Andrew Murray
And God Created Woman
Difference between Anabaptists and Evangelicals
Mysteries of the Kingdom of God
Anabaptist
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The Anabaptist Voice
12/17/2008
Proclaiming the Good News of the Kingdom of God: Love, Joy and Peace in
Jesus.
Dear friend,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Is
it cold where you are? We are a bit cold, but not freezing. The leaves on some
bushes in our backyard have became a beautiful red, and we are enjoying the
colors. Our God is wonderful and He gives us wonderful gifts. We enjoy the
beautiful sunsets while we are worshipping Him in our daily evening
church.
Pat’s son Titus is 5 years old and going to school now. His English
teacher asked what is up above? One child answered, “God,” but Titus said, “God
is inside me.” We were amazed and blessed. Here is
a photo of the sunset from our house and Elizabeth, Titus and Paul in the snow
up in cold Canada.
Just like Titus, Elizabeth can also sing very well. She is only two
years old, and she sang on the phone for us the ABC song and the Halleluiah
song. It is a great joy to listen to them sing on the phone.
Don is slowly recovering from the cold. Naomi is well and enjoys going
to physical therapy. Praise God.
Michi’s cousin Tomoko called the other day for prayers as somebody had
snatched her purse. She lost all her IDs, driver’s license and cash, plus car
keys and house key. The policeman took her home and somehow she could get into
her house. Michi was thinking about her and how hard it is for Tomoko, who is
80 years old and living all by herself in Fresno, California. Michi called her
this morning, and a happy voice
answered. Of course her purse is still lost, and she is not expecting it back,
but she is at peace under the love of God. She had an extra car key in the
house. A Christian friend is helping her, and changed all the door keys, so the
people who stole the purse cannot get in. Praise God! Michi was so blessed to
hear that Tomoko is at peace.
May God the Father grant you peace, love and faith, dear Jean, and grace
to all who love our Lord Jesus Christ with an undying love. (Eph
6:23-24)
your brother and sisters in Christ,
Don, Michi & Naomi Murphy
Tucson, AZ phone 520-297-1639
www.AnabaptistChurch.org
"Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what
is good.” (Romans 12:9)
Our Sunday
Service
12/14/2008
Songs:
“We All Believe in One True God” (German: Wir glauben an einen Gott by Peter
Riedemann, c. 1540), “With Pleasure I will Sing” (German: Mit Lust so will ich
singen by Felix Manz, 1527), “O Christ Our Lord” (German: Als Christus mit
sein’r wahren Lehr by Michael Sattler, 1527)
Hutterite Sermon Preface: “We must Follow Christ Obediently in order to
Become His Disciples”
God the Father has, in pure grace and mercy, left us His divine and holy
Word. He entrusted it to us from the beginning, so that knowing how we should
live here and now, we may be able to share in the heavenly calling… (continued
in Hutterite Preface No. 18)
Hutterite Sermon: “Brotherly Community, the Highest Command of Love”
The apostle Paul teaches us that there is overflowing love, joy and peace
for those people who are in the kingdom of God here on earth, (Rom 5:1, 14:17,
15:13, Gal 5:22) the peace and joy that comes from Jesus through His Holy Spirit
(John 15:11, 16:24, 17:13) when we live according to His teachings.
However,
Jesus did
say that the road to the kingdom of God is a narrow, hard road that many try to
follow but few succeed in traveling on it all the way to the kingdom. (Mt
7:13-14, Luke 13:24)
That road to the kingdom is paved with the commands of Jesus that those
who would reach the kingdom must travel on. The need to obey the will of God is
taught through out the Bible. Jesus said, “Why do you call Me Lord and not do
what I say?” (Luke 6:46, Mt 7:21)
Jesus told us, “Do not store up for yourselves
treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and
steal… No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the
other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve
both God and Mammon [wealth, money].” (Mt 6:19, 24, Luke 16:13)
One of the hardest commands of Christ is His command to give up
private possessions: Mt 6:19-34, 19:21, Luke 3:11, 6:30, 11:41,12:33-34, 14:33,
16:13, Acts 2:44-47, Acts 4:32-5:11. This subject is one of His most common
teachings. The main theme of the preaching of Jesus was the kingdom of God.
Wherever He went, Jesus preached about the kingdom. In His kingdom there can be
no selfishness.
Yet, in spite of His teachings, mammon (wealth, money, possession) is one
of the basic evils that has penetrated the Church. It affects so much of our
lives. It prevents us from loving our neighbor as ourselves, which is why the
Lord Jesus said that no one can be His disciple if they do not give up, dispose
of, all of their possessions. (Luke 14:33) He said that a person can not serve
both God and wealth. But most people obviously don't believe Him as they
certainly try to do so, telling themselves that they are not really serving
mammon, even when most of their time is spent in doing so.
Eberhard Arnold, a 20th
century Hutterite leader and author of book ‘The Early Christians After the
Death of the Apostles’, said, “All service of Mammon contains within it a kind
of reverence or secret worship of these things, a clinging to them and a love
for them that denotes a decision against God. The attempt to combine servitude
to God and servitude to Mammon must therefore repeatedly end in failure. Man
with his one heart must love God alone and cleave to Him, but despise Mammon.
God and money are the two masters between whom man has to choose; they are the
two goals of living and striving that cannot be reconciled.”
“In the world we know, in the epoch we live in, there is not only one
power at work, the power of love and life that leads to association and to the
fellowship of all. In this world and this world epoch there is also another
power work. This other power is the opposite principle. It is death that
destroys life; it is separation and destruction that bursts asunder the
fellowship of love. This power is a poisoning which makes the organism sick and
corrupt. It is the murder and killing of life.”
“Only from the Mammon spirit do wars come. You can not serve God and
Mammon. Jesus called Satan the murder from the beginning, the leader of the
unclean spirits. Mammon’s nature is murder. Wars are the sign of the Mammon
spirit.”
Leo Tolstoy, author of War
and Peace, said, “A pacifist can not own property. For ownership requires the
use or threat of force to protect it.”
Jesus told His disciples to cut all ties to Mammon by giving up all of
their possessions and so they did as we see in Acts 2:44 and Acts 4:32-35, “All
the believers were together and had everything in common.”, “All the believers
were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of his possessions was his
own, but they shared everything they had… There were no needy persons among
them. Those who owned lands or houses sold them, brought the money from the
sales and put it at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to anyone as he
had need.”
Peter Riedeman, the 16th
century Hutterite leader in his Confession of Faith, said, “All
believers have fellowship in holy things, that is, in God. He has given them
all things in his Son, Christ Jesus. Just as Christ has nothing for himself,
since all he has is for us, so too, no members of Christ's body should possess
any gift for themselves or for their own sake. Instead, all should be
consecrated for the whole body, for all the members. This is so because Christ
also did not bring his gifts for one individual or the other, but for everyone,
for the whole body.”
“Community of goods applies to both spiritual and material gifts. All of God's
gifts, not only the spiritual but also the temporal, have been given so that
they not be kept but be shared with each other. Therefore, the fellowship of
believers should be visible not only in spiritual but also in temporal things:
Paul says one person should not have an abundance while another suffers want;
instead, there should be equality.”
Andreas Ehrenpreis,
the 17th century Hutterite leader wrote that brotherly community is
the fulfillment of love. He said, “Talk of faith and brotherliness does not go
together with wearing expensive clothes, dining well every day, or piling up
riches. The man who saves and accumulates always does it for himself and his
family. Whether he lives or dies, his brothers and sisters in the faith have
little or nothing to expect from him. How can he speak of love to God, of love
to his neighbor, when the desire for wealth is doing its destructive work in
him?
“When we are filled with the spirit of community, we become simple and
modest. We will be satisfied with what little food and clothing we have. On
other points, people who honestly call themselves brothers can easily find a
common recognition and reach a common agreement in faith; for example that it is
God's will to shun war and weapons once and for all. But about possessions, in
spite of the prophets and apostles, men will fight and struggle against the
clear truth. Any profits from our work should not be hoarded. The fruits of our
work must be put at the disposal of all our brothers in God. They are for the
feeding, housing, and clothing of the poor, the hungry, and the old. It was
through love that Jesus became poor and one of the lowliest on earth.
“So He commands us as our Lord to love one another in the same way He loved
us. That means that we make our fellow citizens in His Kingdom fellow heirs of
all our goods, that we accept one another as members of the Household of God,
that we close neither our hearts nor our purses to any need of a brother. Then,
and then only, will God's love remain with us. That alone is genuine love.”
Song:
“Christ Went Into a Mountain” (German: Christus, der Herr, ist gangen by Hans
Betz 1527)
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