Tag: bible

2 SAMUEL #12: JUSTICE FOR THOSE WHO REJECT GOD’S LOVE

On By Pastor TomIn 2 Samuel, Bible, Bible Teaching, House Church, Podcast, Religion, Sermon, UncategorizedLeave a comment

If someone rejects God, do you think God should force them to be eternally in His presence? It would mean that our choices don’t actually mean anything, that we aren’t, in fact, free. If there are no consequences for a choice, it’s not really a choice, is it? It’s meaningless to “choose” if everything will work out the same way, no matter what you choose.

Mephibosheth shows us what it looks like when we freely accept the faithful love of God. But in today’s passage, Hanun shows us what happens when we make the opposite choice and reject that love.

To listen to the sermon, click the play button:

For some people, the player above may not work. If that happens to you, use the link below to either download, or open a player in a new page to listen.

To download, right click on the link (or do whatever you do on a Mac) and save it to your computer: Download 2 Samuel Part 12

Remember that in chapter eight, many of David’s military victories are described. Then, in chapter nine, we read about how David was kind to Mephibosheth, son of Jonathan. Now, in chapter 10, we get the details concerning how one of the wars described in chapter eight came about. Although it seems like chapter nine was an interruption in the flow of the narrative, actually, chapter nine fits perfectly with chapter ten.

In chapter nine, David reached out with the faithful love of God to Mephibosheth, who probably assumed that David was his enemy. Mephibosheth courageously responded to David’s overtures, and the result was a beautiful demonstration of God’s grace through David.

Now, in chapter ten, something similar happens. Nahash, king of Ammon, died. If you remember, it was Nahash who attacked the Israelite town of Jabesh-Gilead, shortly after Saul became king. This is recorded in 1 Samuel chapter eleven. Against all expectation, Saul attacked and defeated Nahash, and the armies of Ammon.

However, it appears from our text today (verse 2) that Nahash had helped David during the period he was running from Saul. This was probably more from a desire to keep the country of Israel unstable and divided, and to get revenge on Saul, than from any true kindness toward David on the part of Nahash.

Even so, when Nahash died, David sent ambassadors to his son, Hanun, to offer his condolences. Just as most kings in David’s situation would have considered Mephibosheth a threat, most would also have considered Hanun an enemy. In addition, the Ammonites were among those Canaanite tribes who worshipped idols and at times led the people of Israel away from the Lord. But David reached out to Hanun in his grief, seeking to show him the faithful love of God, just as he had done with Mephibosheth. In other words, this story starts the same way as the story of Mephibosheth in chapter nine. If you remember from last time, David said he wanted to show “the faithful love of God” to someone in Saul’s family. The Hebrew word for “faithful love of God” is hesed. That same word, hesed, is used here in chapter ten. David says he wants to show hesed to Hanun, in honor of his father (verse 20.

In this case, however, the results were very different from the situation with Mephibosheth. On the advice of his councilors, Nahash seized David’s emissaries, shaved off half their beards, and cut their robes off to show their bare buttocks. He sent them back to David that way, in utter humiliation. I think even today, we can get a sense for how rude and spiteful this was. It was like giving David “the finger” and saying “screw you!” It communicated an absolute lack of respect for David. It was more or less a declaration of war.

In other words, Hanun’s response to David, and to the faithful love of God, was pretty much the exact opposite of Mephibosheth’s response. Hanun rejected the faithful love of God that was offered to him through God’s chosen instrument, David.

Remember that Jesus and his apostles taught that even the Old Testament is ultimately about Jesus. These things actually happened, but God guided their happening in such a way as to reveal to us the Messiah, Jesus Christ.

27 And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, [Jesus] interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself. (Luke 24:27, ESV2011)

14 But as for you, continue in what you have learned and firmly believed. You know those who taught you, 15 and you know that from childhood you have known the sacred Scriptures, which are able to give you wisdom for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 16 All Scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting, for training in righteousness, 17 so that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. (2Tim 3:14-17, HCSB)

4 For whatever was written in the past was written for our instruction, so that we may have hope through endurance and through the encouragement from the Scriptures. (Rom 15:4, HCSB)

12 For the word of God is living and effective and sharper than any double-edged sword, penetrating as far as the separation of soul and spirit, joints and marrow. It is able to judge the ideas and thoughts of the heart. (Heb 4:12, HCSB)

So, to really understand this, we need to remember that this is still all ultimately about Jesus. It should help us get to know him better. Last week, we saw that David revealed the heart of God’s ultimate Messiah, Jesus. The heart of Jesus is to find the lost and broken and show them God’s everlasting and faithful love. David lived that out, and Mephibosheth received that love.

But there is another possible outcome. Jesus wants to show God’s faithful and everlasting love to each person. But what about the person who doesn’t want it, who won’t receive it? That is what 2 Samuel 10 is all about. It is the other side of the same coin, the second part in the same story of God’s love for people. It is the story of what happens when people reject the faithful love of God.

Now, it is true, Hanun received some bad advice from his councilors. But even so, he believed his advisors, rather than the emissaries of the kind king, and the responsibility for that belief was all on him. Yes, he had people lying to him. But he also had David’s men telling him the truth, and Hanun made a choice to believe the lies rather than the truth. The consequences were all his own fault.

Now, I don’t know what would have happened if Hanun had repented and sent messengers to David acknowledging his wrong and asking for forgiveness. But Hanun, realizing that he had done wrong, proceeded to do even more wrong. He armed for war, and called on allies to help him. He was proud and stubborn and was willing to make both soldiers and civilians pay for his own mistakes.

The consequences were severe. David sent his army to besiege the capital city. Joab and his brother Abishai commanded the armies, and they defeated the Aramean allies of Hanun, while the army of Hanun fled back inside the walled city. Then the Arameans were upset, and sent another army. David himself took charge of the army of Israel, and the Arameans were defeated a second time. They never again helped the Ammonites. We are basically finding out the details of the military campaigns described in chapter eight.

Ultimately, though it took at least a year, the Ammonites themselves were utterly defeated and their capital city destroyed. Hanun lost his crown, and probably his head; while his people were made into heavy-laborers for the Israelites (these final events are recorded in 2 Samuel 12).

Hanun demonstrates for us what happens when we reject the faithful love of God that is offered through his chosen messiah, Jesus. Mephibosheth humbly received that love, and it blessed him for his entire life. But Hanun rejected it. It took some time, but ultimately, because he rejected it, he lost everything, and ruined the lives of tens of thousands of others.

We like to talk about the love and mercy and grace of God. I know I do. And that love and mercy and grace is indeed ours if we will simply trust the good heart of Jesus. When we receive it, we are brought into a daily relationship with Jesus, just as Mephibosheth had a daily relationship with David.

But the other side of the story is this: it does not go well for those who reject the love of God offered in Jesus Christ. Yes, it’s true, people lied to Hanun about David and his intentions. And the devil will use people and circumstances to lie to us about Jesus. But ultimately the truth was there for Hanun to choose, if he would just trust David. And the truth about Jesus is there, if we will just trust him. When we refuse to do that, we are inviting destruction upon ourselves. None of our allies or misplaced hopes will be able to save us.

This isn’t just an Old Testament teaching either. The writer of Hebrews says this:

1 God’s promise of entering his rest still stands, so we ought to tremble with fear that some of you might fail to experience it. 2 For this good news—that God has prepared this rest—has been announced to us just as it was to them. But it did them no good because they didn’t share the faith of those who listened to God. 3 For only we who believe can enter his rest. As for the others, God said,
“In my anger I took an oath:
‘They will never enter my place of rest,’”
even though this rest has been ready since he made the world. 4 We know it is ready because of the place in the Scriptures where it mentions the seventh day: “On the seventh day God rested from all his work.” 5 But in the other passage God said, “They will never enter my place of rest.”
6 So God’s rest is there for people to enter, but those who first heard this good news failed to enter because they disobeyed God. 7 So God set another time for entering his rest, and that time is today. God announced this through David much later in the words already quoted:
“Today when you hear his voice,
don’t harden your hearts.” (Hebrews 4:1-7, NLT)

This is pretty clear: we need to rest from our own life that centered around our own desires and selfishness, our own works and ambitions, and instead rest in God’s great love for us, surrendering to him. We enter that rest by trusting the Word, that is Jesus. If we don’t, the good news we have heard about Jesus does not help us. That’s the lesson of Hanun, king of the Ammonites. When we reject the faithful love of God, we are inviting judgment onto ourselves.

Paul writes something similar in 1 Corinthians:

1 Now I want you to know, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, all passed through the sea, 2 and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. 3 They all ate the same spiritual food, 4 and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from a spiritual rock that followed them, and that rock was Christ. 5 But God was not pleased with most of them, for they were struck down in the wilderness.

 6 Now these things became examples for us, so that we will not desire evil things as they did.

Those ancient Israelites chose not to trust God, and as a result they suffered the consequences.

Isaiah wrote:

In repentance and rest is your salvation. In quietness and trust is your strength. But you would have none of it. (Isaiah 30:15)

Jesus himself mourned because the people of Jerusalem refused to receive him, and he said that as a result they would experience much suffering and sorrow. He also said this:

16 “For God loved the world in this way: He gave His One and Only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life.  17 For God did not send His Son into the world that He might condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. 18 Anyone who believes in Him is not condemned, but anyone who does not believe is already condemned, because he has not believed in the name of the One and Only Son of God.

We usually only read verse 16. But verse 18 adds that if we reject God’s chosen messiah, we have condemned ourselves. About 75% of all Americans think there is a heaven, and they will go there when they die. 40% of people think it doesn’t even matter how you relate to God, he’ll accept everyone anyway. But the bible is clear: grace and truth and eternal life are offered through Jesus Christ alone. When you reject Jesus, you reject God, and you condemn yourself. John wrote:

11 And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. 12 The one who has the Son has life. The one who doesn’t have the Son of God does not have life. 13 I have written these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life. (1John 5:11-13, HCSB)

Hanun shows us the route of “not-life.” It is real. Some people do reject Jesus. Believing the lies someone told them is not an excuse for people when they also have the truth in front of them. There are consequences to rejecting God’s faithful love.

This is difficult for many people in modern Western culture. We think it’s unfair unless everyone is included, regardless of their response. But if you think about it, it makes a great deal of sense. If someone rejects God, do you think God should force them to be eternally in His presence? It would mean that our choices don’t actually mean anything, that we aren’t, in fact, free. If there are no consequences for a choice, it’s not really a choice, is it? It’s meaningless to “choose” if everything will work out the same way, no matter what you choose.

This is the part of the Christian message that most people don’t like. In fact many people say that ideas like this are judgmental, and mean and intolerant. Do a thought experiment with me. Imagine you are at the top of a cliff, and there are many bushes all around you, so you can’t see the ground under your feet. You come upon a sign that says, “Warning! Stay Back! If you walk forward from here you may die!” Is that sign mean and judgmental, or intolerant? Of course not. The message is there to protect you from making a tragic mistake. Or imagine an inviting swimming hole in a small river. Next to the water a sign says: “Do not Swim Here! Dangerous currents and undertow! High risk of Drowning!” Is that sign being cruel and bigoted? Of course not. It is an entirely appropriate warning, trying to protect you from throwing away your own life out of foolish ignorance. The truly cruel and horrible thing to do would be to let people fall of the cliff, or drown in the swimming hole, because you were afraid of offending them by posting such signs.

Listen to God’s heart-cry toward us:

10 “Son of man, give the people of Israel this message: You are saying, ‘Our sins are heavy upon us; we are wasting away! How can we survive?’ 11 As surely as I live, says the Sovereign LORD, I take no pleasure in the death of wicked people. I only want them to turn from their wicked ways so they can live. Turn! Turn from your wickedness, O people of Israel! Why should you die? (Ezekiel 33:10-11, NLT)

It might surprise you to learn that Jesus spoke about hell more than any other person in the Bible. He did not want anyone to suffer eternal separation from God, and that is why he came and died for us. But he was very clear about what happens if we reject the faithful love of God offered to us through Himself. He was so clear about it, because he does not want anyone to perish:

3 This is good and pleases God our Savior. 4 He wants all people to be saved and to learn the truth. 5 There is one God. There is also one mediator between God and humans—a human, Christ Jesus. 6 He sacrificed himself for all people to free them from their sins. (1 Timothy 2:3-6, GW)

Jesus Christ does offer forgiveness, second, third and 233rd chances, love, grace and peace. He offers us daily relationship with himself, and joy. But outside of Jesus, none of that is ours. It all comes only in and through Jesus. If we reject Jesus, we reject it all, and none of the other things we rely on will be able to save us. So let’s pay attention to the lesson of Hanun, and today, let us not harden our hearts. Let’s be like Mephibosheth, not Hanun.

Listen to the Holy Spirit right now.

2 SAMUEL #9: GOD’S HOUSE?

On By Pastor TomIn 2 Samuel, Bible, Bible Teaching, House Church, Old Testament, Podcast, Religion, Sermon, UncategorizedLeave a comment
Photo by Filippo Bergamaschi on Pexels.com

God’s true presence is not found inside of special buildings, but rather, within the community of his people as they gather together to worship, learn and serve.

To listen to the sermon, click the play button:

For some people, the player above may not work. If that happens to you, use the link below to either download, or open a player in a new page to listen.

To download, right click on the link (or do whatever you do on a Mac) and save it to your computer: Download 2 Samuel Part 9

2 Samuel #9 .  2 Samuel Chapter 7:1-29 ; 1 Chronicles 17:1-26

Last time we examined the covenant the Lord established with David: to make one of his descendants the Messiah, the forever-King and savior of God’s people. We also considered God’s over the top grace offered to David and to us, and the security knowing that when we want to do God’s will, even if, by mistake, we try to do the wrong thing, the Lord will make sure to keep us from pursuing it. I think there is yet one more lesson to glean from this passage.

David set up various full-time ministries for the tent of meeting, and then he wanted to build the Lord a permanent temple in Jerusalem. The prophet Nathan agreed with David, and they were ready to start the project when the Lord spoke to Nathan, and told them to wait.

It wasn’t that David’s heart was in the wrong place, or Nathan’s instincts. They just didn’t fully understand the Lord (no one ever does, of course). The Lord wanted to show David and Nathan a few things. The first thing the Lord wanted to make sure they knew is this: He doesn’t need a house. He says this:

5 “Go and tell my servant David, ‘This is what the LORD has declared: Are you the one to build a house for me to live in? 6 I have never lived in a house, from the day I brought the Israelites out of Egypt until this very day. I have always moved from one place to another with a tent and a Tabernacle as my dwelling. 7 Yet no matter where I have gone with the Israelites, I have never once complained to Israel’s tribal leaders, the shepherds of my people Israel. I have never asked them, “Why haven’t you built me a beautiful cedar house?”’ (2 Samuel 7:5-7, NLT)

During the historical period in which David lived, most people believed that gods were attached to specific places and people-groups. This is important in understanding the Old Testament. The Philistines had a primary god named “Dagon.” They built a temple for him, and made an idol of him. The Canaanite peoples who lived nearby also believed in Dagon—but not as their god. He was the god of the Philistines, and no one needed to worry about him—unless you went into Philistine territory. If you did that, then you needed to respect Dagon, because that was where he lived. The Ammonites, who lived on the other side of the Jordan river, and to the south, worshipped a god named Moloch. For their part, the Philistines theoretically believed that Moloch was a deity, but they didn’t worship him because his territory was some distance from where they lived. There were various other gods in the region as well, including the one known as Baal. It is likely that all of the non-Israeli people around the area had some level of belief in Yahweh, the God of Israel. But they thought of him like every other ‘god.’ To them, he must be just the god of the Israelites, and only really powerful in Israelite territory.

The Israelites were continually tempted to believe in the Lord in the same way: as their personal god, one among many, generally most powerful only in their own territory. But the Lord had been continually trying to get them to see the truth: that there is only one real God, the Lord Himself, and that he is God over every people and place. That was one reason the Lord had never, before this, asked his people to build a temple for him. I think God was trying to stop the Israelites from getting the idea that he really was just like all the gods of the people who lived around and near the Israelites. They might tend to get stuck on that idea if there was a permanent temple in which he “lived.” The idea that the Lord traveled with Israel wherever they went was entirely new and unique in the ancient world. No one had ever heard of a God who went with his people, wandering anywhere he chose, even into the territory of other gods. No one had ever really conceived of the idea that there was only one true God. So, a temple might tempt the Israelites to think of God as only a local, Israelite deity.

By the way, the Canaanites worshipped a god they called “Baal.” In the ancient Canaanite legends, Baal demanded a bigger and better temple. So the Lord’s response also shows David how different he is from the supposed “god” of the people who lived nearby.

Now, eventually, of course, Solomon, David’s son, did build a temple to the Lord. Why would God do that? Did he change his mind? One way in which it was very different from the temples of the gods of the surrounding people is that there was no statue (idol) of God anywhere. But I think the main issue was this: During Solomon’s reign there was much more peace with surrounding cultures, because the Israelites had conquered them. Because they lived at peace, the Israelites started befriending their non-Israelite neighbors, and going with them to worship sites on top of high hills, where the heathen people worshipped their false gods. Therefore, one purpose of the temple in Solomon’s time was to bring the Israelites together to worship the Lord alone. Even though, as we know, a person can worship the Lord anywhere, the Israelites were being drawn to worship false gods when they went to other places. The temple, when Solomon finally built it, was intended to make sure they would worship the Lord only, and do so together as one people. Even so, in the end, that didn’t really work out. Solomon himself recognized the limits of a temple. After it was built, he prayed:

18 “But will God indeed dwell with man on the earth? Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you, how much less this house that I have built! (2Chr 6:18, ESV)

So God wants us to understand that he lives everywhere. He doesn’t need a dwelling place on earth. I get a little crazy when I hear Christians calling their church buildings “the house of God.” No church building, not even the most magnificent cathedral, is a place where God “lives.” If you want to see “the house of God,” look around at your fellow believers, and look in the mirror.

19 Don’t you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourself, 20 for God bought you with a high price. So you must honor God with your body. (1 Corinthians 6:19-20, NLT)

We believers are individually temples of the Holy Spirit, but most especially, believers who live and worship together are the place where the Holy Spirit “lives.” The Lord lives “in his body,” and his body is made up of the people of the church (not the building).

27 Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. (1 Corinthians 12:27, ESV)

11 Now these are the gifts Christ gave to the church: the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastors and teachers. 12 Their responsibility is to equip God’s people to do his work and build up the church, the body of Christ. 13 This will continue until we all come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God’s Son that we will be mature in the Lord, measuring up to the full and complete standard of Christ.
14 Then we will no longer be immature like children. We won’t be tossed and blown about by every wind of new teaching. We will not be influenced when people try to trick us with lies so clever they sound like the truth. 15 Instead, we will speak the truth in love, growing in every way more and more like Christ, who is the head of his body, the church. 16 He makes the whole body fit together perfectly. As each part does its own special work, it helps the other parts grow, so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love. (Ephesians 4:11-16, NLT)

God “lives” in each of us individually, and also in a special way with all of us together. None of this has anything to do with physical buildings. So this was one reason God didn’t want David to build a temple.

This might sound a bit startling, but stay with me: a building accomplishes nothing spiritual.

A building is completely unnecessary to real church, and often has a negative impact on making disciples. History bears out what I am saying here. It was precisely at that point in time – during the time of Solomon and his temple – when the people of Israel began to go astray again and worship other things. The temple did not help in the least, and an argument might be made that it hurt. Solomon’s temple was destroyed four hundred years later, and about a century after that, another was made. Four hundred years after that, king Herod built a  third temple to please the Jewish people who were his subjects. It was even more magnificent than Solomon’s temple. Even with these amazing temples, the Jews utterly failed to walk with God. Let me make it very clear – the magnificent temple of the Jews did not help them when it came to actually receiving God’s salvation in Jesus Christ.

Jesus himself found the most receptive hearts far away from the temple – in the outlying areas of Palestine, not in Jerusalem. The temple, as God gave it to the people, was intended to help people recognize the Messiah when he came to earth. But most people missed the point entirely, and instead made the temple itself into a kind of idol.

Some people make church buildings into an idol as well. The closest thing in the New Testament that we have to modern church buildings is the synagogue. Jesus apparently was regular in going to the synagogues. But most of his real ministry and disciple-making took place outside of weekly worship services.

After the time of Jesus, the church worshipped in private homes, in small groups, for almost three hundred years. Even now, that period stands as one of the most effective disciple-making eras in history. After Christianity finally became legal in the Roman empire, Christians began creating buildings for their church meetings. The emergence of this trend of constructing dedicated physical church buildings coincides with the beginning of a long decline in Christianity. In fact, it wasn’t long after this that Europe entered what we call “the dark ages.” We can’t blame all of the problems of the dark ages on church buildings, but it was a period where Christianity was focused on buildings and institutions, and did very little real disciple-making that truly transformed lives.

A building dedicated to worship sometimes has practical value. However, a lot of church buildings are used for only a few hours each week – which doesn’t seem very practical after all. If the bible and history teach us anything about worship-buildings, it is that they often lead believers to live with the wrong focus, and sometimes to entirely miss the point.

I want to be honest here. I think one of the reasons New Joy Fellowship (our church here in Lebanon, TN) has not grown much numerically is because we have not built a church building. I think a lot of folks would be up for that – to build something we could look at and see and touch and say “We did that. That’s ours.” I deeply wish that people would be that committed to building a life that belongs entirely to Jesus and to living for his purposes. I think a lot of people who might otherwise come back to our worship after visiting just don’t feel like it is really “church” without a church building. I want to be blunt: when we have a building, we can divert our attention to religious activity that keeps God at arm’s length. But when there is no building, we are confronted with what it is really about: walking with God, walking in fellowship with each other, and working in God’s kingdom. If you have a building you can “have church” without those things. But if you don’t have a building, and you don’t have those things, you don’t have a church. It’s easier to have a building – you can pretend to be a church without really engaging with Jesus.

I’m not saying it is wrong for churches to build their own buildings to worship in. But I am saying it is unnecessary, and often it slows down spiritual growth and disciple-making.

Let’s see what Jesus said about worshipping in a particular building:

21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. 22 You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” (John 4:21-24)

Jesus essentially says here that worship is not about a place. It is about turning to God in spirit and truth. In fact, that is the kind of worship God is seeking, not people who just want to go to a certain place. God said to David, look, the place of worship for the past four-hundred years has been that moldy tent, wherever it happens to be parked. Why do you suddenly think that isn’t good enough?

So, what does all this do for your relationship with God today? First, I want to encourage you to hold on to the understanding that a real church is a community of people who trust Jesus and walk in fellowship with God, and in fellowship with one another, and allow God to use their lives for his kingdom purposes. It has nothing to do with where, when or in what building they worship.

There are people who take things too far the other way. They claim it is not important to have dedicated times of worship with other believers. They think “Hey, my body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. I don’t need to be part of a worshipping community.” But that picture is not Biblical either. Such a thing would not even have occurred to the apostles, or any Christians throughout history, until quite recently. Historically, all cultures were very communal, and the idea of an individual who doesn’t need a community was entirely unknown in Biblical times, and even for centuries afterwards. So, to be clear, though Christians don’t need a church building, they do need a church—that is, a community of people with whom they regularly worship and serve.

David and Nathan were both godly men who thought at first that a building for God was important. So don’t feel bad if you have thought that in the past. But understand, God told Nathan and David, “No, it isn’t important. I don’t want a building right now.”

The focus that God wanted was on his work to bring salvation into the world. He wanted his people to receive the Messiah and put their trust in him. That is the focus he wants for us also.  Jesus said:

19 Again, I assure you: If two of you on earth agree about any matter that you pray for, it will be done for you by My Father in heaven. 20 For where two or three are gathered together in My name, I am there among them.” (Matt 18:19-20, HCSB)

The word “where” means “whatever place you happen to be in.” The full presence of God, and full authority of heaven is found among God’s people gathered together, not in a building somewhere.

Now, I want to speak directly to New Joy Fellowship and to the people of Life Together Churches for a few moments. It’s easy to say “come help us build a building.” People understand that. It’s a helpful thing to motivate people. It is a simple vision to grasp and it is less threatening than real discipleship.

But I want to challenge you to present new people with a vision to “come help us build disciples.” Think about it this way. Not a single church building that now exists will be there in the New Creation. Not. One. But every single disciple that we make will be there with us. Let’s not waste time and money building what is after all, a fake church. I mean it. A building is not a church, no matter how many crosses and altars you slap on it. Let’s put our time into real church. We can present the vision clearly and simply. We want to make disciples. We do that by walking with God, walking with others and working in the kingdom. Let’s build a real house of God in that way!

2 SAMUEL #8: GOD’S GRACIOUS HEART TOWARD YOU

On By Pastor TomIn 2 Samuel, Bible, Bible Teaching, Old Testament, Podcast, Religion, Sermon, UncategorizedLeave a comment

The text today highlights David’s sincere yet misguided intentions to build a permanent place of worship for God, and how God’s corrective guidance reveals His gracious heart. Through David’s story, we learn about the immense freedom and comfort in trusting God’s leadership, the boundless nature of His grace, and the ultimate promise of a Messiah who will save all people and reign forever. It invites us to reflect upon our own relationship with God and embrace the abundant grace He offers, even in the face of life’s uncertainties and challenges

To listen to the sermon, click the play button:

For some people, the player above may not work. If that happens to you, use the link below to either download, or open a player in a new page to listen.

To download, right click on the link (or do whatever you do on a Mac) and save it to your computer: Download 2 Samuel Part

We’ve been considering what we learned about God’s holiness and worship from the time that the ark of the covenant was brought to Jerusalem. 2 Samuel describes the event with one chapter, chapter six. However, 1 Chronicles takes two long chapters to recount the same thing (1 Chronicles 15 & 16). Mainly what we learn from 1 Chronicles is that David set up various ministries for the priests and Levites: not just the priests who offer sacrifices, but also professional worship musicians and song-writers, full time door-keepers, administrators and so on. There were probably more than 100 full time ministers taking care of the ark and of the tabernacle.

But after all, when it was all said and done, the place for all this amazing ministry was just a very old tent. The tent was put together in the days of Moses, more than four-hundred years before. Israel has a dry climate, but I have to imagine that sometime during four-hundred years, there had been mold. I’m sure there were rips and scuffs, and it is a good guess that there were a lot of patches by this point in time.

David talked to Nathan about it. He said, “Look, here I am in a palace – and God lives in a tent.” The implication, not spoken explicitly, is that it is time to build a permanent place of worship. Nathan the prophet said, “Go and do all that is on your heart, for the LORD is with you.”

But right afterwards, the Lord spoke to Nathan, and said, “No, I have a different plan.”

The first thing that struck me when I read this was the safety  and freedom there is in living in daily relationship with God. God doesn’t allow our misguided good intentions to go unchecked. Both Nathan and David had their hearts in the right place. They were sincere. Both of them, however, were sincerely wrong. Even so, because they were keeping in step with the Lord, they were able to hear it when the Lord corrected them. And the Lord did correct them. He didn’t say, “Well, shucks, they got it wrong again. Oh well.” No, when they didn’t get it right away, he spoke to them again. So we can trust God’s leadership. Picture someone walking with a friend who is blind and using a cane. They come to the corner of a street where there is traffic. The friend says quietly, “stop here.” The blind person doesn’t hear it, and keeps walking. Of course the guide is going to repeat himself, more loudly, and maybe even grab onto his blind friend, to prevent him from being hurt. Do we expect any less from God?

Now, one important thing here is that Nathan and David really did want to do whatever God wanted in this situation. They weren’t insisting on their own way. So when they made the wrong choice, they were able to hear the Lord when he spoke to them about it.

Unfortunately, sometimes we are like a blind person who says to our guide, “I don’t trust you, so I won’t go where you are taking me.” We ignore Him when he says “turn here,” or “stop there.” Then, sad to say, often we blame God for the bad things that result from our unwillingness to listen to him. But when Nathan and David were open, the Lord kept them moving in the right direction, and they were able to hear it.

This is tremendously comforting to me. Sometimes, we get so caught up in wanting to do the right thing that we become almost paralyzed with fear, thinking we will make the wrong choice. We think, “If I mess this up, it will be disaster. I could destroy God’s plan for my life. I could destroy my chance at happiness.” Maybe we’re looking at a job or a career move. Maybe we’re buying a house, or choosing a college or deciding what we want to be when we grow up. Maybe we’re trying to decide if we should marry someone or not. Brothers and sisters in Jesus, we can have tremendous freedom, hope and joy in these choices. If we truly want God to do what he wants in and through our lives, then ask the Lord for guidance. If you aren’t sure which way he is leading, step forward boldly and make your best choice. If you are wrong, the Lord will correct you. We don’t have to be experts at hearing from God. But we have to be open to letting him do whatever he wants. If we maintain that openness, we’ll be able to hear it if we start down a path where he doesn’t want us to go.

The fact that we really can trust the Lord to guide us is wonderfully comforting. It is part of God’s grace. But wait, there’s more!

David, good-hearted man that he was, was thinking something like this: “God chose me, the youngest son of an unremarkable family, to be king over his people. He was with me, protected me, sustained me, and finally established me as king. After that, he helped me defeat the surrounding enemies, like the Philistines. Isn’t it about time I start paying back what I owe the Lord? Isn’t it time for me to do something for him?”

And God said: “No, my grace doesn’t work like that. Not only do you not pay me back, but I will pile on with the grace and blessing. You want to build me a house? How about this: I will build you a ‘house,’ a dynasty that will last forever, and it will be used to bring immeasurable blessing to the entire human race.”

The word used for “house” is the same all the way through. It is the Hebrew word pronounced “va’yit.” This is a pretty flexible word. It is used for David’s palace, for describing a dwelling and also for a family, a line of descendants and so on. I think the Lord deliberately inspired the writer to use the same word, in order to emphasize what he was doing. He was piling on the grace.

What God promises is that David will have a descendant who will rule forever. David’s descendant will preside over the kingdom of God. This is a prophecy. Now, I have said before that prophecy is kind of like viewing a mountain range from a long way away. It looks like all the mountains are next to each other in a line across the horizon. But when you actually get into the mountains, you often find a great gap between peaks that looked like they were right next to each other when viewed from a distance. In the same way, when you read a text like this one it looks like all parts of the prophecy are supposed to take place at the same time; yet we find that parts of prophecy were fulfilled a few years after, and others hundreds of years later. Here, the prophecy is not a complete revelation of every detail. But it shows that there will be a descendant of David who reigns forever. This descendant will be chastised and punished – just as Jesus was punished for our sins. God will do something eternal through this person. There are a few things here that may refer to Solomon, and some that may refer to other kings descended from David, but clearly, the prophecy is talking mainly about Jesus.

God didn’t just say that David was his favorite choice for king. He didn’t just give him victory over a giant. He didn’t just take care of him in those years of hardship and trouble. He didn’t just protect David during battle and make him victorious – often against overwhelming odds. He didn’t just actually make David king. He didn’t just deliver David from his enemies and give him a secure place to live and rule. He also promised (and delivered generations later) that David’s name and family line would be honored forever. He promised that the messiah would be descended from David. He is showering grace after grace upon David. You can’t out-give God.

David, understandably, was overwhelmed. He went and “sat before the Lord.” And then he prayed. David says something very important in verse nineteen that seems to be lost in translation in many English versions of the bible:

“Who am I, O Sovereign LORD, and what is my family, that you have brought me this far? 19 And now, Sovereign LORD, in addition to everything else, you speak of giving your servant a lasting dynasty! Do you deal with everyone this way, O Sovereign LORD? (2 Samuel 7:18-19, NLT)

Though I like the NLT in general, I think they could have done a better job with the final phrase. A few other versions do something similar. But in Hebrew it says, literally: “and this is torah for all mankind.”

The Hebrew word “torah” has various related meanings, as many words do. It can mean custom or rule. But the most common meaning is “instruction from God.” It is often translated “law.” During the time of Jesus, torah was one of two terms that described God’s revelation in the Bible. When a Jew said “the torah (law) and the prophets” he meant “the word of God as revealed in the bible.” So, I think the best translation is probably the HCSB, which says: “And this is a revelation for mankind, Lord GOD.”

I think David is speaking prophetically. He is saying that this promise of the descendant who will come–a messiah who will reign forever–is God’s very word for humankind. It is a law and a promise for all humanity. In fact, this promise to David was remembered, and repeated, throughout the centuries that followed, and it was always understood as a promise for a messiah who would bring God’s blessing to all human beings.

In verse 21 David says this:

21 Because of your promise, and according to your own heart, you have brought about all this greatness, to make your servant know it.

This shows us that the promise is according to God’s own heart. Some translations have “will” but “heart” is more literal. This promise reveals the generous, gracious, loving, wise heart of God.

So let’s make this personal right now. Do you believe that this extreme graciousness is according to the heart of God? Even more personal – do you believe that this great grace is the way that God deals with you?

Let me remind you about David. He lied in a moment of pressure. He blew his top when he was insulted. He ignored what God said about marriage. He was not perfect. God was not gracious to David because David deserved it. David did not deserve it. God was gracious because that is the heart of God.

So set aside any thought of “well, I don’t deserve God to treat me that way.” Of course you don’t. Neither do I. Neither did David. Do you understand and believe that if you let him, God will deal with you in the same way he dealt with David?

I would guess that a lot of us don’t experience God in this way, and sometimes we believe that we cannot. There are reasons for this.

At times, I think we don’t experience the gracious heart of God in day to day life, because we insist that God must be gracious in the particular way we want him to. We want a better income, and so if he doesn’t do that, even though he is offering us tremendous joy through relationships with dear friends, we don’t really receive that grace. We want healing, and so we spurn the grace he offers us to grow and have joy even in pain. We want our spouse to change, and so we don’t want to receive the grace the Lord offers us through that person – just as he is. When we have an attitude of entitlement: “God must provide grace in exactly the way I want it”—it is difficult to really receive.

Please understand me. I don’t think it is wrong to ask God for healing, or for an income that meets your needs, or for a good marriage. Those are all good gifts that God often wants to give. The problem comes in when the only way we will see God as gracious is if he gives us specifically what we are asking for. If he doesn’t give us the particular gifts we want, we become hurt, and we fail to see how gracious he is to us in other ways. In this issue, it doesn’t help when we compare ourselves with others. Especially in these days of social media, I think we usually believe that other people are doing better than we are. When we practice thanking God for the many good things he has given us, it becomes easier to see how gracious he really is.

At other times, we don’t recognize the gracious heart of God because we have allowed lies about God into our lives, especially through difficult events. A child dies. A spouse leaves. And we interpret those events in such a way that we begin to distrust the heart of God. The first problem creeps in when we insist on understanding everything. Why did the child have to die? I’m not saying we can’t ever honestly struggle with our pain, but I do believe that sometimes the answers to those questions are simply bigger than we can understand. When we demand that everything must make sense in a way that we can understand, it is easy to start to believe that God isn’t the good Person that the Bible tells us he is. Don’t get me wrong. If you follow this blog, you know I am an intellectual, and I’m all for using your mind. But the human mind is finite. Trying to understand an infinite God is not logical. At times, faith calls us to trust even beyond our understanding. When we can’t understand, we are faced with a choice – will we trust that God’s heart is good and gracious towards us in ways we can’t comprehend, or will we demand that the universe function according to our own personal sense of justice and goodness? This text calls us to trust that the heart of God is good and full of gracious intentions for us.

Finally, we can trust God’s goodness because of the promise he made to David. It was the promise that God himself would come to earth, and take it upon himself to heal the distance between us and God. This promise to David was not for David alone. It was a word of God, for all humankind.

Therefore, when we doubt the goodness of God, we turn to the cross. There, we can see how much he loves us. He suffered unimaginably so that our suffering could be limited to this short life on earth. If you doubt he loves you, remember this: He died for you.

Take some time to contemplate the goodness of God today.

2 SAMUEL #6: THE SHOCKING PROBLEM WITH HOLINESS

On By Pastor TomIn 2 Samuel, Old Testament, Podcast, Religion, Sermon, UncategorizedLeave a comment

This text shows us just how vast is the distance between God and us. It shows how much we need Jesus and just how much God went through in order to bring us back to him.

To listen to the sermon, click the play button:

For some people, the player above may not work. If that happens to you, use the link below to either download, or open a player in a new page to listen.

To download, right click on the link (or do whatever you do on a Mac) and save it to your computer: Download 2 Samuel Part 6

2 Samuel #6. 2 Samuel 6:1-10

After David defeated the Philistines decisively and captured Jerusalem, he decided that he should bring the Ark of the Lord to Jerusalem, the new capital city of Israel. Remember, the Ark was a wooden box plated with gold, with carved angel’s wings over it. Inside the box were the stone tablets of the ten commandments, and possibly part the staff that Aaron, the High Priest, had used. At this point in time, the Ark would have been about four-hundred years old. If you remember, back even before Saul became the first king of Israel, the Israelites had taken the Ark into battle with them, trusting in the Ark to save them. The Lord was not pleased by this, because they were treating the Ark as if it were an idol, using it the way the pagan people around them used idols. So the Lord let them be defeated, since they were not actually trusting the Lord Himself. During the battle, the Philistines captured the Ark. After this the Lord showed his power to the Philistines, and wherever they put the Ark, trouble came upon them. Finally, they sent the Ark back to the Israelites. That story is told in 1 Samuel chapters 4-6, and we covered it in part 4 of the sermon series on 1 Samuel. The ark ended up at a place in Israel called Kiriath-jearim (also called Baalah of Judah).

Now, a few decades later, David and his elite warriors went to that place to bring the Ark back to Jerusalem. It was on the property of a man named Abinadab. His sons, Uzzah and Ahio walked beside the cart that held the Ark while David and his men celebrated along the way. And then this happened:

6 But when they arrived at the threshing floor of Nacon, the oxen stumbled, and Uzzah reached out his hand and steadied the Ark of God. 7 Then the LORD’s anger was aroused against Uzzah, and God struck him dead because of this. So Uzzah died right there beside the Ark of God.
8 David was angry because the LORD’s anger had burst out against Uzzah. He named that place Perez-uzzah (which means “to burst out against Uzzah”), as it is still called today.
9 David was now afraid of the LORD, and he asked, “How can I ever bring the Ark of the LORD back into my care?” 10 So David decided not to move the Ark of the LORD into the City of David. Instead, he took it to the house of Obed-edom of Gath. 11 The Ark of the LORD remained there in Obed-edom’s house for three months, and the LORD blessed Obed-edom and his entire household. (2 Samuel 6:5-11, NLT)

Here we have the two major themes of this text. First is this: God is so Holy, so different and “other” that he is inapproachable. If it means death to touch the mere representation of God’s presence, who can endure his actual presence? This was shocking and horrifying to David. It even made him angry. I think we forget that the Holiness of God is shocking, terrifying and horrifying. It may even make us angry. Why does God behave so inexplicably?

One of the things that makes the Bible unique is that it contains things like David’s response. The story isn’t only that God killed Uzzah. Part of the story is also that this event made David angry and upset. That is a comfort to me, because it kind of makes me upset, also. It shows us that it isn’t wrong for this sort of thing to get our attention, and it isn’t wrong even for it to bother us.

I don’t want us to gloss over this too quickly. Many people read these types of things in the Bible and think they are the first ones ever to be shocked by this sort of thing, or to question God about it. But here is David, shocked and angry at God in the very moment that this happened. It is shocking. If we are not shocked by this, we don’t really get the message. God’s holiness is shocking, terrifying, unfathomable. It should leave us saying, “Well then how could we ever be close to God? How could anyone ever please him?”

So, don’t feel bad if, like David, these kinds of things in the Bible upset you. That’s normal. But don’t stop with simply being upset by it. Pursue it. Ask the Lord to help you understand such things. Let’s pursue it together right now.

One thing we ought to know right away is that David, his men, and the priests were not transporting the Ark the way God had commanded through Moses. Moses was very clear about how the ark was to be moved from place to place:

12 You shall cast four rings of gold for it and put them on its four feet, two rings on the one side of it, and two rings on the other side of it. 13 You shall make poles of acacia wood and overlay them with gold. 14 And you shall put the poles into the rings on the sides of the ark to carry the ark by them. 15 The poles shall remain in the rings of the ark; they shall not be taken from it. (Exodus 25:12-15, NLT)

However, David and his men put the ark in a cart. If the Ark had been carried by the poles—as God commanded—no one would have had to worry about it slipping off a cart and falling to the ground. So, in the first place, they were ignoring God’s command, which is never a wise thing to do. We won’t cover the latter part of the chapter until next time, but we see that this error was corrected when they moved the Ark again later. Verse 13 shows us that this second move was accomplished with human beings carrying the Ark by the poles, not riding in an ox-cart. In any case, it does seem that this incident would have been avoided if they had taken God’s commands seriously. When God commanded the Ark be moved this way, it was to protect people from accidentally touching it. We often don’t realize, or perhaps we just forget, that God’s commands are there to protect us.

One of the things that might bother us is that Uzzah himself was only trying to protect the Ark. He didn’t want it to fall on the ground. How can that be such a terrible thing? However, by doing this, there were two assumptions that Uzzah was making. First, he assumed that God himself was incapable of protecting the Ark. He thought it was up to him to protect God’s glory. This reveals a lack of faith. Remember the recent history: The enemies of Israel had captured the Ark, but God used it to show them his glory, and then also he made sure that the Ark was returned to Israel. In spite of that, Uzzah assumed that in this instance, God would not take care of his glory, or the Ark. In other words, he didn’t have real faith in God.

The second assumption Uzzah made is that it would be better for the Ark to touch him than to touch the ground. He thought he himself was more holy and sanctified than the very earth that was created by God. In other words he didn’t really believe in his own sinfulness, nor in God’s complete holiness.

Now, even with that explained, I still think this passage is troubling. I suspect the reason it bothers us so much is because it is about the Holiness of God, and that is not something we truly understand, or even think about much.

Sometimes I think because of the grace given in Jesus, we forget why that grace is so important and so unbelievable. We forget the huge gulf that separated human beings from God. Without Jesus, if we were simply to wrongly touch a representation of a holy God, we could be killed, like Uzzah. There was an irreconcilable gap between us and God. But since Jesus intervened, we no longer live in that situation, and we often forget how serious the problem would be without him.

One question that I hear quite often is, “Doesn’t God just accept us as we are?” Actually, no. If he could do that, there would have been no need for Jesus to sacrifice himself. Well then, can’t God do anything? Why couldn’t he have made it so that he could just accept us?

God can do anything, but the one thing he will not do is change his own nature. God is the most wonderful, glorious, amazing, loving being in all of existence. To change his nature would be to change the very nature of reality, and it would be an unbelievably terrible thing for all creation if God changed his nature. If God changed his nature, there would be no hope that human beings would ever be better than they have been. Hatred, jealousy, strife, murder, rape, torture, selfishness and so on would become eternal, with no hope of any change, ever. So, because of our sinful flesh, God instead chose to sacrifice himself in order to change our nature.

At times, we might be tempted to think, “Are we really so bad? I mean I can be a bit selfish sometimes, but am I really so awful that my very nature had to be changed?” But we often forget that the problem is deeper than our behavior. Individual sins are about what we do, and some people are pretty good at minimizing those—at least the ones that others can see. But Jesus made it clear that sin is not only about behavior, it is also about what is in our hearts. So, he said, for example, that the Law of Moses tells us not to murder. But if we have murder in our hearts, even if we don’t act on it, we are guilty.

21 “You have heard that it was said to your ancestors, ‘Never murder. Whoever murders will answer for it in court.’ 22 But I can guarantee that whoever is angry with another believer will answer for it in court. Whoever calls another believer an insulting name will answer for it in the highest court. Whoever calls another believer a fool will answer for it in hellfire. (Matthew 5:21-22, GW)

You see, sin is a disease that is passed on genetically to every human being. In some people, that disease has obvious and radical effects. In others, we don’t see much of it on the outside. But every single person carries the disease. The thing that made Hitler such a monster is inside all of us. Most of us don’t let it get so out of control, but it’s there:

20 And then Jesus added, “It is what comes from inside that defiles you. 21 For from within, out of a person’s heart, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, 22 adultery, greed, wickedness, deceit, lustful desires, envy, slander, pride, and foolishness. 23 All these vile things come from within; they are what defile you.” (Mark 7:20-23, NLT)

Because sin is inside of every human, we would be destroyed by the presence of God. God has to change us before he can welcome us into his presence. Through Jesus, it is the power of God that does the changing, not our own work and effort. Without that work, God’s holiness would destroy us, just like it did to Uzzah.

There is nothing I can think of that really illustrates the holiness of God adequately. But let me take a few tries at it. I’ve mentioned in other sermons about the chemical reaction that occurs when pure sodium is put into water. Sodium is a soft metal, a chemical element. It literally explodes when it comes into contact with water. When you are done reading this sermon, do an internet search for pure sodium and water, and watch a few videos; they are highly entertaining. I found one in which the reaction blows up a toilet. The point is because of the laws of physics and chemistry, sodium cannot exist in its pure form in water. If you bring the two substances together, the sodium explodes. The intrinsic properties of each substance prevents them from being together.

In the same way, sin cannot continue to exist in the presence of God’s holiness. You might say that it, too, explodes. This is because of the intrinsic nature of sin, and of God’s holiness. You might say that if a sinful person touched even a representation of the one true holy God (as Uzzah did) that person would die instantly. That’s what happened in our passage today.

Here’s another illustration. Though we don’t do it any longer, for a number of years we raised goats, pigs, and chickens on our little farm. Except for when we had to bottle feed baby animals, we did not generally allow these animals in the house with us. Think about it for a minute. Why don’t we allow pigs in the kitchen? Why don’t we allow goats to stand on our table and eat with us? Why do we care if they defecate on the table while we eat?

It starts with this – we are other than these animals. They are fundamentally different than us. I think most people would be willing to agree that pigs are not humans, and that goats do not behave according to human standards. Even though goats often stand and poop into their own food trough, and that is quite natural for them, there is something in us that rebels against having a farm animal defecate on the table where we eat. We simply do not tolerate it. It revolts us. This revulsion is deep and instinctive, showing us that the differences between us and our animals are also deep and persistent. We love our animals but we can still be revolted by their behavior. We love them, but we refuse to let their behavior into our home. We must place limits on how and when those animals can be with us.

We do allow some animals in our home – dogs and cats. But part of why we allow this is because we train them to behave according to our standards. Even so, most people still don’t allow dogs or cats to eat food off the table, and certainly they aren’t allowed to defecate on it.

When our dog Mario went out and rolled in manure – as dogs like to do naturally at times – we insisted upon cleaning him up before we let him back in the house. Imagine that instead, after rolling in manure, he decided to try and clean himself up, still having no more than a dog’s understanding of the world. Dogs lick themselves a little bit, but they can’t reach most of their backs, or any of their heads, and they don’t clean themselves even as much as cats do. Mario might lick his own tail a little bit, and then think his efforts should make him acceptable to us, but there’s no way he could actually clean himself well enough to meet our standards. We had to do the work of making him clean. And we were willing to do that work, to make him clean, because we loved him and wanted him to be with us. But he couldn’t be with us while he was covered in manure. Our human nature would not tolerate it. It was unacceptable.

Why can’t we just accept the animals as they are, and allow the goats to defecate in our food, and the dog to come into the house covered in manure? Sometimes it is hard to explain why we can’t allow such things, but we can’t. We are too different.  It is simply not in our nature to accept such things, while it is in the nature of the animals to do such things.

So, because we are born sinful in nature, it is natural for us to behave in ways that God simply cannot accept. Remember, though, it’s not just about what we do. Sin is inside us, even when we behave properly. God’s nature is even more different from ours than a pig’s nature is different from a human’s. Our sin is far worse to God than manure on a dog is to us. The idea of an animal pooping in our food is only a poor reflection of how revolting our sin is.

Our attempts to clean ourselves up are as pathetic as our dog Mario’s attempts. On our own, we don’t even really understand what it is to be cleansed. We need God to do the work of cleaning us up. And he is willing to do that work, because he loves us and wants us to be with him.

Once in a while, our dog would manage to sneak into the house covered in manure. On those occasions  my reaction was swift and shocking. I moved quickly and loudly to keep him from transferring manure to our carpet, or to us. He couldn’t have understood me if I had tried to explain it to him reasonably, so I had to get his attention in a way that might have seemed shocking and horrifying to him.

So it is with God. His response to Uzzah is shocking and horrifying. David became afraid, and even angry, when he saw it, and said, “how can the ark of the Lord ever come to me?” Meaning, “how could I ever be close to a God who is like this?”

But what the Lord did for us in Jesus is to give us a new nature. This is one of the reasons I think it is so important to realize that when we are in Jesus, (that is, when we have received him through faith) we are no longer fundamentally sinful. God cannot fellowship with fundamentally sinful beings. He has cleaned us up, changed us in ways we could not change ourselves.

Even though that was still in the future during the time of David, the Lord found ways to communicate that was his plan. And he included even those who lived before the time of Jesus in that plan:

For God presented Jesus as the sacrifice for sin. People are made right with God when they believe that Jesus sacrificed his life, shedding his blood. This sacrifice shows that God was being fair when he held back and did not punish those who sinned in times past, for he was looking ahead and including them in what he would do in this present time. (Romans 3:25-26)

So, if God has taken care of the problem, why is this text in 2 Samuel still here for us, who have trusted in Jesus to do these things for us? Why do we need this part of the Bible?

Imagine a friend comes over to your house, and while you are doing something else, he notices a bill open on your table. He decides to pay it for you. If that was a thirty-dollar phone bill, you’d be grateful, but not wildly so. It would be really sweet of him to pay that bill, and you’d thank him, and it would be a fairly restrained thankfulness. But imagine instead, he paid your mortgage. Not your monthly payment, but the whole mortgage—all $200,000 that you still owe on your house. That would be an entirely different kind of situation, with an entirely different level of thankfulness. Texts like this one in 1 Samuel Six show us just how much God has done for us, of how overwhelmingly thankful we ought to be.

I think we can view this text with three thoughts: First, we often need to be reminded of God’s precious holiness. God has not changed. He is still as holy now as he was then. When we understand his greatness, his “other-ness” it should lead us to be in awe of him. Scripture says in several places that “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (e.g. Proverbs 9:10 & 15:33; Psalm 111:10). We need to relearn that God is awesome, powerful, and that without Jesus we are incapable of interacting with him on our own terms.

Second, we need to remember how truly horrible and unacceptable our sin is. If you imagine how  revolting it would be to eat food in which pigs have defecated, you are only beginning to think of how horrible our sins are to a holy God. Our sins keep us from fellowship with God. Imagine your dog covered in manure, standing on your  table, pooping in your food. Would you hug that dog before getting him off the table and cleaning him up? Our sin is worse than that for God’s holy nature.

Third, we need to remember how amazing God’s grace is. He came as a human so that he could take our sin upon himself. He sacrificed himself to make us into new people who can now fellowship with God. He didn’t just pay a phone bill, he paid off our entire debt. And then on top of that, ensured that we will never owe anything again, and on top of that, he has piled blessing after blessing. When we know the size of our debt, the huge gap that was between us and God, we can begin to be appropriately thankful.

Thanks to Jesus, we can have God’s presence in our lives. He has done the work to clean us. He has changed our nature so that we are not destroyed by God’s holiness if we get close to him.

21 Christ was without sin, but for our sake God made him share our sin in order that in union with him we might share the righteousness of God. (2 Corinthians 5:21, GNT)

Let’s thank him and praise him right now! Next time we will consider what all this means for worship.

2 SAMUEL #5. THE REAL HERO OF YOUR STORY

On By Pastor TomIn 2 Samuel, Bible, Old Testament, Podcast, Religion, Sermon, UncategorizedLeave a comment

David understood that his life was part of God’s story, told for God’s purposes. He even understood that it was the Lord, not himself, who was the hero of his life-story. So, when everything that he worked so hard to gain seemed to fall apart, David continued to trust in God. Even in obvious-seeming situations, he did not assume he knew what God wanted. The Lord invites us into the same sort of relationship that David had. When we trust him, we find we can be at peace, even in difficult times.

To listen to the sermon, click the play button:

For some people, the player above may not work. If that happens to you, use the link below to either download, or open a player in a new page to listen.

To download, right click on the link (or do whatever you do on a Mac) and save it to your computer: Download 2 Samuel Part 5

2 Samuel #5. 2 Samuel 5:12-25; 1 Chronicles 11:15-19; 1 Chronicles 14:1-17  

I want to revisit something we skipped over rather quickly last time. 2 Samuel 5:12 says this:

“Then David knew that the Lord had established him as king over Israel and had exalted his kingdom for the sake of His people Israel.” (italics added for emphasis)

I think this is a key to most of this chapter, and actually, to the entire life of David. David did not consider his monarchy to be his doing, or his kingdom. David did not consider his life to be about himself. The Lord was the main character in the story of David’s life. Even after he was anointed, for fifteen years David wasn’t king, because God didn’t want him to be king yet. When he finally became king, it was because God wanted him to be king. The Lord did it, for the Lord’s own glory and purposes. It wasn’t about David. It was about God.

The incidents that follow this verse confirm that David maintained this attitude, especially about his kingdom.

5:17-25 appears to describe the same event as 1 Chronicles 11:15-20, and also 1 Chronicles 14:1-17. What happened is this. When Saul was king of Israel, David was his enemy. For the Philistines, that meant that Israel was divided, and less of a threat. Plus they gained a great victory over Israel in the battle when Saul was killed. But seven years have passed. David alone was now king over a united Israel. The Philistines rightly perceived this as a threat to them, so they immediately went looking for David, to bring him to battle and kill him if possible.

The Philistines invaded by coming up a valley that led from their lands by the coast, up into the highlands that were controlled by the Israelis. They did this once before, early in the reign of Saul. The valley the Philistines used against David is called “Rephaim.” There is no place with that name anymore, but scholars feel pretty sure that the lower end of the valley comes out on the plains by modern-day Beit Shemesh – or, as it is called in Samuel, Beth Shemesh. There are two main branches in the higher part of this valley, one that begins to the north of Ancient Jerusalem, and one that starts at a point to the south of Jerusalem, just north of Bethlehem. My personal opinion from reading the text is that the Philistines were in between Jerusalem and Bethlehem (see picture below). In fact, 1 Chronicles 11 says that when they invaded up the valley of Rephaim, they took over Bethlehem and kept a garrison of soldiers there.

Some scholars feel that all this happened before David captured Jerusalem, but it isn’t clear. One reason to think it was before the capture of Jerusalem is that Jerusalem was such a fortress, David didn’t need to go to a different stronghold. However, David, being the great tactician he was, may have decided he didn’t want his troops trapped in the city where he could not effectively do battle, and so he took them down to the south of the Philistine advance. There is no way to know for sure, although the account of the battle in 1 Chronicles 14 puts it this way:

8 When the Philistines heard that David had been anointed king over all Israel, they mobilized all their forces to capture him. But David was told they were coming, so he marched out to meet them. (1 Chronicles 14:8, NLT)

So, whether it was before, or after Jerusalem was captured, it appears that David took his army back to one of his old haunts – the Cave of Adullam, where he had previously hidden from both Saul and the Philistines (1 Samuel 22). We don’t know exactly where the cave was (in fact it probably refers to a number of caves in the same area. But from what the Bible says, and from the existence of actual caves in the region, it was probably to the south and west of Bethlehem, and to the south of the Philistine forces in the valley.

15 Once three of the thirty leading men went down to David’s rock at the cave of Adullam when the army of the Philistines was camping in the valley of Rephaim. 16 While David was in the fortified camp, Philistine troops were in Bethlehem. (1 Chronicles 11:15-16, GW)

It seems that David went to the cave of Adullam before the Philistines got to Bethlehem. So, when David attacked, it was from an unexpected direction. Instead of meeting them head on, he attacked on their right flank.

Let’s pause here and consider a few things.

After probably fifteen years of running, hiding, eking out existence and barely surviving, David became king of Judah. After seven years as king of only one tribe, his own tribe of Judah, he finally received the fulfillment of the Lord’s call on his life. Finally, he became king of all Israel.

The confetti had hardly settled to the ground before he was invaded. In short order indeed, David was right back to hiding in caves. Maybe an economic analogy would help us understand how this could have affected David. Think of a person who spent half her life in poverty, working steadily at a plan to build wealth, but seeing few results. None of the breaks ever seemed to come her way. After years, she finally reached the upper middle class. At last, seven years after that, she made her first million. Three weeks later she was flat broke again.

It had to be an awful feeling for David to find himself back in the caves where he hid from his enemies fifteen years or more before. If he was like me, he would have spent a lot of time whining to God about how he had done everything that was asked from him, and why couldn’t he ever catch a break? If he were like me, he would explained to the Lord that he had already been here and already learned this lesson, and what was the freaking point of this kind of hardship anyway? But David was not like me. He was like I want to become. He was like the person the Holy Spirit was showing the world through him – the true Messiah.

So when David went to the cave, he continued to trust the Lord. He asked God a simple question: What do you want to do here? What are you after in this situation? Shall I go and fight these guys or not?

Before we continue the main narrative, there’s a cool story about something that happened while David was in the cave during the invasion. There is no doubt that he did experience distress – he was a human being, after all. The enemy were camped in his own home-town (Bethlehem, in case you have forgotten). It was a hot and dry day, and David said (this was as close as he got to complaining) “I wish I could get a drink from the well at Bethlehem.” I think he was expressing that he was hot and thirsty. I think he was also upset that Bethlehem – his own town – was an enemy camp. He’s basically saying: “Wouldn’t it be wonderful, right now, if we could just walk up to that beautiful cold well in Bethlehem and have a drink? Wouldn’t it be great if there were no invasion at all?”

David was a fearsome warrior, and he led a bunch of other very powerful warriors. Three of the mightiest took David at his word, and broke through the Philistine lines and brought David a drink from the well at Bethlehem. David’s response is interesting:

They brought it back to David, but he refused to drink it. Instead, he poured it out to the LORD. 19 David said, “I would never do such a thing in the presence of God! How can I drink the blood of these men who risked their lives? ” For they brought it at the risk of their lives. So he would not drink it. Such were the exploits of the three warriors. (1 Chronicles 11:18-19)

When I first read this, I thought, “I’d be angry if I were one of those three warriors.” But actually, I think what David was saying was this: “I am not worthy of such a costly drink. I can’t claim it. Only the Lord is worthy of that kind of effort and self-sacrifice.” He was actually honoring the men more by pouring it out than by drinking it. He “poured it out to the Lord.” He was saying that the lives of these men were precious to the Lord. There was a actually a type of offering called a drink offering, where a drink (usually wine) was poured into the ground. The idea was to say, “this is God’s, not mine, and I pour it out to show that everything I drink ultimately comes from God.” So David did not consider himself worthy of that kind of sacrifice from his men, and he directed their attention to the Lord. Life wasn’t about him, it was about God. God was the one who gave them the strength and flat-out guts to do this amazing deed. He was the one who was to be honored, not David.

The hero of this entire story is the Lord. David consciously realized this, and made statements to draw attention to the Lord, rather than himself. We think of God as loving and gracious and giving and kind – like the best possible parent. And yet, he is also the best, the only true Greatest Of All Time. No NBA superstar has more game than the Holy Spirit. No downhill skier can take a mogul like God. No warrior can be more ferocious and cunning than Jesus. No writer can craft a better story, no historian can plumb more significance from events than the Father. No musician can play a concerto or improvise a lick better than the Lord. Our Triune God is not just the writer and director of the play – he himself is the star performer, and he is brilliant at all he does.

I don’t know about you, but at my age, I don’t go in for hero-worship. Actually, I never did. Human heroes always suffer from significant flaws, and we get disappointed when we really give them our admiration. But there is one Person who is worthy of our hero-worship. David understood that, and he also understood that it wasn’t him. The amazing feats we see in other people – or the amazing things we can do ourselves – are just tiny reflections of the overwhelming awesomeness of God.

So David heard that God wanted to drive the Philistines out of Israel, and David obediently attacked. The Philistines were defeated, and David named the spot, “The Lord Breaks Out” (that’s what “Baal-perazim” means). Not “I have gotten victory.” Not even, “God helped me get a victory,” or even yet, “God got victory – for me.” No – it was God’s victory for God’s purposes and God’s glory. David and his men got to be the fierce warriors that they were created to be – but it was all about the Lord and for the Lord.

The Philistines made a second try. I love the fact that David did not assume that he should do the same thing again, just because it was the same situation. Instead, once more, he asked God what he wanted to do. The Lord did want him to fight again, but he gave David a different specific battle plan, along with the promise that God would be marching out in front of him, doing the real work of winning the battle.

So what do we take away from all this? The first thing I need to get straight is this business that my life is here for God’s plan, God’s purposes and his glory. None of what I am supposed to do is about me. God is amazing and gracious, and so even while he makes use of our lives for his own purposes, he blesses us in the midst of that. David got to be the king and lead like he was made to lead; he got to fight like the warrior he was created to be.

I get to study the bible and think and use my brain and then share it with people who are willing to listen to me. I get to sit here and tap on my keyboard and express the thoughts that the Lord gives me to express. I love it – I really do. It isn’t my message, and it isn’t about me, but I get blessed when I let God do his thing with my life. You will get blessed when you let him do his thing with your life – which is almost certainly going to look different from everybody else, because God has a unique purpose for each one of us. When I say “blessed,” I don’t necessarily mean financially or physically blessed – we Americans, especially, think that’s the main kind of blessing (it’s not). But you will experience the grace and favor of God if you let him be the hero of your life’s story. You’ll appreciate the story he writes through you.

Second, I need to remember that one kind of hero-worship IS acceptable. I need to pay more attention to how skilled, talented, smart, funny, tender, fierce and truly excellent God is. He deserves my worship and admiration. He is the best – at everything.

Third, when life takes a turn for the worse – as it did for David, many times in his life – I need to remember that this is all in God’s hands. If he wanted to hide this great leader of men, this fearsome warrior, in a cave, that was his business – David was his man whether on the throne, or in a cave. If God wants to allow hardship in my life, I will certainly pray for it to be cut short, and I will certainly believe that he will bring better times too. But I will also trust in the meantime that he knows what he is doing and I am ALWAYS in his hands.

I also want to take this away from the text: God is the one who fights the battles I have to be involved in. Most people are probably not called to physical warfare, like David was (although some people certainly are). But sometimes we are called to make a stand for something that is important to God. At other times the Lord calls us to engage in some project, or to work at a certain place, or be involved with certain people, and so on. We can consider all these things “battles” for the purposes of applying this text.

There are some battles we don’t have to fight. Sometimes we go to war without asking God, and so we end up fighting for ourselves. But David went to war only when God directed him. And when he did that, it was God who fought his battles for him. So if you are in a battle that you have to be in, one that you are supposed to fight, remember, it is God who really achieves the victory. All we need to do is show up and let him use us. I take great comfort in that.

The flipside is important, too. We don’t need to fight any battles except the ones the Lord has for us. It’s a good lesson to learn from David that we should ask the Lord before just launching into some kind of endeavor. Even though it may have seemed obvious, David kept asking the Lord before engaging in battle. We might find that we have fewer battles to fight if we only engage when the Lord is telling us to.

When we realize that God is the main character in our story, the one true hero, it takes a lot of pressure off us. Our part is to respond to God, to let him work in and through our lives. But he’s the one telling the story of our lives, and he’s the one who is responsible for how it turns out. I don’t mean that there are no consequences to our actions. But I do mean that if we do our best to be faithful to him, we can be at rest about how things turn out. We can be at rest even when we fail at times to be faithful, because God’s nature does not change:

11 The saying is trustworthy, for:
If we have died with him, we will also live with him;
12 if we endure, we will also reign with him;
if we deny him, he also will deny us;
13 if we are faithless, he remains faithful—
for he cannot deny himself. (2 Timothy 2:11-13, ESV)

What is the Lord saying to you today?

SERENITY PRAYER #12: SUMMARY AND APPLICATION

On By Pastor TomIn Podcast, Religion, Serenity Prayer, Sermon, UncategorizedLeave a comment
Photo by Thirdman on Pexels.com

To listen to the sermon, click the play button:

For some people, the player above may not work. If that happens to you, use the link below to either download, or open a player in a new page to listen.

To download, right click on the link (or do whatever you do on a Mac) and save it to your computer: Download Serenity Prayer Part 12

  This week I just want to do a brief summary of the lessons on the Serenity Prayer. We’ve talked about a lot of things, and while I don’t expect everyone to connect with everything, I also trust that at least some things have been helpful in your journey with God. As I quickly go through the lines of the prayer, I’d like to ask you to consider these questions:

  1. What is one new or refreshed way of thinking about my life in Christ that I have seen through this study?
  2. What is one practice, habit, or discipline in my life in Christ that I have begun to practice or would like to begin practicing after this study?
  3. What is one area we talked about that I’d like to know more about, whether in this group, or in my own personal times of studying God’s Word?

            Ok, let’s walk through the lines as we did week by week. And if your most important takeaways were different from what I summarize here, I think that may well be a good thing. We serve a God who speaks to us both as a community and as individual children.

God, grant: The character of the God we pray to shapes the way we pray and how we expect Him to answer. And we recognize our dependence on God, not just for our salvation, but for our day-to-day sanctification.

The serenity to accept the things we cannot change: Life is outside our control, and that’s not only ok, it’s actually good. We can turn to the God who is in control and trust Him as we learn to accept life on life’s terms. We also recognize the truth that we are limited beings, not gods ourselves.

The courage to change the things we can: Living faithfully means doing hard things and costly things at times. We operate in trust that God is at work, and that He will give us what we need to make the changes in ourselves that He is asking us to make. We set aside fear-based decision making and the need to blame others and bravely face what we can do something about.

The wisdom to know the difference: We look for wisdom from God, not from ourselves. That wisdom will come through His Word, through Christian community, and through our time in prayer. It will generally be found in humility and peace.

Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time: We don’t stay trapped in the past, or live in anxiety about the future. We try to pay attention to what God is doing in our lives right now and respond to Him in the present. We enjoy what He has given us today for our daily bread more than we focus on what we had in the past or hope to have in the future.

Accepting hardships as a pathway to peace: Hardship and suffering are part of the normal Christian life. We can fight against that reality, or we can look for ways to accept what we have and find contentment in the presence of God with us in the middle of the pain.

Taking, as Jesus did, this sinful world as it is, not as we would have it to be: Jesus was able to live a holy and righteous life of perfect submission to the Father in the middle of a very broken and sinful world. If we want to navigate this world well, as He did, we need to adopt the same tools of prayer and acceptance.

Trusting that He will make all things right: Trust does not just mean agreeing with an idea, it means taking actions that show that idea. And God gets to determine what “right” looks like. If that doesn’t match our definitions, we choose to trust Him and revise our definitions.

If we surrender to His will: Choosing to follow Jesus means I die to my self and give control of my life to Him. I don’t have to like His will. I don’t have to understand His will. I choose to give up my rights to Him and obey His will.

That we may be reasonably happy in this life: There are things about living God’s way that work even in this life. They won’t give us perfect happiness, but happiness is not really our goal anyway; it is a by-product of having good and God-centered goals for our lives.

And supremely happy with Him forever: Following Jesus is ultimately not about this life anyway. It is about life in a kingdom that is coming and will last forever. We live in all these ways (because God makes it possible for us to do that) because we believe that our lives after the resurrection are going to be incredible in union with Christ. We are learning to live now in ways that will make sense then.

Before we pray the Serenity Prayer together one last time (at least in this study), let me share again the questions I asked at the beginning.

  1. What is one new or refreshed way of thinking about my life in Christ that I have seen through this study?
  2. What is one practice, habit, or discipline in my life in Christ that I have begun to practice or would like to begin practicing after this study?
  3. What is one area we talked about that I’d like to know more about, whether in this group, or in my own personal times of studying God’s Word?

And now let’s pray.

God, grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, the courage to change the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time, accepting hardships as a pathway to peace.

Taking, as Jesus did, this sinful world as it is, not as we would have it to be.

Trusting that He will make all things right if we surrender to His will – that we may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with Him forever.

SERENITY PRAYER #11: SUPREMELY HAPPY IN THE LIFE TO COME

On By Pastor TomIn Podcast, Religion, Serenity Prayer, SermonLeave a comment
Photo by Singkham on Pexels.com

This is what we are doing as Christians: We are trying to learn, by the power of the Holy Spirit, what the language of the kingdom of God is, what its culture is like, how to function in an environment that is foreign to much of what we experience here on a day-to-day level. But in doing that, we are becoming more and more fit for the life that God has waiting for us when He comes again to re-create the heavens and the earth in full reconciliation to Him and full submission to His rule. Much of what we have been praying throughout this study is a part of that training for eternal life. And alongside that training, the tools that we need to keep us going until then.

To listen to the sermon, click the play button:

For some people, the player above may not work. If that happens to you, use the link below to either download, or open a player in a new page to listen.

To download, right click on the link (or do whatever you do on a Mac) and save it to your computer: Download Serenity Prayer Part 11

And Supremely Happy with Him Forever

1 John 3:2-3; 1 Corinthians 13:12; Revelation 7:16-17; Revelation 21:3-5

            Here we are at the end – and we are going to finish by talking about the end, although I might question whether what we usually refer to as the end (or the last days, or the finish) is really more of a true new beginning. We’ll talk about that as we move through the last phrase of the Serenity Prayer: “And supremely happy with Him forever.” First, let’s pray.

            Last week, we talked about being reasonably happy in this life, and hopefully we realized that our reasonable happiness in this life is tied to our confident expectation that we have something beyond this life. While we live in the present moment, we live as those who are anticipating a meaningful future. The events of this world, from the beginning of time until the end, are not just random, and they are not just a cycle that we are destined to endlessly repeat. As Christians, we believe that history is heading somewhere – that there is a final destination, not only for us, but for all of creation. And this is where we find ultimate happiness.

            The idea of deferring pleasure is not a new one, but it is one that we increasingly struggle with in our culture, and I include the church in that. We can gratify so many of our desires so quickly and so easily – at least in part – that we can easily forget the value of having both to work and to wait for something meaningful. It’s easy to put something in the microwave, or have it delivered, or take the shortcut. And so, things that require sustained discipline in one direction in order to gain a reward have become less common than maybe they once were (or maybe that’s just what all of us say as we get older). But most of the meaningful experiences and changes in my life have come because I have believed that continuing to practice good, healthy, and holy things will eventually produce results that surpass what I can get from a microwave. Much of what the Serenity Prayer has been calling us to is a practice of good, healthy, and holy things now that will benefit us some in the present, and even more so in the life to come.

            Let me be clear: our efforts toward living the life God calls us to live are not in any way the means by which we enter the life of the kingdom. We enter the life of the kingdom by invitation of the King, which He has extended to us in the death and resurrection of His Son. And, there are things we can and should do in order to participate in that kingdom life – not only in the future, but now. As we looked at the Beatitudes last week, I hope that connection came through. What Jesus calls His followers (us) to do in the Beatitudes is to live in line with the life that we are receiving now and will fully enter into when He returns in triumph. We are being trained, equipped, and fitted for the life that is to come – the life that is unending, the life of perfect fellowship with God in all His fullness. And that way of living won’t necessarily make sense now. It will often go against the things that bring temporary worldly success in any field. But we aren’t living for this world. We are living now for the next.

            The closest analogy I can think of for this is preparing to live in a foreign country with a very different culture. My wife Jayme and I were blessed to live in Prague, the capital of Czechia, for three years, and we’ve gotten to travel extensively to visit missionaries from our church across the world. Many of the things we do to get ready for another culture are of little to no value in this one. Before we left for Prague, I spent a lot of time beginning to learn the language. How valuable do you think that was in Nashville, Tennessee? Not very. And knowing the history and geography of the Czech people didn’t do me much good here. Neither did learning how their public transportation system works, or what the established churches in that country were like. We put considerable time and effort into things that only really helped when we moved to that new country. Oh, there was a place here or there when some of that knowledge came in handy in the US. But for the most part, if we had never gone to Prague, the vast majority of that time, energy, and money would have been for nothing.

            And this is what we are doing as Christians. We are trying to learn, by the power of the Holy Spirit, what the language of the kingdom of God is, what its culture is like, how to function in an environment that is foreign to much of what we experience here on a day-to-day level. But in doing that, we are becoming more and more fit for the life that God has waiting for us when He comes again to re-create the heavens and the earth in full reconciliation to Him and full submission to His rule. Much of what we have been praying throughout this study is a part of that training for eternal life. And alongside that training, the tools that we need to keep us going until then.

            What is that eternal life going to be like? The most important part of it is contained in this line of the prayer. We will be “with Him.” That is the most meaningful and satisfying aspect of the kingdom life that God is preparing us for (and preparing for us). That we will be “with Him.” That we will walk in deep, fulfilling, intimate relationship with our Creator: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. As I introduced the lesson today, I said that what we usually refer to as “the end” might better be described as the true new beginning. What do I mean by that? Let’s look back to the beginning – the first three chapters of Genesis.

            When God created the universe, how did He describe it? It was all good, right? Until He got to people – then it became “very good.” “So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” (Genesis 1:27-28) Man and woman worked together in the garden to exercise the authority God had given them to rule together over all creation. Adam later shows that authority by giving names to all the animals – that was part of his job. Did you realize that there was work to do in Eden? Genesis 2:15, “The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.” And later in the chapter, Eve joins him. Yes, after the fall, work becomes cursed because of sin, but in the beginning, it was not so. Adam and Eve worked together in harmony to take care of the world that God had entrusted to them. And they were in harmony not only with one another, but with God Himself. We don’t know how long things lasted that way, but until the fall, creation functioned in perfect order with all the pieces meshing together under the Lordship of God.

            And that beautiful picture is what is coming again for us. In Ephesians 1, as Paul is describing what it means to be a saint, a faithful one in Christ – a Christian – he shares one of the mysteries of what God is doing. Ephesians 1:9-10, “And He made known to us the mystery of His will according to His good pleasure, which He purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times will have reached their fulfillment – to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one Head, even Christ.” God is coming to renew all creation and bring back the Garden of Eden – only this time with no serpent waiting in the wings! A day is coming when Jesus will emerge to exert the authority He already has over all powers and principalities, purifying the earth and all creation, and then reigning over the new heavens and the new earth along with us. We (humanity) are going to be given our old jobs back – we will rule over a sanctified and re-created world alongside Jesus!

            Sometimes our images of heavenly life have more to do with movie depictions or even favorite hymns than they do with Scripture. And granted, Scripture doesn’t give all the details I would like (probably because I couldn’t understand them anyway), but John tells us this:

 “2 Dear friends, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet been revealed. We know that when He appears, we will be like Him because we will see Him as He is. 3 And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself just as He is pure.” (1 John 3:2-3)

In living as God’s children now, we are being prepared for something even more that will be revealed when we see Him (Jesus) as He is. Paul makes a similar point at the end of the great love chapter in 1 Corinthians 13:

 “For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.” (1 Corinthians 13:12)

            I want to make one more point about the life that is waiting for us before connecting back to the Serenity Prayer. I have often heard the Christian life described in terms that I will summarize like this: “Say a prayer with these words. Now you will go to heaven when you die instead of hell. Just hang on until then.” I think that is well-meaning. I think there is truth in it. And I believe it is a woefully inadequate picture of what God intends as we live this life in anticipation of the one to come. John, after describing the transformation waiting for us as children of God, then says, “Everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself just as He is pure.” Knowing the transformation that is coming when we are raised into our new bodies in the new creation does not lead John to say, “So just hang on until then.” No, he calls us to purity because we know what’s coming and we want to be preparing for it! And Paul’s statement about the full knowledge that awaits us when we see God clearly is at the end of a long chapter encouraging us to live lives full of very practical love. So, our trust that Jesus is coming for us is intended to shape us now!

            And what we’ve been talking about for the last several weeks is also intended to do exactly that. Accepting the things we cannot change is an acknowledgement of God’s sovereignty in anticipation of His ultimate rule. Courageously changing what we can moves us and, hopefully, those around us, closer to the kingdom life that is coming. The peace that accepting hardship is intended to lead us to is the peace that comes when Jesus overthrows all enemies once and for all. And every time we surrender to His will, we become a little closer to what we will be in the resurrection. We move further into the identity that God the Father has given, is giving, and will give us in His Son by the power of the Holy Spirit.

            And in other ways this prayer helps us move well through things now that will no longer be a part of life in the resurrection. Some of the hardships we have to accept now will not be allowed into the kingdom where:

 “Never again will they hunger; never again will they thirst. The sun will not beat upon them, nor any scorching heat. For the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd; He will lead them to springs of living water, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.” (Revelation 7:16-17)

We will no longer need to take this sinful world as it is, because Satan will be overthrown, and God will descend from heaven to live with His people:

 “3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. 4 He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more deathor mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.’ 5 He who was seated on the throne said, ‘I am making everything new!’ Then he said, ‘Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.’” (Revelation 21:3-5)

We will still take the world as it is, but the world will finally be as God would have it to be, and we will get to enjoy Him and His Presence forever.

            This is why we practice the things we’ve been studying for the past several weeks, as well as all the Word of God teaches us about the way to live: because we believe a new and better life is coming. And in that hope, we choose to do things that are often difficult and painful in this life, because we no longer think of this place as our permanent home. Ultimately, we don’t live in Prague, or Lebanon, or Antioch, or Carthage. We are citizens of heaven. And we are called to live as those who know that one day, we will be supremely happy in our home.

We will wrap up next week with a summary of the Serenity Prayer. I hope that God has used this to shape your lives in some of the ways that He has shaped mine. Let’s close again this week with the Serenity Prayer. Please join with me as we pray this prayer as a community together.

God, grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, the courage to change the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time, accepting hardships as a pathway to peace.

Taking, as Jesus did, this sinful world as it is, not as we would have it to be.

Trusting that He will make all things right if we surrender to His will – that we may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with Him forever.

May God empower us this week to live this life in confident hope of the even better life to come. In the name of Jesus, Amen.

SERENITY PRAYER #10: REASONABLY HAPPY IN THIS LIFE…

On By Pastor TomIn Podcast, Religion, Serenity Prayer, Sermon, Uncategorized1 Comment
Photo by Anna Tarazevich on Pexels.com

What kind of happiness should Christians desire? How does that come into our life as we follow Jesus? What does the bible say about the happiness of those who follow Jesus?

To listen to the sermon, click the play button:

For some people, the player above may not work. If that happens to you, use the link below to either download, or open a player in a new page to listen.

To download, right click on the link (or do whatever you do on a Mac) and save it to your computer: Download Serenity Prayer Part 10

Matthew 5:1-12; 1 Thessalonians 4:13-14

Imagine with me for a moment that you are talking to a friend or relative you haven’t seen in several years. It may be at a family get-together, or a friend’s wedding, or a high school class reunion. You talk for a few minutes about life, catching up on the events of the last few years, and then the other person asks you a question: “Are you happy?” How would you respond? What does it mean to be happy – even reasonably happy? This week, as we continue to meditate on the Serenity Prayer, we will take a look at that question. But first, let’s pray.

            Over the last several weeks, we have been asking God for several things: serenity, courage, wisdom, the ability to be present and enjoy this moment, acceptance, trust, surrender. And now we finally get to the end result. What is it that we are hoping all these things produce in our lives? There are probably several right answers to that question, but the Serenity Prayer provides an answer connected to happiness – reasonable happiness in this life, and supreme happiness in the life to come. Next week we will talk about our happiness in the life to come, but this week we are focused on the here and now – what does it mean to live a life that is reasonably happy?

            One of the first things we need to confront is one of our culture’s idols. Our culture has idolized happiness. It has become a critical – maybe the critical – way to evaluate any decision. If you do X, will it make you happy? I’m not suggesting that we shouldn’t consider happiness at all, but it needs to be way down the list. Too many people have walked away from callings, responsibilities, marriages, and even God Himself because they didn’t feel like they were happy where they were. I’m not saying this to heap coals of guilt on anyone who has made those decisions in the past – I’ve made some of them myself. If that’s a part of your story, grace upon grace to you – God is faithful to forgive. But if we want to live the life that God is giving us through Jesus Christ, if we want to walk out what He has been offering us as we pray this prayer, we need to make decisions moving forward that are not primarily directed toward our happiness.

You see, happiness is actually not an aiming point. It’s not a goal. It is, instead, a byproduct of pursuing the right aims, of moving toward the right goals. If we set out to find happiness, it will almost certainly elude us. But if we set out to find the things that God is calling us to, if we set out to live the life He is offering us, then at least at times, we are going to encounter happiness along the way. Not always – as the prayer says, we are “reasonably” happy in this life. Something more and better is ahead of us, and we will talk about that next week. But in the meanwhile, we can expect to have some measure of happiness in this life – particularly if we are looking for something else.

            What should we look for? Well, I am going to point us to the Beatitudes: Jesus’ first public teaching in the gospel of Matthew. Jesus’ disciples gather to listen to Him in what we have come to call the Sermon on the Mount, and Jesus begins by telling them what the good life looks like. In most translations, these beatitudes begin with the word “blessed.” And frankly, I generally like that, because of what I’ve already said about how misplaced our pursuit of happiness can become. But the handful of translations that choose the word “happy” to begin these statements aren’t doing a bad job either. I’m not a Greek scholar, but I’m fairly well-trained in the language, and it’s a valid choice for the Greek word makarios. But what does it mean to say that Jesus begins by speaking the blessing of happiness over His listeners?

            Let me detour for just a minute here. I’ve spent this year reading through the Bible with three close friends, and one part of my intention in doing that is to listen to the whole story with fresh ears. In doing that, there are some words that I’ve recognized that I may have a more partial understanding of than I’ve thought. It is ridiculously easy for us to bring our own meanings to the text of the Bible, and so I’ve been asking the Holy Spirit to clarify the meanings of some key words based on how God is using them in telling His story. And I’d like to do that with “happy” in the Beatitudes. If we start with our definition of happiness and try to make what Jesus says fit into it, we are probably going to miss at least some of what He is saying. But what if we start by saying, “Jesus is about to teach us what really brings happiness,” and then let that shape how we understand what happiness is and means, and how it functions in our lives? I think if we do that, we may come closer to realizing that reasonable happiness in this life. Let’s read this text. (Matthew 5:1-12) As I read, I’m going to intentionally use the word “happy” in place of the familiar “blessed,” (as the Good News Translation does).

“1Now when Jesus saw the crowds, He went up on the mountain; and after He sat down, His disciples came to Him. 2 And He opened His mouth and began to teach them, saying,
3 “Happy are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
4 “Happy are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
5 “Happy are the gentle, for they will inherit the earth.
6 “Happy are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied.
7 “Happy are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.
8 “Happy are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
9 “Happy are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.
10 “Happy are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

11 “Happy are you when people insult you and persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of Me. 12 Rejoice and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great; for in this same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

            Obviously, we could do an entire series on the teaching of Jesus in these verses. But for our purposes, I want to focus on just two of them, and help us see how understanding what Jesus is saying about happiness in those two verses can help us understand what it will mean for us to be reasonably happy in this life, and how it may challenge our internal definitions and desires for happiness. And I believe what we discover in those two examples can probably be applied to the others as well with time, meditation on God’s Word, and prayer.

            Of all the statements Jesus makes here, the one that seems most counter-intuitive if we think in terms of happiness is verse four, “Happy are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” As I tend to define it, happiness and mourning are almost polar opposites. If I am mourning, then I have lost something – or more likely, someone – that I did not want to lose. I am grieving that loss. And this is where I believe we need to begin to redefine our picture of happiness. Is Jesus calling us to be happy because we have experienced loss? No. Why does He say we can be happy? Because we will be comforted. Paul talks about this in 1 Thessalonians 4:13-14,

13 Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope. 14 For we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him.

Neither Paul nor Jesus is telling us that we should not be sad (although that false message has crept into some aspects of American Christianity). What they are both telling us is that our sadness is different, and even includes a dimension of happiness, because we believe that our mourning isn’t the final answer.

 There is a strong connection here to what we have talked about in the last two weeks, “Trusting that God will make all things right if we surrender to His will.” Why can our mourning bring us to happiness? Because we believe that God is able to make things right. That doesn’t mean we sit back in our loss and do nothing. Think about the three parables of loss in Luke 15. A sheep is lost, a coin is lost, a son is lost. The shepherd who lost his sheep goes looking for it in the countryside until he finds it. The woman who lost her coin turns the house upside down until she finds it. And what about the father who lost his son? Well, he doesn’t go looking. Finding people and restoring relationships with them is more complicated than chasing down a sheep or a coin. But the father was watching as he waited. Even watching and waiting can be active in the kingdom of God. And what happens in each of these parables when what has been lost is now found? They have a party! The anxiety, fear, and frustration of the search has been replaced by joy that spreads through the whole neighborhood! A part of what Jesus calls us to in this Beatitude is to believe, even as we mourn, that a party is coming. And to let that belief bring us some modicum of happiness, even as we mourn.

That blend of happiness and pain is obvious in another of the Beatitudes: “

11 Happy are you when people insult you and persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of Me.”

Let this sentence challenge how you (and I) have been defining happiness. If happiness is primarily a product of my circumstances, then this sentence makes no sense. I don’t enjoy being insulted, excluded, lied about, and left out – not to mention the more physical persecutions and punishments that were waiting for many of Jesus’ listeners that day. If happiness means feeling good about what is happening in my life because I’m getting what I want, then I couldn’t possibly be happy in the middle of this kind of response from people around me. But what if I have been learning to accept hardships as a pathway to peace? What if God has been teaching me how to accept with serenity the things I cannot change? Because my ability to change what someone thinks of me or how they treat me is pretty limited. If I make it my goal in life to ensure that no one says anything evil about me, then I’d be better off going down to the beach and yelling at the tide to keep it from coming in. But what if I learn to accept life on life’s terms? To surrender to God’s will that allows me to suffer in these ways, and trust that He will make it right…eventually?

            And that’s what Jesus goes on to say in the next verse: “12 Rejoice and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great; for in this same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” How do we find happiness in the middle of persecution? One, we recognize that a day is coming when God will make this right. We are confidently hoping to enjoy the Presence of God forever (what reward could be greater?) And two, we see that we are finding our place among the people of God. This is what has always happened for people who are devoted to God and committed to Him above everything else. Whether we are going around making prophetic proclamations or not, when we live as citizens of the coming kingdom, we are setting ourselves up to be mocked, scorned, and ridiculed. And the good news is, we are in good company! The painful opposition we face is the same painful opposition the faithful people of God have almost always faced.

            I believe if we took the time, we would see the same theme running through each of the Beatitudes: that we can be reasonably happy in this life because we trust that living as citizens of the heavenly kingdom is a part of our learning to live the eternal lives that God is preparing for us and preparing us for. Now, it won’t “work” in this world. We will see other people accumulate more wealth, get more honor and recognition, satisfy desires that are not kingdom-oriented, benefit from stirring up conflict, and get what they want in the short term. And at times, that will be painful for us. But we can find reasonable happiness in knowing that God is the one who will ultimately be responsible for our well-being, and we are preparing ourselves for eternal life with Him by living now in ways that really don’t work in the kingdom of this world, but will work admirably in the kingdom of heaven that has begun to break into this world, and will eventually, when Christ returns, overwhelm it.

            Now, that is only going to produce reasonable happiness. We aren’t going to be ecstatic and bubbly all the time – honestly, I wonder about the well-being of people who come across that way. But we also aren’t dragging around with our faces cast to the ground, morosely hanging on until Jesus comes back. And our ability to be reasonably happy is connected to our willingness to surrender, as we talked about last week from Philippians 4. Paul was able to be reasonably happy because he had learned to accept life on life’s terms – to experience contentment in whatever circumstances God had given him as he lived out his calling in a broken, sinful world. Paul could see Jesus at work in the circumstances of his life, whether they were good or bad, and because Jesus was at work, Paul could engage his life as a child of God. The abundant life that Jesus promises us in John 10 isn’t just coming one day in the resurrection. It has already begun. And since it has already begun, we get to experience, at least in part, the joy that will one day be ours forever.

            It’s probably been obvious as we go through the message today that we can’t really talk about our reasonable happiness in this life without talking about our supreme happiness in the next. They are inextricably connected – our happiness here is rooted in the happiness that is to come. And we’ll talk about that more next week.

With that said, let’s close again this week with the Serenity Prayer. I hope you’ll join with me as we pray. As I mentioned earlier, I have changed the wording to make it a communal prayer.

God, grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, the courage to change the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time, accepting hardships as a pathway to peace.

Taking, as Jesus did, this sinful world as it is, not as we would have it to be.

Trusting that He will make all things right if we surrender to His will – that we may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with Him forever.

May God teach us to experience reasonable happiness this week as we wait for Him. In the name of Jesus, Amen.

SERENITY PRAYER #9: If I Surrender to His will…

On By Pastor TomIn Podcast, Religion, Serenity Prayer, SermonLeave a comment

To listen to the sermon, click the play button:

For some people, the player above may not work. If that happens to you, use the link below to either download, or open a player in a new page to listen.

To download, right click on the link (or do whatever you do on a Mac) and save it to your computer: Download Serenity Prayer Part

If I Surrender to His Will

2 Timothy 3:16-17; Daniel 3:16-18 Philippians 4:11-13; Matthew 26:39-44; John 5:19

As we get close to the end of the Serenity Prayer, last week and this week are really where the rubber hits the road for me. I can rightly ask God for all kinds of help with the serenity, courage, and wisdom I need to live in the present, enjoy the moment, and accept the hardships that come with life. But if I don’t trust Him, as we talked about last week, my ability to receive those gifts and put them into practice is going to be very limited. And if that trust in God doesn’t lead to my surrender to His will, as we will talk about this week, then I am risking a life of idolatry. What do I mean by that? Well, let’s pray together and then find out.

            This phrase – if I surrender to His will – has two parts. We’re going to start with what I consider the easier one first and then tackle the harder one. If I am going to surrender to God’s will, then obviously I have to know what His will is. But it won’t take long to realize that there are lots of different opinions on what God’s will is, and on what He must want. Some of those contradict each other, so they can’t all be right. If I want to know God’s will, how do I do that? How do I sort through the competing claims to understand what God wants in my life?

            Let’s start with the foundation – if you want to know God’s will, begin by reading the Bible. And I would say, the whole thing. Learn the whole story, from creation to re-creation. And continue to read it again and again and again. God has revealed so much about His character, His desires, and yes, His will for us in the inspired Scripture.

 “16All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, 17that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.” (2 Timothy 3:16-17)

God has revealed Himself to us thoroughly in His Word, particularly when we read it as believers who are united with the Word who was made flesh and filled with the Spirit of God. And while the Bible does not typically contain answers about which job we should take, or which car to buy, or whether to choose this restaurant or that one for dinner (or to stay home instead), God does use His Word to lay out the parameters for His will as we make daily decisions.

            I like the analogy of a football game (for those of you who are not football fans, I do apologize, but the analogy really works). In the Bible, God has laid out the dimensions of the field, defined what is out of bounds, and set a general framework of rules for the game. But that does not tell us who should play which position, what style of offense and defense we should play, or whether or not to go for it on fourth and two. God’s specific will for us has to be worked out in the context of our lives – think of Him as the head coach in this analogy – but His specific will is going to be revealed somewhere within the background of the playing field He has already set in place. We play the game of life as He designed it to be played.

            You may feel like I’m spending a lot of time on something that should be obvious, but I can tell you that in over 20 years as a pastor, I’ve found that sometimes people are certain God is wanting something that He has already told us He does not want. I’ll give an old example from my days on the mission field. The pastor of the most dynamic, vibrant church in town came before the congregation and announced that God had told him to divorce his wife because she was not sufficiently supportive of his ministry. Not because she had broken their marriage vows. Not because she had abandoned him, or was abusing him, or was caught in addiction and refusing to get help. But because she had a different picture of church ministry than he did. I can tell you that while I’ve had to wrestle with some difficult and convoluted marriage dilemmas over the years, there is nothing in the Word of God anywhere that allows a Christian man to divorce his wife in order to further his ministry. It’s just not there. And while that is a dramatic and obvious example, I could list many others over the years of people who believed God was leading them to do something that He clearly was not. We need to know well the revelation of God in Scripture so that we can identify the times when our ideas about what God might want come into conflict with what He says there. “Did God really say…?” is the oldest trick in the book – and if we know the Book, we have a better chance to recognize that.

            The next thing I believe we need in discerning the will of God is community. Even when I know what God says in His Word, I find it easier than I’d like it to be to justify, manipulate, or otherwise finagle the words of Scripture to find a verse that I can pull out in support of what I want. That’s where I need God to build a healthy church family of people around me who know me and love me well enough to help me discern what it is that God wants. We talked about this some when we talked about wisdom in week four, but I don’t think we can say it enough. God has always put His people into communities, large and small, so that we can listen, pray, talk, and discern the will of God together. We are designed to live the Christian life in community – it is inherently a team sport, not an individual one. And often the ideas that I have in my head about what it is that God wants sound much different when I say them out loud to a trusted brother or sister. I can fool myself into thinking that God wants what I wish He wanted; when I bring other people into the picture, they can often see much more clearly. In fact, if I could change one thing about the Serenity Prayer, I would change it from an individual prayer to a corporate one. And since this is just a prayer that someone wrote, not Scripture, I actually can do that, and in fact, when I pray at the close of these last few lessons, I will pray the prayer communally – “we” instead of “I.”

            Third, look at what God is doing in your life. What doors is He opening? Which ones has He shut? What gifts and resources has He given you? And as Henry Blackaby describes in Experiencing God, look back over your shoulder. How has God used you in the past? What are the marker stones He has laid down in your history? How do the circumstances of your life inform what God may be asking you to do (or to stop doing)?

            And finally, pray. I don’t mean wait until the end to pray – pray throughout this process. Pray as you read the Word of God, and ask God to show you what He wants you to see. Pray as you talk about your decision with brothers or sisters, and ask God to highlight things that are said that can point you in the right direction. Pray as you look at your circumstances, and ask God to bring things to mind that can be directional markers. And pray as you process all those moving pieces of community, history, and what is in your own heart – processing them against the backdrop of God’s eternally accurate and valid Word.

            At the end of all that, as we said in the discussion on wisdom, you may still not have certainty, but your odds of honoring God with your decisions have gone up tremendously. And you have come to know Him better as you have spent time seeking His will. Now comes the hard part: surrendering to that will.

            Surrender is not a word that immediately conjures up lots of positive associations in our mind. It’s connected to things like this: give up, lose, defeat. We place a high value in our culture on winning, hanging in there, succeeding. So why do we have this word in the middle of our spiritual lives that indicates that we are not enough? That we have to quit? Well, it’s a matter of what we are quitting. In order to surrender to God’s will, what we have to give up is our own will – our right to decide for ourselves what we will do and how we will do it. In C.S. Lewis’s book, The Great Divorce, Lewis says this: “There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘Thy will be done.’” God has given us free will. We have the ability to make choices. But He has given us that ability so that we can, in turn, offer it back to Him. We can decline the option to make our own decisions and, instead, surrender that option back to the One who gave it to us. Let’s look at the three examples of this from Scripture.

            Our first example comes from the Old Testament book of Daniel. It’s a familiar story. In Daniel chapter 3, the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar sets up a golden image and decrees that at its dedication, everyone in attendance must bow down and worship the golden image. Three of the officials in attendance were captives from Judah: Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. We know them better by the names the Babylonian officials gave them: Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. When everyone else bowed down to Nebuchadnezzar’s idol, those three refused. They were brought before the king and given a chance to “repent” of their defiance – they got another chance to bow. Now, in this case, discerning the will of God was not particularly challenging. It was pretty obvious to godly Jews that worshipping other gods was a significant part of what had gotten them exiled in the first place. These three men knew what God’s will was. But their response of surrender is impressive, and an excellent model for us to imitate. Here is their reply: “

16 Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego replied, “O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you. 17 If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God whom we serve is able to save us. He will rescue us from your power, Your Majesty. 18 But even if he doesn’t, we want to make it clear to you, Your Majesty, that we will never serve your gods or worship the gold statue you have set up.” (Daniel 3:16-18, NLT) 

This is what it means to trust that God will make all things right if we surrender to His will. It includes the acknowledgement that God’s will may not be what we want. The three men wanted to live. They were confident that God had the ability to preserve their lives, and they hoped that He would. But even if He did not, that changed nothing about their obedience, their surrender to His will. If obedience to God meant death, then they would take it and trust that His will for them was still good. After his attempt to kill them by burning them to death in a great furnace, even King Nebuchadnezzar grasps what they are doing and why (at least for a little while). In Daniel 3:28, he says, “Praise be to the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who has sent his angel and rescued his servants! They trusted in him and defied the king’s command and were willing to give up their lives rather than serve or worship any god except their own God.” The three young men gave up their ability to direct and protect their own lives because they trusted that whatever God did, it would be better than choosing their own will over His.

            These three men faced a literal, concrete idol. But idolatry comes in many forms. At its heart, idolatry is placing anything other than the One True God at the center of our lives, our wills, our decision-making. Most of us are not going to bow down to a golden image any time soon – but what are the powers and principalities that may sneak onto the throne of our lives? Where do we bow to our comfort? Our security? Our longing for life to follow the plans we have made? Or even our desire to exercise the right we have to make decisions for ourselves? That, too, can be an idol, and place us at the center of our own lives. We are not the center, and we are not designed to be the center. God, and only God, can occupy the throne – anything else is idolatry.

            Now, surrendering to God’s will is not always a matter of life or death, like it was for the three men in Daniel (at least not immediately). Sometimes, it is simply about accepting the direction God has for our lives, even if it makes our lives more difficult. You’ve noticed by now how interconnected the lines of this prayer are. Surrendering to God’s will may mean accepting the hardships He allows as a pathway to peace. Paul talks about this type of surrender in Philippians 4:11-13, Paul says,

 “11 I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. 12 I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. 13 I can do all this through Him who gives me strength.”

In this passage, Paul is in the middle of thanking the Philippians for the support they’ve recently sent him. He’s glad to get money, clothes, food, or supplies that will make his stay in prison more bearable for him. At the same time, he is not insisting that he must have these things in order to be okay. If God’s will allows Paul to be in prison, he will accept it. If God’s will sets him free, he will accept it. Paul trusts God enough to give up his freedom, his position, his status, and even the meeting of his daily need for food, if God’s will allows him to be in those situations. He has thoroughly let go, quit, resigned, and surrendered his will to the will of his Master, Jesus.

            And it is Jesus who most clearly illustrates for us what it looks like to surrender His will to the will of His Father. We see it clearly in the garden. Three times, Jesus asks His Father to take away the cup of betrayal and execution if it is possible. And each time, after He expresses the passionate desire of His heart, He ends His prayer by choosing to surrender His will to the will of His Father. (Matthew 26:39-44) But this act of surrender on the eve of His death was nothing new. In fact, Jesus had lived His entire life in surrender to the Father. As early as 12 years old, He is saying to His parents (in response to their frantic search for Him) that His priority is to be about His Father’s business. Even though it creates tension with the Jewish expectations of a twelve-year-old boy, Jesus was already laying down control of His life and giving it to His Father. This continued throughout His ministry. John’s gospel highlights this with multiple mentions of the way Jesus paid attention to the timing and leading of His Father. Nothing happens in the gospel until the time has come. And John makes it clear that the time does not come when others want it to, or even when Jesus Himself wants it to, but when the Father knows it is the right time. He highlights this in Jesus’ discourse with the Jewish leaders in John 5. When they challenge Jesus’ actions of healing on the Sabbath,

 “19 Jesus gave them this answer: ‘Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by Himself; He can do only what He sees His Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.’” (John 5:19)

How total is this surrender! Everything Jesus does, He does by looking to the Father and taking direction from Him. He says it again in verse 30:

 30By myself I can do nothing; I judge only as I hear, and My judgment is just, for I seek not to please Myself but Him who sent Me.” (John 5:30)

Jesus’ life is not lived for His own benefit or at His own direction; it is lived at the direction of the Father and to please Him. And His language echoes what He will say to His disciples in John 15:5,

“I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in Me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from Me you can do nothing.”

Our lives will not bear fruit if we live them out of our own will, but when we live them in union with Jesus, when we surrender to the Father’s will as He did, then incredible things can happen! And also, lots and lots of mundane, boring things that very few will see or value, but that surrender brings glory to God just as much as the dramatic gestures. In fact, don’t be fooled into thinking that it’s only important to surrender to God in the big moments. Our decisions in those big moments are shaped by the quiet, day-to-day decisions we have made to give up the right to live life the way we want in order to live it as God has directed us to live.

            As we close, please remember that this is all a prayer. I am not encouraging any of us to try to work harder to surrender or force ourselves to give up. That is largely fruitless, at least it has been in my life. Instead, I am asking us to pray that God will do this for us. If I am going to surrender to His will, it will be because His Holy Spirit is at work in me empowering me to surrender. That’s an odd phrase – getting the power to give up power – and I believe it is absolutely vital to living the life that God has for us in Christ Jesus. It’s time for us to raise the white flag, admit that we have failed to run our own lives well, and we will fail again, unless God takes our lives and our wills into His hands and we surrender them to Him – day by day, hour by hour, decision by decision. And when we do that, we can trust Him to bring about what is Good.

With that said, let’s close again this week with the Serenity Prayer. I hope you’ll join with me as we pray. As I mentioned earlier, I have changed the wording to make it a communal prayer.

God, grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, the courage to change the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time, accepting hardships as a pathway to peace.

Taking, as Jesus did, this sinful world as it is, not as we would have it to be.

Trusting that He will make all things right if we surrender to His will – that we may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with Him forever.

May God give each of us the gift of surrender this week. In the name of Jesus, Amen.

1 SAMUEL #32: THE END OF SAUL

On By Pastor TomIn 1 Samuel, Old Testament, Podcast, Religion, Sermon, UncategorizedLeave a comment

To the very end, Saul chose to act as if he couldn’t trust the Lord, as if everything depended upon his own ability to stay in control. When his own schemes and capacities failed, he despaired, and determined to be in control of his own fate to the very last, he took his own life. The great tragedy is that the Lord was always there for him, and was constantly trying to get through to Saul. When Saul killed himself, the Lord lamented his loss.

Let’s use Saul’s story to remind us that even when we feel like God isn’t there, he has never abandoned us. Let us give up on control, and instead, like David, trust the Lord in all circumstances.

To listen to the sermon, click the play button:

For some people, the player above may not work. If that happens to you, use the link below to either download, or open a player in a new page to listen.

To download, right click on the link (or do whatever you do on a Mac) and save it to your computer: Download 1 Samuel Part 32

1 Samuel ends with the death of king Saul, recorded in chapter 31. While David was returning home, and then pursuing the Amalekites who had destroyed his town and taken his family, the Philistines and the Israelites began a great battle.

As I mentioned before, the Philistines invaded the valley of Jezreel, which was the only relatively easy way to get from the Mediterranean coast into the Jordan Valley of Israel. Saul’s forces were on a mountain ridge to the south of the valley, a place called Mount Gilboa. When the Philistines began to move east toward the Jordan, Saul moved to attack them and block them.

The picture below is of the actual area (with present day roads, reservoirs and buildings that would not have been there at the time, of course). The Philistines were invading through the valley in the left of the picture, starting in the foreground and pushing toward the Jordan valley in the distance. The Israelites were positioned on the ridges to the right. The little hill labeled “Tell Jezreel” was probably not there.

The massive Philistine army turned to destroy the Israelites. This was a good strategic move, because if they left them alone on the mountain, the Philistines couldn’t be secure in the valley. The battle became a rout. Israel’s army fell apart. Jonathan and his brothers were killed. I want us to consider some things in the following verses:

3 The battle pressed hard against Saul, and the archers found him, and he was badly wounded by the archers. 4 Then Saul said to his armor-bearer, “Draw your sword, and thrust me through with it, lest these uncircumcised come and thrust me through, and mistreat me.” But his armor-bearer would not, for he feared greatly. Therefore Saul took his own sword and fell upon it. (1 Samuel 31:3-4, ESV).

Verse 3 contains some ambiguous Hebrew expressions. Most English translations make it seem like Saul was severely wounded before he committed suicide. That is certainly one possible way of translating it, and probably a good one. But even so, it is quite possible that Saul was not wounded at all, but only in despair. An almost literal translation of verse 3 would be this:

“The battle became a great burden upon Saul. When the archers came within range of him, he was deeply traumatized.”

The “burden” of battle could be intense physical combat. However, that doesn’t make sense when we learn that the enemy archers have only just come into range. If he was fighting hand to hand, archers would be irrelevant. They would not shoot, for fear of hitting their own men. From this, it seems likely that Saul was not even involved in actual combat. Therefore it seems probable that the “intensity” or “burden” of the battle was purely psychological for Saul.

The literal translation of Saul being “wounded” is “deeply traumatized,” or “anguished.” We have just learned that the intensity of the battle is most likely only psychological for Saul, and probably not physical (see previous paragraph). “Traumatized” can mean physically wounded of course, and it isn’t wrong to translate it that way. Even so, knowing that what is happening with Saul is already psychological, it would not be wrong either to interpret the trauma as emotional distress, rather than a physical wound.

I believe that this view is reinforced by two things. First, Saul is clearly afraid of being captured and “mistreated.” He says so in verse 4. Several commentators speculate that Saul was thinking about what happened to Samson, the Israelite judge, who was captured by the Philistines. They blinded him, chained him like an animal, and paraded him around to be cursed and spit upon for their entertainment (Judges 16:21-25). Saul was clearly afraid of this sort of thing. That certainly makes it unlikely that Saul had any severe physical wound, because if he was badly wounded, the chances were much greater that he would simply die before the Philistines could do much else to him. Remember, in those days, there were no painkillers, no antibiotics, no modern medicine. Wounded people died at a much higher rate. Severely wounded people frequently died within a few minutes or hours. If Saul had been severely wounded, he would not have feared what else the Philistines might do to him, because he would have soon been dead.

 Second, notice his armor-bearer’s response when Saul ordered the armor-bearer to kill him. The armor-bearer would not kill Saul, “because he was terrified,” (also verse 4). What was he afraid of? If Saul was mortally wounded, why would the armor bearer be afraid to finish what was inevitable anyway? No, I think Saul’s mood and his words are what scared the armor-bearer. He didn’t want to kill Saul because Saul was not physically anywhere near death.

The night before the battle was when Saul went to the witch of Endor, and consulted with a demonic spirit who masqueraded as Samuel. If you remember, that spirit had spoken only words of condemnation and despair to Saul. Saul accepted this message and believed it as if it was truly Samuel speaking. So, here’s how I think it went down: You have a man who has his entire life been insecure, erratic and manipulative. He is a control freak, now in a situation where he does not have control. He has recently accepted and believed the words of a demon. He is deeply emotionally troubled by the battle long before it even comes near him, in fact, he was troubled even before it began (because of his encounter with the witch the night before). When he sees that the archers are finally in range, he suffers deep psychological trauma. He is horrified at the idea that he might be taken prisoner, and made a spectacle in front of his enemies. So he orders his companion to kill him, and when that person refuses, he takes his own life. In other words, he gave up even before all was truly lost. The words of the demon were a self-fulfilling prophecy, in large part because Saul believed them and acted accordingly.

Now, I want to write about something that most Christians don’t talk much about: Suicide. It’s right there in the text, so I think the Holy Spirit wants to deal with the subject. But before we get into it, let’s get one thing clear. You may have known someone who committed suicide. Sadly, I’ve known several. I am convinced that some of the suicides I have known died still clinging to Jesus. There are others about whom I really don’t know. If there is any question, it doesn’t do anyone any good to wonder whether that person died in faith, or if he went to hell. That’s not the point of what we are about to consider. What’s done is done. I cling to the biblical truth that God is far more gracious and merciful than I can comprehend. We leave our loved ones in God’s hands. I certainly don’t believe that suicide in general is some kind of unforgiveable sin.

But right now, I want to talk to and about the living. If you are reading this, you are alive, and these words are for you, not for someone who has already died. Don’t waste your time wondering how to apply these words to someone else – these are for you, for me, for the living.

Saul’s suicide was clearly an evil, demonically influenced act. It was his lack of faith that prompted him to take his own life. It was his lack of trust in the Lord, combined with the fact that he believed and agreed with demonic words. He behaved as he believed. If you are ever tempted to suicide, please understand – you are being tempted by a demonic power. Do not listen to demons. Do not agree with them.

G.K. Chesterton has some insightful thoughts about killing oneself. He says:

The man who kills a man, kills a man. The man who kills himself, kills all men; as far as he is concerned, he wipes out the whole world.

His point is clear, but we don’t often think about it. The person who commits suicide does not merely kill herself. From her point of view, she is killing the whole world. Suicide looks at the world and says, “As far as I am concerned, there is nothing worthwhile in the entire universe. I would be just as well off if the whole world is destroyed.” Now, many times, this is because of despair and hopelessness that things will ever get better. I have compassion for people in that much despair. But that level of despair sure sounds demonic to me.

And of course, suicide is not a private decision that affects only yourself. It is a terrible thing for those left behind to know that you preferred death to living on with them. Sometimes the suicidal person knows this. They are angry at loved ones, and they want to hurt those people as well as themselves. Suicide is not just self-destruction – it destroys everyone who knows you. Once again, if that doesn’t sound demonic, I don’t know what does. Sometimes, of course, the suicidal person just can’t see beyond their own struggle. They just aren’t thinking about how their action might affect others, or maybe they even think that everyone will be better off without them. My heart breaks for such people, but suicide is not the answer.

Some Christians may say: “Well, I want to get to heaven. I’m tired of the struggles of this world – I want to be in the peace and rest of eternity with Jesus. Wouldn’t suicide get me to heaven faster?” But that is so much like Saul’s attitude. Saul always insisted upon his own way. He manipulated, fumed and got depressed and sought help from demons – all to get his own way. Like the ultimate spoiled brat, when he realized that this time there is simply no way it was going to happen, he would rather die. We Christians are supposed to live in trust – not in control. We don’t get to determine how and when we die. To do that is to put yourself in the place of God.

I’ll be honest. Several times a year the pain I live with gets so bad that I want to die. I have actually prayed for the Lord to take my life not once, but several times. But I will not take matters into my own hands, because my life is a gift from God. It isn’t mine—it belongs to Jesus. Only the Lord gets to say when and how it ends. No matter how bad things feel, suicide is not God’s answer for me, or anyone reading this.

Remember, Jonathan and his brothers died too. Their result was the same as Saul’s. And yet it was entirely different. They died fighting for their country and for each other.

Jonathan showed courage. Saul showed demonic self-centeredness. I don’t think Saul’s death was the result of God’s judgment. It was the result of a lifetime of Saul’s self-absorbed choices, culminating in the final ultimate act of selfishness. About Saul, you can say for certain, “he chose his own fate.”

Even so, Saul’s story ends with people who loved God mourning for him. I think this is because they were led by the Holy Spirit. God always wanted Saul to turn to Him and trust him. And so after he died, the Spirit of God moved two groups of people to honor Saul in a special way.

After the battle, the Israelites in the nearby parts of the Jordan valley fled. The Philistines took over their towns, among them a town named Beth-Shan, which has been the site of an archeological dig for many years in modern times. The Philistines found Saul’s body, cut off his head, and hung the corpse on the wall of Beth-Shan. They did the same with the bodies of Jonathan and his two brothers. There is a reason that we call brutal, ignorant cruel people “Philistines,” even today.

The residents of an Israelite town further south in the hills on the other side of the Jordan heard about this. That town was Jabesh-Gilead – the place of Saul’s very first battle, the town that had been shamed for centuries, but which Saul had rescued. They remembered how Saul had saved them and finally removed their shame. So they sent a commando-type unit through the night to Beth-Shan. They stole Saul’s body, and those of his sons, from the Philistines, and brought them back to Jabesh-Gilead. They burned the bodies and then buried the bones with honor. It was a bittersweet  end to the reign of Saul, coming full circle to the beginning when he was younger, and did trust God. I think their actions were a reflection of the Lord’s sorrow at Saul’s choices. Saul chose his own way, and he suffered the consequences. But I do not believe that was what God wanted. He gave Saul the freedom to choose, and I believe he was sorrowful for what the king chose. The Lord reveals this same attitude in Ezekiel 33:11

Tell them: As I live” — the declaration of the Lord GOD — “I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that the wicked person should turn from his way and live. Repent, repent of your evil ways! Why will you die, house of Israel? (Ezek 33:11, HCSB)

A second person who reveals this attitude toward Saul is David. Remember, David had the Spirit of God in a way that was special in those days. Often, he is a type of Christ – he reveals the kinds of actions and attitudes that the true Messiah has. And so when he heard of Saul’s death, he wept in sorrow. Because he was human, I’m sure he was more upset about the loss of his friend Jonathan than the death of Saul. But he reveals the heart of God. The Lord was never against Saul. He always wanted him to turn back, repent and receive grace. Inspired by God, David wrote a beautiful lament, recorded in 2 Samuel 1:19-27

19 The splendor of Israel lies slain on your heights.

How the mighty have fallen!

 20 Do not tell it in Gath,

don’t announce it in the marketplaces of Ashkelon,

or the daughters of the Philistines will rejoice,

and the daughters of the uncircumcised will gloat.

 21 Mountains of Gilboa,

let no dew or rain be on you,

or fields of offerings,

for there the shield of the mighty was defiled —

the shield of Saul, no longer anointed with oil.

 22 Jonathan’s bow never retreated,

Saul’s sword never returned unstained,

from the blood of the slain,

from the bodies of the mighty.

 23 Saul and Jonathan,

loved and delightful,

they were not parted in life or in death.

They were swifter than eagles, stronger than lions.

 24 Daughters of Israel, weep for Saul,

who clothed you in scarlet, with luxurious things,

who decked your garments with gold ornaments.

 25 How the mighty have fallen in the thick of battle!

Jonathan lies slain on your heights.

 26 I grieve for you, Jonathan, my brother.

You were such a friend to me.

Your love for me was more wonderful

than the love of women.

 27 How the mighty have fallen

and the weapons of war have perished!

The greatest tragedy of Saul’s life is that the Lord always loved him, continually reached out to him, never stopped offering his grace, and yet Saul acted as if God wasn’t there for him. Saul was never in as much danger as David, and he didn’t have any real reasons to be afraid and insecure. Yet he let his fears and insecurities rule him. David’s life was often in danger and insecure, and yet he lived in deep security, because he trusted the Lord.  But Saul rejected that path. He preferred to try to control things himself. He did not surrender his own will to God. But God’s love and grace and forgiveness were never more than a heartbeat away, if only he had turned to receive them. And so when Saul died, the heart of God was to lament his loss.