My family just recently joined the modern world. We finally switched to a cable plan that gives us DVR. My first reaction was, 'Wow where has this been all my life?" The first thing I recorded was a Minnesota Vikings game I didn't have time to watch. Later I watched the game in less than an hour and a half. I was able to skip the commercials and also all the standing around that happens in football. It wasn't long after that I was recording my favorite shows and watching them when I wanted sans commercials. I also found myself clicking through the guide to find other shows I wanted to record to watch later. I mean who invented this? We should declare him king. I can watch what I want when I want and I don't have to put up with the hassles of commercials and if I want to do something else during the show I can just pause it. It has totally changed how I watch TV.
Wouldn't it be great if we could just DVR life? I don't want to go to work today, or go to school I'll just DVR it and do it later. Sorry I don't have time to talk to you right now, just stand there for a second and I will DVR you and when I have time I'll just hit play and then you can talk. A business meeting and one of my kids sport's games is scheduled at the same time, no problem I'll just DVR one and do it later. Better yet I'll DVR them both, go home pour a glass of wine, take a hot bath and tomorrow I'll deal with them, or maybe the next day. If a bunch of meetings and appointments and interruptions begin to build up in the DVR well I can just erase them. That person that always irritates me, erase, that bill collector that keeps calling, sorry erase. Oh if life could just be lived on DVR. I know that you are nodding in agreement with me right now.
Unfortunately we all know that life cannot be lived on DVR. Life happens whether we are ready or not. It doesn't ask us if we have time to participate, it doesn't happen when it is convenient for us. If you are like me life can sometimes seem like it is getting out of hand. Every morning during the week I have to get my kids out of bed, dressed, fed, teeth brushed and out the door to school. Then depending upon what day of the week it is I have to run to my office to do this or that and then off to something else, and that is just the stuff that is planned. The unplanned stuff comes out of nowhere and it is different every time. It can be that person that wants to talk, my kid's school calling about something, or a million other things. Nights can be filled with sports, meetings, emergencies, classes or family events both planned and unplanned. That is just Monday through Friday, don't get me started on the weekends. I learned a new phrase recently that is used in group therapy when someone becomes overcome. When a person reaches their emotional threshold they can yell out, "Stop and I meant it!" When they do that everything and everyone comes to a stop and is quiet until the situation is dealt with. There are times during the week that I, and am sure you, would like to cry out to the world, "Stop and I mean it!" Where is that DVR remote when you need it?!
Life has no DVR remote, therefore we have to do something ourselves to slow life down or to get ourselves ready to handle the chaos that is coming. Even though we cannot shout out, "Stop and I meant it," and then watch everything come to a stop around us we can take some time out of the day to stop and find our focus. Some people call this centering, I call it prayer. I call it prayer because for me that is what it is. The best time to do this is early in the morning before life begins. I start it off with reading Scripture and ending that with a Psalm that I pray through and then going to prayer about what I think is going to happen during the day. After that I put in God's hands the things that I don't know are going to happen during the day. It is putting God in control and putting my trust in him. God is my DVR. There are certain things during the day that I am going to have control over, and there are many others that I am not. I ask that God give me wisdom in the things that I have control over and guidance and deliverance from the things I don't. I can't DVR people or events, but I can rely on God to help me with those people and those events.
So take some time during the day to hand it over to God, give up some control and let God work through you in everything you do.
Tuesday, October 8, 2013
Thursday, January 17, 2013
Sermon for Chapter 3 of the Story
Previous on the story we met Abraham and his family. Our story this morning is about his great grandson Joseph. Remember last week God had started his nation building thing which of course is not politically correct to do today. Remember things had not started off very well either. Abraham and Sarah took over twenty-five years to have a child and then they only had one. Isaac after twenty years well he only has two and one of them turns out to be a trouble maker. Finally with Jacob the son of Isaac and the grandson of Abraham we start getting a people production line going, we end up with twelve and then it’s off to the races, it just took awhile to get some momentum going. Jacob like his grandfather Abraham has his named changed by God. God changed his name to Israel and gave him the same promise he had given his grandfather and then his father Isaac. God said to him, “I am God Almighty; be fruitful and increase number. A nation and community of nations will come from you, and kings will be among your descendants. The land I gave to Abraham and Isaac I also give to you, and I will give this land to your descendants after you.”
Jacob, now Israel who the nation would be named after again has twelve sons. One of the youngest of those sons is named Joseph. Joseph was Israel’s favorite son. Our story this morning starts off with Joseph at age seventeen. We have all heard that phrase mom loved you best, or you were always the favorite. Thankfully most of the time that is said jokingly. But unfortunately sometimes it also true and it usually creates problems in the family as the other kids feel left out. I am the youngest in the family. My parents both had kids before they married each other and had me. My oldest brother was 18 years older than me and then I have one that is fifteen years older and one that is seven years older. None of them lived at home while I grew up, so in a sense I grew up as an only child. My brother who is fifteen years older than me, told me once that they were all amazed at how differently I was raised than them, I got everything and was treated as the center of the universe, and had a totally different childhood than they did. A couple years before Darla and I got married I was at his house in Northern California and he said, “You know mom couldn’t have cared less who the rest of us married, but man I sure feel sorry for whoever marries you. Nobody can ever be that perfect.” Fortunately I don’t think my brothers were the jealous type, they found it more funny than anything else.
Unfortunately that is not the case with Joseph’s brothers, they resent him to death. It doesn’t help that Joseph is a pretty good kid who always seem to want to do the right thing. You ever met people like that? It also doesn’t help that he keeps having dreams where his brothers and his parents are always bowing down to him. It also really doesn’t help that he keeps sharing those dreams with whoever will listen. Discretion is something that Joseph could probably learn here. Joseph’s dreams are a big part of the story. Joseph has two dreams where he sees himself in the center and his brothers bowing down to him. When he tells them this dream they are really ticked off, even his dad Israel is mad. Who do you think you are that we should bow down to you? You and your coat of many colors, dad’s special one. Joseph doesn’t mean to make them mad it’s just the dream that God keeps giving him.
Well his brothers have had enough and one day his father sends him to check on his brothers and they see the perfect opportunity to get rid of him. The story says, “But they saw him in the distance, and before he reached them, they plotted to kill him. “Here comes that dreamer! They said to each other, “Come now, let’s kill him and thrown him into one of these cisterns and say that a ferocious animal devoured him. Then we’ll see what comes of his dreams.” Boy I am glad my brothers weren’t like that, I mean with family like that, who needs enemies. Think this is a dysfunctional family, oh yeah! So they rip his coat of many colors off of him and they thrown him in the cistern while they decide exactly what they are going to do with him. As they sat down to eat their lunch they see a caravan approaching and say to each other hey instead of killing him ourselves and his blood be on our hands why don’t we just sell him into slavery, after all he is family. Gotta love that type of thinking, hey remember he’s family, he’s our brother, let’s just sell him into slavery and then we will go back home and tell dad that a savage animal tore him to shreds. Remember last week when I talked about how God was going to start a new nation that would follow him and how in our thinking this nation should be made up of all stars from other nations. God’s plan was to start from scratch, well this what you get when you start from scratch, definitely not the all star team, more like a family off the Jerry Springer show.
So that is what they do they sell Joseph to the Ishmaelites and they tell Israel their father that they found Joseph’s coat, which they cover with animal blood, and that he must have been killed by wild animals. This is overwhelming to Israel and he never gets over his grief. Meanwhile these traders take Joseph to Egypt. He is sold again as a slave to an Egyptian administrator named Potiphar. Joseph is such a good slave that Potiphar puts him in charge of the whole household. So Joseph is prospering but then Potiphar’s wife decides she wants to sleep with Joseph and Joseph refuses saying he will not sin against God. Notice what he says there, he will not sin against God; ultimately every sin is against God. Potiphar’s wife gets fed up with being rejected and so she falsely accuses Joseph of assaulting her. When Potiphar comes home he believes his wife and he throws Joseph in prison. After Joseph is thrown in prison it says that God was with him and Joseph was so liked in the prison that the warden put him in charge of everything. Do you see a pattern developing here? No matter how bad Joseph’s life gets God never abandons him. While in prison Joseph gets a reputation for being able to correctly interpret dreams. One day there were two prisoners who had dreams and they asked Joseph what he thought. After listening to their two dreams he told one that his dream meant that in seven days he would be restored to his position serving the king, he told the second guy that his dream meant that in seven days he would be hanged by the king. Both of his interpretations turned out to be true which I am sure the second guy was not too please about. Joseph told the first guy when the king restores you remember me in this prison. The guy says sure no problem, but once he gets restored he completely forgets about Joseph.
Over two years pass and Joseph remains in prison, this wasn’t some short stint in jail. Even though he is pretty much running the show, his life doesn’t seem to be turning out too well. No one wants to spend their life in prison. Even if you are the head prisoner you are still a prisoner. And who knows how long he would have remained there if God hadn’t done something in his upper story. What happens is that Pharoah the King of Egypt starts having very disturbing dreams. He knows that they have great meaning but he cannot understand them. He brings in all his wise men and magicians to interpret the dreams, but none of them can do it. They too are dumbfounded. The man who was in prison with Joseph is the Pharaoh’s cupbearer and watching this remembers Joseph. He says you know what I just remembered something I promised I would do and he goes to Pharaoh and tells him about Joseph and his ability to interpret dreams. Joseph is brought to Pharaoh and Pharaoh tells him his dream and asks him to tell him what it means. Joseph’s response to him is revealing he tells Pharaoh, “I cannot do it, but God will give Pharaoh the answer he desires.” He tells Pharaoh I will tell you what it means, but understand it is not me telling you but God. He is the one with the power to do this not me.
So Joseph tells him what his dreams mean. Here is where we see God’s upper story and our lower story converging. Pharaoh tells him that in the first dream he saw seven beautiful cows emerge from the Nile only to be eaten by seven ugly cows. In the second dreams he saw seven savory heads of grain on a single stalk and they are swallowed up by seven dried up, worthless heads. Joseph tells Pharaoh that the dreams mean that God is saying that for the next seven years Egypt will have seven years of bountiful harvest, but that will be followed by seven years of famine. He told Pharaoh this is God’s plan, there is no doubt this is what he going to do so you must prepare for it. He tells Pharaoh you should put a wise man in charge of storing food during the seven years of bountiful harvest so that you will have food for the seven years of famine. The Pharaoh and his official after hearing this are so impressed by Joseph they say okay well how about you? Admittedly there is bizarreness to this story. Pharaoh is like, I know you were just in prison this morning, but you’re the wisest guy I have ever met, so I am going put you in charge of this whole thing. In fact I am going to make you my deputy, the only one who is going to have more authority in Egypt then you is going to be me. Talk about a promotion. This is better than winning the lottery.
And so in this rags to riches story, Joseph after being sold into slavery by his brothers, after being falsely thrown in prison, suddenly becomes second in command of all of Egypt, and he is not even an Egyptian. Well things happen just as Joseph said they would. For seven years the harvest is huge and Joseph makes sure that a large portion of it gets stored away for use during the coming famine. The people of Egypt must of have thought he was a little crazy all they could see was all the good stuff that was happening, what famine are you talking about? But Joseph is diligent in his duties. He even gets married and has a family of his own. Well after the seven years of good times, the famine hits and there is no food. The Egyptians start coming to Pharaoh to ask for help and Pharaoh sends them to Joseph. Joseph opens up the storehouses and starts supplying the people. Now they don’t think he is crazy. A couple of years into the famine more of the upper story and the lower story come together, the famine spreads into where Jacob, Israel and his sons are living in Canaan. Israel, still grieving for Joseph who he thinks is dead, tells Joseph’s brothers to go down to Egypt to bring back some food so they don’t starve. And so Joseph’s brothers travel to Egypt and finally end up standing before their brother Joseph, now age 39, this is 22 years after Joseph had told them his dream about them bowing down to him, and they had sold him into slavery, and guess what they do, the bow down before him and ask for grain, 22 years after Joseph dreamed they would do it. They don’t recognize Joseph, but he recognizes them. Now in our lower story, what is the first thing you would think would go through Joseph’s mind? Wow, who’s laughing now? Who’s in control now? Throw me in a cistern huh, sell me to slave traders, tell my dad I was killed by a wild animal. Don’t even think about looking for me for the past 22 years? Well guess what, now its payback time! Wouldn’t this be the perfect ending to this morning story? Joseph tells them who he is and has them all thrown into prison or executed for what they did to them. That’s what they deserve right? Yes, that is exactly what they deserve. What goes around comes around. Or at least it would be nice to see them brought to justice.
But here is another reason that this is the greatest story ever told. Joseph doesn’t do that. He doesn’t take revenge. He doesn’t hurt his brothers or chew them out or hold them accountable in way shape or form. Why? I mean down here in the lower story we want to see some justice meted out, so why doesn’t Joseph do that? Why instead of that does he eventually move his entire family into Egypt with him and give them lush land to live in? Well this is that upper story lower story contrast here again. Joseph though living in the lower story understands what is going on in the upper story. He realizes that the upper story is the most important story. When he reveals himself to his brothers he says, “Come close to me. I am your brother Joseph, the one you sold into Egypt! And now, do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you. God sent me here to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance. So then it was not you who sent me here but God.” Joseph understands the upper story, he understands that like us he is an actor on God’s stage and he knows his lines and the part that God has called him to play. Once you understand the upper story, then what happens in the lower story makes sense to you, even if it doesn’t make sense to anyone else.
That is why Joseph is able to forgive his brothers, and it why we should be able to forgive those around us as well. Joseph understood the grace and forgiveness that God had provided for him in his life so he felt free to do that in his own life with his own brothers. When we understand that God’s upper story is all about his relentless pursuit to get us back. When we understand just how much he has forgiven us and how much he continues to forgive us everyday then that frees us to forgive those who have sinned against us. When we do not forgive others, no matter what they have done to us, we are blocking God’s forgiveness of us. We are showing that we really don’t understand the upper story of God’s great love for us. We are called to forgive because we have been forgiven. Joseph saw that upper story, he saw God’s plan, moreover he saw God’s grace and he simply passed it on to those in his own life.
Here is some more upper story stuff. Remember last week with Abraham how we talked about how God was going to use this new nation he was building to reveal himself to the world? That this new nation of Israel, which was founded by Abraham, was going to be God’s light on the hill, the beacon that would draw others in the world to him? It was through this new tiny nation that God was going to bring salvation to the world through the Savior who would come from this nation, namely Jesus Christ. Well right now in our story this nation is still very small with all the sons and daughters there were about 70 people when they came into Egypt. They are not yet that large nation that is as numerous as the stars in the sky or the sand on seashore, they are tiny and they are vulnerable. The famine could have very easily wiped them completely out. God in the upper story had a desire to preserve this new nation of his so down there down in the lower story working through man’s sins and bad decisions he orchestrated it so that Joseph would be sent into Egypt and be able to make sure that there was food for them to make it through the famine. Understand that God saved the Egyptians through this too, but his primary mission was the save this new small nation of Israel, his nation, his people. Joseph understood that was what had happened. So even though his brothers had committed a great sin against him, which he would have been justified in making them suffer for, he knew the upper story and therefore he knew this was God’s will.
So Joseph brings his brothers and all their families into Egypt. And it turns out to be the perfect move. The Israelites were shepherds and the Egyptians considered shepherding an abomination. Therefore they were more than willing to let the Israelites do it and even gave them lush land to live in, so not only did they have land and food but also they were separate from everyone else, and that brings up another important part of the story, and this is important to remember. God strictly forbids the people in the nation of Israel to marry anyone outside of the nation. If other nations joined them and worshipped their God they would allow them to marry into the nation, but that was it. There was a reason for that. The other nations worshipped pagan gods, and God knew that if they intermarried with these other nations that his people would also began to worship these false God. It was not a racial or ethnic issue; it was purely a religious issue. God knew that if they did intermarry the nations of Israel would be destroyed as his people before they even got started. Therefore this move from Canaan to Egypt was perfect. In Canaan there was always the temptation to marry into the other nations, but not in Egypt. The Egyptians owned everything and they wouldn’t even think of intermarrying with people who shepherded sheep. The Israelites lived there for over four hundred years. During these 400 years of no intermarrying they grew to over a million people and that set the stage for them to be able to later take over the land of Canaan. Only after 400 years were they finally big enough and strong enough to drive the other nations out and claim the land that God had promised them. God’s upper story converging with man’s lower story. God does things in his time but he does them.
In midst of this story about the nation of Israel I want to take one last look at Joseph and the point of his life. I want you to look at the sheet that I passed out to you that has the timeline of Joseph’s life. Remember at age 17 Joseph is sold into slavery. At age 30 Joseph is made second in command of all of Egypt and at age 39 is when his brothers come and ask him for grain. Twenty-two years had elapsed from when Joseph was given his dream of his brothers bowing down to him to when it actually happens. Those twenty-two years of slavery and prison time and being separated from his family were very hard times for Joseph. God was always with him making him successful but they were years of suffering. But then I want you to look at the age he died, 110. So for 71 years Joseph lived in prosperity and peace with his family. And those 71 years made all the junk that happened to him in the lower story survivable. Joseph was blessed in that he seemed to always be able to see the upper story even was his lower story seemed a disaster.
Maybe you have gone through similar time periods in your life that were like Joseph's 22 years. It may have been ten years, thirty years, two months, six months where it seemed everything was over, but now you can look back and see that God used that time to train you, to make you stronger, to get you ready to handle something big that was coming later. Maybe some of you of are currently in that 22 years period. Maybe it seems that nothing is going right in your life, that it is one emergency after another, or that just when things start to go good, something else pops up and knocks you back down again. If that is the case remember Joseph, and remember God’s upper story, remember he hasn’t forgotten about you or stopped loving you. Deliverance will come, this too shall pass. Let God use this period to strengthen your faith and your resolve. Remember no matter what is going on in your lower story, God still loves and cares for you in the upper story and one day He will deliver you in the lower story.
Every week we conclude with a clue. This week’s clue is not like the previous week’s clues, which involved the shedding of blood and pointed forward to Jesus’ death on the cross. This week’s clue is about a deliverer. Joseph is a deliverer. He delivered the people of Israel from starvation. That deliverance comes by the way of 22 years of suffering. Because of him the nation of Israel is saved. Joseph today points us to another deliverer, who is promised to deliver all nations through his suffering. That man’s name would be Jesus who would deliver us from our sins. So we leave the nation of Israel in Egypt. Next week we find that all does not go well there, and now a new deliverer is needed to bring them back out of Egypt. Next week we meet a man who talks to bushes, divides water and carves tablets.
Jacob, now Israel who the nation would be named after again has twelve sons. One of the youngest of those sons is named Joseph. Joseph was Israel’s favorite son. Our story this morning starts off with Joseph at age seventeen. We have all heard that phrase mom loved you best, or you were always the favorite. Thankfully most of the time that is said jokingly. But unfortunately sometimes it also true and it usually creates problems in the family as the other kids feel left out. I am the youngest in the family. My parents both had kids before they married each other and had me. My oldest brother was 18 years older than me and then I have one that is fifteen years older and one that is seven years older. None of them lived at home while I grew up, so in a sense I grew up as an only child. My brother who is fifteen years older than me, told me once that they were all amazed at how differently I was raised than them, I got everything and was treated as the center of the universe, and had a totally different childhood than they did. A couple years before Darla and I got married I was at his house in Northern California and he said, “You know mom couldn’t have cared less who the rest of us married, but man I sure feel sorry for whoever marries you. Nobody can ever be that perfect.” Fortunately I don’t think my brothers were the jealous type, they found it more funny than anything else.
Unfortunately that is not the case with Joseph’s brothers, they resent him to death. It doesn’t help that Joseph is a pretty good kid who always seem to want to do the right thing. You ever met people like that? It also doesn’t help that he keeps having dreams where his brothers and his parents are always bowing down to him. It also really doesn’t help that he keeps sharing those dreams with whoever will listen. Discretion is something that Joseph could probably learn here. Joseph’s dreams are a big part of the story. Joseph has two dreams where he sees himself in the center and his brothers bowing down to him. When he tells them this dream they are really ticked off, even his dad Israel is mad. Who do you think you are that we should bow down to you? You and your coat of many colors, dad’s special one. Joseph doesn’t mean to make them mad it’s just the dream that God keeps giving him.
Well his brothers have had enough and one day his father sends him to check on his brothers and they see the perfect opportunity to get rid of him. The story says, “But they saw him in the distance, and before he reached them, they plotted to kill him. “Here comes that dreamer! They said to each other, “Come now, let’s kill him and thrown him into one of these cisterns and say that a ferocious animal devoured him. Then we’ll see what comes of his dreams.” Boy I am glad my brothers weren’t like that, I mean with family like that, who needs enemies. Think this is a dysfunctional family, oh yeah! So they rip his coat of many colors off of him and they thrown him in the cistern while they decide exactly what they are going to do with him. As they sat down to eat their lunch they see a caravan approaching and say to each other hey instead of killing him ourselves and his blood be on our hands why don’t we just sell him into slavery, after all he is family. Gotta love that type of thinking, hey remember he’s family, he’s our brother, let’s just sell him into slavery and then we will go back home and tell dad that a savage animal tore him to shreds. Remember last week when I talked about how God was going to start a new nation that would follow him and how in our thinking this nation should be made up of all stars from other nations. God’s plan was to start from scratch, well this what you get when you start from scratch, definitely not the all star team, more like a family off the Jerry Springer show.
So that is what they do they sell Joseph to the Ishmaelites and they tell Israel their father that they found Joseph’s coat, which they cover with animal blood, and that he must have been killed by wild animals. This is overwhelming to Israel and he never gets over his grief. Meanwhile these traders take Joseph to Egypt. He is sold again as a slave to an Egyptian administrator named Potiphar. Joseph is such a good slave that Potiphar puts him in charge of the whole household. So Joseph is prospering but then Potiphar’s wife decides she wants to sleep with Joseph and Joseph refuses saying he will not sin against God. Notice what he says there, he will not sin against God; ultimately every sin is against God. Potiphar’s wife gets fed up with being rejected and so she falsely accuses Joseph of assaulting her. When Potiphar comes home he believes his wife and he throws Joseph in prison. After Joseph is thrown in prison it says that God was with him and Joseph was so liked in the prison that the warden put him in charge of everything. Do you see a pattern developing here? No matter how bad Joseph’s life gets God never abandons him. While in prison Joseph gets a reputation for being able to correctly interpret dreams. One day there were two prisoners who had dreams and they asked Joseph what he thought. After listening to their two dreams he told one that his dream meant that in seven days he would be restored to his position serving the king, he told the second guy that his dream meant that in seven days he would be hanged by the king. Both of his interpretations turned out to be true which I am sure the second guy was not too please about. Joseph told the first guy when the king restores you remember me in this prison. The guy says sure no problem, but once he gets restored he completely forgets about Joseph.
Over two years pass and Joseph remains in prison, this wasn’t some short stint in jail. Even though he is pretty much running the show, his life doesn’t seem to be turning out too well. No one wants to spend their life in prison. Even if you are the head prisoner you are still a prisoner. And who knows how long he would have remained there if God hadn’t done something in his upper story. What happens is that Pharoah the King of Egypt starts having very disturbing dreams. He knows that they have great meaning but he cannot understand them. He brings in all his wise men and magicians to interpret the dreams, but none of them can do it. They too are dumbfounded. The man who was in prison with Joseph is the Pharaoh’s cupbearer and watching this remembers Joseph. He says you know what I just remembered something I promised I would do and he goes to Pharaoh and tells him about Joseph and his ability to interpret dreams. Joseph is brought to Pharaoh and Pharaoh tells him his dream and asks him to tell him what it means. Joseph’s response to him is revealing he tells Pharaoh, “I cannot do it, but God will give Pharaoh the answer he desires.” He tells Pharaoh I will tell you what it means, but understand it is not me telling you but God. He is the one with the power to do this not me.
So Joseph tells him what his dreams mean. Here is where we see God’s upper story and our lower story converging. Pharaoh tells him that in the first dream he saw seven beautiful cows emerge from the Nile only to be eaten by seven ugly cows. In the second dreams he saw seven savory heads of grain on a single stalk and they are swallowed up by seven dried up, worthless heads. Joseph tells Pharaoh that the dreams mean that God is saying that for the next seven years Egypt will have seven years of bountiful harvest, but that will be followed by seven years of famine. He told Pharaoh this is God’s plan, there is no doubt this is what he going to do so you must prepare for it. He tells Pharaoh you should put a wise man in charge of storing food during the seven years of bountiful harvest so that you will have food for the seven years of famine. The Pharaoh and his official after hearing this are so impressed by Joseph they say okay well how about you? Admittedly there is bizarreness to this story. Pharaoh is like, I know you were just in prison this morning, but you’re the wisest guy I have ever met, so I am going put you in charge of this whole thing. In fact I am going to make you my deputy, the only one who is going to have more authority in Egypt then you is going to be me. Talk about a promotion. This is better than winning the lottery.
And so in this rags to riches story, Joseph after being sold into slavery by his brothers, after being falsely thrown in prison, suddenly becomes second in command of all of Egypt, and he is not even an Egyptian. Well things happen just as Joseph said they would. For seven years the harvest is huge and Joseph makes sure that a large portion of it gets stored away for use during the coming famine. The people of Egypt must of have thought he was a little crazy all they could see was all the good stuff that was happening, what famine are you talking about? But Joseph is diligent in his duties. He even gets married and has a family of his own. Well after the seven years of good times, the famine hits and there is no food. The Egyptians start coming to Pharaoh to ask for help and Pharaoh sends them to Joseph. Joseph opens up the storehouses and starts supplying the people. Now they don’t think he is crazy. A couple of years into the famine more of the upper story and the lower story come together, the famine spreads into where Jacob, Israel and his sons are living in Canaan. Israel, still grieving for Joseph who he thinks is dead, tells Joseph’s brothers to go down to Egypt to bring back some food so they don’t starve. And so Joseph’s brothers travel to Egypt and finally end up standing before their brother Joseph, now age 39, this is 22 years after Joseph had told them his dream about them bowing down to him, and they had sold him into slavery, and guess what they do, the bow down before him and ask for grain, 22 years after Joseph dreamed they would do it. They don’t recognize Joseph, but he recognizes them. Now in our lower story, what is the first thing you would think would go through Joseph’s mind? Wow, who’s laughing now? Who’s in control now? Throw me in a cistern huh, sell me to slave traders, tell my dad I was killed by a wild animal. Don’t even think about looking for me for the past 22 years? Well guess what, now its payback time! Wouldn’t this be the perfect ending to this morning story? Joseph tells them who he is and has them all thrown into prison or executed for what they did to them. That’s what they deserve right? Yes, that is exactly what they deserve. What goes around comes around. Or at least it would be nice to see them brought to justice.
But here is another reason that this is the greatest story ever told. Joseph doesn’t do that. He doesn’t take revenge. He doesn’t hurt his brothers or chew them out or hold them accountable in way shape or form. Why? I mean down here in the lower story we want to see some justice meted out, so why doesn’t Joseph do that? Why instead of that does he eventually move his entire family into Egypt with him and give them lush land to live in? Well this is that upper story lower story contrast here again. Joseph though living in the lower story understands what is going on in the upper story. He realizes that the upper story is the most important story. When he reveals himself to his brothers he says, “Come close to me. I am your brother Joseph, the one you sold into Egypt! And now, do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you. God sent me here to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance. So then it was not you who sent me here but God.” Joseph understands the upper story, he understands that like us he is an actor on God’s stage and he knows his lines and the part that God has called him to play. Once you understand the upper story, then what happens in the lower story makes sense to you, even if it doesn’t make sense to anyone else.
That is why Joseph is able to forgive his brothers, and it why we should be able to forgive those around us as well. Joseph understood the grace and forgiveness that God had provided for him in his life so he felt free to do that in his own life with his own brothers. When we understand that God’s upper story is all about his relentless pursuit to get us back. When we understand just how much he has forgiven us and how much he continues to forgive us everyday then that frees us to forgive those who have sinned against us. When we do not forgive others, no matter what they have done to us, we are blocking God’s forgiveness of us. We are showing that we really don’t understand the upper story of God’s great love for us. We are called to forgive because we have been forgiven. Joseph saw that upper story, he saw God’s plan, moreover he saw God’s grace and he simply passed it on to those in his own life.
Here is some more upper story stuff. Remember last week with Abraham how we talked about how God was going to use this new nation he was building to reveal himself to the world? That this new nation of Israel, which was founded by Abraham, was going to be God’s light on the hill, the beacon that would draw others in the world to him? It was through this new tiny nation that God was going to bring salvation to the world through the Savior who would come from this nation, namely Jesus Christ. Well right now in our story this nation is still very small with all the sons and daughters there were about 70 people when they came into Egypt. They are not yet that large nation that is as numerous as the stars in the sky or the sand on seashore, they are tiny and they are vulnerable. The famine could have very easily wiped them completely out. God in the upper story had a desire to preserve this new nation of his so down there down in the lower story working through man’s sins and bad decisions he orchestrated it so that Joseph would be sent into Egypt and be able to make sure that there was food for them to make it through the famine. Understand that God saved the Egyptians through this too, but his primary mission was the save this new small nation of Israel, his nation, his people. Joseph understood that was what had happened. So even though his brothers had committed a great sin against him, which he would have been justified in making them suffer for, he knew the upper story and therefore he knew this was God’s will.
So Joseph brings his brothers and all their families into Egypt. And it turns out to be the perfect move. The Israelites were shepherds and the Egyptians considered shepherding an abomination. Therefore they were more than willing to let the Israelites do it and even gave them lush land to live in, so not only did they have land and food but also they were separate from everyone else, and that brings up another important part of the story, and this is important to remember. God strictly forbids the people in the nation of Israel to marry anyone outside of the nation. If other nations joined them and worshipped their God they would allow them to marry into the nation, but that was it. There was a reason for that. The other nations worshipped pagan gods, and God knew that if they intermarried with these other nations that his people would also began to worship these false God. It was not a racial or ethnic issue; it was purely a religious issue. God knew that if they did intermarry the nations of Israel would be destroyed as his people before they even got started. Therefore this move from Canaan to Egypt was perfect. In Canaan there was always the temptation to marry into the other nations, but not in Egypt. The Egyptians owned everything and they wouldn’t even think of intermarrying with people who shepherded sheep. The Israelites lived there for over four hundred years. During these 400 years of no intermarrying they grew to over a million people and that set the stage for them to be able to later take over the land of Canaan. Only after 400 years were they finally big enough and strong enough to drive the other nations out and claim the land that God had promised them. God’s upper story converging with man’s lower story. God does things in his time but he does them.
In midst of this story about the nation of Israel I want to take one last look at Joseph and the point of his life. I want you to look at the sheet that I passed out to you that has the timeline of Joseph’s life. Remember at age 17 Joseph is sold into slavery. At age 30 Joseph is made second in command of all of Egypt and at age 39 is when his brothers come and ask him for grain. Twenty-two years had elapsed from when Joseph was given his dream of his brothers bowing down to him to when it actually happens. Those twenty-two years of slavery and prison time and being separated from his family were very hard times for Joseph. God was always with him making him successful but they were years of suffering. But then I want you to look at the age he died, 110. So for 71 years Joseph lived in prosperity and peace with his family. And those 71 years made all the junk that happened to him in the lower story survivable. Joseph was blessed in that he seemed to always be able to see the upper story even was his lower story seemed a disaster.
Maybe you have gone through similar time periods in your life that were like Joseph's 22 years. It may have been ten years, thirty years, two months, six months where it seemed everything was over, but now you can look back and see that God used that time to train you, to make you stronger, to get you ready to handle something big that was coming later. Maybe some of you of are currently in that 22 years period. Maybe it seems that nothing is going right in your life, that it is one emergency after another, or that just when things start to go good, something else pops up and knocks you back down again. If that is the case remember Joseph, and remember God’s upper story, remember he hasn’t forgotten about you or stopped loving you. Deliverance will come, this too shall pass. Let God use this period to strengthen your faith and your resolve. Remember no matter what is going on in your lower story, God still loves and cares for you in the upper story and one day He will deliver you in the lower story.
Every week we conclude with a clue. This week’s clue is not like the previous week’s clues, which involved the shedding of blood and pointed forward to Jesus’ death on the cross. This week’s clue is about a deliverer. Joseph is a deliverer. He delivered the people of Israel from starvation. That deliverance comes by the way of 22 years of suffering. Because of him the nation of Israel is saved. Joseph today points us to another deliverer, who is promised to deliver all nations through his suffering. That man’s name would be Jesus who would deliver us from our sins. So we leave the nation of Israel in Egypt. Next week we find that all does not go well there, and now a new deliverer is needed to bring them back out of Egypt. Next week we meet a man who talks to bushes, divides water and carves tablets.
Sermon for Chapter 2 of the Story
Last week on The Story. Isn’t that how a lot of modern TV shows start off? That’s how Desperate Housewives always started, “Previously on Desperate Housewives”, and they would give you a review of the things that had happened in the seasons past episodes, particularly those that were going to be part of the storyline that night. I could always tell what the episode was going to be about by watching what they reviewed. Sometimes it was a continuation of something that had happened four episodes before. We will have a few of those in The Story. But this week we have only had one episode, our first season is just getting started. So it is pretty simple. Last time we learned that there is an upper story and a lower story. God works in the upper story doing his divine acts, God also works in the lower story where we live working through us to accomplish things in his upper story. We discovered that we are all actors on a stage and that in the story we find God’s script. As the story started out we saw how God created the heavens and the earth. We heard that human beings are considered the highest of God’s creation. That God made us in his own image. Most importantly we discovered that God’s vision in creation in the upper story is to be with us in the lower story. Unfortunately we saw that Adam and Eve chose a different vision and that sin and the sinful natured entered the human race. Yet, God passionately pursues us at great cost. The episode continued with God doing a do over by the flooding the world and destroying every living thing, except Noah and his family and the animals in the ark. We also saw that it did not solve the problem, sin survived the flood and not long after Noah and his family find themselves in another sinful situation.
This morning we start to learn a very important lesson about God and his love and pursuit of us. He doesn’t give up. God just flat refuses to quit loving us and trying to bring us back to him. He is like that parent with a rebellious child; no matter what the child does he refuses to throw in the towel on them. Jesus many thousands of years after our story this morning would tell another story of a father who had a prodigal son that he never gave up on. But that is a story for another time. Today I want to look at one of the most amazing and most important stories in The Story. The greatest story ever told. The first thing we need to discover this morning is where The Story takes place. On your map, either in your Bible or in the handout find the Tigris and Euphrates River. In this area is where everything is happening. The people of the world had all been one, even in language and they had begun to build a tower to reach to the heavens. God seeing their arrogance confused their languages and scattered the people. Now they lived in different people groups speaking different languages, making up different nations. Obviously this took place over a very long time period, how long we don’t know, but let’s just say for the sake of the story our story takes place many, many years later. We can even get an approximate year about 2091, give or take a few decades or even a few hundred years. So around 4100 years ago. No one was marking down dates on a Calendar at the time, in fact no one could agree on a calendar at the time. So once upon a time, long, long ago, in a land far, far away.
God looks at this situation, which was very similar to the situation that existed before the flood; people were sinning and committing evil everywhere. He has promised he will never flood the world again, but he is not pleased with what he sees. God decides this time that the best way to deal with this is to create a new nation that would follow him. He would be hands on with this new nation; they would be designated as his people. He would give them his laws and they would live like people should live. They would worship him and they would live the way people who worship God should live. The plan, when the other people on the earth saw them they would want to become a part of this new nation. They would stop worshipping idols, they would stop living evil lives and they would start to worship God himself and become part of his people. God had big plans for this nation, they were going to be his light on the hill, his people that would show the others how great a God he was. So you would think, or at least we would think down here in the lower story that God would start looking for another Noah. Not to build an ark but to lead this great nation.
In fact it would seem in our lower story that God would hand pick the best men and women from the other nations to make up this nation, you know (Name a bunch of nations and people from them) and than he would find the most talented guy on the earth to lead it. That makes sense in our lower story; get the best people and the man most qualified for the job. And here in part is why this is the greatest story ever told. God does none of that. In fact he does just the opposite. He doesn’t go find the best and the brightest of the other nations. He decides to start from scratch. And as for the most talented and best equipped guy to lead it, well instead he chooses a husband and wife who are 75 and 65 years old. Not only that their parents and their grandparents had worshipped pagan gods and they had no children and the wife is barren. In the lower story it kind of makes you scratch your head and go and so this is plan, yeah like this is going to work. I mean you want to talk about finding the least qualified people for the job. Really this is the plan?
And if you think you are surprised by this twist in the story well you can just imagine how Abraham felt. Abraham sat there and thought, let’s see, I am an old man, my wife is an old woman way past child bearing years, no one is following me right now and on top of that you want me to leave where I am at right now, where may ancestors have lived for years and move to another place where I don’t know anyone and the people that do live there are known to be unfriendly. Sign me up. I think this video may capture what the story is trying to get across here, (Show video)
You know sometimes when we read these stories out of the Bible we tend to think of these people as special, we don’t really make the connection that these were real flesh and blood people like us, but they were. I want you to look at your hands and look at the person next to you. Abraham and Sarah were not any different. They were not superheroes, and God did make them superheroes, they were people just like you and I today, with all our faults and anxieties and problems. They were flesh and blood, The story is about people just like you and I. And so remembering that and remembering Abraham’s situation, listen to this next part, “So Abram went, as the Lord had told him, they set out for the land of Canaan and they arrived there.” “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.” That’s faith. I know that there are a number of you here this morning, who have made big moves in your life, some of you even moved here from another country. There is excitement in a move like that but there is also fear. I have made several cross country moves in my life for schooling and Darla and I have made two huge moves in our marriage, one 2100 miles East from Idaho to Indiana and then seven years later a 2200 mile move southwest from Indiana to Arizona both times not really knowing what I was getting myself into. Let me tell you there are some gut check moments when you make moves like that. What if this doesn’t work out, what if it ends up in disaster? Some of you can identify with those feelings. Abraham if he had those struggles they are not mentioned in the story. God speaks to him, he picks up and goes, and he has nothing and nobody waiting for him at the other end, that’s faith.
But back to the question of why of all people, Abraham and Sarah? This doesn’t make any sense in our lower story. God though in the upper story has a reason and a plan. God works through people, but he wants the credit. Did you hear what I just said, God works through us as people, but at the end of the day he wants the credit. So therefore he many times chooses the weakest and the most unqualified so that when it all works out people will know that it was God who really did it. It is kind of like God is saying look I am so powerful that I am going to accomplish this with one arm tied behind my back, hoping on one leg, blindfolded and chewing gum at the same time. That’s what God does here with Abraham and Sarah. God chooses an old and unlikely couple so that all people would look to God, knowing that all that happens is done by God. God wants people to see him and understand his plan.
God makes a promise here to Abraham that really is four fold plan for the new nation. You know we are in the political season, and both candidates have their own plans for the nation, well God is no different, he here offers his plan. The difference is God is not a politician you can trust him that he what he says he is going to do he will do. The story reveals this four fold plan in these words, “I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all people on earth will be blessed through you.” The first part of the plan. God will make the nation great. Notice it says God will make the nation great, the nation of Israel will be later become a powerhouse. Two God will make Abraham’s name great. Abraham will become the father of many nations. He will become the father of all who believe later in Christ as well. Three, God will bless all who bless Abraham and curse the one who curses Abraham. God destroys the pagan nations around them and but blesses those who chose to become part of God’s great nation. And fourth, God will bless all the nations of the world through Abraham and the new nation. God will use the new nation to reveal his heart and his plan to win us back. In the long view what we see here is that God is going to use the nation of Israel to show how great he is and to draw people back to him. He is also going to use the new nation to bring fourth the Savior of all mankind who we now know as Jesus. Out of this great nation that Abraham will be the founder of, salvation will be brought to the entire world. This is God’s plan in the story to bring man back to him. This is his grand scheme to pursue and bring us back into a relationship with him. But looking at them from a lower story perspective it wouldn’t be because they were the all star team, no most of the time they look more like the strike replacement team, or the B or C team or the spare parts team.
So Abraham and Sarah are off to start the new nation, and you would think since this is God’s idea and God’s deal it would start off with a bang, but in reality it starts off more like a slow fizz. In fact it almost seems that everything falls apart before it even gets put together. I mean if you are going to start a nation what do you need? People, and lots of them. But here’s the thing Abraham is 100 years old and Sarah is 90. Not exactly child bearing years, and things don’t seem to be working out. Sarah cannot get pregnant. The years go by and nothing happens, no children. This is a little confusing. God said that he was going to bring forth a nation from Abraham and Sarah and yet they have not been able to have children, which really should be no surprise considering their age. And so doubt begins to kick in, can God really be trusted. Abraham even has an encounter with God where he says to God, “Sovereign Lord, what can you give me since I remain childless and the one who will inherit my estate is Eliezer of Damascus? You have given me no children; so a servant of mine will be my heir.” Abraham is desperate, what about that promise God? God responds, “This man will not be your heir, but a son who is of your own flesh and blood will be your heir.” Look up at the sky and count the stars – if indeed you can count them. So shall your offspring be.” And the story says, “And Abram believed and God credited to him as righteousness.
Sarah though has had enough. God’s plan sounded good but he wasn’t working fast enough for her and so she decided God’s needs some help and she comes up with her own plan to start this nation for God. Let’s pause for a moment here. Can you see the warning light go on here? How many of you at times have had that same thought? God is not moving fast enough, I need to do something. Or maybe it wasn’t God, maybe it was something else. And instead of waiting you impulsively took the reigns. How did that turn out? Most of the time it ends in disaster. In the story this sort of things happens a number of times and it never turns out good. So Sarah comes up with this idea that she will give her servant to Abraham to sleep with and maybe she can get pregnant and get this nation going. Abraham doesn’t put up any argument at all here. He is all for the idea and so Sarah gives her servant Hagar to Abraham and Hagar gets pregnant and Ishmael is born. God blesses Ishmael, but he does not begin the new nation with Ishmael, instead Ishmael becomes the father of other nations. God says nothing about this by the way, this is not his plan but he lets man do what he wants to do. Later when God talks with Abraham again about the new nation, Abraham brings up Ishmael to him and God looks at him and says no, he is not the one. Ishmael becomes a source of grief later on to both Abraham and Sarah and becomes the father of what is now known as Islam. Sometimes the consequences of taking things in our hands instead of waiting on God can have disastrous long term consequences.
Finally one day almost twenty five years after God has given Abraham and Sarah the promise God visits Abraham and promises the 100 year old that within a year he and Sarah are going to have a child. Sarah overhears the conversation and laughs’ thinking that is impossible. God hears her laugh and calls her on it. Within the year Sarah gets pregnant and has a child which God tells her to name Isaac, which means laughter, and who wouldn’t laugh that someone would have a child at that age, even God gets in the mix by telling them to name him laughter. God in the upper story even thinks it’s funny. God has a sense of humor, where do you think we get our sense of humor. Isaac is the child of the promise; he is the one that the nation will start to build upon. I mean this is crazy though isn’t it. In the lower story we would have chosen a younger fertile couple and we would have had them popping out kids every nine months like a production line. But God choose two people way past child bearing years and then doesn’t give them children for close to twenty-five years after that. Sometimes God’s thinking in the upper story doesn’t make sense to us in the lower story. But God has a plan and Abraham and Sarah learn to trust him that he knows what he is doing.
So maybe it seems like we are headed toward a happily ever after ending here right. Well just when you thought it was beginning to make sense, God throws a twist in the story, and not a minor one either. When Isaac is about 15 years old, God one day tells Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. Yeah you heard that right. God severely tests Abraham by commanding him to offer Isaac as a sacrifice. God says, “Take your son, your only son, whom you love – Isaac – and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you.” God’s upper story continues to get more confusing to us down here in the lower story. Now as parents we know what Abraham does, he says no way I am going to do that, not happening. Well actually he doesn’t say that. Instead the story says, “Early the next morning Abraham got up and loaded his donkey. He took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. When he had cut enough wood for the burnt offering, he set out for the place God has told him about.” Abraham obediently does what God asks him to do. Let me show you another video that puts this situation in a modern world context. (Show the video)
What is the thinking going here? Abraham obediently replies and takes his son, his 15 year old son to the Mountain of Moriah. Now after they get there Abraham and Isaac start walking to the top and they are carrying everything with them. At some point Isaac realizes that they don’t really have everything. They don’t have the lamb for the sacrifice, and so he turns to his dad and asks where the lamb for the sacrifice is? He dad’s response, “Don’t worry son God will provide it.” When they get to the top Abraham lays Isaac upon the altar, (Pull the sheet covering the body on the altar) and he gets ready to sacrifice him. If Isaac had any doubt as to who was being sacrificed well it was gone now, he was the sacrifice, and even though he is fifteen years old and his father is a very old man he doesn’t resist. He could have probably very easily overpowered his dad, but he doesn’t even attempt to do so, he doesn’t even cry out. He trusts that his father knows what he is doing even if he doesn’t understand it. Abraham as well doesn’t hesitate, he is trusting that his Heavenly Father, God knows what he is doing even if he doesn’t understand it. Just as he is about to bring the knife down, God calls out to him from heaven, “Abraham! Abraham!” “Here I am,” he replied. “Do not lay a hand on the boy,” he said, “Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.” Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son.
This is a story of faith and complete trust in God. In the story we read that, “Abraham reasoned that God could even raise the dead, and so in a manner of speaking he did receive Isaac back from death.” In this portion of the story we also get a picture of what is going to happen later on in the story. You could say that we have yet another clue as where this story is headed. Remember last week our clue was the shedding of the blood that was required for God to provide skins to cover Adam and Eve’s same. Well today we have another shedding of blood. In this case a substitute shedding of blood. A ram’s blood is shed in place of Isaac’s. Abraham didn’t have to sacrifice his son, his only son who he loved. Here is the clue, interestingly enough most scholars believe that the hill of Moriah is most likely in Jerusalem. It is on the same hill that 2080 years later another sacrifice would be offered up. (Reveal the curtain and the man on the cross) Centuries later another son, an only son, who was loved by his father will be sacrificed on this same hill and not spared. The same place where Isaac is nearly sacrificed, 2000 years later Jesus is sacrificed on the cross for our sins. God did not stop the sacrifice that time. Instead he let Jesus be our substitute he let Jesus die in our place. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him will have eternal life.” God will win us back at great cost to himself. That is how much he loves you. Abraham got a picture of that in the near sacrifice of his own son.
The bottom line of the story today? In choosing Abraham and Sarah to begin the new nation, God reveals a pattern. God chooses unlikely people who are not the smartest, the most beautiful and handsome with the best resumes. God chooses ordinary people like you and me. No matter who you are, you are qualified to be used greatly in God’s great story. You may reveal God, too, and reflect his plan to win us back. We have had two clues in the past two weeks of the story; they were both about the shedding of blood. Next week the story continues with an interesting character. A man who wears a coat of many colors and whose life God uses to preserve his new nation. But in the story God throws in one plot twist after another before it all comes to pass. So join us next week as we meet a man who rises from slave to deputy Pharaoh.
This morning we start to learn a very important lesson about God and his love and pursuit of us. He doesn’t give up. God just flat refuses to quit loving us and trying to bring us back to him. He is like that parent with a rebellious child; no matter what the child does he refuses to throw in the towel on them. Jesus many thousands of years after our story this morning would tell another story of a father who had a prodigal son that he never gave up on. But that is a story for another time. Today I want to look at one of the most amazing and most important stories in The Story. The greatest story ever told. The first thing we need to discover this morning is where The Story takes place. On your map, either in your Bible or in the handout find the Tigris and Euphrates River. In this area is where everything is happening. The people of the world had all been one, even in language and they had begun to build a tower to reach to the heavens. God seeing their arrogance confused their languages and scattered the people. Now they lived in different people groups speaking different languages, making up different nations. Obviously this took place over a very long time period, how long we don’t know, but let’s just say for the sake of the story our story takes place many, many years later. We can even get an approximate year about 2091, give or take a few decades or even a few hundred years. So around 4100 years ago. No one was marking down dates on a Calendar at the time, in fact no one could agree on a calendar at the time. So once upon a time, long, long ago, in a land far, far away.
God looks at this situation, which was very similar to the situation that existed before the flood; people were sinning and committing evil everywhere. He has promised he will never flood the world again, but he is not pleased with what he sees. God decides this time that the best way to deal with this is to create a new nation that would follow him. He would be hands on with this new nation; they would be designated as his people. He would give them his laws and they would live like people should live. They would worship him and they would live the way people who worship God should live. The plan, when the other people on the earth saw them they would want to become a part of this new nation. They would stop worshipping idols, they would stop living evil lives and they would start to worship God himself and become part of his people. God had big plans for this nation, they were going to be his light on the hill, his people that would show the others how great a God he was. So you would think, or at least we would think down here in the lower story that God would start looking for another Noah. Not to build an ark but to lead this great nation.
In fact it would seem in our lower story that God would hand pick the best men and women from the other nations to make up this nation, you know (Name a bunch of nations and people from them) and than he would find the most talented guy on the earth to lead it. That makes sense in our lower story; get the best people and the man most qualified for the job. And here in part is why this is the greatest story ever told. God does none of that. In fact he does just the opposite. He doesn’t go find the best and the brightest of the other nations. He decides to start from scratch. And as for the most talented and best equipped guy to lead it, well instead he chooses a husband and wife who are 75 and 65 years old. Not only that their parents and their grandparents had worshipped pagan gods and they had no children and the wife is barren. In the lower story it kind of makes you scratch your head and go and so this is plan, yeah like this is going to work. I mean you want to talk about finding the least qualified people for the job. Really this is the plan?
And if you think you are surprised by this twist in the story well you can just imagine how Abraham felt. Abraham sat there and thought, let’s see, I am an old man, my wife is an old woman way past child bearing years, no one is following me right now and on top of that you want me to leave where I am at right now, where may ancestors have lived for years and move to another place where I don’t know anyone and the people that do live there are known to be unfriendly. Sign me up. I think this video may capture what the story is trying to get across here, (Show video)
You know sometimes when we read these stories out of the Bible we tend to think of these people as special, we don’t really make the connection that these were real flesh and blood people like us, but they were. I want you to look at your hands and look at the person next to you. Abraham and Sarah were not any different. They were not superheroes, and God did make them superheroes, they were people just like you and I today, with all our faults and anxieties and problems. They were flesh and blood, The story is about people just like you and I. And so remembering that and remembering Abraham’s situation, listen to this next part, “So Abram went, as the Lord had told him, they set out for the land of Canaan and they arrived there.” “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.” That’s faith. I know that there are a number of you here this morning, who have made big moves in your life, some of you even moved here from another country. There is excitement in a move like that but there is also fear. I have made several cross country moves in my life for schooling and Darla and I have made two huge moves in our marriage, one 2100 miles East from Idaho to Indiana and then seven years later a 2200 mile move southwest from Indiana to Arizona both times not really knowing what I was getting myself into. Let me tell you there are some gut check moments when you make moves like that. What if this doesn’t work out, what if it ends up in disaster? Some of you can identify with those feelings. Abraham if he had those struggles they are not mentioned in the story. God speaks to him, he picks up and goes, and he has nothing and nobody waiting for him at the other end, that’s faith.
But back to the question of why of all people, Abraham and Sarah? This doesn’t make any sense in our lower story. God though in the upper story has a reason and a plan. God works through people, but he wants the credit. Did you hear what I just said, God works through us as people, but at the end of the day he wants the credit. So therefore he many times chooses the weakest and the most unqualified so that when it all works out people will know that it was God who really did it. It is kind of like God is saying look I am so powerful that I am going to accomplish this with one arm tied behind my back, hoping on one leg, blindfolded and chewing gum at the same time. That’s what God does here with Abraham and Sarah. God chooses an old and unlikely couple so that all people would look to God, knowing that all that happens is done by God. God wants people to see him and understand his plan.
God makes a promise here to Abraham that really is four fold plan for the new nation. You know we are in the political season, and both candidates have their own plans for the nation, well God is no different, he here offers his plan. The difference is God is not a politician you can trust him that he what he says he is going to do he will do. The story reveals this four fold plan in these words, “I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all people on earth will be blessed through you.” The first part of the plan. God will make the nation great. Notice it says God will make the nation great, the nation of Israel will be later become a powerhouse. Two God will make Abraham’s name great. Abraham will become the father of many nations. He will become the father of all who believe later in Christ as well. Three, God will bless all who bless Abraham and curse the one who curses Abraham. God destroys the pagan nations around them and but blesses those who chose to become part of God’s great nation. And fourth, God will bless all the nations of the world through Abraham and the new nation. God will use the new nation to reveal his heart and his plan to win us back. In the long view what we see here is that God is going to use the nation of Israel to show how great he is and to draw people back to him. He is also going to use the new nation to bring fourth the Savior of all mankind who we now know as Jesus. Out of this great nation that Abraham will be the founder of, salvation will be brought to the entire world. This is God’s plan in the story to bring man back to him. This is his grand scheme to pursue and bring us back into a relationship with him. But looking at them from a lower story perspective it wouldn’t be because they were the all star team, no most of the time they look more like the strike replacement team, or the B or C team or the spare parts team.
So Abraham and Sarah are off to start the new nation, and you would think since this is God’s idea and God’s deal it would start off with a bang, but in reality it starts off more like a slow fizz. In fact it almost seems that everything falls apart before it even gets put together. I mean if you are going to start a nation what do you need? People, and lots of them. But here’s the thing Abraham is 100 years old and Sarah is 90. Not exactly child bearing years, and things don’t seem to be working out. Sarah cannot get pregnant. The years go by and nothing happens, no children. This is a little confusing. God said that he was going to bring forth a nation from Abraham and Sarah and yet they have not been able to have children, which really should be no surprise considering their age. And so doubt begins to kick in, can God really be trusted. Abraham even has an encounter with God where he says to God, “Sovereign Lord, what can you give me since I remain childless and the one who will inherit my estate is Eliezer of Damascus? You have given me no children; so a servant of mine will be my heir.” Abraham is desperate, what about that promise God? God responds, “This man will not be your heir, but a son who is of your own flesh and blood will be your heir.” Look up at the sky and count the stars – if indeed you can count them. So shall your offspring be.” And the story says, “And Abram believed and God credited to him as righteousness.
Sarah though has had enough. God’s plan sounded good but he wasn’t working fast enough for her and so she decided God’s needs some help and she comes up with her own plan to start this nation for God. Let’s pause for a moment here. Can you see the warning light go on here? How many of you at times have had that same thought? God is not moving fast enough, I need to do something. Or maybe it wasn’t God, maybe it was something else. And instead of waiting you impulsively took the reigns. How did that turn out? Most of the time it ends in disaster. In the story this sort of things happens a number of times and it never turns out good. So Sarah comes up with this idea that she will give her servant to Abraham to sleep with and maybe she can get pregnant and get this nation going. Abraham doesn’t put up any argument at all here. He is all for the idea and so Sarah gives her servant Hagar to Abraham and Hagar gets pregnant and Ishmael is born. God blesses Ishmael, but he does not begin the new nation with Ishmael, instead Ishmael becomes the father of other nations. God says nothing about this by the way, this is not his plan but he lets man do what he wants to do. Later when God talks with Abraham again about the new nation, Abraham brings up Ishmael to him and God looks at him and says no, he is not the one. Ishmael becomes a source of grief later on to both Abraham and Sarah and becomes the father of what is now known as Islam. Sometimes the consequences of taking things in our hands instead of waiting on God can have disastrous long term consequences.
Finally one day almost twenty five years after God has given Abraham and Sarah the promise God visits Abraham and promises the 100 year old that within a year he and Sarah are going to have a child. Sarah overhears the conversation and laughs’ thinking that is impossible. God hears her laugh and calls her on it. Within the year Sarah gets pregnant and has a child which God tells her to name Isaac, which means laughter, and who wouldn’t laugh that someone would have a child at that age, even God gets in the mix by telling them to name him laughter. God in the upper story even thinks it’s funny. God has a sense of humor, where do you think we get our sense of humor. Isaac is the child of the promise; he is the one that the nation will start to build upon. I mean this is crazy though isn’t it. In the lower story we would have chosen a younger fertile couple and we would have had them popping out kids every nine months like a production line. But God choose two people way past child bearing years and then doesn’t give them children for close to twenty-five years after that. Sometimes God’s thinking in the upper story doesn’t make sense to us in the lower story. But God has a plan and Abraham and Sarah learn to trust him that he knows what he is doing.
So maybe it seems like we are headed toward a happily ever after ending here right. Well just when you thought it was beginning to make sense, God throws a twist in the story, and not a minor one either. When Isaac is about 15 years old, God one day tells Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. Yeah you heard that right. God severely tests Abraham by commanding him to offer Isaac as a sacrifice. God says, “Take your son, your only son, whom you love – Isaac – and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you.” God’s upper story continues to get more confusing to us down here in the lower story. Now as parents we know what Abraham does, he says no way I am going to do that, not happening. Well actually he doesn’t say that. Instead the story says, “Early the next morning Abraham got up and loaded his donkey. He took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. When he had cut enough wood for the burnt offering, he set out for the place God has told him about.” Abraham obediently does what God asks him to do. Let me show you another video that puts this situation in a modern world context. (Show the video)
What is the thinking going here? Abraham obediently replies and takes his son, his 15 year old son to the Mountain of Moriah. Now after they get there Abraham and Isaac start walking to the top and they are carrying everything with them. At some point Isaac realizes that they don’t really have everything. They don’t have the lamb for the sacrifice, and so he turns to his dad and asks where the lamb for the sacrifice is? He dad’s response, “Don’t worry son God will provide it.” When they get to the top Abraham lays Isaac upon the altar, (Pull the sheet covering the body on the altar) and he gets ready to sacrifice him. If Isaac had any doubt as to who was being sacrificed well it was gone now, he was the sacrifice, and even though he is fifteen years old and his father is a very old man he doesn’t resist. He could have probably very easily overpowered his dad, but he doesn’t even attempt to do so, he doesn’t even cry out. He trusts that his father knows what he is doing even if he doesn’t understand it. Abraham as well doesn’t hesitate, he is trusting that his Heavenly Father, God knows what he is doing even if he doesn’t understand it. Just as he is about to bring the knife down, God calls out to him from heaven, “Abraham! Abraham!” “Here I am,” he replied. “Do not lay a hand on the boy,” he said, “Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.” Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son.
This is a story of faith and complete trust in God. In the story we read that, “Abraham reasoned that God could even raise the dead, and so in a manner of speaking he did receive Isaac back from death.” In this portion of the story we also get a picture of what is going to happen later on in the story. You could say that we have yet another clue as where this story is headed. Remember last week our clue was the shedding of the blood that was required for God to provide skins to cover Adam and Eve’s same. Well today we have another shedding of blood. In this case a substitute shedding of blood. A ram’s blood is shed in place of Isaac’s. Abraham didn’t have to sacrifice his son, his only son who he loved. Here is the clue, interestingly enough most scholars believe that the hill of Moriah is most likely in Jerusalem. It is on the same hill that 2080 years later another sacrifice would be offered up. (Reveal the curtain and the man on the cross) Centuries later another son, an only son, who was loved by his father will be sacrificed on this same hill and not spared. The same place where Isaac is nearly sacrificed, 2000 years later Jesus is sacrificed on the cross for our sins. God did not stop the sacrifice that time. Instead he let Jesus be our substitute he let Jesus die in our place. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him will have eternal life.” God will win us back at great cost to himself. That is how much he loves you. Abraham got a picture of that in the near sacrifice of his own son.
The bottom line of the story today? In choosing Abraham and Sarah to begin the new nation, God reveals a pattern. God chooses unlikely people who are not the smartest, the most beautiful and handsome with the best resumes. God chooses ordinary people like you and me. No matter who you are, you are qualified to be used greatly in God’s great story. You may reveal God, too, and reflect his plan to win us back. We have had two clues in the past two weeks of the story; they were both about the shedding of blood. Next week the story continues with an interesting character. A man who wears a coat of many colors and whose life God uses to preserve his new nation. But in the story God throws in one plot twist after another before it all comes to pass. So join us next week as we meet a man who rises from slave to deputy Pharaoh.
Tuesday, December 11, 2012
The Story - Chapter One
The Story is a 31 chapter narrative that goes through the entire Bible. This is my sermon from Chapter 1 which was preached on September 9th 2012. How it is written here and how it was actually delivered differ in many places. In other words my sermons are never preached word for word.
THE STORY CHAPTER 1 CREATION: THE BEGINNING OF LIFE AS WE KNOW IT
The Adam and Eve transition video has been shown. I walk out on stage. There is an apple on the table. Balls of various sizes are on the floor.
God. Welcome to the story. The main character in our story is God. He is also the script writer. I don’t know about you but I love a good story. As a child of older parents I grew up listening to stories that my parents and their friends would tell. I grew up in Western Montana and my dad and his friends were loggers and construction workers and they knew how to tell a story. A guy said one time that if Garrison Keillor were go into a bar in Montana and listen to the stories he would quit his day job, because he couldn’t compete. And I believe that. My dad, who at age 16 logged in Oregon and then joined the Navy to go to war in the pacific and then came back and was a foreman on road construction crews that built roads in the mountains of Oregon, Idaho, Montana and Wyoming, was a master story teller. He told what you could call semi-true stories. They were mostly true but also had enough baloney in them to keep you guessing and hanging on every word. My dad had lived through the great depression, World War II and I was fascinated by his stories of those times. I often wondered what it would have been like to live in those times. I would try to place myself mentally in those places and try to imagine my parents as young people. Stories were large part of my growing up. This morning we are going to begin to tell the story, and it is not a semi-true story. It is a completely true story, there is no once upon a time, or this really happened here. No this is a true story. In fact it is the most fascinating, it is the greatest story ever told. And you have a part in that story. God wrote the script and you and I are actors. And if you and I are going to play our part well we need to learn the script. This is what we will be doing. Our script, like most scripts starts at the beginning.
We start first with God. Notice I said we start. God on the other hand doesn’t have a start, a beginning. God is eternal. Eternal doesn’t just mean that he never has an end, but that he never had a beginning either. That is hard for us to conceptualize, because you and I do have a beginning, and so for the sake of understanding, we start at the beginning of creation. Some have referred to it as the big bang; however it happened, it was big and it happened with a bang, but we are not talking about an impersonal accident here; instead we are talking about God acting as a poet and as an artist. Any of you who have hiked through the mountains or in the Grand Canyon are who have witnessed creation in all its beauty know that creation is the work of an artist. In the story we see God painting and writing, and in six days he creates a masterpiece.
Notice that there is an order to how God works. On days one, two and three God creates places. Day one he creates light and darkness. Day two he creates the sky and the waters. Day three he creates land and vegetation. God creates the background on the canvass like a great painter. If you have ever watched someone paint you can appreciate this. They fill in the background with color and then they start adding the detail. That is what God starts doing on day four. If you look at the chart you see the sequences. Day four God puts in the sun and the moon and the stars. As you see I put some balls out there to roughly estimate the planet sizes. (Explain them) Looking at these is truly amazing when you see the size of earth compared to everything else. We are a pretty small planet. As they say sometimes great things come in small packages.
Then on day five he fills the sky with the birds and the waters with sea creatures. Then on day six he fills the land with animals and last of all he creates us, humans. The creation of man is God’s crowning achievement. We hear this in God’s own words, “Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our own likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over living creature that moves on the ground.” Where God had created other animals and things he gave them life, when he created man he gave him his own breath, he created him in his own image. In other words God’s core passion is people because they are made in God’s image. We are, you and I are God’s core passion, we are why everything else was made. Think about that for a second. All the beauties of the creation are secondary to you. You are the most important thing in the universe to God. Talk about self-esteem, we have God esteem. And as we will see in the rest of the story, God’s supreme passion to be with you at all costs.
So here we have this beautiful creation, we have the planets in their orbits, and we have birds in the air, fish in the sea and animal on the ground. We have plants and trees and a garden where man and woman live in perfect harmony with God. Everything is perfect. And it would be nice to conclude this story this morning with and they lived happily ever after. I mean this is the greatest story ever told, so isn’t that how it should end? Adam and Eve continue to have the perfect relationship with God and with each other, they have children and populate the earth, and all their children are perfect too and you and I when we come along well we live in a perfect world as well, but the story this morning doesn’t end that way. Far from it. No this is not the end of the story, this is just the beginning. The story continues with well an apple, or some sort of fruit we really don’t know. It continues with the big bang of the Fall. A bang this is still resounding throughout the world. We are still suffering the consequences of it this morning.
Now some people question why the fall had to happen. Couldn’t God have stopped it from happening? And why of all things that tree? You have heard of the tree right? In the midst of the Garden where God had put Adam and Eve to live He put a tree called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And he also put another tree there, called the tree of life. He told Adam and Eve the garden is yours, take care of it and eat of the fruit of the trees, but don’t eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, because if you eat of that tree you shall surely die. Eat of everything else, just not that tree. So why would God do that? Well here is the funny thing about God. Some of you may have grown up with this image of God as some sort of mean judge or enforcer, or someone looking over your shoulder waiting for you to mess up. That may have been an image put there by a parent or a pastor or a grandparent. But that is really not the God that The Story describes. The God in the story is a loving God who wants to have a loving relationship with the people he created. And if you are going to have a loving relationship with someone you have to give them the freedom and power to choose to love you back or to reject you. If there is no ability to walk away to reject the other person that is not really a relationship that is just one person controlling the other, using them, it’s really an abusive relationship. God is not going to force his people to love him. He gave Adam and Eve the choice and he gives you and me the choice still today.
To fully understand what’s going on here we first have to understand Adam and Eve’s nature. You and today because of what happened with this apple have a sinful nature. We will get to that later, but we sin not only in things that we do or don’t do, but in our thoughts and desires as well. In fact we are so filled with sin that we can’t help but sin. We can’t stop ourselves. If we had been Adam and Eve in our current state we would have been doomed from the start, but Adam and Eve were not sinners, they had a perfect nature, they had the ability to not sin. They had the ability to avoid temptation and always do the right thing. They were the perfect creation of God. Therefore their rebellion is a deliberate choice, with forethought. They knew what they were doing and did it anyway. They gave into the temptation to be their own God. Remember Satan’s, the snake’s temptation, God knows that if you eat the fruit you will be like him and Eve took the apple and ate and gave some to Adam who also ate. With this sound (Crunch) Adam and Eve rejected God and died spiritually and became separated from God. And when God found out he threw them out of the garden and told them that they were cursed and that the ground was also cursed because of them. So much for living happily ever after. So much for the nice fairy tale. No this part of the story ends in betrayal, spiritual death and disaster. Adam and Eve had replaced God with themselves.
That’s how the grand story that we are embarking on for the next nine months starts off. It is the basis for the rest of the story. In fact the rest of the story is really about God’s pursuit to get us back. There is a huge transition in the story here. The first three chapters are like part one of the story and then from the middle of Genesis 3 to Revelation 22 is part two. First part thrown out of the garden separated from God, part two God comes after us, trying to find us, trying to bring us home to be with him. The impact of Adam and Eve’s sin was huge. They were not just filled with sin; their spiritual DNA was changed; now sin was part of their life and because of that new spiritual DNA their offspring were born with sin as well. Sinners produced sinners and the world became a completely different place.
As the generations pass and the world population grows it becomes more and more corrupt. The Story says, “The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that ever inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled.” God looks at the world he has created and the people he has created and he is greatly dismayed. The perfect thing that he had created had become ruined. He decides it is time to start over and he resolves to wipe out everything but a small portion of people and animals and he looks around he sees a man named Noah. The story says, “Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked faithfully with God.” God decides that he is going to start over with Noah and so he calls him and tells him to build an ark to save his family so that God can do a do over. Here is a strange thing in the story, this shows the difference in the thinking that goes on in God’s upper story compared to the thinking that goes on in our lower story. God in the upper story does something here that he never does again, he actually chooses the best person for the job. As we will see in the rest of the story God chooses people that at times were the least qualified for the job. In our lower story, our day to day lives, God’s actions sometimes don’t make sense. We wouldn’t choose the people that God chooses, but here with Noah we are on the same page. This is the man for the job. God tells Noah build an ark, and he gives him exact instructions on how to build it. He tells him what kind of wood to use and what length it should be and then he tells him to gather two of every kind of animal plus additional animals for food. Sounds like a simple story, but I want you to look outside for a minute. He told Noah to build the ark in a setting much like this. No ocean nearby, no massive waterways that we know of. He is in a desert! There is no indication that there had ever even been rain before, much less something called a flood. On top of that he told Noah, hey when you’re not building the ark, I want you to out and preach to everyone around you that they need to repent or I am going to flood the earth. Now here is the most interesting thing, according to the timeline it took 120 years to do this, it took him that long to build the ark. So Noah I want you to build an ark in the middle of nowhere, you are going to have to find your own gopher wood and no one is going to help you except your sons, who are probably going to think that you are nuts, as is the rest of the community and while you are doing that, and working your day job mind you, I want you to go knock on doors and explain to people that you are building an ark in the middle of the desert because a flood is coming and tell them they need to repent. I am sure this made Noah Mr. popular, more likely the crazy man that lives down the street.
In the face of all of this Noah builds this Ark, most people think it was more of a barge than a ship and he loads all the animals and his family upon it and God closes the door and it begins to rain. And it rains for 40 days and 40 nights. Does that number remind you of anything? Yesterday we finished our 40 days of prayer for The Story. We prayed up a storm that The Story would bring many people back into a relationship with God. God here uses that same 40 days to restore things on earth so that he can continue to have a relationship with mankind. We will find out later in the story that 40 days is always a time of great significance. So for forty days it rained and springs of water came up from the ground and the whole earth was flooded and every living thing on it was destroyed. All the people, all the animals, everything except for Noah and his family and the animals with them in the Ark. Finally the rain stopped and slowly after many months the water receded and dry land appeared and Noah and his family and all the animals were allowed to leave the ark.
The minute they stepped outside they encountered a whole new world. Everything was gone, the earth itself had been deeply changed by the waters and they find themselves alone in this brand new world. It’s now their job to start over. From eight people and the animals left on the ark, they were going to have to repopulate the world. It sounds like something out of a really bad end of the world movie, but this was reality. Imagine that you and your family the only ones left on the planet and it is your responsibility to repopulate it. It is a new beginning, a brave new world. The first thing that Noah does is build an altar to the Lord and he offers God sacrifices upon it to thank him for saving them. The first thing Noah and his family do in this new world is worship God. Sounds like a really good start doesn’t it? So maybe this is the happily ever after ending that we want right? Noah and his family worship God, reproduce and their children worship God and everything is perfect. I mean God had wiped out the evil human race in the flood and now Noah and his family are worshipping him. (Take a bite of the apple) but that sound could still be heard. Yeah, the sinful human race had been wiped out but sin was still around. Noah, though a righteousness man was still a sinner and so were the members of his family. Sin had survived the flood on the ark as well. It had stowed away in Noah’s family during the voyage. Even though this new life started with worship, it wouldn’t be long before sin raised its ugly head. In fact not long after, Noah get’s drunk and falls asleep, the story says, “Noah, a man of the soil, proceeded to plant a vineyard. When he drank some of its wine, he became drunk and lay uncovered inside his tent. Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father’s nakedness and told his two brothers outside. But Shem and Japheth took a garment and laid it across their shoulders; then they walked in backward and covered their father’s nakedness.” Ham gets in trouble here because instead of covering his father’s shame he goes and tells others about it. Sin was still around in all its naked evil. So the story continues with man’s sin and God’s pursuit of him. If the story sounds like a mystery novel, well in some ways it is a little. It is a bit of a mystery story and like any good mystery novel the story contains clues. In this morning’s chapter of the story there is a salvation clue even in the midst of the opening big bang. Remember back for a moment after Adam and Eve sinned. One result of their sin is that they become aware of their nakedness. Embarrassed they cover their nakedness with fig leaves. God sees this and takes away the fig leaves and instead covers Adam and Eve with the skins of animals. There is the salvation clue. Nothing had ever died until now. In the perfect world there was no death, because there was no sin. Adam and Eve were vegetarians until after the fall. For the first time Adam Eve saw an animal physically die, they saw blood being shed. And that blood was shed so that their nakedness, their sin could be covered. The clue, for God to restore the vision that human beings are His supreme passion it will require the shedding of blood.
There is an upper story and a lower story in this chapter today. God created the world with the grand vision of dwelling together with us in the world. It is God’s supreme passion to be with you. For that to be a real relationship God gave us freedom of choice. Adam and Eve choose to eat of the Tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil, thus ruining God’s vision of dwelling together with us. Sin was deposited permanently into the nature of Adam and Eve, a deadly virus separating them from a holy God. The rest of the story, the entire Bible in fact, tells us of the relentless pursuit of God and the extent to which he will go in order to get us back. The flood was God’s first attempt. But it doesn’t work because it doesn’t deal with sin. Sin goes into the ark with Noah and it disembarks with him. The point of the story. Well you’re the point of the story. You sitting here in this room this morning. You are the point of the story. From the creation story we discover the value of human beings. God wants to be with you. Think about that. You. God wants to personally be with you. At great cost to God, God has done everything possible to get you back. You are valuable. True, lasting self-esteem begins by believing what God says about you. God loves you. When God replaced Adam and Eve’s fig leaves with garments of skin, he gave us a clue as to how far he would go to fulfill this supreme desire to restore a relationship with us. Even when we are ashamed and feeling vulnerable, he covers us in order to restore our relationship with him, but covering us requires the shedding of blood.
There will be much more shedding of blood before this story is over. All of it will point forward to the ultimate shedding of blood that would happen thousands of years later on a cross in a place called Calvary. But we are getting ahead of ourselves a little. Next week in the story we get another picture of that great clue of the shedding of blood. It’s a picture you won’t soon forget. It’s the picture of a building of a nation; it is a picture of a fulfilling of a promise, a promise that is still ours today. So join us next week when we meet a couple of senior citizens who are told it is time to start a family and build a nation.
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
TRANSITIONS, SOME PLANNED, SOME NOT
Yesterday my kids went back to school after six and half weeks of summer vacation. They are second graders now and more is expected of them. My daughter was anxious to get back to school to see her friends and to learn more things. She is a good student and athlete and is very popular. The transition back to school was easy for her. I was worried about my son though, because he is one of those people who doesn’t do transitions well. He made it very clear in the days leading up to the new school year that he didn’t want to have anything to do with it. He doesn’t like school, unless you count recess and P.E. In the past getting him to school and dropping him off has been a huge undertaking. He doesn’t like waking up, he doesn’t like getting dressed, he doesn’t like walking from the car to the school, he doesn’t like putting his backpack and lunch away, and he really doesn’t like it when I leave him there. After six and half weeks of freedom I was not looking forward to his first day in second grade. On Monday morning when I got him up he threw a fit, he didn’t want to go. I had to threaten to take him to school in his underwear to get him dressed. A threat, by the way, I hope he never calls me on because I think I would be more embarrassed then he would be. He would probably gleefully throw his hand in the air and say, “Look at me, I’m wearing Batman underwear.” Once I finally got him dressed things seem to change. He calmed down and ate breakfast. When we got to the school I anticipated fireworks, but instead he calmly got out the car and walked to his classroom. In the classroom he did all the unloading he had to do and sat down. And that was it. No fireworks, no pleading. Today I took him to school and it was the same thing. I am still waiting for the other shoe to drop as they say, but he seems to have made a smooth transition to second grade. Part of that may be that it was a planned transition that we had talked to him about long before it happened.
This past week I had a transition that was not planned. In my desire to connect the congregation to the sermon in as many tangible ways as possible I decided to play Noah. The sermon was about how God talks to us and I thought preaching as if I was Noah would make the message more real. I thought of this about four weeks ago and so I didn’t shave the entire time. My plan was to then dye my beard white and find a white wig for my hair. Unfortunately I discovered that it is almost impossible to find a wig anywhere in July that is inexpensive. My next plan was to just wear a headdress and dye my beard. Darla and I went out about bought a hair product to bleach my beard. What happened next I am still trying to figure out. For some insane reason I decided to go ahead and bleach my hair and beard. Well bleaching my beard turned out impossible because of the fumes, but we went ahead with the hair on top of my head. Darla put all the stuff in and I put the cap on for an hour. When we took the cap off my hair was not white, it was yellow. So the next day I led worship and preached as Noah with Yellow hair. Thankfully the members of Family of Christ have a good sense of humor. The real transition came later on. After worship I went home and I shaved off all my facial hair. I have had a mustache for close to 30 years so it was a big change. I have always worn a mustache because without one even in my mid-thirties I looked like I was seventeen. In other words I have always had facial hair to look older. I then went to the barber and pretty much has them shave my head. After I got home I stood in front of the mirror in the bathroom and looked at myself. It was shocking to say the least, but in a good way. I looked like I had suddenly become 10 years younger. For someone now in their late forties this was a good thing. The tuff of yellow hair that remained was a little weird but I liked what I saw. Therefore I have decided to keep the look, although I will let the yellow color go. I was so encouraged by the change that I have decided to start working out again, although I will try to avoid buying the sports car and the gold chain. It was an unplanned transition but one I like and think is for the good.
In September Family of Christ is going to go through a transition. We are going to start The Story in both the learning center and the church. The Story is a program that takes you through the Bible in 31 weeks. It covers the main stories of the Bible and reads like a novel. In other words there are no chapters and verses, but it is still the actual NIV text. We will teach it during Sunday worship and also in small groups and in the learning center as part of our regular curriculum. We want to get the parents in our learning center involved as well, doing The Story at home with their children at night. This will be a transition in every part of our ministry. It means a change of material in the learning center, it means a change in the order and presentation of worship on Sunday morning, it means a change in everyone’s devotional life. As with every transition there will be rough spots along the way, but in the end it promises to be a good change for the better.
In life we all face many transitions, school transitions, job transitions, personal transitions and hopefully in some cases transitions in our relationship with God. We invite to you join us in our transition starting September 9th.
Pastor Fred
This past week I had a transition that was not planned. In my desire to connect the congregation to the sermon in as many tangible ways as possible I decided to play Noah. The sermon was about how God talks to us and I thought preaching as if I was Noah would make the message more real. I thought of this about four weeks ago and so I didn’t shave the entire time. My plan was to then dye my beard white and find a white wig for my hair. Unfortunately I discovered that it is almost impossible to find a wig anywhere in July that is inexpensive. My next plan was to just wear a headdress and dye my beard. Darla and I went out about bought a hair product to bleach my beard. What happened next I am still trying to figure out. For some insane reason I decided to go ahead and bleach my hair and beard. Well bleaching my beard turned out impossible because of the fumes, but we went ahead with the hair on top of my head. Darla put all the stuff in and I put the cap on for an hour. When we took the cap off my hair was not white, it was yellow. So the next day I led worship and preached as Noah with Yellow hair. Thankfully the members of Family of Christ have a good sense of humor. The real transition came later on. After worship I went home and I shaved off all my facial hair. I have had a mustache for close to 30 years so it was a big change. I have always worn a mustache because without one even in my mid-thirties I looked like I was seventeen. In other words I have always had facial hair to look older. I then went to the barber and pretty much has them shave my head. After I got home I stood in front of the mirror in the bathroom and looked at myself. It was shocking to say the least, but in a good way. I looked like I had suddenly become 10 years younger. For someone now in their late forties this was a good thing. The tuff of yellow hair that remained was a little weird but I liked what I saw. Therefore I have decided to keep the look, although I will let the yellow color go. I was so encouraged by the change that I have decided to start working out again, although I will try to avoid buying the sports car and the gold chain. It was an unplanned transition but one I like and think is for the good.
In September Family of Christ is going to go through a transition. We are going to start The Story in both the learning center and the church. The Story is a program that takes you through the Bible in 31 weeks. It covers the main stories of the Bible and reads like a novel. In other words there are no chapters and verses, but it is still the actual NIV text. We will teach it during Sunday worship and also in small groups and in the learning center as part of our regular curriculum. We want to get the parents in our learning center involved as well, doing The Story at home with their children at night. This will be a transition in every part of our ministry. It means a change of material in the learning center, it means a change in the order and presentation of worship on Sunday morning, it means a change in everyone’s devotional life. As with every transition there will be rough spots along the way, but in the end it promises to be a good change for the better.
In life we all face many transitions, school transitions, job transitions, personal transitions and hopefully in some cases transitions in our relationship with God. We invite to you join us in our transition starting September 9th.
Pastor Fred
Monday, June 25, 2012
ADOPTED? SO WHERE ARE YOUR "REAL" PARENTS?
“Does babies have to be born in a belley.” What you have just read was not misspelled, at least by me. My seven year old daughter typed that into the Bing search engine the other day. I discovered it shortly after she got off the computer. I sat there looking at the question for several minutes trying to think of what must be going through her brain. My daughter Jasmine and her twin brother Charlie are adopted. As I sat there I could sense the pain that must have went into that search. Jasmine has expressed that pain a lot lately to us. We took Jasmine and Charlie into our arms when they were just four days old. They were preemies and weighed about three and half pounds each. We knew then that one day these types of questions would be coming. For Jasmine the questions started early, when she was about three and a half. We have always been very open with our children about their adoption, when they have asked questions; we have always answered them to the best of our ability. I say to the best of our ability because we never met or had any contact with their biological mother and father. Ours is a closed and sealed adoption. That was the choice of the biological parents, not us. What we do know we share with them. We knew the questions would come because our children are African-American and we are white. In fact I was curious when the questions would begin. Right after we adopted them I read several books on the history of African-Americans and also books on the psychology of raising children of another race so that I would be prepared for all the stages.
What I didn’t see coming was the cluelessness and sometimes cruelty of other people. Now before I explain that statement let me say first of all that those people are in a very small minority. The vast majority of people have been openingly accepting of both the kids and our mixed race family. Charlie and Jasmine have been the recipients of tons of love and support. In fact I have been overwhelmed at times by the response of people to my kids and to us. So again what I am about to tell you is the result of a very small number of people. What I have learned though, is that a small number of people can cause a lot of damage in a small child’s life. I am amazed for instance at what people feel they have to say. When Jasmine was 3 and half she came home and informed my wife and I that she was black. Now I know that sounds like an obvious statement, because she is. The problem is that most children don’t realize their skin color until age four and when African-American children do they refer to themselves as brown, not black. So I knew she hadn’t come up with this on her own. I knew someone older had pointed that out to her so she would know that she was a different color than her parents. I knew this was my first test. I swallowed hard because what I wanted to do was ask, “Who told you that?” So that I could go track them down and hit them up side the head with a two by four. I did ask her in a very gentle manner, but she wasn’t telling. Several months later you came up to me and said, “Daddy, I’m brown.” I said, “Really.” And she said, “Yeah, and you and mommy are orange.” So for a long period of time we were the brown and orange family. We still laugh about that.
The questions increased in Kindergarten. Jasmine is a very beautiful, smart and athletic girl and so this brought a lot of jealously from three particular girls in the class. The one thing they apparently figured they had on her was that she was adopted, and they brought that up to her all the time. Finally one day she had enough and she turned around and took all three of them out. After they stopped crying they pointed out Jasmine as their attacker. Jasmine was punished as she should have been and we punished her as well at home, but when we approached the teachers about the cause behind it, nothing happened. Thankfully the next year the three girls were put into a different classroom than Jasmine and the problems have decreased.
The other day my wife was sitting in the front room with Charlie and Jasmine and a neighbor kid from down the block that is their age. In the middle of watching TV the kid turned to Jasmine and asked, “So why didn’t you stay with your real family?” My wife interrupted and told him that none of us knew why they had been given up for adoption. The damage had been done though. After I heard about it I spent some time lying in bed with Jasmine as she went to sleep that night. I talked to her again about her adoption and how much we loved her and that I was her daddy no matter what and that I would always be there for her. I know this is a subject that is on her mind a lot.
One night Jasmine said to Darla, “I bet my first mommy really misses me.” Darla told her I am sure that she does. I bet she thinks about you a lot. I have watched my wife time after time through the years defend Jasmine and Charlie’s biological mother, a woman she has never met. People will make statement to us about how they can’t understand why someone would give up their child. Darla points out to them that most mothers don’t want to give up their children, but they realize they can’t afford to raise them on their own, or that if they kept the child he or she wouldn’t be raised in a safe environment. There are many good reasons that women give up their children for adoption. What people need to realize is that adoptive children have a need to believe that their biological parents loved them. When a derogatory statement is made about a biological mother it is unsettling for the adopted child. Charlie spent three weeks in the hospital very sick when he was first born. I remember his biological mother called the hospital to check on him. I have shared that story with him and Jasmine to show them that they have always been loved.
As I sat and looked at Jasmine’s question in the engine search I thought about all these things. I wanted to go into her room and wrap her in a cocoon so that nothing else could hurt her, but I know I can’t protect her from these things. She is going to have to grow in her confidence and face these questions and deal with them. One way that Darla and I try to help her is by reminding her that we are all adopted by God. We are God’s children by faith, adopted through our baptism into Christ’s death on the cross and His resurrection from the dead. So we are all in the same boat. And it’s a good boat to be in. I put another question to the search engine tonight about adoption. As I searched through the responses I found a quote from an unknown source. It says, “Adoption means you grow in your mommy’s heart instead of her tummy.” I’ m going to give that Darla to share with Jasmine tonight.
What I didn’t see coming was the cluelessness and sometimes cruelty of other people. Now before I explain that statement let me say first of all that those people are in a very small minority. The vast majority of people have been openingly accepting of both the kids and our mixed race family. Charlie and Jasmine have been the recipients of tons of love and support. In fact I have been overwhelmed at times by the response of people to my kids and to us. So again what I am about to tell you is the result of a very small number of people. What I have learned though, is that a small number of people can cause a lot of damage in a small child’s life. I am amazed for instance at what people feel they have to say. When Jasmine was 3 and half she came home and informed my wife and I that she was black. Now I know that sounds like an obvious statement, because she is. The problem is that most children don’t realize their skin color until age four and when African-American children do they refer to themselves as brown, not black. So I knew she hadn’t come up with this on her own. I knew someone older had pointed that out to her so she would know that she was a different color than her parents. I knew this was my first test. I swallowed hard because what I wanted to do was ask, “Who told you that?” So that I could go track them down and hit them up side the head with a two by four. I did ask her in a very gentle manner, but she wasn’t telling. Several months later you came up to me and said, “Daddy, I’m brown.” I said, “Really.” And she said, “Yeah, and you and mommy are orange.” So for a long period of time we were the brown and orange family. We still laugh about that.
The questions increased in Kindergarten. Jasmine is a very beautiful, smart and athletic girl and so this brought a lot of jealously from three particular girls in the class. The one thing they apparently figured they had on her was that she was adopted, and they brought that up to her all the time. Finally one day she had enough and she turned around and took all three of them out. After they stopped crying they pointed out Jasmine as their attacker. Jasmine was punished as she should have been and we punished her as well at home, but when we approached the teachers about the cause behind it, nothing happened. Thankfully the next year the three girls were put into a different classroom than Jasmine and the problems have decreased.
The other day my wife was sitting in the front room with Charlie and Jasmine and a neighbor kid from down the block that is their age. In the middle of watching TV the kid turned to Jasmine and asked, “So why didn’t you stay with your real family?” My wife interrupted and told him that none of us knew why they had been given up for adoption. The damage had been done though. After I heard about it I spent some time lying in bed with Jasmine as she went to sleep that night. I talked to her again about her adoption and how much we loved her and that I was her daddy no matter what and that I would always be there for her. I know this is a subject that is on her mind a lot.
One night Jasmine said to Darla, “I bet my first mommy really misses me.” Darla told her I am sure that she does. I bet she thinks about you a lot. I have watched my wife time after time through the years defend Jasmine and Charlie’s biological mother, a woman she has never met. People will make statement to us about how they can’t understand why someone would give up their child. Darla points out to them that most mothers don’t want to give up their children, but they realize they can’t afford to raise them on their own, or that if they kept the child he or she wouldn’t be raised in a safe environment. There are many good reasons that women give up their children for adoption. What people need to realize is that adoptive children have a need to believe that their biological parents loved them. When a derogatory statement is made about a biological mother it is unsettling for the adopted child. Charlie spent three weeks in the hospital very sick when he was first born. I remember his biological mother called the hospital to check on him. I have shared that story with him and Jasmine to show them that they have always been loved.
As I sat and looked at Jasmine’s question in the engine search I thought about all these things. I wanted to go into her room and wrap her in a cocoon so that nothing else could hurt her, but I know I can’t protect her from these things. She is going to have to grow in her confidence and face these questions and deal with them. One way that Darla and I try to help her is by reminding her that we are all adopted by God. We are God’s children by faith, adopted through our baptism into Christ’s death on the cross and His resurrection from the dead. So we are all in the same boat. And it’s a good boat to be in. I put another question to the search engine tonight about adoption. As I searched through the responses I found a quote from an unknown source. It says, “Adoption means you grow in your mommy’s heart instead of her tummy.” I’ m going to give that Darla to share with Jasmine tonight.
Thursday, January 26, 2012
HANGING OUT AT THE GROCERY STORE
I like hanging out at the grocery store, it is one of my favorite places to be. I usually go there at least once a day. I do that because I like my ingredients as fresh as I can get them. I don’t necessarily spend a lot of money there, but I just like to shop and price things and plan. Yes I know that sounds strange. What is really strange is that in general I don’t like to shop. I make it to the mall maybe twice a year and I can’t stand to walk into a clothing store. When my wife does manage to drag me to the mall, I moan and groan the whole time we are looking at clothes. I hate shopping! I love walking around the grocery store though. All that food, all the possibilities of things that can be cooked with it! My love affair with grocery stores started in college at the University of Idaho. I did most of my own cooking in college and my roommates and I would go shopping at 2 a.m. in the morning. At that hour we had the whole place pretty much to ourselves. It was a fun place to hang out for a few hours before the donut shop opened at 3:30 in the morning. My friend knew the donut shop owner and she would let us in and we frost our own fresh donuts. There is nothing like a warm freshly frosted donut. Then we would all go home and finally sleep.
My love affair with the grocery story increased when I went to Seminary in Fort Wayne, Indiana. The seminary required that all unmarried students live on campus and eat at the cafeteria, something I had never done in college. The problem was the cafeteria food was awful. The building was officially called Katherine Lutheran Hall in memory of Martin Luther’s wife. The food was so bad though we called it Kitty Litter Hall. My friend and I detested the food so much that we usually ate out at one of the local restaurants instead. So I was paying money for board and then paying money to eat somewhere else, but at least I didn’t have to eat bad food. I have always believed that life is too short to eat bad food. Another thing my friend and I would do was to go to the grocery stores. We never bought anything mind you, we had no way to cook it, but we window shopped. We would walk down the meat aisle looking at the all the things we could be cooking if they would let us move off campus. The main two grocery stores we would go to were Cubs and Lions Foods, they were superstores. Superstores were new in those days, we liked them because they were huge and had tons of food. We sometimes wondered if we could buy some of this food and then break into the dining hall and cook it while everyone slept. We never did, but just dreaming about it made life a little easier.
I like visiting grocery stores and comparing them to each other. I know that certain stores carry this brand and other stores carry that brand and I am also pretty good at knowing what that brand costs and how it tastes compared to another brand. I always have my ears open to new stuff and new tastes. A good grocery shopper has to know their stuff. For instance with meat, different stores call the same grade or type of meat two different things. Sometimes an ingredient called for in a recipe has a different name at the store. I study to go shopping. It is almost like a sport. If I do it right and get the right ingredients and then I use the right techniques to cook it, well I have had a good day and everyone is happy.
Sometimes I think I am strange because I am fascinated by this stuff, but then I read in Scripture that this seems to be important to God as well. When God wants to point out that something is good, he uses food talk. He tells the Israelites that they are going to receive a land filled with milk and honey, he even gives them recipes. For the Passover they have to cook a lamb and they are given precise instructions on how to do this. When the Israelites are in the desert he sends manna and rains quail down upon them, you could say the grocery store came to them. In the New Testament Jesus is always eating with someone. When the disciples realize that they are in the middle of nowhere with five thousand people they tell Jesus, “Hey dismiss these people so that they can go to the grocery store and buy food.” Jesus instead, again, brings the grocery store them and feeds the people himself. The book of Revelation pictures heaven as a big banquet where God brings out of the storehouses, the grocery stores, the finest of meats and the finest of wines. Many people believe that when we get to heaven we will have jobs to do there. If that is so I call dibs on being the guy that gets to do the shopping, especially since it’s all free.
So is visiting the grocery store a little vision of heaven? Well I wouldn’t go that far, but is a wonderful relaxing place to be most of the time. So much food, so little time. What are you eating tonight?
Pastor Fred
My love affair with the grocery story increased when I went to Seminary in Fort Wayne, Indiana. The seminary required that all unmarried students live on campus and eat at the cafeteria, something I had never done in college. The problem was the cafeteria food was awful. The building was officially called Katherine Lutheran Hall in memory of Martin Luther’s wife. The food was so bad though we called it Kitty Litter Hall. My friend and I detested the food so much that we usually ate out at one of the local restaurants instead. So I was paying money for board and then paying money to eat somewhere else, but at least I didn’t have to eat bad food. I have always believed that life is too short to eat bad food. Another thing my friend and I would do was to go to the grocery stores. We never bought anything mind you, we had no way to cook it, but we window shopped. We would walk down the meat aisle looking at the all the things we could be cooking if they would let us move off campus. The main two grocery stores we would go to were Cubs and Lions Foods, they were superstores. Superstores were new in those days, we liked them because they were huge and had tons of food. We sometimes wondered if we could buy some of this food and then break into the dining hall and cook it while everyone slept. We never did, but just dreaming about it made life a little easier.
I like visiting grocery stores and comparing them to each other. I know that certain stores carry this brand and other stores carry that brand and I am also pretty good at knowing what that brand costs and how it tastes compared to another brand. I always have my ears open to new stuff and new tastes. A good grocery shopper has to know their stuff. For instance with meat, different stores call the same grade or type of meat two different things. Sometimes an ingredient called for in a recipe has a different name at the store. I study to go shopping. It is almost like a sport. If I do it right and get the right ingredients and then I use the right techniques to cook it, well I have had a good day and everyone is happy.
Sometimes I think I am strange because I am fascinated by this stuff, but then I read in Scripture that this seems to be important to God as well. When God wants to point out that something is good, he uses food talk. He tells the Israelites that they are going to receive a land filled with milk and honey, he even gives them recipes. For the Passover they have to cook a lamb and they are given precise instructions on how to do this. When the Israelites are in the desert he sends manna and rains quail down upon them, you could say the grocery store came to them. In the New Testament Jesus is always eating with someone. When the disciples realize that they are in the middle of nowhere with five thousand people they tell Jesus, “Hey dismiss these people so that they can go to the grocery store and buy food.” Jesus instead, again, brings the grocery store them and feeds the people himself. The book of Revelation pictures heaven as a big banquet where God brings out of the storehouses, the grocery stores, the finest of meats and the finest of wines. Many people believe that when we get to heaven we will have jobs to do there. If that is so I call dibs on being the guy that gets to do the shopping, especially since it’s all free.
So is visiting the grocery store a little vision of heaven? Well I wouldn’t go that far, but is a wonderful relaxing place to be most of the time. So much food, so little time. What are you eating tonight?
Pastor Fred
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