What would you do if I told you you and your family
were chosen for an “extreme home makeover?” You know how that works on
TV. A family is chosen and their entire house is renovated in one week
while they’re away. They have no idea what the plans are and don’t have a
clue what it will look like when they get back home. But at the reveal,
they are in for a wonderful surprise. Decorators, carpenters,
electricians, and contractors add and renovate rooms to make a brand new
house from the old one complete with all the latest appliances,
electronics, and style all designed to the personal needs and tastes of
each of them who will now live there. Interested? I have a copy of the
application: 17 pages plus a video you send in describing why you deserve
to have your house redone. ABC TV gets 10,000 of these applications a
week. What would you do if you were awakened one morning with the news
that you and your family were chosen for an “extreme home makeover?”
Well, the
Bible says we all sure need one. The church can give one. When the Bible
says you need one it is not talking about real estate. The home makeover
the church can give you is not a house of lumber, pipe, wire, appliances,
and furniture. The Bible speaks of a home. The church is concerned about
the people, not the house. If you listen to the Bible and learn from the
church today you’ll begin to understand what you’re really yearning for
when you wish somebody would wake you up early in the morning to tell you
that you have been chosen for an “extreme home makeover.”
God has always been in
the home makeover business. After all, it was God who built the
neighborhood to begin with! In the beginning life was built exactly to
God’s specifications—designed exclusively for peace, justice, love,
fulfillment, and joy. The problem is we’ve had our own plans, and our
plans are not exactly in keeping with the Master design. We take on our
own projects without consulting the chief architect. And we live with the
results right now. A world designed for peace, justice, love,
fulfillment, and joy has become anything but that, given the world we and
our children find ourselves in every day. God originally placed in the
perfect environment a beautiful human community that now has become so
dysfunctional.
The Bible says we need
an extreme home makeover.
The Bible holds nothing
back in its stark and detailed description of this dysfunctional human
family. Soon after emerging from the paradise of the Garden of Eden
itself the first murder was committed when a man kills his own brother.
Even after God reached out and initiated a relationship with the family of
Abraham they hardly lived the part of people of the promise! Siblings
were so jealous of one another that they sold their own brother
into slavery. Humanity had its own plans. They did not consult the
Master design.
The Bible says they
need an extreme home makeover.
Moses knew that after
he brought the Hebrews out of slavery in
Egypt
. God victoriously delivered them from an oppressive and powerful enemy
and was leading them to a land flowing with milk and honey. On their way
they got thirsty for there was no water for them to drink at their
encampment and started quarreling with Moses, saying,
Why did you bring us out of
Egypt
, to kill us and our children
and livestock with thirst?
(Exodus 17:3b)
Moses cried out to God,
What shall I do with this people? They are about to stone
me?”
(Exodus 17:4)
It was then that God instructed him to go ahead of the people with some of
the elders, take his staff, stand on the rock and strike it. When he did
so, water flowed. God provided as God always does but the people wondered
out loud,
Is the Lord among us or not?
(Exodus 17:7b)
Here they are, the people of God on their way to the Promised Land,
ready for divine formation,
ready to be reshaped and remolded back
into our original shape,
all ready for a divine makeover,
yet they are so dysfunctional they even wonder whether God is even with
them. They accepted the gifts and the grace of deliverance but they
didn’t trust the God who gave it to them.
The Bible says they
need an extreme home makeover.
That’s why God finally
became a human being in the person of Jesus Christ. All along God had
reached out in grace and love, time after time sending judges and prophets
and kings to guide these dysfunctional children. Then Jesus came. Jesus
came to teach us what a home is really all about. He ministered to the
poor and the sick, he ate meals with sinners, he lifted up the downtrodden
and put the privileged in their place. He paid a steep price for it—it
cost him his life. This human family is so dysfunctional we even killed
the Son of God. But in one unbelievably forgiving act of grace God raised
Jesus from the dead and restores all of life to the grandeur and grace of
its origin by the resurrection to all who would believe in him.
The Bible says we need
an extreme home makeover.
The Apostle Paul says it quite clearly:
Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus. (Phil
2:5)
The mind of Christ—the attitude, the disposition, the will, the spirit of
Jesus.What does he mean by this? What does it mean to have the same mind
as Jesus? It is not an especially strange experience to us. It’s
resonating in us when we’re glad to see such a deserving family get a new
house from a TV network. I believe every human being with any heart at
all is very close to the mind of Christ as we find ourselves struck so
deeply by the devastating human tragedy of hurricane Katrina. In the face
of suffering on such a grand scale even the most crass of us find that
gift of God’s Prevenient Grace in us coming to life as we tearfully follow
the news reports or generously respond to the need. Every human being has
at least a spark of that spirit which is reflective of the mind of Christ
in us.
But Paul says,
Let the same mind be in you that was
in Christ Jesus. (Phil 2:5)
Paul desperately wants people of God to be restored to the life created in
us in the beginning.
To have the mind of Christ is to be more than
simply disposed to
compassion in reaction to tragic events.
To have the mind of Christ is to be more than emotionally moved
when a family finally gets the break they truly deserve.
In these experiences we get just a hint of what it is like to have the
mind of Christ in us.
Paul says Jesus
Emptied himself, taking on the form of
a slave..humbled himself
and became obedient.
(Phil. 2:7a, 8a)
The mind of Christ—the
attitude, the disposition, the will, the spirit of Jesus. It’s a way of
life of which most of us only have a fleeting experience.
The Bible says we need
an extreme home makeover.
That television program
is number one in its time slot. I wonder why? Is it because they show
all the latest in household appliances and technology? That’s probably
not it. It is because you can’t wait to see how in the world they are
going to get all that done in seven days? Maybe. I think ABC has a hit
TV series on its hands for another reason: it’s because they help
somebody. They choose a particularly worthy family in need of help. If
you watch the program at all you notice that it’s not really all the
latest household luxury items nor the swiftness of the build that catches
you the most. You watch it because you want to see how the people react.
That’s what gets the ratings. Its not about lumber and framing and
plumbing and lifestyle, it’s about relationship. Except for the fact that
this program is immediately followed by “Desperate Housewives” there might
be some hope for network television! The real drama when they move that
bus out of the way to “reveal” the result is not so much the completion of
the construction—it’s the grateful tears of those who receive such a great
gift and the warmed hearts of those who labored so hard to give it to
them.
If that’s it, if that’s
what an extreme home makeover is really all about, have I got good news
for you today. The church is in the relationship business. The church
knows about home and family. The church strives every day to instill in
you and in me the mind of Christ. And as the Psalmist says,
We will not hide them from our children; we will tell to the
coming generation the glorious deeds of the Lord, and his might,
and the wonders that he has done.
(Ps. 78:4)
And I have more good
news for you. Just about every single family and person called to be
people of God in the Bible turn out to be such whining, complaining
scoundrels! But God saves them anyway.
If all God has had to
work with all along is a bunch of dysfunctional families then I know God
can work with us!
The Bible says we need
an extreme home makeover. The church can give you one.
