DESICCATED ORANGE

THE DESICCATED ORANGE

 

I grew up in Depression years.  On our small farm we had apples and pears and lots of berries.  Grandmother canned some things and dried others.  We had little money but lots of good things to eat.  At Christmas time the small church we attended gave candy and things to the children.  My prize gift to receive was an orange – one solitary orange.  But to this small child, it was a priceless gift.  Nothing tasted so delicious as that orange!  The context is that there were no supermarkets yet and fresh fruit in the winter was almost impossible to find.

 

Later, working in an office, gifts were exchanged at Christmas time.  Good cheer and good times.  But one gift that always showed up was a desiccated orange.  It was an old orange that had dried up and mummified.  It was supposed to be funny.  Wrapped in beautiful paper with silver seals, but when you opened it!  Good for a laugh but nothing else.  It was now just a hard dry skin, useless.

 

It was a real orange from a tree.  It once had tasty juice and pulp.  But it gradually dried up and died.  It still looked like an orange, pale color, round, and we called it our orange.  But it was desiccated, worthless, only a gag gift.

 

Congregations can go through the process like that orange.  Paul the apostle wrote: “having a form of godliness but denying its power. And from such people turn away!” 2 Tim 3:5 (NKJV).  They will act religious, but they will reject the power that could make them godly.  Power cannot be separated from form.  Just as faith without works is a form without substance (James 2:26), so is religion (pattern) without power.  You may have the most expensive car, but if you remove the battery, I won’t run.  You need the power.

 

Some lose their first love of Christ and wither.  Some preachers listen to harsh preaching on tapes and then repeat those things word for word.  A woman at a tiny congregation came to the preacher in the parking lot.  “Don’t you like anything about us?  What could we do to please you?”  He had preached harshly about how you must sing even if you have a sore throat.  A congregation about to call a new preacher said: “But he preaches such wonderfully harsh sermons!”  Then in a month they put him out of the pulpit.

 

Congregations can go through a process that leaves them like that old orange.   Jesus warned: "Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.” Luke 12:1 (NKJV).   Paul spoke of “will worship.”  “These things indeed have an appearance of wisdom in self-imposed religion, false humility, and neglect of the body, but are of no value against the indulgence of the flesh.” Col 2:23 (NKJV).   Some champion “old paths” but we ask: Whose old paths are they???  The New Testament church was filled with life and spiritual vigor.  We read: “praising God and having favor with all the people."  Acts 2:47 (NKJV).

Walter Scott wrote a booklet “The Holy Ghost.”  .  It was bound with Campbell’s The Millennial Harbinger, Vol. 2 (1831).   “CHRISTIANITY, as developed in the Sacred Oracle, is sustained by three divine missions--the mission of Jesus, the mission of the Apostles, and the mission of the Holy Spirit.”  And: “Here, then, we have the descent of the great spiritual missionary into the body of Christ, the church; from which moment he has never left it, and never can leave it; for while the personal mission of Jesus to the Jews, and that of the Apostles to the world, were only temporary, the mission of the Spirit into the body of Christ is an eternal matter--even death cannot annul it.  "For if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwell in you," says Paul, "he that raised up Jesus from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you." "He shall abide with you forever."

 

God is more generous than we are.  Even when we focus intently on form, power is there also.  Picture a man sitting, always looking down at the dust and debris at his feet, searching for something of value.  And above his head is a gold crown.  He needs just to reach up and take it.  The Psalmist wrote: “If You, Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? But there is forgiveness with You, That You may be feared.”  Psalms 130:3-4 (NKJV).

 

The message of the Gospel is the GOD who loves us and calls us through Jesus Christ – the Eternal Word who came in flesh & blood, skin & bones – the Lamb who takes away sins.  “Law” sells well.  “Obedience” is necessary – but notice John the Apostle.  “And whatever we ask we receive from Him, because we keep His commandments and do those things that are pleasing in His sight. And this is His commandment: that we should believe on the name of His Son Jesus Christ and love one another, as He gave us commandment.”  1 John 3:22-23 (NKJV).

 

PS: Moses Lard, was an old preacher who sometimes seemed very harsh.  Shortly before his death he said something like this.  “If I had my life to live over, I would still preach the same gospel.  But I would preach it more with a sense of: God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life.”