The Power of Music

You probably know that I love music.  I listen to a little of the newer music, but the music I really like is the music I grew up with, the music of the ‘70s.  I suspect that’s true of most of us--our favorite music tends to be the music we grew up with.

The funny thing is, I can hear a song from that era that I haven’t heard in years, and I can still sing along with it.  I still know all the words.  It may have been years since I even thought about that song, and yet it still stuck with me.

Maybe you’re that way, too.  Music does that to us.  Music sticks with us in a way that nothing else does.  I don’t remember a bit of the calculus that I took in the ‘70s, stuff that I actually studied, but I still remember the words to the songs even though I don’t remember studying them at all.

The thing is, there’s nothing new about that.  It’s a part of human nature.  Remember last week, when I mentioned I was reading the book of Deuteronomy?  There was something else in there that struck me about that book that I thought I would share with you.

Deuteronomy Chapter 32 is mostly a song that Moses sang.  It’s a song of praise to God, but it’s also a warning.  It’s a warning to stay faithful to God, and a statement of what’s going to happen to them if they don’t.  

But here’s what’s interesting to me about it.  Before Moses sings the song, God says this to him:  

Now write down this song and teach it to the Israelites and have them sing it, so that it may be a witness for me against them.  When I have brought them into the land flowing with milk and honey, the land I promised on oath to their ancestors, and when they eat their fill and thrive, they will turn to other gods and worship them, rejecting me and breaking my covenant.  And when many disasters and calamities come on them, this song will testify against them, because it will not be forgotten by their descendants. I know what they are disposed to do, even before I bring them into the land I promised them on oath.”  So Moses wrote down this song that day and taught it to the Israelites.

God knew the people were going to forget what He had said.  God knew the people were

going to forget the commandments.  They were going to forget all the things God had done for them.  They were going to forget their own history.  But they would not forget the song.  They would not forget the song Moses had taught them.  They would not forget the words of God contained in that song.  That song would stick with them, even if they forgot everything else.

That’s why it’s important that we learn some Christian music.  I don’t care whether it’s old, traditional hymns, gospel bluegrass songs, contemporary Christian music, or something else.  We need that Christian music.  We need it to become a part of us.  Because if it does, we’ll remember it.  We’ll remember it long after we’ve forgotten everything else.

It’s good to read the Bible.  It’s good to study the Bible.  It’s good to try to memorize some verses.  But if we know “Amazing Grace” or “Jesus Loves Me” or “What a Friend We Have in Jesus”, those words will stick with us long after we’ve forgotten part of the Twenty-third Psalm or the Ten Commandments.  And we’ll know the love and grace of Jesus.  Not only will we know it, we’ll feel it.  We’ll feel that love and grace of Jesus even if we’ve forgotten everything else.

So find a way to listen to some Christian music.  Sing along with it.  Make it part of you.  You’ll strengthen your faith.  And you’ll probably really enjoy it, too.

The Why

This is the message given in the United Methodist churches of the Wheatland Parish on Sunday morning, January 4, 2020.  The Bible verses used are Hebrews 2:10-18.

             On Christmas Eve we told the Christmas story.  And we should have, obviously.  But you know, sometimes, when we tell that story, we get a little too bogged down in the details.  And I’m as guilty of that as anyone.  But we love to hear about the Joseph and Mary being turned away from the inn and going out to the stable.  We love to sing about how Jesus was born there and was placed in a manger.  And then we love the part about the angels and the shepherds and the star and the wise men.

            And that’s all great.  I’m not criticizing it at all.  But the thing is that we sometimes focus too much on the “what” of the story.  What we don’t focus on enough, sometimes, is the “why”.  Why did God do this?  Why did God send Jesus, the divine Son, to earth in the first place?  Why, in short, is this story such a big deal to us?  That’s why, today, instead of reading about the wise men or about Jesus’ circumcision or about any of the other things that happened shortly after Jesus’ birth, we have a reading from the book of Hebrews.  

The book of Hebrews is really a remarkable book.  Someday we may do a sermon series just on the book of Hebrews, because there’s a lot of really good stuff in it.  We don’t actually know who wrote it.  Traditionally it was attributed to the Apostle Paul, and some sources still give him credit for it, but most scholars don’t think he actually wrote it.  We don’t know who did.  But whoever it was, was an excellent writer, because he or she could say an awful lot in just a few words.

Look at the first sentence of our reading for today.  “In bringing many sons and daughters to glory, it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through what he suffered.”

Let’s break that down.  “God, for whom and through whom everything exists”.  Think about that.  We talk a lot, as Christians about how everything was created by God.  But Hebrews does not just say that it is through God that everything was created.  It also says that everything was created for God.

In other words, all of creation exists for God.  It exists to give glory to God.  Everything.  The animals.  The birds.  The trees.  The rocks.  The snow.  The sky.  All of creation exists for the glory of God.  That’s why you’ll read things in the psalms like “The heavens are telling the glory of God and the firmament proclaims God’s handiwork.”  That’s in Psalm 19.  “Let the heavens be glad and let the earth rejoice; let the sea roar, and all that fills it; let the field exult and everything in it!  Then shall all the trees of the wood sing for joy before the Lord.”  That’s in Psalm 96.  We read something similar in Psalm 98, too.  And there are lots of other examples.  “God, for whom...everything exists.”  All of creation exists for the glory of God.

And that includes you.  And it includes me.  You and I exist for the glory of God.  And sometimes, we try to give glory to God.  And sometimes we even succeed.  But of course, you and I are fallen, broken, sinful people.  We may succeed in giving glory to God sometimes, but there are a lot of times when we fail.  As the Apostle Paul says in Romans Three, Twenty-three, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

So God’s goal, as the first phrase in our reading says, was to “bring many sons and daughters to glory.”  Now, in using that word many, I don’t think the writer was saying that God purposely wanted to exclude some.  I have no doubt that God would like to bring all human beings to glory.  But God knew that some people were going to reject him.  The only way to avoid that would be for God to take away our free will, to take away our ability to make our own choices, and God does not do that.  So, God knew that all human beings were not going to be brought to glory.  But God still wanted to bring, “many” to glory, as many as possible.

So, what was the best way, the “fitting” way, as our reading from Hebrews puts it, for God to do this?  It was to become one of us.  Jesus, “God the Son”, would become human.

And it’s important that we understand that.  Jesus was, in fact, fully human.  Yes, he was still the divine Son of God.  But he was also fully human.  As verse seventeen of our reading for today says, he was “made like them, fully human in every way.”  

There are a lot of things that means, but one of them is that when Jesus died on the cross, he truly did experience death.  Jesus truly died, just as you and I will die.  And that had to happen, because the purpose for Jesus coming was, as it also says in verse seventeen, to “make atonement for the sins of the people.”  Jesus, by dying on the cross, took the punishment that should go to us for our sins.

But there’s more to it than that.  I mean, that would be awesome enough, to have our sins forgiven by the death of Jesus, but there’s more to it than that.  Go back to verse eleven.  Listen to what it says.  “Both the one who makes people holy and those who are made holy are of the same family.  So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters.”

Think about that.  The one who makes people holy--Jesus--and those who are made holy--you and me, through our faith in Jesus--are of the same family.  Jesus is not ashamed to call us, you and me, brothers and sisters.

Is that not incredible?  By the life and death of Jesus Christ, you and I are on the same level as Jesus himself.  We are his brothers and sisters.  Jesus himself calls us that.  In verse twelve, Jesus is quoted as saying to God, “I will declare your name to my brothers and sisters.”  That’s you and me.  

You and I are Jesus’ brothers and sisters.  There’s no way we deserve that.  There’s no way we’re worthy of it.  I mean, you and I don’t belong in the same area code with Jesus Christ.  And yet, Jesus calls us his brothers and sisters.  Jesus, who was and is completely holy, makes us holy, too.  And it’s all because God, out of God’s tremendous, unbelievable love for us, wanted to bring us, you and me, to glory.

That’s the why.  That’s the point of the Christmas story.  That’s why Jesus came to earth as a human being.  He could not come as an angel because he did not come to save angels.  He could not come as a spirit because he did not come to save spirits.  Jesus came as a human being because he came to save human beings.

Listen to how the letter to the Hebrews sums it up:

For this reason he had to be made like them, fully human in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people.  Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.

This was such an incredible sacrifice Jesus made.  Think of it:  to give up his life in heaven.  To give up, even if temporarily, his part in the trinity.  To sacrifice all that, in order to save us.  And to come as someone who, as the letter to the Hebrews says, was fully human in every way.  To start out as a baby, completely helpless.  To be a toddler.  To have to learn how to walk and talk and use a spoon and learn all the things that little kids have to learn.  To grow, to change.  To go through being a young person, learning about the world.  To be a teenager, to be a young adult.  To learn a trade.  To learn how to find his place in society.  And then, eventually, to leave home, to leave his family, to leave the only life on earth he’d ever known, so that he could truly be the Savior that he was sent here to be.  And then, ultimately, to be killed, murdered, to take the punishment that should have gone to us for our sins.

That is love.  That is incredible love.  That’s a love beyond our ability to understand love.  And it’s the love God has for you and for me and for everyone.

The Christmas story is an awesome story.  But let’s not just think about the shepherds and the wise men and the baby in the manger.  Let’s go beyond the “what” of the Christmas story.  Let’s remember the “why”.  And let’s be grateful to God every single day of our lives for the incredible love that God has for us.

A Time to Rejoice

Recently I was reading in the Book of Deuteronomy.  Now, Deuteronomy is not exactly the most popular book of the Bible.  A lot of it is a recap of what happened in the four books of the Bible that came before it.  What’s not a recap is mostly a listing of Old Testament law.  Reading current law books isn’t exactly thrilling.  Reading Old Testament law can be even less interesting.

But I was reading it anyway, and I saw something that struck me.  I’m going to quote a bit of it, from Deuteronomy Chapter Sixteen.  See if you can figure out what it was that struck me about it:

Count off seven weeks from the time you begin to put the sickle to the standing grain. Then celebrate the Festival of Weeks to the Lord your God by giving a freewill offering in proportion to the blessings the Lord your God has given you. And rejoice before the Lord your God at the place he will choose as a dwelling for his Name—you, your sons and daughters, your male and female servants, the Levites in your towns, and the foreigners, the fatherless and the widows living among you.

Did you figure it out?  Well, here’s what it is.  Apparently, there was a specific time and place each year at which the people of Israel were supposed to rejoice before the Lord.

We don’t really think of “rejoicing” in that way, do we?  We think of rejoicing, of feeling joy, as something that needs to be spontaneous.  It has to come from the heart.  It has to be something we really feel.  But that’s not what the people of Israel were told.  They were told to plan their rejoicing.  They were told that it was to happen at a certain time and at a certain place.

I find that fascinating.  These laws, after all, came from God.  God was telling the people of Israel that every year, at a certain time, the people of Israel were supposed to plan their rejoicing.  They were supposed to come to a certain place at a certain time and rejoice.  There was nothing spontaneous about it.  God did not say “come and rejoice if you feel like it”.  God did not say “come and rejoice if you think you had a really good year”.  God said they were to come, and they were to rejoice.  Period.

Why would God do that?  Well, I don’t know God’s mind, but I can think of one reason.  What happens over and over again in the Old Testament?  God blesses the people of Israel.  The people of Israel prosper.  Then, the people of Israel take God’s blessings for granted.  They drift away from God.  God withdraws God’s blessings.  The people of Israel suffer.  They turn back to God and ask for forgiveness.  God forgives them and blesses them again.  And the cycle starts again.

I suspect one of the reasons the people of Israel were told to come together and rejoice was to try to break that cycle.  They were to take some time to really think about how God had blessed them over the past year.  It was an attempt to keep people from taking God for granted, and instead to be grateful for what God had done for them.  Even if it hadn’t been a perfect year--even if it hadn’t felt like a particularly good year--there were still things that God had done for them, ways that God had blessed them, and they were to take the time to think about it and be grateful for it.

That applies to us, too.  I don’t know how your year went.  For some of us it went better than for others of us.  Some of us had lots of good things happen.  Others of us suffered losses of various types.  For most of us, the year was a combination of good and bad, because that’s how life works.

But now, as we come to the end of the old year and the start of a new year, I encourage you to do what the people of Israel were told to do.  Rejoice!  Rejoice even if you don’t feel like it.  Rejoice even if you don’t think the year was all that good.  Because no matter how your year went, there are still things God did for you.  There are still ways God has blessed you.  After all, God does not owe it to us to do anything for us.  So anything positive that happened was a blessing from God.  Take time to think about those things, and be grateful for them.

That’s a good way to end the year.  It’s a good way to start the year, too.  No matter what’s going on in your life right now, think of ways God has blessed you.  Be grateful to God for that.  And rejoice!  God will appreciate it.  And I suspect you’ll feel better, too.

61*

Last Sunday was my birthday.  I am now sixty-one years old.

That’s hard for me to believe.  In my mind, I feel like I’m still fairly young.  Until, of course, I get around people who actually are young.  Then, I realize that things that don’t seem all that long ago to me happened before they were born.  

I wonder sometimes what I must look like to younger people.  I especially wonder what I must look like to the kids in my youth group.  I was just finally getting used to the fact that I was old enough to be their father.  Now, I’m old enough to be their grandfather.

Sixty-one.  Think of all the changes that have happened in the world since I was born.  Dwight Eisenhower was the president.  No one had heard of Vietnam.  There were only sixteen major league baseball teams.  The Dodgers had just played their first season in Los Angeles.  There was only one major league sports team in Minnesota, and it was the NBA’s Minneapolis Lakers.  People still used manual typewriters.  A telephone was something that was attached to the wall, and the receiver had a cord.  In fact, some people didn’t even have a dial--they still had party lines.  Television was mostly black and white, and around here you were lucky if you got three channels.  Space flight was still a far-fetched dream.  And I could go on and on and on.

Sixty-one years.  It’s a long time, in human terms.  In God’s terms, of course, it’s nothing at all.  The Bible tells us that to God, a thousand years are but a single day.  Sixty-one years to God is what?  A long lunch?

And the truth is, I don’t really wish I was younger.  I’m quite happy with who I am and where I am and what I’m doing.  I am fortunate to still have very good health--I have no serious problems, and don’t even have anything that hurts on a regular basis yet.  I was able to ride my bicycle ten miles or so regularly this summer and am able to use my exercise glider regularly this winter.  I still have a good energy level.  I’m able to do work that’s meaningful and that I enjoy.  I’m able to do that work in a place I love being in.  And I’m able to do that work with wonderful people who are great to work with.

When you get right down to it, there’s not a lot more you can ask out of life than that.  It’s like it says in the third chapter of Ecclesiastes:  to eat and drink and to find satisfaction in your work is a gift from God.  I am enjoying that gift, and will continue to enjoy it for as long as God gives it to me.

So, happy birthday to me!  I hope you had a wonderful and blessed Christmas, too.  And may we all have a Happy New Year.

Get Up and Do It!

This is the message given in the United Methodist churches of the Wheatland Parish on Sunday, December 22, 2019.  The Bible verses used are Matthew 1:18-25.

            Some of you may remember that several years ago we conducted a tournament to see who the favorite Bible character of the Wheatland Parish was.  Mary, Jesus’ earthly mother, won the tournament.  Joseph, Jesus’ earthly father, got knocked out a couple of rounds in.

            And that’s kind of the way we think of Mary and Joseph.  Mary gets all the publicity.  There’s way more in the Bible about Mary than there is about Joseph.  Joseph is around for the first couple of years of Jesus’ life, and then he’s never mentioned again.  Oh, there’s that story about Jesus at age twelve being left behind at the temple and his parents looking for him, but Joseph is not named in that story.  Mary is, but not Joseph.  

That’s really how the Bible tells the story.  Mary is the main parent of Jesus.  Joseph is just kind of an afterthought.  The gospel of Mark does not even mention him.  The gospel of John only makes a couple of references to “Jesus, the son of Joseph”.  

And here’s another thing.  When you read the story of Mary in the gospel of Luke, you get a lot of statements from Mary.  In fact, the gospel of Luke gives us an entire song from Mary.  You know how many quotes there are from Joseph in the Bible?  Zero.  None.  We are not given one sentence, one word, not even one syllable uttered by Joseph.  For all the Bible tells us, Joseph might never have said a word in his entire life.

But here’s the thing.  We may not know anything Joseph said.  But we know several things Joseph did.  And every time we’re told something Joseph did, Joseph obeyed God.  He did not hesitate.  He did not ask questions.  He simply did what the Lord told him to do.

Look at our reading for today.  Joseph finds out that Mary is going to have a child.  He’s not sure what he should do.  An angel appears to Joseph in a dream and tells him to go ahead and take Mary for his wife.  And we’re told, “When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife.”

Joseph heard from an angel a couple of other times.  When Herod is trying to have the young Jesus killed, an angel appears to Joseph in a dream again and tells him to take Mary and Jesus and go to Egypt.  And we’re told, “So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt.”

And when Herod died and it was okay for them to return, an angel again appears to Joseph in a dream and tells him to go back to Israel.  And we’re told, “So he got up, took the child and his mother and went to the land of Israel.”

We’re never told anything Joseph said.  We’re never told anything Joseph thought.  We’re never told anything Joseph felt.  But we are told what Joseph did.  And each time, what we’re told is that Joseph was obedient to God.

I have to think that there were times Joseph really did not want to do what the angel was telling him to do.  In fact, I suspect that after a while, Joseph really did not want to hear from the angel any more, because every time the angel appeared, it told Joseph to do something hard.  After all, it could not have been easy to take Mary for his wife.  Even assuming he loved Mary, there were still going to be all the questions, all the rumors, all the gossip about the two of them, with Mary getting pregnant before they were married.  

It could not have been easy to take Mary and Jesus and go to Egypt.  Think about it.  They were leaving behind everything they owned other than what they could carry.  And probably they had to carry Jesus himself a lot of the way—he’d have been at most a toddler at this time, maybe still a baby.  They were going to a foreign country, to a place where they probably did not know anyone.  They may not even have known the language.  Would they be accepted there?  What were they going to do there?  How would Joseph make enough money to take care of his family?  Where would they find a place to live?  This was quite a thing Joseph was told to do.  And he got up and did it.

And it could not have been easy to go back to Israel, either.  We’re not told how long they were in Egypt, but people think it may have been up to two years.  Think about that.  They’d probably gotten established in Egypt by that time.  Joseph may have even had a good business for himself as a carpenter.  And now, here they are, having to leave everything behind again.  Yes, they were going home, but it had been a long time since they’d been there.  Would they be accepted when they came home?  Would Joseph be able to re-establish his business?  Were they going to have to find a different place to live, again?  But again, Joseph did not let any of that stop him.  An angel of the Lord told him to do something, and he got up and did it.

Joseph did not know what was going to happen when he did all these things.  The angel did not tell him the future.  The angel does not say that after Jesus is born they’ll need to go to Egypt, and they’ll be there a couple of years, and then they’ll be able to come home again.  In fact, the angel does not give him any assurances at all.  The angel never says, “Don’t worry, God will protect you.”  The angel never says, “God will reward you for your faith.”  The angel never even says, “God will be with you wherever you go.”  The angel just tells Joseph, “Do this.”  And Joseph gets up and does it.

And when you think about it, what we get up and do is really the bottom line of our faith.  It’s not about what we say.  It’s not about what we think.  It’s not about what we feel.  It’s about what we do.  Faith is acting in obedience with what the Lord wants us to do.

Now don’t get me wrong.  Our words are important.  But if our actions don’t back up our words, our words are meaningless.  Our thoughts are important.  But if we don’t put our thoughts into actions, our thoughts are meaningless.  Our feelings are important.  But if our feelings are not translated into actions, our feelings are meaningless.

This is what the apostle James was getting at when he made the statement, which I’m sure many of you have heard, that faith without works is dead.  It’s important to have good thoughts and good feelings, but if we stop there, our thoughts and feelings are worthless.  They don’t do anyone any good.  Our thoughts and feelings are only worth something if they’re translated into actions.  Our faith itself is only worth something if it’s translated into action.

You’ve probably noticed that I often pray for God’s Holy Spirit to lead us and guide us and inspire us.  I believe that God wants to lead us, and guide us, and inspire us.  But God leading us won’t do any good if we don’t follow where God is leading us.  God guiding us won’t help if we don’t go the way God is guiding us to go.  God’s inspiration won’t change anything if we don’t follow up on what God has inspired us to do.

It’s not always easy.  It was not always easy for Joseph.  It’s not always easy for you and me, either.  It takes a lot of faith to truly put our lives in God’s hands.  It takes a lot of courage, sometimes, to do the tough things God sometimes asks us to do.  It takes a lot of trust to go wherever God wants us to go, to do whatever God wants us to do.  That’s especially true when as with Joseph—and often with us—we have no guarantee of what the outcome is going to be.

Joseph followed where God led him.  Joseph went the way God guided him.  And these were some incredibly important things God was leading Joseph to do.  Think about it.  The Bible does not tell us anything about Joseph’s background.  I mean, it tells us his genealogy, but it does not tell us if he was old or young, rich or poor, intelligent or average.  But there’s no indication that Joseph was anyone special or powerful or important.  As far as we can tell, Joseph was a fairly common, ordinary man.  And here he was, this common, ordinary man, trying to protect his family.  Protecting the life of the Savior of the world!  And who was he protecting them from?  Common, ordinary Joseph, this one guy, is protecting his family from King Herod!  A powerful king with a big army who would’ve had Joseph killed without even thinking twice about it.

The Bible appears to treat Joseph as an afterthought.  But if you think about what Joseph did, you can see that he was not an afterthought at all.  God chose Joseph to be the earthly father of Jesus.  God put every bit as much thought and care into the selection of Joseph as God did with the selection of Mary.  The obedience of Joseph, the faith of Joseph, were incredibly important in the story of Jesus.  Joseph’s faith, expressed through his actions, is every bit as amazing as the faith of Mary.

There are things that God wants you to do.  And there are things God wants me to do, too.  We may not always know what they are, but a lot of times, we do.  We probably don’t know our entire future, just as Joseph did not know his entire future.  But a lot of times, we do know what the next step is that God wants us to take.  The question is what our response would be.

Once Joseph found out the next step, he got up and did what God wanted him to do.  May we have the faith, and the courage, and the trust, that Joseph had.  May we be obedient to God.  May we see what God wants us to do, and may we get up and do it.

Joseph and Mary: The One Thing We Know

It’s less than a week to Christmas as I write this.  As I think about the Christmas story as given to us in the Bible, it’s always remarkable to me how little we know about Joseph and Mary, and how even some of the things we think we do know are not actually in the Bible.  There seems to be somewhat of a mythology that’s grown up around Joseph and Mary, as if we have a need to fill in the gaps somehow and get a fuller picture of who they were.  In doing so, though, we run the risk of making them who we want them to be rather than who they really were.

For example, you’ll hear it stated as a fact that Mary was very young, a teenager, maybe a young teenager.  That could be, but the Bible doesn’t tell us so.  The Bible says nothing about Mary’s age.  It says nothing about Joseph’s age, either--you’ll hear people say that he was older than Mary, but the Bible does not tell us that, either.  We know nothing about how old either of them were.

You’ll also hear it stated as a fact that Mary and Joseph were poor.  Maybe they were, but again, the Bible does not say so.  The Bible says nothing about their economic status.  They were not out in the stable because they were poor and could not afford a room.  They were there because the small town of Bethlehem was overcrowded due to the census and there were no rooms available.  We know Joseph had a trade--he was a carpenter.  Maybe he made a good living.  Now, had they been rich, they might have been able to offer an innkeeper enough money to kick someone else out and let them have a room instead.  But maybe not--maybe Joseph and Mary were not the sort of people who’d kick someone else out into the cold so they could be comfortable.  We simply don’t know.

There are lots of other things about them we don’t know.  We don’t know if they had siblings.  We don’t know how they were regarded in the community.  We don’t know if they were short or tall, good-looking or plain.  There’s really only one thing we do know about them.  We know that they were people of great faith.  They believed in God.  They trusted God.  And they would do what God wanted them to do.

I suspect that’s the only thing the Bible tells us about Joseph and Mary because that’s the main thing we need to know.  That’s the reason God chose them.  God knew He was asking them to do some really hard things.  Some things that, in human terms, were impossible.  God knew that it would take people of tremendous faith to do those things.  That’s why Joseph and Mary were chosen.  They were not chosen for their age, the economic status, their reputations, their looks, or anything else.  They were chosen because of their incredible faith.

That faith is an example to us.  You and I are called to have that kind of faith.  We’re not likely to be called to do the things that Joseph and Mary did, but we are likely to be called to do some hard things.  Some of you have already had to do hard things, maybe many hard things.  Some of you are doing hard things now.  And some of you will have still more hard things in your future.  So the question is, can we have enough faith to do those hard things.  Can we trust God that much?  Can we trust God enough to face hard things, and follow through with them, even when we don’t want to, even when we don’t understand, even when we don’t know what’s happening or what the outcome can be?  Can we trust God that much?

As we approach Christmas, let’s remember the faith of Joseph and Mary.  And let’s ask God to help us have that kind of faith.  

Endurance and Hope

This is the message given in the Gettysburg United Methodist church on Sunday night, December 8, 2019.  The Bible verses used are Romans 15:4-13.

            Hope.  The expectation and desire that something will happen.  But not just anything.  Something good.  Something we really want.  Hope is a belief that things are going to get better.  No matter how things may look now, even when it seems like things have hit rock bottom, hope is a belief that somehow, in some way, things will get better again.

            Hope is an important part of Christmas.  When we’re little kids, we hope we’ll get the toy or the game we want.  As we get older, we hope for time with family and friends.  Sometimes, we hope for a few days to just relax and rest and not have to do much of anything.

            Hope is very important to our Christian faith as well.  In fact, in First Corinthians we read that hope is one of the three most important things, along with faith and love, that God has given us.  We sometimes refer to Advent and Christmas as a season of hope.  And in fact, we sometimes refer to God as a God of hope.  Hope is very important to us in our lives and in our faith.

            But the Apostle Paul, in his letter to the Romans, does not refer to God as a God of hope.  Hope is involved with God, certainly.  But listen to how Paul describes God.  He describes God as a God of endurance and encouragement.

            Endurance and encouragement.  That’s how we get hope, according to Paul.  He tells us that everything that was written in the past, all the words of the prophets, all the words of the law, everything that appears in the scriptures, was written to teach us.  And it was written to teach us endurance.

            Do you ever think of the Bible that way?  Do you ever think of God’s Word as having been written to teach us endurance?  That’s what Paul says.

            But when you think about it, it does kind of make sense.  Because endurance is one of the things that helps us keep our faith.  We could not have faith if it was not for endurance.

            Because the truth is that life throws a lot of hard things at us.  You don’t need me to tell you that.  Everyone here has experienced plenty of hard things.  Things that discourage us.  Things that knock us down.  And it can happen in all kinds of ways.  It can be material setbacks.  It can be health setbacks.  It can be things that damage our reputation.  It can be things that cause us to lose friends and feel alone.  Sometimes it might be our own fault, but sometimes it’s not.  You know, they say everything happens for a reason, and maybe that’s so, but there are plenty of things that happen that I’ll be darned if I can figure out what the reason might be.  And I suspect that’s true for you sometimes, too.

            And when those things happen, we make a decision.  We either continue to believe, we continue to have faith, or we don’t.  And that’s why the Bible was written to teach us endurance.  It was written to give us examples to follow.  It was written to give us guidelines and rules to live by.  And it was written to show us and tell us that, no matter how bad things get, God will always be there.  And God will, eventually, make things get better.  If we did not have those examples, if we did not have those guidelines, if we did not have those rules, if we all we had to rely on was ourselves and our own ability to hang on to faith, we’d never make it.  It’s those examples and guidelines and rules that were set down in the Bible that give us the ability to hold on through those tough times.  The Bible was, indeed, written to teach us endurance.

            Paul says it’s the encouragement that those passages provide that gives us that hope.  Think about all the people, all the great heroes in the Bible, who had times when things went against them.  Joseph--the Old Testament Joseph--was sold into slavery in a foreign country.  Job loses everything for no apparent reason.  Daniel was thrown into a den of lions just for worshiping God.  Jesus himself was killed even though he had done nothing wrong.  

But God never left them.  God stayed with them, and God saw them through their bad times.  Joseph eventually became the number two man to the great Pharaoh and saved his people from starvation.  Job kept his faith and got everything back and more besides.  Daniel not only survived the lions’ den but was able to bring many people to faith.  And of course, Jesus rose again, conquering death itself.  All those people, and many others, endured.  They kept their faith no matter how bad things got.  Their endurance teaches us to endure.  Their endurance encourages us to stay strong in our faith in bad times, too.  And that encouragement gives us hope, again, that things are going to get better if we just stay faithful to God.

But is that all we get?  Just this vague hope that somehow, sometime, in some way, things are going to get better if we just stay faithful to God?

No.  We get more than that.  Because remember what we said hope is at the start of this message.  It’s not just some vague wish.  It’s an expectation.  It’s confidence.  It’s trust.  We trust that our faith in God will be rewarded.  We are confident of that.  We expect that.  We don’t just wish that things will get better.  We know things will get better.  We know that because we know we can trust God.

Now, as we’ve said before, that does not mean we’ll get everything we want.  Things will get better, but maybe not in the way we wanted or expected.  In fact, it’s my experience that God quite often acts in ways that never even would have occurred to us.  But of course, God’s ways are always better than our ways.  And sometimes I think that God enjoys surprising us, making things work out for the best, but in a totally different way than we ever would have thought of.

And as we’ve also said before, we don’t know when things are going to happen.  That’s another way endurance comes into this.  We’d love it if God worked on our time schedule, but of course God never does.  But again, God’s time is always better than our timing.  And again, I think God enjoys surprising us, making things happen at a time we were not expecting.

But what we get from this endurance and encouragement is more than just hope.  If, because of that endurance and encouragement, we really do trust God, what happens?  Paul says it this way:  “The God of hope [will] fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in Him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”

What an awesome thing!  If you and I trust God, if we truly trust God, we will be filled with joy and peace.  If you and I trust God, if we truly trust God, we will overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

It’s not always easy to have that much trust in God.  But again, that’s why the Bible was written.  We have all these examples of people who held on to their trust in God, even when it was not easy.  All these examples of people who endured in the faith, and whose endurance was ultimately rewarded.  We’re shown that endurance to encourage us in our faith.

But we have other examples, too.  I suspect we all know people who had or have a strong faith, who held onto that faith no matter how many times life knocked them down.  Their endurance is an example to us as well.  And that endurance can encourage us in our faith.

But we also have the example of our own lives.  As I said earlier, I know that everyone here has gone through some hard things in your lives.  Think about the times that those things happened, and yet you remained strong in your faith.  Think about the times you endured, despite everything.

What happened as a result?  How did things work out?  In some case, of course, things have not worked out yet.  You’re still waiting to see how things are going to work out.  But the things that have worked out, what happened?  Do you feel like it was worth it?  Do you feel like your endurance was rewarded?

I suspect the answer is yes, or you would not be here.  And the result of that endurance can give you encouragement that it will happen again.  Whatever it is that you’re still waiting to see how it works out, be encouraged.  Know that God has been there for you before.  And let that knowledge encourage you to know that God is there for you now, too, and will see you through whatever you’re going through.

The endurance taught in the Scriptures, in the lives of people we know, and in our own lives gives us encouragement.  That encouragement gives us hope.  May that hope fill us with the joy and peace that comes with trusting God, not just at Christmas time, but all the time.