Proclaiming the Promise

Sermon given at Grace UMC 4/24/16

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This sermon does not have a complete manuscript and is best viewed by listening to the audio. 

Scripture Reading:

^NRS  Exodus 3:1 Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian; he led his flock beyond the wilderness, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. ² There the angel of the LORD appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed. ³ Then Moses said, "I must turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned up." ⁴ When the LORD saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, "Moses, Moses!" And he said, "Here I am." ⁵ Then he said, "Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground." ⁶ He said further, "I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob." And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God. ⁷ Then the LORD said, "I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, ⁸ and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the country of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. ⁹ The cry of the Israelites has now come to me; I have also seen how the Egyptians oppress them. ¹⁰ So come, I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt." ¹¹ But Moses said to God, "Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?" ¹² He said, "I will be with you; and this shall be the sign for you that it is I who sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall worship God on this mountain."

In the movie “It Could Happen to You” which is said to be loosely based on a true story, Nicolas Cage plays a cop who stops in to a diner and doesn’t have enough money to give a tip to the waitress, so he makes an unbelievable promise. He says that he has a lottery ticket and if he wins, her tip will be half of whatever the prize is. The waitress laughs it off, and who could blame her, but to the amazement of everybody the cop wins the lottery and he comes to that same diner, and fulfills his promise and he gave the waitress a 2 million dollar tip. The funny part of the movie is watching Nicolas Cage explain to his wife that he had to give the waitress 2 million dollars because…he had promised her. Now the producers of that film claim that it is based off of a true story, but we may find that hard to believe, primarily because if the absurdity of the promise, but even more so that such an absurd promise was kept. We’ve become accustomed to being skeptical of big promises. How many of you have received an e-mail that said that Bill Gates was giving money to people who sent this e-mail to at least 10 other people, that it was being tracked by Microsoft and there was a picture of a person holding a check that was signed by Bill Gates. Have you ever received that check?

Now whenever a person makes a promise, whether it be a preacher, a politician, or a spouse, two things that you must consider about that person is their ability to keep the promise (some people make big promises with good intentions but they lack the resources to carry them out), and that person’s trustworthiness. Is this person just blowing smoke trying to get you to do something? Now when it comes to the many promises that God makes to us in His word, we must look at God’s ability to keep those promises and His faithfulness to uphold His promises. In the scriptures, we read about a loving heavenly Father who has made to you many precious promises. Promises that tell us that our needs our taken care of, that our sins our forgiven, that we will never be overwhelmed beyond our ability to bear, and he has promised the gift of everlasting life. Now God has both the power and the integrity to fulfill each and every promise He has made. He has proven His power and His faithfulness time and time again, and like a loving Father, God cares for each and every one of us and He has promised that whatever happens He will always be there for us. 

We go back to the story of Abraham. God had promised Abraham a number of things. One of them was that they would populate the land of Canaan, a land of great bounty. In the time of Joseph the people of Abraham migrated to Egypt. They were there 400 years. Let’s put that in perspective.

400 years ago today

Shakespeare died yesterday

There was a colony in Virginia at Jamestown trying to survive

Plymouth was not yet planted

Spain had settlements in Florida and Mexico

The American Indian lived throughout the land

God had promised. Now God was going to keep that promise.

Random thoughts - Central message of Jesus

Within the last few weeks I have been preaching and teaching about the central message of Jesus. We so often immediately respond that the central message of Jesus is love. I won't deny that it is an important lesson that Jesus teaches us, to love God with all that we are and love our neighbors likewise. But is that the central message?

I have come to believe that the central message is shown to us through scripture in the life and teachings of Jesus. Jesus, the special gift of God, God incarnate, has such a unique relationship wth God, creator and Father, that we often miss that Jesus of all people probably did not need prayer as much as we do. And yet, Jesus is in constant prayer. I believe that leads us to the conclusion that the central message is that we need to be in an intimate relationhip with God as the central part of our lives. God is the center of everything we know and hold dear and yet we almost always leave God out of our decision making and discussions. A typical meeting in the church starts with a short prayer and then we jump right in. Our personal decisions almost never utilize prayer when we go about our daily lives, even when those decisions are major.

My own life has been choatic at times, most of them as a result of decisions that I have made outside of the relationship with God. When I find myself in those places it is always God I turn to, but what if we turned to God before the choas? In my daily devotions now there is a place for silent contemplation and prayer. Bishop Cho of the Virginia Annual Conference has challenged us to one hour of prayer each day. That can be divided in segments throughout the day. I have found that when I give God and hour, my world seems less choatic. Maybe it really still is but I am able to deal with it better.

So the central message of Jesus is a personal and intimate relationship with God. It starts with prayer, a deeper prayer life where we are in constant communication with God and listening is a required aspect of that conversation.

The Bible in Itself

Sermon given at Grace UMC 4/17/16

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Scripture Reading:

^NRS  John 3:11 "Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you do not receive our testimony. ¹² If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? ¹³ No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. ¹⁴ And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, ¹⁵ that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. ¹⁶ "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. ¹⁷ "Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

Back in the 1500s, people didn't have a Bible they could read. The Catholic Church controlled the translating of Scripture and only offered it in Latin. But when Martin Luther rebelled against the abuses of the Church of his day he worked hard to make a translation available in German (the language of his people). The daughter of the printer Luther used was cleaning in her dad's shop and she picked up a piece of paper off the floor. It read, "For God so loved that He gave..." and that was all. The rest of the verse was not printed yet, but what she saw excited her. The thought that God would give her anything moved her. Her mother noticed a change in her and asked her why she seemed so happy. The girl pulled a crumpled piece of paper out of her pocket and showed it to her mother. The mother read it and asked, "What did He give?" The girl said, "I don't know but if God loved us enough to give us anything we should not be afraid of Him." What she read on that scrap of paper changed how she looked at God.
And what people read in our lives can change how others look at our God as well. One man has wisely said: "We may be the only Bible anyone ever reads."

Ellsworth Kalas writes in his book, God’s Promises that Keep Us, that he would never try to create a sunset if he were an artist. That the original is so beautiful and breathtaking that it is impossible to recreate its majestic beauty on canvas. He recounts that years ago he served in a church with a magnificent carillon. It would play every day, every hour, during the week days. The music was beautiful. But over time the music faded. Not because the music stopped playing, rather, he listened to the music day after day and eventually he stopped hearing it.

I believe that John 3:16 is just like that. We have it imprinted into our consciousness so well that when someone begins to say it, we can finish it for them. We may have learned it when we were young. We may have heard it in various places or even have seen it in football and baseball games. Funny, I stopped noticing after a while until I read Kalas’ book and I began to look again and it suddenly reappeared. Actually it had been there all along, I just had tuned it out.

Have you ever noticed that on television or in the movies, there is almost always a story within the story? As we watch entranced the story line there appears another smaller story that suddenly takes our consciousness away from the larger story. In this smaller story is the theme of the larger story or it may be that the smaller story sets the punch line for our understanding of what is happening. I remember watching a movie some years ago about a man, his sister and his mother and the psychologist he falls in love with. She is treating him for depression and suddenly you are transported into a world of love and intrigue as they fall for each other. You forget about the larger story as you get wrapped into the central emphasis on their relationship until suddenly you are transported in his mind back to a time when he was young and the brutal act that changed them all. Sometimes we get so engrossed in the story that we miss the larger context and it takes the story within the story to help us to unwrap it.

Kalas reminds us that Martin Luther said that very thing when he shared, “What Spartan saying can be compared with this wonderful brevity?” he asked. “It is a Bible in itself.” In fact he repeated the scripture itself three times as his last words before he died. What words could convey so much emotion and have such impact?   

Early in the 1800s, Hans Egede, a Danish missionary, left his native land to preach the gospel to the Eskimos of Greenland. He labored for years, teaching them the truths of Christianity, and yet he saw no apparent results from his long and self-denying efforts. Eventually he became so discouraged and depressed by the indifference of the people that he decided to leave the country. The Bible verse he selected from which to preach his farewell sermon was, “I have labored in vain, I have spent my strength for naught and in vain” (Isaiah 49:4).

Egede was succeeded in the work by Mr. Beck, a Moravian missionary. On his arrival, Mr. Beck began to tell the Eskimos of God’s wonderful love to guilty sinners as revealed at Calvary’s cross. When Kajarnak, the old Eskimo chief who was a brutal murderer, heard the missionary reading the blessed and marvelous words of John 3:16, he exclaimed, “Read it again!” Beck read the wonderful words of life again and again, and the old chief burst into tears and wept like a child. God’s holiness and righteousness had not moved him; the coming terrors of hell had made no impression on him. But the unmatched love and grace of God in giving His beloved Son to die that a sinner might be eternally saved completely broke the hardened heart of the murderous Eskimo chief.

Today we are faced with uncertainty about the future, the future of our world, our community and our church. But that uncertainty should be overshadowed by the words that God has given us in John. For God so loved the world reminds us that before you and I were born, God’s love was in the world. Before we breathed our first breath, God’s love permeated everything around us. From the moment of our birth to this very moment, God’s love embraces us and beckons us into relationship with God. If that were all that was written it would be enough. But there is more. God gave us Jesus, the begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. I believe it is like the picture of a sunset, impossible to recreate and often impossible to find the right words to say about its meaning. But we must say it, over and over and over again, lest it become like the music in the carillon that we stop hearing and soon lose the majesty and beauty of it. It sits centered in our consciousness like the foundation of a great cathedral, never wavering of falling though the wind may attempt to sway it from its moorings like a great lighthouse on the rocks of the Cape. But when we turn our hearts off to it, or stop hearing the beauty in it, then it can become lost like the sands of the beach in a great Nor’easter, never to be reclaimed except by the grace of God alone.

Today we come to this place with the promise of eternal life, a gift so great it cannot be imagined or purchased. Yet it was purchased through the gift of God of Jesus and the cross which bore our iniquities through the blood of the divine Son of God, a price so large that its value can’t be adequately grasped. Our lives claimed by God though the gift of a Son and the only cost is a beckon to believe in that promise and in the giver of the gift. We have been called to discipleship in ways we cannot understand and at the moment stand on the brink of God’s greatness. But it requires that we have faith, we have trust that no matter what happens, preachers coming and going, the saints departing into the promise, or the world around us in its chaotic vibrations like the wind in a great storm. It requires that we believe that if God can bring about that much love in a gift of sacrifice of one’s own son, that we can be the people God wants us to be, a people whose central focus is not on self or success or possession, but on love. Love for the God who gives us this promise and love for our neighbor, whether they are black or white, Asian or Indian, straight or gay, rich or poor, clean or addict, we find a way to love one another with no regard to worldly standards.

The other day I heard a story of a young man who heard this verse every Sunday morning for four years. His Sunday school teacher repeated it every Sunday and had them repeat it as well. He grew he said to dislike the verse so much that after leaving that class he never repeated it or said it, even in his mind. He grew up, married and became the head of a family that was chosen to be a foster family. A little child wrapped in bandages and casts was delivered for their love and safe keeping. Over the next three years they became the parents to that child. One day the grandparents of the child came and wanted the child back. The day they had hoped would never come had and they watched the child taken from their arms and placed in the car to take it back to the grandparents the child did not know. He said at that moment, the words of John 3:16 came to his mind and he finally understood what gift God had made.

I wonder this morning if we have closed our minds to the love and truth of the words that are the Bible within itself. Have we forgotten what love is offered to us? Or can these words be the tiny pinhole that breaks the great dam that is holding us back from the living waters of Christ?