let love out 1

Matthew 5: 14-16

"You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven. 

Hello

Hello, my name is Travis and I am “rewound a cassette with a pencil years old.” I think this is a great way to tell you my age because it forms an instant connection with if you’re of the same generation. We know the pain of dialing a phone number with more than one zero. We went through it together! We grew up with three channels, one of which was pbs. You feel my pain...or you don’t. There’s a good chance you could be  “hid under your desk to survive a nuclear attack,” years old. And some of you, (He-man, thundercats, years old people) like me, have kids that say pause when playing tag. When I was a kid! (I hoped I would never say those words, but here I am,) “When I was a kid,” we said, safe, or base, or timeout; we never said pause, because it didn’t exist in that context. Now, I know why, when I tell my kids to stop, they don’t seem to understand. They don’t really know the meaning of the word stop, The spirit of this age speaks a different language, one generation passes away and another takes it place. They step into this world out of the innocents of the garden, though we see the pain and evil of this world: to the pure all things are pure. But their day is coming when they too will be ejected from the garden and a flaming sword will block their re-entrance.

It doesn’t bother me that I am getting older. I’ve watched my oldest boy (9) watching a vcr tape rewind. I said, “Dylan, what are you doing?”  because he was just sitting there watching this movie rewind. I thought maybe he’s scanning the old Disney movies for hidden messages, but He didn’t know... he didn’t know that he could press stop, then rewind, and it would go faster. The idea of winding-up, rewinding, and unwinding is falling out of the intrinsic understanding of this generation. There is no old clock in my house and my watch is my phone. When do we speak of winding in a way that they would understand its meaning? Perhaps baseball and stairs will save our winding words for us, but how shall they understand?

I got my first Walkman for Christmas in 1981, I was 8 years old, and I remember walking into my Grandmothers trailer, headphones blaring Ozzy Osborne's “Blizzard of Oz. I listened to that tape over and over, only “pausing” to take it out, flip it over, and stick it back in. I stood in my Mom-Mom’s living room, where her mom (my great grandmother) Mama, laid bedridden in a hospital bed in the corner of the small room. Mama had suffered several strokes and was paralyzed on the left half of her body. She was picked bushel baskets of tomatoes for a nickel years old. I remember looking at her and thinking, there’s no way she can understand what a Walkman is, not alone headphones. I mean, she was  “wind up” the Victrola if you want to play a record; years old. Four years latter In 1985 Marty McFly would use a Walkman to wake up, George Mcfly, in 1955, dressed as an alien named Darth Vader. Some of you are “don't know what I'm talking about” years old, and that’s OK. The point I’m getting at is this: Technology is changing the way we think.

Elon Musk, believes, “We are most likely in a simulation.” He says, “If you assume any rate of improvement at all, games will eventually be indistinguishable from reality,” Sane, successful, people believe all this “life” could be a program. The real crazy thing, Hebrews 11:3, says, “what is seen is not made out of what is visible. The things which do appear are not made from the things that are.” The things we see; wood, bricks, flesh and blood, bone and sinew, are not made from the things that they are, but this reality is constructed from things unseen. “Through faith we understand that the worlds are framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.”  

The Bible clearly tells us we are to walk by faith and not by sight. So the real challenge before us is to see the unseen. To Fix our eyes on Christ so that we will not grow weary in well doing. To take heed to our life and the word of God, and continue in them, for in doing this you will both save yourself and those who hear you.

Technology helps us to see the meanings of words differently. We can understand how it could be the God spoke everything into existence, but having this understanding doesn’t necessarily bring us closer to God, but closer to thinking we are god. Can we see how spoken language creates code that forms programs. Can we see how the cells of our bodies duplicate themselves by direction. Do you know the only reason we eventually die of old age is because it’s written in our DNA of our cells to stop reproducing at a certain point. Flesh may go this far...but there’s a virus in the programming, do you think that some rich men would give every cent they have to unlock the secret of immortality to rewrite the code. Have you heard of crisper? It's a scientific breakthrough by which though an injection man can rewrite his biological code. 

Some people see the future as the utopian society in which we will reach our greatest achievements, We will overcome the curse and man will no longer have to toil with labor by the sweat of his brow. We will all receive a universal basic income and be happy. Most science fiction writers see the rise of the machines, or 1984, or a brave new world, or the hunger games, or a zombie apocalypse. The vision seems always to be a dystopian society on the verge of self annihilation. Why is it the prophets of this world can only see its destruction? Isn't it something, that none of the Scifi prophets predict  a utopian society that breaks the code and reaches immortality. And if immortality is achieved it’s corrupted and serves only the rich. There’s corruption in the programming.  

There’s a virus. 

One thing I’m sure of, is that we will never achieve immortality. Genesis‬ ‭3:22-24‬ ‭NIV‬‬ says, “And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.”  

I want to 'Pause' here as we reflect that the thing that protects a network from a virus, is a firewall. It’s a wall that divides that network from the larger world and protects itself from malicious software, viruses, etc. We have been separated from the source of eternal life. Between us and the eternal, there was a firewall, a flaming sword, a wall of separation between the holy and the profane, between that which lives forever and that which is a dying ember.