The Curse of Complacency

I’ve been thinking about how things go from bad to worse. Not really thinking about how that’s true . . . but more thinking about the how it happens. The mechanism, the process by which things go from a bad situation into a very, very bad situation.
This is actually the theme to one of my favorite books. Chinua Achebe, an African author, wrote a classic of modern literature called Things Fall Apart. It’s the story of an African tribal leader by the name of Okwonko who rose from poverty to a position of great standing in his tribe. Okwonko has great wealth, he has great power, but then tragic circumstances force him to be exiled from his village for seven years. And while he is gone, things begin to fall apart. White men move into the area, and with them they bring their culture . . . their law . . . their religion. The strong African culture is changed, bit by bit, until the point when Okwonko is finally able to return that he can barely recognize it. Okwonko strives to return to the life of wealth and influence that he once knew, he tries to get back to the way things used to be, but the forces at work are so strong and so subtle that he is unable to overcome them. The story ends with Okwonko’s dreams and life collapsing around him . . . and his spirit is broken. He is powerless against the forces that seemingly conspire against him . . . the forces that cause things to fall apart, the forces that cause things to go from bad to worse.
What I’ve come to realize is that the reason things fall apart has little to do with mere circumstances, but it has everything to do with attitude and action. Things fall apart because of complacency. When people get complacent, things go from bad to worse. People settle into a routine, they think that things are good enough where they stand right now, and they get complacent. Sometimes they think that things will always be the way they are currently, so they get complacent, and things start to fall apart.
I think that you know what I mean by complacent. When people get complacent they get a little soft, a little too comfortable. They lose that edge that they used to have, the driving force that used to propel them forward. They sit back on their accomplishments and expect the past to carry them into the future.
We’ve all seen people get complacent. The Republicans will hold office for a while and then forget that they have to keep working on it, so the Democrats take over . . . only to have the same thing happen to them a few years later. Or take a guy who’s never had much money, so he watches where every single penny goes. Scrimps by for years . . . and then one day hits big with the lottery. Suddenly the guy who’s never had two nickels to rub together is the proud owner of 100 million dollars, and he gets complacent. Doesn’t watch where his money goes, because he figures he doesn’t have to any more. And you know what happens to him? A few years later the money’s gone and he’s in worse shape than he was to begin with. Or how about this: when people get complacent, a little ol’ team called Appalachian State comes along and whups your rear end for you! Complacent people forget that the other team didn’t show up to get beat, but to play . . . and play hard.
Which is what makes spiritual complacency such a scary thing! People who get spiritually complacent forget that the other team came to play hardball. They think they’re tight with God, so they don’t take spiritual things as seriously as they did just a few months ago. Sleeping in on Sunday suddenly becomes more important than it used to be. Sunday morning Bible study gets put on the back burner. Prayer grinds to a halt. But since the other team is still playing hard, the complacent folks are hearing and believing the lie that they’re still spiritually okay. Sure, they might have missed a Sunday or two (well, let’s call it eight, but who’s counting?), but in the end they’re still pretty good, right?
This is the problem that the ancient Israelites had in our Old Testament reading for today. They had it so good that they got complacent in their relationship with God.
Last week we talked about the rich exploiting the poor. The reason for that was because in Amos’ day the Israelites had a thriving economy. They were fat and happy. But their financial success had made them so spiritually complacent that they couldn’t see what was happening around them. They couldn’t see that they were living in a spiritual wasteland. Amos says in Amos 6:4-6, “4 You lie on beds inlaid with ivory and lounge on your couches. You dine on choice lambs and fattened calves. 5 You strum away on your harps like David and improvise on musical instruments. 6 You drink wine by the bowlful and use the finest lotions, but you do not grieve over the ruin of Joseph”
The country was going to pot before their very eyes, but they couldn’t see it! The poor were languishing in the streets, unable to even buy bread! Worship at the temple of Holy God –instead of being the focal point of their lives, the very thing that their entire lives revolved around—had become something they did when they felt like it. They should have been grieving and mourning over the spiritual death that surrounded them on every side! But instead, they tended to have the attitude that everything was okay. “We’re happy, we’re wealthy, we’ve got a good life . . . heck, we’re God’s chosen people, what could happen to us?”
What could happen? They could forget that they were in a covenant with God. A covenant in which God said, “Honor Me above all else. Follow my decrees. Be about My business.” The covenant clearly stated that if they honored God by following Him, they would enjoy a life of prosperity and peace. They had prosperity, they had peace . . . but they forgot the God who gave it. And so God—in His mercy—took it all away from them. “You will be the first to go into exile,” He promised . . . and they were.
In 606 B.C. Jerusalem was overthrown. And the Scriptures record in 2 Kings 24:13-14, “13 As the LORD had declared, Nebuchadnezzar removed all the treasures from the temple of the LORD and from the royal palace, and took away all the gold articles that Solomon king of Israel had made for the temple of the LORD. 14 He carried into exile all Jerusalem: all the officers and fighting men, and all the craftsmen and artisans-- a total of ten thousand. Only the poorest people of the land were left.” The people had sinned the sin of complacency . . . and God kept His word. Only the poor—the people who couldn’t afford to be complacent—were left.
You might be thinking, “Well, I’ll never get complacent! That will never happen to me!” But complacency isn’t something that happens all at once; it sneaks up on you over time. You have to actively fight complacency. You have to be constantly vigilant.
The Apostle Peter warns us in 1 Peter 5:8, “8 Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.” On the surface, that sounds pretty easy to avoid, because it sounds pretty easy to spot. After all, all we have to do is be on the lookout for a ravenous beast named Satan. Once you see him, you avoid him.
But it’s not quite that easy. If it were, none of us would be spiritually complacent. You might feel like you’re not complacent.
You know how a lion eats an elephant? One bite at a time.
That’s how Satan works on you. It’s how he devours you. One . . . little . . . bite . . . at a time. He doesn’t pull us away from God all at once. That would be too obvious. I like to point out that our spiritual lives are like a compass. When we’re in tune with God, we’re facing true north. But then Satan comes in and sneaks us a little lie. Just a little lie. It still sounds like the truth, and if you’re feeling a bit complacent you’ll believe it and get taken just a few degrees off true north. Then another little lie and you’re still feeling pretty good, and now you’re a few more degrees off. And another lie. And some more complacency. And another lie. And another. And before you know it, in your complacency you’ve allowed Satan to turn you 180 degrees away from God!
One bite at a time. That’s all it takes. And if you’re not vigilant, if you’re not keeping one eye open all the time, if you’re not self-controlled and alert to the Enemy’s schemes, you’re going to get devoured . . . because you’ve allowed yourself to become spiritually complacent. The opposite of spiritual complacency is being spiritually vigilant.
Helen Hanna—a lot of you know her—has a little cross-stitched saying on her wall, and it says something to the effect of, “If you don’t feel close to God anymore . . . guess who moved?” Guess who moved? God didn’t. You got complacent . . . and so you moved. You moved away from God.
Let’s be honest, now . . . how many of us have failed to be vigilant . . . have gotten complacent. How many of us have moved? How many of us have felt far away from God?

Ephesians 2:12-13, “remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. 13 But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ.”
We don’t need to feel far away from God. But the answer isn’t in doing more, in working harder . . . but in looking. The answer isn’t in what we can do, but in what He has done. The answer to spiritual complacency is in looking to the cross, because there we see the thing that has taken us from complacent people who are far away to redeemed people who have been brought near: the blood of Jesus Christ.
The blood of Jesus Christ keeps us near to God even when we feel far away! We get complacent, we start to move away from God, and the blood of Christ steps in and says, “No, that’s not you . . . you’re not far away. I’ve brought you close.” The blood of Christ stands as the eternal witness to the world, to the roaring lion, and to our complacency that we are close to God.
Things fall apart, they go from bad to worse because in our complacency we allow ourselves to be deceived, to turn away from God. But even when we are spiritually complacent, the blood of Christ is vigilant . . . bringing us to repentance . . . bringing us to the cross . . . bringing us back close to God.

“I will never forget anything they have done.”

Good morning. I want to talk about something today that I’ve kind of understood for some time now, but have never really had to put it into words. This is kind of uncharted territory for me. Frankly, this is a sermon that I’ve really had to struggle with. Martin Luther used to use a profound Latin phrase, “Oratio, meditation, tentatio faciunt theologum.” Translated, it means, “Prayer, meditation, and struggle make one a theologian.” By that he means that the more a pastor prays over the text, the more he meditates over the text, and the more he agonizes over the meaning and application of the text, the more a pastor really wrestles with the text, the more the theology of God sinks deep, deep into the fiber of his being. That’s true for me, and it’s true for you. Prayer, meditation, and struggle make us theologians.
It’s that struggling part that’s really gotten a hold of me this week. I’ve wrestled with this text, questioning every possible angle I thought I might take on preaching it. It’s been the sort of thing that has caused me to question so many things that I’ve previously taken for granted. It’s not been easy! But I hope and pray that my struggles may result in good fruit for you, something for you to take home and ponder over. Something to sink deep, deep into the fiber of your being.
I guess part of my struggle with developing this sermon is because I’ve had to refine my understanding of what God truly cares about. I mean, the things He’s truly passionate over . . . the things that just get His heart racing. The things that are immensely pleasing to Him and the things that just make Him furious.
What’s the number one thing that God is just incredibly passionate about? It’s about people getting saved, right? It’s about the Gospel. And for the longest time I just kind of naively assumed that if the Gospel was getting out there, that if people were getting saved, then no matter what else happened God was cool with that. I guess that I just kind of assumed that if the Gospel was the thing that God cared about the most, the thing that topped His list, then that’s the only thing we really needed to be worried about. But I was wrong.
Now, it’s still true that God’s first and foremost concern is about getting people saved through the work of Jesus Christ. But just because that’s His biggest concern it doesn’t mean it’s His only concern. He’s also concerned about justice . . . about fair play. He’s concerned about the poor.
You can hear God’s heart, His passion, His driving concern for the poor of the land in these words from the Old Testament reading: Amos 8:4-7, “4 Hear this, you who trample the needy and do away with the poor of the land, 5 saying, "When will the New Moon be over that we may sell grain, and the Sabbath be ended that we may market wheat?"-- skimping the measure, boosting the price and cheating with dishonest scales, 6 buying the poor with silver and the needy for a pair of sandals, selling even the sweepings with the wheat.”
The rich were getting richer and the poor were getting poorer. And it wasn’t just due to circumstances, but it was because the rich were getting richer by exploiting the poor. Everything they could do to put a little more back into their own pockets, that’s what they were doing. Scales that measured out just a little bit less than they said they did. Prices that were inflated because they knew people couldn’t get their goods anywhere else. Shoddy products: mixing the dry husk—the useless chaff—back in with the good wheat. Treating people like cattle . . . no, not like cattle . . . like property, like things. Lowering the value of human beings to the cost of a cheap pair of cruddy sandals.
This is what they were doing. Why? Because they thought they could get away with it. Because greed had taken over their lives. Because they thought that all God really cared about was their sacrifice at the Temple and their offerings that they made. They had remade God in their own image, but they forgot that God isn’t like us. They forgot that He doesn’t care about things at all, but what He truly cares about is people. They forgot that God wants us to use things and love people . . . and instead they loved things and used people.
And this using of people, this trampling of the poor and needy, this infuriates God so much that He says something so harsh that I can’t find the equivalent of it anywhere else in Scripture. This God that is a God of love and mercy and grace and second chances is so offended by the way that the rich are treating the poor that He swears—God swears—“I will never forget anything they have done.”

Now why is this so troubling? I mean, it’s not as though we’re an incredibly wealthy congregation. If anything we probably lean a little more towards the “poor” side of the spectrum. We’re mostly working class folks, and if anyone’s getting exploited around here it’s us. Corporate America exploits the working class. We’re the ones who deserve a break, right?
That’s what I used to think . . . until one day that I ate a chocolate bar.
Now in my house we love chocolate! When someone’s feeling down or they get a scraped knee, what do I say? “Chocolate fixes everything.” I love chocolate so much that I scoured the internet to figure out how to eat more of it and still be healthy. And I found out that the darker the chocolate the better it is for your brain. But if you don’t like the dark chocolate I also found out that the regular milk chocolate can also be good for you, too! You just have to take your chocolate bar and break it in half and shake all the calories out. Or if you don’t want to do that, all you have to do is put your chocolate on top of the refrigerator. Calories don’t like height, so they’ll jump off before your chocolate bar gets up there. In our house we strictly adhere to the two main food groups: chocolate and cheesecake . . . and if you put them both together you’ve got a complete meal!
But did you know that according to Lutheran World Relief that ninety percent—ninety percent—of the world’s cocoa is grown by families. Families that own small farms of twelve acres or less. West African countries in particular are critically dependent on cocoa for money.
And these families that grow cocoa for my chocolate bar don’t sell directly to Hershey. Instead, they are often forced to sell to a middleman who makes the real money. The farmers oftentimes have to sell their crops for less than it cost to produce them. If they make a profit at all it will be minimal. And somehow they still have to feed their families on next to no money at all.
The result is that these families live in poverty. As a matter of fact, in a recent sermon by pastor Rob Bell he reported that eighty percent of the people of the world live in sub-standard housing. Half of all the people in the world live on less than two dollars per day. 1 billion children live in poverty. And one billion people don’t have decent drinking water. In West Africa the prices for the cocoa crops are so low that it has resulted in severe poverty and even child slavery . . . all so that I can enjoy a chocolate bar for less than a dollar. Add in a soda with that and I’ve just spent more on a snack than half the people in the world have to live on every day.
Suddenly chocolate doesn’t taste so good. It tastes like starving children. It tastes like exploitation.
And this isn’t just true of chocolate, but of coffee and crafts and a thousand other things! Everywhere we go we are faced with choices of where to spend our money, and the fact is that very often the money you and I spend is on little comforts that come from the back-breaking toil and exploitation of the poor. We get richer . . . they get poorer . . . and God swears, “I will never forget what you have done.”
Amos prophesied against the ancient Israelites for their contemptible treatment of the poor. He spoke against them, and I think it’s more than fair to say that he speaks against us. God cares about the poor . . . He is passionate about the people of the world who live in poverty. And all too often we fail to use the blessings He gives us to bring them out of poverty.
The Old Testament prophets frequently use judicial language to describe the distance sin caused between God and His people. The message was clear: Israel had broken God’s covenant. They had failed to do what God commanded; they had failed to worship Him and Him alone. They had failed to speak on behalf of those who could not speak for themselves: the widow . . . the orphan . . . the poor. Israel had broken God’s covenant, and so God divorced Himself from them. In His anger, they were ripped from their homes in the Promised Land and cast from His presence into exile. No longer were they His people.
No one could deny God that right . . . because He was absolutely justified in His actions. They deserved it and, in many ways, should have expected God’s justice. But what they didn’t expect was God’s mercy.
As the book of Amos closes we hear something amazing. After the destruction of Israel that was brought about by their own sin, the Lord says in Amos 9:13-15, “13 "The days are coming," declares the LORD, "when the reaper will be overtaken by the plowman and the planter by the one treading grapes. New wine will drip from the mountains and flow from all the hills. 14 I will bring back my exiled people Israel; they will rebuild the ruined cities and live in them. They will plant vineyards and drink their wine; they will make gardens and eat their fruit. 15 I will plant Israel in their own land, never again to be uprooted from the land I have given them," says the LORD your God.”
Did you hear those amazing words? They came right at the end . . . “the Lord your God.” He’s still their God. In spite of their sin . . . He’s still their God. He’s still the God of mercy . . . of love . . . and of second chances. And God does not change.
God doesn’t change! That means despite our sin, He’s still our God, as well! He looks at us and knows that we’re just as guilty as Israel, and yet He says, “I’m going to go the cross and bring you back from exile . . . I’m going to rebuild your lives and make you whole once again. I’m going to redeem you . . . because I am your God . . . and you are my people.” Jesus Christ is our God, and His blood gives us forgiveness . . . even when we’ve eaten a chocolate bar.
And in this forgiveness that Jesus offers us, He also guides into a new life! He gives us the power to leave our old lives behind. He gives us new eyes to see things as He sees them! He opens our eyes to the needs of the poor and He gives us hearts of compassion and hands that willingly work not only to bring justice and equity back into the world, but to carry His offer of salvation to those who are not only poor in life, but poor in spirit.
Proverbs 14:31 says, “He who oppresses the poor shows contempt for their Maker, but whoever is kind to the needy honors God.” You and I live in a state of unprecedented wealth. God has seen fit to bless us with wealth that is unimaginable to half of the world. Not only do we have physical blessings that others do not have, but we also have the spiritual blessing of forgiveness and eternal life in Christ. He has blessed us beyond imagination, and in that blessing He grants that we may use our wealth to honor God by showing kindness to the needy.

A Balancing Act

Both the Law and the Gospel must be kept in balance for us to be spiritually healthy.

Remember when playgrounds still had teeter-totters? You know, when you had one big board that sat on a center pivot point, and you’d get on one side and your best friend would get on the other? You’d push up and they’d go down. They’d hit bottom and then push up, and you’d go down. Up, down, up down. Lot of fun, right?
But what was the most fun on a teeter-totter? When you got down to the bottom and stayed there, right? And your friend is there, hanging in mid-air, little legs kicking. And you’d look right at them and their eyes would get all big and round, because they knew what you were about to do . . . and they’d say, “Don’t you do it!” and you’d say, “Oh, I’m gonna do it!” And they’d say, “Don’t do it!” and you’d say, “Oh, I’m gonna do it!” And then suddenly you’d jump off and they’d rocket to the ground, crashing their rear end down on that board when it hit. Probably breaking their tailbone . . . oh yeah, good times . . . goooood times. Teeter-totters were fun!
Well, I take that back. Teeter-totters need balance to work properly. And while it was fun as long as you were the one causing the imbalance, it wasn’t fun at all when someone else did it to you! Then it wasn’t fair!
See, I never thought that it would be possible to learn an important spiritual lesson from a teeter-totter, but I did. And the lesson is this: if you don’t want to get hurt, balance is important.
We meet people all the time whose lives seem out of balance. It’s pretty easy to tell. I met a guy once who bought his dream car: a tricked-out Corvette. Wouldn’t even park normally; the car was so valuable that he was one of those guys who always ate up four parking spots just so no one else could park near his precious Corvette and scratch it all up. He had this great car, but he couldn’t afford anything else. Not rent. Not heat. Not food. His life was out of balance.
Or maybe you know someone who spends all their time on one particular passion of theirs. Could be a hobby or maybe even a worthwhile cause. But they spend so much time on that one thing that they don’t have time for relationships anymore. No friends, no family . . . just that one, all-consuming passion of theirs. Their lives are out of balance.
Now that’s sad to see, isn’t it? We just want to grab them and tell them, “Look, I understand where you’re coming from and all . . . but you’ve got to get some balance back in your life!” It’s hard to see a person with their life out of balance.
But as sad as it is when a person’s physical life is out of balance, it’s especially bad when a person’s spiritual life is out of balance. As Lutherans we often talk about two spiritual concepts that are equally important; two concepts that need to be kept in balance. Those concepts are called Law and Gospel, and they need to be kept in balance. If we get too far to one side or the other we’re missing something. We’ve upset the balance, and we’re going to be spiritually hurt.
This is what the Apostle Paul is trying to tell Timothy in the opening verses in our reading from I Timothy. Timothy is pastoring a church in the city of Ephesus, and there were apparently some supposed teachers there who were getting the message out of balance. From the reading, it sounds like what they were doing was preaching all Gospel and no Law.
We use the words “the Law” as a spiritual shorthand that basically means, “God’s commands.” The Law is what He has set down as being His requirements upon people. It’s His will for mankind. If you think of the Ten Commandments you’re pretty much on track. The Law of God are those things in which God looks to us and says, “This is what I expect of you.”
Now a lot of times we might be tempted to think of the Law in a negative fashion; a bunch of “thou shalt not” rules. Lines that we’re not supposed to cross. Things about which God says, “Do not do this!” But Paul says that the Law is good, if it’s used properly. How is this so?
The Scriptures show that the Law has three uses: three ways in which God uses His rules and expectations in our lives. The first is general: the Law restrains sin in the world. Now that’s good, isn’t it? I often like to say that a world in which everybody understands “Thou shalt not kill” is a pretty good place. That’s good, but it’s not what Paul’s talking about. He’s talking about the second use of the Law.
The second use of the Law is like this: it’s a mirror. This particular mirror was left in the church after Dale and Erin’s wedding. I’ve been wondering why that was . . . but now I understand! It was left here so that I can use it in a sermon illustration!
A little over a week ago a young bride used this mirror to make sure that she was beautiful for her wedding day. Every imperfection was looked at closely in this mirror, and it was covered up or fixed.
But what if the imperfections that show up in this mirror are so deep . . . so horrifying . . . that they can’t be fixed? What if this was like the magic mirror from Snow White? The wicked queen looks into the mirror and says, “Mirror, mirror, on the wall . . . who is the most beautiful of all?” She expects the mirror to say, “You are, of course.” But the mirror tells her the truth: she’s not the most beautiful. She’s flawed. She’s imperfect. There’s a new standard by which the queen is now being judged . . . and she doesn’t measure up.
In the second use of the Law God holds up a mirror to our lives. Here God shows His demands for us and the Law clearly reveals that we don’t live up to it. We haven’t kept the Law completely, and so we’re lawbreakers. We’re sinners. We can look in this mirror and feel pretty good about ourselves . . . but when we look in the mirror of the Law we can only come to the conclusion that the only thing we are worthy of is God’s condemnation.
The mirror of the Law is a mirror of death. It shows us for what we truly are, and we can’t escape its awful truth. It’s hard to look at a mirror like that . . . but it is necessary.
It’s necessary because until you take a long, hard look into that mirror you can never realize—and thus never believe in—the wondrous beauty of the Gospel. What the Law kills, the Gospel makes alive. What the Law condemns, the Gospel forgives. When the Law says, “Guilty!” . . . the Gospel pronounces “Forgiven.”
See, that’s what the Gospel of Jesus Christ does. Through His death on the cross, Jesus Christ won forgiveness and redemption for any who would believe and trust in that Gospel. It is beautiful not because it denies the claims of the Law—the claims that says, “sinner!”—but because it affirms that claim. Jesus Christ looks at each of us, knowing the full extent of our sin, and yet He says, “I give my life for you.” He does not love us because we are beautiful, but instead we are beautiful because He loves us.
This is the beautiful truth that the so-called teachers in Ephesus were trying to subvert! They were trying to do away with the Law, saying that the believer had no use for the Law, because the grace of Jesus Christ had been applied to them! But if you take away the Law . . . if you take away the mirror . . . then you can no longer see the cross. The old rugged cross loses its beauty . . . it’s majesty . . . and it becomes just another tragic death of a good teacher instead of the final triumph of the Son of God over sin, death, and the devil.
How does this play out for you in your life? Have you been shying away from calling a sin what it clearly is: a sin? You can say anything you like . . . you might say, “Well, this is just the way I am.” Or maybe, “You just don’t understand what I’ve been through . . . if you’d understand that, then you’d understand why I act the way I do.” Or even—and this is my favorite—“I believe God understands.” You can say any of that, and it still won’t change the fact that the mirror of God’s Law shows sin in your life. You’re not fooling God . . . you’re probably not even fooling any of the rest of us . . . the only one you’re fooling is yourself. And that’s tragic . . . because by saying you have no sin is saying that God—and His Law—is a liar. By hiding from God’s mirror you’ve also hidden from His cross, and the cross is the only place where you can really get rid of your sin.
When I was little there was one time when I spilled a glass of milk on the kitchen floor. No one saw me do it, so I tried to cover it up. I grabbed a rug that was in the kitchen and threw it over the spilled milk and walked away, secure in my knowledge that my spill was hidden away.
But after some time went by, do you know what began to happen? The milk soaked into the rug and stained it. The milk went sour. It stank up the kitchen. And when someone finally pulled the rug up, peeling it up off of the floor that it had gotten stuck to, they got a big whiff of the sour stink of what I thought had been hidden away.
Hiding from the mirror of the Law doesn’t remove your sin . . . it just lets it fester and rot until the stink of it permeates everything else in your life. There is no balance of Law and Gospel in your life, because you have cast away the Law . . . but in the process you’ve also hidden away the Gospel . . . and you’re going to be spiritually hurt.
Instead of letting that happen, why not just learn to look honestly into the mirror? But not in an imbalanced way; looking only at the Law. Instead, learn to look at it this way: through the cross. Look at the mirror: do you still see yourself? Is your sin still there? Yes, of course . . . but what stands in front of it? The cross.
This is where we find balance between Law and Gospel: the cross. It’s where we can humbly say “I am a poor miserable sinner” in the very same breath that we say, “I am a forgiven and redeemed child of God.” Nothing taken away from the demands of the Law, and nothing hiding the beautiful Gospel. Just the cross, holding both Law and Gospel in perfect balance. That’s spiritually healthy.

Are Only A Few Going To Be Saved?

Do we weep over the lost that will not enter the narrow door?


(opening skit)

The church is darkened. A small, narrow door stands at the front of the church, near the pulpit.

A lone woman enters hesitantly from the rear doors. She is clearly confused and distraught, not exactly knowing what’s going on. As she approaches the front, she is met by another woman. They apparently know each other.

Woman # 1: Oh, I’m so glad to see a familiar face! I can’t figure out what’s going on. The last thing I remember was that I was driving in my car on the way to a football game, I think there may have been something in the road ahead, and next thing you know I’m here, standing before this door. Can you help me? I’m so scared . . .

Woman # 2: Easy now . . . it’s okay. I’m not sure exactly what’s going on, but I think that’s the door into Heaven.

Woman # 1: What? You mean I’m dead? Was I in an accident? Is that what happened?

Woman # 2: I don’t know. I guess so. I think something like that happened to me, too.

Woman # 1: Wow . . . this is crazy! (indicating the congregation) I guess all these people must be dead, too?

Woman # 2: Yeah, I guess so. I think we’re all waiting to get into Heaven.

Woman # 1: Wow . . . who would have guessed that after all those years of being neighbors, we’d end up here together! What church did you go to, anyway?

Woman # 2: I went to Our Saviour. And you?

Woman # 1: Oh, I was a church member, but I never really attended. It just didn’t seem important at the time, you know?

Woman # 2: Uhh . . . no . . . not really.

Woman # 1: Well, it doesn’t matter now, I guess. After all, they say all roads lead to God.

Woman # 2: Who says that?

Woman # 1: Well, you know . . . they. Them. People that say things like that.

Woman # 2: (beginning to feel awkward) Ummm . . . we never really talked about . . . well . . . religion, did we?

Woman # 1: No. No, I guess we didn’t. That’s funny, huh? All those years living next door to each other. We talked about kids, we talked about our husbands, we talked about the price of milk and gas . . . but we never talked about religion.

Woman # 2: I’m so sorry . . . I guess I should have taken the time to talk to you about it.

Woman # 1: Well, don’t worry about it now. Let bygones be bygones, I always say.

(A robed man steps out of the door. He gestures to woman #2 to come and enter.)

Woman # 2: Ummm . . . I guess that’s my cue. I’ll see you around, okay?

Woman # 1: Hey, don’t worry about that. I’ll come with you!

(They both come forward, woman #2 first. The robed man allows her to pass but stops woman #1.)

Woman # 1: What’s going on? Why won’t you let me in?

(a voice is heard, reciting the words of the Scriptures)
Luke 13:22-29 22 Then Jesus went through the towns and villages, teaching as he made his way to Jerusalem. 23 Someone asked him, "Lord, are only a few people going to be saved?" He said to them, 24 "Make every effort to enter through the narrow door, because many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able to. 25 Once the owner of the house gets up and closes the door, you will stand outside knocking and pleading, 'Sir, open the door for us.' "But he will answer, 'I don't know you or where you come from.' 26 "Then you will say, 'We ate and drank with you, and you taught in our streets.' 27 "But he will reply, 'I don't know you or where you come from. Away from me, all you evildoers!' 28 "There will be weeping there, and gnashing of teeth, when you see Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, but you yourselves thrown out. 29 People will come from east and west and north and south, and will take their places at the feast in the kingdom of God.

Woman # 1: What do you mean, “Away from me?” But she gets to go in!

Woman # 2: (clearly distraught) I’m so sorry . . . I should have told you. Only those who believe in Jesus Christ can enter Heaven. I’m so sorry . . .

Woman # 1: You mean I can’t enter the door? Why didn’t you tell me? (the robed man shakes his head, “no” The woman begins to walk slowly back down the aisle, emotion welling up in her) All those years we lived next door to each other . . . Why didn’t you tell me?!!



. . .




According to a 2002 poll taken by the Pew Research Council, over 82% of Americans consider themselves Christian. Eighty . . . two . . . percent. By and large, that number reflect my own experiences with the people of Hudson. As I’ve been around town—maybe at the youth soccer league or even perhaps at the store—when I meet someone inevitably the question comes up, “What do you do for a living?” And while I’m always a bit hesitant to say what I do (it always seems to change the conversation somewhat), in the end I end up telling them, “Well, I’m a pastor over at the Lutheran church.” And almost without fail, someone will say, “Oh, that’s good. I’m a member at such-and-such church.”
I assume that’s your general experience, as well. Mostly everybody you know in the Hudson area claims some sort of affiliation with an area church. And maybe you’ve been content to leave it at that. After all, it seems a bit rude to press the issue. When a person says they attend church, we ought to give them the benefit of the doubt, right?
Yet it makes me wonder . . . if all these people are church members, then why aren’t all our Hudson churches full? Hudson has a population of what? Around 2500 people or so? But yet in my talks with the area pastors, I can account for only about three to four hundred people in church on any given Sunday morning. Three to four hundred. And that’s even a fairly generous estimate, in my opinion.
But that’s just the people in Hudson itself. It doesn’t take into account the number of people that live within just fifteen short miles of Hudson. According to the US Census, by 2011 there will be over fifty-eight THOUSAND people living within fifteen miles of Our Saviour Lutheran Church. Fifty-eight THOUSAND. 82% of that number claims to be Christian. Why in the world aren’t all of our churches full?
The only conclusion that I can come up with, and the only conclusion that I think is valid, is that while many people claim to be Christian, they do not follow Jesus Christ. They are not His disciples. They may claim to believe, they may even be a church member somewhere, but since our churches are not full to overflowing, I can only assume that although many people claim Jesus Christ, they do not walk with Him as His followers.
These are people we know! These are our neighbors . . . our friends . . . our family. They claim Jesus Christ, but do not seem to follow Him. An apparently they believe that that makes them safe. But let’s ask ourselves: what will happen to these people—our friends, our neighbors—if they continue along that path?
There were apparently some followers of Jesus who were wondering the same thing. He was traveling around, preaching and teaching on the Kingdom of God. And apparently His words must have touched a nerve in one person, because that one person got up and asked him, “Lord, are only a few people going to be saved?”
“Are only a few people going to be saved?” Well, that gets to the heart of the question, doesn’t it? And it seems like we’d expect the God of mercy and grace to say, “No, of course not! My grace is big enough to cover everybody! I want everybody to be saved, and so it doesn’t matter what a person says or does, or even what they believe in, because in the end all paths lead to me. No, no . . . don’t worry. I’ll make sure everyone gets in the door of Heaven when the time comes.”
One of the cleverest lies of the Enemy, of Satan, has been to convince as many people as possible that the way to eternity with God is wide and broad. That it’s easy. That a loving God would never turn anyone away from the doorway into Heaven.
But Jesus doesn’t say that. Instead, what He says ought to shake us up a bit. Heck, it ought to frighten us. What He says is, “The door is narrow.” The door is narrow, and that puts the brakes to the lie that everyone gets in in the end.
Jesus says the door is narrow, and that many will try to enter, only to have it shut in their face. And while others are admitted in, the people who thought that the door would always be open will be on the outside, pounding on the door: “Sir! Open the door for us!” “Why would I open the door? I don’t even know you.” “But Lord . . . we ate with you. We drank with you! You taught in our streets! Didn’t we talk about you while we walked around town? Didn’t we chat about you while we had breakfast at Karen’s Café? Didn’t we laugh with your followers while we filled up at the gas station? Didn’t we live right next door to your people?”
And Jesus will say, “Away from me, you evildoers.” And there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Weeping . . . because of opportunities lost. Because of a door—a precious, precious door—closed in their face for all eternity. And gnashing of teeth over eternal separation from the beauty and truth of God and condemnation to the torment and eternal regret of Hell.
Who will weep? Our friends will weep. They’ll realize—all too late—that Christ was real, that His forgiveness was absolute, but that they never truly became His disciples and instead preferred the false comfort over being a “church member” to the true comfort of being a devoted, active disciple of Jesus Christ. Our neighbors . . . our friends . . . our family . . . will weep.
They will weep, but will we? What if the final words we heard as we entered into eternity with Jesus Christ weren’t, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant”, but “Why didn’t you tell me?” What if we entered into eternity with the accusation ringing in our ears that we knew the truth but hadn’t cared enough to go the extra mile, to make sure that our neighbors had every opportunity we could possibly find to hear and believe in the Gospel, but that we hadn’t shared it with them? Would we weep then? No . . . I understand that we won’t weep in Heaven . . . but does the thought of those who will not be allowed through that narrow door make you weep now?
God’s people are no stranger to sorrow over the lost. In Psalm 119:136 the Psalmist weeps streams of tears over the fact that God’s Law is not obeyed. In Jeremiah 9:1, the weeping prophet longs that his head were a spring of water and his eyes a fountain of tears . . . he would weep day and night for his people that are lost. And the Apostle Paul weeps aloud in Romans 9:2, crying out, “I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. 3 For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, those of my own race.” Paul is willing to suffer eternity in Hell if only his people could live forever in Heaven. His heart is broken for the lost!
But not just God’s people, not just His prophets, not just His Apostles, but God Himself weeps over the lost. As He prepared to enter Jerusalem for the final time, the time having come for Him to offer His life on the cross for the redemption of the sins of the world, Jesus Christ looked into eternity and saw how even then people would reject Him. He saw how they’d reject His free offer of eternal life, how they’d turn away and instead decide to follow their own path, and He wept. He wept because they did not recognize the time of God’s coming to them . . . for them.
God’s people and God Himself weep over the lost because of the utter futility of the tragedy! They weep because they know that they don’t need to! No one needs to weep over the lost, because Christ worked to make sure that there didn’t need to be any lost! He came to earth as a little baby, becoming human just like you and me. In our place He lived the perfect, sinless life that you or I couldn’t live. And on the cross He died the death that you and I deserved. His work was done for all, for everybody, and all that someone who is lost must do to receive the benefits of Christ’s work is to believe upon Him, to trust in the salvation that Christ offers, to believe and to be baptized. His work is completed, and it stands completed for all, for everybody, if only they would just believe upon His promises.

That’s the promise that you stand upon: the promise that you are forgiven in Jesus Christ. You won’t we weeping with regret on that day, because the narrow door will be open to you. But since that is true, it is also true that until that day you are to weep over the lost. You weep because you bear the responsibility of exposing as many people as possible to the true, saving Gospel of Jesus Christ.
There’s a story told about a man of faith—a believer in Jesus Christ—who worked in a decidedly un­-Christian workplace. And day after day his righteous soul was vexed by the sinful lifestyles he saw exhibited every day. And day after day he cried out to God, complaining that he was the only Christian in his department. He complained to God day after day, “God, it’s so hard working with all these people! I’m tired of hearing about their wild weekend flings! Not one person in my department follows you!”
And then . . . one day . . . God answered him. God said to him, “You are right . . . you are the only person your entire department that follows me. Isn’t it amazing, then, that I have entrusted the task of reaching all of them to you?”

There was one time, not all that long ago, when a young girl came to the font of Christ’s baptism. This was a young girl that our family had befriended; who had found a place in our church home and there was taught of how Jesus Christ had offered His life as a ransom for hers. In this church, she learned of how to be cleansed from her sins. She learned not just how to become a church member, not just how to claim to be a Christian, but to live a life that followed in Christ’s footsteps. And as she came to this font . . . this very font . . . I wept. I wept because my heart could not contain the joy over the fact that Christ had claimed her as one of His own. Because of what He had done, her name was written in the Book of Life. She would, one day, enter through the narrow door. And in my tears were the applause of all of Heaven over one sinner who had repented.
Can we make an effort to weep like that more often? Not to weep with regret over those lost, but over those found? To weep with joy, knowing that God has used us—each and every one of us—as His instrument in proclaiming His Gospel, in inviting our neighbors and friends to church to experience His Gospel, in ensuring that the people of our community that we know and love will one day enter through the narrow door.

Interpreting This Present Time

We live in today with an eye for eternity.



If you’ve looked in the back yard of the parsonage, you may have noticed that I’ve got a pool there now. But you may not have heard the story behind how I got it.
It was around Mother’s Day, and the kids and I had been shopping in Adrian for a little somethin’ somethin’ for Stephanie. We got her some “mother bling” . . . a gold chain that holds little kid-shaped charms: one charm for each kid, each with the appropriate birthstone set in it. But then on the way home I glanced over into the yard of one of the houses we were passing and did a double-take.
“Is that really what that sign said?” I couldn’t believe my eyes. So I whipped the van around and headed back up the street. And sure enough, just as I had seen, was a sign: “18’ pool. With accessories. Free.”
Well! A free pool! How could I pass that up? (Now, I did think briefly of returning all the stuff we had bought for Stephanie and instead passing off this pool as a very thoughtful gift . . . but I resisted the urge to be a total cheapskate!)
So we got the pool loaded up in the van and headed home to set it up. And little did I realize how much a free pool would cost! First, you’ve got the water. Two to three thousand gallons of water has to be paid for somehow. Cha-ching! Then the chemicals. Cha-ching! Algae killer. Cha-ching! Pool vacuum broke, gotta get a new one. Cha-ching! And so on and so forth, until it starts to sound like a twisted version of the credit card commercial: Pool chemicals: 40 dollars. Pool skimmer: 25 dollars. More pool chemicals: 45 dollars. Look on pastor’s face when he realizes how much the “free” pool is costing him: priceless.
What seemed to be a good idea for today—a free pool—turned out to be a rather pricey venture just a few months down the road. I had allowed myself to get into a situation where living with an eye for today was costing me in the long-term.
It’s foolish to live only for today! Parents, you understand this. When you were raising your kids, there were times when you had in mind the person that they would become in 20 years’ time but they only had in mind what they wanted today, right now. You wanted to build some lasting character into them, and so you were willing to live with a bit of division, maybe even hostility, for today. Who they were going to become was more important than what they thought of you today. Your mission of raising good kids—really, of making raising a kid into a good adult—had you living in today, but guided your actions with an eye for the future.
Or sometimes we see this in union negotiations. There might be a contingent of union members who want huge benefits and big salaries. Their desires for today might very well bankrupt the company, but it seems like some workers don’t care as long as they get want they want today. But the negotiators realize that they’ve got to look a the big picture, and so they accept a package that will keep the company financially healthy in the long run so that the employees might continue to be able to make a living not only for today but for years to come.

Of course, the truth is that today is the only day we can live in. But there must be times when the things that we choose to do today aren’t determined by what today demands, but by what our long-term goals are. When we have a long-term plan in mind, we are able to endure sacrifice, hardship, and even some strife and division in today so that our goal for tomorrow may come about. The demands of today are deliberately ignored in order to serve the greater goal of a better tomorrow.



In Luke, chapter twelve, beginning with verse 49—the Gospel lesson for today—Jesus presents us with a pretty clear picture of how to live a life that balances the demands of today with the goals of tomorrow. He gives us a picture where we understand the context in which we live today, but our actions and choices are driven by the greater goal of what will happen in the future. Jesus shows us that we live in today with an eye for eternity.

How do we as Christians live in today? We live in today by understanding how to interpret the time in which we live. Jesus tells us that we should be able to interpret the times in the same way that we can look at the sky and know what kind of weather we’ll be having. Interpreting the times should almost be second nature to us.
When I think about understanding the times in which we live, I think of the men of Issachar. The men of Issachar lived in the time of David. David’s not yet been made king, and he’s on the run from Saul: the evil, faithless king that God was about to replace with David. It’s a critical time in Israel’s history.
And as David was on the run, men from all over Israel came and joined him, forming a mighty army. And in 1 Chronicles chapter twelve there’s this list of all the men who joined up on the side of David. Nearly everyone in that list is named as being some sort of mighty warrior. It mentions men who came with shield and spear, brave young warriors, experienced fighters with every kind of weapon. All the men who came to David were named as warriors . . . all except the men of Issachar. The men of Issachar stick out not because of their fighting strength, but because they were called men “who understood the times and knew what Israel should do.”
All the men came ready to fight a battle, but the ones that get some special recognition are the ones who understood the times. They not only knew where the nation of Israel had been, they understood where it was going now. The men of Issachar had been carefully taking note of what was going on in the country. They realized the impact that the country’s woes would have on their own tribe. Because they were students of the times, they realized that the future of Israel was at stake. And furthermore, because they understood the times in which they lived, they had a better understanding of what God’s plan was and what their part in it would be.
In order to carry out our mission, Our Saviour Lutheran Church must become like the men of Issachar. We must become students of the time in which we live. We must become students of the community, watching and learning what’s happening among our neighbors, our city, our county, and understanding it. Not living in the past, but living in today, having our finger on the pulse of our community. We’ve got to know what challenges our neighbors are facing . . . what factors are threatening the livelihood of our community . . . what obstacles there are that will keep us from accomplishing our mission. Like the men of Issachar, we must understand today and live in it.
But Jesus does not give us the luxury of living only for today, but He also gives us a mission that is meant to create in us a sense that what we do today will have repercussions into eternity. At the beginning of the Gospel reading He says, “I have come to bring fire.” That’s end-of-the-world talk. It’s language that brings to mind the end of the age . . . it brings to mind Judgment Day.
Our mission is huge! C.S. Lewis once wrote in The Weight of Glory, “It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations.”
Our mission is to make disciples of Jesus Christ, and to do so with the knowledge that every person we as a church encounter is a person that we will somehow help along their way to either Heaven or to Hell. Everything we do will in some way impact their eternal destiny, and we must understand the times in which we live in order to carry out our mission to its full effectiveness.
We live in today with an eye for eternity. The key is to properly view the former in the context of the latter. Our Saviour Lutheran Church has a greater mission at stake than just what we desire for today. It’s not about what we desire, it’s about what God would have us do in and among our community. None of our personal desires is as important as the mission.
In the 1950’s there were five men who understood their times and the mission God had called them to. And so these five men left America, took their wives and children, and banded together as missionaries to the Auca Indians in Ecuador. The Auca were a fierce tribe, feared by all their neighbors. And yet these five men took it upon themselves to meet—and minister to—this brutal tribe.
Over the period of a few months they would air drop gifts to the Aucas. They learned as much about them as they could from the other natives. And then, finally, they decided it was time to meet the Aucas face to face.
They never came back alive. All five men were speared to death. Why? It would be discovered later that the men had been killed because of the word of one young Auca girl. A girl who on a lark decided to tell the rest of the tribe that these men had come to kill them and eat them. A lie . . . a lie told as lark, a joke, and it cost five good, Christian men their lives.
No one would have denied the choice of the women to take the bodies of their dead husbands and head back home. But one woman stayed. Understanding what was at stake—both her life and the eternal lives of the Aucas—Elizabeth Elliot stayed and continued to reach out with the message of God’s love and grace given through Jesus Christ to the very people that had made her a widow.
And she did it. Within two years she had made friends and converts of the Aucas. Elizabeth Elliot answered God’s call and made a major difference in the eternal destiny of a people who, without her, would have died without Christ. She understood her times. She understood the cost. And she was willing to live her life today with an eye for God’s mission in eternity.
As Jesus came to fulfill His mission, there were certain things that He understood. He understood not everybody was going to answer the Spirit’s call to believe in Him. He understood that households and families would be divided in two over who chose to follow Him and who rejected His message. He understood that, because of Him and His message, there would be strife and division and even anger and resentment among people who had before known only peace and love. He understood all of this . . . and yet He came anyway! He came anyway, knowing the cost and willing to pay it, seeing the cross and willing to endure it, because the cost of not coming was too great for God to endure. The cost of Christ not coming was that all would die in their sin and be condemned. So He came on His mission, offering grace and eternal life to all in order that at least some might believe and be saved. This is the cost He paid for you. This is the cost He paid for me. As Christ looked upon us in love, He calculated the cost that His mission would take to get us into eternity with Him. And thank God . . . He paid it. He paid it all.

What cost is keeping you in a life that lives just for today? What cost is keeping you from carrying out God’s mission? What cost is keeping Our Saviour from being a church that lives in today with an eye for eternity? Is it a church service that runs a bit longer than what we might like? Is it that you feel you’re too old, that you’ve already done your part? Is it that you just don’t really yet understand the times in which we live? Is it that you just don’t know how we can carry out the mission we’ve been given? What’s the cost that’s keeping us from fulfilling our mission?
Is it greater than this? Is it greater than the cost of the cross? Because if it is not, then it pales in comparison to the cost Jesus was willing to pay so that you and I and everyone else in this community may come to Him and know Him and be forgiven and be redeemed.
Imagine the impact Our Saviour could have on our community if we began to live in today with an eye for eternity. Imagine the change that would occur in our community if we united together under the mission of Jesus Christ. With His grace supporting us, with His mission guiding us, setting aside our desires for today and living out lives that impacted people for all eternity . . . this community could be transformed. All through a church living in today with an eye for eternity.

Lord, Teach us to Pray

Now, I know none of you ever have problems when it comes to prayer, but frankly sometimes I’m at a loss for what to say. I know, I know! That’s a terrible thing to say. After all, I’m the professional!
And that’s what I get all the time: At somebody’s house for a meal, they say, “Pastor, would you pray?” And typically I’ll say, “It ain’t my home . . . you pray!” Or like a few weeks ago when Stephanie and I were at our high school reunion. We went to a Lutheran high school in Nebraska, so of course after our old class president gave his big welcoming speech and right before we sat down for a little meal, he said, “ . . . and now pastor is going to lead us in prayer before we eat.” And in my mind I went, “oh, brother . . . okay, well I can think of something.” But thankfully in the ½ second I had to think as I took a breath and opened my mouth to begin praying for all my old classmates, I suddenly realized that he didn’t mean me, but the elderly pastor who served as the school’s alumni coordinator! Dodged that bullet, let me tell you!
But okay, okay . . . maybe some of you do have that same problem. When it comes time for prayer, you’re not certain of what to say. You’re not sure of what you can pray for. Can you pray for yourself? Is every prayer supposed to be for someone else? Are there certain prayers God just doesn’t want to hear?
I think that the main problem behind our fear to pray lies with confidence: we don’t have it. We’re pretty sure that God answers prayer, we know that’s what the Scriptures teach, but we just really don’t have the confidence that He’s going to answer this particular prayer. There’s a number of different reasons for this: we’ve never been taught how to pray, so we’re not confident that we’ll say the right words to get God to hear us. We’re nervous about speaking in public, so we’re not confident that we can pray without making some sort of mistake and look foolish in front of other people and God. But even worse, sometimes we’re not confident that God even wants to hear what we have to say. We’re afraid we’re just bothering Him, and so we lack the confidence that our prayers are even something that God desires.
Now, I can’t do much about you being afraid to pray in public (unless, of course, you’re in the Discipleship class, in which case I simply force you to! J). But would it surprise you to know that the disciples—the early leaders of the church, the heroes of the Book of Acts—that there was once a time when they weren’t so confident in how they should pray, either? It’s right there in the Gospel lesson for today. Open your Bibles to the Gospel of Luke, chapter eleven.
Jesus is praying—of course Jesus is praying. It seems like you can’t sneeze in the Gospels without Jesus praying—Jesus is praying, and the disciples look over and notice what He’s doing. And they realize something: they don’t know how to pray like Jesus prays. Now, these are good Jewish boys, all of them. They’ve been raised up attending the synagogue and no doubt they’ve memorized a number of prayers. But true to form, Jesus doesn’t seem to pray the way they’ve been taught. He approaches it differently. Maybe it’s just easier for Him . . . maybe His prayers sound more like He’s talking to someone that He knows personally, I don’t know. But the disciples recognize that He’s got a handle on prayer that they don’t, and so they say, “Lord teach us to pray.”
What comes next is interesting. The next words Jesus says are what we know as the Lord’s Prayer. We pray it every Sunday, really every worship service. It’s an excellent prayer, perhaps even the best, most sublime piece of beautiful, poetic prayer that’s ever been known to man.
But while the Lord’s Prayer is an excellent prayer and it is good and right to pray it, I want you to notice something: the disciples didn’t say, “Lord, give us a prayer”, but, “Lord, teach us to pray.” That means something.
It means something, because Jesus says, “when you pray . . .” “When you pray.” We could maybe even say, “whenever you pray” (that’s fair in the Greek). Jesus isn’t primarily giving them His words to pray, but giving them a model to guide their own prayers. While the Lord’s Prayer is an excellent prayer in and of itself, it also serves as a model for how to build our own prayers.
The Lord’s Prayer is a template that Jesus gives us for prayer, and it’s pretty good: approach God knowing that He is your loving Father, keep in mind that He wants us to be more and more holy, ask Him to give us all the things we need for daily living, ask for forgiveness, forgive others, and ask for strength to leave our evil ways behind. It’s simple. It’s straightforward. It’s a good prayer.
But so far Jesus has given the disciples a template for prayer, but He hasn’t necessarily given us them the confidence they need to pray. For that, Jesus offers two parables that aren’t a template for prayer, but incentive to prayer. The parables give us confidence to pray.
Luke 11:5-8 5 Then he said to them, "Suppose one of you has a friend, and he goes to him at midnight and says, 'Friend, lend me three loaves of bread, 6 because a friend of mine on a journey has come to me, and I have nothing to set before him.' 7 "Then the one inside answers, 'Don't bother me. The door is already locked, and my children are with me in bed. I can't get up and give you anything.' 8 I tell you, though he will not get up and give him the bread because he is his friend, yet because of the man's boldness he will get up and give him as much as he needs.
There’s three characters in the story. One character is us: we’ve had a friend come to visit and need to lay out a little spread for him, but we don’t have any bread. Bread’s important; in those days it was the staple of every meal. In fact, it was the utensil that they used to eat. Not having bread would be like you or I not having forks or knives or spoons to lay out on the table. The friend we go to get bread is God. We’re asking him to give us what we need to provide for the third character: the friend that’s come to visit us.
The way that I’ve commonly understood this story was that we go to God and we hammer and hammer and hammer on his door until He gives us what we are asking for. The moral of the story, as I’ve always understood it, is that persistence in prayer pays off.
But wait . . . wait. Look at that passage more closely. Kenneth Bailey, in his book Poet and Peasant, points out several important facts about this parable. One, there is no indication of persistence in that parable! Where does it say that the guy bugs his friend until he finally gets up out of bed, goes down to the cupboard, throws some bread out the door and says, “THERE! Are you satisfied now?!?!?” Because God’s not like that . . . He’s not doesn’t answer our prayers just because He’s irritated half to death with our asking.
Instead, Bailey points out that the custom of the time dictated that a guest be given hospitality. A host was obliged to honor his guest by setting out a meal. But we have no bread. Our friend needs a meal, he’s been traveling long and hard and he’s tired and worn out. He needs what we cannot provide. Where will we get what we lack to provide for our friend’s needs? We’ll go to the One who can provide out of His surplus.
The women of the day baked bread in a communal oven, one that was owned by the whole village. Since they all met there, they each knew who had extra and who had yet to bake some. Therefore, the host goes to the house of a man whom he knows has bread. He knows where to get the things he cannot supply for his guest, and so he goes to the only place that can provide what he lacks: he goes to the house that has a surplus.
And when he gets there, note this: he doesn’t knock. Strangers knocked. Soldiers hammered on the door. But a friend? A friend calls out. “Friend, give me what I need to provide for my other friend . . . for I do not have what he needs myself.” As we pray for the needs of others, then, we go to the house that can provide. We go to the house of our friend—we go to the Father—and we call out in prayer that from His surplus He may provide us with something to give to our friend in need.
But now that we have the confidence of where to go to receive what is needed, do we still lack the confidence that once we get there our request will be granted?
Luke 11:11-12 11 "Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? 12 Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion?
Does a father love his child? One of the things that’s always impressed me about both my parents as well as Stephanie’s is that they have always been willing to give us good things that we lacked. No matter what the problem was, when we have had a need, they’ve always been willing to help out. And why? Because we’re their kids . . . and they love us. We’ve never been embarrassed to approach them with our needs, because we know that out of their love for us they’ll do what they can to ease our burden. No strings attached, just a generous gift given from the heart.
God’s the same way. When we approach Him in prayer we call Him “Father.” And because He loves us He’s not about to look down His nose at us and say, “You want whaatt?? A new car to get to work? Whattsamatta, you can’t walk, or something? Oh, heck . . . here’s this old beat-up skateboard. Now take it and go away, you’re bothering me.” No! God gives us good gifts! Why? Because He loves us! And we can have confidence in approaching Him with any prayer request, knowing that He will listen to that request in love and answer our prayers in a way that results in good.
So there it is: Jesus has taught us to pray. He’s given us an outline for prayer, and He’s given us the incentive to pray.
Do you have the confidence to pray now? God is your Father, He loves you. You only have to look to the cross to see that. That’s where this all ties together. At the cross we see God’s care and concern for us, the depths of His love for us. But we also see the enormous surplus that He has to offer, for in the cross of Christ every sin that you have ever committed or will one day commit has been paid for. All from God’s surplus of grace and mercy. The cross proves that God cares about your needs, because it was at the cross that He met your need for forgiveness even before you realized your need for it. And it proves that God wants to hear what you have to say, because the Scriptures teach us that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord—everyone who looks at the cross and trusts in the forgiveness that God offers there—everyone who calls upon God to save them through the cross will be heard. The cross reveals to you the confidence you have in prayer, knowing that God will hear your prayers and answer them with the love of a father for His children.
What would happen if we all began to pray with the confidence that Jesus says we can have?
Would we pray more often?
Would we pray more fervently?
Would we prayer with greater hope?
. . . might we pray expecting?

The answer, of course, is yes. With the confidence that Jesus gives us in prayer—the model for prayer, the incentive for prayer, and with the cross as the basis for prayer—we will pray.
. . . and God will hear.

Your Questions Answered, Part Three: Strong Faith

Hebrews chapter eleven begins with this way: Hebrews 11:1, “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” With these words the anonymous writer of the book of Hebrews begins what is now known as the great “Heroes of Faith” chapter.
Now that very name gives birth to something in our minds. They were “heroes of faith.” They had extraordinary faith. Life-changing faith. Strong faith. The list of people in Hebrews chapter eleven reads like a “who’s who” of the Old Testament. Noah. Abraham. Moses. Each of them commended for their faith. Each of them held up as an example for us to follow.
Certainly faith is important. I remember one of my earlier seminary classes. There was one class where a professor was challenging us not just on what we believed, but why we believed. And as young seminarians, we began to trot out all the common answers that give us grounds to prove that our faith is valid. You know, good things like the scientific evidence for creation, the concept of intelligent design—where the order and structure of the whole of creation is cited as evidence that someone must have created it—and even things like the circumstantial evidence for the resurrection of Christ and the presence of absolute truth.
And this professor shocked—no, stunned—the whole class when he simply said, “What do you guys have against faith?” His point was—and although it took a few years to really get ingrained into my mind—that we as a church are a community of faith. We don’t live by evidence. We don’t believe in God because He is the most logical option. No, our existence is lived by faith. It is defined by it. The presence of faith—call it blind faith, reasoned faith, or whatever—is the thing that binds us together as a religious community.
Now if that is true, if faith is the core component of the religious life, then it must be true that strong faith is also important. I mean, no one wants a weak faith . . . “Dear God, if you do truly exist, and if you love me . . . which I’m not sure that you do . . . then grant my sister the healing she needs . . . if you can, anyway . . . anyway, if it be your will, ummm . . . amen.” No! Nobody wants a weak, wimpy kind of faith! We want a strong faith! You know, where we just walk into the room and the demons get a little shaky. The mountain-moving kind of faith; the kind that prays insanely bold prayers. “Lord, we know that it is your will that little Johnny be healed, and therefore we pray that your healing will come this hour, this minute. Cast this demon of teething pain away from this little boy and give him and his parents a good night’s rest. Oh, and while you’re at it, park a new Mercedes in my driveway by the time I get home. In Jesus’ strong name, amen!”
If we want that kind of faith, then how do we get it? What’s the magic formula for growing that kind of faith? What prayers do we need to pray? What do we need to give to get that strong, mountain-moving, world-beating, demon-terrifying, rock-solid, bedrock kind of faith? How do we become “heroes of the faith”?
Let’s turn to chapter eleven of the book of Hebrews for some answers. Open up those Bibles and let God’s word soak in a bit.
As we read through chapter eleven, I want you to notice that there are two kinds of people in there. Two groups of people, but really only one common situation. We’ll get at the common situation in just a bit, but first let’s look at the two groups. The first group is the people for whom good things happen. We’ll begin at verse four.
Hebrews 11:4, “4 By faith Abel offered God a better sacrifice than Cain did. By faith he was commended as a righteous man, when God spoke well of his offerings. And by faith he still speaks, even though he is dead.”
Abel is commended as a hero of the faith because of his good sacrifice. Abel offered God his best. He gave Him the very best he had. It takes a strong faith to offer God your best, not to just give Him what’s left over after the bills are all paid, and that’s exactly what Abel did: he offered God his best, and was commended for it.
Hebrews 11:5, “5 By faith Enoch was taken from this life, so that he did not experience death; he could not be found, because God had taken him away. For before he was taken, he was commended as one who pleased God.”
Enoch was “one who pleased God.” His faith was of such character that God saw fit to even remove him from the pain of death. Enoch’s faith in this life was so evident that it literally carried him into the next.
Hebrews 11:7, “7 By faith Noah, when warned about things not yet seen, in holy fear built an ark to save his family. By his faith he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness that comes by faith.”
When warned of a coming flood—something that seems pretty bad on the surface—Noah trusted God in faith and built the ark. In so doing he not only saved his family, but in fact the whole of the human race. Everyone else—the people without faith—perished, but Noah and his family survived and inherited the righteousness of God.
Hebrews 11:8-10, “8 By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going. 9 By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. 10 For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God.”
Abraham was called by God to go. Go where, he didn’t know . . . but in faith he went. And when he answered God’s call in faith, Abraham never had to worry about where he was going to live, because God always provided for him. He lived each day in faith, each day seeing the bounteous providence of God in his life.
Now certainly these are all good things. Offering God our best and being recognized by God Himself for it. Being spared from the agony of death. Surviving a world-wide flood on a boat made of gopher wood. Living every day surrounded by God’s blessings.
Is this what strong faith brings? No, it is how strong faith grows. Strong faith grows when people believe in the promises of God and then live to see those promises come true.
Now this just makes perfect sense, doesn’t it? After all, when people promise us something and then fulfill those promises, then we begin to trust them more and more, don’t we? It’s the same way with God; when He fulfills His promises to us, our faith in Him naturally grows stronger each time we see another promise fulfilled. We learn to trust Him more and more because of the good things that happen.
And we see this all throughout the entire chapter! The author of Hebrews rattles off name after name, telling all the wonderful things that God had done for the great heroes of the faith! He goes on for so long, telling these wonderful stories, that finally he runs out of time! Hebrews 11:32-35, “32 And what more shall I say? I do not have time to tell about Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel and the prophets, 33 who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised; who shut the mouths of lions, 34 quenched the fury of the flames, and escaped the edge of the sword; whose weakness was turned to strength; and who became powerful in battle and routed foreign armies. 35 Women received back their dead, raised to life again.”
Who wouldn’t trust a God like that? Who’s faith wouldn’t be strengthened by seeing God’s strong hand of deliverance through trials and sufferings? When victories are won, we trust God all the more. When we become powerful through God’s workings, our faith grows stronger and stronger. That’s the first group of faith’s heroes: the people whose faith grew by seeing God’s promises fulfilled.
That all sounds fantastic, doesn’t it? Having a kind of faith that is built upon a trustworthy God, where we just know . . . we know that we know that we know that God will deliver us from evil because He’s done it so many times in the past.
But there’s a second group revealed in chapter eleven, as well. If we’d back up a bit in the chapter, we’d hints of it in earlier parts, but this second group really becomes crystal clear at the end of chapter eleven. This second group is the people whose faith grew through bad things happening to them.
Pick it up half way through verse thirty-five. The author of Hebrews has just ran through those marvelous events of conquering kingdoms, shutting the mouths of lions, quenching the fury of the flames and women receiving back their dead, and then he says this rather frightening word, “Others . . .” “Others.”
Hebrews 11:32-39, “Others were tortured and refused to be released, so that they might gain a better resurrection.” Tortured . . . and refused to be released. That’s some seriously strong faith. “36 Some faced jeers and flogging, while still others were chained and put in prison.” What kind of faith can endure imprisonment?
“37 They were stoned; they were sawed in two; they were put to death by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated-- 38 the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground. 39 These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised.”
This is the second group of people: those for whom strong faith is cultivated in the stinking fertilizer of suffering and pain and even death. And every time that these people faced a new and greater hardship, they looked to God, trusted in His promises, and believed that even if they were not to be delivered in this life, that God was more than capable of delivering them from suffering in the next.
There’s two groups of people, and although I think we all know which group we’d prefer to belong to, I want you to notice that they all have but one common situation: it is God that put them into situations where their faith must grow.
Whether your life is the pinnacle of blessedness of the pit of despair, God has put you there in order that your faith might grow. Are you living a blessed life? God is blessing you so that you may see the fulfillment of God’s promises and learn to trust Him more. But on the other hand, if you are in a world of hurt and pain, God has put you there so that you will be forced to trust in the graciousness and mercy of God despite the fact that everything that your eyes see tells you otherwise. Pain or pleasure, it is God at work to strengthen your faith in Him and His promises.
Grab a hold of that truth! Let that sink into your mind! Say it with me: Pain or pleasure, God is at work to strengthen my faith. Because once you really begin to understand this, every situation in your life begins to take on new meaning. You didn’t just happen to receive a check in the mail just in time to pay that bill that you had no way to pay: you’re seeing God’s providing hand in your life. You didn’t just happen to get bad news from your doctor, but God is asking you to trust Him despite the odds against you. You’re not just living a charmed life and it’s not that if it weren’t for bad luck you wouldn’t have any luck at all, but in each and every event of your life, whether good or bad, whether pain or pleasure, God is throwing you back to the foot of the cross where you can look up to Him and say, “Yes God, I do trust You! Do with me as you will! Bless me if you wish, yet even though you slay me, yet will I trust in you.”

One more thing about strong faith: it has to have an object. Faith doesn’t just trust, but it must have something to trust in. And the object of faith—strong faith, mountain-moving, demon-quaking faith—is the cross. The cross is the center of the Christian faith, for it is there that Christ made the ultimate fulfillment of every single promise that God ever has made and ever will make. Look to the cross . . . look in faith . . . in faith lean upon Christ’s cross, and everything falls into place.
You have riches? You have wealth of any kind given to you by God? They just pale in comparison to the riches Christ offers you on the cross. Every blessing you’ve received from God stems from that cross, and when in faith you look to that cross you are able to recognize them for the gift of God that they are, and your faith will be strengthened.
You have pain? You have suffering? That pain and suffering is absorbed into the cross through the redeeming blood of Jesus Christ. Every trial you face is a trial that Christ bears for you on His cross, and when in faith you look to His cross you are able to see that God is using this pain in your life to make you more like His Son . . . and your faith is strengthened.
Pain or pleasure, God is at work to strengthen our faith. It doesn’t matter which one is happening to us right now, because through all of it God is at work in all of us. But no matter what our circumstances are, we can as one body look up at that cross and together say, “Yes Lord, we do trust in you. Do with us as you will.” And in faith together we will move mountains. The demons will quake in our presence. We will pray insanely bold prayers. We will have strong faith.

In Jesus’ strong name . . . amen.

Your Questions Answered, Part One: Disillusioned With God

There was a time in my life—not all that long ago—when I suffered through a fairly serious crisis of faith. It seemed that my whole world was collapsing around me. I had enemies on every side, my hopes and dreams were turning to dust before my eyes.
I did all the things that heroic faith demanded. I claimed the promises of the Scriptures. I prayed for my enemies. I prayed to God for my deliverance. I doggedly believed that God would vindicate me and that He would restore everything that had been taken from me, that I would see my life rise up from the ashes.
But despite my faith that the situation would get better, instead it got worse. It got worse. It got so bad, in fact, that I lost my unshakable confidence that God would see things right. I began to question Him. And then I began to distrust Him. At the very lowest point I remember simply having a breakdown. Crying and screaming, I yelled out, “Why is God allowing this to happen to me?!?” I had become disillusioned with God.
Now I think that if we were all to be honest there have been times when each of us has experienced a certain sense of disillusionment with God. Are you with me? Have you experienced this yourself? It’s not a crime, it’s not an unforgivable sin, we can confess this in front of one another.
We’ve all been there. God doesn’t do what we expect. We pray and pray and pray, we serve and give faithfully, we read our Scriptures, we do all the things that God’s faithful people are supposed to do, the things that we assume will result in God hearing us and answering our prayers, and still He doesn’t do what we want Him to. He doesn’t answer our prayers the way we would like Him to. The illness we’ve been praying over doesn’t get better, it gets worse. Our prayers and fasts and offerings seem to have no effect, and it looks for all the world as though God has left the building. Trouble is, we’re still inside it, struggling and striving and hoping for release.
So how do we deal with this? There we are, standing in the pile of smoking rubble that used to be our lives, and it looks like God refuses to fix it. We are ready to go into battle, strapping on the full armor of God, and still the enemy lops our head clean off. We claim God’s promise that “Never will I leave you, never will I forsake you” and then we look over in our corner and God’s . . . just . . . not . . . there. And inwardly we struggle and fight and desperately try to hold on to some kind of faith, but there doesn’t seem to be anything to hold on to. We grasp the wind.
How do we deal with this? Well, it’s a bit different for every individual, but there’s a basic outline that we each can follow. The first step is to arm yourself with knowledge. You need to know what’s really going on.
The fundamental issue of disillusionment with God stems from a desire to be in control, to be able to dictate the actions of God rather than live under His apparent whims.
In that sense we’re a little bit like Roy Pearson. You may have heard about him in the news recently. Seems ol’ Roy took his pants to the cleaners two years ago and when he came back to pick them up a few days later, they couldn’t find them. So he waited a few more days and they gave him pants that matched his check-in receipt. Trouble was, Roy doesn’t like cuffs on his pants, and these had cuffs, so of course Roy figured they couldn’t really be his. He’s been so upset over the whole matter that he finally decided to sue. For 54 million dollars. And the reason? Because the cleaners had a sign that said, “satisfaction guaranteed”.
Sometimes we come to God and figure that He has a 100% satisfaction guarantee. We figure that we have an inherent right to our satisfaction and that God should live up to our expectations. In other words, we feel that we have a right to control God.
But God will not be controlled. He will continue to work, but always—always—on His own terms.
The is what the Old Testament prophet Elijah learned in 1 Kings 19:13-18. Elijah was on the run, fearing for his life. The queen of Israel was working hard to establish Baal—and not the one true God—as the god of Israel, and she was fed up with Elijah’s continual reminder that she was on a path to destruction. She had her sights on Elijah and was seeking to put him to death. It appeared as though God no longer cared. So defeated and disillusioned, Elijah went and hid in a cave. Then God spoke to him. “What are you doing here, Elijah?" 14 He replied, "I have been very zealous for the LORD God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, broken down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too." 15 The LORD said to him . . . 18 Yet I reserve seven thousand in Israel-- all whose knees have not bowed down to Baal and all whose mouths have not kissed him.””
God continues to work, although we may not see what He is doing. But does that mean He isn’t working at all? No. God has His plan, He is working His plan, but it is a plan that is His. We can’t control what He does or when He chooses to reveal His work and His plan. But He is working, nonetheless.
That brings up the second bit of information you need to know. Sometimes we think, “I don’t like what’s going on, but if I could just understand what God is doing, then I’d be okay.”
This is kind of what Job—the all-time winner for the “Disillusionment with God” award—did. At nearly the height of his suffering, Job finally breaks down and complains that he just doesn’t understand. Job 23:1-5, “Then Job replied: 2 "Even today my complaint is bitter; his hand is heavy in spite of my groaning. 3 If only I knew where to find him; if only I could go to his dwelling! 4 I would state my case before him and fill my mouth with arguments. 5 I would find out what he would answer me, and consider what he would say.”
It’s natural to want to understand why. But what’s really going on when we say that? Isn’t that just another form of control? When we say, “I want to understand,” we’re in effect saying that if we could understand, then we’d approve. The whole thought, when laid out, would be something like, “I now understand what God is doing through such-and-such, and I hereby give my consent.” In other words . . . we’re still in control.
Disillusionment with God is just that: dis-illusionment. On the original sermon topic request, the person who requested this noted that they had heard it recently said, “Disillusion is the child of illusion”, and that’s true. When we are dis-illusioned, the illusion that we can control God is becoming unraveled. It’s frightening to realize we don’t have a 100% satisfaction guarantee, that God cannot be controlled. As C.S. Lewis was fond of saying, “It’s not as though He’s a tame lion.” He is, after all, a living God.
So now you’re armed with knowledge. You know that God is a living God, that you cannot control Him. And yet you’re still faced with the reality of this bad situation. You want it to turn out better, but still God seems to have other ideas. What’s the next step? In other words, how do you learn to deal with a living God?
God cannot be controlled . . . but that does not mean He can’t be trusted. Quite the opposite, actually. If you were to meet a person who continually brought you harm, you would naturally—and rightly—assume that they couldn’t be trusted, and you would stay away from them. But in God’s case, you can trust Him even in the midst of what appears to be a very, very bad situation.
Why is that? Because God’s word is trustworthy and true. You can rely upon it. You can trust God’s Word because it is the Word of God. When He speaks, it is impossible for Him to lie.
And that trustworthy, reliable Word of God—the Scriptures—has this to say about living in brokenness and still trusting in a living God for deliverance: Romans 8:25-28, “25 But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently. 26 In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. 27 And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God's will. 28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”
Let’s break that down quickly: In this case, last things first. The final thing Paul says you must know is the most important. You must know and trust that God is using your present difficulties to conform you to the image of His Son. God is using this time of pain and suffering to make you more like Christ.
Think of all that Christ’s suffering has brought you! Through His suffering, you have been given new life, forgiveness of sins, and peace with God. You don’t need to live in fear of divine judgment. You don’t need to fear death. Through Christ’s suffering, God has given you eternal life. Can any amount of present suffering, no matter how difficult, ever take that away? As Paul says, God’s grace is truly sufficient for you.
That’s really the answer that drives all the other answers. As Christ suffered, so too you, a Christian—literally a “little Christ”—will suffer. Not a meaningless suffering, but a suffering with a glorious, heavenly purpose that will echo into eternity, because the grace of Jesus Christ that He won through His suffering can and will see you through.
And in that knowledge—the knowledge that Christ’s suffering is of benefit to you, and therefore your suffering also has benefit—in that knowledge Paul says that when you are faced with circumstances in our life that we cannot explain, those times when it seems as though God is not listening—the times of sicknesses, of death, of pain and regret, the times of our own weakness—Paul says that first you wait. Not just an idle waiting, but a hopeful, patient waiting. A waiting that puts its faith in God for Him to do what is good . . . no, to do what is best, and do it in His own time.
And while you wait, you pray. And whatever you do, remember this point, and remember it well: when you try to pray but you’re so broken and in so much pain and confusion that you can’t even make the words come out, the Holy Spirit—God Himself—helps you to pray, translating your groans and cries into a beautiful prayer that words by themselves could not express. Where is God when it hurts? He is with you, praying.
You wait in hope, you pray in the Holy Spirit, and thirdly in faith you cling to His promises. The promise in verse twenty-eight that all things—not just some things, not just the good and pleasant things—but in all things God is working to bring about good—real, true good—in your life. Your current trials and temptations, your hurts and your scars, in God’s hand they will one day turn into badges of honor and glory, because God has promised that it is so. And as one who’s been there, I promise you that it will be amazing the way God does it.
We all feel disillusioned with God at times. We don’t like pain. We don’t like fear. We don’t like being out of control. We don’t like suffering. But perhaps it’s good to be dis-illusioned, because then we must rely upon the true God, and not an illusion of a God we can control. The true God makes no promise that we will not suffer, but He does make a promise to be with us even in the midst of our suffering. Whether or not we see Him or feel His presence, He is there, praying with us, working to bring good into our lives . . . even through suffering . . . all in the name of Christ.

. . . and they praised God because of me.

People are not to be praised for what they do for God, but God to be praised for what He does through people.


On one of the internet pastor’s forums I regularly participate in there was a recent conversation about what one guy called “mega Christian stars.” The topic of discussion was how this man had met one of our modern-day Christian heroes and was a bit disappointed in how the encounter turned out.
Considering what the “Christian hero” had done in his life—he was a Hollywood actor who had found Jesus and become known for his firm stand on the gospel and his love for Christ—my internet friend was disappointed that, when he met the man face-to-face, his hero was just another regular guy. I don’t know what he expected—maybe a halo hovering around his head or a bright, shining, holy light that enveloped him wherever he went—but what he expected wasn’t what he saw. He saw a normal guy and was disappointed that he wasn’t something more exciting. Something praiseworthy.
It got me to thinking this week about the nature of praise and to whom we naturally want to give it. In the Christian community we love our heroes of the faith: those people who are great teachers or preachers or leaders. The people who have really accomplished something huge for the Kingdom of God. We talk about them to our church friends and sometimes even recommend their books or CD’s or whatever to our unbelieving friends.
There’s a certain ring of truth to doing that. After all, I think what is in our minds is just to give credit where credit is due. So when we see someone who is really doing some good for the Kingdom of God, we want to acknowledge that. But . . . to whom is the credit really due?
Think about it. When we heap praise upon someone or something other than God, what do the Scriptures call that? It’s called idolatry: the placing of someone or something in the place of honor that rightly belongs to God alone. Rather than praising people for what they’ve done for God, we should instead praise God for what He’s done through people.
Let’s use the Apostle Paul as an example. In his letter to the Galatians Paul embarks on a discussion about himself. After opening his letter, he begins to tell the Galatians about how no one taught him the gospel of Jesus Christ, but that he received it in a personal revelation from Christ Himself. He launches into a discussion about what he used to be like, how he persecuted the church, how God called him and then how he did this, how he did that, the places he went, the people he met.
Now by any standards this sounds pretty prideful. Paul appears to be boasting about himself, doesn’t he? After all, I count about seventeen “I”, “me” or “my” references in those thirteen verses alone! That’s one way that you can tell when a person is really self-centered: when they talk about themselves all the time. When they say, “enough about you . . . let’s talk about ME!”
We’ve all met people like that before: people who work really, really hard to make sure you know how great they are. People who want to become some sort of idol in your eyes. But when it’s that obvious, it’s usually pretty easy to spot. It’s harder to spot the same kind of thing when we’re the ones putting someone else on a pedestal.
Whenever a group of Christians gets together, it doesn’t take long for one of them to start talking about one of their Christian heroes. Get the right circle together and you’ll hear names like Joyce Meyers or Joel Osteen. Someone really into prayer is going to mention Stormie Omartian. The folks who like to be on the cutting edge will mention Rob Bell. And you’ll hear people positively gush about how great these folks are.
I’ve got my Christian heroes, of course. If you were to ask me which books to read I’d throw out a list including Andy Stanley, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, C.S. Lewis, and John Maxwell. I’d probably thrown in a little bit of Augustine and possibly even some Rick Warren or Hermann Sasse for a bit of flavor. And then no doubt I’d tell you what each of these men has accomplished for God and His Kingdom to underscore just why they’re so important. I’d want you to know the men’s lives so that you could appreciate them in the same way I do.
But pride in the person is misplaced. It’s not much different than assuming Paul is being prideful in talking about himself. It’s the same thing.
But if we back up just one verse in Galatians, it becomes obvious that there’s something deeper that Paul is saying. Forget for a moment the notion that he’s just seeking attention for himself and read verse ten. What does he say there? Galatians 1:10, “10 Am I now trying to win the approval of men, or of God? Or am I trying to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a servant of Christ.”
Paul prefaces all of his prideful-sounding “me” talk by saying that he’s NOT trying to win the praise and approval of men. If he were, he wouldn’t be a servant of Christ. The servant isn’t more important than the master. In fact, everything the servant does is done to make the master—and not himself—look good. The servant is invisible, and the master gets the praise.
That’s the ticket to understanding what Paul is saying! He’s not trying to draw attention to himself, but to what God has accomplished through him! Look at verse twenty-four: Paul doesn’t say that people praised him for what he had done for God, but Galatians 1:24, “they praised God because of me.”
So Paul’s whole story in verses eleven through twenty-four is not told to glorify himself as bragging what Paul’s done for God, but so that others may praise God for what He’s done through Paul. In telling his the story of his own redemption, Paul actually takes the focus off of himself and puts the focus on God! And just look what God has done!
In verse eleven God has established His gospel in Jesus Christ.
In verse fifteen God has called an imperfect sinner to repentance through His gospel.
In verse sixteen God has chosen that same sinner to proclaim His gospel.
In verse twenty-two an invisible, unknown servant’s life is held up before the people, and in verse twenty-four they praise God for what He’s accomplished through that man.
Paul’s still not perfect, he’s still a sinner, and yet people are praising God because of the story of how God has worked in Paul’s life.
The Greek word for praise in verse twenty-four helps us to understand this a bit better. The word translated as “praise” is the word doxazo, from which we get our word doxology. How does the doxology go? Let’s sing it together, and as we do I want you to notice who is getting the praise:
“Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Praise Him all creatures here below. Praise Him above ye heavenly hosts. Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.”
Praise God. Praise Him. Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Praise be to the Triune God, the God who works, the God who redeems, the God who saves!
The only person that praise is rightly directed to is God. He is to be praised not because of people’s amazing accomplishments for Him, but because of the awesome, gracious way that He works through broken, sinful people.
Do you know anyone like that? Some poor, broken sinner through whom God has worked His story of redemption? Of course you do . . . all you have to do is look in the mirror. God has worked through you!
So you’re heard Paul’s story . . . what’s yours? How has God redeemed your life and changed what was misdirected and self-centered into something for which He is to be praised?
I know . . . it can be hard to think about your story, and it can be hard to talk about it. It’s hard to tell your story because, honestly, it may seem like bragging. But that’s okay, because when you brag, brag on what God has done, not about what you have done. Downplay your role and brag His up.
It’s not too hard to get started, really. Just start by contemplating the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Think about that for a moment. About what the Gospel is. The God of all creation sent His Son to earth. Picture Jesus Christ . . . see Him teaching . . . see Him leading His disciples . . . see Him praying for His followers . . . and see Him hanging on a cross. He is there; broken and bloody but still holding to His Father’s will and strongly seeing through His mission to the very end. And He did that for you. That’s what the Gospel is.
But the Gospel isn’t just something Jesus did, but also what He is doing now. He continues to take all the work He did all those year ago and apply it to your life today. He is still teaching you, leading you, interceding for you. His death still redeems you, it buys you back from a shallow, self-centered life into a life filled with good, God-centered things.
That’s what the Gospel does, it works through you to change you, to redeem you, to save you. That’s your story of how God has worked through you. This is your way to give praise to God for what He has done.
And when others hear your story, they too can praise God for what He’s done in your life and even for what He has yet to do. I don’t know about you, but I know that God has brought about some real serious changes in my life, and I hope and pray that He’ll continue to work, because I’ve got stuff that still needs to be changed.
But when I tell others the story of how God’s worked in my life, I don’t tell them so that they’ll praise me. I don’t want them to know about seminary, or about pastoring, or anything else so that they’ll think I’m really doing something for God, but I tell them so that they can see that God can work even through a normal, flawed, every-day human being like me . . . and they will praise Him for His goodness, His mercy, and His work. He is a God worthy to be praised.
So be like Paul . . . tell your story. Fix your eyes and your heart upon Jesus and tell the story of how He has worked in your life—not so that they will praise you for what you are doing for God, but so that they will praise Him for what He has done through you. Allow others to see how Christ has shone his light into your life, and they will praise God because of you.