20 January 2013
Dear Phyllis,
These past four weeks have been horrendous. We have taken a hammering as bad as it gets. Fortunately it appears that things are easing up slightly, and we may gain some altitude for a change. Losing Annie was major. That has cost me 20 years. Two months ago I felt like a young father at the early stage of life. Life looked wonderful. I am no longer family man. It takes children to make a family. Without children, all you have is a couple living together. We had a really good thing going teaching at Annie's kindergarten. The children there loved us very much, and we loved them. With the pain of losing Annie, we quit the school. This was a bad shock for the school. Friday I went over there to talk to the directors for the first time in three weeks. I said, “Come to church Sunday and perhaps we can talk about coming back again. It would be good if this works out. Of course we cannot rule out the possibility that Annie may come back to us, but I would be reluctant to put much money on the chances of that.
I had a good talk with Pastor Kichikun Thursday. He said at the conclusion of our time together, “The message I get out of this time is HOPE”. I have no idea what he was talking about. I certainly don't feel like the embodiment of hope. I would say, my hope is very low; but my faith is based on nothing less than Jesus Blood and righteousness. Certainly, I am not counting on my faith. If we had to go by my faith, the train wreck would have been all over many years ago. But if we go by Jesus faithfulness, there might be stability there.
When Rosemary went south 24 years ago I said, “That's it for me”. I felt I was no longer qualified to be a missionary or preacher. Consequently, for the next five years I remained in total silence. It wasn't until I was with the Japanese team doing dendo (evangelism) in Siberia that Kawasaki sensei asked me to take the responsibility for preaching. I felt the Lord would hold me responsible if I didn't share with the Russians, who had had 70 years of darkness, what I knew of Jesus. That brought me out of seclusion, and I have been preaching ever since. But with this latest upheaval, I felt this represented a serious charge against my qualifications to be a servant of God. Thursday, in our discussion Pastor Kichikun said he was going to be away this coming Sunday, and asked if I would step in for him. That was a very difficult call. I don't know what is right, but reluctantly I said I would.
I have felt for a long time that there is a serious defect in most preaching today. That includes my own message. Jesus said, “If I be lifted up I will draw all men unto Me” (Jn. 12:32). By this, Jesus was referring to His Cross, but I believe this also applies to preaching. No doubt, there is a place for preaching the law. Without preaching a standard, there is no way we can get anyone lost enough to get saved. It is only when a person sees what bad shape they are in that they will cry out for salvation. But telling a person what they should or shouldn't do will in nowise improve their conduct. Telling a drunkard he shouldn't drink won't make him dry. I am very good at preaching about sin. All I have to do is look at my own heart, and I have all the commentary I need for resource material. I can preach about principles for the Christian life. I like to preach about prophecy. But that isn't preaching Jesus. Oh, for the ability to lift up Jesus, and make Him look good! Oh, if we could only lift Him up as the jewel among jewels, and show to others His luster, perhaps that might draw some to Him.
I started to do that several months ago. The greatest passage I know that describes the beauty of Jesus is in Song of Sol. 5:10-16. In that passage there are 12 points. I had hoped to take one a month, and spend a year telling the folks in Kichikun's church how lovely our Lord is. I spent two sermons on 2/3 of the first verse. There are three points in verse 10. The first point is, “He is white (clean)”. In this Jesus is utterly unique in all humanity. He is the only one who is truly clean. If the Bible told is nothing more about Jesus, that alone would make Him uniquely qualified to be the savior. This alone would make Him attractive.
The second point is, “He is rudddy”. This is a word not commonly used in scripture or our daily speech, but is used twice in describing David (1Sam. 16:12, 17:42). Basically what this is pointing out is the humanity of Christ. A person who is healthly is a ruddy person. He has a ruddy complexion. When the Bible says that Jesus is ruddy, what it means is that He is totally human. Angels certainly are clean, but you can't say they are ruddy or human. Had Jesus never come to this earth, He certainly would have remained white, clean, or pure – spotless. But when He emerged as an infant in Mary's arms, He identified Himself with us in all our humanity. That makes Him different. The second message was on His humanity. I feel this is a weakness in evangelical circles. We react against liberalism, that rejects His deity and claims Him only as a man, so badly that we short change ourselves on this vital other aspect of the humanity of Christ.
The third point of verse 10 is, “He is the fairest among ten thousand”. If we only accepted that wording as it is in our KJV that would be a very good message, but, my understanding is that, in the Hebrew, that could be better translated “He is the flag bearer”. He carries the flag.
In years past, when two armies came together in war, they would put the flag carrier in the front of the army; and the name-of-the-game was to advance the flag. As the two armies would jostle back and forth, the flag moved according to the moving of the front line. With the advance of modern warfare, this business of moving the flag has disappeared. But in 1945 there was one incident that has immortalized this concept.
During the 2nd WW, the battle of Iwo Jima was one of the worst of the war in the Pacific. The Japanese had 20,000 soldiers deeply entrenched on this small island. There was terrific aerial and sea bombardment that did very little good. The Japanese were as tenaciously dug in as at any ground in the war. The main feature of the island was a small volcanic hill, Suribachi. Five brave Marines braved heavy enemy fire to climb that 550 foot hill to erect the American flag. A navy photographer recorded that moment in history with his legendary photo. When that scene hit the news print in America, a shot of patriotism and thrill rushed across the country. That was the first time an American flag had flown over Japanese soil.
Jesus is our flag carrier. He came and took the high ground. He has raised the Fathers flag over what was formally the devils domain and we can now safely follow in His victory.
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That sure is a good message, but it didn't get preached. I started this letter yesterday, and this is a far as I got. It was with great anticipation that I wanted to share this message with Kichikun's church today, but it went up in smoke at 10:00 last night. I went to bed with a very heavy heart, and I knew it was impossible for me to give that message today. I was hoping I could get someone else to speak in my place, but at 5:00 AM the Lord began to give me a different word.
When I got to church this morning I was greeted by a very small crowd. At 10:30, when the service is supposed to start, the congregation consisted of two old ladies plus, Pastor Yora and his wife. Yora is the main man with Destiny Rescue, and is working with Kichikun as an associate pastor. I don't know. Maybe by the time the late-comers got there we might have had 12 or more. I was glad to see the director of Annie's school, Sangha, in church this morning. It was largely for his sake, that I spoke on What is a Christian? and How Do You Become One? The subject was very heavy on my heart, and I didn't have any trouble talking for over an hour. Even then I only covered a portion of the things that should have been said.
The relationship between the Old Testament and the New Testament is a subject that is very much on my heart. I began by stating that Christian is: 1. A child of God. 2 A citizen of heaven. 3. Joined to Jesus. And 4. A holy people. I told how God choose Israel 4,000 years ago to be His people, and took them to Mt. Sinai to seal a marriage covenant with them. God ratified that covenant at Sinai, predicated on the basis of IF. The covenant was wonderful. There was nothing wrong with it. God said it was conditional on the keeping of a few house rules. I talked about the necessity of having house rules. Even in keeping a dog you must have rules that the dog must be house broke and trained. You can't have a dog making piles and puddles all over the house. Destiny Rescue has house rules. We had house rules in Karuizawa and Ikoma. If someone stayed with us, I would not permit smoking, drinking, immodesty, or rock music. If they didn't like it, they could leave. God's house rules are very reasonable. There are only ten – four vertical and six horizontal. I said, “Is God unreasonable in requiring that His people could have no other god beside Him”. I asked, “If I came home, and saw another man sitting in my place at the dinner table, would I be wrong in running him off? If I went to bed, and pulled the sheets back, only to see another man sleeping in my place, would I be unreasonable in kicking him out?” Is God out of line in insisting that we have only Him. Joshua challenged the people in his day to pick one (Josh. 24:15). If you want the Lord, then serve Him. But please don't mix them.
There is no way I can tell you all I said in a one hour message on two pages. But one point that I felt was important was the business of making a vow. There are three levels of committal speech – your word, a promise, and a vow. Of course any Christian should keep his word. If we say something, best we keep it. This is a huge problem here in Thailand, but I don't believe it is restricted to Thailand. I am particularly sensitive about keeping your word about time. If you say you will be somewhere at 6:00, it is a serious breach in honest if you aren't. But few people think much about this in Thailand. To a large degree we go by “Thai time” (anytime I get there). But a promise is a more binding commitment. I person might say he will do something, but to nail that down, we sometimes say, “Is that a promise?” That makes it considerably more binding. But the highest level is a vow. In court they use “under oath”. To lie under oath is a very serious crime. Men serve long prison sentences for perjury.
There is nothing more important in a persons life than keeping a vow. If confidence breaks down at that level, there is no more way a person can say anything significant. They are just a write off. The problem with the OT was that there was no provision to enable people to keep that vow. Israel was serious when they said, “All that the Lord commands we will do.” Tragically, history proved how faithless they were.
But in the NT the Lord makes that provision by Jesus living in our hearts. He is the law that is written in our hearts (Heb. 8:10).
Anyway, I said something like that.
We need your prayers,
bill
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