Sunday, March 8, 2009
Sins against the Holy Spirit: Insulting
Hebrews 10: 22 – 31
Many of you may remember the original version of Lorraine Hansberry’s play, “A Raisin in the Sun”, later it would become a movie, and recently it was shown on Broadway with an updated cast.
“A Raisin in the Sun,” dealt with themes relevant today: housing values, affordability, racial integration, the role of a male in a household, the role of a woman in a household, the African American experience from an international African perspective, a college education as an instrument of advancement, there were many themes and issues the original version dealt with; but the one that stands out in my mind is the one where the mother played by Claudia McNeil confronted her college student daughter, played by Diana Sands when she would dare to suggest based on her college learning there was no God.
Big Mamma would permit discussion on a lot of things, but when her daughter crossed the line, she slapped her face and insisted that could not insult her, nor could you insult her God and made her repeat that in my mother’s house, there is God.
Many of you may not know the name Cem Tokac.
However, I think you may know his story: He was the Turkish hauler who was standing in a train yard behind a truck; when that truck was hit by a moving train, and caused the truck to run him over.
He lay on the ground, and his friends thought he was dead. They rush to his side only to find him wake up later with only a few bruises and scratches on his body.
In a later interview, the man began to proclaim all the good things he would do with his life. He even made February 25th his new birthday because God had given him a new lease on life. Whatever he said, and I believe whatever he will do in life; he will never insult God, who had given him a second chance.
So powerful is this idea that you cannot insult the Spirit of God, that Jesus tells the story of the man who built a bigger barn to contain all the things he had accumulated, this man had forgotten that every good and perfect gift comes from God.
He thought he had done it by himself, and God says to him, “you fool this day your soul is required of thee in paradise.” The man actions insulted God.
We can never forget that our covenant with God is that he will be our God, and we will be his people.
Furthermore, we cannot forget that God is a jealous God, and His Name cannot be taken in vain.
A critical reading of Scripture would inform us that when Moses encountered God on the mountain. He asked God to reveal himself to him by asking, “What is your name.” God responses by saying, “I am.” I am is written in Hebrew as YHWH. In the mind of the ancients, it was written but never spoken, so that one does not violate the command of taking God’s name in vain. For this reason, I am very careful on how I use God’s name. Like a prominent preacher of our time, I would never use the name of God in combination with any other word. Particularly, a word combination that would cause God’s name to be a subject of ridicule or dispersion.
When translators transcribed that Bible would encounter this word YHWH, they would see written above it the word Elohim. This word was spoken and sung by the Cantor. It was used as a substitute in spoken language because the read word of God YHWH, was never to be spoken. Translators not fully aware of this religious cultural concern combined Elohim and YHWH because they saw them together in their translations to read Jehovah.
My Orthodox Hebrew brothers continue to separate the words and will only use Elohim, and never speak Jehovah or YHWH, because they never wished to incite the rage of a God, who clearly commands not to use his name in vain.
Never forget that God is sovereign. God demands obedience – that’s why scripture will say that obedience is better than sacrifice.
“Trust and Obey for there is no other way to be happy in Jesus than to trust and obey.”
We find many instances where people, powers, and principalities have insulted God.
America for all of its might identifies itself as being founded by God. In God, we trust. However, the truth of the matter is that American really means that it trusts in its economic power, in its military power, in its classism power.
God is shaking the very foundations of man made systems all around the world. Once America believed in a Darwinist premise – that only the strong survived; a kind of survival of the fitness.
America believed in a kind of capitalistic premise that when the 10% of the population controlled of 90% of the wealth. That was a good system.
Purely capitalistic system, when the rich exploit the labor the many, when the rich get richer and the poor, get poorer. That’s a good capitalistic system.
All over the world, that system was promoted – they thought when Marxism failed, they thought when Communism failed, they though that when socialism was confined to third world economies that their concept of capitalism had won.
“Little did they know that truth forever on the scaffle and wrong forever on the throne – yet in the shadows of the dim unknown standest God keeping watch over his own.”
When I was a youth everyone wanted to get a job at Broening Highway the GM plant: they paid well, you had benefits, and you could even get a discount on a Cadillac.
GM was the epitome of a capitalist system.
Who would know that some forty years later you could buy GM stock for the less than $2.00? Who would know that even after receiving billions of dollars in bailout money, GM would be going hat in hand to other countries asking for government assistance because they are broke and may soon file for bankruptcy?
For years the management and leadership were eating off the top of the hog. They consistently looked for ways to cut back on the benefits to workers, while at the same time increasing bonus pay outs to upper level management and its owners.
What was good for GM was good for America.
However, the word of God does not go out void – for as much as ye have done unto the least of these. You have done it unto me.
America now finds itself having to care for the poor, having to look for those who are in need of health insurance; having to provide education opportunities to all children; having to put those who are unemployed back to work – simply to save its economic soul.
Unless it changes it ways, America has insulted God.
This idea of insulting the Holy Spirit means that you will accept the benefits of God’s love; and do not reciprocate with your with your love and allegiance; but with contempt.
The idea exemplified by the old hymn, “give your best to the master give him first place in your heart, consecrate every part.”
Is null and void!
The Power Class in America has gotten so far off track that a few judges in the state of Pennsylvania accepted money from the corporate forces in the prison system to send innocent youth to jail.
They recently went to jail for accepting millions of dollars in kickbacks.
God’s word is true if you would harm a little child it is better that you tie a millstone around your neck and jump into the sea.
Those Judges were insulting God.
The Church community needs to be careful. God has given us the great commission: to go ye therefore into all the world and preach the gospel and at best we are standing on street corners with megaphones, literally not going across the street or around the corner.
The Church community is insulting God.
Some of you, some of us, act as if we pulled ourselves up by our own bootstraps and forget that it is God, who has made us and not we ourselves; we are his people and the sheep of his pasture. In those moments of lapse, when we think that we are self-sufficient - we/you are insulting God!
In this text, we find admonitions that warn us not to sin against the Holy Spirit.
First the writer reminds us that it was the high priest – Jesus the Christ, who has saved us by the blood of his sacrifice on the cross.
Second because of that sacrifice and baptism we are cleansed of an evil conscience and our bodies which is the temple of God is also cleansed.
Third we indicate to us the power of faith in God that is supported by God’s word.
Fourth, he reminds us of the power and responsibility of the church:
1) to engender love for everyone and to enable everyone to be good works
2) to exhort, or encourage, our members to be Christian in all our endeavors.
Fifth, the writer chastises us for sinning when we know better. Because we have a knowledge of truth, we cannot make meaningful gestures to God for forgiveness.
Sixth, he reinforces the idea of judgment.
The writer later states in the text that we should never insult the Holy Spirit because we should have patience in life, and we should do the will of God, knowing that we will receive the promise of God.
Patience in life means that you are willing to endure hardship by living for God.
The promise of God is not he will never leave you or forsake you.
