Where Love Comes From

This is the message given on Sunday morning, May 9, 2021, in the United Methodist churches of the Wheatland Parish.  The Bible verses used are 1 John 4:7-21.

            God is love.  We say that all the time:  God is love.  And it’s true, of course.  But I think that sometimes we just say that because it’s something to say.  It’s a slogan.  It’s still true, but we say it without actually thinking about what it means.  We say it without thinking through all the implications of the statement that God is love.

            In our reading for tonight, the Apostle John says that God is love, too.  But he goes on to deal with all the implications of that statement.  Let’s look at it.

            He says that love comes from God.  If that’s true, that love comes from God, then without God there can be no love.  And John pretty much says that, too.  He says that everyone who loves knows God, and whoever does not love does not know God.  And so, that raises our first question:  can someone who does not know God, love?

            Well, yes and no.  I’m sure there are atheists, people who don’t believe in God, who love their spouses and their children and their parents.  But that’s not really what John is talking about when he’s talking about love.  Remember, in Luke Six, Jesus says, “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you?”  He says everyone does that.  Jesus’ command is that we love our enemies, that we do good to them, that we lend to them without expecting to be paid back.  When John is talking about love, he is talking about the kind of love God has--a complete, total, unconditional love.  That’s the kind of love you and I, as Christians, are supposed to have.  And that’s the kind of love that we can only have if we know God, because that kind of love comes from God.

            John then goes on to give the ultimate example of how much God loves us.  God loves us so much that he sent the divine Son, Jesus Christ, into the world to die for us.  Jesus Christ, who was completely without sin, took the punishment that you and I should get for our sins.  He did that so that you and I could have the chance for salvation and eternal life, if we just believe in Jesus as the Savior.  As John puts it, “This is love:  not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.”

            That’s the kind of love you and I are called to have for each other.  Not that we can bring salvation to anyone--only God can do that--but that we love totally and completely and unconditionally, like God does.  And there is only one way we can do that--through God’s Holy Spirit living in us.  That’s why someone who does not believe in God cannot love in the way John is talking about here.  If we do not have God’s Holy Spirit living in us, we cannot love the way God loves.

            But even for those of us who do believe in God, it’s still hard to love in that total, complete, unconditional way.  We cannot do it by ourselves.  As John says, we can only do it through God’s Holy Spirit living in us.  But John says there’s one other thing we need to do.  We need to acknowledge that Jesus is the Son of God.  He says, “If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God.”

            But we say, well, I have acknowledged that Jesus is the Son of God.  And I still don’t love in the total, complete, unconditional way that God does.  Why not?

            Well, what does it mean to acknowledge that Jesus is the Son of God?  Obviously, it means more than just saying the words.  They’re not a magic formula.  When we acknowledge that Jesus is the Son of God, we need to really mean it.  We need to really believe it.

            And we say, well, but I do.  I do mean it when I say Jesus is the Son of God.  I really do believe it.  But I still struggle with this.  Why?

            And believe me, I struggle with it, too.  Why?  Because what John is talking about here is not just a commitment of the head.  He’s not just talking about having an intellectual belief that Jesus is the Son of God.  John is talking about a lifestyle.  John is talking about acknowledging Jesus is the Son of God with every action we take.  With every word we say.  With every thought we think.  Every aspect of our lives needs to acknowledge that Jesus is the Son of God.  This is not something we can do once and then we’re done with it.  It’s something we need to do every day.  Every hour.  Every minute.  Acknowledging that Jesus is the Son of God needs to be something we do all the time.

            And that’s what, so much of the time, we fail at.  We spend far too much of our time not acknowledging that Jesus is the Son of God.  In fact, we spend far too much of our time not thinking about Jesus at all.

            Let me ask you:  how often, during a normal day, do you think about Jesus?  You’ll have to answer that for yourself, but I know that for me that answer is “not nearly as often as I should.”  And it’s not that I don’t want to.  It’s not that I intentionally ignore Jesus.  It’s just that, well, I get distracted.  I think about baseball.  Or music.  Or my work.  And of course, that last one I can justify to myself because I can say, well, my work is about Jesus.  Well, yeah, but preparing a sermon or preparing confirmation class or doing the other things I do is not necessarily the same thing as acknowledging that Jesus is the Son of God.  It can be, if I bring the right attitude to it, and sometimes I do.  But far too often I don’t.

            Now, I’m not saying we have to consciously think about nothing but Jesus every minute of our lives.  But Jesus needs to be involved in all of it.  And the thing is, it can be so easy for us to kind of compartmentalize Jesus.  We think about Jesus when we’re in church.  And maybe when we pray.  And maybe if we do a daily Bible reading or a daily devotion.  And then--we get up, we go about our business, and we leave Jesus behind.  We don’t think about Jesus at all until the next daily devotion, or the next Bible reading, or the next Sunday in church.  We go acknowledge Jesus as the Son of God while we’re doing those “Jesus” things, but we don’t acknowledge Jesus as the Son of God the rest of the time.  And so we do not love totally and completely and unconditionally.  We do not love as God loves because we do not have God’s Holy Spirit living in us.  And we do not have God’s Holy Spirit living in us because we are not acknowledging Jesus as the Son of God.

            So, how do we move forward?  John tells us that, too.  We move forward by constantly feeling God’s love.

            John says, “We know and rely on the love God has for us.”  And later, “We love because he first loved us.”

            The key to acknowledging Jesus as the Son of God all the time is feeling God’s love for us all the time.  And for me, that makes it a lot easier.  Acknowledging Jesus as the Son of God all the time sounds hard for me.  I’m not sure I can do that.  I’m not even sure I want to.  But feeling God’s love all the time?  That’s something I think I can do.  And in fact, it’s something I want to do.  Who wouldn’t?

            It’s not always easy, of course.  We all have times when things go wrong.  And sometimes they’re important things, dealing with ourselves or our loved ones.  When things go seriously wrong, it can be hard to feel God’s love.

            But we can still do it, even in those times.  If we can take a step back, and get past our current situation, we can think of all kinds of times we’ve felt God’s love.  We can think of all kinds of times God has been there for us and helped us through whatever we were going through.  We can know that, if God has been there for us in the past, God will be there for us again.  And we can be confident that, if God’s love has been there for us before, God’s love is still there for us.  We can feel God’s love, even in those hard times.

            God is love, and love comes from God.  If we feel God’s love, we will be able to acknowledge that Jesus is the Son of God.  If we acknowledge Jesus as the Son of God, we will have God’s Holy Spirit living within us.  And with the help of God’s Holy Spirit we’ll be able to love like God loves:  completely, totally, and unconditionally.  Then we will know how it feels to live in God, and have God live in us.  And once we have that feeling, we’ll never want to be without it.

The Power of Encouragement

This is the sermon given in the Sunday night service in the Gettysburg United Methodist church.  The Bible verses used are 2 Thessalonians 1:1-12.

            One of the easiest sins to fall into, and one of the most dangerous, is the sin of arrogance.  Thinking that we’re better than we are, and letting everyone know how good we think we are.  Putting out our opinions as if they were the gospel, and looking down on anyone who disagrees with us.  Acting like we have it all figured out, and all those other dopes just cannot get with the program.  Arrogance.

            Arrogance may be the sin the Bible talks about the most.  If not, it’s definitely in the top five.  And the reason the Bible talks about arrogance so much is that it takes us away from God.  Arrogance convinces us that we don’t need God, that we can take care of ourselves and do whatever we want, because we’re so great and so good.  And sometimes, by the time we find out that it does not work that way, we’re in serious trouble.

            And so, you hear preachers talk about our need to be humble.  To humble ourselves before the Lord, to come to God with the knowledge of how unworthy we are.  To know that it is only by the grace of God that we’re able to approach God at all.  Humility is considered a virtue, and a very important one.

            And it is.  But we can carry anything, even humility, too far.  If we’re too humble, it can get in the way of serving God.  We need to recognize that God has given us some talents and abilities, and God wants us to use them.  And we also need to know that it’s okay if we feel good about using our talents and abilities for God.

            In our reading for tonight, the Apostle Paul is writing to people who live in a town called Thessalonica.  That’s why they’re called Thessalonians.  And Paul is really complimentary to them.  Paul says that he and others should always thank God for them.  Their faith is so strong.  Their love for each other is so obvious.  And that faith, and that love, is always increasing.  In fact, the people of Thessalonica have so much faith and so much love that whenever Paul goes to other churches, he always brags to those other churches about how great the church in Thessalonica is.  He holds them up as an example to all the other churches.

            And Paul does not stop there.  He keeps praising them.  He says, you have done this despite the fact that you have not had an easy time of it.  You’ve been persecuted.  You’ve endured trials.  And still your faith has stayed strong.  Paul says, this just goes to show that God did the right thing by calling you to His church, and that you are worthy of the kingdom of God.

That all had to make the people of Thessalonica feel pretty good, right?  I mean, it sure would make me feel good.  To have someone as respected as the Apostle Paul bragging about your church to other churches?  To have him holding your church up as an example to all the other churches?  To hear him bragging about how you’ve kept your faith strong in spite of persecution, and that you are worthy of the kingdom of God?  That would be awesome, right?  I mean, I’d be happy to just have the District Superintendent say that.  But the Apostle Paul?  How great would that be?

            I’m sure Paul knew it would make the people of Thessalonica feel good to hear all this.  That’s the point.  Paul wanted them to feel good.  Paul wanted them to know that he appreciated their faith.  He wanted them to know that God appreciated their faith, too.  Paul wanted to encourage the people of Thessalonica.  He wanted them to keep doing what they were doing.  He wanted them to do even more.  He wanted his words to inspire them to go further, to continue to please God with their faith and their love.

            We all want that kind of encouragement.  We all want that kind of inspiration.  Not only do we want it, we need it.  We need to hear that what we’re doing is noticed.  We need to hear that the things we do are appreciated.

Have you ever felt like you were being taken for granted?  I suspect you have.  It’s not a good feeling, is it?  

Now, as I said last week, we should do the right thing just because it’s the right thing.  We should not do the right thing because we want a reward, either from humans or from God.  We should do the right thing--the right thing in God’s eyes--because that’s what God deserves.  But still, when someone notices that we’ve done the right thing, when someone appreciates that we’ve done the right thing, when someone compliments us for doing the right thing, it makes us feel good.  We all like compliments.  Mark Twain once said, “I can live for two months on a good compliment.”

So, knowing that, what should we do?  We should be like Paul!  We should look for people whose faith is strong.  We should look for people who show love to others.  We should look for people who do the right thing just because it’s the right thing.  And when we find those people, we should tell them how proud we are of them.  We should tell them that we can see God in them.  We should tell them that we see what they’re doing, and that we appreciate it.  Telling them that just might encourage them and inspire them to do even more.

And there’s one more thing we should do.  We should pray for them.  Because Paul did that for the people of Thessalonica, too.  He prayed for them.  And he told them he was praying for them.

How did he pray?  He prayed that God would make them worthy of God’s calling.  Now that’s an encouragement, but it’s also a reminder.  It’s a reminder that they’re not actually worthy of God’s calling, and they cannot make themselves worthy.  The only way they can become worthy of God’s calling is if God makes them worthy of it.  So, while it’s fine that they feel good about what they’ve done, they need to not be arrogant about it.  They need to not think they’ve done these things on their own.  They’ve done them with God’s help.  And the only way they can keep doing them is with God’s help.

That’s a good reminder for us, too.  It’s fine for us to appreciate compliments.  It’s fine for us to respond to encouragement and inspiration.  But at the same time, we need to remember, too, that we are not doing anything on our own.  We have no right to feel arrogant about how great we are, because we’re doing anything because we’re great.  Any good things we do are with the help and the inspiration of God.  

But Paul follows that reminder with some more encouragement.  He says he is praying that, by God’s power, “He will bring to fruition your every desire for goodness and your every deed prompted by faith.”  In other words, Paul is telling the people of Thessalonica that he’s confident that they want to do the right thing.  They have faith, and they want to do good.  And so he is praying that God will keep that desire strong in them, so that, with God’s help, they can continue to do more and more.

These are things we can pray for each other.  And you know what?  We can pray them for ourselves, too.  We can pray that God will keep the desire to do good strong in us, too.  We can pray that God will help us do more and more--again, remembering that we cannot do those things on our own, that we can only do them with God’s help.

And Paul closes this section with this:  “We pray this so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.”

And that’s the clincher.  That’s the desire we really need--a desire to have Jesus be glorified in us.  A desire to do things that help people see the glory of Jesus in us.  If we have that desire, we will feel God acting in and through us.  Then, we truly will be worthy of God’s calling and of God’s kingdom.

So pray that way.  Pray for God to give you that desire.  Pray for God to give others that desire, too.  Pray that we will all have the desire to do things that bring glory to Jesus name.  

We all need encouragement.  We need to hear encouragement, and we need to give encouragement.  But most of all, we need to pray for God’s encouragement.  Because if we have that, Paul’s prayer for the people of Thessalonica will be answered in us.  Jesus’ name will be glorified in us, according to the grace of God and our Lord Jesus Christ.

 

If You Are Willing

This is the message given in the United Methodist churches of the Wheatland Parish on Sunday morning, May 2, 2021.  The Bible verses used are Matthew 8:1-17.

            Jesus did a lot of things while he was on earth.  One of the biggest things he did, though, was heal people.  The Bible gives more examples of Jesus’ miraculous healing than it does of any other miracles of Jesus.  One of the things we call Jesus is the Great Physician.  

            Jesus healed lots of people while he was on earth.  We don’t know how many, because often the Bible would say, as it does at the end of today’s reading, that he “healed all the sick.”  But it must have been a lot.

            The fact that it’s mentioned so often shows how much of an impression Jesus’ healing made on people.  It also shows that the authors of the gospels, inspired by God, thought it was important that everyone know about Jesus’ healing.  We can understand why.  For one thing, those miracles were pretty impressive.  For another, they were proof that Jesus had power that human beings do not have, and that he could do things human beings cannot do.  And because he was using that power for good, it was proof that Jesus’ power came from God.  It was proof that Jesus was who he said he was, the Son of God.

            But when we look at these stories of healing, we see something else running through them.  Jesus did not just use his healing power at random.  He did not use it indiscriminately.  There was a faith component to Jesus’ healing, and that faith is at least as important as the healing itself.

            Matthew does not give us any particulars about the healing at the end of this passage, where he simply says that he “healed all the sick.”  But let’s look at the others.  In the first one, a man with leprosy comes to Jesus.  And the man says, “Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.”

            That’s a statement of faith.  This man knows Jesus has the ability to heal him.  He has no doubt about that whatsoever.  His question is not whether Jesus can heal him, his question is whether Jesus will heal him.  He has complete faith that Jesus can do this, if he only will.

            But it’s a statement of faith in another way, too.  By putting it that way--if you are willing, you can make me clean--he’s saying that he knows that whether he’s healed or not is completely up to Jesus.  He has no ability to force Jesus to heal him.  He does not deserve to be healed.  Jesus does not owe it to him to heal him.  He is just hoping, desperately, that Jesus will show mercy and compassion and love to him.  He is coming to Jesus in complete and total humility.  He’s hoping Jesus will be willing to heal him, even though he does not deserve it.  And of course, Jesus grants his request.  He does heal him.

            The next story is the story of the centurion’s servant.  Now, to get the full impact of this, we need to understand who a centurion was.  He would not have been Jewish.  He would not have been one of Jesus’ people.  A centurion was a Roman soldier.  He was called a centurion because he commanded a hundred soldiers.  It’s the same root as our word “century”.  

            For the most part, Roman soldiers did not care about the Jewish people.  Not that they hated them or anything.  They just, literally, did not care about them.  What the Jewish people did, did not matter to them.  Not at all.  They had no interest in Jewish society, Jewish religion, or any other thing Jewish.  As long as the Jewish people did not cause trouble, as long as they paid their taxes and did not disrupt society, they could do what they wanted.  It made no difference to the Roman soldiers one way or another.

            And yet, here’s this Roman soldier coming to Jesus.  And not just any Roman soldier, a centurion.  A man with some authority.  One of the last people you’d think would care about Jesus.  But here he is, asking Jesus for help.

            That showed faith in and of itself.  He tells Jesus of the suffering of his servant.  Jesus offers to come and heal him.  And then, this centurion, this non-Jewish person, this person who you’d have thought would have no interest in Jesus at all, makes one of the strongest statements of faith in the Bible.  He says, no, Jesus, you don’t need to do that.  I’m not worthy of having you come to my house, and I know you don’t need to.  All you have to do is say the word, and my servant will be healed.  

            Just like with the man with leprosy, the centurion comes to Jesus humbly.  He recognizes that whether his servant is healed is completely up to Jesus.  He has no ability to force Jesus to heal his servant.  Jesus does not owe it to him to heal his servant.  He is just hoping, desperately, that Jesus will show mercy and compassion and love to his servant.  He is coming to Jesus in complete and total humility.  He says, Jesus, it’s up to you.  If you say the word, my servant will be healed.  And of course, Jesus does say the word, and the servant is healed.

            Then, we’re told of Peter’s mother-in-law.  We’re not told anything about her faith.  We’re not told anything here about Peter’s faith, either.  But of course, from the rest of the gospels, we have no doubt that Peter had faith, too.  Peter does not appear to have even asked Jesus to heal her.  The way it’s written, Jesus saw Peter’s mother-in-law sick, and Jesus healed her.  

            So, what’s the lesson here?  That if we or someone who loves us has faith, we’ll automatically be healed?  No, of course not.  We know better than that.  We know people of faith, and we know the loved ones of people of faith, who got sick and were not healed.  Those people did not die because of a lack of faith.  That’s not how this works.

            We know Jesus is still the Great Physician.  That’s why we pray for healing so often.  But look at what happens in these miracles.  First, no doubt is expressed about Jesus’ power.  There is complete faith that Jesus can give healing if he chooses to.  Second, there is no attempt to manipulate Jesus into giving healing.  There is no thought that Jesus owes it to them to give healing.  There is no thought that they deserve to have Jesus give healing.  Instead, Jesus is approached with total humility.  It is recognized that whether Jesus performs a healing miracle is completely up to Jesus.  And there’s no indication that, if Jesus had chosen not to heal them, their faith would have been any less.  I’m sure they would have been disappointed.  But they would have continued to believe in Jesus and to trust Jesus.

            The Bible tells us that we can ask things of Jesus.  But when we approach Jesus, whether for healing of for anything else, this is the attitude we need to have.  First, we need to have complete faith in Jesus’ power.  We need to have complete and total faith that Jesus can do anything that Jesus chooses to do.  But we need to have no thought that we can manipulate Jesus into doing what we ask.  We need to have no thought that Jesus owes it to us to give us what we ask.  We need to have no thought that we deserve to have Jesus give us what we ask.

            Instead, we need to approach Jesus with total humility.  We need to recognize that whether Jesus gives us what we ask is completely up to Jesus.  And if Jesus chooses not to give us what we ask, we need to continue to trust Jesus.  We need to trust that Jesus has reasons for not doing what we’ve asked, even if we don’t know what those reasons are.  It’s okay if we’re disappointed.  But we need to continue to believe in Jesus and to trust Jesus.

            And that, of course, is the tricky bit.  It’s easy to believe in Jesus and to trust Jesus when things go well and it seems like Jesus is giving us everything we want.  But can we continue to believe in Jesus and to trust Jesus when things don’t go so well?  Can we continue to believe in Jesus and trust Jesus when Jesus is not giving us what we want?  In fact, can we continue to believe in Jesus and trust Jesus when it seems like what Jesus is doing is the exact opposite of what we want?

            When you think about it, that’s the true test of faith.  When we come to Jesus, with complete humility, asking Jesus for help, and Jesus does not do what we want.  How we react to that shows whether our faith is real.  

            The man with leprosy said, “Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.”  The centurion said, “Lord… just say the word and my servant will be healed.”  Unspoken, but just as important, was the thought, “Lord, if you are not willing, and if you do not say the word, I will still believe.”

            May that be our statement as well.  When we go to God, may we say, “Lord, if you are willing, you can say the word and do what I’ve asked.  But if you don’t, I will still trust you.  I will still believe.”

            If we can say that, then we know we have faith in Jesus Christ.

 

Do the Right Thing

This is the message given in the Gettysburg United Methodist church on Sunday, April 25, 2021.  The Bible verses used are Joel 2:1-32.

            God is big.  God is really big.  We really cannot imagine just how big God is.  I mean, you could take the biggest thing you can think of, multiply it by ten, and then double it, and you’d still be nowhere near how big God is.  God is bigger than the universe.  God is bigger than everything.

            Most of us know this, but I bring it up because sometimes, as Christians, we forget it.  Or maybe the better way to put it is that we don’t think about it.  We tend to make God too small.  We tend to try to bring God down to our level.

            Now, to some extent, this is probably inevitable.  Because God is bigger than anything we can imagine, we have to shrink God down just so we can think about Him at all.  And that’s not necessarily wrong.  But what can happen is that we just focus on the aspects of God that we like, and ignore the aspects of God that we don’t like.

            And so we say things like “God is love”.  “God is forgiving.”  “God is merciful.”  And of course, those statements are all true.  God is love, and God is forgiving, and God is merciful.  And we should all thank God every day that God is all of those things.  But those things are not all God is.  There’s a lot more to God than that.  And we need to recognize those things if we’re going to live as God wants us to.

            In our reading from Joel, Joel tells the people that the day of the Lord is coming.  And while we might think that would be good news, for them it’s not.  The people of Israel have sinned against God.  They have turned away from God.  And now, they are facing one of the aspects of God that we don’t like to talk about so much:  God’s judgment.  God has judged the people of Israel, and the judgment is not a favorable one.  

            Israel is facing a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and blackness.  They are facing what Joel calls “a large and mighty army...such as never was in ancient times nor ever will be in ages to come.”  And he goes into detail about what that army is going to do.  You heard it, and there’s no need for me to repeat it.  But it’s going to be really bad.  Basically, everything is going to be wiped out.  There’s going to be nothing left.  This is the Lord’s army, with the Lord Himself at the head of it.  No one is going to be able to endure the judgment that God is going to give.

            God is love, and God is forgiving, and God is merciful.  But God does not allow us to take advantage of that.  God does not allow us to just take those things for granted.  God’s love, and God’s forgiveness, and God’s mercy, do not allow us to ignore God and just do anything we want, trusting that God will always forgive us.  God’s love will not prevent God from issuing God’s judgment.  God’s forgiveness will not prevent God from making us take the consequences for our actions.  God’s judgment is real, and it is not something we want to be on the wrong side of.

            But judgment is not all there is to God, either, and it’s not all there is to the book of Joel.  After saying all these things about the day of the Lord, Joel says this:  “‘Even now,’ declares the Lord, ‘return to me with all your heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning.’”  

            Joel says, in effect, it’s not too late.  God’s judgment is real, but God has not given up on us.  There’s still time for us to turn this around.  There’s still time to return to God.  

            How do we do that?  Joel says, “Rend your heart”.  Now, there’s a churchy word if I’ve ever heard one.  “Rend your heart.”  When do we ever say we should “rend” something, other than in this context?   I don’t think I’ve ever used the word “rend” in my life, outside of church.  I don’t know why it’s used here.  What it means is to tear something.  Tear your heart open before God.  Let everything out--all the selfishness, all the arrogance, all the pride, all the envy, all the things that take us away from God.  Let it all out.  Get rid of it.  Humble ourselves before God.  Ask for forgiveness, yes, but do more than that.  Acknowledge that we have no right to expect God to forgive us.  We really don’t even have the right to ask God for forgiveness.  In fact, we don’t have the right to be in God’s presence at all.  We need to give up any pretense that we have any goodness whatsoever.  Rip our hearts open before God, begging God to forgive us and give us another chance.

            Joel reminds the people that God is gracious and compassionate.  God is slow to anger and abounding in love.  But even so, Joel says, don’t take these things for granted.  Don’t think God is just automatically going to forgive you.  God does not owe it to you to give you another chance.  God is not obligated to do anything.

            And I love the way Joel puts it.  He says that if the people do this, if they do come to God humbly, asking forgiveness, “Who knows?  He may turn and relent and leave a blessing.”

            “Who knows?”  If we tear open our hearts, if we return to God, if we acknowledge God as the Lord, if we treat God the way God deserves to be treated, God just might forgive us and give us another chance.  He might not--again, God is not required to do this--but He might.  So let’s do it.

            Now, notice, this is not said as an attempt to manipulate God.  This is not, well, we’ll act in a certain way to make God do something for us.  This is, “We’ll do the right thing, and then we’ll see how God responds.”  We’ll hope that, in this instance, God’s desire to forgive and to be merciful are stronger than God’s judgment.  But we have no guarantee of that.  But if we do the right thing, then maybe--maybe--God will exercise forgiveness and have mercy on us.

            And you know, when you think about it, that phrase contains a lot of what we’re supposed to do as Christians.  Do the right thing.  Not because we expect God to reward us.  Not because we think it will benefit us on earth.  Not even because we think it’ll help us go to heaven.  Do the right thing because it’s what God wants us to do.  Do the right thing because it’s the right thing.

            Now, when I say “the right thing”, I’m talking about what’s right in God’s eyes.  Jesus told us a bunch of those things.  Love God.  Love your neighbor as yourself.  Love your enemies.  Seek God’s kingdom.  Treat others as you would like to be treated.  Forgive.  Repent of your sins.  If we follow the words of Jesus, we will do the right thing in God’s eyes.  

            The people of Israel did the right thing.  They tore open their hearts.  They turned away from evil.  They repented of their sins.  They acknowledged the greatness of God.  They acknowledged that God was their Lord, and they approached God that way.

            They approached God humbly.  They did not ask God to give them back everything they’d had.  They did not ask God to make them great and powerful.  They did not ask God to treat them like they were anything special.  They just asked God to spare them and give them another chance.  They knew they did not deserved it.  They knew God did not owe it to them.  But they asked anyway.  They asked because they knew God was their only chance and their only hope.

            And their hope was justified.  From the rest of the chapter, you know that God did hear their prayer, God did forgive them, and God did give them another chance.  In fact, God did more than that.  God promised to give them prosperity, and promised that anyone who called on His name would be saved.  God’s desire to forgive and to be merciful were stronger than God’s judgment. 

            God is, of course, the unchanging, eternal God.  That means all those aspects of God that existed in Joel’s time still exist today.  God is still love, and God is still forgiving, and God is still merciful.  But God still gives judgment, too.  And it’s still a bad thing to be on the wrong end of God’s judgment.

            So, when you think about God, remember that God is more than love and forgiveness and mercy.  God is all those things, but God is also judgment.  And we don’t want to be on the wrong end of it.  So, let’s tear open our hearts.  Let’s do the right thing--the right thing in God’s eyes.  Follow the words of Jesus.  Obey God’s commandments.  Not because we expect God to reward us, but just because it’s the right thing to do.  And who knows?  Maybe God will not give us the punishment we deserve.  Maybe God will forgive and be merciful.  God forgave the people of Joel’s time.  He just might forgive us, too.

 

A Matter of Trust

This is the message given in the United Methodist churches of the Wheatland Parish on Sunday, April 25, 2021.  The Bible verses used are Isaiah 25:1-9.

            I don’t know about you, but I find it very tempting to just not pay attention to the news anymore.

            Now, I’m not saying that’s the right thing to do.  But it just seems like, when we pay attention to the news, all we hear is bad news.  And I’m not going to go down the list of things--you know it as well as I do.  But it seems like the news is just one bad thing after another after another.  And it’s depressing to see it.

            And the thing about it is that, for almost everything we see, it seems like there’s nothing we can do about it.  We see all these bad things, and we have no idea what we might do to make them better.  And so we add frustration to our depression, and that just makes us feel worse.

            That can happen in our personal lives, too.  Sometimes bad things happen to us personally.  And sometimes it seems like there’s nothing we can do about those things, either.  

            The temptation, in response to all this, is simply to withdraw.  To pull back into what we think of as a safe area, to ignore the world, and just try to get through our lives as best we can.  But I don’t think that’s really what God wants us to do, and it’s really not even possible anyway.  No matter how much we may try to withdraw, the world has a way of forcing itself back into our consciousness.  So there we are, depressed and frustrated, and forced to deal with situations that it seems like we can do nothing about.

            The people of Isaiah’s time would’ve been able to relate to all this.  They did not have twenty-four hour news channels, but they knew they were living in a time when things were pretty bad.  Israel was under pressure from enemies on every side.  And it seemed like there was nothing they could do about it.  Certainly, the common people did not think there was anything they could do about it.  And I would think they were feeling pretty depressed and frustrated, too.

            The prophet Isaiah, in our reading for today, tells them, and us, how to deal with this.  The passage is written as a prayer to God, but Isaiah surely knew that God was not his sole audience.  Don’t get me wrong--Isaiah was addressing God, and I’m sure he meant every word he said.  But he clearly knew other people were going to hear what he said, and he said these words with that knowledge in mind.  He wanted the people of Israel to benefit from his words, and we can benefit from them, too.

            After saying that he will exalt and praise God’s name, Isaiah says this:  “in perfect faithfulness you have done wonderful things, things planned long ago.”

            It seems to me that there’s so much packed into that statement, and it’s all stuff we need to remember about God.  First, God is faithful.  What God does, God does in perfect faithfulness.

            When we get depressed and frustrated, I think we tend to forget about that.  God is faithful.  God sees what’s happening in the world.  God sees what’s happening in our personal lives, too.  God knows what’s going on with you, and God knows what’s going on with me.  And God is not just going to abandon us and allow these things to happen forever.  God is faithful.

            Second, God has done wonderful things.  In this context, “wonderful” does not just mean something really good, although it includes that.  “Wonderful” means things that are incredible.  Things that are awe-inspiring.  Things that just make us go “Wow!”  

            And so, we know that in addition to being faithful, God is good.  And God is all-powerful.  God is, literally, awesome.  We said that God is not going to allow our situation stay as it is forever, but it’s more than that.  God is going to do some things that are amazing.  God is going to do things that are so astounding that we would not believe them possible, until we remember who it is that’s doing them.  There is no such thing as impossible for God, because with God, all things are possible.

            Third, the things God is doing are “things planned long ago”.  Nothing ever comes as a surprise to God.  Nothing that happened in Isaiah’s time, and nothing that happens now.  Nothing that happens in the world, and nothing that happens in our personal lives.  God knows everything that’s happening, and God has a plan for all of it.  That does not mean God caused it all--human beings still have free will.  But God has a plan to turn all those things for good.  Those wonderful things that God is going to do are things God has planned to do all along.

            We hear that, and maybe we agree with it.  But then we look around, and--we don’t really see any evidence of it.  We don’t see God turning our situations around for good.  Sometimes we don’t see God doing much of anything.  We just see the bad things that are happening, and they seem to keep happening, with no sign that they’re going to get better.

            That was true of the people of Isaiah’s time, too.  They could see no sign of things getting better.  And so, Isaiah reminds people of all God has done in the past.  He says, “You have been a refuge for the poor, a refuge for the needy in their distress, a shelter from the storm and a shade from the heat.”

            In other words, whenever we’ve had trouble in the past, God has been there for us. God has always provided what we needed when we needed it.  If God has done that in the past, we can trust God to do that again.  God has always been there for us, and God will always be there for us.  That was true for the people of Isaiah’s time.  It’s true for our time today, too.

            So, as it so often does, it comes down to a matter of trust.  Can we trust what God has said?  And can we trust what God has done?  Can we trust that, because God has been faithful in the past, God will be faithful again?  Can we trust in God’s goodness?  Can we trust in God’s power?  Can we trust that God has a plan, even if we don’t understand what the plan is?  In short, can we trust that God loves us and that God will do right by us, even when it looks like things are going wrong?

            It’s not easy.  Sometimes it seems like it should be easy, but it’s not.  It never has been.  One of the threads that runs through human history is a failure to trust in God.

            When we don’t trust God, all kinds of things happen, and almost all of them are bad.  One of the things that happens is what we already talked about, that we try to withdraw from the world.  But when people of faith withdraw from the world, what happens?  The people who don’t have faith take over.  And that’s not going to lead to good things for anyone.  God can still use it, of course--again, God can use anything for good.  But it’s still going to make things harder for a while.

            But the opposite thing can happen, too.  If we don’t trust God, we start thinking we have to do things ourselves.  We try to force things to happen, rather than allowing them to happen in God’s way and at God’s time.

            Have you ever done that?  I have.  I did not realize it at the time.  If I did, obviously, I would not have done it.  I thought I was doing God’s will.  I thought what I was trying to make happen was exactly what God wanted to happen.  But in fact, I was doing my will.  What I was trying to make happen was exactly what I wanted to happen.  But again, I did not realize it.  I had convinced myself that what I wanted had to be what God wanted, and so if it was not happening then God must want me to make it happen.  But in fact, I was trying to force things to happen my way, rather than allowing them to happen God’s way.  I was not trusting God.

            It’s not easy to trust God.  But it’s worth it.  Look at how Isaiah closes this passage.  “The Sovereign Lord will wipe away the tears from all faces; he will remove his people’s disgrace from all the earth….The Lord has spoken.  In that day they will say, ‘Surely this is our God; we trusted in him, and he saved us. This is the Lord, we trusted in him; let us rejoice and be glad in his salvation.’”

            God is the Sovereign Lord.  God is faithful.  God is good.  God is all-powerful.  And God loves us.  God does has a plan.  He always has had a plan.  We may not always understand the plan, but that’s okay.  God does not ask us to understand it.  God asks us to trust it.  God asks us to trust Him.  If we do, God will end our tears.  God will save us.  We will rejoice and be glad in God’s salvation.

            When we look at the world, things can look bad.  And sometimes they look bad in our own lives, too.  And in fact, sometimes they will get worse before they get better.  But they will get better.  God makes that promise, and God always keeps God’s promises.  That was true in Isaiah’s time.  It’s true for us today, too.

 

Overwhelming Righteousness

This is the message given in the Sunday night service in the Gettysburg United Methodist church on April 18, 2021.  The Bible verses used are Isaiah 51:1-16.

            Do you ever just kind of feel overwhelmed by everything?

            I do, sometimes.  I think we all do.  It just seems like life comes at us fast and hard sometimes.  And these days, that seems to happen a lot.  COVID.  Riots.  Violence.  Injustice.  Societal unrest.  And just in the lives of people around us, or maybe in ourselves, we have all kinds of things going on.  Health issues.  Financial issues.  Relationship issues.  The pressures of work or school.  

            It just seems like it never ends.  And if affects us.  It has to.  We lose patience.  Our mood gets sour.  Our tempers get short.  We feel like we just need a break, a chance to refresh ourselves, a chance to just catch our breath.  And it seems, sometimes, like we never get one.  Every time we think we’re going to, here comes something else to knock us back.  It feels like we’re running as fast as we can just to stay in the same place.  And we get tired.  And it’s hard.

            The churchy thing to say, of course, is to trust God.  Find our rest in God.  And of course, that’s absolutely right.  But how do we do that?  How can we find our rest in God?  How can we learn to trust God when it seems like life is coming at us faster than we can deal with it?

            God knows it’s hard for us to do that.  And so, God gives us some help with it.  God, speaking through the prophet Isaiah, tells us how to handle these situations.

            God starts out by telling us to look to the past.  Think of your ancestors, your parents, grandparents, and so on.  God reminds us that they had some hard times, too.  And yet, God was always there for them, and God got them through it.  After all, if He had not done that, you and I would not be here.  So, if God did that for them, God will do it for you, too.

            In Isaiah, God references Abraham and Sarah.  But you and I don’t have to go back that far.  Most of us don’t have to go back that many generations to get to the generation that first came to this country.  In my case, it’s just two generations, to my grandparents.  For a lot of us, our ancestors came here with very little.  They endured all kinds of hard conditions.  They went through things most of us can only imagine.

            And yet, they made it.  They made it because they trusted God, and God was there for them.  God was with them, and God helped them get through it all.  

            I don’t mean to minimize the problems we have now.  They’re serious, and we need to take them seriously.  But it’s a human trait for each generation to think that they have things worse than anyone ever has.  It’s not true.  Every generation has serious problems.  And every generation needs God’s help.  And if we turn to God, and we ask God for help, God will be there for us.  God was there for Abraham and Sarah.  God was there for our ancestors.  God will be there for us, too.

            But God does more than just help us survive.  God helps us live life abundantly.  God says he will “make [the] deserts like Eden, her wastelands like the garden of the Lord.  Joy and gladness will be found in her, thanksgiving and the sound of singing.”

            Sounds good, right?  But sometimes we think, yeah, well, I don’t see much of that around here.  I don’t see that “abundant life” I’m supposed to have.  I see problems.  I see all kinds of bad stuff going on that I don’t like and that I don’t seem able to do anything about.  That “joy and gladness” must have been shipped to the wrong address, because I sure don’t see much of it here now.

            I wonder if that’s the reaction the people of Isaiah’s time had, too.  Because the next thing God says is “Listen to me, my people.  Hear me, my nation.”  In other words, if what I’ve said is not enough, listen up, because I have more to say.

            And here it is:  “My righteousness draws near speedily, my salvation is on the way, and my arm will bring justice to the nations.  The islands will look to me and wait in hope for my arm.  Lift up your eyes to the heavens, look at the earth beneath; the heavens will vanish like smoke, the earth will wear out like a garment and its inhabitants die like flies.  But my salvation will last forever, my righteousness will never fail.”

            Listen to the things God promises in that statement.  Righteousness.  Justice.  Hope.  And most importantly, salvation.

            God’s righteousness will never fail.  The time will come when God makes everything right.  I don’t know when that will be, but it will come.  

            But even now there are times when God’s righteousness prevails.  Not always--the world is not yet as it should be or will be.  But there are times.  There are times when what is morally right does happen.  And there are times when justice is done.  

If you look past the headlines, you can see those times.  You can think of those times.  Times when someone did something good for someone, with no thought that they’d get anything in return.  Times when someone did the right thing with no thought of any reward, just because it was the right thing.  Times when people showed love to each other, even if there was no one else around to notice.  Righteousness does sometimes happen.  Justice is sometimes done.

And that should give us the hope that God promises.  For one thing, they help us recognize that righteousness and justice do exist, even if they don’t prevail all the time.  But God has placed enough of a sense of righteousness and justice in human hearts that we’re willing to act that way sometimes, then with God’s help we can act with a sense of righteousness and justice more of the time.  Maybe all the time.  Things can get better.  With God’s help, they will get better.  We can see a day when God’s righteousness and justice prevail.  That’s the hope you and I have through the Lord.

And it’s what God promises us.  God says, ““Hear me, you who know what is right, you people who have taken my instruction to heart:  Do not fear the reproach of mere mortals or be terrified by their insults.  For the moth will eat them up like a garment; the worm will devour them like wool.  But my righteousness will last forever, my salvation through all generations.”

When the bad things are all around, when life seems ready to overwhelm us, this is what we need to remember.  Don’t worry about what mere mortals can do.  They’re not going to win.  God’s going to take care of them.  God’s righteousness and justice are going to prevail.  And when they do, it will be forever.

And when God says forever, God means forever.  Literally.  Not just here.  Not just in our lives on earth.  God’s righteousness is forever.  God’s justice is forever.  And our salvation, through our faith in Jesus Christ, is forever, too.

God makes that point again a little later on.  “I, even I, am he who comforts you.  Who are you that you fear mere mortals, human beings who are but grass, that you forget the Lord your Maker, who stretches out the heavens and who lays the foundations of the earth.”

God says, why are you so worried about what human beings are doing?  Whatever they do, it won’t last.  And it certainly won’t prevail against God.  God is the one who created everything.  And not just everything on earth--God created the stars and the planets and the entire universe.  Think of how powerful, how awesome, how incredible, God really is.  And that same powerful, awesome, incredible God created you.  And created me.  That God is not going to allow us to be overwhelmed by mere human beings and mere human concerns.  God’s righteousness, God’s justice, and God’s salvation go way beyond anything mere humans can do.  God’s righteousness, God’s justice, and God’s salvation will always prevail in the end.  They will prevail on earth, and they will prevail in heaven.

It’s okay if life seems overwhelming sometimes.  It happens to everyone.  But when it happens to you, stop for a minute.  Remember all the times God has been there in the past.  All the times God has been there for your ancestors, and all the times God has been there for you.  Know that if God has been there in the past, God will be there in the future, because God is the unchanging, everlasting God.

The concerns of this world gets overwhelming because this world is all we know.  But God knows eternity.  God is bigger and stronger and better than anything in this world.  So trust God’s strength and God’s goodness.  Know that God’s righteousness and God’s justice will win.  And know that, if we stay close to God, God’s salvation will be there for us.

 

The Time Is Now

This is the morning message given in the United Methodist churches of the Wheatland Parish on Sunday, April 18, 2021.  The Bible verses used are Romans 13:8-14.

            The definition of a Christian is someone who believes Jesus Christ is the Savior, the divine Son of God.  And you think, well, duh.  You really went out on a limb with that one, didn’t you, pastor?

            But here’s the thing.  If we truly believe in Jesus Christ as the Savior, as the divine Son of God, we need to do more than just make that statement.  We need to do what Jesus told us to do.  Jesus says that a couple of times in John, Chapter Fourteen.  “If you love me, keep my commands.”  “Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me.”  

If we truly love Jesus, if we truly believe Jesus is the Savior, we need to do what Jesus told us to do.  And while Jesus told us to do many things, the main things he told us to do have to do with love.  He said the two most important commandments are that we love God and that we love our neighbor as ourselves.  Jesus told us to love even our enemies.  The last time he spoke to the disciples before his arrest, he told them he was giving them a new commandment:  “love one another”.  They were to love others as Jesus loved them.

That’s a pretty high standard.  To love people as much as Jesus loves them.  Because Jesus loves completely and unconditionally.  That’s what we’re supposed to do, too.

We don’t, of course.  I mean, sometimes we do.  But a lot of times we don’t, too.  It’s hard.  And it’s not just a problem we have.  It’s a problem Jesus’ earliest followers had, too.  That’s why so many of Paul’s letters, and the other letters we have in the New Testament, talk about love so much:  because we have a very difficult time loving to the extent we should.

The Apostle Paul, in the part of his letter to the Romans that we read today, writes about love.  He says that all the commandments--“You shall not commit adultery,” “You shall not murder,” “You shall not steal,” “You shall not covet,” all of them--can be summed up in the statement “love your neighbor as yourself”.  

Paul calls love a debt, a debt that’s always outstanding and can never be fully paid.  In other words, no matter how much love we give, we always owe more.  We never reach a time when we’ve loved enough, when we don’t need to give any more love.  Love is always owed to everyone.

But you know, you’ve heard all this before.  There’s certainly nothing new or profound about it.  Those of you who’ve been going to church for a long time, you’ve heard any number of pastors stand here and talk about how we need to love each other.

And it’s not that it’s wrong.  I mean, we probably all agree with it.  But, because we’ve heard it all before, there’s nothing new or exciting about it.  Nobody’s sitting out there going, “Hey!  Did you hear that!  Paul says we should love each other.  He says we should always give more love to everyone!  That’s amazing!”  The reaction, when we hear stuff like this, is more likely to be “yeah, yeah, yeah.  We get it.  We should love each other.  We know.”  It’s something we’ve heard over and over and over again. 

And that was true back in Paul’s time, too.  No one reading or hearing Paul’s letter to the Romans was thinking “What?  We should love each other?  What a concept!”  People knew that one of the main things about the followers of Jesus was that they were supposed to love each other.  There was nothing new about it then, either.

But what there was in Paul’s time is something there is in our time:  there’s a kind of complacency about it.  In theory, we might agree that we always owe more love than we can give, and so we should always try to love more and more.  In practice, though, I suspect most of us feel we love just about enough.  Now, that may not apply to everyone.  Maybe you are constantly trying to love more and more.  Maybe you are always trying to increase the love you give.  I hope so.  That’s an awesome thing to do.

But a lot of us are not really doing that.  And again, that was true in Paul’s time, too.  And so Paul tries to fight that sense of complacency.  He tries to create a sense of urgency about our need to give love.  He says we need to do this now.  Immediately.  Don’t wait.  Don’t think we’ve already done enough.  He says, “The hour has already come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed.”

Think about that.  “Our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed.”

It seems to me there are a couple of ways we can think about that statement.  One of them is to believe that the time is near at which Jesus will come again.  And while I’m not making a prediction, Jesus said several times that we need to live with an awareness of that possibility.  He told us that we don’t know when the day will come, and so we need to be ready all the time.  And so, we need to increase the love we give now.  We need to love others more and better and more fully and more consistently now.  We should not be complacent about it.  We should not put it off until some later time.  We don’t know that a later time will come.  The time to keep working to pay that debt of love is now.

But you know, most of us are complacent about Jesus coming again, too.  Again, in theory, we agree that Jesus could come again at any time.  And some of us even think it could be soon.  But very few of have changed our lives in anticipation of that.  Very few of us have thought, “I’ve got to show more love to people.  I’ve got to love more fully and more consistently, because Jesus might come back at any time.”

So, that leads us to the other way to think about Paul’s statement.  We may believe that Jesus won’t come for hundreds of years, but none of us is going to live that long.  If Jesus does not come in our lifetime, all that means is that the day will come when we go to meet him.  And we need to be ready for that day, too.

None of us knows when that day will come.  And sometimes we try to be complacent about that, too.  Especially when we’re young.  We think, well, yes, of course, I’m going to die someday.  But it’s not going to happen any time soon.  I’ve got plenty of time.

But we don’t know that.  Every day there are young people who die, sometimes without warning.  My first boss, when I worked in Pierre, died suddenly at age thirty.  It happens.  Every day someone, somewhere goes to bed with all kinds of plans for the next day and simply does not wake up again, at least not on earth.  

I’m not saying that anyone should be obsessed with the idea of death.  But we do need to live our lives with an awareness of it.  We need to recognize that we are going to die, and that we need to have our life in order before we do.  And the most important thing about getting our life in order is to get our relationship with Jesus Christ in order.  So if, as Jesus said, the way to our faith in him is to keep his commands, and if his main command is that we love each other as he loves us, then we’d better get to work on loving others now.

And I say get to work on it because it’s not an easy thing to do.  Loving fully and consistently is not something that comes naturally to us.  Love is a part of human nature, no question about it.  But so are things like selfishness and arrogance and pride.  We have it in us to love as Jesus loved.  But it’s not always easy to bring it out.

How do we do it?  By staying as close to Jesus as possible.  Or, as Paul put it, “clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ.”  Spend some time every day thinking about Jesus.  Whether that’s through prayer, or through reading the Bible, or through taking some quiet time to focus on Jesus, or however we do it, we need to do it.  There are lots of ways to do it, and any way that works for you is a good way.  But we need to do it.  

And we need to do it consistently, every day.  If we’re going to love fully and consistently, we need to stay close to Jesus fully and consistently.  We cannot do this by ourselves.  But if we stay close to Jesus, if we feel God’s Holy Spirit in our hearts, we can.  Not perfectly, because humans never do anything perfectly.  But we can do it.  Jesus would not have told us to do something that was impossible.  With Jesus’ help, we can do this.

But the time to do it is now.  As Paul says, the hour has come for us to wake up from our slumber.  The time to love fully and completely and consistently is now.

Let’s show our love for Jesus by keeping his command to love one another.  And you know what?  If enough of us do that, we just might make the world a lot better place.