Bends in the Road

I’d like to introduce you to some fine boys—four of them, in fact: Hananiah, Mishael, Azariah, and Daniel.  These boys were good-looking and smart, but they weren’t vain about it; they also honored and served God faithfully.  They were the golden boys, they were the Rat Pack of their time and place, with Daniel playing Sinatra, and the other three assuming their proper lesser roles.  Their potential was unlimited, their future bright.  It would be tempting to believe that these good times would never end, that if they just followed the road they were on, it would lead them to a lifetime of prosperity, honor, and respect.  It would be tempting to trust in the natural gifts the Lord had bestowed upon them, their good looks, their charm, their intelligence.

But then: a bend in the road.

It wasn't their fault, they had done nothing to deserve it, but suddenly the road they were traveling took an unexpected and unavoidable 90-degree turn to the left.  Jerusalem was besieged, overrun, and conquered by Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon. The boys were given over as prisoners, spoils of war, slaves to this terrible foreign king.  They would never see their beloved homeland again in their lifetime.  They were probably made eunuchs, which meant they would never have families of their own.  It would be tempting to despair, to doubt God, to doubt their position as God's chosen people.

And then: a bend in the road.

A Biblical Perspective on Suffering

Once upon a time there was a successful businessman named Joseph B. Saintly.  He was remarkably well respected by both his peers and his employees.  He offered the finest low-cost health plan to his workers, and when they came up short, he paid their bills himself.  He was the director of The Saintly Foundation to Aid Widows and Orphans, and his anonymous gifts to other charities were thought to be almost scandalously generous.  Joseph B. Saintly was a good man, in all the ways people mean that word.

He had a wife Mildred, who occasionally disapproved of his generosity, but to whom he was utterly faithful.  He had a son Bill, who enjoyed the comfort provided by his father's wealth, but was by no means a playboy.  He had a daughter Jill, who had married well and was expecting Joseph B.'s first grandchild.  Mr. Saintly was a happy man.

He was a deacon in his local Baptist church, head of the building committee, teacher of the teenage boys' Sunday School class, and he provided scholarships for kids to go away to summer camp.  His views on religion were both orthodox and correct, focusing rightly on the glory of God, but not neglecting a life of good works.  Joseph B. Saintly was a faithful man.

The Beginning of Wisdom

There are dozens upon dozens of Bible passages that refer to something that has become increasingly foreign to our modern society, something called "the fear of the Lord," or "the fear of God."  Here is just a small sampling:

The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever. (Psalm 19:9) 

Oh, how great is Your goodness, which You have laid up for those who fear You, which You have prepared for those who trust in You In the presence of the sons of men! (Psalm 31:19) 

Let all the earth fear the Lord; let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of Him. (Psalm 33:8) 

The angel of the Lord encamps all around those who fear Him, and delivers them. (Psalm 34:7) 

Oh, fear the Lord, you His saints! There is no want to those who fear Him. (Psalm 34:9) 

For as the heavens are high above the earth, so great is His mercy toward those who fear Him. (Psalm 103:11) 

As a father pities his children, so the Lord pities those who fear Him. (Psalm 103:13) 

The mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear Him, and His righteousness to children’s children. (Psalm 103:17)

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom—so says the Bible in three different passages, and a fourth is like it: the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.  That says to me that before we can make any real, substantive advance toward the worthy goals of wisdom or knowledge, our starting block must be that exalted place called the fear of the Lord.  If we don't begin with the fear of God, our wisdom is doomed to be the wisdom of man, which is not the wisdom of God at all.  Romans 1 offers these words in reference to those who trusted in worldly wisdom: "… although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.  Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools … Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind."

If the fear of the Lord is truly the beginning of wisdom, then these people who sought after wisdom from a different starting point became not wise, but fools.  According to God's Word, it could have had no other result.

Tap Shoes R Us

Thomas Fletcher was a man with an idea. Even more than that, he was a man with ambition: He wanted to be rich, and he wanted to be respected. Even more than that, he was a man who owned a pair of electric hedge clippers, which he had grudgingly lent to his no-account next-door neighbor, Bill Chatsworth. But I digress: Tom Fletcher had an idea, and he had ambition. What could possibly make him more money and gain him more renown than to become an internet millionaire? It seemed that everyone had heard of folks like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, men who had discerned a vacuum in the American marketplace and rushed to fill it. All Thomas Fletcher needed was to find a similar void in the market, and then be there with the answer. After pondering these things for several months, and having stayed up late one night watching "Singing in the Rain," he believed he had identified his opportunity. He would become the world's leading internet provider of tap shoes. Who didn't love tap dancing? And Fletcher's subsequent research convinced him that that segment of the marketplace was deliciously under-represented.

First he had to acquire some capital, something that turned out to be even easier than he had naively expected. For the famous venture capitalist Barton Sizemore had long practiced the strategy of occasionally investing in something that sounded so bizarre, so strange, so out-of-left-field that it just might work. And if it did work, the payoff would be colossal. So Sizemore agreed to loan Fletcher the tidy sum of one million dollars for a half-share in his profits, with the provision that if the business wasn't as lucrative as hoped, the million dollars would be repayable at the end of a year's time.

Thomas Fletcher was elated. "Tap Shoes R Us" was about to become a reality! First, using part of the money, he bought himself a new car; it wouldn't do for an internet mogul to be seen driving around in Fletcher's rusty old bucket of bolts. Secondly, he paid to have his house painted and a swimming pool installed in his back yard. Finally, the frugal entrepreneur invested the remainder of the loan into inventory, purchasing tap shoes of every size, style, and color. His garage was soon full to overflowing with box after box of shiny metal-tipped shoes.

Regarding Parables

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(It would be helpful if, before you read the sermon that follows, you take a moment to read Matthew 13:1-17.)

Most of the time, when we gather to hear a sermon, what we receive generally falls into one of two categories. Either we receive instruction about how to make the principles of the gospel practical in our day-to-day lives, or we are given some kind of teaching designed to help us understand some of the more obscure points of doctrine or theology. On a good day we get both.

What our preachers and teachers do for us is take the tough, hard-to-swallow pieces of our religion, grind them up for us and spit them back out in little, easy-to-digest portions that we can more readily handle as our own spiritual food. (I know this doesn't sound too flattering or appealing.)

Think of a nest full of baby birds. The mother bird flies down to the earth and nabs a worm, partially digests it, and then flies back to the nest, where she regurgitates it into the throats of her children, and they receive the nourishment they need.

Don't get stalled by the analogy. The point is, when we hear a sermon, we are usually getting something that has been designed to help us understand the finer points of religion, something that has been carefully prepared to increase the understanding of all who hear.

That is not how Jesus preached.

When Jesus Called

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Today's lesson deals with the call of Jesus to follow Him, and how several people responded to that call. I'm not necessarily talking about the salvation of their souls (though that may possibly be implied as well); I'm just talking today about the legacy of the lives of these ten or so people who came face to face with Jesus Christ and heard the words coming from His own lips: "Follow Me."

First of all, let's look at the four famous fishermen--two sets of brothers--Andrew and Peter, James and John:

"And Jesus, walking by the Sea of Galilee, saw two brothers, Simon called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea; for they were fishermen. Then He said to them, 'Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men.' They immediately left their nets and followed Him. Going on from there, He saw two other brothers, James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, in the boat with Zebedee their father, mending their nets. He called them, and immediately they left the boat and their father, and followed Him" (Matthew 4:18-22).

We know from other passages that these men already knew Jesus, at least a little bit. They had heard Him speak; they had been to His house. But this represented a significant moment in their lives; Jesus says the words, "Follow Me." And they did. Later on in the book of Luke, a similar scene is recorded. Some think it refers to the same point in time--I think it refers to another moment, shortly after the first call from the Lord:

Hide and Seek

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It seems like from the beginning of the time of the human race, God has been playing an elaborate game of hide-and-seek with the people He calls. "Seek My face," He commands, and our hearts reply because of His own grace, "Your face, Lord, I will seek." And God, instead of then bursting out of the darkness into our lives, laughing and saying, "Here I am!" continues to remain hidden, mostly: Hidden from our experience, hidden from our every-day, hidden from our mundane.

If you look at the world that surrounds us, it would be easier sometimes to believe that there is no God than that we have a loving Father who tenderly watches over our every waking moment and guards us while we sleep. Wars and rumours of wars. Famines and earthquakes. Abortions and infanticides. Ethnic cleansings. Tsunamis. Crime. Neglect. Disease. Sudden and surprising heartbreak. Spousal abuse, child abuse, poverty and starvation. Is this the creation of a loving Father? But still the call goes out from God, like a whisper of breath in our ears, in the midst of the noise and clamor of our warring world: "Seek My face." And in the midst of our sin and confusion, we are surprised and somehow delighted to find our own hearts responding, "Your face, O Lord, I will seek."

In Old Testament times, people were afraid to look upon God, and rightly so.

We already read this morning about Jacob and his face-to-face encounter with the Lord, how he was blessed by God but walked away from that encounter with a permanent limp.

The Treasure of the Lord's Prayer

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When I was a child, my mother used to come in and sit at my bedside every evening to hear my prayers before she turned out the lights. In our family, we didn't say the "God bless Mommy, and God bless Daddy" kind of prayers; we recited "Now I Lay Me." It might not have been very deep or searching or theological, but it was something--something to remind us little children that there was a God in Heaven watching over us at night.

Now I lay me down to sleep;
I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
If I should die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take. Amen.

When my sisters and I grew a little older, we graduated from "Now I Lay Me" to The Lord's Prayer. We'd recite it every night with the same passion and intensity that we'd recited our earlier prayers--that is to say, virtually none.

By the time I got to the age where my Mom quit listening to my bedtime prayers, I had it down to the point where I could say the whole thing in about one-and-a-half seconds.

OurFathew'art'n'He'n-ha'db'name-kingd'mcome-w'b'done-da'ybread,f'rgiv's'r'debts-kingd'm-pow'r-glory-f'rever. Amen!

I say that to my shame now, but that's really how I did it. I didn't honor God with such "praying," but at least my mother tried to remind me, night by night, that He was there.

Bella and the Prince of Spices

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Once upon a time, there was a slender young girl named Bella. She was very poor, and all she had to eat was a daily portion of watery, tasteless gruel. Day after day, she would sit at the table with her bowl before her, dreaming of nothing so much as a spoonful of sugar to sweeten the taste of her meal.

"Oh, for a bit of sweetness," she sighed. "If I only had a pinch of sugar, how happy I would be." She said this to herself every day, not remembering to be thankful for the gruel's nourishment, only resenting its blandness.

One day, there came a knock at her door: rap, rap, rap! Scurrying to answer it, she found a smiling, whiskered man there, clad in a beggar's rags.

"Yes?" Bella asked politely.

The man stepped into her small room with a grin and a bow. "I am the Prince of Spices! I have come in answer to your prayers!"

The Prince of Spices? Bella had never heard of such a thing! He certainly didn't look like a prince, and she said so.

"Ah, but appearances may deceive!" he winked. "Your Ladyship's wish?" And with that he reached into the folds of his rags, and produced a little paper packet filled with a brownish powder. "Where is your porridge?" he asked. She pointed to the table, and the Prince of Spices opened the packet, drew out just a pinch of the powder, and stirred it into the gruel.

"There!" he cried triumphantly. "Taste and see!"

Resolution for a New Year

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"Tell me a little bit about yourself." We've all had chances to do that; maybe a job interview, maybe meeting somebody new at a party.

Most of us, when asked to describe ourselves, would give an answer something like this: "Oh, I'm 5'7", a little overweight. I work for ABC company and I like jazz music. A huge Steelers fan. I'm a Democrat, a member of Local 202, but I vote for whoever impresses me the most. I give blood to the Red Cross and sometimes I volunteer for the Boy Scouts. I like to donate a little money to St. Jude's and the Heart Association. My daughter just gave birth to my first grandson, and I'm just as pleased as I could be. Oh, what else? Well, I'm a member of the Methodist church. I guess that's about it."

Don't think that I'm mocking you if that sounds a little like what your answer would be. Those are all acceptable things to say if you were posed such a question. But is that how you really regard yourself in your heart of hearts?

I hope that being a member of a church wouldn't be the last thing you think of. And I hope even more that being a member of a church would not be a poor substitute for a living, breathing, growing relationship with a living God, who is constantly breathing life into you as you mature in your faith.

So ... What Next?

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(Prior to reading this sermon, you might want to read Ecclesiastes 2:12-23.)

On Christmas morning, my wife Susan and I had the pleasure of having our year-and-a-half-old grandson Taylor with us for breakfast and a time of opening gifts. It was great fun watching him as he opened each present, delighting in tearing the paper off the box and finding what was inside, sometimes even pausing for a fraction of a moment to inspect or play with its contents. I think his favorite gift was a box of Ritz cheese-and-crackers that his grandmother gave him. But after each package was opened, and each brief inspection completed, it was instantly on to the next box, searching for another bow to tear off, another bit of colored paper to rip away.

What's next? What's next? What's next?

We've all heard stories of children who, after they had opened all of their gifts on Christmas morning--more gifts than they could have had any right to reasonably expect, since their parents probably went into debt to provide them--sullenly sit on the floor and say with a poorly-disguised sense of disappointment, "Is that all?"

Remember that old song that Peggy Lee used to sing: "Is That All There Is?"

Is that all there is? Is that all there is?
If that's all there is, my friend, then let's keep dancing.
Let's break out the booze and have a ball,
If that's all there is.
(copyright Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller)

One of the most depressing songs ever written, both for its sense of ingratitude and its sense of hopelessness.