. No blood...no blessing.

What a powerful reminder it would be for our own prayer and praise if we imagined the blood of Christ upon hands folded or raised to heaven.

1. If both your parents worshipped with you regularly while you were growing up, there’s an 80% likelihood that you’ll worship God regularly as an adult.

2. If only your mother worshipped regularly with you, there’s only a 30% probability that you’ll worship regularly as an adult.

3. If only your father worshipped regularly with you, the likelihood that you’ll worship regularly as an adult increases to 70% percent!

With all the fuss at this year's Synod over the Office of Women, I almost hesitate, but those who know me, know I won't, to bring up the pink elephant in the room. Why isn't more attention being paid to the fact that men comprise only about 30% of membership of the RCA?

One could debate the future of women in leadership in the RCA, but we can't debate the truth that if we fail to increase the number of men in the pews the RCA does not have a future. If we don't address this growing or is it shrinking problem soon we will not have the funds to fund the Office of Women or much of anything in the denomination.

Yet I never hear this issue talked about at any level of the RCA. With the mass exodus of young people from our churches, most never to return, where will we be in 10-25 years? We need to get serious about the men inside and outside our congregations.

But will we assess the churches $1.30/member to form an Office of Men? I doubt it. If you want to see the real reason for our decline - ask, "Where are the Dads?"

It is perhaps one of the most enduring images of American Christianity over the last 50 or 60 years. The stadium filled with people and a preacher there, standing on the platform having delivered a message that calls people to Jesus Christ, and then you begin to hear the strains of an old familiar hymn…Just As I Am. As the people in the choir are singing that old familiar hymn, you begin to see people coming down out of the upper regions of the stadium. Billy Graham is imploring them to come forward, "There is still time to come." He sees them coming down by thousands. As they come to the floor of the stadium, they are met by other thousands who come and who spend time with them and leading them to the knowledge of Jesus Christ.

I found something new about the whole crusade process in the last year, something I did not know before. If you go and you talk to the Billy Graham Association, they can say that they can pretty much tell you how many people on a given night at a given crusade in a given location are going to come down out of their seats to either make a commitment or a recommitment to Jesus Christ. They can tell you almost exactly how many people are going to come.

Now, why is this? How do they know how many people are going to come forward on any given night? They know that (they say) because they know already how many counselors they have trained, how many counselors will be in attendance at any given crusade, and they know God will not send any more people out of the stands than there are counselors to individually meet them and share the Good News of Jesus Christ.

What they operate on is something called the principle of spiritual readiness. This applies to not only things like the Billy Graham Crusades, but for our purposes this morning, it applies to the life of the Church, and it applies to the life of this regional synod as well. The principle of spiritual readiness is quite simply that God will not give more than you are prepared to receive. God will not give you, will not give me, and will not give the Church, more than we are prepared to receive.

This principle of spiritual readiness is a corollary of the Biblical truth that God wants His church to grow. Now this truth is sometimes misunderstood in the life of the Church. It becomes, sometimes in our day and age, a myth, but the truth is, according to the Word of God, God wants His Church to grow. God wants His Church to be growing. He wants each individual part of it to grow.

Time and time again, you read in Scripture, you see God bringing explosive growth into the life of the Church. From the very beginning, Jesus called to Himself the 12. Following His death, the 12 became 120 who were left of all of those who followed Jesus during His ministry. And in the upper room, the Holy Spirit came, and the Church was born. From that 120 first gathered there were at that first Sunday service if you will...3,000 came into the life of the Church. Over successive gatherings, 5,000 came into the Church, and more and more, until we read over in Acts 2:47 these words, "And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved."

God is a god of growth. God is a god who desires growth for His Church. If we are not growing, then we are neglecting what God is calling us to do. But there are going to be some who say, "Wait a minute, Pastor, we're talking about numbers again. I thought you weren't a numbers kind of guy." I wasn't up until just a little while ago. Now, I'm still not a numbers kind of guy as the world sees it. You know, you have numbers on your accounting. Pastors get together and say, "Well, how big is your church?" “Well, my church isn't anything, but God's Church is growing every day.”

But we get caught up in this trap of the modern materialistic consumer mindset where we care about numbers...numbers, numbers, numbers. How many do you have in your pews? How much do you have in the offering? How much square footage do you have? And I, like a lot of people, rebelled against that idea until I had a chance to have a conversation with the pastor of one of these larger churches.

Now, I fully expected I was going to hear the same numbers garbage that I had heard year after year, and I was going to be turned off. But he made the point as he was talking…he said that each one of those numbers represents a life. Well, that kind of caught me. I had never thought of it that way…that every one of those numbers represents a life that Jesus Christ wants to transform. It represents a life that Jesus gave His life for.

That changes our thinking about the issue of growth and the issues of numbers. It is not just to fill the pews. It is not just to pad the budget. It is not just to have something to talk about or brag about. It has to do with the very Kingdom of God itself. It is not a theoretical thing; it is a matter of life and death. It is a matter of life and death for those who have not heard.

"And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?" How can they hear unless there is a place that they can hear the Word of God preached? How can they grow, how can they thrive, unless there is a Body for which they are to join, in which they are to experience that?

So it is not mere theory. For them, it is a matter of life and death. It is, for us today, a matter of life and death. I proved this one Sunday morning in my own church with a simple little illustration. I had everyone over the age of seventy come to the front of the church and asked the church to look around at how few people were left. I said that the latest statistics said the average life-expectancy in the U.S was 74 years. I said look around at the empty pews, “ This is the future of the church unless things change.” 

I challenged our classis churches to do the same thing and one of the members told me “You know what? If I stand up and say, 'Would everybody over the age of 70 or 80 please stand up,' I have no one left in the pews." It is a matter of life and death. It is a matter of faithfulness to the kingdom.

So it is not just a numbers game. It is reality. It is reality for us as the Church, but more importantly, it is a reality for those outside the Church, because they need to hear of the transforming power of Jesus Christ. But how is that going to happen? How is that going to take place?

Here is where the Church often stumbles. We stumble because we neglect the corollary of the truth. We say, "Yes, God wants this church to grow." We say, "Yes…Jesus says, 'I will build My Church.'" And then we sit and wait and wait and wait. We miss the corollary to the principle that God wants to grow His Church, but He grows it through the readiness and the preparedness of His people.

If we are not ready to receive, if we are not prepared then God is not going to send us. I came to the realization over the past little while that that really is why we have not grown like we can grow or should grow. Are we ready to grow? You know, a lot of churches say, "Well, once we get the people, then we will make the change," but you're not going to get the people unless you are already ready to receive them.

Let's think about that a little bit from the Word of God. Our passage of Scripture this morning is Isaiah 62, and here we see God calling to the Church through the prophet Isaiah. Notice, it says, "Pass through, pass through the gates! Prepare the way for the people. Build up, build up the highway! Remove the stones. Raise a banner for the nations. The Lord has made proclamation to the ends of the earth, 'Say to the Daughter of Zion, 'See, your Savior comes! See, His reward is with Him, and His recompense accompanies Him. They will be called the Holy People, the Redeemed of the Lord, and you will be called Sought After, the City No Longer Deserted.'"

Would you not like that to be the reputation of your church…as the Sought After Church.? Scripture says that God is coming, the Savior wants to come, and He wants to bring His reward, but notice what precedes it. The coming of Christ to His Church, the coming of His reward which is His newly called people is the preparation of the Church. Isaiah 62 is the heart and soul of this principle of spiritual readiness. It tells us what we need to do to be ready when God is going to send the growth He wants.

Some of you had a chance to see that movie Facing the Giants, the story of that football coach and a down-and-out team, in danger of losing his job. He is working there in this Christian high school, and he is wandering, you know, what is going to happen? There is the scene where there has been this old faithful man who walks through the schools, and he prays over every locker.

He reads the Scripture, and he is praying, and one day he comes in and talks to the coach. He says, "I have a word from God for you." And the word was, "Get ready for the rain." He was telling this coach, "God wants to do a tremendous work in this school and a tremendous work through you, but you have to be ready for it." He talked about those who are ready for the rain. Who is going to be blessed? The person who hears the forecast and does nothing or the farmer who goes out and gets his fields ready and plant the seed? Are we ready for what God can and will do?

Why do we get ready, according to what Isaiah says? There are few things that I think are important, and a few of these things, we need to do. How do we get ready for what God has promised will come? How do we get ready for what He wants to give?

Well, the first thing we need to do is make a commitment to reach those outside the gate. Isaiah says, "Pass through the gates." He says to the people, "Get out of the security of your cities. Get out of the security of your groups. Get out of the security of your church, and get out in the community." Because that is where the people are.

I was interviewing at a church a few years ago, and they said, "We want a pastor who is going to come in and help us grow. We want a pastor who is going to help us do outreach and going to help us evangelize. So I am talking to their consistory, and they're surrounded on both sides by a couple of thousand-member churches. I said, "Well, what do you want to do to become like them? What ideas, what thoughts do you have?"

They sat there for a moment and said, "You know, we have thought about that, and we don't want to be like those churches. We don't want to grow like that." I said, "What do you mean you don't want to grow like that?" They said, "Well, we are happy kind of the way we are; we like being a family church. We like knowing everybody. And frankly, Pastor, we would be appalled if 20 people showed up as visitors on Sunday morning. We wouldn't know what to do with them. Frankly, we wouldn't want them. Maybe 25 people over a year or two, but on a Sunday...that would never work." I was amazed by that.

But I have come to discover over the years that there are churches who don't want to grow. There are churches that are happy being a family church. They are happy with what they have. There are a lot of churches in our classis like that. They are happy being a church of 40 or 50 people. They know everybody. They can just kind of be a family, loving each other. They have no desire for growth. But that kind of thinking leads to death…the death of a church, the closing of the doors.

Who knows, within the next 5 or 10 years, how many churches in this synod are going to close their doors. And you see, the reality is, if we don't make some changes here, when these people go to their heavenly rewards, you're going to have a big space and not very many people in it.

So you have to say, "God, we went to grow. We want to be a growing church, and we going to make a commitment to do what is necessary to go out in the community, and to the harvest fields, the mission fields, to do what you've called us to do. But this starts by saying, "We want to be that kind of church. We want to be a faithful church, Lord. We want to be a growing church."

Now you may think that is a simple thing to say. It is a very simple thing to say. It is a very difficult thing to mean…to actually mean that we are willing to do whatever is necessary to prepare ourselves for what God is going to send.

Part of that, secondly then, is we need to start building some things up. It says, "Build up the highways. Prepare the way." That means we need to start getting people, programs and property in place. What are the things we need to repair, replace or remove?.

Thirdly we are told by Isaiah we need to remove the barriers. “Remove the stones.” We need to make our worship a little more acceptable. We need to make some of our things a little more acceptable to people who don't know the language. We need to realize that God would be sending us people who don't know the Christian faith. So we need to be willing to adapt some of our methodology. We need to remove some things that are hindrances to the lost.

That doesn't mean we change our doctrine. It doesn't mean we change the truth we believe, but it means we meet people where they are rather than expecting them to come and be where we are…to remove those kinds of barriers.

Finally Isaiah says, "Raise the banner among the nations." The last thing we need to do to get ready is to let the community know we are here. You know, it is unbelievable the people I meet who may know me after 11 or 12 years, but they still don't know where the church is…people in Midland Park will be talking…"Oh, by the way, where is your church?" How can you miss a big brick church sitting on a big piece of property…but they do. What about your churches? Do people know you are here? Do people know you care about them? If they don’t know, have do we let them know?

Part of outreach is raising our voices…sharing the message. How do businesses grow? How do companies grow? They grow more by word of mouth than they do by advertising. There are some companies that only grow by word of mouth. How do churches grow? Most churches don't grow strictly through advertising, although you may need to do that. They grow by people telling other people. By creating what they call a "buzz" about the church. How often do we talk about what the church is doing and what God wants to do through us?

God is ready for His Church to grow. The question is…are we ready to receive that growth? Are we ready for what God wants to do? What do we need to do to prepare the field? What do we need to do to remove the barriers? What do we need to do to build up, so that when He sends showers of blessings, it brings a harvest? A harvest of those who know Him and who love Him?

^{Scripture: Matthew 28:1-15}

¹Now after the Sabbath, toward the dawn of the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. ²And behold, there was a great earthquake, for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. ³His appearance was like lightning, and his clothing white as snow. ⁴And for fear of him the guards trembled and became like dead men. ⁵But the angel said to the women, "Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. ⁶He is not here, for he has risen, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay. ⁷Then go quickly and tell his disciples that he has risen from the dead, and behold, he is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him. See, I have told you." ⁸So they departed quickly from the tomb with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples. ⁹And behold, Jesus met them and said, "Greetings!" And they came up and took hold of his feet and worshiped him. ¹⁰Then Jesus said to them, "Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee, and there they will see me." ¹¹While they were going, behold, some of the guard went into the city and told the chief priests all that had taken place. ¹²And when they had assembled with the elders and taken counsel, they gave a sufficient sum of money to the soldiers ¹³and said, "Tell people, 'His disciples came by night and stole him away while we were asleep.' ¹⁴And if this comes to the governor's ears, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble." ¹⁵So they took the money and did as they were directed. And this story has been spread among the Jews to this day.

EMPTY!

There is only a simple wooden sign with the words: “He is not here! For He is risen!” to mark the site of Christ’s resurrection. The tomb is tucked away within an enclosed garden in the heart of the city of Jerusalem. Yet within those walls the noise of the traffic seems to disappear. We had returned to the tomb for Sunday morning worship. The crowd that gathered was so small; a few dozen people at best. Afterwards I remarked to the man who had lead the service of my surprise at finding so few worshippers here.

What he said was so simple, yet so profound. “What did you expect? Its only an empty hole in a hillside.” I pondered that thought for awhile and today I find great wisdom in his words. Its true. What makes the tomb so important is that it is empty. Jesus is not there. He is alive and let loose in His world.

That was the lesson of the angel at the tomb. Yes, come see the place where he was. But then go quickly and tell the Good News. And the Good News is that Jesus is gone ahead into the Galilees of our lives waiting for us to catch up with him. There is no need to dwell on the emptiness, when the fullness of the resurrected Christ is available to us!

²⁵It was the third hour when they crucified him. ²⁶The written notice of the charge against him read: THE KING OF THE JEWS. ²⁷They crucified two robbers with him, one on his right and one on his left. ²⁹Those who passed by hurled insults at him, shaking their heads and saying, "So! You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, ³⁰come down from the cross and save yourself!"

³¹In the same way the chief priests and the teachers of the law mocked him among themselves. "He saved others," they said, "but he can't save himself! ³²Let this Christ, this King of Israel, come down now from the cross, that we may see and believe." Those crucified with him also heaped insults on him.

"CALVARY AT THE CROSSROADS"

Nearly two thousand years have done little to lessen the impact Calvary had upon our group as we saw it for the first time. The caves in the hill give it the eerie appearance of a grinning skull. In Jesus day, the road past Calvary was one of the busiest in all of Israel. It was chosen as a place of execution for maximum visibility and effect. So adding insult to injury, as Jesus hung between those two thieves, the crowds passed by hurling words that cut as deep as any thorn. Today Calvary is still at the crossroads of Jerusalem. At the very foot of Calvary is one of the main bus terminals for the city. Daily thousands load and unload in the shadow of the cross. Yet sadly the crowds don’t even stop to insult, they just ignore. Here where our salvation was wrought, people pass by without a second thought!

Yet in spite of the world’s ignorance, the cross still stands, as the old hymn puts it, “over the wrecks of time.” Oh, how so many lives could be changed if they would only take the time to stop and ponder what took place on that desolate hill. Friends, Calvary stands at the crossroads of time, and at the crossroads of your life and mine, don’t pass it by without pausing to pray even a simple word of thanks.

² He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.

³ He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

⁴ Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted.

⁵ But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.

⁶ We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

⁷ He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.

⁸ By oppression and judgment he was taken away. And who can speak of his descendants? For he was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgression of my people he was stricken.

⁹ He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death, though he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth.

¹⁰ Yet it was the LORD's will to crush him and cause him to suffer, and though the LORD makes ^[c] his life a guilt offering, he will see his offspring and prolong his days, and the will of the LORD will prosper in his hand.

¹¹ After the suffering of his soul, he will see the light of life and be satisfied ; by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many, and he will bear their iniquities.

¹² Therefore I will give him a portion among the great, and he will divide the spoils with the strong, because he poured out his life unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors. For he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.

"VIA DOLOROSA"

Some visitors carry wooden crosses down the narrow winding streets. Others flog themselves with leather whips. Some content themselves with making the journey upon their knees. All of them are trying in some small way to enter into the suffering of Jesus as He traveled the Via Dolorosa. The Way of Sorrows, the traditional pathway Jesus followed from Pilate’s Hall to Calvary. Commemorated by 14 stations or stops this trail leads through the heart of the Old City of Jerusalem.

As we walked its narrow corridors we found ourselves walking through the meat market, where even today the blood of sheep and goats run in the cracks. The stench was horrible. Yet greater was Jesus’ horror as he followed his cross to the place of his execution. The crowds filling the streets with taunts. The push of the soldier’s spear in his already torn back. The heat and the exhaustion taking its toll as the weight of our sins begin to fall upon his head.

As I think back upon that long walk in the footsteps of Jesus, as I ponder what he endured for me the words of the hymn come to mind: “Jesus to Calvary did go, His love for mankind to show; What He did there, brought hope from despair: O how He loves you, O how He loves me, O how He loves you and me.”

¹³"Crucify him!" they shouted.

¹⁴"Why? What crime has he committed?" asked Pilate. But they shouted all the louder, "Crucify him!"

¹⁵Wanting to satisfy the crowd, Pilate released Barabbas to them. He had Jesus flogged, and handed him over to be crucified.

"THE KING’S GAME"

It was all a game! That’s what we found as our group entered the remains of the Roman garrison at the Antonia Fortress. The mocking, the scourging, the purple robe and the crown of thorns were all part of a game that the Romans soldiers played with Jesus. Carved into the floor of the fortress was the crude design that symbolized the “King’s Game.” It was often played with condemned prisoners to add to the humiliation of their last hours.

How ironic that this simple game that created false royalty for the pleasure of cruel soldiers, would be played with the true King of Kings! It added greatly to my understanding of Jesus’ words “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”

Do you play games with Christ? Do you pretend at your faith? Putting on a false face and playing by His rules only when it suits you? Be warned that someday, maybe soon, we will all stand before the Great King and it will be no game. Our eternal destinies will not rely upon the roll of the dice, but upon how we accepted Christ for who he really is. If we stand by Christ Crucified, we shall reign with Christ Glorified.

Within the confines of the Garden of Gethsemane there are eight olives trees which some botanists claim are over 3,000 years old! If this is true it means that there is a piece of living history that survives from Christ’s day down to our own. It is possible that these very trees were eyewitnesses to the greatest battle ever waged in prayer. Oh that these trees could speak of the agony of that hour. What a tale of grace and glory they could relate.

The night Jesus was betrayed He took His disciples and retreated to Gethsemane and wrestled with His Father in prayer. Jesus like any man did not wish to die. He knew the torments that awaited upon the cross. But He submitted Himself to the Father’s plan. Our salvation was guaranteed in the seven simple words Jesus spoke: “Not my will, but thine be done.”

How hard it is for us sometimes to submit to the will of our Heavenly Father. We think we know a better way and easier way. How we must learn that God’s way is the best way. Are you wrestling with God today over some important matter? Think of Jesus beneath those three thousand years old olives trees and pray the prayer He prayed. “Thy will be done.”

Scott Nichols

I wholeheartedly agree with this. But I think that the church, unfortunately, too often mirrors the world and not the Gospel. Rather than being bold in our witness and outreach, many churches today are looking to cut staff, budgets and programs. When we should be out front offering the words of Jesus in Matthew 6, "not to be anxious, but seek first the kingdom"; we are "hunkered in the bunker."

I think now is the time for the church to be more visible. To offer more, not less. Our church was out front on some of these issues and we had in place things like Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University and Angel Food Ministries. We were strategically positioned to have an impact. And we are looking at expanding, not contracting our efforts.

Even in tough economic times,  I think if presented with a compelling vision, the people of God can and will step it up. What is needed is courageous leaders to sound that advance. I appeal to our churches to trust God and move out in faith. Don't let fear cause you to miss what could be the beginning of a great work of God's Spirit in our land.

Archbishop Daniel Deng Bul of Sudan relates in the same article that Sudanese Christians "are called infidels by the Islamic world when they hear our brothers and sisters from the Christian world talking about same-sex [relationships] to be blessed...It will give them [Muslims] the upper hand to kill our people."

Some might call it ironic that the Reformed Church is carrying on its dialogue regarding homosexuality at the same time as it publicly calls for an end to the genocide in Darfur, Sudan. Some may call it that...I call it tragic.