Oakbrook Evangelical Free Church

How did we get here? I drove up route 41 to the Algoma exit–but is that a complete answer? How did a religion started two thousand–or maybe even four thousand–years ago in the middle east get to the middle of North America? And how did we get to be a Free Church? Why do we all have our own copies of the Bible in a language that we can read? If somebody’s last name is Smith–for example–he probably has an ancestor who nailed shoes onto horses. If his last name is Kovács, his ancestor did the same–in Hungary. If somebody’s first name is John, say, or Mary–those are Hebrew names; how did that happen?

We live in a town named for an Indian chief–not the overalls, as I first suspected, and in a county named for an Indian tribe, not a recreational vehicle. Some pretty unusual coincidences had to happen to make all those things part of our everyday world. My mom is fond of saying how strange and wonderful it is that she, who was born in Round Lake, Illinois, ever got to meet my dad, who was born in Hamburg, Germany. Coincidences–or maybe part of God’s plan. She also told me that she had an uncle, or maybe a great uncle, who told the little kids how he lied about his age in order to fight in the civil war, and he always made them feel the bump in his arm where a confederate bullet had lodged long ago. That’s history, something that is close to the surface.

I don’t carry a bullet in my arm, but I did once find an old piece of brass, about 30 calibre, that’s 762 NATO, deep in the Negev desert of Israel–and a few feet away, a flint knife, several thousand years older. And hey, the sole of a boot of Egyptian issue. When those guys run away they run away fast! And you can find Indian arrowheads right around here. History–close to the surface.

How far back do we have to go to find out how we got this way? We can always start with Genesis 1:1 because our history is set down in the Bible. That’s my text for today’s sermon: the Bible–Genesis through Revelation. I won’t read all of the text. You’ve heard of the Walk through the Bible; this will be a run through the Bible. Through most of it anyway, because the Book of Revelation isn’t over yet, but you can always read to the end of it and find out who wins. I’ll give the answer away: God wins. Although at times it might seem close.

The Bible covers four thousand years of history. The prophecies of Revelation carry the story up to today (that’s another two thousand years) and even our future. That’s a long time and let’s just try to hit the high points. Let’s take it two thousand years at a time, and let’s go fast.

The first two thousand years covers the first eleven chapters of Genesis, and it won’t take us long to cover. God creates the universe and he says that it is very good. And God is not an easy grader. And Adam and Eve are given one task, take care of the garden, and what could be easier; there are no weeds, no trash to pick up–there are no tourists. And just one rule that they have to obey; don’t eat from the tree in the middle of the garden. I don’t know if they broke that rule right away, but I don’t think they waited long. We humans have fallen and we can’t get up.

One bite of fruit is all it took. And the next thing you know brother is killing brother. Humans are just not working out, so God sends a flood. A remnant is saved, Noah and his family. Once the flood is over, Noah figures it’s Miller time. Before long, Noah’s descendants are building a tower to reach the sky. Of course this doesn’t work, and we end up with a world where nations can’t talk to each other. Two thousand years that very effectively demonstrates that human beings aren’t very good at getting along with each other, much less getting along with God.

The second two thousand years tells the story of God’s plan to bring people back to him, and will take a little longer to tell. But not too long I hope. Because you all know the story anyway. Genesis chapter twelve; God summons Abraham. Abraham begets Isaac, Isaac begets Jacob, Jacob begets Joseph and his brothers. There is a famine in Israel, so the family goes to Egypt to see if they can score some food. Good news! It turns out they actually know somebody who is a powerful man in the Egyptian government! Bad news! The important guy is the brother they sold into slavery! He doesn’t hold a grudge though, even if he does play a few mind games on his brothers. And he says, in Genesis 50′20 “You meant it for evil but God meant it for good.”

Now of course the Bible is full of verses that can be thought of as summing up the whole of God’s message in just a few words; this is just one of them. That’s what humans do, we do evil deeds but God turns that around on us. Or, more often, we try to do something good, and that doesn’t work either. Maybe we can sum that verse up in just two words: BUT GOD… The history of the human race on a bumper sticker.

So God meant it for good, and the family of Abraham did not die out in the famine. It doesn’t end there, a nice happy ending. History is a roller coaster. Now the bible skips completely over a space of about 400 years. A good long gap in the narrative; no prophecies, no miracles, just the long miserable life of a nation of slaves, a story not worth telling. People must have thought that God had abandoned them. Sometimes we pray for something and don’t see any results for a few days, or a few years… can you imagine praying for something and not getting an answer for four centuries?

The answer is worth waiting for though–400 years… and then Passover. A baby was born at about the 320-year point, Moses. And I bet his mom and his sister told him long stories about what God had done for his people many many centuries ago. And God sent Moses to Pharaoh. And led the people out of slavery. And he received the ten commandments. And they wandered in the wilderness for forty years. After that 400 year gap that should have seemed like a walk in the park.

Moses, a hundred and twenty years old, didn’t get into the promised land. His successor, Joshua, did. And guess what? The promised land is already inhabited and Joshua has to fight to gain control of it. Joshua did not name a successor and the result is the book of Judges. A simple formula: the people turn away from God, the Phillistines, or somebody else just as bad, starts to give them a bad time, a Judge arises and saves the day. The people turn back to God for a while, and then it starts all over again. Turn away, bad stuff happens, here comes the judge, we won, praise God, hallelujah, let’s turn away again.

And in the meantime, Ruth (A gentile girl) marries Boaz (whose mother was a gentile) and becomes the great grandmother of King David.

Israel has three great kings, Saul, who really wasn’t all that great, and David (who was certainly a lot greater) but did not get to build the temple, but did get to write most of the psalms, and his kid Solomon, who did build the temple, and somehow found the time to write among other things, the book of Proverbs, which he should have called it “Do What I say, Not What I Do”.

Three Kings, and then Two Kingdoms. When Solomon died the land split into two kingdoms, a north and a south. And after Solomon, the quality of kings was way down. But prophets were up. The northern kingdom was conquered by Assyria and was not heard of again. The prophets warned the people about this, but who listens? So then there was one kingdom, which lasted until they were conquered by the Babylonians. And now there is no kingdom, just some people living in exile. Shortly before this there had been a religious reform movement: you can’t just sacrifice anything to any god you feel like sacrificing to, you can only do it according to God’s own laws and you can only sacrifice in the temple in Jerusalem, not just on any handy hilltop. And now the temple is gone. And the prophets in exile did a surprising thing (with God’s help): they invented the synagogue.

And then Cyrus of Persia defeated the Babylonians and allowed the Jews to go back to the promised land and rebuild it. The Jewish text of the old testament ends with Cyrus’s proclamation, “whoever there is of God’s people, let him go up.” Jews still speak of going back to Israel as “going up”.

Our own text of the old testament ends instead with the book of Malachi. This book ends with the prophecy that before the end times God will send his prophet Elijah. Elijah is described in Second Kings 1′8 as being a hairy man with a leather belt. Mark, usually thought of as the first gospel to be written down describes John the Baptist as wearing a camel’s hair coat with a leather belt. (Mark 1′6). Hairy coat, hairy man, close enough. And we think, well, that didn’t take long. Elijah’s going to come back, turn a couple of pages and there he is. But remember the 400 year gap between verse 7 and 8 of Exodus 1? Here comes that gap again.

Fortunately we have some other sources outside the bible to fill in the parts of the story that happened between the testaments, unlike the four centuries in Egypt where we really don’t know anything. The Old Testament is all written and completed by about 400 bc. At about that time the Greek philospher Socrates was given poison to drink. His follower Plato took really good notes so we know what Socrates had to say. Plato’s most famous follower was Aristotle, another famous philosopher. Aristotle’s most famous pupil was Alexander the great who did not go into the philosophy business but decided instead to conquer the world, which he did, and then died. Greek language and culture spread throughout the mediterranean world. And anybody who wanted to do business on an international level had to use Greek to get along. One result of this was that the Jews, who had become unfamiliar with Hebrew since the exile, translated the Old Testament into a Greek version called the Septuagint, and now everybody in the known world, even the gentiles, could read God’s word. That was a good thing, everybody having access to a common language, but Alexander’s successor who was running the Israel part of the empire thought that one common religion would be a good thing too–except that the universal religion wouldn’t be Judaism, but the worship of the Greek gods.

The Greeks tore down the symbols of worship of the one true God and put up pagan images instead and insisted that the Jews should cooperate. Some people didn’t have a problem with that, but not Judah Maccabee and his brothers. They fought against the Greeks, and miraculously they won, and they rededicated the profaned temple. That was the miracle of Hanukkah, which we don’t read about in our bibles, nor do we find it in the Jewish scriptures, but only in the books of the Apocrypha. Can you imagine Jesus being born into a land that had forgotten God and now worshipped Zeus? God did not let that happen.

And after freeing the land from the alien oppressor once again, the Jews were in command of their own destiny, in their own land, and unfortunately it didn’t last. The new dynasty wasn’t successful, and then Rome took over with little resistance.

Four hundred years ago the language of the bible was Hebrew and the world was run by the Persians. And now everybody speaks Greek and the world is run by Rome. Those four hundred years were a preparation for what was to come next.

Four hundred years of slavery in Egypt–and then Passover.

Four hundred years of biblical silence–and then Christmas.

The New Testament story only covers one century, but it’s the most important century in the history of the world. Jesus Christ is born, grows to manhood, chooses his disciples, preaches, and performs miracles. He is crucified, dies, is buried, rises from the dead. The story of the Christian church begins. This is the era that I call the time of the apostles and epistles. Apostles to spread the word and epistles to explain it. The word is spread. The church is on its way.

But the New Testament is not over yet. There’s still one more book: Revelation. Since the second coming is part of that book it’s still going on, and we are in it. As prophecy it’s accurate so far: yes, we have wars and earthquakes and famines, so we know it’s accurate in what is still to come. I thought I found a mistake in Rev. 6′6–the price of oil will not go up–? But actually that verse is about olive oil. So there are no mistakes.

Christianity began as a small and persecuted group and it grew and flourished in spite of that persecution– some would say it flourished because of persecution. Before long there were Christian communities throughout the Roman Empire, and as far away as Ethiopia, and on its way to India too. Early in the fourth century the emperor Constantine made Christianity legal in the empire. There must have been many people who saw this as the ultimate triumph–we won, praise God, Hallelujah. But when the world accepts Christianity there is a tendency for Christianity to accept the world. We can get complacent, just like the people in the book of Judges.

But Christianity was on the map now and no longer just an obscure little Jewish sect. So powerful in fact that when rome’s political and military power collapsed, the Roman church remained a uniting influence. At the end of the fourth century with Rome’s power pretty much gone, the eastern half of the empire still had a thousand years to go. The western half, speaking Latin but not Greek, needed the bible in their own language, which St. Jerome supplied.

With Rome’s power gone, the western lands were on their own, and feudalism filled the power vacuum. If such a person as King Arthur existed, he was a part of that. Europe was held together by their common faith and the universal language of latin. Our European ancestors were converted in a way that seems foreign to us: missionaries started by converting the local king or prince thereby making all of his subjects automatically Christian, though it took a couple of generations before that faith trickled down to the ordinary citizens. Our ancestors were savages, barbarians, pagans, and only the word of God brought them out of that.

There were enemies everywhere, Vikings and Mongols and Huns, and terror raids were commonplace. Then an even greater enemy appeared–Islam. They exploded out of the Arabian peninsula and almost conquered the world. The seven churches of Revelation were swallowed up in their advance. They got far into Europe before being stopped, and hung on to Spain for centuries. These are the sons of Ishmael and they are still around.

Monasteries in Europe helped to preserve God’s word in a time of chaos. It’s hard to tell how strong religious faith was in those days among the common folk. Partial understanding was mixed with superstition, and the year one thousand was approaching–could it be the end of the world?

As it turned out, it wasn’t. But the year Y1K and thereabouts brought many changes. The vikings settled down and gave up raiding, in fact they sent missionaries to the Ukraine. Missionary work continued both from Rome and from Byzantium–illiterate tribes were given the bible in their own languages, and literacy. Countries like Russia were visited by missionaries from Byzantium and were given a modified Greek alphabet and became eastern orthodox. Countries like Poland were evangelized from Rome, learned to use the Roman alphabet, and became Catholic. The Serbs and the Croats are still fighting each other over which alphabet to use–among other things.

In 1054 the eastern and western halves of the church formally split over what seems to us to be a trivial point of theology, and in 1066 William the Conqueror invaded England. The Normans were actually the “north-men”, Scandinavians who took over a part of France called Normandy, a few centuries before D-Day, learned to speak French and then imposed that language on their new subjects. Sir Walter Scott observed that the peasants of England called pigs by the anglo-saxon word swine when they were working among them but once the pig was prepared for the master’s table it was now called, in French, pork. Soon enough the two languages merged into what we now know as English–a recent addition to the languages of the world, but of minor importance, only spoken by some unimportant people on an isolated island.

The first English writer to produce a literary masterpiece in the new language was Geoffrey Chaucer, who lived at the same time as John Wycliffe, who translated the bible into English. We know of the troubles that modern bible translators suffer when they go to a primitive tribe to give them God’s word–but in those days an Englishman who translated the bible into English, in England, was risking his life.

And then a German named Gutenberg invented the printing press. Bibles were suddenly affordable. Imagine if you had to spend a few thousand dollars to own your own bible, and then it was in a language you couldn’t read. All of that was changing. In 1492, besides being the year that Columbus sailed the ocean blue, Spain finally managed to kick out the last of the Islamic conquerers.

The modern world is taking shape. Martin Luther translated the Bible into German and started the protestant reformation, and Henry VIII invented the Anglican church. Still, nobody was free to follow his own conscience and worship God in his own way; if you lived in a protestant country you could be a protestant, in a catholic country you could be a catholic, or you could get into a whole lot of trouble.

A lot of people wanted to be free. If your ancestors came over on the Mayflower they were among those who thought that the Anglican church wasn’t quite protestant enough. King James of England felt that his country needed a Bible that everyone could accept. And if you didn’t, watch out. The translation was done by a committee and it may be the only time that a committee created a literary masterpiece. The pilgrims didn’t like a new-fangled translation and they stuck to the old Geneva translation, which was approved by John Calvin after all. At the same time, William Shakespeare wrote his plays.

Now England was Anglican and it wasn’t safe to be anything else. Catholics wanted to take it back, and a Guy named Fawkes plotted to blow up the houses of parliament and the whole english government. It didn’t succeed, and it turned popular feeling violently against Catholics. England still remembers 11-5 the same way we remember 9-11.

The Pilgrims in the New World were the beginning of America, a colony for another century and a half. We fought for our independence and won it. And here was a new thing: America was to be a country where more than one religion would be allowed–a novel idea. Freedom of Religion. John Wesley’s non-violent revolution brought the Methodist church into existence. The French revolution followed a different agenda and became more a freedom from religion instead of freedom of religion.

The industrial revolution, a revolution of invention and technology, went a long way toward freeing the lower classes from drudgery. There were slaves in America, and elsewhere, and religious people both opposed and justified slavery, using different passages in the Bible, but it was only when slavery stopped making economic sense that it could come to an end. Not without a fight. And not without splitting denominations over the issue. It’s not to our credit that we ended slavery–other nations had already done so. And in some parts of the world it still exists.

We enter the 20th century. Feudalism, which made sense in Europe in the power vacuum left by Rome, was on its last legs, cumbersome, old-fashioned, unfair, but it wouldn’t just go away. A Yugoslavian anarchist triggered the first world war–only it wasn’t called that. It was going to be the war to end war and instead it was the first of a series and we had to give it a roman numeral. Anti-feudalists (and anti-capitalists) started a revolution in Russia with the stated purpose of bringing justice to the workingman, but the workingman in Russia only changed masters.

Social justice was still a goal to some more reasonable people, and worked better when it was done in a Christian spirit. The first sunday schools for example were just that, a school, on sunday, that taught the children of the lower classes how to read and write. These were children who had to work instead of going to school, and education was meant to free them from economic hardship–without shooting the capitalists. The so-called social gospel is still strong, churches that provide homeless shelters and soup kitchens, but sometimes it wasn’t an evangelistic tool to preach the word, but instead became an end in itself, and got too mixed up with marxism and darwinism. This alarmed some Christians. We need to go back to the fundamentals of our faith, they said, and there was a book, “The Fundamentals”–wonderful, except when people used that idea to withdraw from what they saw as a Godless society. The other extreme was the liberal notion that anybody can believe in anything because it doesn’t really matter what you believe as long as you are sincere.

Sometimes we do evil and God means it for good, more often, I think, we do good, or hope to, and mess it up and God has to clean up after us. True evil is rare, but almost halfway through the 20th century, true evil did arise. The Germans, whose distant ancestors were savages until they were converted to Christianity, sloughed off that thin veneer of civilization. The second world war, and the Holocaust, are still fresh reminders of what actually evil people are capable of. But out of that there came the establishment of the modern state of Israel. The 60th anniversary of that will be coming up in less than two years, and I am sure that God is still on the side of his people. The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered. In case anybody thought that our bible was a document that had been copied and re-copied until it was full of errors could now see a complete scroll of Isaiah, for example, two thousand years old, more ancient than any copy we previously had, and it differed only in one letter, that didn’t even change the sense of it. Proof that God had kept his word intact. And in 1950, the Swedish E-Free church and the Danish-Norwegian E-free church, joined to form the Evangelical Free Church, and that’s us.

The wars with the roman numerals were over, but not war itself. It just became too complicated to keep track of, otherwise we’d have things like WWII.a, or WWIII part one. Just as the Bible tells us, there will be wars and rumors of war. And I might add, wars that don’t even rate a rumor, wars that happen on the edges of the world between people we never heard of and for reasons we can’t understand. There are still earthquakes and famines. There are tsunamis, a word that the author of Revelation never heard of.

We are still living within God’s plan; He still has work for us to do. Six thousand years of history has formed us as a nation and as a church. Some of us look at the world the way it is and think that these must be the end times, but I think that it has always looked that way. We have a church to build and people to reach. We are being tested, we ourselves less than others. We have people who want to get rid of the crosses on our watertowers or municipal letterheads. Some people are being jailed or murdered for their faith.

Some very unlikely events have worked together to bring us to this place. The odds against some of these events happening goes beyond coincidence–they can only be explained by calling them God’s will. Right here in Oshkosh we are enjoying peace and prosperity that most of the world can’t even imagine. God has given us a wonderful life–but not just so we can relax and enjoy it. Jesus said in John 14′12: “…anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these…”

Greater things than Jesus? He fed 5000. We need to feed 5 billion. He cured lepers. We can eliminate leprosy. He preached to thousands, we can preach to millions. Our European ancestors were converted to Christianity a thousand years ago. And yet we are still sending missionaries to Europe, as well as to Africa and Asia, because the need is still there. And did you know that the Nigerians are sending missionaries to the USA? The need is still here. We’ll continue to reach out, not just us, but the whole Christian world. We can and we must. Only God can turn evil into good, but He will use us.

Can we do it all by ourselves? No–we have six thousand years that prove otherwise. Can we just kick back and let God do it all by himself? Not exactly, because God has given us tasks as part of his plan.

We need to know God’s will. If that were easy, we would have done it already. If we know God’s will, He will give us the ability to do it. I think the most important thing, the most amazing thing, is that he also gives us the ability to want to do it.

We pray that God will be with us as we leave this place and go out into the world–whether we travel on route 41 or some other road, help us to remember that we are still on the road to Jericho, still on the road to Emmaus, still on the road to Damascus.