Forgiveness

When I agreed to speak this morning on forgiveness, I didn’t expect to have my entire sermon outlined to the congregation the previous week… Last Sunday, [---], speaking about relationships, mentioned the cost of unforgiveness – how it only eats away at the one who refuses to forgive. [---], in his meditation earlier, mentioned the cost of forgiveness – how it involves absorbing a debt, often at a great price. [---] mentioned the example of Jesus – how his sacrifice for us was for the sake of our forgiveness, and how critical this is for us. Finally, [---] mentioned how to be truly forgiving involves participating in the sacrifice of Jesus ourselves – experiencing within us that death that leads to resurrection.

It hasn’t exactly left me with much material to cover… but instead of taking this as a set-back, let me interpret it differently; as reinforcement: God’s way of letting us know just how important the subject of forgiveness is this morning. So let me begin with a true story. It’s one you already know, but in perhaps a slightly unfamiliar form. This telling is due to Ray Pritchard, from Mississippi…

It’s Friday morning. Outside the Damascus Gate is a road and on the other side of the road is a flat area near the spot where the prophet Jeremiah is buried. Up above is a rocky outcropping that, if studied at a certain angle, looks like a skull. You can see eroded into the limestone two sockets for the eyes, a place for the nose and maybe a place for the mouth. Skull Hill, they called it. Golgotha. It was the place where the Romans do their killing. And the soldiers are ready to do their dirty work this morning. This is the death squad. They are in charge of crucifixions.

On this particular Friday morning their workload is light. Only three this week. The soldiers know that two of the men being crucified are just average, ordinary criminals—the kind that you find in any big city anywhere in the world. No big deal. But the third man, the one from up north, the preacher from Nazareth, his case is different. They don’t really know who he is. But they know it’s important because they sense the buzz in the crowd. There are more people than usual. There’s something morbidly fascinating about watching someone else die. The people of Jerusalem, at least some of them, loved to come out and watch the crucifixions. Well, maybe they didn’t love it but they couldn’t stay away. Some strange magnetic force drew them back to Skull Hill again and again. But today there are more people than usual, a bigger crowd, noisier, rowdier, milling to and fro, waiting for the action to begin.

Up the road comes a parade of people led by a brawny foreigner carrying a cross. That couldn’t be the one they were going to crucify. It turns out he was a man by the name of Simon—Simon of Cyrene. The crowd swirls around him and behind him is a stooped figure. Now walking, now crawling, each step an agony to behold. He had been beaten within an inch of his life. His back was in shreds. His front was covered with the markings of the whip. His face was disfigured and swollen where they had ripped out his beard by the roots. And on his head a crown of thorns six inches long stuck under the skin. A shell of a man. A man already more dead than alive. When the fellows on the crucifixion detail saw that, they weren’t unhappy. After all, sometimes people got a little feisty when you tried to nail them to a cross. No, they didn’t mind getting a person who was almost dead because it meant their work would be easier.

They laid the cross out on the ground and they laid the body of this man on the cross. He moved, he moaned, he didn’t do much. One hand over here, one hand over there. Wrapping rope around this arm and around that arm. Rope around the legs. They drove the spike on the forearm side of the wrist so that when the weight of the cross fell, the spike wouldn’t rip all the way through the hand. A spike in both wrists and then a spike through the legs. With the ropes in place they began to pull the cross up. Jesus’ blood spurts from the raw wounds. Steady now, boys, steady. Don’t drop it. It was a terrible thing to drop a cross before they got it in the hole. They lowered it carefully, and it fell into place with a thud. And there was Jesus, naked and exposed before the world, beaten, bruised and bloody. The soldiers stood back, satisfied.

And then… then this man seems to want to say something from the cross. He opens his mouth, and out come these amazing, haunting, remarkable words: “Father forgive them for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34).

No one expected him to say that. A dying man might scream or curse or utter threats, but you never heard a word of forgiveness when a man was being crucified. Yet that is precisely what Jesus offered to these men who were murdering him. He offered them forgiveness. He prayed that they might be forgiven. He asked his righteous and holy Father in heaven, the Lord of the universe, to forgive his murderers while they were murdering him.

This man, Jesus, doesn’t do any of the things that we would do in his place:
• He doesn’t offer a word in his own defense.
• He doesn’t condemn Herod or Pilate or the Jewish leaders.
• He doesn’t proclaim his own innocence.
• He doesn’t turn against God.
• He doesn’t attack his attackers.
• He doesn’t attempt to save himself.
• He doesn’t blame anyone—though many were to blame.
Instead, he prays. As his life ebbs from his beaten and bruised body, as the blood drips to the ground, he does the one thing he can do. He prays – and he prays for those who are torturing him. And Jesus is an example to us this morning, dear friends. Let us learn from our Savior today:
• We do not forgive because they understand what they did.
• We do not forgive because they have suffered as much as we suffered.
• We do not forgive because they “deserve” forgiveness.
• We do not forgive to gain some personal advantage over them.
• We forgive in spite of what they’ve done.
• We forgive because God is gracious.
• We forgive because that’s what Jesus did on the cross.
• We forgive because that’s what Jesus did for you.
That’s right: he prayed for us, there, too. When he prayed, “Father forgive them for they know not what they do,” he wasn’t just referring to the soldiers, the mob, and to the disciples who had all deserted him. I was included in the “them” and so were you. He was praying for you and he was praying for me.
“Hold on.” You might be thinking. “I’m not like that. I would never crucify anyone.” Perhaps not. But even Jesus’ closest disciples abandoned him before his trial. At best, if you had been there, you might have been like Peter – lying to and cursing at a stranger thinking you are connected to the arrested man. At worst, you would have been there along with the crowd shouting, “Crucify him. Crucify him!” We really are no better.

Early Sunday mornings at Bethel, we come before this table to participate in the Lord’s supper. We might be so familiar with it that we’ve forgotten Jesus words when he passed around the cup: “Drink from it, all of you,” he said. “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.” (Matthew 26:28) Every time we drink from that cup, as we did this morning, we are acknowledging God’s forgiveness in our lives. We are acknowledging our participation is Jesus sacrifice for us.“This is my blood, which is poured out for you for the forgiveness of sins.”

When Jesus talks about drinking his blood, we naturally react with a shudder and an “e-e-e-ew.” Well, just like we might think that we would never crucify anyone, most of think that we would never drink blood. And sure enough, the Jewish people listening to Jesus’ words didn’t like that kind of talk at all. The Bible says, “From [the time he started talking like this] many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.” After all, they had grown up with the Jewish teaching about blood, and avoided it as much as possible. “Drink blood? What are you talking about???” they might have asked.

But Jesus chose this image, as objectionable as it is, on purpose. He knew that there would be this reaction to it, but he also knew that there is a similar reaction – something deep within us – that also reacts against the need to be forgiven. Jesus talk about blood-drinking is to shake us up – to help us to realize that we need to get over something deep within our very nature. By that nature, we are offended at the very thought that we might need forgiveness. We want to think that we are really quite fine, thank you. But no: the reality is so opposite, and so severe that Jesus puts it in the starkest of terms: “I tell you the truth,” he says, “unless you drink my blood [– unless you accept my forgiveness –] you have no life in you. [But] whoever drinks my blood has eternal life.” (John 6:53) “This is my blood, which is poured out for you for the forgiveness of sins.”

The first lesson this morning, dear friends, is that we are deeply, desperately, sorely in need of forgiveness. In fact, that’s the idea behind the story that Jesus tells in Matthew chapter 18, isn’t it? And before we turn there, I’d like to point out that this parable was delivered to Jesus’ disciples. Not to the Pharisees. Not to the tax collectors. This is a parable intended for the benefit of those closest to Jesus: and this is very important. Verse 23: “Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. As he began the settlement, a man who owed him [a bunch of money] was brought to him.” Now folks often translate this “bunch of money” in ancient terms. The pew Bibles, for example, use “bags of gold.” But since I certainly don’t trade in gold, I had to do some research, and discovered that the amount of gold that this man owed to his king is close to the sum of all the balances of every single credit card in Canada – in the vicinity of 30 billion dollars-worth. As Richard Feynman famously noted, we used to call numbers like this “astronomical” numbers – these days, we should call them “economical” numbers. In its essence, this number is well beyond anything repayable. But let’s proceed with our passage:

“As [the king] began the settlement, a man who owed him $30B was brought to him. Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt. At this the servant fell on his knees before him. ‘Be patient with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay back everything.’ The king took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go.”
When the servant begs his master, saying that he will pay back everything, he’s saying the only thing that he can imagine to have any effect. But the king is willing to put up with this nonsense, too: knowing full well that such a debt could not be repaid in many, many lifetimes. You see, we’re not talking here about the “wups, sorry, how much do I owe you?” kind of debt. As if I were visiting a friend and on the way home I accidentally run over a rose bush. This is a bigger debt; much bigger. Imagine how your friend might respond if you try the “wups, sorry, how much do I owe you?” if, after climbing into your car to head home, instead of running over his rose bush, you run over his child. We’re talking that kind of debt, friends. And it is precisely because the debt is so enormous that the grace involved in the canceling of that debt is so amazing.

Every summer, I like to spend a week at camp, and one of the things that I like to do during the chapel time at camp is to have the campers re-enact this parable. I choose one child to be the king (or perhaps the queen) and other children to be the guards and the bookkeeper. One of the counselors always plays the role of the servant owing a lot of money, and the campers really seem to enjoy seeing a counselor grovel in front of the camper playing the “king” part. As the Bible reminds us, back then if someone couldn’t pay a debt, their freedom was forfeit – they became slaves, along with their entire family. The camper playing “king” often likes the sound of that. But then I come to this part:“The king took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go.” “NO WAY!” the campers sometimes respond spontaneously. And this is, of course, the correct response! As incomprehensible is the amount of the debt, the grace and mercy and love active in the canceling of that debt is more unfathomable still. God’s response to us is, “Yes way!” God’s grace is amazing and glorious and transforming.

As it says in Colossians chapter 2: “He forgave us all our sins; he canceled the record of the charges against us and took it away by nailing it to the cross.” What a joy; what a relief; what a blessing. But hold up… the story doesn’t end there. (verse 28)

But when the man [having such a considerable debt canceled in its entirety] left the king, he went to a fellow servant who owed him a few thousand dollars. He grabbed him by the throat and demanded instant payment. His fellow servant fell down before him and begged for a little more time. ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay it,’ he pleaded. But his creditor wouldn’t wait. He had the man arrested and put in prison until the debt could be paid in full. When some of the other servants saw this, they were very upset. They went to the king and told him everything that had happened. Then the king called in the man he had forgiven and said, ‘You evil servant! I forgave you that tremendous debt because you pleaded with me. Shouldn’t you [also] have mercy on your fellow servant, just as I had mercy on you?’ Then the angry king sent the man to prison to be tortured until he had paid his entire debt.

Let’s be clear: Forgiveness is not an optional part of the Christian life. Practicing forgiveness is a necessary part of what it means to be a Christian. If we are going to follow Jesus, we must forgive each other. What does the Bible say?

Colossians 3:13 “Bear with each other and forgive one another ... Forgive as the Lord forgave you.”

Mark 11:25 “And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive them, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins.”

Luke 6:37 “Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven.”

Matt 6 “For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.”

Ok, so much for theory. So far two very important points: #1: we are in desperate need of forgiveness ourselves, and #2: being forgiven requires us to be forgiving. But it isn’t easy. Of course it isn’t. If it were easy, Jesus would not have had to come to die. To forgive us cost Jesus his life. To forgive others will cost us something too. We will certainly have to give up our anger, turn away from our bitterness, and decide by a conscious choice that we will forgive those who have sinned against us. And very often we will have to perform that act of forgiveness over and over again until we learn the grace of continuing forgiveness.

It is, of course, one thing to acknowledge the importance of forgiveness, and quite another thing altogether to put it into practice. As C.S.Lewis wrote: “Everyone says forgiveness is a lovely idea until they have something to forgive.”

So how about some principles, that if understood might make it a little easier to exercise forgiveness. First: forgiveness is not something to be avoided. Don’t make the hermit’s mistake. The hermit thinks that the best way to avoid needing to be forgiven or needing to forgive is to remove oneself from others altogether. Tragically, we see attempts at this throughout the history of the church. But that’s not an option for a true Christian. We’re called to be the light of the world. And Jesus explicitly says that that means that folks can see our light. We’re called to be the salt of the earth. And that means that folks can taste our saltiness. The solution to the “problem” of forgiveness is not less sin. The solution is more love.

One day, Jesus was invited out to dinner at the home of one of the Pharisees (this is from Luke chapter 7),

And there was a woman in the city who was a sinner; and when she learned that [Jesus] was was reclining at the table in the Pharisee’s house, she brought an alabaster vial of perfume, and standing behind Him at His feet, weeping, she began to wet His feet with her tears, and kept wiping them with the hair of her head, and kissing His feet and anointing them with the perfume. Now when [Jesus’ host] saw this, he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet He would know who and what sort of person this woman is who is touching Him, that she is a sinner.”

But Jesus replied: Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave Me no water for My feet, but she has wet My feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You gave Me no kiss; but she, since the time I came in, has not ceased to kiss My feet. You did not anoint My head with oil, but she anointed My feet with perfume. For this reason I say to you, her sins, which are many, have been forgiven, for she loved much”

Forgiveness flows from the spring of love. And with these words Jesus reverses the common conception. We understand that those who are forgiven much are grateful in proportion to the forgiveness they receive. But Jesus is saying the converse: this woman’s many sins are forgiven because she loved much. The solution to the “problem” of forgiveness is not less sin. The solution is more love.

We are called to love the Lord our God with all our heart and with all our soul and with all our mind. For it is when we truly love God that he give us glimpses of His glory: the glory of His perfection, of His righteousness, of His justice, of His love, of His mercy, of His holiness, and of His purity. The only possible response to such a revelation is complete humility before God’s awesomeness. The only way that we can deceive ourselves into thinking that we are not in need of forgiveness is to measure everything by ourselves. But if we love God, we just can’t do that. Hanging around God even a little bit makes one realize that God is the measure of all things, and we immediately come to appreciate just how much we need forgiveness.

But we are also called to love our neighbor as ourselves. We know from experience that people who have never experienced love find it very difficult to be loving, and people who have never experienced forgiveness find it very difficult to forgive. But God offers us such depths of love that no matter what we’ve been through, He wants to fill us with living water, overflowing to the world around us. But that’s the second practical Christian principle concerning forgiveness, isn’t it? We will forgive to the extent that we appreciate how much we have been forgiven.

One final point, a point that brings us back to [---] and [---] from last week, and specifically brings us back to Christ on the cross. How is it that Jesus is able to even contemplate forgiving his enemies? If we understood that better, we would be better equipped to exercise forgiveness ourselves. Well, I think that the key is that Jesus had already initiated his sacrifice for us. He knew that that’s why he came into the world. And having already taken on the attitude of a servant, he was now taking on the attitude of a sacrifice. This morning, if you belong to Christ, you, too, are being called to share that mindset with Christ (“Let this mind be in you which is also in Christ Jesus” we read in Philippians chapter 2) – and this is a mindset that will heal your world through the forgiveness that is found in Him. We need to die with Christ, friends. Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross is the ultimate source of all forgiveness – and we need to participate in it. As Tim Keller writes: “On the Cross we see God doing visibly and cosmically what every human being must do to forgive someone, though on an infinitely greater scale...There was a debt to be paid--God himself paid it. There was a penalty to be born--God himself bore it. Forgiveness is always a form of costly suffering.”

Jesus sends us as his Father has sent him: into a fallen world that desperately needs the love and forgiveness of God. But it hurts. Sure it does. But it is expensive. Sure it is. But Jesus obedience on the cross was the only solution for us. To forgive is simply to participate in the sacrifice of Jesus. But that’s not the end of it: because of his sacrifice, God exalted Jesus to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name. And we, too, know that “if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.” (Romans 6) For if we share in his suffering we will also share in his glory. (Romans 8) I’ll conclude by reading from Psalm 32.

Blessed is the one
whose transgressions are forgiven,
whose sins are covered.
2 Blessed is the one
whose sin the LORD does not count against Him…
3 When I kept silent,
my bones wasted away
through my groaning all day long.
4 For day and night
your hand was heavy on me;
my strength was sapped
as in the heat of summer.
5 Then I acknowledged my sin to you
and did not cover up my iniquity.
I said, “I will confess
my transgressions to the LORD.”
And you forgave
the guilt of my sin.
Therefore let all the faithful pray to you
while you may be found;
7 You are our hiding place;
and our protection from trouble

Thanksgiving

Good Morning boys and girls, Moms and Dads. Before we get too serious this morning, I’d like us to play a little game. And for this game, I need a volunteer. Josh! Would you kindly come up here this morning? The game I’d like us to play involves two packages.

As you can see, there is a letter on each of the package. On the first package is the letter O (with a line through it) and on the second package is the letter S (with a line through it). Now both of these letters mean something a little different when you put a line through them. In mathematics, if you put a line through the letter O, it means “nothing”. And that’s exactly what might be in the first package. It might contain nothing, or… it might contain nothing.

But what about the second package. Do you know what it means when we put a line through the letter S? That’s right – it means “money”. And that’s exactly what might be in the second package. It might contain nothing, or… it might contain money. So here’s the game: in a minute, you get to open up one of the packages and take whatever is inside home. But you have to take one or the other; you can’t take neither, and you can’t take both. You could choose the first package, in which there might be nothing… or… there might be nothing. Or you could choose the second package, in which there might be nothing… or there might be money. Which package would you choose?

The second package? Good choice. I think that we can all agree that that is the sensible choice to make. But before you open that package, I have a friend who would like to try to talk you out of your choice. But I’d like you to be smart, and only change your mind if you think that you really should, ok? Snake meet Josh; Josh meet snake…

S: Hi Josh. Sssssooo, you chose the sssecond package.
S: Didn’t your Daddy ever tell you – never take money from strangers?
D: Snake! I’m not a stranger!
S: You look pretty strange to me!
D: come on…
S: Besides, would you trust someone who keeps a talking snake in their closet?
D: I’m not sure you’re getting anywhere, Snake. Have you changed your mind yet, Josh?
S: But Josh! Josh! Why be predictable? Why be boring? He knew that you’d choose the second package all along. Don’t you want to be creative? Surprising? Courageous?
D: Courageous?? Are you convinced yet, Josh?
S: Well, even if that package does contain money, it is sure to have germs all over it. It’s likely been handled by hundreds of people over the years.
D: I’ve never heard of anyone getting sick from touching money, Snake.
S: But that doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen.
D: I suppose…
S: You know Josh, even if the second package did contain money, your Dad would want you to share it with Matt and Danny. You wouldn’t want to have to do that, would you?
D: What do you think?
S: All right, all right – the kid’s too smart for me. Let him open his package.

Ok – go ahead Josh – tear off the top of the envelope and show everyone what’s inside. Money! That’s your reward for being such a good sport, and for not trusting in talking snakes…

Now why did we just play that game? Well, the game that we just played is a good description of how life is. We have a choice to make. We can’t not make this choice. We can’t put it off. Everything we do is exercising this choice. We can either choose to live our lives without God – as if He didn’t exist: not caring what He thinks or listening to what He says. Or we can choose to live our lives with God – acknowledging his presence, and paying attention to what He wants us to know. That’s the choice.

Now if you are interested in what’s “in” those packages, there has been a lot of research concerning exactly that. Scientists have been trying to create a “science of happiness” for the last twenty-five years. And they’ve found some interesting things. They’ve found, for example, that your “subjective well-being” (a fancy sounding way to say “how good your life is”) is going to be better if you live like God matters (that’s why one circle is bigger than the other). Here’s what the research says (Witter et al, 1985) “Religion seems to give hope, meaning, optimism, and security to individuals, and some researchers have concluded that both religiosity and religious activity are positively related to subjective well-being.”

What does this mean? It means simply that even if we just think about this life then there is an already an advantage in paying attention to God. But that’s not all there is to the story, is it? We don’t make any secret of the fact that God wants to bless his children after this life, too, doesn’t He? And the Bible makes it clear that the eternal glory that is waiting for us far outweighs any momentary inconveniences we might experience here.

So that’s life’s big choice. On the one hand, you can choose a life without God. That’s a package called atheism. And atheism is all about “nothing.” Atheism is the belief that there was Nothing. But nothing magically became everything for no reason. And then, for no reason, everything came together magically so that we can all agree that it came from nothing. What’s inside that package? Nothing.

On the other hand, there is a package we could call Christianity. The belief that there is Someone. Someone amazing. Someone powerful and loving. Someone so smart He could make the universe. Someone so loving that when we turned our backs on him, he was willing to be humiliated and scarred and tortured – to literally sacrifice himself in order to win us back. What’s inside that package?

Here are two verses to summarize what’s in that package:
“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you.” (1 Peter 1)

“I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people. (Ephesians 1)”

So be smart like Josh: there is no point in going for the first package – it only promises nothing anyway.

Now for Moms and Dads, you might have recognized what I just presented as a simplified form of a very famous argument that is often called Pascal’s wager. Pascal was once of the smartest scientists who ever lived, and he was the first to present something like this. But if you go to Google and search for “Pascal’s wager”, the first three pages of results will be people who think that they can prove that the logic here is faulty. If anyone who would like to get into it I’d love to discuss that with you afterward, but with one exception, these arguments on the internet aren’t really refutations at all; they are actually evasions – excuses, really.

The exception, and the only good argument against Pascal goes like this: surely God is smart enough to know when people believe in him just to get a reward; God is more interesting in honesty and worship than selfishness. God knows your heart – whether you truly believe in him, or not. But Pascal himself addressed this problem. And he makes a really, really good point while he does it. He says that people who don’t really think that they can believe in God do it for reasons of lifestyle rather than for reasons of logic. That’s right: people don’t disbelieve in God because of science or evidence or logic. That’s a myth. People disbelieve in God because of lifestyle, among other things. And Pascal suggests that the obvious solution to this is… to change one’s lifestyle!

That’s right: “the person who [struggles with belief] should attach himself to a Christian community and begin to take part in the same spiritual activities that believers engage in – to pray, to sing, to read the Bible. Eventually, faith will come…” (WLC) and along with it all the benefits of knowing God. Simply practicing devotion can lead us to real heart-change.

But why did I decide to tell you all that on Thanksgiving Sunday? Well, it has a lot to do with Thanksgiving, believe it or not!

You see, after researchers discovered that Christians are happier, they decided to dig into that a little bit. If Christians are happier than other people, why? And they found something very interesting. The one thing that they discovered to correlate with happiness more than anything else they considered, more than health, more than wealth, more than youth, more than good looks (seriously) – the one thing that correlates with happiness is… an attitude of gratitude. That’s thanksgiving.
Let me describe one of their experiments. This is really cool. They picked three groups of people at random. They asked everyone in the first group to take a few minutes every evening for ten weeks, and write down three events that happened to them that day. The second group was asked to write down three things that irked them today – things that bothered them. And the last group was asked to write down three things that they were thankful for. The results were fascinating. By the end of the experiment, those people who were exercising gratitude were considerably happier than the other two groups. Simply practicing gratitude can change one’s attitude.
And further research has made the picture all the more clear: practicing gratitude reduces stress, fear, anxiety, high blood pressure, depression, and heart disease. Gratitude can actually extend your life.
But the primary source for teaching on thanksgiving and gratitude is the book in front of you this morning. This important idea, so strongly connected to your happiness, is found in the New Testament more than anywhere else in history. Of course, this is good evidence that the God of the Bible is the same God who also designed you and me.
As a concept, thanking and being thankful is more common in the New Testament than the concept of obedience. It is almost as common in the New Testament as that of worship. The size of the bubble matches the number of times the idea is mentioned in the New Testament. But there is a story in the Bible that puts thanksgiving in between obedience and worship, too. Let me read it to you. (Luke 17)
11 Now on his way to Jerusalem, Jesus traveled along the border between Samaria and Galilee. 12 As he was going into a village, ten men who had leprosy met him. They stood at a distance 13 and called out in a loud voice, “Jesus, Master, have pity on us!”
14 When he saw them, [Jesus] said, “Go, show yourselves to the priests.”
Now just in case you don’t know, leprosy is a terrible disease – a disease for which there was no known cure. In fact, it took almost two thousand years to discover a cure. And so these poor men must have heard that Jesus had healed other people, and so they were begging him to heal them, too. So why did Jesus say “Go, show yourself to the priests”? Well, to explain that, let me read another story (Luke 5):
12 While Jesus was in one of the towns, a man came along who was covered with leprosy.[a] When he saw Jesus, he fell with his face to the ground and begged him, “Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.”
13 Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. “I am willing,” he said. “Be clean!” And immediately the leprosy left him.
14 Then Jesus ordered him, “Don’t tell anyone, but go, show yourself to the priest and offer the sacrifices that Moses commanded for your cleansing, as a testimony to them.”
You see, the law – the commands of God as given to Moses – had specific instructions for people who were healed of leprosy: they were supposed to go and let the priests examine them to establish that they were truly healed. But you probably noticed an important difference between these two stories. In the one I just read, Jesus heals the man first and tells him to go show himself to the priest second. But in the story with the ten lepers, Jesus just tells them to go. There’s a good lesson here, by the way: God deals with each of us differently – our experiences are tailor-made for us, and it can sometimes be a mistake to compare our circumstances with that of others. But let’s read the remainder of the first story:
12 As [Jesus] was going into a village, ten men who had leprosy[b] met him. They stood at a distance 13 and called out in a loud voice, “Jesus, Master, have pity on us!”
14 When he saw them, [Jesus] said, “Go, show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went, they were cleansed. [Pretty cool, huh?]
15 One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice. 16 He threw himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him—and he was a Samaritan.
17 Jesus asked, “Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? 18 Has no one returned to give praise to God except this foreigner?” 19 Then [Jesus] said to him, “Rise and go; your faith has saved you.”
Now I’ve got to tell you: if I was just healed from leprosy in that way, I’d be one of those nine who kept going to see the priest. And it wouldn’t be because I wasn’t grateful. It would simply be that the person who had just healed me had given me instructions, and not only that, but I had just been healed because I was following his instructions! So no matter how grateful I felt, I would have persisted in obedience – an obedience not just to the words of my healer, but also faithful to the law that God gave Moses.

But here’s the thing: by persisting in obedience in that manner, I would have missed out on a greater blessing. Greater than being healed from leprosy? Absolutely. For the thankfulness that drove the tenth leper back to Jesus is something that we all need this morning. Christian churches are full of people who have heard Jesus’ voice. For the most part, those people are at least trying to follow his guidance. But only a few, perhaps only one in ten, are able to see beyond the rules, to see the love built into the rules, and to be grateful to the rule-maker; to see through the healing, to see the love in the healing, and to be grateful to the healer; to see through the joy and see the joy-giver. And that was the man who received an extra blessing. That was the man who received the true blessing. That man is the challenge for us this morning.
You see, thanksgiving is actually two things at the same time – feeling grateful and expressing gratitude. Feeling grateful is the practice of slowing down to savor positive experiences. And no wonder that makes people happier! But expressing gratitude is even more important. Feelings of gratitude are often focused on the gift, but an expression of gratitude connects you with the giver. And that’s the other thing that research shows:
With an attitude of gratitude, your relationships will improve! Instead of focusing on what the other person isn’t doing for you, an attitude of gratitude focuses on all that the other person is doing for you – and what a difference that can make. Thanksgiving can heal relationships. How is your relationship with God this morning?
I can guarantee that all ten of the lepers in our story felt grateful. But only one understood how important it was to express that gratitude to his healer. Only one returned to connect with the one who not only gave the rules around healing, but actually provided the healing, too. Only one received that true blessing. Thanksgiving is the bridge between obedience and worship. Practice it – even if you might not feel like it!

Don’t let your problems fill your vision
The way to escape is to make a decision

Open your eyes; wipe the frown off your face
God is extending his hand in grace

Take a breath, chill, lose the attitude.
Be at peace, breath in some gratitude.

God loves you more than you’ll ever know.
And getting to know Him is awesome… so…

Don’t you think it’s time to start living?
Have yourself a grateful Thanksgiving!

Moses

As you might know, one of the things that I do at work is play with words.
And in the age of the internet, there are some brand new words, aren’t there?

You know, words like “blog” (which is like a public diary) and “netiquette” (which is how you are supposed to behave on the internet).
But there are also a bunch of words that were already in the English language, but have recently taken on new meanings. How about “spam”? (junk e-mails) or words that used to be nouns, but are now verbs, too, like “texting” (when you send a text from one phone to another)

But there are also some words in the English language that have taken on not new meanings, but new significance. One such word is “fail.” Fail still means the same as it always did – that is, to fall short of success. But today, if your friends use the word “fail” to describe something you did, they often don’t just mean that you didn’t quite succeed. They can mean that you missed success by such a margin that they’d like to capture it and publish it for your everlasting embarrassment. There are, in fact, websites dedicated to preserving life’s most embarrassing moments. Now while I would never approve of celebrating the misfortune of others, I do have a few examples that I thought I’d share.

• I like this one, because it happened just last month. The difficulty with it is circled in red in the top left-hand corner. It might have been the date of the century, but the newspaper misdated that edition!
• And I like this one, because anyone living in Montreal can appreciate just how desperate you must be to take an iron outside to deal with ice on the roof.
• But I like this one for its self-reference. If you want people to approve of your graphic artistry, it is recommended that you avoid spelling mistakes.

But why do I want to talk about failure today? Well, this morning, I’d like to tell you about someone really, really important in the Bible. Someone that the Bible says was “powerful in speech and in action”. Someone who might have accomplished more for God than anyone else in the Old Testament. And this person is going to be our example this morning. One of the greatest success-stories in the Bible, from him, we will learn some lessons on “how not to fail.” That’s right: this sermon could even be called “How NOT to Fail.”

Can anyone guess who our subject will be this morning? Hint: they made a cartoon movie about his life thirteen years ago. That’s right: today, we’re going to be talking about Moses. Now it wasn’t that long ago that I preached on Moses, but the last time, I talked primarily about how God looked after him when he was really young. This morning, I’d like to remind you of some of the wonderful things that Moses did when he was older. How he came to challenge Pharaoh, the greatest ruler in the world at that time. How he stood up to all the court of the sorcerers of Egypt. How he called down plagues upon the land, and how locusts and frogs and flies and boils and darkness and sickness all came from God according to Moses words. How he organized the people of Israel, and led them through the baptism of the Red Sea. How he met and spoke face to face with God on the mountain.

S: Are you talking about Moses?
D: Hello?
S: Down here!
D: Oh no, not you again!
S: No need to be nasssty.
D: Excuse me…
S: Ssssso. Were you talking about Moses?
D: Yes, that’s right.
S: Moses from Egypt?
D: That’s the one.
S: Well… I don’t think you should use him in a sermon…
D: Oh no?
S: Especially when the children are present?
D: Why do you say that?
S: Well… wait until you hear what I heard.
D: Is this centuries old gossip again?
S: Oh no! This is all completely true.
D: Alright. I’m listening.
S: Well… I heard that Moses was a very nasssty character.
D: Is that right? Who told you that?
S: Well… did you know that he was a murderer?
D: That’s old news.
S: You knew?
D: Sure!
S: And you’re going to use a murderer as an example in a sermon for children!
D: I was, yes.
S: Well, I can’t believe that you’d want to.
D: Are you suggesting that God can’t use people who have made mistakes?
S: Well, there are mistakes… and then there is murder.
D: You’ve got a point… and I sometimes think that Moses himself knew how big a deal it was… after the fact.
S: You mean like when he brought the stone tablets down from the mountain, and they said… “DO NOT MURDER”
D: Yeah – for sure, but I think he had figured it out long before that. After all, the Bible says that Pharaoh wanted to kill Moses after. Which is why Moses ran away.
S: Ran away? What are you talking about?
D: When Moses killed the Egyptian. Here: “He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his own people. Looking this way and that and seeing no one, he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand.”
S: Moses did *much* worse than that!
D: He did?
S: Oh yes, he was responsible for the death of many, many snakes!
D: [facepalm] I’m not sure I’m feeling altogether sympathetic to snakes at the moment. Here, let me finish.

Oof. What a slimy character. The worst thing about him… is that he always sort of tells the truth. It is much easier to deal with lies that it is with half-truths, isn’t it? But by reminding us about that icky event in the life of Moses, the snake unwittingly gave us our first lesson this morning.

You see, Moses really did fail – epic fail, even – when he killed that Egyptian. He lost the respect of the people of Israel, and he was chased out of the country by Pharaoh! By taking matters into his own hands, and doing things his way, Moses made a real mess of it. Moses might even have been trying to help God out when he did that, but his head was too big and his heart was too small, and God didn’t show up to cover for Moses.

But just the fact that the story of Moses, one of the biggest success stories in the Bible, starts with failure teaches us something, doesn’t it? Since we know how the story ends (how God used Moses in a powerful way to free his people), we know (and here is our first lesson on how not to fail, so pay close attention) that Moses didn’t let his past failures keep him from future successes. That’s lesson number one: don’t be crippled by past failures. Not even BIG failures. Just because you messed up yesterday doesn’t mean that you’re going to mess up today. Like the Bible says, we need to be always “Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead.” One of the big principles in the Bible is this thing called forgiveness, and it means that God wants to give us second chances.

Now if any of you have seen the movie the Prince of Egypt, you know how the story goes after Moses messes up. Moses runs away into the wilderness and arrives in Midian. Check. He gets married to Zipporah. Check. And then he meets God in a burning bush. Check? Well, not so fast! Not even close to so fast! You see, at this point, the movie leaves out something important. Not just important; VERY important. In fact, we’re talking forty years important!!

That’s right: Moses didn’t run into that burning bush in the month after arriving in Midian. He didn’t run into that burning bush a year after arriving in Midian. He had to wait FORTY years before meeting up with that burning bush – but you can be sure that those forty years were no waste of time. Oh no: Moses needed FORTY years before his head lost its swelling and his heart grew some humility. And then, and ONLY then, was he ready to really meet God.

But that’s our second lesson on how not to fail. If we want to be sure to succeed, we need to do things in God’s timing and in God’s way. Like the Bible says: “unless the LORD builds the house, the builders labor in vain; unless the LORD watches over the city, the guards stand watch in vain.” If we go out doing things on our own power, they might not turn out the way we had hoped. And in order to know what God’s timing is, and in order to know what “God’s way” is, we need to get to know God Himself.

So let’s do a quick recap: Two lessons so far on how not to fail:
1. Don’t let past failures cripple you.
2. Get to know God (which also means being open to his timing and his strategies).

Which brings us… to that burning bush (Exodus chapter 3): “…Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. 3 So he thought, “I will go over and see this strange sight—why the bush does not burn up.” You see, Moses is curious (that’s always a good thing) and he is wondering why this bush isn’t quite behaving like people had told him to expect. So pay attention! You’ll find that there are LOTS of things in the world that don’t exactly behave like they teach you in school. And you may well find God is there (in those things) wanting to get your attention, too.

Now when God finally got Moses’ attention, the Bible says that he called Moses name “Moses!” and Moses replied “Here I am.” Can you imagine how awesome it would be to hear God’s voice? Well, did you know that the Bible talks about you hearing God’s voice, too? In fact, it even talks about you hearing God’s voice today. What do you think of that? In Hebrews chapter 3, we read: “Today” – that’s right, the Bible is talking about today. “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your heart.” You see, the Bible knows that God wants us to be listening to him all the time, and the number one reason that we do not see God at work in our lives is not that God is not at work in our lives. The number one reason that we do not see God at work in our lives is that our hearts have become hard. Soften our hearts, O God, that we may hear your voice today, we pray!

So God has got Moses attention, and he goes and surprises Moses again. The first thing that God says to Moses is really odd: “Take off your sandals,” God says. Now I’d like you to put yourselves in Moses shoes for a second. I mean “in Moses sandals”. You see a bush that seems like it is burning, but not burning up. You hear your name being called, and then you are told to take your sandals off, which likely means that you will need to put your bare feet down on the hot sand – and believe me: where Moses was, the sand can get pretty hot. So I’m guessing that most of us today, having been taught at school to be independent thinkers, would want to respond: “why should I take my sandals off?” But while thinking the word “why” and before saying the word “why,” Moses hears God say “because you are standing on Holy Ground.” Now if he didn’t feel the goose-bumps yet, just wait for what comes next.

Once again, having been taught at school to question authority, and knowing that that sand is really hot, before you take off your sandals, you want to know one more thing. Just who is it that is giving you orders, anyway? You want to ask “who are you telling me to take my sandals off?” But while thinking the words “who are you” and before saying the words “who are you,” Moses hears God say “I am the God of your father.” Goodness! It is just like God is reading Moses mind! And now God really has Moses attention.

Incidentally, that “taking off the sandals” thing – it isn’t just an ancient custom. It is a lesson for us, too. Moses sandals were the point at which he connected with the world every day. And God is saying to us that in order to come and meet him, we need to be willing to set aside all those things that connect us with our world, too. For us, it isn’t sandals, of course. Perhaps it is television. Perhaps it is internet. Perhaps it is your music. Perhaps it is your phone. Perhaps it is the gym. Or that spot behind the school.

In order to enter into God’s presence, we need to set all those things aside. Have you ever been talking to someone, and in the middle of the conversation, they pick up their phone and send a text message to someone else? How rude is that? Well, don’t make the mistake of doing that to God – by the time you look up from your phone, he may very well be long gone – and it won’t be his fault! Remember: “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your heart.”

So God tells Moses that he has a job to do: God asks Moses to go see Pharaoh, and to bring God’s people out of Egypt. And Moses does exactly what I would have done, and what most of you would do, too. “Oh yeah! Let’s go God!” – not so much! He starts making excuses. But it is really interesting to see how God responds to those excuses. Now there are a whole list of excuses that Moses makes, but I only have time to deal with two of them this morning. The most important one is the first one:

Excuse#1: “Who am I?” Moses asks. The implication here is that Moses thinks that he is nobody special. But God’s reply is most interesting. You see, God doesn’t answer Moses’ question. I wonder if that doesn’t happen to us sometimes: we come to God with burning questions. We pretend like our service to God depends on answers to our questions. But In the Bible, God almost never answers our questions! Why is that? It is because we are almost always asking the wrong questions! When Moses asks “Who am I?” God’s replies: “I will be with you.” This is big. This is not just big: this is enough. When God says “I will be with you” that should be the end of all excuses. You plus God is bigger than any ten armies. The Bible calls you to be a holy people. If you don’t think that you are up to that, God wants to remind you “I will be with you.” Jesus calls you to be the light of the world: to shine warmth and truth in a dark world. If you don’t think that you are up to that, God wants to say to you, “I will be with you.” Jesus calls you to be the salt of the earth: a preserving influence in a culture rotten at its core. If you don’t think that you are up to that, God wants you to hear his voice, “I will be with you.” Remember our second less in how not to fail? Get to know God. If Moses knew God, he would have known that God being with him was bigger than any excuses. But as it was, he had at least one more excuse:

Excuse#2: I’m really bad at talking. And God replies “Who made you, and gave you your mouth? I will help you, and will teach you what to say.” You see, we might know from the end of the story that Moses was a prophet mighty in word and deed. But Moses, at the beginning of the story, really truly didn’t know what he was capable of. And that, dear friends, is the third lesson on how not to fail: we need to know ourselves. Now that doesn’t mean deciding what we are “really like”. Not at all: I’ve known far too many people who have made a “decision” like that with disastrous results. The only way to truly know yourself is to pay attention to the one who made you – to become the person that God made.

For each of us, there is the person that we think we are, but there are also all the people that other people see. Which one is “real”? None of the above. The person that God wants you to become –if you let him, God will help that become the “real you”: the person that “redeemed history” will record as being you. Of course, if you insist on being who you think you are, God might be a gentleman and leave you to it. But if you do that, you will never experience the amazing wonder of sharing in the glory of God as Moses did. But having said that, there is one more important lesson on how not to fail. So far, we have:
• Don’t be crippled by past failures
• Get to know God
• Get to know yourself
But the last lesson comes from the next part of the story. And please remember: this isn’t the end of the story, which ends in great victory for Moses and the people of God. This is just the next part, but all we have time for this morning…. Moses gets up and heads back to Egypt. He confronts Pharaoh, famously saying “let my people go!” and he throws down his walking stick, and it turns into a snake in front of Pharaoh and his court. And how did that turn out? Well, first, Pharaoh isn’t too tickled about it, and orders the people of Israel to do twice as much work. And those people are not exactly delighted about the “help” that Moses has brought for them. Ouch. Fail. And second, all of Pharaoh’s sorcerers are also able to change their walking-sticks into snakes! Yikes. Double Fail. Out in the desert, it all sounded so good. But here, in the sophisticated court of public opinion, it really doesn’t seem to be standing up very well… which brings us to our last lesson on how not to fail. But it is a lesson that comes from the first three. What were they?
1. Don’t be crippled by past failures
2. Get to know God
3. Get to know yourself
Lessons, if we really “get,” will ensure that we:
4. Don’t give up
Moses didn’t give up. He stuck it out, and he goes down in history as one of the greatest men who ever lived: a leader, a lawgiver, an inspiration, and a servant. God might want you to be one of those things, too. And as we approach the season of Emmanuel, we need to be reminded of the words of Moses: “Be strong and courageous… for the LORD your God is with you – he will never leave you nor forsake you.” And we need to be reminded of the words of Jesus: “surely I am with you always.” If God is with us, that should always be enough. “Today, when you hear God’s voice, don’t harden your heart.”

David's imagination

Good Morning, and welcome to all…

The last time that I was up here, I told you about a boy named Samuel. Of course, that boy named Samuel became a man named Samuel, didn’t he? You may recall that the Bible had lots to say about Samuel when he was really young and lots to say about Samuel when he was really old, and not much to say about Samuel in the middle. Now this, of course, is exactly the opposite of what you’d expect if you listen to television. Now notice that I didn’t say “watch television” which can sometimes be harmless – instead, I said “listen to television”. You listen when you start believing that what happens on television is real. It isn’t, you know. On television, you’d learn that the job of someone who is really young is to play and to be entertained. And on television, you’d learn that the job of someone who is really old is to relax and to retire. But we learned from the life of Samuel that God wants both the really young and the really old to be available for His work.

And nobody who has ever truly been available for God’s work has ever been disappointed. Nobody ever says, “instead of doing God’s work, I wish I had just tried to entertain myself.” I can tell you that there is nothing in this world nearly as interesting, or challenging, or rewarding, or fascinating, or delightful as doing God’s work and seeing Him at work in your life.

Sure, there is great value in play, and in recreation. But that’s not what life is all about. Hey, chocolate is fun, too, but just try living on chocolate for a week. Now, some of you who know me might be thinking “Oh sure, you can talk – you don’t have a sweet tooth!” But there is a reason that I don’t. Let me tell you the story: One afternoon about two months before I was three years old, my Mom found me at the back of the closet. There I was, hiding under the coats with an almost empty double layer deluxe box of Black Magic chocolates. Those were my Mom’s favorite chocolates, and she had received that box for Christmas. But now they were gone. And. I. Was. So…. In trouble! But even more than that… I was SO sick. Seriously. Finishing off an entire box of Black Magic chocolates is asking for diabetes. At two years old, you can imagine that finishing off an entire box of Black Magic chocolates just isn’t very healthy at all. My Mom says I wasn’t able to look at another chocolate for months!

A chocolate is nice at the end of a good healthy dinner, for sure. But don’t try making a diet of chocolate. And it is exactly the same thing with playing. Playing is good; playing is fun. But we weren’t put on this earth to be spoiled. And you know? Those people who see play as a reward for good hard work always enjoy their play more than anyone. Learning to work, and to work hard, and to enjoy hard work is one of the most important lessons in life. Of course, it is also a very Biblical lesson, too: Colossians 3:23 says, “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord.”

And that just might be the lesson this morning – a lesson from the life of someone who appears in the Bible after Samuel. And, like Samuel, we meet our hero this morning when he, too, was very young. But instead of Samuel, who we first met in the temple serving the Lord, this morning’s hero from the Bible is first met looking after some sheep. Who can tell me his name? That’s right, this morning we are going to look at the early life of David. Has anyone in this room ever been a shepherd? Has anyone in this room ever hung out with shepherds? Me neither. The only place I’ve come close to sheep is in petting zoos, but that’s it.

But occasionally people with real experience with sheep share their experiences with the rest of us, and it seems that all of those people with experience with sheep agree on one thing. Sheep… are really… really… stupid. Seriously. They just aren’t smart. But you know what that means, don’t you? It means that looking after sheep can be really, really boring. According to Wikipedia, which has an entry on “sheep husbandry” (I kid you not), sheep need three things – air, water, and food. If you needed Wikipedia to tell you that, you should feel… sheepish!

An ordinary shepherd might awake every morning and say, “water: check; grass: check; air: check. Just 23 hours and 59 minutes left in today.” And then the ordinary shepherd would turn his off brain and let the sheep be sheep. In other words, being a shepherd would make practically every living Canadian teenager cross-eyed with boredom. But David, our hero this morning, was no ordinary shepherd. Instead of being bored, David decided that he was going to be the best shepherd ev-er. He looked beyond his job description. This is always a good idea, incidentally: looking beyond the job description. The job description says “air, water, and food.” But that’s just for the ordinary shepherd. Besides keeping the sheep in water, grass and air, David knew that there were two other things that a shepherd was responsible for – two things that could be challenging at times, and two things that kept David from ever being bored – even while looking after sheep.

Number one: a shepherd needs to gain the sheep’s trust and keep those sheep calm. Animals that aren’t super-smart can panic easily, and panicking is usually not what a shepherd wants his sheep to do. So David thought of at least one way to keep the sheep calm. Do you know what farmers do today to keep their animals calm? They often pipe music into their barns, especially gentle classical music. It seems to work. So one of the things that David did while watching sheep was that he became very good at playing the harp. He practiced. And he practiced. And he practiced. And he became g-o-o-d. He became SO good, people began to notice – so much so that he even scored a concert at the palace. He became SO good, that he started to write songs – and he started to become really good at that, too. He became so good, that one of his songs has been on the top of the all-time charts for literally three thousand years – seriously: Psalm 23 in your Bible is the most quoted song in all of time:
The LORD is my shepherd [being a shepherd, himself, David knew how important he was to the sheep, and he realized that God is even more important to us].
The LORD is my shepherd, so I have everything that I need.
He lets me rest in green meadows; he leads me beside peaceful streams. He renews my strength. He guides me along good paths, bringing honor to his name. Bringing honor to God’s name – that’s what happens when we decide to work at things and get better at them.

But I said that there were two things that kept David from being bored, didn’t I? Number one: David worked at his music until he was really, really good at it. But the other thing was even more important for a shepherd than keeping the sheep calm.

Number two: a shepherd needs to protect the sheep. An ordinary shepherd carries a stick – not just to direct the sheep, but also to fight off a wolf who might want to steal a lamb. But a stick won’t get you very far with something bigger than a wolf. Suppose a bear came to have a sheep-snack – a stick wouldn’t get you very far with a bear. Or suppose a lion wanted to have a lamb-lunch – a stick wouldn’t help you against a lion. Now an ordinary shepherd would say “I’m not getting paid enough to take on lions or bears.” But David was no ordinary shepherd. And David had plenty of time on his hands out there in the fields looking after those sheep, so he used that time to become an expert, and not just with a harp, and not just with a stick, either.

In fact, David was so dedicated at becoming the best shepherd that he could ever be that God looked down and said “that’s just who I want to be the next king!” Imagine! That's like a promotion from the mail room to the CEO! You see, the king at the time, whose name was Saul, wasn’t paying close attention to God, and so God told Samuel to find another king to replace him. So, following God’s instructions, Samuel went to the house of Jesse to choose a new king. When he saw Jesse’s oldest son, he thought “ka-ching – king material here.” But God said to Samuel (and this is really important -- please listen carefully), “Don’t judge by his appearance or height, for I have rejected him. The LORD doesn’t see things the way you see them. People judge by outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.” People judge by outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart. And God directed Samuel to choose Jesse’s youngest son, David, to be the next king. People judge by outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.” And David had the right kind of heart that God could use: he wanted to develop his abilities and worked hard to be the best at what he was asked to do – that’s the kind of heart that God is looking for.

Well, a few months after Samuel came to visit, David’s dad asked him to take a care package to his older brothers. They were in the army, and the army was off at war with the Philistines. So David left the sheep behind, and walked to where his brothers were camped out. But as he walked into their camp, he was greeted by a very rude spectacle indeed. Outside the camp there was one of the enemies – a Philistine, shouting insults at the armies of Israel and challenging them to a little one-on-one battle. “Choose one man to come down here and fight me! If he kills me, then we will be your slaves. But if I kill him, you will be our slaves!”

Hearing this, David turned to his brothers and said “Who is this guy, and why are you just letting him insult you? Hey – I’ll go fight him.” And his brothers said “don’t be ridiculous.” He knew his brothers well enough to know that they weren’t going to listen, so he talked to the soldiers close by, and they said “don’t be ridiculous.” And they stage an intervention, taking David to the king, who says to David, “don’t be ridiculous.” And David replied, “what?” and they all said “are you blind? That guy is enormous!” Sure enough: the Bible says that “that guy,” whose name was Goliath, was b-i-g – over nine feet tall!

The first mistake that King Saul and the rest of the army made was to think like the enemy. Whenever we do that, we’ve already lost the battle. Whenever we start thinking like the enemy wants us to think, the battle is lost already. But not David. David remembered the lesson that he had learned a lesson from Samuel just a few months before. Remember? God had said: “Don’t look at his appearance or his height [who cares if he’s big? Who cares if he’s mean?] – the LORD doesn’t see things the way you see them. People judge by the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.” And David knew that no matter how nasty Goliath looked, God was bigger and stronger and tougher than any giant.

So David finally convinces Saul that he is serious and Saul agrees to let David go fight, and he wants to help David out. He helps in the only way he knows – and he piles armor onto David, and provides a weapon with proven effectiveness. Saul is the “expert” here. But as David does what Saul asks him to do, he discovers that he can hardly move. So David does what David has to do – even though it’s not easy. David takes off the helmet, unbelts the sword and removes the armor. It couldn’t have been easy for David to walk away from all that loving expertise Saul offers him. But to go meet Goliath wearing Saul’s armor would be a disaster. David needs to fight the battle using what he knows, what he’s practiced with for hours, and hours, and days, and weeks and months. And what he knows is the weapon of the shepherd – a sling.

Dressed only in a light shepherd's tunic, David runs down the hill to meet Goliath in the valley. Goliath sees him coming and, the Bible says, he disdains David. But Goliath reveals the weakness that David picks up on right away. Goliath says: "Come over here and I will give your flesh to the birds of the sky." This is Goliath's weakness. He needs David to come within range because he can't get to David. And David knows it too. He’d rejected the offer of Saul's armor. If David gets close enough to Goliath to need armor, he’s already lost. It’s game over. But with a sling, he can stay out of Goliath’s reach, and literally run circles around him, waiting for the perfect shot. David would lose in a cage match but he’s not in a cage.

Goliath sees David’s footwork and gets nervous. And it shows. He says stupid stuff like “I will feed you to the cattle.” Even Goliath knows that cows don’t eat meat.

Then David said to [Goliath]. “You come to me with a sword, a spear and a javelin, but I come to you in the name of the Lord of Hosts, the God of the armies of Israel whom you have taunted. This day the Lord will deliver you up into my hands, and I will strike you down [so] that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel, and so that all this assembly may know that the Lord does not deliver by sword or spear; for the battle is the Lord's and He will give you into our hands.”

At this point, I like to imagine that Goliath starts to laugh, and as he laughs, he tilts his head back and exposes his forehead from under his helmet. And at exactly that moment, David lets fly a stone from his sling, striking the giant on his forehead. The stone sinks deep into his forehead, so that he falls on his face on the ground – stunned. Then David runs and takes Goliath's sword from its sheath and kills him, and kills him with it.

The difference between David and the others is insight. David doesn’t only see the giant. He also sees the hand of God. He doesn’t measure by size but by opportunity. The difference between David and the others is that David didn’t arrive at the battle with an enemy-dominated imagination. David has a God-dominated imagination. God is the reality that David lives with. What is your imagination centered on this morning?

Let me finish up reading from another one of David’s famous songs, Psalm 56:
When I am afraid, I put my trust in you.
4 In God, whose word I praise—
in God I trust and am not afraid.
What can mere mortals do to me?
…I will present my thank offerings to you.
13 For you have delivered me from death
and my feet from stumbling,
that I may walk before God
in the light of life.

May David be our good example this morning. Amen.

Samuel

Good Morning Bethel Chapel -- the last time that I had the privilege to be up here, the message was from the life of Hannah. This morning, the message will be on the life of Samuel…

The lesson from Hannah’s life came first. As you might remember, Hannah experienced something powerful and wonderful. She had her prayer answered. She prayed for a baby boy, and God gave her that baby, and she named him Samuel. I pray that you, too, will learn this lesson: and because of answered prayer in your life, you will be able to say with Hannah “my heart rejoices in the LORD – he guards the steps of his faithful servants.” Hannah’s story taught us a lesson on how to have our prayers answered – how God listens to us. But with Samuel, we learn a more advanced lesson: how to listen to God!

Now when I was in Sunday School, I only learned three stories about Samuel: one that happened when Samuel was very young, and the other two that happened when Samuel was very old. And you might think that there must be many stories about Samuel in between, but funny thing: the Bible doesn’t give us very much in between at all! For the most part, the Bible tells us about Samuel when he was very young and tells us about Samuel when he was very old, and it is as if what he did in between isn’t nearly as important. That’s a good lesson right there? Sometimes we think that what happens when we are kids doesn’t matter that much. Sometimes we think that what happens when we are old doesn’t matter that much. But the story of Samuel teaches just the opposite: we can never be too old or too young for God to use us in important ways.

But this morning I’m going to start at the end and go backwards – starting with a lesson from Samuel when he was old. And this is a lesson that we can only learn from someone who has spent his entire life in close communication with God. At the time that this story takes place, Samuel had served his Lord and the people of Israel all his life. He was what the Bible calls a judge, and he guided God’s people as best he could – even God thought that Samuel did a great job. How do we know that? Well, many years later when God was talking to the prophet Jeremiah, God would mention Samuel and Moses as two of His most influential servants in history.

In any case, when Samuel was old and thought he deserved to be treated with respect, something happened that made Samuel “displeased.” That’s the word the Bible uses. It is a very good and proper word. But I think that it is a polite way to say that Samuel was “seriously perturbed.” Have you ever been seriously perturbed? Maybe when your sister borrowed your clothes, or when a friend broke your iPod or spilled ink on your books? How about something even more emotional… have you ever had a friend let you down? Well, that’s more like what Samuel felt. You see, the elders of the people came to him and they asked him… to give them a king.

A king? Yes, a king. Now I’d imagine that Samuel was thinking something like this: “Hold on. Why would you people want a king… now? The people of Israel have been led by a judge – that is, someone God raised up to lead them – for two hundred and fifty years. And now – when I’m in charge – you want a king. I guess I’m not good enough for you.”

You might be able to sense why Samuel was “displeased.” The Bible says that Samuel was so displeased that he immediately prayed about it. Really, that’s what it says: “Samuel was displeased, so he prayed to the LORD.” Good advice. Prayer puts perturbation in perspective. “Samuel was displeased, so he prayed to the LORD.” And because Samuel had been in such good practice talking to God all of his life, when Samuel prayed, he heard God talking back to him. And this is what God said to Samuel: “it is not that the people have rejected you by asking for a king; instead, they have rejected me.” In other words “Don’t take it personally. Let me worry about it.”

And this, my friends, is a lesson that we need to learn, too. Whenever you are displeased, whenever you are “seriously perturbed,” God will be talking to you, too. At least He will be trying to get through to you – it is really super hard to listen to God when we are upset, isn’t it? And God will be trying to say to you: “Don’t take it personally. Let me worry about it.”

After all, that’s the lesson for us in Philippians chapter 4: “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. 7 And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” There is nothing that takes away joy like stress, and God wants us to learn to live joyfully – stress-free! And the way He does this is very much like the way a parent looks after a young child.

I can still recall many years ago hearing one of the mothers in this church say to her child, “do I look like a garbage can to you?” I laughed. And if you are a parent, perhaps this happened to you, too: given a wrapped candy, your child would finish the candy and then they would come to you with the wrapper, expecting you to take it – and to look after it. In sweetness and innocence, a young child, when faced with a difficulty, simply takes that difficulty to her parent and leaves it there, and walks away, and never gives it another thought.

But it is that same beautiful child-like faith that we can bring to God at any time. If something troubles us; if we are anxious; if we are hurting, or annoyed – God is there willing to take our garbage. Just as he tells Samuel, he tells us: “Don’t take this personally; let me handle it.” Now that doesn’t mean that life is easy. Of course not. But it does mean that we can count on God to help us bear our burden, and we can trust in Him to look after the part that hurts the most – the emotional part.

When I was growing up, I can remember almost every time that my father was angry. One of those times, I was not about to ask any questions, but… I put two and two together and realized that my Dad was angry because someone at our church had been telling lies about my Mom. And my Dad was in “fix it” mode – he wanted to set the record straight, and he wanted everyone concerned to know the truth. But there was one thing that kept him from action: my Mom didn’t seem to be that troubled about the situation. My Dad couldn’t understand this – her reputation was under attack! And my Mom, as they used to say, had plenty of fire in her belly. But then my Mom explained: “those who mind don’t matter, and those who matter don’t mind.” Anyone who knows me will know that the lie isn’t true. And there isn’t anything that you can say to someone who wants to believe lies. Besides, my Mom said – God is big enough to handle it for me. And indeed He was.

I’m so glad that Samuel’s story is in the Bible. Because most of us aren’t able to have nearly as close a relationship with God as Samuel had. With the rest of us, the message that we get from God might not be altogether clear. But thanks to Samuel, we can’t miss it: no matter what happens in your life, no matter how natural it is to take things personally, no matter what the struggle is, God wants to help you bear it – “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, … present your requests to God. 7 And the peace of God, …will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

Now if there was ever a lesson worth learning that might be it! …but even better than learning the lesson second-hand from someone like Samuel would be to learn to listen to God directly. But guess what? That’s precisely the other lesson from the life of Samuel. The first lesson from the life of Samuel (we’re going backwards, if you remember) – and one that’s important for us all to learn – is how to go about listening to God.

E: Are you serious?
D: Excuse me?
E: I said, are you serious?

Hold on…

D: Hi Edgar
E: Hi there – oh! Hi folks, nice to see you again.
D: Sorry – you asked…
E: I asked if you were serious.
D: Of course I’m serious. Don’t I look serious to you?
E: (pause) No comment.
D: But what do you mean by the question?
E: Well, your story is from the Bible.
D: It often is.
E: And of course God talks to people in the Bible.
D: What’s your point?
E: God talked to Moses, and Abraham, and Elijah…
D: Yes?
E: But God doesn’t really talk to people today, does He?
D: What makes you think that things are so much different today?
E: Well, we do have cars and airplanes and computers today…
D: But none of those things change what it is to be human.
E: …I wouldn’t know.
D: Well, we think the same, behave the same; we have the same struggles, and the same fears, and the same ambitions, and the same hopes and the same dreams that people had thousands of years ago.
E: I’m just saying that God talked to people a lot more in the Bible.
D: Well, it’s funny you should say that.
E: Oh?
D: Yes, because in the Bible story today, the Bible says just the opposite.
E: It does?
D: Sure: 1 Samuel 3:1 says, “In those days the word of the LORD was rare; there were not many visions.”
E: Huh – well, well, back then, everyone trusted in God.
D: Not so much.
E: But they had to – they were in the Bible.
D: Not at all. The Bible says that they didn’t really trust God to look after them.
E: Really?
D: That’s right – they were hedging their bets and investing in other things that promised to make them happy and take care of them.
E: I guess that’s kinda like it is today, too.
D: Yeah – they used to call this idolatry, and it is every bit as common today as it was in Samuel’s time.
E: Idolatry? Are you serious?
D: Very serious. Some people trust in their career; some trust in their money. Others trust in their skills, or their friends, or their brains, or their families.
E: But those are all good things!
D: Sure, but if you jump and expect those things to catch you, they might very well let you down.
E: Huh.
D: Things really haven’t changed a whole lot.
E: Hold on. You said that Samuel was a judge. At least you have to admit that the judges in the Bible were all super good.
D: I wish. The judge just before Samuel had terrible problems.
E: Oh?
D: Yes – his name was Eli, and his sons were a disaster – they took advantage of their position as priests and were terribly corrupt.
E: Oh my!
D: You’ll just have to listen to the rest of the story! Would you mind?
E: No – it’s fine – I can listen down there.

Well, if you haven’t got the picture yet, when Samuel was young, the entire nation of Israel was in bad shape – perhaps in some of the same ways that nations are in trouble today: God’s Word seemed to be rare; God’s people didn’t seem to care; and God’s leaders weren’t perfect by any means. God’s people needed help in a big way. And God, in His great love, provided that help – but God being Who He is, He provided that help in a way that nobody would ever expect. I love this. If you had brought together all of the wisest people of the day, and asked them “What should God do to fix His people’s problems?” not a single one of them would have imagined what God actually did. God seems to love surprises. God loves to use the weak things of the world to confound the strong. And the things that world thinks are foolish to confound the wise. Instead of sending a mighty warrior to lead God’s people to victory, God instead decided to speak to a very young boy – a boy named Samuel.

When Samuel was very young, probably around the age of three, his Mom and Dad took him to the tabernacle and gave him as a gift to God. Now that doesn’t happen very often, does it? Samuel’s parents were – I don’t really know the right word, exactly – “special”? They might have paid for his food and his clothing, but the priest at the time, who we already mentioned – Eli – looked after Samuel and taught him all about God.

But there was one slight problem with God’s plan to talk to this young boy: the boy in question didn’t know how to handle God’s Word! No surprise, really: very few young people – hey, very few old people for that matter – know how to handle God’s Word correctly. That’s why the Bible says being able to handle the word of truth requires work! The King James Version even uses the word “study” to describe this necessity. And so it was that Samuel heard God’s voice but didn’t really think that it was God speaking to him at all. Of course you know what this means: it means that God may very well be talking to us far, far, far more than we are able to appreciate.

It happened early one evening – after Samuel had gone to bed, but before he had fallen asleep. God called Samuel. And Samuel jumped up and ran to Eli, and said “Here I am – you called me?” But it wasn’t Eli who called Samuel at all. So when Samuel came to him, I bet Eli was puzzled. “I did not call,” Eli said, “Go back and lie down.” Now the first time it happened, I bet Eli thought that it might have been a dream. In fact, after being told it wasn’t Eli who called, maybe even Samuel thought it could have been a dream. But it happened again! “Samuel,” God called. And Samuel got up again and ran to Eli. “Here I am – you called?” Now if Eli was puzzled before, just imagine the look on his face this time. “No… I did not call; go back and lie down,” he said. Now I want you to imagine this. Samuel is losing sleep because someone is calling him. Eli is losing sleep because Samuel is thinking that he is calling him. If it had only happened once, the guess that it was just a dream is believable. Twice, not so much. But when it happened the third time, well, you can be sure that Samuel was trying to make sure that he heard what he thought he heard, because he didn’t want to bother Eli for nothing.

Now before we proceed with Samuel, I’d like to talk about you for a few minutes. There may very well be times that God is speaking to you but you think that it is really someone else. God can actually sound like your Mom. God can sound like your Dad. God can even sound like your Sunday School teacher. And the first-most important lesson from the life of Samuel is that you need to be willing to listen to those people in your life if you are going to be able to listen to God at all!

Teenagers – this is particularly important for you. I know how much pressure you are under not to listen – not to listen to what your parents say to you; and not to listen to what anyone in any authority says to you. Peer pressure, cultural pressure, hormonal pressure. I know it all. But get this – if you aren’t willing to listen to your parents, you may never connect with God. “Hold on,” you might say, “they are old… they are out of touch… they have problems…” Eli was old; Eli was out of touch; Eli had plenty of problems. If Samuel wasn’t willing to listen to Eli, he never would have been able to connect with God.

The Bible says “How can you say that you love God if you don’t love your brother? If you can’t love your brother – how can you claim to love God?” Well in this case what is true of affection is also true of communication. “How can you say you listen to God if you don’t listen to your brother? Or sister? Or parents? Or husband? If you can’t listen to your brother, whom you can see – how can you listen to God, whom you cannot see?” Remember the parable? God in judgment tells his servants, “Whenever you looked after the least of these brothers of mine, you looked after me.” The lesson from Samuel’s life is an extension of this. Whenever you are willing to listen to the least of these brothers of His, you are practicing listening to God, too.

So sure enough: God called Samuel a third time. “Samuel” and Samuel got up again, went to Eli and said, “Here I am; you called me?” And the third time, Eli finally realized what was going on: Eli realized that God was talking to Samuel, and so Eli told Samuel to go back to bed, and if he was called again, to say, “Speak, Lord; your servant is listening.” And that’s exactly what Samuel did, beginning a lifetime of talking to and listening to God.

Now in Sunday School, the story stops there. They don’t tell you what God told Samuel. Because it isn’t very nice. You see, God wanted to tell Samuel that God was going to judge Eli and Eli’s family! Seriously. God was going to punish Eli’s family because Eli’s sons were so evil. But take a moment and think about that: Samuel would never have known that God was talking to him unless he had had respect for an old man who was about to be judged harshly by God. Isn’t that amazing? Eli was under God’s judgment. Eli had failed. Eli’s sons were a disaster. But in spite of all that, if Samuel didn’t have respect for Eli, Samuel never would have been able to connect with God.

Dear friends, learning to listen to God is the lesson of a lifetime, and not just the lesson of a half-hour. But I hope that the story of Samuel has given you at least two hints to help us all to learn that important lesson. Number one: you gotta be willing to listen to others. Number two: don’t let stress come and block your ears from the word of God – you don’t need to take so much personally. God wants to handle it for you.

Hannah

Good Morning. I’m so glad that today I get to share one of my all-time favorite stories from the Bible. Now while I bet most of you know this story from Sunday School, I’m going to fill in some pieces that aren’t usually mentioned in Sunday School, ok? The message this morning is about a parent. What’s more, this parent has a very special place in all of history (not just the Bible). Really! In fact, you should learn about this person in history at school – except that our school administrators don’t seem to want to give the Bible that much credit.

Now I want you to guess who this person is. The first hint is simply that our subject is the author of the song of praise that Bethany read a minute ago. [The second hint is that this parent’s child also has a special place in history. This child is the first - or perhaps second - child in history whose words are ever recorded.] That’s right, [the child is Samuel, and] this morning I will be telling the story of [his mother, whose name was] Hannah.

[Now I just told you part of what Samuel’s place in history is.] But what is Hannah’s special place in history? Well, the poem that was read for us earlier is Hannah's prayer. Hannah is the first woman in history whose composition is recorded. Now in spite of what some people will like to tell you, the Bible is really very respectful and generous to women. And it is not only in the New Testament, where Jesus empowers women and Paul writes that there is now no difference between men and women in Christ. It is in the Old Testament, too. Even before Hannah’s poem is recorded for us – giving a woman a voice in the Bible long, long before women had any power or voice in other cultures – there is a woman’s story even earlier in the Bible, isn’t there? Of course, I mean the book of Ruth. But even before that, the stories of Rahab and Deborah and Hagar and Miriam are given important places in scripture. In fact, the status of women in the Bible is literally thousands of years ahead of the rest of the world. If you don’t believe me, look it up: it is difficult to find examples of women’s writing apart from the Bible that are less than three thousand years after these words of Hannah were recorded.

But before we talk about Hannah I need to tell you something about the time that Hannah lived in. It was a little different back then than it is today. You knew that already. I'm just reminding you. But one of the big ways that things were different is that back then babies were really, really important. Now I know that today there are some people who think that babies are important – they are all my friends.  But back then pretty much everybody knew that babies were important. And Hannah herself thought that babies were really, really important. The trouble was that Hannah couldn't seem to have a baby. Now she was married. And she and her husband did love each other. But no babies were happening. And this broke Hannah's heart.

But there is something else that I need to tell you about how things were back then. As you probably know, today there are about the same number of boys as there are girls, and the same numbers of men as there are women. At least that's true in Canada and North America. But back then it wasn't true at all. You see, every year back then most of the men would go to war. They would be fighting battles with other men from other nations. Many of them would die. So there were many fewer men than they were women. And so, if a woman wanted to be married – and almost every woman wanted to be married because, as you recall, everyone knew that babies were really, really important – have I said that too many times? – if a woman wanted to be married, she might have to share a husband with another wife. I bet you can imagine that that wasn't always a lot of fun.

Anyway, poor Hannah: not only was she unable to have a baby, but her husband had another wife who already had a number of children. And that other wife was always teasing Hannah for the fact that she had babies while Hannah did not. Why are people mean like that? Remember, if somebody else is mean to you, it doesn't help matters at all if you decide to be mean yourself.

Now, during most of the year, Hannah could keep busy and mostly avoid that other woman’s taunts. But every year Hannah, her husband, and her husband's other wife with all her children went to Shiloh where God's tabernacle was set up and where everyone in Israel was supposed to come and make sacrifices. Of course, on those trips, the whole family was basically forced to hang out together. And those were the worst times. The year our story begins, poor Hannah has just had to suffer through a particularly nasty bout of teasing. And the Bible says that she went to the tabernacle and prayed. First Samuel, chapter one, verse ten: “In bitterness of soul, Hannah wept much and prayed to the Lord.”

Let’s stop here for a second: “Hannah wept much and prayed to the Lord” – now I’ve already told you that we can learn a lesson about prayer from Hannah, didn’t I? After all, the whole reason that Hannah’s story is in the Bible in the first place is that her prayer was special. That is, God answered her prayer. So if we look closely at her prayer, we might find a lesson on how to have our prayers answered by God, right?

But the funny thing about Hannah’s prayer is that it is one of those prayers that the “experts” say we shouldn’t pray! Poor Hannah is so beside herself with grief that she comes to God with a deal: “If you, O God, give me what I want, then I’ll do something for you.” I gotta tell you: we are in no place to make bargains with God. It is a big mistake to imagine that God is a way to get whatever it is that we want. That's just wrong. God is worthy of greater respect than that! And if we don’t come to God with respect, then how can we expect to receive answers to our prayers?

But go figure: even though Hannah prayed in a way that we aren’t supposed to pray God answered her prayer anyway. I really love that. It means that God doesn’t operate according to any formula. God is big enough to take us just as we are, and to take our prayers just as they are – “doing it wrong” or not. And He loves us. He loves us enough to listen to those prayers – especially when our hearts are breaking. This is the God that we serve, dear friends. He doesn’t ask us to behave before we belong. He doesn’t ask us to climb up to His standard before He is willing to listen to us. It was while we were still sinners that Christ died for us.

Of course, God’s children will be known for resembling their Father. We, too, must be willing to overlook lapses in spiritual protocol. According to the Gospel of John, there is only one thing critical to the church – that we love one another. We remain in Jesus when we love one another. We experience the fellowship of unity when we love one another. We provide the most compelling and attractive offer of grace to the world when we love one another – accepting without exception.

But back to Hannah: here’s how the Bible continues: “And [Hannah] made a vow, saying, ‘oh Lord Almighty, if you will only look upon your servant’s misery and remember me, and not forget your servant but give her a son, … I will give him to the Lord for all the days of his life, and no razor will ever be used on his head.’”

Now please notice what Hannah does. Hannah looks for a win-win situation. She isn’t just looking for what she wants. Instead, she wants to be able to do something for God. I think that that is a good principle: when we stand before God, we need to understand that we have no rights at all! As we were taught a few weeks ago, it is really God Who owns our money; it is God really owns our time; God owns our bodies; God owns our brains. As the Bible says, “It is God who has made us, and we belong to Him” and “Every good gift is from our Father above.” That’s just the way it is. That’s the reality. If we have any other attitude when we come to God, we shouldn’t expect Him to take us seriously.

So Hannah searches her heart to find something that she thinks God might want from her. And you know what she finds? She decides that since her heart is going to be broken anyway, she would accept the second most heartbreaking thing in the world in order to avoid the most heartbreaking thing in the world. Hannah is not just using God. Hannah’s deal with God involves a huge sacrifice. You see, if never having children is the worst possible thing in the world, then the second worst thing in the world would be to have to give up your only child. But that’s exactly what Hannah offers to God: “I’m willing to give the child back to you,” she says, “as long as you are willing to give me a child.”

Now God didn’t just answer Hannah’s prayer outright. It is clear from the Bible that God wanted to answer Hannah’s prayer, but before He did, He put Hannah to a test. Now if you’ve ever been to school, chances are that you know something about tests. But if all you know about tests is from school, then you probably don’t like them very much. I find it amazing when an eleven-year old boy is troubled about being given a test at school – when the same boy, being given a test in a video game, gets all excited! Of course, in video games they aren’t called “tests” – they’re called “puzzles”. But they really are just tests, of course. At school, or in a video game, the test is to see if your brain is in the right place. With God, we’re tested to see if our hearts are in the right place.

And you know? A lot of the Bible is better explained – hey, a lot of life is better explained – when we realize that God is continually testing his children. It happens all the time! What does the Bible say? “Dear friends, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed. (1 Peter 4:12,13)” or “Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face [tests] of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops [you to perfection]. (James 1)” The good news about the kind of tests that God gives us is that God knows how we are made, and knows what we can handle, and never sets us up for failure.

And so God put Hannah to a test. And the name of her test was Eli. Eli was the priest and judge in Israel at the time.

S: Did you sss-ay “Eli”
D: Hello?
S: I sss-aid – did you sss-ay “Eli”?
D: Oh! Hello. Well yes I did.
S: Well! Let me talk to you then…
...
D: You said you wanted to talk to me?
S: Ye-sss.
D: About Eli?
S: Ye-sss. I’ve heard sss-ome nassss-ty things about Eli.
D: Well, this is church – we don’t gossip in church.
S: It isssn’t gosssip… exsssactly.
D: Hmm.
S: And it isss all true!
D: Gossip can be true and still be gossip.
S: Aren’t you conssserned about eeee-vil in the church?
D: Of course I am!
S: Well then you should be conssserned about Eli’s sssons!
D: Oh yes, Eli’s sons – the Bible says that they were very wicked.
S: Sssseee? If it’sss in there, then it isssn’t gosssip.
D: Ok… We know that Eli’s sons were bad characters.
S: But they were also supposed to be priestsss!
D: What’s your point?
S: Well, if there is a lot of corruption among the priests, then how can we trust anything at all that they ssssay?
D: But there is corruption everywhere! Everywhere that there are people… or snakes.
S: No need to get nassssty.
D: But seriously. In all of history, there has never been power without corruption. Does that mean we shouldn’t have any more government?
S: well…
D: And in all of history, there has never been money without corruption. Does that mean we shouldn’t have any more buying and selling?
S: I was jussst sssayin’.
D: You’ve said enough.

Goodness! That snake was making some pretty vile insinuations, wasn’t he? And the worst part? Everything that the snake said was true! Eli’s sons were wicked. They took advantage of their position as priests and they even stole from those coming to the tabernacle. Now I’m sure that these things were common knowledge at the time. No doubt even Hannah was aware that Eli was not a very good father. But that’s exactly why God used Eli to test Hannah.

As you remember, Hannah had promised to give back to God the son that she was praying God would give to her. And as we discover later in the story, that means taking the child Samuel, when he was very young indeed, and asking Eli to take care of him! That’s right! This same priest who had done such a horrible job raising his own sons would be the one responsible for parenting Hannah’s precious son into adulthood. And if that didn’t occur to Hannah the first time she prayed her prayer, it almost certainly would have crossed her mind when Eli came up to speak to her.

You see, Eli insulted Hannah. Can you imagine? Hannah comes to the tabernacle to pour out her heart to God and to beg Him for mercy. She’s in terrible sorrow. And then this old, corrupt, failure-of-a-parent, who is supposed to be representing God, comes up and, mistaking her sobs for something else, very rudely says to her, “How dare you come here drunk?”

Now if this story were being told by Hollywood, Hannah would have been totally angry. And if there were another tabernacle down the street, I’m sure that Hannah would have been tempted to leave Eli’s and never set foot in it again. Unfortunately, we are both too much influenced by Hollywood and there is too much opportunity for us to sit in judgment on the church. If we are ever offended by someone representing God, we are often far too quick to become angry, and far too quick to decide that the church down the street is a better “fit” for us – or perhaps to give up on church altogether. I wonder how many prayers remain unanswered because our pride makes us unable to pass the tests that God has for us.

I’m glad, though, that Hannah passed her test. I’m glad that her story is recorded in scripture as a lesson for us. In spite of Eli’s evil sons. In spite of his poor parenting. In spite of his insensitivity to her heartache. In spite of his insult. Hannah treats Eli with respect. Respect, incidentally, that he likely didn’t deserve. But no matter. Hannah responds with respect and with dignity. “Oh no sir! I haven’t been drinking – instead, I was pouring out my heart to the Lord,” she replies. From her position of weakness and suffering, Hannah brings dignity and respect to the one in a position of power.

And that was the test. Throughout scripture, we learn that God is slow to anger and abounding in love. In the book of James, we are told that we, too, should be slow to anger. Hannah’s test was to prove that her heart was in sync with God’s – she was placed in a situation where it would have been all too easy for her to become angry, but she didn’t. I pray that we, too, can do the same.

Psalm 37:4 says “delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart.” And Hannah’s heart was so in tune with God that He granted her heart’s desire. She was soon able to have a baby. A boy. She named him Samuel. When he was old enough for solid food, she brought him to the tabernacle and committed him to God, asking Eli to look after him. But that isn’t the end of her story. The Bible says that she was able to have not just one, but five more children after that. As for Samuel, in spite of being looked after by Eli, the parent-fail, the Bible says that Samuel grew in favor with God and with all the people. But his story will have to wait for another Sunday.

Zaccheus

This morning, I’m going to tell you one of my very favorite stories from the Bible. This story is about a man named Zach. Did you know there was someone in the Bible named Zach? Now Zach wasn’t like any of you. You guys have plenty of friends, and even those people who aren’t your friends want to be your friends. Not only did Zach not have any friends. But nobody wanted to be Zach’s friend at all.

You see, Zach was well…vertically challenged. That means he was short. Much shorter than most people. And I bet when he was growing up, the kids at school teased him for being short. If fact, I bet he got pushed around quite a bit. There are some people out there who will push you around or give you trouble just because they can get away with it. And I bet Zach was a bully magnet. All the bullies in the neighborhood took turns picking on Zaccheus. Oops -- yes, that was his real name: Zaccheus. But we'll just call him Zach. It's easier isn't it?

But it is even worse than that. You see, Zach was a tax collector. Now I don’t know if you’ve ever heard your Mom or Dad talk about taxes, but they are not one of the nice things in life. I remember when I was little. Every year, my Dad would lock himself into a room to do our income tax. Nobody was allowed to go into the room. And when my Dad came out for dinner, he always looked so tired and sad. That’s what taxes can be like, and taxes have been around for a lo-o-o-o-ong time. The big difference is that now, the government uses shops and banks to collect taxes, and they make us send our own taxes in every year. Not too long ago, governments hired tax collectors to collect taxes. But as you can imagine, if everybody hates taxes, then not too many people would want to be friendly with tax collectors.

So Zach was short, and he was a tax-collector. That would have been bad enough. But it is even worse than that. You see, when Jesus lived, the government was the Roman Empire. The Roman army had come and taken over the land. The Jewish people wanted to get rid of the Romans in the worst way. So when one of their own kind became a tax collector, not only was he associating himself with taxes, but he was associating himself with the enemy. People thought that Zach was a traitor.

So Zach was short, and he was a tax-collector, and everyone thought he was a traitor. That would have been bad enough. But it is even worse than that. You see, the only reason that anyone would ever want to be a tax collector back then was that it was a good way to become rich. Not only did the government pay the tax collectors well; the tax collectors soon learned that most people did not really know how much money they had to pay! So the tax collectors started to ask for more money than they were supposed to. And they gave the government what they wanted and put the rest of the money in their pocket. So not only was Zach thought to be a traitor, he was thought to be a thief as well.

So nobody wanted to hang around with Zach. Nobody wanted to be Zach’s friend. Maybe you know of someone like that at school. Maybe you can think of someone who is not very popular at all. I bet Zach felt a little like those people feel, and of course that means he was very sad. So even though Zach was very rich, he felt very, very lonely. Even though everything looked good and smart and healthy on the outside, Zach knew that he was sick on the inside. He wanted to have friends, he wanted to be a friend. Sure, there were people who pretended to be his friend, but they would always end up stealing from Zach, and they were never seen again. Zach didn’t want false friends – he didn’t want people who just pretended to be friends to take advantage of him – he wanted someone who would be a real friend.

And then one day…one day he heard that there was this guy. He didn’t really know what to think about this guy. Some people were saying that he healed people, that he said things that not only made you think, but also reached down and touched your heart. Of course, this guy that everyone was talking about was Jesus. He heard that Jesus could look into people’s hearts and see the hidden things inside. And he heard that Jesus was kind to those who were willing to have their hearts changed. Now Zach knew that nobody would believe him, but he really wanted to have his heart changed, too. He knew that he hadn’t been good, but he didn’t think that he was strong enough to change on his own. Zach wondered whether Jesus might be willing to help him, too. He sure was curious about him, anyway, and he decided he wanted to see Jesus. He wasn’t sure that he wanted to meet Jesus, but He wanted to know what all the fuss was about.

Then Zach heard rumors that Jesus was coming to town, so he came up with a plan. Right near the gate of the town that Jesus was certain to come through, there was a big old fig tree. Has anyone every seen a fig tree before? Well, a fig tree is a great place to hide. Really big leaves, really close together. But a fig tree, especially a sycamore-fig tree, is also a great place to climb. With the branches coming almost down to the ground even the shortest of people could climb up. So Zach decided he would climb up the fig tree near the gate coming into town, and when Jesus arrived, he would be able to get a good look at him. And besides, it was a great place to hide. Nobody would ever have to know that he was there, and he would sneak down when everyone was gone. But even the best plans don't always work out quite right, and it didn’t quite work out the way way Zach intended.

Zach made his way up into the tree all right. That part worked out. And he was sure that nobody he knew saw him climb up there. And Jesus came into town all right. He even came to the right gate, there beside the tree. And there was a crowd of people wanting to see Jesus, and some of them were being healed there in front of Zach’s eyes. A woman brought her son who couldn’t walk. After Jesus touched the boy’s legs, he could throw away the crutches. An old man came who couldn’t see. Jesus touched his eyes, and gave him his sight back. It was even more wonderful than anything that Zach had ever expected. But then the most frightening and terrible thing happened. Jesus suddenly asked the crowd around the gate to be quiet. Zach ducked back a little behind the big fig leaves and held his breath…and then Jesus calls out…

“Zach! Zacchaeus”

Jesus isn’t even looking in the same direction as the tree, so Zach just figures there must be some other person with that name. As if! Then Jesus slowly turns around, looks up into the tree and smiles. There is no question about it. He is looking right at Zach!

“Zaccheus! Come down out of that tree. I’m coming to your house for lunch.”

Whoa. How crazy is that. Zach’s heart must have been beating a million beats a minute. What would he do? What could he do? Of course, he came down right away. And now, instead of Zach’s turn to be shocked and surprised, it was the entire crowd’s turn to be shocked and surprised. Jesus was going to go to the house of a thief and a traitor. Back then you never ever went to somebody’s house unless they were “acceptable” – and tax collectors were NOT acceptable. No doubt people were quick to point out Jesus’ “mistake”. But he insisted that this was NOT a mistake. Jesus really, really was going to Zaccheus’ house for lunch!

Now, we do not know what Jesus and Zach talked about at lunch, but they did become friends. And after Jesus left, Zach’s heart was totally changed. After meeting Jesus, people usually change what they consider important. Before meeting Jesus, Zach thought money was important. Now, he didn’t mind giving it away. Before meeting Jesus, Zach was worried about what people thought about him. Now, it didn’t matter much at all – he knew that only what God thought about him was important. Before meeting Jesus, Zach would do anything for a friend – even a fake friend. But after meeting Jesus, the best friend in the world, nobody wants fake friends anymore. Now that doesn’t mean that Zach was mean to those people. It just means that Zach didn’t have to do wrong things just to make those fake friends happy. Meeting Jesus made Zach change his whole outlook on life.

Everyone had thought that Zaccheus was not good enough to be Jesus’ friend.
Even Zaccheus didn’t think that he was good enough to be Jesus’ friend.
Jesus surprised everyone – including Zaccheus – by wanting to be his friend anyway.

Everybody knew that Zaccheus had done all kinds of bad things.
Even Zaccheus knew that he had done some bad things.
Jesus wanted to be Zaccheus’ friend anyway.

Everyone thought Zaccheus would have to become good before Jesus would want to talk to him.
Zaccheus also thought that he would have to become good before Jesus would want to talk to him.
Jesus surprised everyone by wanting to become Zaccheus friend, and letting Zaccheus become good when he was ready to.

And Jesus wants to be your friend, too. Maybe you are hiding from Jesus. Just like Zach did. You see this crowd, and many of them are Jesus' friends, and you might even see changed and healed hearts. But maybe you're hiding inside your own mind, not wanting to be seen, not really participating with the rest of the crowd. But maybe, just maybe, Jesus is calling your name, asking you to come out from your hiding, wanting to talk to you and become your friend. Don’t put it off. Don’t imagine that he is talking to someone else. Jesus wants to be your friend today. He'll be the best friend that you'll ever have.