By Rev. J. Clark Echols, Jr.

“Wait silently for God alone, for hope is from Him … Trust in Him at all times, you people; pour out your heart before Him..” (Psalm 62:5, 8).

In what should we hope? In what should we trust? Obviously we should hope for salvation, and trust in God. And notice that we all have this hope now, and that leads us to trust in the Lord, even though hope applies to future things – what we would like later – and trust applies to the present – we want to trust the Lord now. We know this is true because as the Lord fulfills our hopes, we gain trust in Him.

Hope is commonly defined as a desire that we expect to be fulfilled. And trust is commonly said to be a confidence in someone or something. If this is so, why are so many hopeful people disappointed and hurt? And where is the evidence that our faith brings protection if we trust in it? And a final question: The Psalmist says that the Lord is “good to all and His tender mercies are over all His works” (145:9). What kind of mercy is it to let people’s dreams be destroyed by, say, a violent storm? What kind of mercy allows faithful, trusting people to suffer, not to mention allowing the innocent to starve, the young to die needlessly, the old to languish. There are answers to these questions in the Word, where we find that the hopes that are dashed and the trust that fails are not the hope and trust that are God-given. That is what the Word shows us: that genuine hope and trust are given to us by the Lord, not made up or manufactured by us.

What we are to do is to live according to the dictates of the Word at the same time as we are in the hope and trust that the Lord will save us. We are supposed to acknowledge that we do nothing good of ourselves at the same time as we feel assured by the hope that the Lord will grant us an understanding of truth from which we can live a good life. We are supposed to acknowledge that we bear the responsibility of the choice between good and evil at the same time as we trust that the Lord will lead us to do only that which is good and believe only that which is true.

Genuine hope is not simply the desire to have our expectations fulfilled. It is not a vague wish that things will go as we would like them to. That wish could be based on an evil desire; or we could be ignorant of what is best for us; it could go against what the Lord would have us hope for. When this kind of hopefulness is denied, it quickly fades, and we simply replace it with a new wish. It is a weak and temporary kind of hope. Genuine hope looks to what is eternal, so it never fades. It is given to us by the Lord, so it is most powerful. At the foundation of genuine hope for salvation is the promise the Lord has made that He will come to us and that He is in the constant endeavor to save us. That is His work. And we feel His work in us as a perception and assurance that the Lord helps us in our times of deepest despair – during combats of temptation.

We are not always conscious of it, but the Lord is very near us in states of spiritual struggle. If we continue to hope and trust in Him, and turn to Him, He can temper our despair with the hope of deliverance. Without Him there is no deliverer, no hope. He gives us hope in the realization that the purpose of temptation is that we will be saved and will receive heavenly happiness. Therefore, the hope we feel is His power working within us. Genuine hope is the Lord’s answer as He flows into us with the power of His glorified Divine Human. In so casting evil out of our minds, the Lord fulfills our hopes and earns our trust.

The danger in temptation, of course, is that we will lose hope and fail to trust. We do not readily feel the Lord’s help. In fact, we are most aware of the spiritual pain brought about by the hard choice before us. This mental, spiritual pain rules our thought, and anguish is our primary feeling. Yet in all this the Lord still maintains our ability to choose – that is His constant gift. It is His continual presence, in whatever state we are, that makes our freedom possible. We must make the choice – He cannot do that for us. Yet He does give us something of a perception of His presence. This perception is the hope He gives us, the hope He establishes. And it brings us consolation that our salvation is being wrought in us.

Now, the Lord wants to give us His hope, and He wants us to learn to trust Him. His Divine mercy will grant them to us when we have in us the vessels to receive them. These vessels are His truths, confirmed in our daily life. And so it is in His Word that we find the fulfillment of our hopes and the foundation for our trust. This hope continues with us to the farthest limits of despair; it is a hope that is not merely a desire for something we want; rather, it looks to our salvation and eternal welfare. In this hope we have a firm answer to doubt, despair, fear and death, for it is not limited by what we have or what we don’t have, or by the grave, but looks beyond it. It is not man- made, but applied to us by the Divine mercy of the Lord Himself.

Such genuine hope establishes real trust. Our hope for salvation, our hope for our future, establishes a trust in the Lord – that He is helping right now on our journey to heaven.

Consider for a moment trusting in the Lord to lead us to everlasting peace, joy and fulfillment. That has to be the greatest trust we can have. It is not simply confidence that our desires will be granted. It isn’t simply faith. if we believe that our faith alone saves us, our trust will be limited, and often too weak to stand up in times of natural or spiritual trial. When faith is not used in life, it is not saving; when it is, it becomes charity, which does save. We all must beware of the false sense of security merely having the faith can give us. If our trust in the Lord consisted merely in having faith in our memory, then all we would have to do is await salvation from the Lord, with our hands hanging down. This inaction does not reflect trust. In fact, such apathetic irresponsibility is what has led to the starvation, death and injustice that happens to the innocent and faithful that we wrongly ascribe to the Lord’s inaction.

Genuine trust in the Lord leads us to act from our faith. We trust that the Lord will guide our steps as we strive consciously to follow His path to heaven. Real trust is a faith that originates from charity in our will, from the sincere desire to do what is good. When we live according to the truths the Lord has shown us, then we are really placing our trust in Him. The ultimate of trust is to stake our eternal happiness on the truthfulness of what He says.

As we hope in the Lord, we uphold our responsibility to flee from evils and do goods, and we are given a lasting trust. This trust stays with us even in the midst of temptation. Like genuine hope, real trust is a force from within whereby we are able to resist evil. And notice the cycle here: as we become aware in ourselves of a willingness to submit ourselves to the Lord, even in temptation, He brings us victory and a perception of the security we have in Him. As we apply this perception of truth to our lives, He then inflows into our will with even more power, increasing our trust in Him. Therefore, every time we actually, with conviction, submit ourselves to our trust in the Lord, He comes with more and more power to cast evil out of our minds, to enlighten us, and to fill us with joy.

This trust endures throughout all the trials and tribulations of life on earth. We are taught that “for those who trust in the Divine, all things advance toward a happy state to eternity, and whatever befalls them in time is still conducive” to that eternal state (AC 8478). Such people do not blame the Lord for their temporal woes. They have the greatest confidence that the Lord will, if they let Him, use everything that happens to further their reformation and regeneration. These have genuine trust in the Lord.

Hope and trust in the Lord are not so hard to attain in this life. Actually, mere obedience to the Lord’s laws, the ten commandments, requires trust in the Lord, and implies our hope for salvation through obedience. Beyond this obedience it is our responsibility to come to see that we have hope and trust solely because the Lord’s Divine mercy affects them in us, and because they are the Lord’s to give us (see AC 30). The Divine mercy is applied freely to all, and is always effective for those who abstain from evil. The Lord’s mercy is of His Divine love which is constantly striving to lift us up if we allow Him to. Thus, the Lord grants His mercy not according to the doctrine we know, but according to the doctrine we live, that is, the charity we are practicing.

The Word teaches, then, that all real hope and trust are from the Lord, and are given to us from within. If our hope is in our salvation, then whatever we hope for will be granted. If we have trust in the truth we see working in our lives, we will always feel secure. The Lord has made this promise, and desires to give us these gifts. As we respond to His promise with a life of fleeing from evils and doing goods, out of the pure mercy of His Divine love the Lord will grant us eternal happiness. So hope and trust are gifts greatly to be desired.

As it is written in the 27th Psalm:

“Though an army should encamp against me, my heart shall not fear; though war should rise against me, in this will I be confident. One thing I have desired of the Lord, that will I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in His temple” (v. 3, 4).

Amen.

By Rev. Erik J. Buss

What is anxiety? Many of us feel anxious about our jobs, or our marriages, or our friendships, or our children, quite regularly. We have all probably felt that tightening of our stomach that comes with feelings of anxiety. Maybe we can’t fall asleep at night, because we just can’t stop worrying about our latest problem. Yet how many of us could give a good definition of anxiety, one that would tell us where the true causes of it lie? When is anxiety good, spurring us to act, and when is it destructive, paralyzing us with doubt? Here are some of the teachings of the New Church on the subject.

First, we need to ask ourselves what exactly anxiety is. We often say “I’m a bit tense today” or speak of feeling anxious about something. But aren’t we normally describing the symptoms? We say we are anxious or tense when we feel tension in our shoulders or stomach, or when we get a certain kind of headache, or when we get irritable for no reason, or when we feel unaccountably tired. Even Webster’s Dictionary defines anxiety as a “painful or apprehensive uneasiness of mind, usually over an impending or anticipated ill.” It goes on to describe how it can show itself as sweating, tension, increased pulse. This definition is describing symptoms.

The definition that Swedenborg’s Writings give goes to the root of the problem of anxiety. This definition is that anxiety arises “from being deprived of what … which we love. Those who are affected only with bodily and worldly pleasures, or who love only such concerns, grieve when they are deprived of them; but those who are affected with spiritual goods and truths and love them, grieve when they are deprived of them” (AC 2689:2). Isn’t that so simple and clear, encompassing all kinds of anxiety? If we feel anxious about getting up in front of a crowd or talking to a stranger, isn’t it from fear of losing that person’s good opinion of us by coming across as stupid or wrong? When we feel anxious about whether we are good enough to get to heaven, aren’t we fearing that we will lose the good in heaven which we love? When we feel anxious about making a long-term commitment in a relationship, don’t we fear losing our self-respect if that person dumps us because we opened up to them and they rejected what they saw, or if we make a big mistake and blow it ourselves?

The teachings for the New Church tell us even more about the source of anxiety. Anxiety is caused by the presence of spirits with us. The spiritual world is very real, and influences us all the time. Some spirits delight in stirring up our minds and making us feel anxious. Why is this significant to us? Well, isn’t it easier to fight someone else than to fight against ourselves? When we see anxiety as coming from a source outside of ourselves, we don’t have to chastise ourselves for feeling anxious, afraid or depressed. We can chastise the spirits with us. And instead of asking the Lord to, as it were, carve out the evil part of us, we can ask Him to cut off the influence of these spirits. In other words, by recognizing that anxiety comes from spirits with us, we objectify our problem and make it easier to deal with.

We can be helped by recognizing that anxiety is a fear of losing something we love, and comes from spirits with us. However, we need to distinguish what kind of anxiety it is. Some kinds of anxiety are useful for us to feel, and some are destructive. For instance, the Swedenborg says that we always feel anxiety when we are tempted. When we are tempted some good love we have is threatened and we come to doubt that it can survive this onslaught of evil it is facing. A person can have his commitment to a spouse tempted by a strong desire to commit adultery. This desire threatens the marriage, and because the person loves the marriage he feels anxiety about the conflict. If he didn’t love marriage, the thought of cheating would cause no anxiety and there would be no temptation. He wouldn’t even stop to think about not doing it.

Another reason the Lord allows us to feel anxiety for a good reason is to spur us to action. For instance, if we have done something wrong, the pangs of conscience we feel immediately afterward cause anxiety. That is good, because the feeling makes us resolved not to do it again. The Lord also allows us to feel anxiety when we learn a new truth and realize that it is telling us we need to change our lives. In this instance we are probably feeling anxiety at having to give up an evil way of living that we don’t want to. For example, a businessperson who realizes that not telling the whole truth about his product is actually lying and stealing might feel anxiety that he will lose business or his position in his company if he changes to a more honest approach and doesn’t make as many sales.

Anxiety does not have to focus on a loss we personally will feel. A person can feel anxiety at being unable to help other people she loves. For instance, parents often have to let children make choices that they know are damaging to them. They won’t stop the child because they respect the child’s right to make choices. Parents can feel lots of anxiety and fear for the child because they know he is damaging good loves from the Lord. Worry for others probably feels worse than any other kind of anxiety because there is nothing we can do to make the problem go away. All we can do is trust that the Lord is taking care of that person as well as anyone possibly could.

Misfortune and grief we experience also can make us feel anxiety. This is good because it can cause us to elevate our thoughts to spiritual issues. It gives us a chance to think about the Lord’s governance of the world and our own lives. For instance, the pain and suffering of many in the world has caused anxiety for many. It has led them to wonder why God allows these events, and what it says about the nature of God, of His respect for our free will, of the nature of evil, and how we respond to it. Because a value is threatened – in this instance our love for peace, we can feel anxiety even though nothing threatens us directly.

These kinds of anxiety are good because they all arise from a good love. They are a sign that we are spiritually healthy. If we didn’t have good loves, we wouldn’t feel these kinds of anxiety. The challenge we face is that a good feeling can turn into something destructive if we focus too much on it. One of the leading causes of destructive anxiety comes from focusing too much on something that once was positive. For instance, the anxiety we feel in temptation, which makes us feel that we will never get to heaven, is good because it makes us realize how much we need the Lord’s help. However, when we dwell on it and lament about our evil and wonder whether it is worth the effort to try being good since we are on our way to hell anyway, then the anxiety becomes destructive. Similarly, a parent can feel a healthy worry for a child who is choosing a harmful path, but when they can’t stop thinking about it, can’t sleep because of it, and decide they are a worthless parent, that anxiety becomes destructive. Anxiety is like an adrenaline rush. It can be useful to push us through a hard time because it gives us that extra bit of energy we need. However, just as adrenaline is harmful to the body when it stays for too long, so anxiety becomes destructive when we dwell on it.

Another major cause of anxiety that is destructive is fear of losing something in the future that is not essential to our long-term happiness. It is so easy to get caught up in our worldly possessions that we lose track of their importance. Money can easily become the foremost issue in our lives, even when we have enough and to spare. The Lord teaches that good people are not anxious, and that they define care for the morrow, or unnecessary anxiety as “suffering about losing or not receiving things that are not necessary to life’s useful employments” (HH 278:2). In other words, they worry about money only when it impacts on their ability to be useful people.

I should mention one other cause for anxiety that the Heavenly Doctrines for the New Church give. That is mental disorder of some sort. If our minds are disturbed, we are wide open to the influence of our destructive tendencies, to hell within ourselves. We can find ourselves anxious over every little problem without any cause. Although everyone needs the Lord’s help in their lives, these people need to get their bodies and minds fixed before the Lord can work with their spirits. This is an important factor to be aware of.

Isn’t it interesting that the Lord gives us many good reasons why we might feel anxious, but only a few that are destructive? Maybe this fact can lead us to look at anxiety in a different light. Maybe we can see that much of the time we feel it, it is productive, some sadness the Lord is allowing us to feel now so we can feel greater happiness later. As with anything good the Lord gives us, the hells affecting us will try to turn it into something destructive. But in itself, anxiety is a useful tool.

With this idea in mind, we can approach anxiety with a far more calm attitude. We can ask ourselves, “Is this anxiety now serving any useful purpose? Am I motivated to do what is useful? Am I acting in a loving way because of it?” If yes, we can say a quiet thank you to the Lord for it. If not, we can reject it as an influence of hell, something we want to have nothing to do with. Either way, we are in control of our anxiety, instead of having it control us.

One final teaching about anxiety offers us a hope for what our lives can become like. It is that anxiety becomes less and less an issue in our lives as we progress spiritually. Most of us are probably at the point where the Lord’s words about worrying apply to us: “Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature? So why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore do not worry, saying, What shall we eat?” or “What shall we drink?” or “What shall we wear?” For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things.” As we become more advanced, we become more content in the Lord and become more willing to accept the Lord’s guidance in our lives. Listen to the description of how angelic people think about the events that occur in their lives: “Very different is the case with those who trust in the Divine. These people, despite the fact that they are concerned about future events, still are not, because they do not think of the morrow with worry, still less with anxiety. Their spirit is unruffled whether they obtain the objects of their desire, or not; and they do not grieve over the loss of them, being content with their lot. If they become rich, they do not set their hearts on riches; if they are raised to honors, they do not regard themselves as more worthy than others; if they become poor, they are not made sad; if their circumstances are meager, they are not dejected. They know that for those who trust in the Divine all things advance toward a happy state to eternity, and that whatever befalls them in time still leads towards it.” (AC 8478:3). We can all eventually come to feel this in our hearts. For now, we can be content that the Lord is slowly guiding us to that time when anxiety will no longer be an issue in our lives. We can use the anxiety we feel to become happier, more productive people.

Amen.

By Rev. Ian Arnold
Brisbane, July 5^th, 2009

1 Samuel Chapter 3, verse 21 and Chapter 4: verse 1: “Then the LORD appeared again in Shiloh. For the LORD revealed Himself to Samuel in Shiloh by the word of the Lord.

And the word of Samuel came to all Israel.”

It is a story that comes out of South Africa from many years ago, and from the New Church there, about one of our very poor black pastors there, a man called Michael Moloko. Michael Moloko’s Church was in a poor rural area where people at the time traded more in good than in money. Offertories were more commonly made up of products harvested, such as a few eggs, corn or, in more prosperous circumstances, a goat. This is how it was in the 1960’s such I knew it to be.

It was also the time when as yet the old imperial currency was still in use, pre-decimal days, and a one pound note having come into his hands Michael Moloko took it to a local store, owned and run by a white man, an Afrikaner, to get it changed into coins. Though not very graciously, the store owner obliged but, unthinkingly, handed over the change for not one but five pounds. Michael Moloko froze and other Africans in the store waiting to be served and noticing what had happened urged him in their own language to take it, say nothing, and get out of the place. If he wouldn’t, they would. ‘Why be a fool?’ they muttered. But for Michael, and for several more agonizing seconds, the struggle went on, until he called the attention of the store owner to what had happened. And though jeered as he was by the other shoppers he walked out of the store with his integrity intact. His conscience had triumphed.

This story came back to mind as an appropriate lead in to this sermon on Conscience.

We talk about it; we are often troubled and challenged by it; and we tend to demand even higher standards of others when it comes to acting according to it. We also, especially when we are younger, wish we could wriggle free of the restraints it imposes on us. But for all this we know, when we stop and think about it, how pivotal and necessary conscience is; and how unruly and chaotic life would be without it.

The reality is that we rely on conscience, both other people’s and our own, more than we realise.

We rely on people’s conscience to cause them to do the right thing. For example, to wait their turn in a queue or to be orderly and respectful of others about getting on and off public transport.

Indeed, we are outraged when people seem to be oblivious to conscience and unrestrained by it. Just now, and understandably, there is widespread outrage at the reported looting yesterday of a newly overturned semi trailer on the Gateway Motorway, even as the driver lay fatally injured in the destroyed cabin of the vehicle.

We live with assumptions about the impact and influence of conscience on people’s behaviour. And this is usefully noted, it is only when conscience fades as a restraining influence in community life and so far as people’s behaviour is concerned that laws have to be enacted and penalties imposed. External restraints begin to be needed when internal restraints are no longer effective. We might once have hoped that people’s social conscience would restrain them from throwing rubbish out of their cars but, and the evidence being that conscience is not sufficiently strong in that area, laws and penalties have had to be imposed.

Conscience is pivotal, too, where our relationship with the Lord is concerned.

The Lord leads, guides, restrains, nudges and awakens us to right attitudes and behaviour via our conscience.

And so it is not surprising it is mentioned in the Bible, or in the Word here. Do you remember the story of the woman taken in adultery, in John’s Gospel, Chapter 8? The Scribes and Pharisees had brought to Jesus, we read there, “a woman caught in adultery“. And they reminded Jesus what Moses in the law, had commanded in such situations, that she should be stoned. “What do you say?” they pointedly said to Him. “He who is without sin among you” He said “let him throw a stone at her first.” And then we have it, “Then those who heard it, being convicted by their conscience, went out one by one…”

But in the Old Testament, and strange at first strange as it seems, there is no mention of conscience, as such, and the word is not to be found! (There is a memorable story about conscience, without the word being mentioned, as when Nathan the prophet went into king David after his adultery with Bathsheba and Psalm 521, believed to have been written by David after this encounter, is an outpouring of a very troubled conscience.)

Notwithstanding the fact that the word ‘conscience’ doesn’t appear in the Old Testament, its role, its relevance, and its importance is, however, highlighted and identified in the stories of the prophets, especially in the story of Samuel, the first of the prophets.

What is without doubt is that Samuel was the conscience of his people. It was Samuel who lifted his people’s thinking onto a higher level; who reminded them of a higher purpose in life; who urged on them God-fearing standards of behaviour.

And the story of Samuel, as we have it here in the Word, in its deeper, internal or spiritual meaning, is all about the role of conscience in our lives, yours and mine.

Let me just run through with you some of the highlights of Samuel’s life and ministry and see these in relation to the role and influence of conscience in our lives.

For one thing, life for and amongst his people was unruly and indeed chaotic before Samuel came on the scene. If I can take you back into the book of Judges and to the period immediately before his birth, it is said there that “In those days there was no king in Israel; and everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” This is as directionless people this is describing; competing voices; different ways to well-being being urged. Samuel brought cohesion and unity and focus. His was a voice that came to prevail over all. He spoke up for and identified higher goals and aspirations, something which conscience is all about.

The next thing, usefully noted, is that even as a child he learnt to be fearless in saying what had to be said and in exposing waywardness. At times he came across as inflexible and demanding – just as conscience does.

What is particularly significant and – when we understand its significance – quite beautiful, is that it was Samuel’s role to open up the doors of the Tabernacle; “to open the doors of the house of the Lord”, it says. And this is the third thing and it takes us right to the heart of what conscience does. The role of conscience is – and very much so – to open up our lives to higher and more interior levels. It is its role to open up the way so that the spiritual can flow down into the natural. Its role, in a very real sense, is to bring us closer to and, indeed into the presence of, the Lord.

And remember this: the story of Samuel begins with him as a fragile baby and vulnerable child. He needed care and protection. His mother made him a little coat each year. Conscience is at first, with us, fragile and vulnerable. It needs protecting and nurturing. It can easily be lost to us. It needs our care and attention if it is to survive and thrive.

Since it is so crucial and plays such a crucial, pivotal role, how is conscience formed?

We need to be clear about this, that Conscience is not intuitive.

Now for sure, certain things, the Writings teach, are intuitive, such as that there is a God, that He is One and that life is ongoing beyond our life in this world. (See True Christian Religion para.8, etc). But not conscience.

No, conscience is installed through things learnt, impressions received, examples observed and taken on board, and feelings that have left an impression – certainly the feelings with which things have been said to us. Just let’s recall from the Reading earlier in the Service: “Conscience in a person is formed from the beliefs that his religion has given him, depending on how deeply he accepts them.” (Arcana Caelestia 9112) And as new things are learnt and taken on board conscience is strengthened.

It is and has been urged that conscience is the voice of God and therefore infallible. In connection with times of war we hear and read about “conscientious objectors”. Associated with this is the position taken that conscience is not, therefore, to be challenged; that it is inviolable. But the greater truth is that it can be explored with us or with another; modified and revised, in the light of greater understanding or a shift in loves.

Arising out of this, too, is the fact that conscience is going to vary with people; from different backgrounds; in different cultures and religions; according to what people have been brought up to believe is good and true, right and proper. What one person, therefore, can happily do, you or I would, from conscience, be in turmoil about. But not them. And what we might do, untroubled by conscience, others from another upbringing and on the basis of their understanding of right and wrong, could recoil from.

There is a fascinating teaching in the Writings about over-burdening conscience, as can happen. We pile in on to conscience or make certain things matters of conscience, which are not appropriately ascribed to it. For instance, social conventions, other externals and diet. If someone chooses to be a vegetarian this is not so much a matter of conscience, but a choice. It is not life or death, heaven or hell.

As was touched on earlier, there is often part of us that wants to quarrel with our conscience. And it is what we sometimes do. At our most exasperated or tested moments we wish we didn’t know ‘such and such’ or had been taught ‘such and such’. Others, after all, don’t seem to care, notice or thank us for it.

But conscience is not our enemy. We need to embrace it as our friend; and as a life saving friend at that!

Let me just refer you here to Arcana Caelestia paragraph 8002, sub-section 2, where it reads, “Conscience is the plane onto which the angels flow and through which we have consort with them.” This is amazing! Conscience is where we meet with the angels and they with us. To feel conscience is to know the angels active with us, having drawn closer to us than at other times.

And here is something to really hold on to: that however weak, relatively, the voice or pangs of conscience may be, it is nevertheless a sign that the angels have a foothold (tiny though it be) in our lives which, if not in this world, then in the next they would expand and develop.

Appropriately, also, and on a Family Service Sunday, this is worth noting:

Every parent, indeed all of us who have contact with children and the young, yearn for them to enjoy the happiest and most fulfilled life possible.

We seek to provide for them materially, understandable so. Grandparents will pay for School fees. We want the best education possible for them. Again, understandably!

We want our children to grow up, be fulfilled, well liked and well-adjusted adults.

In fact, though, it is those who have, and live from, a robust and healthy conscience who stand the best chance of living with integrity and self-respect, in peace and mind and serenity of spirit. “Conscience” we read “regarded in itself is not any distress, but is a spiritual willingness to do what religion and faith dictate. Thus it is that with those who enjoy a conscience live in tranquil peace and inward blessedness.” (True Christian Religion 666) Tranquil peace and inward blessedness. It’s actually what the name ‘Shiloh’ means, in Hebrew. Calmness and tranquillity. It’s where the Lord revealed – and reveals! – Himself. Conscience, calmness, tranquillity and the presence of the Lord are all linked beautifully together.

What – beyond this – could you really wish for, for a child? And so here is where our focus with them needs to be. It is the greatest gift we can work with the Lord to leave them with.

“Then the LORD appeared again in Shiloh. For the LORD revealed Himself to Samuel in Shiloh by the word of the LORD.

And the word of Samuel came to all Israel.”

Amen.

By Rev. Terry Schnarr

“When the Lord saw her, He had compassion on her and said to her, ‘Do not weep'” (Luke 7:13).

Jesus is a God of love and compassion, of mercy and forgiveness. He is a loving and merciful God. He is tender, understanding, and gentle with us. He loves us dearly.

Last Sunday we were encouraged to pick one day this week to compel ourselves to practice one teaching of the Lord all day, to consciously try very hard to work on it. Did you try? How did it go? Perhaps you intended to but forgot. Perhaps you started to keep some teaching in mind but forgot after a short time. Perhaps you tried but intermittently forgot during the day. Perhaps you were able to keep it up all day and even did it for two or more days.

If you forgot, or didn’t try, or tried and failed, how did you feel? Did you conclude, “I’m just no good,” “I can’t do this,” “I can’t even remember the Lord for one day,” or “I’m just a heathen”? How many of you had this kind of experience and those kinds of thoughts? How many of you felt defeated, hopeless, like giving up, or guilty? Maybe you feel bad or guilty right now. Maybe you feel despairing of ever getting closer to the Lord, of ever having the strength and determination to exercise your freedom and willpower to compel yourself to do the Lord’s will.

“Do not weep.” All of those kinds of thoughts and experiences are from hell. The evil spirits are fighting you. They are the ones putting those thoughts into your head. It feels as if they are your own thoughts, but they are not. They are from the evil spirits who are with you. They are trying to stop you, make you feel hopeless, and make you give up. Don’t let them win. Keep at it. Keep trying. It takes perseverance and practice, but with a little patience you will be able to do it because the Lord is with you and is giving you the power to do His will.

He is not angry with you. He isn’t giving up on you. He is still with you, loving you, having compassion on you. He is keeping the evil spirits away and preventing them from making you feel worse. He is surrounding you with angels so that you can do what He wants. Don’t quit trying. What the Lord is concerned with is the intention of your will. Keep trying. The Lord is completely understanding of the difficulties and challenges we face. His mercy and compassion and forgiveness are unconditional.

This is so evident from many stories in the Word. When He came to Jerusalem and looked down over it from the Mount of Olives, from the east, He wept. From His love He could see there was no love and charity left in Jerusalem. He wept because He was grieving for the people who had no love, no charity, no understanding, no light, and no truth. They were confused and in darkness. He went to the temple, cleansed it, and began to teach and heal to give them help.

There is never any anger in the Lord, only love and compassion. He is love itself and cannot possibly be angry. Even when there is an appearance of anger, as when He cleansed the temple, He was really acting from love, mercy and compassion.

The Lord never punishes either. He is always understanding and forgiving. Even when there is an appearance of punishment, as when people are said to be sent to hell, the Lord is acting from love and mercy allowing them to choose their life and providing a place for them to pursue their evil loves, all the while trying to restrain them from plunging into lower hells and greater frustration and dissatisfaction.

In the original Hebrew, Jehovah’s compassion is expressed by a word which means the inmost and tenderest love. Such love is pictured by the Lord’s looking for the one lost sheep and carrying it back in His arms.

The Lord has compassion on all of us. He especially has compassion on us when we are in ignorance, when we lack a knowledge of truth and wish we had more, because we are then in doubt and confusion. He is also especially compassionate on us when we are deficient in love and desire to have more good loves, because we are then feeling empty and devoid of life, lacking the blessings and delights which come from doing good and using our talents to serve Him.

Nevertheless, the Lord does not intercede, step in, and change us or fix us. He works to maintain our freedom, controlling the spirits around us so that we are free to approach Him. He never interferes with our lives, but always tries to make the path to His door the easiest path to follow so that we will choose to follow Him.

When we do choose to follow Him, to obey His teachings, then He enters into our lives with love and wisdom, giving us good desires, enlightened thoughts, and joys when we do good works of charity for others.

The Lord is especially close to us, actually dwelling inside of us, when we have compassion on others, when we love and care for one another the same way He loves and cares for us. We cannot be compassionate when we are in truth alone, when we know truths but do not act on them in our daily lives. We become compassionate, loving, and caring toward others only when we do the good works the Lord teaches us in the Word because to do them we have to quit being selfish and materialistic to have time and energy to do for others. When we do good works, then the Lord fills us with love and compassion for others. For example, He forgives us our sins when we forgive others their sins against us.

When we have compassion for others, we enter into a closer relationship with the Lord. The Heavenly Doctrines teach us that when we feel pity or compassion toward others, the Lord enters into us with an influx of love. This is said to be an admonition, a kind of suggestion or command from the Lord to reach out to another person. “When those who are in perception feel compassion,” we read, “they know that they are being admonished by the Lord to give aid” (AC 6737). When we feel compassion, we are being urged and prompted by the Lord to act. This is one way of experiencing the Lord in our lives.

He is especially compassionate toward us when we have been suffering spiritual miseries and temptations. The widow of Nain was suffering grief and despair over the loss of her husband and now her only son. “A large crowd from the city was with her. When the Lord saw her, He had compassion on her and said to her, ‘Do not weep.'”

To not weep means to be consoled, we are taught in the Heavenly Doctrines. Not only does the Lord have compassion on us but He acts on His compassion. He gives us consolation. He consoles us. How?

The Lord consoles us three ways. First, when we pray to Him and approach Him He comes to us and surrounds us with angels. We are taught that He answers our prayers with something like a revelation, which is manifested or experienced in our affections as hope, comfort, or a kind of internal joy. Second, the angels stir up our thoughts to help us remember truths from the Word which can be helpful to us. Third, He admonishes other people to come around to give us support and assistance, even as many people in Nain were gathered around the widow who had lost her husband and only son.

A man who was covered with leprosy came to Him, imploring Jesus to help him. He was not just asking for a simple favor; he was begging for his life with complete humility. He came to Jesus as his last hope. He got down on his knees and said, “If You are willing, You can make me clean.”

The leper’s dramatic example demonstrates to us the kind of attitude we need to bring to the Holy Supper. We need to acknowledge Jesus Christ as our God, as the only one who can save us from our evils, as the only one who has the power to cleanse our minds. We need to acknowledge Jesus as the only hope we have left for our salvation because He really is. When we kneel down to take the bread and wine, we would do well to keep the words of the leper in our thoughts: “If you are willing, You can make me clean.”

“Jesus, moved with compassion, put out His hand and touched him, and said to him, ‘I am willing; be cleansed.’ As soon as He had spoken, immediately the leprosy left him, and he was cleansed” (Mark 1:40-42).

“Jehovah is gracious and full of compassion. He has given food to those who fear Him” (Psalm 111:4,5). He is “slow to anger and great in mercy. Jehovah is good to all, and His tender mercies are over all His works” (Psalm 145:8,9).

Jesus is willing to help you. Jesus is more than willing. He desires nothing more than to cleanse your spirit so that He can be with you and be inside of you. This is His love. Ask for His help and you will receive it; seek for His power and you will find it; knock and He will open up the door for you and come in with all the blessings of peace and happiness. He will do for you as He did for the widow of Nain, an ordinary person like you and me. “When the Lord saw her, He had compassion on her and said to her, ‘Do not weep'” (Luke 7:13).

Amen.

By Rev. Ian Arnold

“It is the mark of someone wise to be aware of which ends are present in himself. Sometimes it does seem as though his ends are selfish, when in fact they are not, for the human being is such that in everything he considers how it affects himself. This he does regularly and habitually.

But if anyone wishes to know the ends he himself has in view, he has merely to take note of his feeling of delight whether it is on account of his receiving praise and glory, or whether it is on account of his performing some unselfish service. If it is the latter delight that he feels, genuine affection is present in him.

He ought also take note of the varying states he passes through, for these states cause his feelings to vary considerably. A person is able to find these things out in himself, but not in others, for the ends in view to anyones affection are known to the Lord alone. This is why the Lord said,

“Do not judge, lest you are judged; do not condemn, lest you are condemned.” (Lk 6:37)

For a thousand people may apparently share the same affection for truth and goodness, and yet the affection in each of them may have a different origin; that is, each may have a different end in view.” (Arcana Caelestia, paragraph 3796.3)

Coming to grips with our MOTIVES and how they can change along the way.

I want to take you, friends, into the book of Joshua; to chapter 9 and the verses 3, 4, and 15:

“When the inhabitants of Gibeon heard what Joshua had done to the inhabitants of Jericho and Ai, they worked craftily and went and pretended to be ambassadors. So Joshua made peace with them, and made a covenant with them to let them live. And the rulers of the congregation swore too.”

Friends, it’s one of those things we are so very conscious of, isn’t it? How at times there can be the most awful mismatch between what, on the one hand, we intended and what, in fact, is the outcome. People launch into a project, launch into a conversation, take an initiative in one or another areas of life, and the outcome is unforeseen, unanticipated, and very, very different from what they hoped and thought it would be.

What comes to mind is a biblical example, and that example is Judas Iscariot. Its almost certain that when Judas betrayed the Lord, his motive was not that the Lord should be arrested and crucified, but that the Lord should at long last instigate the rebellion which Judas Iscariot, the only Judean by the way amongst the 12 disciples, is believed to have wanted the Lord to engage in. But, of course, the outcome was horribly different from what he ever intended.

And this is, I’m saying, a common experience: there is this mismatch between what is intended, and what is the outcome. When we stop and reflect on that and, sometimes as we do, agonise over it, it’s very important and I hope you find it very reassuring that in the eyes of the angels motives, or intentions, or ends, are everything. Are everything.

There is this question people within the New Church ask, concerning Judas: is he in heaven? Was he amongst the 12 disciples who the Lord called together in the spiritual world in 1770? And a reasonable answer is: most likely he was, because the end, the intention, the motive, qualifies everything. And I want to refer you here to some wonderful passages, first of all from paragraph 3489 of Arcana Caelestia:

“The angels pay no attention to anything else than the things that are internal, to ends in view, that is to peoples intentions and wills and to their thoughts stemming from these.” Note that they pay no attention to anything else, than to the ends, the motives, or to the intentions.

And I also draw your attention to two other short statements, this one from the work Conjugial Love:

“The end in view, the aim, or the intention of the will, is what is primarily considered by the Lord.”

And from Arcana Caelestia, paragraph 1930:

“In the other life, no-one is ever punished for evil acts if he has acted from an end that is truly good.”

And that applies to Judas Iscariot if, as I say, we are right.

Dont forget friends, it may also apply to those people we like to stick pins into, like Robert Mugabe. In the other life, no-one is ever punished for evil acts if he has acted from an end that is truly good.

In introducing the readings this morning and the topic, I said to you that we agonise over them, we try to discern and unravel our motives; but in one area, we have this horrible failing of assuming that we are very competent, so far as motives are concerned, and that is other peoples motives. It’s one of the classic human failings, to make assumptions about the motives of other people. Now, of course you may protest, that we don’t do it with people who are closest to us or whom we know. But we need to just stop a moment and recognise the fact that we are supremely good at doing it when it comes to people we don’t know, who are public figures, who are held up to ridicule, because people assume they know what their motives are, whether it’s Robert Mugabe or John Howard, or whoever it is. Journalism hits rock-bottom in the constant ascribing of motives to people, to politicians, to those people whom it is regarded as fair game, to make what is in fact are spiritual judgements. And if we can’t practice restraint where motives and the judgement of motives are concerned, where public figures are concerned, then woe betide us!

We should practice restraint and shun the community tendency to jump to conclusions as to what the motives are. Whether it’s a new industrial reform or whatever it may be, you look and read the journalists and what they are saying and about the motivation which lies behind it.

We do not know, and cannot know, the eternal state of another! The Writings, the Word itself, Jesus Himself says: judge not, that you be not judged; condemn not, that you be not condemned. And as we have it said in the first book of Samuel, chapter 16:

“The Lord does not see as man sees. Man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”

And that’s something that you and I need to have the humility to acknowledge that that is something we are incompetent about, and can’t do.

Now it is different when it comes to our own motives. I want to just go back a bit to that reading earlier in the service. It was Arcana Caelestia, paragraph 3796:

“It is the mark of someone wise to be aware of which ends are present within himself.”

And almost the same statement appears in True Christian Religion in the chapter there where its discussing repentance. It says there:

“True repentance is not only examining not only what one does in ones life, but also what one intends in ones will to do.”

“It is the mark of a wise person”: the need to know and discern accurately, and as honestly as we can, what our motives are. So far as that is concerned, there are three things that it is important for us to bear in mind. Two of them appear in this reading that we can read again from paragraph 3796 in Arcana:

“Sometimes it does seem as though our ends, our motives, or our intentions are selfish, when in fact they are not, for the human being is such that in everything, he considers how it affects himself.”

Its a very important statement.

First of all, as we look within ourselves and try to identify and analyse what our motives are or have been, we don’t want to beat ourselves up too much because we see a connection with ourselves. That’s what that statement is saying, and it’s full of mercy.

The second thing that arises here is that when we are trying to identify what our motives are, we need to recognise that situations and circumstances may colour what we see, and that a one-off insight may be very lop-sided. So again, we have to be careful of beating ourselves up when we see what is apparently a self-regarding or a self-serving motive at work. Maybe we need to stand back and look at a bigger picture, and not just one episode that has arisen. Two lovely statements there that caused me to choose that paragraph in our readings for this mornings service.

The third thing: when it comes to our responsibility to examine ourselves, to check out our motives, the third thing that comes up is a question which is often on peoples minds: “I feel myself to be such a mixture, and when I look, I see such a mixture; I really don’t know what my motives have been for such and such a circumstance.” One of the most helpful passages in that regard comes at the end of the book Divine Love and Wisdom, and it’s worthwhile remembering the point that’s made here:

“A person does not feel and perceive the love of performing uses for the sake of uses, but he or she does feel or perceive the love of performing uses for the sake of self. Hence also they do not know when they do them, whether they are doing them for the sake of uses or for the sake of self.”

Very difficult! It acknowledges the difficulty that they may know that in the degree they shun evil they are performing uses for the sake of uses, for so far as they shun them they do them not from themselves, but from the Lord.

The truth is, we cannot know, and it is impossible to see for sure, heavenly or good motives at work in our lives. But what we are urged to do is to look for those motives that are self-regarding, hold them up to ourselves, maybe repent of them if that is required, and shun them in future. And in so far as we do that, heavenly motives will flow in from the Lord through the heavens. And we don’t have to know what they are; they will be there as a matter of course. Because by shunning what is self-regarding, we make it possible for what is heavenly to flow in and take its place.

Now friends, I want to take you, as I said, back into Joshua chapter 9. And the key there for you and I to hold on to is that Joshua made a treaty with people the real nature and identity of whom he did not fully recognise, and yet by making a treaty with them, he was able to gain a strategic foothold in the promised land.

The spiritual meaning of that passage is all about motives. And what it’s opening up for us is this: that in the early stages of our regeneration, no differently than Joshua, we make treaties and alliances and covenants with forces, with ends, intentions and motives, the true quality of which we do not fully recognise. But as a result of which, we are able to gain a strategic foothold in the promised land of heaven. It’s a wonderful story, and in a summary, that’s what the Lord is teaching us here in Joshua chapter 9.

None of us can claim the purest of motives, that would apply all though our lives. But the reality is that in the early stages our motives are fairly muddied by what is self-regarding and self-serving. And the thing is that by making alliances and covenants with such motives, we can nevertheless gain strategic and important footholds in the promised land of heaven. Remember what is said of the Lord Isaiah chapter 42:

“A bruised reed He will not break, a smoking flax He will not quench.”

And again, that is about motives. It is about motives that may not measure up fully to the ideal, but nevertheless the Lord can use them with us to lead us into, and to enable us to have, a firmer and firmer footing in the promised land of heaven. And that is wonderful.

Joshuas covenant with the Gibeonites was all about the way in which we enter into alliance with ends, intentions and motives, the true nature of which we do not fully recognise, but as a consequence of which our progress in heavenly life and regeneration is furthered and strengthened by our doing so.

As it said there in the text:

“When the inhabitants of Gibeon heard what Joshua had done to Jericho and Ai, they worked craftily and went and pretended to be ambassadors. So Joshua made peace with them and made a covenant with them to let them live, and the rules of the congregation swore to them.”

I am reminded of the great Protestant reformer, Martin Luther. As a relatively young man, he entered a monastery, and he was quite candid in his later years as to why he entered the monastery. He simply said it was to save his soul from hell, which is a very self-regarding motive! What’s in it for me! Like the disciples when Peter said, “what’s in it for us, weve left everything, what do we get out of this?” And yet as we know, Martin Luther went on to lead a historic reformation, weakening of Roman Catholicism and so on. And in the case of Peter, he went on to be leader of the infant Christian church, and is believed himself to have been martyred courageously facing Christian persecutors. The Lord is perfectly able to use self-serving and self-regarding motives as a foothold and as a step in our journey towards the promised land of heaven.

It is important also friends, that as well as we remember that about the Lord, is that He does not despise ever where we are, or where we are working from. Important as it is to remember that, it is important also for us to remember two things.

Firstly, that regeneration is a process. That if we recognise and identify motives, ends and intentions of which we are not particularly proud, that can be a stimulus for us to try harder, to work differently, with the Lord in the future.

Secondly, there is this wonderful reassurance that arises out of that promise in Divine Love and Wisdom, paragraph 426. Stop worrying about whether your motives are good, just focus on making sure they are not self-serving and self-regarding. And insofar as you do that, you can be utterly reassured that you will be making room for good and worthy motives from the Lord to take their place.

My reading of the teaching we have is that we were never meant to identify good motives at work in our life, because we run the risk of wanting to own them, and that has all the dangers of merit and pride. So the Lord mostly keeps us unaware of good motives at work in our lives, but he does draw our attention to the self-serving ones, for they are what we need to wipe away.

“Now the inhabitants of Gibeon heard what Joshua had done to Jericho and Ai, and worked craftily and went and pretended to be ambassadors.” Lots of motives come up to us and pretend to be ambassadors. “So Joshua made peace with them.” We do. Martin Luther did. “And made a covenant with them to let them live.” So did Peter: quite likely when the Lord told him they were all going to sit on 12 thrones! “And the rulers of the congregation swore to them.”

Afterwards, as we read on in Joshua chapter 9, once the nature of the Gibeonites had been recognised, they were put in there place, and made to be hewers of wood and drawers of water: servants. At first they were allies, but later they were made to be servants.

I hope friends, whenever you hear of Joshuas covenant with the Gibeonites, the word “motives” leaps into your mind.

Amen.

By Candidate David C. Roth

“Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. For there is nothing covered that will not be revealed, nor hidden that will not be known. Therefore whatever you have spoken in the dark will be heard in the light, and what you have spoken in the ear in inner rooms will be proclaimed on the housetops” (Luke 12:1-3).

Beware: to be on one’s guard. This is the definition which today’s dictionary gives us for the word “beware.” Our text taken from the gospel of Luke is an example of the Lord’s urging His disciples to beware of something to beware the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. He gave this warning not only for the sake of His disciples, but as a message for all times, and one of high priority for all of us here today. The Lord is saying to all those who will listen, “Be on guard against a life of hypocrisy.” He knows of its potential danger if not shunned. He knows it is especially dangerous to those who have acquired into their lives the goods and truths of His Word. He knows the sorry outcome of one who chooses to live a life of hypocrisy, and that is why He warns us. If any one of us were driving down the road and came upon a sign which said, “Danger, Bridge out,” we would certainly stop, or at least slow down. In our text the Lord is holding up a similar warning sign. From a Divine concern for our eternal welfare He is giving us some important words of advice. When the Lord gives advice, it takes no more than common sense to realize that we should listen to it and heed it.

We first need to recognize that it is for our own good that He gives us this warning. For example, if a mother firmly or harshly yells at her son to get his immediate attention as a prevention against his harming himself, she is doing it out of love, not anger. She wants nothing more than his safe-keeping and happiness. She sees the danger and must do what she can to get his attention. The boy, on the other hand, may at first see this as an act of anger by his mother and may take offense, or feel he is being picked on. However, afterwards he can look back at the situation and see that there was great danger and that his mother yelled at him for his own good.

The Lord has to speak to us sometimes in the same way. He loves us all as His children and wants us to be happy. He knows the only true happiness awaits those who go to heaven. So in His Word He teaches us the way to heaven. Sometimes His words seem harsh or unloving, even threatening, but this is only an outward appearance. As we know, the sayings in His Word, no matter how harsh, are all infilled with His unceasing love for our salvation.

In our text, as a matter of priority the Lord urgently warns His disciples to beware the leaven of the Pharisees because it could destroy them. It is one of the most grievous evils people of the church can commit, which in this case are His disciples. It could cost them as dear a price as an eternity spent in hell. He certainly does not want this for His disciples any more than He would wish it for any of us at this day. He knows it will bring only extreme unhappiness and bitter frustration.

But what is this hypocrisy which the Lord warns against? A good example of hypocrisy can be seen in the New Testament Word in the Lord’s condemnation of the Pharisees. He accuses them of washing only the outside of the cup while leaving the inside full of extortion and self-indulgence. Then He compares them to “whitewashed tombs which appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness” (Matt 23:27). By manipulating the laws of the Jewish Church to their own advantage they would devastate widows’ estates by stealing all their money and property under the pretence of religious devotion. And further, by their holy and pious externals they would draw righteous young men into the work of the temple only to turn them out more evil than themselves. The Lord oftentimes referred to the Pharisees as hypocrites for these and many other reasons. As He said, “You outwardly appear righteous to men, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness” (Matt 23:28). He is teaching us that a hypocrite is one who purposefully deceives others, by hiding his own true character, a character of evil, behind a false front of good.

A hypocrite knows that what he is doing is evil. Since he wants no one to know of his evil, he hides it and deceives others into thinking that he is really very innocent. He hides it so that he is free to keep doing his evil, selfishly manipulating circumstances, and other people, all without hindrance of the law, or loss of honor, reputation, and gain. The hypocrite’s whole life is possible by means of his ability to hide behind a facade of good appearances. Yet there is a certain sad irony to the life of a hypocrite. The irony is that while he is trying to deceive others, he actually ends up deceiving himself. Yet we can be certain of one thing: he is not deceiving the Lord. In the other life the Lord will take his facade away; then what is his gain? As the ancient writer Job asked, “For what is the hope of the hypocrite, though he may gain much, if God takes away his life?” (Job 27:8) And again, “The joy of the hypocrite is but for a moment” (Job 20:5).

It is true that hypocrites can harm others with their poisonous deceit, yet we find that the real danger of hypocrisy is to the hypocrites themselves. By a life of deceit they do great harm to their spiritual life. We are taught in the Writings that deceit is the one thing which can destroy our most precious and essential gift from the Lord our remains. Remains are those states of innocence, good affection, and powerful knowledge from the Lord’s Word. They are implanted with us predominantly in infancy and childhood, and later become the incentive for us to regenerate. Without these we have no hope of regenerating; we have no power to regenerate. The hypocrite destroys these innocent states by dragging them down into his evil life as curtains of innocence to hide his evil intention. This mingling of innocence with guile completely destroys the regenerative power of his remains. The hypocrite, in effect, destroys the little child in himself. For remains serve in the formation of a spiritual conscience and a new will and understanding which can bring us into a new state of innocence. As is taught, “Unless you become as a little child, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.”

Clearly the life of a hypocrite is a life which leads to hell. The hell of a hypocrite is one of terrible solitude, one of eternal isolation from others. In the other world they live in a dark and barren desert with jagged rocks and caverns, all alone. As is said in the book of Job, “The company of hypocrites will be barren” (Job 15:34). However, the hypocrite creates this situation for himself. Our true person is our spirit, and if we are always trying to hide it, then we will finally end up succeeding in the other life. We will end up alone, well hidden in dreadful isolation, forever deprived of the joy that relationships with others bring.

It is easy for us not to worry much about some future state which we may never find ourselves facing. But there is something happening right now which many people are not aware of. It is the reason for this irony mentioned in the situation of the hypocrite, and which might also be cause for fear right now. The fact is, a hypocrite cannot hide his evils from anyone in the entire spiritual world. At all times, including this very moment, spirits and angels can all know exactly what our spirit is thinking and willing in perfect view, as if in broad daylight. Listen to what the Writings say on the subject:

“Nothing whatever is hidden of that which a man in the world has thought, spoken, and done, but it is in the open, for it is these things which make [his] sphere. Such a sphere also pours forth from the spirit of a man while he is in the body in the world, and from this his quality is also known. Therefore believe not that the things a man thinks in secret and that he does in secret are hidden, for they are as clearly shown in heaven as are those which appear in the light of noon” (AC 7454m emphasis added).

Nothing we ever say or do can possibly be hidden from the Lord. And as we have just noted, a person’s thoughts and deeds are clearly shown in heaven. So then we need to ask ourselves, “What is being revealed about me right now that is being seen in the light or being proclaimed from the housetops?” Certainly we don’t want to have all manner of evil thoughts and intentions broadcast in association with our spirit. This would definitely have ramifications similar to what we would experience here on earth if the same thing occurred. For example, if horrible and perverse words were constantly flowing from our mouths, any good people nearby would quickly take off, and hellish ones would rapidly gather as our companions. The same would happen with good and evil spirits around us in the spiritual world.

On the other hand, we can have good intentions and thoughts flowing from our spirit if we instead firmly shun hypocrisy and try to think and do what is good and true. It works both ways. Imagine the harsh reality of the hypocrite when he arrives in the other world and realizes that all the things that he thought he had successfully hidden from everybody in the world had been the daily news to angels and spirits there. The Writings teach that ” … nothing whatever is hidden, but that what a man inwardly thinks and plots is in the other life made manifest as in clear day” (AC 6214). And as the Lord warned in our text, “There is nothing covered that will not be revealed, nor hidden that will not be known” (Luke 12:2).

In His exhortation to the disciples the Lord is not only warning us against the long-range possibility of hell itself, but is right now trying to keep us from the overwhelming embarrassment that could await us in the other world. We need to think about what we are doing, saying, thinking, and intending. For nothing we deliberately do is a secret not now, not ever. We can hide nothing. A good rule of thumb might be: if we wouldn’t want certain emotions and thoughts broadcast over a loudspeaker, or any of our specific actions shown to the world on television, then we should not indulge in those emotions and thoughts or perform those acts, because the truth of the matter is, those feelings, thoughts, and actions are being broadcast this way, even this very moment. “Whatever you have spoken in the dark will be heard in the light, and what you have spoken in the ear in inner rooms will be proclaimed on the housetops.”

Nonetheless, we can take comfort in the fact that the only thoughts which will be broadcast in association with our spirit are those thoughts which we have chosen to dwell on with delight, that is, those thoughts which we make our own. A conscientious and well disposed person should know that not every fleeting emotion or passing thought will be broadcast to our spiritual companions. We can also breathe a great sigh of relief knowing that after death the Lord will not reveal everything about our spirit. He will let only those things be revealed which will be of use to our spiritual progress. For example, what good would it do to reveal an evil someone has done and repented of? He has already repented so there is no use. That is why nothing we have done and have truly repented of will of necessity be disclosed after death.

While we are in this world, our spirit is always being literally bombarded with influences from both the good and the evil spirits which are with us. How many of us have had thoughts that we couldn’t imagine we were even capable of having? When first stimulated, those thoughts were not our own, but we have the choice to make them so. Everything flows into us either from heaven or hell, and our life basically consists in choosing between accepting the good things or the bad things. Our basic humanity consisting of our free will to choose one or the other. We read, “Each and all things with man flow in according to his freedom evil from hell, and good from heaven, that is, through heaven from the Lord” (AC 6189).

If we heed the Lord’s warning, and beware the leaven of the pharisees by shunning hypocrisy, then what do we have to fear? In this life we will not be trying to cover or hide our true self in the dark or in the inner rooms. We can confidently say, “Let my actions be brought to light and my sayings proclaimed on the housetops. I have nothing to hide.” The confirmed hypocrite has much to fear, however not only the daily embarrassment and the disclosure of his character and deeds after death, but the fact that his eternal home will be an isolated eternity in the dark, barren wastelands of hell.

If we earnestly shun hypocrisy in our lives, and sincerely try to keep the deeds of our hands clean and the thoughts of our hearts pure, we will not have cause for daily fear, nor will we tremble when the veil is lifted in the next life to reveal our spiritual identity.

Amen.

By Rev. Frank Rose

Do you sometimes feel that your life is out of control, or that you wished you had more mastery over yourself and over your world? The Lord was talking to this need in the third of the Beatitudes, but as in the other blessings His words come as something of a surprise. He says “Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth.” The appearance is that the earth belongs to the strong. We see in history examples of men who are powerful who had a clear ability to make decisions, who were ruthless, who were conquerors. The meek, the gentle, would find themselves overrun by stronger forces than themselves. Of course, if you stop and look a little more carefully at these dominant figures in history you come to find another side. Imagine the dictator in one of the new republics in Africa who has risen to power on the basis of murder or imprisoning thousands of people. Yes, he can look out of his palace and say, “I’m lord and master over all that I survey.” But he’s looking through barred windows. He is surrounded by bodyguards and can never move without being protected. He drives through the country in a limousine that has bullet proof windows. In a sense, he is imprisoned by his own position of power. He is in constant fear of being overthrown and eventually the day may come when he is stripped of power, stripped of wealth, cast into prison, and he realizes that his days of glory were very short lived. Or think of the successful executive. He is quick to make decisions. He’s aggressive and knows what he wants in life and goes out to get it. He achieves success. He’s respected and feared and goes home at night and finds that one thing he cannot control is his wife or his children. That boy that is growing up to be a man, that he pictures as one day the manager of the firm, drops out of school and lives a life of drug abuse and is totally ignorant of all responsibility. His daughters hate him and as soon as possible they will get married and leave home. And not only that, he is powerless over his own feelings – his times of depression or his anger or his frustration. So what exactly is he in control of, or is he being ruled by his own success? Some such people come to the point where they acknowledge their powerlessness and they begin to look at their life a little differently. They become softened by bitter experiences. They get in touch with their poverty of spirit. They experience the reality of grief and mourning. They become softened people.

Once a person has reached that stage would you say he is more in control of his life or less so? From external appearances, it seems that the old spirit has gone, but Jesus said, “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” A dear friend of mine was sharing with me her experience with trying to quit smoking. What she realized after years of struggle was that the big problem was that she thought she was in control. So she would say to herself, “I can stop whenever I want to.” And every now and again to prove that to herself, she would quit smoking for a few weeks, but always in the back of her mind was the thought “I can start any time that I want because I can stop anytime that I want. I’m in control of this situation.” Then she would find herself after two or three weeks without a cigarette, waking up at two o’clock in the morning, dressing, going out to an all-night convenience store to get a pack of cigarettes. She realized that she is not in control. That experience broke the illusion that she was in control, and brought her into a completely different attitude toward this addiction. She said she finally knew what it was and what it felt like to hand something in her life over to the Lord, and to say openly, “Lord, I cannot control this without your help.” The marvelous thing was that immediately, the addiction was gone and she no longer classified herself as a smoker who was trying to quit. She just said, “I’m not a smoker anymore because I’ve handed that over to the Lord.” You see, through that surrender, she achieved what she could not achieve through conscious control.

Now this teaching that “The meek will inherit the earth,” is one of the most difficult of all of the teachings of the Lord for people to grasp. It runs so contrary to the appearance. It seems as if we are alone, in the fact that we continually struggle to bring our life into order and make sense out of our life. I knew someone who loved the book – “How to Take Control of Your Time and Your Life.” Such a wonderful promise! You can take control of your time and your life. What an illusion that is! Because if we try to take control merely from our external man, merely from an external point of view, we will find that we are constantly being defeated. In order to take control, we need the quality known here as meekness.

Now this is a very difficult word to translate. We usually think of the word meek as being weak or insipid. But the word meek in both the Hebrew and the Greek languages comes from the root – “To be tamed” or in the case of a field – “To be plowed.” When a farmer goes to prepare a field he knows that the soil is too hard to receive the seeds so he’ll plow the field to loosen the soil, to soften it, to make it receptive. Then it is literally true that the meek, or the plowed field, will inherit the earth more than one that is hardened and tough. With a horse they would use the same word – to tame a horse. The tamed horse still has plenty of energy, plenty of power, but power and energy is now directed by something other than the horse, so its energy is directed or steered.

A person who is meek is a person who has gone through some kind of experience in life in which his self-control has been softened and his illusion about dominating his world or himself has been broken. It’s remarkable; you read in the Old Testament and you find that Moses is described as being very meek more than all men who were on the face of the earth. And Moses was the man who went into Pharaoh, the most powerful person in the world, confronted Pharaoh and said to him, “Let my people go!” And went back repeatedly, until finally Pharaoh had to yield. And yet Moses was called meek. In what sense was Moses a meek person?

We find in the story of the battle with the Amalikites a clue to the power that Moses had. The children of Israel went from Egypt into the wilderness and there they became very vulnerable not only to the danger of starvation and thirst but also to the marauding bands of the Amalikites. They attacked the Amalakites at the rear of their camp. The soldiers were at the front line, so they attacked them at their most vulnerable spot. They were in the wilderness and suddenly their whole lives were at stake. In the story you will find that Moses left the battle scene and went up upon a hill. Moses raised his hands and while his hands were raised, the children of Israel were victorious. When his hands fell from fatigue, they began to lose the battle.

Why did Moses raise his hands? What was the gesture here? It was the gesture of prayer. He was praying for all the people on that mountain top and he could not sustain it so he had to be supported by Aaron and Hur. But as long as he could maintain an attitude of prayer and submission to the Lord’s will, then the soldiers in the valley could be victorious. So it might have seemed to them as if the battle depended upon their courage, on their weapons, on their strength. But the real issue was being fought on the hilltop – the issue of submission or meekness. As long as Moses could maintain that attitude of prayer, then they had an inner strength in what they did.

Think about how this may apply to your life. The battles that we fight are mainly internal battles. We fight the enemies of fear, of depression, of anger, and in most lives of people these emotions sweep over them like an invading army. Now if you try to control your emotions just by self will, you will find repeated failure, like the man who tries to control his temper just by will power and will power alone. He’s using Satan to cast out Satan. If a person tries to overcome his depression by telling himself – “Cheer up” – he’ll only get more depressed because he’ll have a sense of failure in not being able to accomplish that simple task. Of ourselves, we cannot govern or control our emotions. Our emotions will, more likely, control us and overwhelm us like a flood.

Just before the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus went into the wilderness and was tempted by the devil and in the third of those temptations the Bible says the devil took Him to a very high mountain and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and said that Jesus could have all those kingdoms if only He would bow down and worship him, the devil. How can the devil offer all the kingdoms of the world to Jesus who is Lord of all? Well, doesn’t it appear as if the world is run by human ambition, by greed by the love of money, by raw power? Doesn’t it appear as if the only way to influence people is by an appeal to their lower self? Doesn’t it seem as if the only way to be successful in life is to compromise your principles? – To be strong – to be courageous – to be in control.

But once again, the real issue is on the mountaintop. On the mountaintop you must maintain an attitude of prayer – the prayer that the Lord’s will be done. So in our life there will be times in which we feel as if we simply cannot control the things in our life and we’re brought to that position to understand the quality of meekness. On Palm Sunday, when Jesus rode into Jerusalem, it was said “Behold your King is coming, meek and sitting on a donkey, a colt the foal of a donkey.” Sometimes you hear the expression, gentle Jesus, meek and mild. Yet what did Jesus do when he entered Jerusalem? He went straight to the temple, saw the people buying and selling, overthrew their tables and said, ” It is written My house shall be a house of prayer and you have made it a den of thieves!” Was that meek behavior? But later when Jesus was arrested and brought before Pilot, was accused and threatened with death, it is written that “He opened not his mouth.” As the lamb before his slaughter is dumb, he opened not his mouth. Why did not Jesus speak at that time – why didn’t he call for legions of angels to come down from heaven and free Him and destroy His enemies? Because the issue here was whether He is going to be led by the internal forces or by external loves and ambitions. He could feel within himself the anger to the mistreatment that he was enduring. He could feel within himself the frustration and the pain of looking at human behavior at its worst. He also realized that you cannot answer evil with evil, and if you want to inherit the earth you have to submit to something higher and in this case He referred to the Father, and by the Father He was talking about the Divine Love. He had to become passive so the Divine Love would operate through Him. And we all, at one time or another in our life, have to learn what that quantity of passivity is; what is it like to be passive and have the Lord be active.

Listen to this teaching from True Christian Religion, “The Lord alone is active in a person and the person, by himself, only passive. But he is moved to activity by the inflow of life from the Lord.” And again, “Those who are governed by the Lord are passive and have no power of themselves. They are powerless to act and feel anything of themselves and they know it. With them there is only a passive force. These are called poor and also needy. And they are so esteemed by those who suppose that they, themselves are strong. These weak ones who can do nothing of themselves are governed by the Lord. He himself takes care of them. “The meek shall inherit the earth!”

Those who have that inner quality surrender to something higher than themselves. What they’re surrendering to is the power of love. As we read, “Rational good never fights no matter how much it is attacked because it is gentle and mild, long suffering and yielding, for it’s nature is that of love and mercy. But although it does not fight, it nevertheless conquers all. It does not ever think of combat nor does it glory in victory. It is of this nature because it is divine and is, of itself, immune from harm for no evil can assail what is good.”

“The meek shall inherit the earth” – The people who are willing to let their lives be ruled by the gentle qualities of love. They don’t get trapped in the illusion that somehow they can control their inner world, they can control other people they can control circumstances. Notice the word inherit,

The strong conquer the earth; the meek inherit the earth. And what does it mean to inherit? A beloved child of a rich father will find that one day he suddenly owns things that he did not earn by his own strength. He comes to possess a wealth that doesn’t really belong to him simply because he inherits it. The meek inherit the earth, which means that they come to experience all the wealth that the Lord provides in heaven and on earth. Your life can be rich and full – not by conquering it, not by dominating the world, but by that beautiful quality of inner surrender. Just let the Lord be the God of your heaven and your earth and you become His child, you become like Him and therefore you inherit everything that belongs to Him. You inherit the world; and this gives a person an inner peace and contentment.

This third Beatitude was actually a quotation from the Psalms and all that Jesus did was to add the word blessed or blissfully happy. It says in Psalm 37, “The meek shall inherit the earth.” In contrast to the evil doers “Who will be cut off.” As the Lord said, “Come to me all ye that labor and are heavy ladened and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I am meek and lowly in heart and you will find rest for your souls, for my yoke is easy and my burden light.”

Amen.

By Rev. Ian Arnold
Brisbane, July 4th, 2010

Numbers Chapter 13, verses 30 to 32a: Then Caleb quieted the people before Moses, and said, ‘Let us go up at once and take possession, for we are well able to overcome it.’

But the men who had done up with him said, ‘We are not able to go up against the people for they are stronger than we.’

And they gave the children of Israel a bad report of the land which they had spied out…”

What is opened up for us here

It is amazing what issues – all to do with our own lives – are touched upon and the insights about ourselves that this episode opens up for us.

But this is typical of the Word, throughout, in whatever book of the Word or place you look into; and we rightly expect it to be so.

What we see on the surface is no more or less than the tip of the iceberg. There is just so much underneath.

It is where and why we – and people more generally – can get it wrong, especially when it comes to the Old Testament. There is a fair percentage of it that reads – and comes across as being – dry as dust irrelevance, making no immediate or obvious connection with life as we face it, have to deal with it and are challenged by it, today. But go beyond the story and beneath the surface and it really begins to come alive for us.

Fundamental truths of our existence highlighted

As near as we can calculate, this story is all of three thousand, two hundred, years old. It is about the ancient people of Israel who, after some centuries of slavery in Egypt, escaped and, with Moses their leader out at front, began their journey to the Promised Land. Within weeks Moses sent ahead twelve scouts, or spies, to reconnoitre the land to which they were heading and which they had been promised, a land flowing with milk and honey. On their return, all twelve were glowing in their reports of the fertility and richness and beauty of the land, but while two (and just two) urged that they go confidently forward and that it was theirs for the taking, with God’s help, the other ten spoke negatively, highlighting difficulties and persuading the people there was no way they could do it.

As we noted a moment ago, the story is near 3,200 years old. But beneath the surface it is right on target as to how it is so often with us.

Indeed, what is opened up, highlighted and brought home to us here is one of the great and fundamental truths of our existence.

We live in the midst of opposing influences and urgings impacting on us. These can of course be, and often are, from people, friends, and relatives and loved ones around us. But often overlooked are impulses reaching us from within. The thing is, we have all known our times when we have been buffeted and pulled one way or another. ‘Shall I or shan’t I?’ ‘Do I or am I better to leave it on one side?’ All private, I am talking about here; known only to yourself; a wrestling match going on; and no one outside of you knows about it.

We nominate and identify certain goals or projects we would like to accomplish. It could be to lose weight, learn an instrument or acquire a new skill. One part of us is all enthusiasm, full of confidence, revved up at the thought of it. But then doubts and questions start finding their way in. ‘I’m being silly’. ‘It’s too idealistic’. ‘What thanks will I get from it anyway?’ ‘And does anybody notice or care?’

In the midst of opposing influences from the spiritual world.

What comes across at first as utterly extraordinary is that we are not the source or origin of our thoughts and feelings. The reality is that all our thoughts and feelings are awakened and brought to our consciousness as the result of the activity of our unseen spiritual companions, angelic or heavenly spirits on the one hand and evil or devilish spirits on the other.

Being in the midst of their activity and influence, and carefully monitored and balanced as this activity and influence is, by the Lord, we are in freewill and able to choose which we will accede to, favour or give into.

From heaven is relayed to us all that is positive, upbeat, reassuring and affirming of what is possible.

From hell is relayed to us all that is negative, dark, discouraging and self-serving.

From heaven, and when it comes to the Lord, and His purposes for us come message of trust and confidence.

From hell, when it comes to the Lord and His purposes for us, come dispute and cynicism and defeatism.

There is in fact far more said about this, in the Bible, than is often realized. Abraham sent his servant to find a wife for son Isaac and promised him that the angel of the Lord would be with him and prosper his quest. (See Genesis 4:7) When Jesus was tempted of the devil in the wilderness, at the end “angels came and ministered unto Him.” (See Matthew 4:11). Again, most of us can remember what Jesus said about children, that “their angels do always behold the face of my Father who is in heaven.” (Matthew 18:10) And whilst not immediately apparent, on the surface, Psalms 34 and 35 highlight this activity; Psalm 34 the activity of angels and Psalm 35 the activity of evil spirits.

Explains so much

That this is so explains so much.

It explains the battles that go on in our minds. It makes sense of how it comes about that we come to be so torn (and indecisive) within, between different directions, both of which beckon and both of which have appeal.

A surge of hope and optimism can be side lined by a different surge of doubt and pessimism. We ebb and flow in this regard.

Sometimes a wave of what is beautiful and inspiring descends upon us, while at another time a wave of what is ugly and what causes us to feel downcast descends upon us.

And isn’t it amazing that on one occasion a breakage or a set back is of no account to us and we wave it aside as being of no consequence. At another time annoyance and irritability are awakened and surge in.

The question is – and what is important – is that we then have to decide whether to give in and go along with that irritability and annoyance or make the greater effort required to shun it and to reclaim and affirm tolerance and mercy.

Especially when it comes to truths and goods

All of this – the ebb and the flow; the contrary influences at work; the voices having different messages for us and urging different ways ahead on us; all of this is especially and acutely so, and felt, when it comes to spiritual life and the person we are becoming within.

What is for sure is that peace, joy and contentment are all on offer. The Lord created us so that He might bless us. He wants us to see ourselves as people of worth. For this is what He created us to be. He is urging for us to know and believe that we are all capable of nobility of behaviour, of thoughtfulness and restraint. This is the Promised Land. This is the land of milk and honey; of release and freedom from our small-mindedness and addiction to what is material, natural and external and narrowly self-focused.

Everyone subscribes to this

What is interesting is that everyone subscribes to this as an ideal. Remember? All twelve of the spies said what a beautiful land the Promised Land was and would be. Is there a person anywhere, we might well ask, who does not want peace to reign across the world? The end of conflict; of roadside bombs which kill and maim? Who doesn’t aspire to live contentedly and happily? We all do, of course.

Our modern day heroes tend to be the people who, in their lives and behaviour, have exhibited these qualities. Nelson Mandela and the late Mother Theresa come to mind.

But it is of course a different story when it comes to us. One the one hand we hear voices within which tell us we can do it, and have it, and on the other hand we hear the voices of negativity and defeatism. ‘It’s all pie in the sky!’ ‘It’s good in theory, but let’s be practical!’ ‘The world just doesn’t work like that!‘ And, more personally, we get unwanted reminders of our failures and shortcomings; times we have slipped up, let ourselves down, given in when we should have held on.

Trawling for ammunition

As the teaching in the Heavenly Doctrines highlights, this – indeed – is a particularly potent strategy of evil spirits in their quest to have us succumb, give up, surrender to what is selfishly satisfying, that they trawl through our memories for those very lapses just mentioned and with which, they “accuse and condemn” us. (See Arcana Caelestia 6202:2 and 8159). As a consequence we feel further weakened and more dispirited than ever.

So, what was the difference?

So, what was the difference, the two as against the other ten? The optimists and the pessimists? Those who urged confidence as compared with those who spoke of certain defeat and pointlessness, even before they tried?

The thing is, the ten looked only to their own resources and, seeing weakness, urged it would be suicidal to try. The two who urged confidence and pleaded with the people to go forward had in mind not just their own very limited resources but the reality that the Lord would be with them and give them the resolve, strategies, determination and perseverance to succeed.

If we look to our own scant resources, how weak we are; how weak we have been; our poor track record; how irresolute we can be; how formidable the opposition seems; how steep the hill to climb seems to be; how entrenched old mind sets are; we cannot but give up and give in before we start.

If, however, we accept that, yes, we have no strength of our own but that the Lord is with us; has blessed us to this point; and will be with us as we go forward, bringing His strength and resources to bear on our behalf, the Promised Land of heavenly living will be ours.

May we all be strong to go forward notwithstanding the voices of negativity and discouragement which otherwise, if given into, so hold us back.

“Then Caleb quieted the people before Moses, and said, ‘Let us go up at once and take possession, for we are well able to overcome it.’

But the men who had gone up with him said, ‘We are not able to go up against the people, for they are stronger than we.’

And they gave the children of Israel a bad report of the land which they had spied out…”

Amen.

Readings:-

Matthew Chapter 17, verses 14 to 20

Numbers Chapter 13, verses 1 to 3; 17 to 21; and verse 25: also Chapter 14, verse 1

Arcana Caelestia 2338 and 8670

“Temptations involve feelings of doubt regarding the Lord’s presence and mercy, and also regarding His salvation. The evil spirits who are present with a person at such times and who are the causes of the temptation do all they can to infuse a negative outlook, but good spirits and angels from the Lord in every way disperse that doubting attitude, all the time preserving a feeling of hope and in the end strengthening an affirmative outlook. Consequently a person undergoing temptation hangs between a negative and an affirmative outlook. Anyone who gives way in temptation remains in a doubting, and sinks into a negative, frame of mind, whereas one who overcomes still experiences feelings of doubt; yet he who allows himself to be filled with hope remains in an affirmative outlook.” Arcana Caelestia 2338

“People who are being tempted are involved in toil against falsities and evils, and also the angels are involved in toil together with them to maintain them in faith and so in the power to be victorious.” Arcana Caelestia 8670

Amen.