Most of the stories Jesus told lend themselves to easy application, do they not? Consider, for example, the story of the Prodigal Son or the story of the Good Samaritan. Everybody resonates with those two stories because everybody understands them and can relate to them. After all, who among us hasn’t felt the tug toward the far country and felt the need to come home once we had come to our senses? Or, who among us hasn’t wrestled with the responsibility of going out of our way to help another in need, especially when we at one point were on the receiving end of such aid? In almost every story Jesus tells, there is at least one character we can see ourselves in, or one character we can imagine ourselves working to become. 

But in this parable that is before us this morning, that is not so much the case. It’s hard for us to wrap our hearts around its central character, the character of the Dishonest Steward.

Look at the story. It’s a story about a rich man who has so much money he can’t keep up with it. So, what does he do? He hires a manager. Only, the rich man obviously has not checked his manager’s references, because the guy he’s hired is slick and slimy, and as dishonest as they come. The rich man doesn’t see it, but evidently others do, and at some point they bring it to the rich man’s attention that his manager has been squandering his possessions, which by the way is the same word Jesus uses to describe what the prodigal son does with his inheritance while away in the far country. He squanders it.

The steward’s squandering has left the rich man’s reputation in shambles. In terms of standing, the rich man has taken a serious hit in the eyes of the town peasants, a most serious matter in the first century world. So when the rich man calls his manager in to give an account of his sloppy stewardship, the manager freaks out. He knows that he’s about to be shown the door and in the future he will have no place to land. “What will I do?  I’m not strong enough to dig and I’m too ashamed to beg.” (The manager, you see, is also concerned about his reputation.) And then a light bulb comes on. And on the spot the manager comes up with a plan and quickly rushes it into action.

He calls all of his master’s creditors together and starts discounting their rates of interest in a way that would leave a banker’s head spinning. To the first he says, “So, how much do you owe the master? 800 gallons of olive oil? Here, take your bill and sit down quickly and crank out a check for four hundred and we’ll call it even.” To the next he says, “And how much do you owe? One thousand bushels of wheat? Make it 800 and you’re good to go.”   

And when the word reaches the rich man about what his slimy steward has done, you’re thinking, “He’s going to get it for sure now.” But that’s not what happens. Remarkably, the rich man praises his dishonest manager because of how he acted so shrewdly! Instead of berating him, the master applauds his craftiness! And I know what you’re thinking. Why would the rich man do such a thing? He does so, because he is more interested in his reputation than in his money, and he knows that now all the peasants will assume that he has been stricken with a bout of generosity which has led him to instruct his manager to lower their rates of interest. The peasants won’t know that the steward has only acted to save his own skin, and as far as the rich man is concerned, what the peasants won’t know won’t hurt them. And so, at the end of the day, the peasants benefit from a sweet deal, the rich man sees his reputation skyrocket in the eyes of the people and the dishonest steward gets to keep his job. Win, win, win. And there is your story.

Well, actually it is not; it is not the whole story. Because while the Jesus’ disciples’ heads are still spinning over what Jesus has just told them, Jesus delivers the punch line: “For the people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their kind than are the people of the light.”

OK, and so the point is? Before we consider the answer to that question, let us think first about what the point of the story is not. Jesus is not teaching that the end of an action always justifies the means – that it’s OK to do something as long as everything comes out fine in the end. Jesus was not a relativist. Jesus held to absolute distinctions between right and wrong, good and evil. And he was always insistent that his disciples line up consistently on the side of right.  

But what Jesus was teaching, and what is so instructive about his story for us today, is that we who call ourselves people of faith ought to be more imaginative and more resourceful and more forward-thinking about how we do the work of the Kingdom in the same way that people of the world go about their affairs. We ought to be more creative in how we express the benefits of our faith before an increasingly unbelieving world, at least as creative as worldly people are in theirs. That’s because business as usual just won’t cut any more. If we want to draw others into a spiritual community where we can together celebrate the new life and boundless grace God has provided through our Lord Jesus Christ, then we need to be more faithful with what God has given us to manage so that all who find themselves burdened down with a debt of guilt and shame might find the same release that we have come to know through our faith in Jesus Christ.

I think that’s what Jesus meant when he spoke with his disciples about “gaining for ourselves friends out of our worldly wealth so that when it is gone, we might be welcomed into eternal dwellings.” While on the surface that teaching might seem as if Jesus is encouraging us to employ our worldly gain for self-centered purposes (“leverage it now so that you’ll have a home in heaven”), in reality he’s simply reminding us that when we steward God’s gifts for Kingdom purposes – preaching good news to the poor, proclaiming freedom to the captives and recovery of sight for the blind and release for the oppressed (Luke 4) – we are bearing witness to how our wealth does not master us; we are instead mastering our wealth and using it in ways that honor God and that will result in God honoring us by entrusting us with eternal gain.

You’ve heard the expression, “Follow the money.” It’s a catchphrase from the world of politics that sheds light on how money drives so many of the decisions that result in government policies or explain who moves into what positions of power. The idea is that money is always the impetus for why people act they way that they do.

We don’t normally associate that saying with matters of faith, but if I am hearing Jesus correctly in this story, perhaps we should start doing so. After all, there is a real sense in which the resources we have really don’t belong to us; they belong to God. They’re the Master’s mammon, and we have been entrusted with that mammon to magnify His Kingdom’s presence in our world today.   

Perhaps if we saw our worldly wealth in that way, as being on loan to us from God, we would be bolder. We would be shrewder. We would be more creative in our efforts in using it to bless others.   

It’s a concern that we really do need to give more thought about. Because one day, you and I will be called upon by our Master to give an account of what He has entrusted to us. One day we will stand before the Lord to render an explanation of how well we have used the Master’s resources to draw our neighbors into the fold.   

Will on that day there be others who will say of you, “I know him. I know her. He went out of his way to make me feel accepted. She did the most extraordinary thing to show me Jesus’ grace”?  Or, will it be another way?  Will it be, “God, you wouldn’t believe how badly that manager spent his life squandering your abundant assets”? However it will be is a matter that is being decided even as we speak.   

Make friends, then, for yourselves with worldly wealth, the mammon of unrighteousness so that through your management of it, you will show that your mammon doesn’t own you. God does. And the many lives you have touched with it will show your loving service for God, which will allow you to receive God’s blessing today and in the future enter into His eternal rest.

Joseph Campbell was a professor of comparative religion in the last century whose writings focused on the human experience.  In his most famous work, The Power of Myth, Campbell’s study of human behavior led him to the following conclusion.  Most people he knew were living what he called “wasteland lives.”  He saw them as spending their days in a baffled state, wandering in what he called the “waste land,” without any sense of where the water is, which is of course the source that makes everything green.

Do you know anyone like that? Do you know of anyone who lives a “waste land” life?   In your own life, do you know where the water is?  Do you know where you can go to find what you need to give your life meaning and purpose?

Sadly, not many today seem to do.  They have no sense of transcendence, nothing larger than themselves to hang their lives on, so they go through each day aimless and confused.  But that is not how God created us to live.  God created us to live instead with fulfillment and satisfaction, qualities which can only be known when we choose to order our lives around the direction God gives.

Such was the counsel of the Psalmist in his first psalm.  The book of Psalms is of course a book of hymns and choruses which God’s people employed to lift their lives to God.  This first psalm sets the stage for what will follow as it offers us what English majors know as a comparison and contrast, one that compares and contrasts the spirit of faithfulness with the spirit of unfaithfulness and where those two divergent paths ultimately lead.

The first path is the path of faithfulness. It is a path marked by blessing and favor because of how it focuses on God’s direction and mulls over it moment by moment in every circumstance and situation.  It rejects the faithless influences in life, regardless of how much pressure those influences impose on good people to get them to go in wrong ways.  Notice the progression (or should we say regression): A good and faithful person does not walk with the wicked or stand with the sinners or take company with the mockers.  It’s like the old frog and kettle analogy.  The regression is subtle and hard to recognize until it is too late and a good person finds himself or herself taking up company with the mockers.  And the only way they can withstand the pressure is to fix their attention on the Law of the Lord.  When that happens, that faithful person prospers, not so much in a material sense, and certainly not in a way that enables that person to avoid trial and tribulation.  Instead, God’s favor abides upon that person so that he or she might live a more productive life, a more effective life, which then will enable him or her to experience even greater fulfillment and flourishing.

On the other hand is the path of unfaithfulness, and it is starkly different.  Because unfaithful people are groundless and aimless, because their lives are not rooted in any meaningful sense of the word, every ill wind blows them in any direction.  They have no grounding, no firm foundation.  Therefore, they also have no real security in life.

Now, why, pray tell, would anyone choose the second path, the path of unfaithfulness?  It’s not as if the paths are so similar that one might be easily confused.  The two paths are as different as night and day, hot and cold.  And yet, day in and day out, some people make the wrong choice and go down the wrong path, and cut themselves off from the very life that God created them to know.

Part of the problem lies in our inability to muster the spiritual courage to reject the influence of the crowd that thinks it knows more than God about what makes for a good life.  After all, it doesn’t matter if you’re ten or thirty or fifty or older.  It’s hard to zig when the rest of the world seems to be zagging.  It’s hard to go against the flow and swim upstream against the current.  It’s much easier to float downstream and follow the crowd.

Another obstacle is our desire to have it both ways: to show faithfulness in one respect, while at the same time still leave room for the other foot to be planted in the land of selfish ambition and vain conceit.  The only problem is that God will never honor a divided heart.  God will never favor a double-minded person.  We must be “all in” with God’s ways or we will show ourselves to be “all out.”  We must align our lives with God’s direction or we will inevitably go through life living for ourselves.  There is no middle ground.  If you would know blessing in this life and bliss in the life to come, you must distinguish yourself as a person of faith, consistently embracing the ways of God.  And how do you do that?  How do you order your life in such a way that your focus and attention are fixed firmly upon God’s direction?

A good place to begin is to develop a spiritual discipline you can follow on a daily basis.  Obviously, attending to Holy Scripture is the best place to focus your discipline.  After all, as the Psalmist will later write in the 119th Psalm, we hide God’s word “in our hearts” in order that we might not sin against Him.  Where many people fail in this respect is when they feel as if they must read huge portions of Scripture in order to be faithful in this regard.  And to be sure, the more Bible you read, the better your soul will be.  But if you find yourself in a place where you feel as if you don’t have the time or energy to read large portions of Scripture, read one verse, just one verse, and do your best to commit that verse to memory.  And I assure you that when you start out in that way, it won’t be long before you’ll be finding the time to read more of the Bible, because of how it lifts your soul and calms your anxieties.   

Beyond that, take that one verse, or the one thought that comes from your reading of Scripture, and mull that thought over throughout the day.  Let it sink into the crevices of your heart and when it does, you will come to see how that truth will show up in other places in your life that you never would have expected.  It will show up in your business life, or your academic life.  It will show up in your family life and in your financial life.  It will show up in ways that will enable you to stand boldly and firmly for what is right so that with this stable grounding you will discover the fulfillment and satisfaction in your life that too few people today know.

Isn’t this how Jesus lived his life and found the strength to face the challenges that came his way?  Consider, for example, the temptation period in Jesus’ life, when Satan himself confronted Jesus in an attempt to steer him away from his God-given mission.  With each temptation, Jesus rebuffed Satan’s efforts by quoting from Holy Scripture, passages Jesus had committed to memory.  “Man does not live by bread alone.”  “You shall not put the Lord to the test.”  “You should worship God and Him alone.”  And as you read the story, you get the idea that with each recollection of Holy Scripture, Jesus found more strength to commit himself to God’s way.

This is why faith matters. It connects us to an inexhaustible source of spiritual strength that will sustain us and secure us for a life that contains God’s choicest blessings. Is that the kind of life you are living?  If not, you have a choice to make this morning and only one choice will get you to that place.I know we humans love options.  I know we love not to be locked down to one path. When I’m going to a destination and my navigation app on my phone gives me multiple ways to get there, I feel empowered. I get to choose how I want to travel. But in this matter of experiencing abundant life, there’s only one choice and only one way that will lead you to the place of eternal blessing and you must do whatever is necessary to make sure that you are on it.

It goes, of course, through Jesus, who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. It goes through Calvary and the Garden Tomb to a place of quiet rest near to the heart of God. Choose that path. Walk in that way. Delight in God’s instruction, and then you will live a flourishing life, not a “waste land” life, and you will be able to milk each moment in life for all that it is worth.

Matthew 7:15-20

September 2, 2019, Labor Day

School has now started for pretty much everyone, and it won’t be long before the first report cards go out, which is something that is as much a point of concern for parents as it is for the students.  Do you remember what it was like when report cards were being passed out in your class?  If you did well, you were pleased and your parents were pleased too.  But if you didn’t do so well in a particular subject, if you were like most kids, you always had some explaining to do when you got home.

I can still remember a report card I received in the first grade.  In Arithmetic, I got an A.  In Spelling, I got an A.  In Social Studies, I got an A.  In Conduct, I got a C.  And the teacher’s explanation under the Comments section was, “Doug is a good student, but he talks too much in class.”  Talks too much?  I thought that was what Social Studies was designed to encourage?  Well, guess what grade my parents locked in on?  I learned pretty quickly that all the “A’s” in the world would never make up for my less than exceptional conduct.  

Perhaps that’s a lesson that you also learned along the way.  In the grand scheme of things, what people know doesn’t matter a hill of beans if they can’t allow it to form them into good people. 

That’s something of what Jesus was getting at with this part of his Sermon on the Mount.  You know the general theme of this most famous teaching from Jesus.  It was the Kingdom of Heaven, and how we disciples might join Jesus in making God’s purposes come to pass here on earth as they always do in heaven.   

This section of the Sermon focuses on, of all things, the conduct of believers and how our behavior is the ultimate expression of our belief.  Evidently in Jesus’ day there were a good number of people going around representing themselves as spiritual authorities but living in such a way that their primary concern was self-centered and not God-centered.  “Watch out for them,” Jesus warned his disciples.  “Watch out for false prophets.”  The word Jesus used is a characteristic word in Matthew’s Gospel, which suggests that Jesus was serious about how his disciples were to be most diligent about attending not just to what people might believe but also to how they express their beliefs in their everyday life.

You’re familiar with the old saying, “I’d rather see a sermon than hear one any day.” That’s actually a line from a poem by Edgar Guest, a famous American poet of the early twentieth century.  The reason the line still hits so close to home today is because of how we have seen too many examples of people who have claimed to be followers of Jesus but whose lives have done anything but magnify his presence in them.  If anything, their poor conduct has caused us to question the sincerity of their belief.   

That is precisely why Jesus instructs us to align our confession and our conduct.  According to Jesus, the best way of determining the character of anyone’s witness is by its results.  Just as a tree cannot bear fruit contrary to its true nature so that a thorn bush will not yield grapes or thistles will not produce figs, so will true disciples show forth the validity of their convictions by the “good fruit” that they produce, which are behaviors that ultimately advance God’s purposes in our world.

I think this distinction, while always important to the church’s witness, is even more important today.  Think with me for a moment about the present challenge facing the church in this particular area.  Certainly, it’s always been the case that people who have turned away from the church have always rationalized their actions by pointing to the inconsistency between behavior and belief among confessing Christians.  What is the old line?  It’s almost become so trite that it’s lost a bit of its bite.  “The church is just full of hypocrites.”   

But what was different in days past was the way that people who offered up such an excuse for their lack of involvement still held out a certain measure of respect for the church’s witness.  They may not have darkened the doors of the church, but they at least understood the value of the church for the larger society.  That is clearly no longer the case today.  Many people not only stay away from church today because of the inconsistency they see, they also have come to reject the church’s relevance to the larger culture.  And that is why I firmly believe that the greatest threat that the church faces today is not some external threat; it’s not a threat from without.  It’s an internal threat; it’s a threat within.  It’s the inability of people who claim to be Christian to allow their belief in Jesus to permeate every aspect of their life so that their life can only be explained by the fullness of God’s presence in them.

So, what do people see in you?  Or, more importantly, what do people see from you?  Do they see actions that represent the presence of Jesus and serve to advance his cause in the world?  Or do they see the same old, same old that they see from people who in no way identify as Jesus-followers, actions that are self-centered and wildly ambitious and incapable of holding anyone’s interests except for their own?  Remember that as a bush will inevitably bear according to its nature, so we will produce only that which is in accordance with our nature.  We cannot help but exhibit the state of our hearts not only by what we say, but also by what we do.

How, then, do we go about improving the consistency of our witness?  I think it’s actually pretty simple.  I learned how it works in the first grade, when I got the “C” for conduct on my report card.  You work at it.  You pay attention to it.  You discipline yourself.  You focus your energies and attention on making sure that your discipleship is not simply something you’re about one day a week.  Instead, you allow your belief in Jesus to permeate every aspect of your existence, your labor and your leisure, your relationships and your finances.  In other words, if you restrict your discipleship to special “religious times,” the majority of your waking hours will be isolated from the manifest presence of Jesus and the Kingdom in your life.  But if you allow your belief to drive your behavior, your conduct will instead bear witness to how genuine your faith is and how it enables you in every part of your life to know the joy of God’s salvation.

If this idea sounds radical, so be it.  In fact, I think that’s the quality of life Jesus was calling his disciples to pursue.  After all, the word radical actually comes from a Latin word that means “to be rooted,” to be so deeply grounded in a particular way of life, a Kingdom way of life, that anyone can see that you aren’t driven by the same things that seem to drive everyone else.  You’re driven by something higher, something holier, and people are not repelled by it; they are rather drawn to it, because of how they see the presence of Jesus and all that Jesus stands for alive and at work in you.

Can you do that this morning?  Can you allow your faith in Jesus to elevate your conduct so that as one person has put it, you can “put down roots and put up leaf?”  You can put down roots and bear good fruit?

Herschel Hobbs is a name that long-standing Baptists will know.  Pastor for many years of the First Baptist Church of Oklahoma City, Hobbs is best known for his commentary series on Sunday School lessons that many teachers to this day wish they still had.  In one of his sermons he told about a judge who lived on a big ranch near Dallas.  When the judge died, his funeral was held at the ranch because the church wouldn’t be able to hold the people who would be coming to pay their respects.  Hobbs remembered that there were so many flowers for the funerals it took two trucks to transfer them to the cemetery.  As the flowers were being put on the trucks, Hobbs heard a friend of the judge say to one of the ranch hands who had worked for the judge for many years. “The judge sure received a lot of flowers, didn’t he?” To which the ranch hand replied, “Yes, sir, he did.  But you’ve got to remember that the Judge has been planting the seeds for these flowers an awfully long time.”

What are you planting and what are you producing?  It’s an important question to ask, because one day, the Master will return, and on that day we’ll all have to stand before Jesus and give an account for how we lived our faith, not just how we talked about it.  And on that day, we’ll receive his appraisal.  So, until then, let us live out our faith in ways that produce good fruit so that when the time comes for us to receive our grade from Jesus; we’ll hear him say with deep appreciation, “Well done.  Well done, you good and faithful servant.”

“Why Was There No One?”  Series: “Questions God Asks”

Children, as you know, can at times be the sweetest angels, while at other times they can be the cruelest of God’s creatures.  Under the latter category, I have been indelibly marked by a story that was told to me soon after I had moved from my birthplace of Mobile to what would become my hometown in West Alabama.  You will remember from your own childhood how one of the most important lessons you could ever learn had to do with social codes and interpersonal cues, and who was “in” and who was “out,” and other vital information that might keep you from forever being on the outside looking in.   

The story I was told had to do with another child in the community who was definitely in the “out” category.  She was by no means the most attractive girl in town, nor was she among the more intelligent kids in my sixth grade class.  She was instead the type of child that when someone inadvertently brushed up against her, they would be compelled to wipe away what they thought were germs she had passed on to them.   

Lo and behold, one day, she received in the mail an invitation to an anonymous birthday party at the community recreation center.  She never got invited to parties.  So, you can imagine her excitement.  She wore her nicest dress, put a bow in her hair, made sure she had a suitable present, and then had her parents drive her over to the recreation center.  No one was there yet, but it didn’t matter much to her.  She just waited, and waited, and waited.   

I dare say that a good number of us here this morning have some experience with what it’s like to get stood up, although for most of us when that has happened, the absence of the other party was due to some miscommunication.  Somebody showed up at the wrong coffee shop, or on the wrong day, or at the wrong hour.  But even then, we will never forget the sick feeling in the pit of our stomachs as the thought crossed our minds that someone just may have disrespected to such a degree that they simply didn’t bother to show.   

If you’ve never had to go through such an experience, then good for you; but if you have, know that you’re not alone.  God knows what it’s like to be stood up, even when He has chosen to show up to perform some mighty work of deliverance that those who were to be on the receiving end weren’t patient enough to wait for.

We see God’s story of rejection in this passage that’s before us this morning from the book of Isaiah.  This section of Isaiah has to do with God’s Word to the exiles in Babylon, a conquered people who had been taken away from their homeland against their will to a strange land, where they had to learn new codes and cues and what to do in order to survive.  Their assumption was that God had forgotten them and forsaken them (Isa. 49:14).   

But nothing could have been further from the truth.  God, in His steadfast love, had neither forgotten nor forsaken His chosen people.  As the passages around this one suggest, God commissioned Isaiah to paint a vivid word picture of how in His time the tables will be turned and His people’s captors will bring them back to Zion, and all of this will be a work of salvation that only God will have been able to bring about.  Unfortunately, the exiles follow up God’s promise with questions about God’s ability to come through in such a mighty way, questions which God answers with questions of His own.   

“Where are the divorce papers that I filed, or the bill of sales by which I sold you into slavery?”  In other words, “I’m not the one who is to blame for what you’ve gone through.  If you’ve landed in a strange land, it’s because of how you would not embrace me and how you chose to take matters into your own hands.”

Of all the questions God poses to His people, the one that gets my attention is this question in verse 2: “When I came, why was there no one?  When I called, why was there no one to answer?”  I hear those questions as God’s way of asking why when He showed up to do for them what no one else could have done, the people were nowhere to be found.  It wasn’t God who was a “no-show”; it was the people.  God came to meet them at their point of deepest need, but instead of receiving what God was prepared to give, they stood up God, plain and simple.  There’s no other way to describe it.   

We hear a story like this and our first response is, “Well, I’d never do anything like that!  I’d never stand God up!  I’d never leave God in a lurch!”  But can we always say that we are faithful to be where God calls us to be so that we never miss out on His help and His hope?  I’m not sure that we can.  It’s not so much that we fail to show up when God calls us to meet Him; it’s more the case that we do show up, but when God fails to make His presence and power known when we think He ought, we become impatient and we leave to look for other avenues of encouragement and support, so that when God does show up to respond, we are nowhere to be found, leaving God to wonder, “Where did they go?”  “Why was no one here to greet me?”

Isaiah’s prophecy points to a deep flaw in the human heart, a flaw that presumes that God should always work on our timetables and according to our schedules.  For example, in Isaiah’s day, the people had been in exile for decades and had assumed that God had given up on them, which led them to turn to other nations and to the gods of other nations.  In our day, we are more subtle but nonetheless equally sinful.  When God seems silent in the face of our challenging circumstances and situations, we turn inwardly to our work or our hobbies or our families or our friends, none of which is inherently bad, but all of which can become so when we allow them to take a place in our souls that should always be reserved for God.     

Why is it that we find it so hard to wait upon the LORD?  Might it be that unlike the people in Isaiah’s day, we have become unduly proud people; secure in ourselves, who think it beneath ourselves to wait on anyone to show up, even God?  Proud people can never wait on God to show up.  They will inevitably lose patience and be long gone before God does show up.  Only desperate people, people who know they have nowhere else to turn, will hold fast in their faith that in His time God will arrive, and when He does, He will do something only God can do.

How desperate, then, are you?  How willing are you to wait upon God and to trust your life to His timing?  Or, has your pride become a stumbling block that keeps us from being open to God doing a work in and through you that only God can do?   

Perhaps it precisely this matter of pride that makes children far more patient than adults.  As we age into adulthood, progress becomes our main concern so that we find it hard to associate inactivity with personal gain.  But children?  They show a remarkable propensity for going off the clock and being open to the seemingly impossible and expecting something good to come about when no one else around them is in that frame of mind.  It’s like the little boy who was seen by a shopping mall security guard standing at the bottom of a department store escalator.  The boy had his eyes fixed on the handrail and for the life of him would not take them away.  The security guard asked the boy, “Son, are you lost?” To which the little boy replied, “No, sir; I’m just waiting for my chewing gum to come back.”

Maybe that too is something of what Jesus was talking about when he told his disciples, “Unless you change and become like little children, you will never see the Kingdom of Heaven” (Mt. 18:3).  While the vast majority of people in our world today are primed to expect instant gratification in every aspect of daily life, we have had our hearts and minds changed so that we know how to wait – like Adam who waited for a helpmate, like Noah who waited for the flood waters to recede, like Jacob who had to wait to marry his beloved Rachel, like Hannah who waited for her son Samuel, like the Israelites who had to wait for the Promised Land and then wait some more to be delivered back to it from their exile, like Jesus who waited in the wilderness before embarking on his earthly ministry, and like the first disciples who waited in the city until they were armed with power from on high.  We wait with the confidence that in every situation God is at work and that He is at work for our best interests so that we have only to be patiently open to God’s timing and not be rash by taking matters into our own hands.

So, fix up and find your way to the place to which God has called you, and wait, and wait, and wait.  You can be certain that God in His time will show up.  He will not forget you.  And when He does, when God shows up, rest assured that what He does in you and what He does for you and what He does through you will be more than worth your wait.   

I don’t know what I did to offend the makers of vending machines, but it has been my lot in life to be afflicted with the curse of being the person who is always getting his money taken but never receives the product that he pays for.  Coke machines mock me, because they always seem to be sold out of the one that I am looking for.  Candy and potato chips always get hung up in the metal casings.  And heaven help me if I try to purchase a pack of gum.  What did I do to deserve such a fate?  Was it that time a machine didn’t deliver and I rocked it not so gently to get what I paid for?  Was it the morning back in college that I paid for my paper but an acquaintance grabbed the door before it closed so that he could get one for free?  Is it because of my compulsive checking of the change tray to see if anyone left any change behind (which, of course, I would donate to the church)?  What did I do to insult the vending machine “gods?”

I saw all of this with tongue firmly implanted in my cheek, though there is a part of me that truly believes I should get what I paid for.  And I would imagine that you feel the same way. There is no sin in expecting to receive what you paid for and to be upset when it doesn’t happen.

But there is a sin in expecting to receive more than you deserve in life, and even demanding it.

That’s one of the many lessons we glean from the book of Job.  Job’s story is one that everyone seems to identify with, not that many of us were as afflicted as he was, but because all of us have experienced times in our lives when the questions have come cascading from our souls.  Why me?  Why this?  Why now?  All of us have gone through times when life wasn’t fair and it didn’t seem like God was too concerned with doing anything about it.

The book of Job is a long book, forty-two chapters to be exact.  The basic plot we are familiar with.  The story begins with the description of Job as a “blameless” man, one of the few people in the Bible to be described in such a way (Job 1:1).  Not only was he blameless, he was also fabulously wealthy.  One day as God was calling attention to Job’s outstanding character before the angels, Satan, which in Hebrew means “the Accuser,” showed up to belittle both Job and God.  “Does Job fear God for nothing?” Satan said.  “Have you not put a hedge around him and his household and everything he has?” (Job 1:9-10).  So, God allows Satan to attack Job, short of taking his life, and He is confident that Job will be able to withstand Satan’s assault.

What comes next is riveting.  Job’s possessions are taken away.  Job’s family is killed when a mighty wind strikes the home where they have gathered.  Job gets sick and comes down with painful sores.  Three of his friends show up, ostensibly to comfort him, but they end up only challenging him to confess some secret sin that has brought all of this misery about.  His wife even mocks him.  “Are you still holding on to your integrity?  Curse God and die!” (Job 2:9).  Job has no one in his corner – not his friends, not his wife, and as righteous a he is, he even begins to have his doubts about God.

That’s where our text for the day picks up Job’s story.  Job is at the end of his rope.  He has wrestled with the reason for all of his suffering, and the whole matter seems irrational.  He has asked the hard questions and has received no answers from God.  It seems to Job as if the God he has put his faith in – the God who always rewards people for their good behavior, the God who always gives them what they deserve – that God has shown Himself faithless, and Job is having second thoughts about whether that God is to be trusted.

In our more honest moments, it is that part of Job’s personality that we best identify with.  We would be the last to count ourselves blameless.  We know that the person we look at in the mirror every morning is flawed and imperfect.  But we also believe in our heart of hearts that we deserve something for trying to be good.  We believe that God should reward us for making an effort.  And when doesn’t pan out as we think it should, we know who to blame.  We know there is no one to blame but God.  “He destroys both the blameless and the wicked” (Job 9:22).  You tell Him Job!  “He mocks the despair of the innocent” (Job 9:23).  You go guy!  “He blindfolds the judges.  If it is not he, then who is it?” (Job 9:24).  Finally, here is somebody who gets it.   

No, Job doesn’t get it, and neither do we, at least not until we understand the majesty of God and how in His mercy He doesn’t give us what we really deserve.

This 38th chapter begins God’s response to Job’s lament.  Understand that for thirty-seven chapters God has been patient; God has let Job have his say, and now it is time for God to have His.  Out of the whirlwind God speaks to Job: “Who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge?  Brace yourself like a man; I will question you and you shall answer me.”  And God goes on from there.  “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundations?  Have you ever given orders to the morning?  What is the way to the abode of light?”  There is just one question after another, and with each question from God, Job is reduced to awe and silence.

You should know that there have been many students of the Old Testament who have raised questions about God’s response to Job.  Some have taken offense at God’s seeming insecurity, as if God were being petty and impolite.  Others hear it as an angry response, as if God is scolding Job.  But there are others who have gone deeper into the difficulties such a response from God creates.  “OK; this is not the response I would have expected from God.  I would have expected God to be more gentle with Job.  I would have expected God to have been nicer and more compassionate.  I would have expected God to be more understanding of Job’s condition.  So what does this story tell me about the character of God?”  That’s a very important question.  It’s important that we probe the answer to that question because how we understand the character of God shapes our sense of what it means to be faithful to God and thus what the whole matter of discipleship is really all about.

Maybe Walter Brueggemann, professor of Old Testament at Columbia up in Atlanta, gives us some guidance when he forcefully but faithfully says in one of his prayers, “You are not the God we would have chosen.”  Clearly, Job would have chosen a different God.  Job would have chosen a God who ordered the world so that people who worked hard and kept their noses clean would be guaranteed a prosperous life.  Job would have chosen a God who spared His people from pain.  Job would have chosen a God who never allowed bad things to happen to good people.  And so would we, if we actually had such a choice.  But what do we get?  We get a God who is more than what we would have chosen.  We get a God who is greater than our pain.  We get a God whose purposes are not frustrated by the evil and injustice of the world.  We get a God who reminds us, as He reminded Job, that in spite of the toil and tribulation that make up so much of our everyday existence, there is also splendor and surprise, beauty and blessing, and the God who is the source of all that is good will in His time draw near to sustain us.  And when He does draw near, the work of grace that He will do will shake us to the very core of our being.  The fact that He will give us more than we deserve will rock our world to its very foundation.

Mariah was her name.  She was five years of age when she first heard the story of God’s love and life-giving power.  It was so different from the story she had come to know.  Her father was an alcoholic; her mother battled depression with pills and booze.  Angry words, judgment, and emotional and physical abuse were her constant companions.  Fortunately for Mariah, she had grandparents who would not let up on her parents about taking Mariah to church.  There, she listened intently as the pastor told her about God and about how she was precious to God.  She listened as he talked about Jesus and his love and tenderness for children. He told her that there was nothing she could do that would ever make God to stop loving her.  It was for Mariah, even at that early age, a “counter story” to the only story she had ever known, and at five years of age she was given hope and the promise that with God’s help her life could be different.

And so can yours be different this morning.  You may have come to this place with a thousand “whys” on your heart.  I can’t give you a single answer to any of them, but then neither did God with Job.  What I can give you is a God who is more than what any of us would have chosen – a God who comes to us in the person of Jesus, who is God’s answer to all our questions.   

Where were you when they crucified our Lord?  Where were you when they nailed him to the cross?  Where were you when they laid him in the tomb?  Where were you when he rose up from the dead?  As the old song says, “Sometimes the very thought of such a God causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.”  And, like Job, I have to brace myself and say thanks.  Now, I know.  Now, I understand.

God is not a celestial vending machine to whom I submit my prayers and then He delivers.  God is not in the business of giving me what I want, when I want it.  God is God, and I do not determine how He will act, nor am I always the reason why God acts.  This world belongs to Him, and I simply need to find comfort in the promise that it is such a God that has my best interests at heart, and so do you.

So, the next time you think that God isn’t giving you what you deserve, be thankful.  More than likely, He already has and will continue to give you more than you deserve.  Understand that this world is a wild and wonderful display of God’s ability to keep everything in check, even your little life, and that instead of cursing your misfortune, you can call attention to the good that is so evident to those who have eyes of faith to behold it.  Then brace yourself for the blessing that Job discovered, that in all things our paths are held in the hand of a God who is for us and who has promised to deliver us – a God who allows us to voice our fears and frustrations and then silences them with a Holy Presence that we would be wise to cling to every step of our way.

“What Are You Doing Here?”  Series: “Questions God Asks”

A while back, there was an article in The New York Times Magazine titled, “Fly Me Away.”  It was about a travel agency in Milan, Italy, which specializes in a unique type of getaway.  For most people, getting away means taking a relaxing vacation somewhere, the plans for which doesn’t require the services of a travel agency at all.  But what if the idea of getting away were a bit more literal than just a brief retreat from one’s everyday routine?  What if you wanted to escape a sticky situation, or wanted to start your life all over again?  For that you would want to call the travel agency in Milan, which is called Happy Expatriation, whose owner, Umberto Gallini, created it to help those individuals who want to escape their old way of life in order to create a new life for themselves.  Not surprisingly, Gallini’s agents only have to book one-way tickets for folk who want to start all over again, sometimes out of boredom, other times out of legal jeopardy, and sometimes just out of plain old fear.  Gallini claims that he doesn’t knowingly work with criminals, but he also admits that “if someone chooses not to tell me his problem, I don’t ask” (“Fly Me Away,” The New York Times Magazine, June 21, 1998).

Has there ever been a time in your life when you felt as if you could have used such a service?  Has there ever been a time when you have been so down or discouraged or so hopeless about your circumstances that the idea of starting all over carried a certain appeal for you?  While the thought of a full and complete getaway may have crossed our minds for a fleeting moment, the vast majority of us would most likely never go to such an extreme because of how we can’t be certain that our problems wouldn’t follow us to a new place so that we figure that it’s better simply to stay where we are and try to improve our situations the best that we can.

Maybe that’s why the story of Elijah’s flight to Beersheba and beyond is so fascinating to us at such a very deep level.

You’re of course familiar with Elijah.  He represents the best of Old Testament prophecy and as such is considered the prophet par excellence.  Just as in the New Testament Moses represents the Law, so Elijah represents the entirety of biblical prophecy.  Remember it was he along with Moses who appeared with Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration.   

So, what made Elijah so special?  It was no doubt the manner in which Elijah spoke God’s truth to power at a time when that power had gotten away too far from where God wanted His people to be.  In Elijah’s time, Ahab was the king of Israel, and in the words of 1 Kings “he did more evil in the eyes of the LORD than any of those (kings) before him” (1 Kgs. 16:30).  Of all the evil Ahab did there was nothing more heinous than his marriage to Jezebel, a Baal worshiper from Sidon, who convinced her husband to set up a temple with an altar to Baal in the capital city of Samaria – a direct violation of the first of the Ten Commandments “not to have any gods before me” (Ex. 20:3).  Suffice it to say that Elijah was a constant thorn in Ahab and Jezebel’s side, as he never failed to call attention to how under their leadership the nation was in danger of forfeiting the blessing of God.   

The pinnacle of Elijah’s ministry was the “High Noon” moment where he contended with the prophets of Baal atop Mount Carmel, exposing their frailties and displaying God’s supremacy.  It was a beat-down of epic proportions so that at the end of the day there was not a false prophet left standing.  Ahab was humiliated, and Jezebel?  She was infuriated, vowing to exact revenge on Elijah with every fiber of her being.  “May the gods deal with me ever so severely, if by this time tomorrow, I do not make your life like that of one of them” (1 Kgs. 19:1).   

What we discover next is a shadow side of Elijah.  The contrast between the bold prophet of chapter 18 and the cowering wimp of chapter 19 could not be more stark.  Out of fear for his life Elijah gets away.  He doesn’t need a travel agency.  He runs.  Elijah runs for his life.  In fright and despair, he runs southward to the very border of Judah, where he is beyond Jezebel’s reach but still within the Promised Land.  But then he doesn’t something very strange.  Elijah dismisses his servant, which constitutes a surrender of his ministry, and he leaves the confines of Judah and goes another day’s journey into the desert, which constitutes the abandonment of all things Israelite.  Under a broom tree, a big bush, he lies down and prays for God to take his life, and all that he has lived for.  And that is when God takes over.  That is when God shows up, transforming a place of death into a place of life and recommissioning His prophet so that Elijah might go back to the struggle and in the power of God live to contend his enemies another day.

If you’ll notice, there are a lot of doublets in this passage of Scripture, lots of things that happen in “twos.”  Elijah runs from Jezebel, and then he runs some more.  In his weariness an angel feeds Elijah and then the angel feeds him again.  And most importantly, God asks Elijah a question, one which God also asks a second time.  “What are you doing here?  What are you doing here?”  The repetitions are not only intended to heighten the drama in the story; they are also intended to remind us that God has a purpose for His people to fulfill and when His people stray from that purpose, God is always willing to give them a second chance.  “What are you doing here?”  “What are you doing here?”   

One of the reasons that we are so drawn to Elijah’s story is because of how closely it parallels our stories.  The challenges of life have a way of sapping us of spiritual strength so that if we’re not careful, we also find ourselves in a place where God doesn’t need us to be, a place where we question our value to God and His ability to watch over us.   

So, how do we avoid landing in such a place?  I think the place to begin is by focusing more on God than on the challenges that are before us, great as though challenges may be.  God is not threatened by those challenges.  God is in no way vulnerable to their power.  All earthly power, whether personal or circumstantial, falls under the purpose of our Sovereign God and God always either employs those earthly powers in the accomplishment of His will or He disposes of them.  In Elijah’s case, Ahab and Jezebel will soon be off the world stage and there will be someone else who will take their place.

And that is why God’s word to Elijah was to “go back.”  “This is not where I want you.  Go back and anoint Hazael king over Aram, and anoint Jehu, king over Israel, and anoint Elisha to be your successor.  And don’t think for a moment that you have to run away as if you’re the only one of my prophets left.  I still have 7,000 prophets in Israel who have not bowed their knees to Baal” (vv.15-18).  

God always has more for us to accomplish than we might realize.  In spite of how so often we may feel like failures God has so much more that He wants us to be about.  Instead of cowering before the many challenges of life, what might it be like if we were to rest our hope on what in the power of God might be possible so that what might seem to us to be a dead end might in fact become a new beginning?   

Isn’t that what Jesus chose to do in Gethsemane’s Garden?  Faced with the challenges of his disciples’ misunderstanding and his people’s rejection and the Roman government’s lackadaisicalness, all of which he saw as leading to a thorny cross, didn’t Jesus struggle with the temptation to give up and get away?  “Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me.”  But the more he prayed, the more he felt the presence of God and the more he was filled with the power of God so that by the time he said his “Amen,” he had said, “But not my will, but thy will be done.”  The more Jesus prayed the more convinced he was that God was still in charge and the more certain he was that God would see him through.  And on Easter morning, God saw Jesus through, and by our faith in him, He sees us through as well.   

If we’re not careful, we can put ourselves in places where we miss opportunities to serve God’s purposes and forfeit the joy that comes from being in the center of His will.  As Elijah was led to Horeb, the mountain of God, where he was to receive a second chance, so must we ever keep Calvary in our sights for precisely the same reason – to find our place in God’s plan and to follow it with the grace He makes available.  Can you do that this morning?  Will you go where God would have you to be?

In a “Dennis the Menace” cartoon, Dennis and his know-it-all friend Margaret are speaking about the facts of life.  Margaret condescendingly says to Dennis, “I’ll bet you think the stork brought you.”  To which Dennis replies, “Well, that’s what my dad says.”  And then Dennis goes on to with other bits of information he’s been given.  “Mrs. Wilson says my folks found me under a cabbage leaf.  Mr. Wilson says I fell off a turnip truck.”  “Well, do you want me to tell you where you came from?” Margaret interrupts.  When Dennis declines, Margaret gets huffy.  “Then I guess you don’t care where you came from,” she fumes.  To which Dennis answers, “Nope; I don’t.  Only where I’m goin’ is important to me.”

If the urge in life to get away from it all ever becomes too great for you to ignore, just make sure that where you go is where God would have you to be.  Only then will you find your joy in life and the peace that comes from being in the center of His will.  Believe it when I tell you there is no better place to be in this life than right there. 

Exodus 4:11 • “Who Gave Man His Mouth?”

Series: “Questions God Asks”

If there’s anything that comes naturally to us as human beings it is the fine art of manufacturing a good excuse. The truth of the matter is that coming up with a good excuse is as natural as breathing air. That’s because each of us has a will, and when circumstances converge that frustrate our hearts’ desire, we immediately churn out a good excuse not to do whatever it is that we really aren’t passionate about doing.  

Of course, some excuses are better than others, and in my years of doing church work I think I have heard them all, both good and bad. So, what’s the one excuse I’ve heard that to me has made more sense than any other over the years? It’s the one that has to do with not being talented in a certain area so that our being put in a certain place where we might be over our heads and not up to the task would inevitably lead to embarrassment and ruin. But in order to save face when it comes to our limitations, we often express our regrets along the lines of “When they were handing out singing gifts or speaking gifts or teaching gifts (you get the picture), I must have been in another line.” And who can argue with eloquence like that? Well, evidently God can.  

Our text this morning comes from a most familiar part of the Bible, the book of Exodus. In the fourth chapter God appears to Moses on the back side of nowhere to summon him to return to Egypt and represent God’s people before Pharaoh, demanding that Pharaoh release the people from their bondage in the land.  

As is so often the case in Scripture, God shows up in dramatic fashion – on this occasion in a burning bush. When Moses hears God’s call, he immediately balks, and with good reason. Moses has his picture in all the post offices in Egypt because of how, in his anger, he had killed an Egyptian overlord he had seen abusing an Israelite slave. God responds to Moses’ hesitation by turning his shepherd’s staff into a snake and then back into a staff, whereupon God tells him that from that point on Moses will weld the staff of God in ways that will be used of God to set His people free.  

You would think Moses would have caved over such a demonstration of power, but he doesn’t. He persists in his excuses. “O Lord,” he says to God, “I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue.” The implication is that there are many more people who are far more qualified than he.

But God is not deterred. Moses is His man and God sees something in Moses that Moses cannot see in himself, which is the meaning behind God’s arresting question: “Who gave man his mouth? Who makes him deaf or mute? Who gives him sight or makes him blind? Is it not I, the LORD?” What God wants Moses to see is that if God calls a person to a certain task God will also provide that person with whatever means will be necessary in order to accomplish it.  

When I read this story, the one word that jumps out at me is the word “give.” “Who gave?” “Who gives?” The story invites you and me to see that each of our talents and abilities is ultimately a gift from God. We don’t manufacture talent. We might develop, but there has to be something in place for us to work on, and that something comes to us from above and is intended to be used to accomplish God’s sovereign purpose. That is why when God calls a person to a specific task, God has already gifted that person with abilities that person might not have yet recognized he or she possesses, and whatever else it is that person might need to accomplish that task, God has promised to provide and is capable of providing it.

We see this truth throughout Scripture. We not only see it in the story of Moses, we see it as well in the story of the shepherd boy David, who slays the giant Goliath and grows up to be the ruler that leads the nation of Israel to its greatest glory. We see it in the disciples of Jesus, that motley crew of fishermen and tax collectors that Jesus called to join him in bearing witness to the Kingdom of Heaven, who were empowered at Pentecost with the Holy Spirit to turn the world upside down. We see it in the Apostle Paul, who at one time was “Public Enemy Number One” of the church, but who met the Risen Jesus on the road to Damascus and became a missionary to the Gentiles. It was Paul who in his letter to the Philippians, which he wrote from a Roman prison, assured his readers that “my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus” (Phil. 4:19).

Have you found that to be the case in your life? Have you seen the many ways in which God’s abundance makes up for our shortcomings and His power compensates for our weaknesses? Sometimes we limit ourselves by focusing on our numerous deficiencies instead of focusing on the joy that is possible when we concentrate on God’s unlimited strength. How did one person put it? “We all have gifts; it’s just that some of us haven’t bothered to unwrap them yet.” In other words, some of us have yet to trust God’s call to the extent that we lean upon God’s promise to do for us what in our own hearts we know we could never do for ourselves. But what is faith, other than leaning upon God’s promise to do a work in our lives that only God could make possible?

So, how do we get to that place where we learn to trust God’s promise and locate our purpose more in God’s power than our own? Here’s what the story of Moses teaches us. You begin by learning to surrender your deficiencies to God along with your abilities. Each day you own up to the excuses that are keeping you from joining God in the redemptive work that He is about and you begin to imagine how His grace in Jesus Christ can offset the places where you feel unqualified and inadequate. “I’m not old enough,” or “I’m too old.” Age has nothing to do with obedience. God uses people both young and old to advance His Kingdom purposes day in and day out. “I’m not smart enough,” or “I’m not rich enough.” God has always chosen the foolish things of this world to confound the wise and has promised that the poor in spirit are in a perfect place to receive the Kingdom of Heaven. “There are other people who are more talented than I am.” Yes, there are. But the beautiful thing about the work that God does is that there’s a place for each of us and when we pool our abilities together we can do amazing things to advance the cause of Christ.  

Can you do that this morning? Can you begin to trust your deficiencies to God along with your abilities so that God’s power might be perfected in your weakness and His glory displayed in your ordinariness?  

We’re getting closer and closer to the beginning of another school year, where so many students get another chance to be reminded of what they do not know. I love the story of the young student who was taking a test in his American history class and was stumped by this question: “Name a distinguished foreigner who was a substantial source of aid to the American colonists during the Revolutionary War.” Of course, the answer to the question was the Marquis de Lafayette (or as they say down in Chambers County, “La-Fayette”). But try as he might, this student just couldn’t come up with the name. (We’ve all been there, haven’t we?) Still drawing a blank as the papers were being collected, the student in desperation remembered his grandmother’s admonition “to try God,” And so he scribbled as his answer, “It was God!”

He probably didn’t get credit for that answer, but perhaps he should have. Because when any of us finds himself or herself in a place where we need a lot of help, there is no better source to which we can turn than to God and what God gives and what God provides in an otherwise seemingly impossible situation.

So, what is it that God is calling you to do? Whatever it is, God is sufficient. Trust God by taking some specific and positive step of obedience, which will ultimately require you to lean upon Him more than upon yourself. Only then will you be blessed and only then will God be glorified.