STAND BY ME
LEARNING
DR. JIM DIXON
JOHN 17:15-16
SEPTEMBER 27, 2009
The movie Star Wars is one of the most popular movies ever made, one of the most popular motion pictures ever produced by Hollywood. The movie has been shown all over the world and brought in a massive amount of money. The movie Star Wars was made in the year 1977, 32 years ago: A long, long time ago in galaxy far, far away. It was directed by George Lucas and starred Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher and Alec Guinness. The movie won seven Academy Awards including the Academy Award for Best Musical Score, and I think it’s safe to say that the music from Star Wars has been played by virtually every band all over the world.
Clips from Star Wars have been shown at schools of theology, seminaries, Christian colleges and universities. They’ve been shown at Christian retreat centers and at various seminars. And you might think, well, why? Why would clips from Star Wars be shown, particularly when, quite obviously, the movie Star Wars was influenced by Eastern religious thought, by Buddhism, by pantheism, and by a certain amount of New Age doublespeak? No doubt about that. But you see, there were other dimensions of Star Wars that many Christians can relate to. There was this great struggle between light and darkness. There was this great conflict between good and evil and the universe itself hung in the balance. So much was at stake. Of course, mentoring was critical. What was Obi-Wan Kenobi about? He was about mentoring. What was Yoda about? Yoda was about mentoring. What were Luke Skywalker and Anakin Skywalker about? The failure or the successes of mentoring. All this had to do with a universe that hung in the balance.
Now here we are as Christians and we have a grasp, hopefully, of reality. And we understand that there is a great struggle between light and darkness. There is a great struggle between good and evil, and so much does hang in the balance. Eternity hangs in the balance. Indeed, the cosmos, the universe itself, does hang in the balance. The souls of men, women, and children hang in the balance, and mentoring is absolutely critical, particularly mentoring in learning. We need to be mentored in learning and we need to mentor others in learning. This morning what I’d like us to do is to take, first of all, a look at a lesson from the Old Testament and then more briefly from the New.
From the Old Testament I’d like us to take a look at the relationship of Elijah and Elisha. Perhaps the most famous mentoring relationship of the Old Testament was that of Elijah and Elisha. Some would say Moses and Joshua, but certainly Elijah and Elisha, in the opinion of most, would be the primary mentoring relationship in the Bible. You can go to your Bible later today or tomorrow, sometime this week, and you can start reading 1 Kings—particularly 1 Kings 17:21—and then 2 Kings chapters 1 and 2. You might throw in Chronicles 21 if you want to read about Elijah, this incredible man of God. There were none like Elijah. He was the prophet of God. He raised the dead by the power of God. He was fed by ravens. He called down fire from heaven. He ascended into heaven on a chariot of fire. Elijah, the great prophet of God. Of course, he had his showdown with the prophets of Baal on Mt. Carmel.
Just this last year Barb and I and 200 of you, we traveled together in Israel. We went up to Haifa and northern Israel and then to Mt. Carmel. And up by Mt. Carmel we looked down on the Jezreel Valley, the Valley of Esdraelon. We also stood up there and we saw where this great conflict took place between Elijah the prophet and 450 prophets of the Canaanite deity Baal and 400 prophets of Ashera. So, there was this showdown where each side was to try to call down fire from heaven to consume a sacrifice. And the prophets of Baal built their sacrificial area, their offering area, and then they began to call down fire from heaven. And nothing happened. And Elijah, the great prophet of God, began to have a little fun with this. He began to taunt them just a little bit. He said, “You know, maybe your god is on a trip. Maybe your god is taking a vacation, ” or, “Hey, maybe your god is just deep in thought and so focused on something he can’t hear you,” or, “Maybe your god is asleep. Maybe you need to shout louder. Maybe you need to pray louder.” Of course, they were impotent. No fire descended to consume the sacrifice.
And then Elijah, prophet of God, made his sacrificial area. He took 12 stones representing the 12 tribes of Israel, and then he brought the sacrificial animals. Then he commanded that the offering be flooded with water. And then he commanded that it be flooded again a second time and then a third time. Three times the offering site was flooded and drenched so that it would be very hard to light, and then he called on the power of God. Fire descended from heaven and consumed the sacrifice and consumed the adversaries in a moment of judgment. Elijah, the prophet.
Now, as Elijah was aging it became appropriate for him to mentor another. And Elijah, by the will of God, chose Elisha. He told him that he would pass the mantle of authority to him. You read about this in 2 Kings as you’re reading through chapters 17-21. That began for Elijah 10 years of mentoring Elisha. This was a long process to mentor a prophet of Israel. When Barb and I think of a long process of training like that, we think of our son Drew who went through 4 years of pre-med, and then 4 years of med school, and then 4 years of residency, and now he’s in 2 years of a fellowship. Fourteen years. And Barb and I think to ourselves, when’s he going to make any money? Of course, as we try to help him through all of this, certain things are worth the time, worth the effort, worth the training, and that was true of what it took to become a prophet of God.
So, Elijah began to mentor Elisha and he took Elisha to Gilgal, he took him to Bethel, and took him to Jericho. For many years, Bible scholars and historians wondered why. Why did Elijah take Elisha to the three great cities of Israel, to Bethel, Gilgal, and Jericho? And now today, most scholars believe that these were the great centers of learning—that these were the great centers where the schools of the prophets were—and that’s why Elijah took Elisha there. So, he would have taken him to the schools of the prophets and gone through these years and years of training.
I marvel at this. I marvel at it because as I read the biblical account of Elijah, I see Elijah as a loner. I see Elijah as an introvert and a loner, a guy who really doesn’t like to socialize that much. He can’t stand parties, doesn’t even pursue a lot of deep relationships other than his relationship vertically with God. He’s just this loner and he loved to be out in nature and he loved to be free. I think, I really do believe, the last thing Elijah would have chosen to do would be mentor another human being for 10 years. But you see, the call of God was upon him and the will of God was clear. So, he did it reluctantly. He poured his life into Elisha reluctantly, by the will of God, for the sake of God, and I think sometimes that’s what mentoring is about.
I think sometimes we mentor reluctantly. Kind of like Jonah was a reluctant prophet. You read the book of Jonah and God told Jonah to go and prophesy to Nineveh and he didn’t want to do it. He ran the other way. A reluctant prophet. And God understands people. God understands that some of you might be reluctant to minister. You might be reluctant to mentor. You might be reluctant to volunteer, and he wants you anyway. He knows you’re busy. You’ve got many things in your life. He knows you’re tired. He wants you.
And so, this call is upon the people of God to seek mentoring and to indeed to be a mentor. You can wonder, “Well, what did Elijah teach Elisha? What happened at Gilgal and at Bethel and at Jericho in those schools of the prophets? What did they teach Elisha?” We don’t know for sure, but it’s likely that there was great emphasis placed on the oppression of the poor because all of the prophets in the midst of their training and indeed in the midst of their listening understood God’s burden for the poor and the obligations that were placed upon the wealthy not to oppress the poor. As you read through the major and minor prophets of the Bible, you see that consistent warning, that consistent message not to oppress the poor and to remind the masses to treat the poor with compassion. Surely that was part of Elisha’s training.
There had to be a great deal of time put into the study of apostasy and idolatry, which was a horrible problem in the ancient world and is a horrible problem in this world. The Bible tells us the Lord our God is a jealous God. And the Bible tells us the Lord our God says to the world, “Thou shalt have no other gods besides me.” Even in biblical times there existed, as they exist today, pluralism and syncretism where people try to combine different religions and try to combine different gods, and God says no. So, constantly you see amongst the prophets of Israel saying, “You shall worship no other gods. You cannot combine religions. You worship me alone.” Of course, that would have been part of Elisha’s training.
And then there would have been a vast amount of time put into training in the law. There is no question they would have focused on Torah. They would have focused on the Pentateuch. They would have focused on the five books of Moses, and they would have examined the law. Now, the law is very complex, the Jewish law. It is very complex and it would have been required of him that he understood all of it. So, he would have understood the ceremonial law. And the ceremonial law was law given by God to a particular people for a particular time. So, the ceremonial law was law given by God to the Jewish people for a particular period of time.
Scholars debate what would be included within the ceremonial law, but it has scope, and perhaps everything from the laws of the sacrificial system to purification rites and even Levitical dietary laws would all be part of ceremonial law given by God to a particular people for a particular period of time. The ceremonial laws are repealed in the New Testament, but they were still given by God to a particular people for a particular time. Then they would have discussed civil law and of course for the Jewish people, civil law was summed up in Exodus 21, in the Lex Talionis, in the Law of Retribution. So, a life for a life, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a hand for a hand, a foot for a foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe; that is the Lex Talionis. The Lex Talionis, that expression of the Jewish civil law, was tempered by our Lord Jesus Christ beginning in the Sermon on the Mount.
But what was most important in terms of law was the moral law, which centered on the Decalogue and was expanded throughout the Torah. The moral law would have been at the heart of the instruction Elisha received from Elijah the prophet. The moral law was not given to a particular people for a particular time; it was given to all people for all time. Elisha would have understood this. Elijah would have said this and taught this. The moral law was given to all people for all time. They would have discussed various components of the moral law. They would have looked at the moral law in terms of property rights, in terms of ownership, in terms of theft, in terms of robbery, in terms of stealing and what the moral law requires in terms of the right treatment of people. It would have looked at the moral law in terms of relationship obligations—in terms of how to treat your neighbor, in terms of how to treat your spouse, in terms of marital fidelity.
They would have looked at laws concerning sexual conduct and sexual behavior because the prophets of Israel had to know all of these things and they needed to understand the will of God that was given to all people for all time. So, they would have looked at the purpose of sexual behavior, the purpose of this wonderful gift called sex. Elijah would have explained to Elisha that this gift was given for marriage. The two shall become one. It’s not simply a summation of marriage but even the sexual component of marriage, because as a man and a woman relate to each other in terms of this gift of sexuality. It’s the highest expression of marriage on this physical level, in terms of physical bonding. So, this is a great gift of God and whenever human sexuality is taken outside of the context of marriage, it’s tainted, and it’s cheapened and it’s sin.
Instructions would have been given regarding fornication, that sex prior to marriage is condemned by God and this is for all people for all time. Today we have different messages from the culture. Most people of our culture view sex as recreational. Most people of our culture view sex as just a way of having a little fun or getting a little high. Or they view it as a way of expressing love for someone you care about, but they don’t tie it necessarily to marriage because our culture has changed. Even in the churches people are changing. We hear from you and there are some of you who are not married but are having sex and unabashedly. But understand, the moral law does not change. The moral law was given for all people for all time. Jesus takes the moral law deeper because Jesus says that sexual immorality begins in the heart. They would have looked at marriage in terms of sexual conduct and they would have talked about adultery and how adultery was a sin in God’s sight and oh-so serious for society and for God’s people.
And they would have looked also at homosexuality. In the moral law, both in the Old Testament and in the New Testament, you see the teaching that God forbids the practice of homosexual conduct and behavior. That’s in the moral code of the Old and the New Testament because it’s given to all people for all time. I know this is not palatable to many of you, or perhaps to some of you, and it certainly does not represent cultural values or cultural mores, but it is the moral law. I’m a pastor. I’m not called to popularity. I’m not called to political correctness. I am called to the Word of God. This is the Word of God and it’s timeless. God calls us to love, and Jesus teaches us that the moral law is summed up in love. So often, in times past and in times present, the church of Jesus Christ has forgotten to speak the truth in love. There’s a difference between speaking the truth in love and just speaking the truth. You can speak the truth in arrogance. You can speak the truth with self-righteousness. You can speak the truth in pride. But we’re called to speak the truth in love.
This is a very tough subject, isn’t it? I’m sure some of you feel sorry for me that I’m up here and maybe others of you not so much. I don’t know how many of you have heard of Dr. Jeffrey Satinover. Dr. Jeffrey Satinover is a brilliant man. I think Dr. Jeffrey Satinover is certainly a genius of high order. Dr. Jeffrey Satinover was interviewed recently by World Magazine. He’s written a number of books. He’s a brilliant man, a graduate of MIT, but also degreed from Harvard, degreed from Yale, degreed from the University of Nice in France. This man has high advanced degrees in physics, he is a medical doctor, he is a psychiatrist. He’s scary. Now he’s written a book, and the book is called Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth. And in that book, he argues that there is no genetic mandate for homosexual orientation. He says, in fact, you can look at all the studies ever conducted scientifically, all the studies conducted medically, and simply it is true. There is no genetic mandate for homosexuality. There is slight evidence of small influence in some cases. He says the overwhelming evidence, the preponderance of weight, is on the side of nurture—that our sexual orientation is affected by points of trauma in life, by life experiences, and even by life choices.
Now, I don’t know. I know this is a complex subject and to me, in my mind, the issue really isn’t whether it’s nature or nurture. That’s really not the issue because the Bible says even nature is messed up. Sin has corrupted the world. We’re all fallen and even our genetics are messed up, and so, we all struggle with all kinds of stuff. Some people are genetically predisposed towards alcoholism. I suppose anybody could become an alcoholic, but some people are genetically predisposed, and the influence is significant. Some people are genetically predisposed to rage and the mismanagement of temper and just the way their biochemistry of the brain works, it’s hard for them. Many, many studies have shown this. So, compassion is the order of the day, right? I mean, we all need compassion and I think everybody wants to be loved. I think heterosexuals want to be loved, homosexuals want to be loved, scientists want to be loved. Many scientists will not reveal or proclaim the truth they discovered because they know it will be politically incorrect and they will not be loved—in fact, they might be hated. So, this is the world in which we live. And remember, we’re called to love each other. But also, we are called to the moral truth for all people, for all time, no matter what the cost.
Well, I want to give a little look to a New Testament story, and I know our time is brief. This is the New Testament mentoring relationship of Paul and Timothy. In my view, there is no mentor in the New Testament more incredible than Paul. Chosen by the hand of Jesus for the purposes of Christ, he was chosen on the Damascus Road as Christ appeared to him in power. And Paul had that radical conversion experience. Jesus knew what he was doing. There are some people that think, “Paul wasn’t really a mentor. Barnabas maybe was a mentor.” Believe me, as you go through the New Testament, the most incredible primary mentor is Paul, and he was chosen by Christ as an apostle chosen to build the church. He was chosen by Christ to plant churches. He was chosen by Christ to train leaders in the Christian world that shaped the Church’s theology.
What an amazing choice. It wasn’t some kind of an accident. Jesus knew exactly what he was doing when he came in power on the Damascus Road, and it wasn’t just coincidence that Paul was there. He had chosen him. He knew all about him. Now Paul was an incredible man because he was Jewish and he was a prominent Jew. He was of the tribe of Benjamin, and he knew his Jewish bloodlines and he was proud of them. He was educated in the Jewish schools, Bet Sefer, the House of the Books. All Hebrew males had to go through Bet Sefer, the House of the books, but very few went on. Paul would have gone on to Bet Talmud and the Bet Midrash. He would have memorized the Torah. He was a scholar.
And then we’re told an amazing thing in the Bible: We’re told that Paul was educated at the feet of Gamaliel. Gamaliel was the most prominent scholar/theologian in Israel and Paul was educated at his feet. This was a Jew of incredible training and of course he was a Pharisee, so he was of the highest religious order and he was, according to some Bible scholars, a member of the Sanhedrin, although that cannot be proven. Paul was a prominent Jew. He came from a prominent Jewish family. He was not just a Jew, he was a Roman. This is what made him so incredible: He was a Roman and was born a Roman citizen, which means either his parents or perhaps even his grandparents were Roman citizens before him.
Now, scholars have tried to trace the history of Paul and his family, and they’re not sure. Many scholars believe that Paul’s family came from Galilee in the first century before Christ and that Paul’s family, in about the year 65 BC, journeyed from Galilee to Asia Minor and to the province of Cilicia and to the city of Tarsus. This would have been when the Roman Empire had conquered Palestine and the Jewish world. When Pompey and his Roman armies came into Israel in 63 BC that would have been the time when Paul’s family left Galilee and went to other parts of the Roman world since now Israel was included in that greater Roman world.
So, Paul’s family, it seems very evident, were part of the Skenopoioi. Skenopoioi were those special people that worked in leather products and those people who worked with cilicium. Cilicium was indigenous to Cilicia and it was used to make tents and it was used to make sails for the great ships. Paul’s family were masters at working with these materials and that’s why many historians believe Paul’s family was granted Roman status and Roman citizenship. They helped make the sails for the Roman navy and for the shipping vessels and they helped make the tents for the Roman armies, so they were granted Roman citizenship. We don’t know for sure. We do know that the power of the imperium, the power to grant Roman citizenship, was only given to generals and we know that at the time Paul’s family would have moved to Cilicia, Pompey and Antony were both in that region. So it may be that Pompey and Antony, one or the other, granted Roman citizenship to Paul’s family.
This is an unusual man, and he knew the Lex Valeria, he knew the rights of citizenship and Roman law, and he appealed to those rights many times. Many times, he said, “Civis Romanus sum,” “I am a Roman citizen,” and he was granted Roman rights. He ultimately, as you know, made his appeal to Caesar. So, here was an amazing man who could operate in the Jewish world and could operate in the gentile and Roman worlds, a man who was multi-lingual, a man who had a vast education. This is who Jesus chose to help shape the theology of the Church and to be an apostle, this amazing man.
Paul wound up mentoring many. You go through your Bible you see Paul mentoring Mark, mentoring Barnabas, mentoring Silas, mentoring Luke. But Paul didn’t just mentor men, Paul also mentored women. So you see Paul’s friendship with Prisca (or Priscilla) and with Euodia and Syntyche, who he calls his partners in the gospel, his partners in the ministry, and his fellow and co-workers. Paul worked with women in a mentoring role as well.
We see Paul’s very special mentoring relationship with Timothy in our passage of Scripture for today. As Paul says to Timothy, the verb is “to observe,” and it’s the key word in this whole section, but it modifies many other words. “So, you have observed my teaching, you have observed my conduct, you have observed my aim in life, you have observed my purpose. You have observed my faith. You have observed my patience. You have observed my love. You have observed my steadfastness. You have observed my persecutions. You have observed my sufferings. You have observed what befell me in Antioch, Iconium, at Lystra… ” So, Paul is describing his mentoring relationship.
I would just say this to you, because our time is up. Who are you observing? Who is teaching you? Who is mentoring you in learning? You say, “Well, I come to church on Sunday mornings,” and that’s well and good because the Bible says, “Forsake not the assembling of yourselves together,” and this is the assembly, the ecclesia. And here we are. And it’s good that you come on the Lord’s Day and that you try to come every Lord’s Day and that we come for singing and that we come for prayer and that we come for sacraments and that we come for the proclamation of the Word. So, there is a mentoring role here. But we have mentoring roles in this church. We have adult education classes available to all of you. We have Midpoint services Wednesday nights, and they meet in the chapel and are preceded by dinner. We have a wonderful men’s Bible study, Tuesday morning; a women’s Bible study, Wednesday morning; and other men’s and women’s Bible studies during the week. We have small group mentoring opportunities, and of course there are mentoring opportunities in the parachurch. I’m on the board of Colorado Christian University. We offer classes to adults of all ages, and you can come. There are mentoring possibilities for young people at Valor across the street, where I’m privileged to be on the board. There are mentoring opportunities through our Cherry Hills Christian Schools. There is mentoring in our Sunday school. The Church of Jesus Christ is called to offer mentoring. And you may need a personal mentor, or you might be willing to be a personal mentor. We offer those opportunities.
And who are you teaching? It’s not just who is teaching you, it’s who are you teaching? So much is at stake, because we need to prepare the next generation and we need to prepare the generation after that. There is a great battle going on. So, we need you in the Sunday school. We’ve told you that it takes a thousand volunteers to run our Sunday school. I know that sounds crazy, but it’s true. To run all of our children’s programs and our youth program, it takes a thousand volunteers working. And so many of them are mentors, but we train you.
And oh, we need you to mentor a child. We’re low on volunteers right now. This is a hard time for churches everywhere because people are pulling back on their financial giving, and they are also pulling back on the giving of their time. This cannot be, so we need you. We need mentors in the inner city in our Whiz Kids program where you can tutor an inner-city child, a child who doesn’t have a lot of material blessings that you have, perhaps. It might be a Hispanic child, it might be an African American child, and God loves them. You can help them. You can mentor them through our church and through Whiz Kids, or through Save Our Youth. And again, we’ll train you. We partner with inner city churches who are our friends and believe me, you’ll get the blessing if you’ll be willing to even be a reluctant volunteer.
We need mentors in Friends in Transition, which is our prison ministry and with prisoners’ families. We need small group leaders. We have our ROP ministry, Restoration Outreach Programs, with Kent Scroggs who is an elder in our church and he heads up these ministries Prodigal Coffee House and the Club House on Colfax to kids and teens. We need mentors desperately. The cause is so great it’s like an ocean, so just grab a bucket. Just grab a bucket. So, this is the call of God upon his people. It always has been. It was in the Old Testament. It is in the New Testament. It is now. It’s the call of God upon his people.
I know you’re busy and it seems like so many people I talk to say, “I’m not only busy, but I’m also tired.” I hear that. I understand. I know that when you have some free time you like to watch a little TV. I’m not against TV. I think it’s an amazing invention, but you’ve got to carve some time out for the cause of heaven. I’m not against movies. I think I’ve demonstrated that. But you’ve got to carve some time out, don’t you? I love sports. I know the Broncos play Oakland today. I know the Rockies have a critical game with St. Louis. I love sports, but you’ve got to carve some time out for the cause of heaven, for the cause of Christ. You’ve got to make that decision that you are going to help, you’re going to be part of the solution, you are going to be light in the darkness, you’re going to be salt in the corruption. This is the will of Christ. We do have in the lobby tables where you can find out more about how you could volunteer. Let’s close with a word of prayer.