How many of us just really love
telemarketers?
Yeah, that’s what I thought. Nobody likes telemarketers. I mean, for all the strange or unusual
holidays we’ve celebrated, we’ve never celebrated National Telemarketers
Day. I don’t think there is one. If there is, it must be something organized
by the telemarketing companies. I don’t
know anyone who wants to get a call from a telemarketer.
And yet, we do.
Even with the do not call list, we do.
Wanda and I could’ve been on so many cruises if we’d just said yes when
the telemarketers called. We could have
lower interest on our credit cards, have an extended warranty on our car, have
our student loans paid off, everything.
If we’d just say yes to the telemarketers.
Now, I’m not telling you that it’s okay to be rude to
telemarketers. After all, they’re God’s
children, too, just like you and I are.
And for the most part, they’re just ordinary people trying to make a
living. In fact, a lot of them are working
at that job because they’re not able to find a better job. After all, would you want a job where you
cold-call people and they yell at you, chew you out, and hang up on you? No one would want that. As soon as the people doing that can find a
better job, they take it.
So, when you get a call from a telemarketer, remember
that there’s a human being on the other end of the line and treat them like
one. If, in fact, there is a human being
on the other end of the line. It seems
like most of the telemarketing calls we get now are automated calls. We don’t speak to a human at all. You can go ahead and be rude to a computer
because a computer does not have feelings.
At least, not yet.
But I bring this up because, while not every
telemarketing call is a scam, there are a lot of scams out there. And what they have in common is they play on
our greed. Part of the American Dream is,
as the saying goes, to be able to turn a minimum amount of effort into a
maximum amount of money. And a lot of
these telemarketing schemes play on that.
The people who fight these scams have a phrase to warn people. You’ve probably heard it a hundred
times. The phrase is “If it sounds too
good to be true, then it is too good to be true.”
When we’re talking about human things, that’s almost
always a true statement. But when we’re
talking about Godly things, it’s not. God
does all kinds of things that sound too good to be true, but that are
true. And that brings us to our Bible
reading for today.
There’s this
guy named Naaman. He commands the army
of the country of Aram, and it’s a really good army. Naaman is widely respected and praised. But Naaman has leprosy. Now, back then the term “leprosy” was used to
cover a wide variety of skin diseases, so we don’t know that he had leprosy as
we’d define the term today. But still,
he had some kind of skin disease, and he finds out that there’s this prophet in
Israel who might be able to cure him.
So, Naaman asks the king for permission to go to Israel. The king says yes, and Naaman eventually is
led to see the prophet Elisha.
Except he does not.
He never gets to actually see Elisha.
All Elisha does is send his servant out to tell Naaman to go wash seven
times in the Jordan River.
And Naaman is outraged.
He’s outraged that Elisha never came out to see him—after all, does
Elisha not know who Naaman is? Does
Elisha not understand that this is a Very Important Person who has come to see
him? But most of all, he’s outraged at
the advice Elisha gave him. He says,
what? Go wash in the Jordan River? That’s all I have to do? That’s not going to work. I’ve already tried
that. I’ve tried washing myself before. There’s got to be more to it than that. There has to be something major involved
here. Either Elisha needs to come out
here and do something big thing, or he’s got to send me somewhere and tell me
to do some big thing, or something.
Washing myself in the Jordan River cannot be all there is to it. That’s too simple. It’s too good to be true.
Naaman would not believe it. He was ready to pack up and go home. It was only after his servants argued with
him that Naaman agreed to go wash in the Jordan. And sure enough, it worked. Naaman’s skin disease was gone. He did not have to do some big, great thing. All he had to do was this little thing. It sounded too good to be true. But it was, in fact, true.
And you know, as I thought about it this week, it seems
to me that our Christian faith is based on a lot of things that sound too good
to be true. Maybe that’s why we struggle
with our faith sometimes. After all, our
society has a lot cynicism and a lot of skepticism. And there are reasons why. We’ve all experienced broken promises. We’ve all known people who’ll say one thing
and do another. We’ve all had times when
people were just out to take advantage of us, or were out to get us
somehow. And so we hear all these things
that sound good, and we think, “That’s just too good to be true.” And so we have a hard time believing it.
What are a couple of the basic foundations of our
faith? Well, one of them is that God
loves us. That, in and of itself, is too
good to be true. Why should God love
us? God is perfect. God is holy.
God is all-powerful. God does not
need us for anything. Why should God
love us? What do we do for God? What could
we do for God, even if we wanted to? God
could get a lot more accomplished if we were not around. In fact, when you look at the world, you
wonder sometimes if God regrets creating human beings and now considers it a
bad move. Why would the holy, righteous,
perfect God love me? Why would He love
you? It sounds too good to be true.
That’s also true about Jesus. Why would the divine son of God come to
earth? Why would he die for us? Why would he want to save us from our
sins? I mean, think of it. Jesus Christ, the divine Son of God, comes
out of heaven and is born as a human being.
He lives his life on earth, fully human as well as fully divine. He teaches people. He feeds people. He heals people. And we kill him. I mean, not you and me personally, but I have
no reason to think I’d have been any different from the people who were around
at that time. And knowing that we’re
going to kill him, Jesus willingly allows himself to be killed. He allows himself to be killed so that all of
our sins can be forgiven, and so that we can have eternal life in heaven if we
simply believe in him as our Savior.
Why would Jesus do that?
What did Jesus get out of it? It
sounds too good to be true.
And then there’s the Holy Spirit. When we open our hearts to God, the Holy
Spirit comes and leads us and guides us.
The Holy Spirit inspires us. The
Holy Spirit helps us follow God. The
Holy Spirit helps us get through the hard times of life. The Holy Spirit let us know that we’re never
alone, that we can always rely on God.
Why? Why would the Holy Spirit do
all that for us? Why would the holy,
righteous, perfect God bother to send the Holy Spirit to come into my heart? Why would the Holy Spirit want to help me when times get hard? Again, it just sounds too good to be true.
I think, sometimes, we feel a lot like Naaman. We come to God with all of our hurts, all of
our sinfulness, all of the damage that’s been done to us in our lives,
sometimes damage we’ve done to ourselves.
And we ask God to heal us. And
God says, “Okay. Just believe in Jesus
as your Savior, and you’ll be healed.”
And we say, what?
Believe in Jesus as my Savior?
That’s all I have to do? That’s
not going to work. I’ve already tried
that. I’ve tried going to church
before. There’s got to be more to it
than that. There has to be something
major here. God has to perform some
miracle, or I have to do some major thing, or something. Just believing in Jesus Christ as my Savior
cannot be all there is to it. It’s just
too good to be true.
But it is true.
God does not have to do a miracle.
The sacrifice of Jesus Christ is the miracle. We don’t have to do some big, great thing. We could never do anything big enough to earn
salvation anyway, and God knows that. So
God does not ask us to do a big, great thing.
God just asks us to do this little thing. Accept Jesus Christ as the Savior. That’s it.
It sounds too good to be true.
But it is true.
All we need to do is believe in Jesus Christ as our
Savior. All we need to do is have
faith. And we don’t even have to do that
perfectly. When we waver, when we fall
away, all we need to do is ask God for forgiveness and another chance. And when we do, God will give it to us. Every time.
When humans make us an offer that sounds too good to be
true, the chances are it is too good to be true. But when God makes us an offer that sounds
too good to be true, it is true. God
really does love us. God really does
offer us forgiveness and salvation through the life, death and resurrection of
Jesus Christ. God offers to guide us and
help us and inspire us through our lives through the Holy Spirit. All we need to do in exchange is believe in
Jesus Christ. It sounds too good to be
true. But it is true.
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