Gideon—the Lord is With Him: Judges 6

                                

The pattern continues, Israel turns back to God each time God raises up a deliverer to save them from their enemies who God is allowing to oppress his people because they love other gods more than they love their own God, but as soon as their deliverer dies, the Israelites turn back to the gods of the nations, worshipping them beside God. God then allows those nations to oppress his people so that when they experience the failure of the other gods to give them what they want, they’ll turn back to the only God who has committed to being their God and who chose them to be his people. 

Augustine said that sin is ultimately a lack of love, either for God or for your neighbor. He wrote that “The essence of sin is disordered love.” Disordered love is about loving less-important things more, and the most important things less than we ought to, and this backwards arrangement of loves leads to unhappiness and chaos in our lives. Think about what James says in his letter to the church, “What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.” James is telling them that they love the wrong things more and Jesus and God too little; this is sin, this is chasing after other gods, just like the Israelites in the days of the Judges.

Now God does something a little different. After Midian cruelly oppresses the Israelites for 7 years, God first sends a prophet to Israel who tells them, “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: I brought you up out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. I rescued you from the hand of the Egyptians. And I delivered you from the hand of all your oppressors; I drove them out before you and gave you their land. I said to you, ‘I am the Lord your God; do not worship the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you live.’ But you have not listened to me.” What a devastating accusation against God’s people!

God reminds them of who they are; they’re his people, their identity lies in God, not in their ethnicity or the other gods they keep chasing. This is a reminder to us that our identity is not found in things or people, it’s not found in ideologies or political parties, in our own bodies and sense of self, but in having been created in the image of God, given life by him, and called by Jesus to follow him and be his disciples. Our identity is found in belonging to Jesus and being part of his body.

After sending his prophet to remind Israel of who they are and how they’ve broken covenant with God, God then shows he refuses to break his covenant with them by calling Gideon to go and save Israel out of Midian’s hand. The Lord comes to Gideon with these words, “The Lord is with you, mighty warrior.” God tells Gideon who he is, that his identity is as a man God is with, a mighty warrior. The Lord’s presence makes Gideon a mighty warrior, but Gideon’s response is fascinating, he goes straight into blame mode, “Pardon me, my lord, but if the Lord is with us, why has all this happened to us? where are all his wonders that our ancestors told us about when they said, ‘Did not the Lord bring us up out of Egypt?’ But now the Lord has abandoned us and given us into the hand of Midian.” Gideon’s grumpy, but his words show that he’s heard the words of the prophet. Instead of being repentant about following other idols, he blames God for abandoning them.

Gideon doesn’t even consider that it’s Israel who abandoned God, trading their identity as God’s children for something false. Gideon makes me wonder how often I’m so blind to my own sin that I can’t even recognize it and blame the hurt on God instead of recognizing my own sin? This is part of the reason so many followers of Jesus fail to recognize just how deep their need for a saviour and deliverer is; we’re too comfortable with our disordered loves and don’t even see it.

The Lord doesn’t even bother answering Gideon. The Lord commands Gideon to go in the strength he has, challenging the objections Gideon’s getting ready to offer about coming from a weak clan and being least in his family. Gideon fails to see himself through God’s eyes and words, instead embracing his own image of himself, an image that gives him permission to hold back, to not engage in what and who God is calling him to do and be. Gideon shows a lack of trust in God’s power and presence; something many people still wrestle with today when things are difficult and Jesus and the Spirit feels far away. They doubt themselves as they see only their limitations instead of who Jesus makes them.

We don’t take Paul seriously when he says in 1 Corinthians 1:26–31, “Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him. It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. Therefore, as it is written: “Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord.” When Jesus is with us, there’s no need to doubt even if things don’t work out the way we expect or want them to because we’re chosen by Jesus to be his.

The Lord answers Gideon with words of reassurance, “I will be with you.” The Lord is still faithful to his covenant promise to be Israel’s God. Gideon’s still unsure and asks for a sign that the Lord is truly with him. Gideon chooses a good sign, he seeks the Lord’s acceptance of his offering, asking for the Lord to wait while he gathers together his offering. Gideon gathers his offering and brings it to the Lord and the Lord accepts it. Finally, it sinks into Gideon, “I have seen the angel of the Lord face to face!” The Lord offers him a blessing and word of reassurance, “Peace! Do not be afraid. You are not going to die.” Gideon builds an altar and calls it The Lord is Peace, the Lord is health, hope, fullness, and having a relationship with his people, all the images that rest in the Hebrew word “shalom.”

Now the Lord demands another offering on proper altar dedicated to God after Gideon tears down his father’ altar to Baal and the Asherah pole beside it, using the wood of the Asherah pole to give the Lord a burnt offering. Gideon obeys; doing it at night with the help of 10 servants to make it safer for himself so that his family and the townspeople don’t know about it until after it’s done. Imagine their surprise when they all wake up and Baal’s altar is torn down and a new altar is in its place! They quickly discover that Gideon’s behind it and demand his death. People hate it when you mess with their gods!

I love Gideon’s father’s response, “Are you going to plead Baal’s cause? Are you trying to save him? Whoever fights for him shall be put to death by morning! If Baal really is a god, he can defend himself when someone breaks down his altar.” He recognizes a God battle when he sees one and recognizes that if Baal cannot defend himself against Gideon, then he probably isn’t able to do a whole lot for anyone else. God’s Spirit comes on Gideon and he calls the men from Israel to fight the Midianites, but Gideon seeks reassurance from the Lord one more time to make sure that God is more than simply a force of nature, that he has true power. He sets out fleeces twice, both times asking that the fleece is kept different from the elements and affects of nature and God provides the reassurance Gideon is seeking; Lord hears his people and is with Gideon. Gideon finally accepts his identity as a mighty warrior for God.

What kind of God battles are going on in our culture, in your own personal lives right now? What altars do you need to tear down to find your identity and strength in Jesus? Do you truly believe that any of the things you love more than Jesus can do more for you than Jesus has done in washing your sin away on the cross, offering you a new life, giving you the ability to leave your old life with all its brokenness and hurt behind while being enfolded by a family of Jesus followers who are here to encourage you and build you up? When you embrace your identity in Jesus, the Holy Spirit fills you with strength and hope as you journey through life, giving you what you need, no matter who you were before, because your foundation is now on Jesus instead of the weak gods of this world!

Deborah—The Prophetess and Judge - Judges 4

                   

Ehud-the left-handed judge dies, Shamgur shows up and has a great battle against the Philistines, striking down 600 of them with only an ox-goad. Yet, the Israelites turn away from the Lord again, worshiping other gods, so the Lord gives them into the hands of Jabin, a king of Canaan, one of the peoples the Israelites were supposed to drive out of the land when God lead them into the Promised Land, but they had never finished the job, getting comfortable living with them instead. Jabin has a mighty general, Sisera with 900 iron chariots under his command, making him one of the most powerful military forces in the world at that time. Jabin and Sisera cruelly oppress Israel. We learn from the next chapter that it was common for them to plunder the Israelites and grab their women and daughters for their men.

Israel’s oppressed for 20 years; the years of oppression are growing longer; Israel doesn’t learn faithfulness well. The Israelites cry out to the Lord for help and the Lord stays faithful to his covenant with them, even though they keep failing God. God does something different this time around; rather than raising up a warrior to deliver his people, God goes to Deborah, a prophetess and judge in the hill country of Ephraim, northeast of Jerusalem in the very heart of Israel. She’s a trusted person in Israel; people come to her to decide their disputes. Deborah sends for Barak and makes him the Lord’s general, chosen by the Lord to go up against the mighty pagan general Sisera. Barak’s told to set up on the high ground on Mount Tabor while the Lord leads Sisera to the river plain of the Kishon River.

The river plain is an ideal place for Sisera’s chariots, with lots of room to maneuver and crush the Israelites. Sisera has no clue that he’s actually up against Israel’s God, not just Barak or Deborah. The Lord has plans for Sisera’s defeat and tells Barak that he’ll give Israel’s general the victory. Barak hesitates though, telling Deborah that he will only go if she comes with him and the troops. This isn’t a sign of cowardice; it shows that Barak sees the world through the eyes of military leaders of the nations around him. It’s so easy to do, seeing the world through the eyes of the society we live in rather than do the hard work of learning to see the world and ourselves through the eyes of Jesus.

Barak wants God’s representative with him when he goes into battle as an assurance of God’s presence, and an inspiration to the men as they go up against the powerful general Sisera. Barak’s thinking that if something goes wrong, Deborah can invoke God’s name and call his power into the battle.

Deborah agrees to come with Barak, but lets him know that because he’s hedging his bets with the Lord by asking her to come with him, that the honour of defeating Sisera will now go to a woman. At this point in the story, we’re expecting that woman to be Deborah. As the story of God’s deliverance of his people unfolds, we notice again that God’s not using people we would normally turn to, to save his people. Deborah and Barak and 10,000 fighting men head out to Mount Tabor, God’s chosen battlefield, but the writer of Judges suddenly sticks in a weird detail about a man named Heber the Kenite who sets up his tent in the region where the battle between Barak and Sisera is going to happen. This is a heads up for us the reader to remember, this detail is going to matter.

Deborah tells Barak, “Go! This is the day the Lord has given Sisera into your hands. Has not the Lord gone ahead of you?” The battle’s engaged! Barak attacks from the heights of Mount Tabor, God messes with Sisera’s army and Israel routs the Canaanite army. Sisera abandons the protection of his powerful chariot and runs away on foot while Barak takes off after him. As Sisera’s running for his life, he comes across the tent of Jael, wife of Heber the Kenite, and we now learn that Heber is in alliance with Jabin, so this is a safe place for Sisera to hide.

Jael goes out to meet Sisera, and being such a powerful and feared general, Jael knows who this battle-weary soldier is. She invites him into her tent. This is a key point, as Sisera believes he’s now in a place of safety. Jael covers him with a blanket and gives him milk to drink after he mentions that he’s thirsty. Jael is following all the customs and expectations of hospitality at that time. As a person needing help and sanctuary, and especially since her husband is an ally of Sisera and Jabin, Jael’s responsibility is to protect and defend the general. Sisera trusts Jael.

Now the story takes an unexpected twist. Sisera commands Jael to “Stand in the doorway of the tent. If someone comes by and asks you ‘Is anyone there?’ say ‘No.’” Sisera now goes into a deep sleep due to the exhaustion and stress of the battle and running for his life; combined with the warm milk, sending him into an exhausted slumber. As Jael waits by the doorway of her tent, she keeps an eye on Sisera and once she’s convinced that he's truly asleep, she takes a tent peg and a hammer, kneels by Sisera’s head, and then pounds the tent peg into his temple, pinning him to the ground and killing him. This is the deepest of betrayals, this is murder, and it shames Sisera who dies at the hand of a woman while asleep. The great general is killed by a woman with a tent peg and hammer, there’s no honour here. Sisera was so confident in his power, in his chariots fitted with iron, with the might of his armies and his reputation, and the Lord uses a woman to strike him down.

Chapter 5 is Deborah’s song of victory, giving God all the glory and honour of the victory. Where God is hardly mentioned in chapter 4, in chapter 5 God gets the victory, glory, and honour; the God of Israel is the God who rules the stars and all of nature, as Sisera discovers when God sends rain and floods to thwart the power of his chariots, making them useless and giving God’s people the victory. Israel has chosen new gods, but they only bring slavery and oppression until the God of Israel, the God of Sinai, reveals his power and his enemies perish before him. Deborah sings about receiving God’s blessings through following him, listening to his voice, and putting ourselves at his service. Jael, a foreigner and woman, is praised and blessed as the defeater of Sisera in spite of how she kills Sisera. We don’t know if Jael is a follower of God. While she’s blessed for killing Israel’s threat, does this condone her actions as Sisera was not her enemy? However, God uses her actions to deliver his people from his cruelty and oppression.

But Deborah’s song also curses those in Israel who stay at home rather than listen to the call to stand up against the enemies of the Lord. This is a reminder that we’re all called to engage false ways of thinking and believing as they pull people away from Jesus. The Lord wins and uses the unexpected to deliver his people. The Lord wins, and the honour of the victory goes to a foreign woman, Jael, rather than Barak, Israel’s general, or even to Deborah, the Lord’s prophetess, just as Deborah had told Barak. The Lord gives Israel victory over Jabin, destroying him.

Deborah reveals to us who God is; he’s God over all creation, there are no enemies that can defeat him. God wins. When we walk away from the Lord to follow other gods, we’re reminded that God is a God of justice and punishes our unfaithfulness. We’re called to return to following Jesus only, to obedience and loving God above everything else in our lives. But God is also a God of mercy as we see when God sends Jesus to draw us back to him and to deliver us from our sin by taking it on himself, as Paul tells the Athenians, “For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.” It’s because of God’s mercy and the extremely heavy cost to Jesus on the cross in our place, that we turn to God asking, “Who do you want us to be as your children, how do you want us to live.” God remains faithful to his people and the covenants and promises he’s given to send a saviour to defeat those gods and deliver us from their power over us.

We experience God’s grace in Jesus, where we’re offered new life and the presence of the Holy Spirit to give us the strength to stand up against the other gods that try to tempt us away from Jesus. New life looks like walking in Jesus’ way, a path where the Holy Spirit shapes us to become who God has created us to be; witnesses to the world, bringing the good news of Jesus.

 

Ehud—The Left-handed Judge: Judges 3:12-30

   

Judges has huge God moments where God shows us that he stays true to his promise to never break covenant with his people; a key theme of Judges. God does allow his people to experience the consequences of their unfaithfulness and choices; allowing the nations and gods they keep choosing over him to dominate and enslave them. Jesus often does the same with us today; allowing the consequences of our choices to play out when we choose to listen to other voices, often leading to hurt, brokenness, and slavery to what had promised us pleasure. Yet Jesus stays true to his promises and covenant to us, never abandoning us and working through the Holy Spirit to keep drawing us back to him for healing and hope.

Israel’s first judge Othniel is a powerful warrior, defeating Cushan the Wicked. Israel has peace for 40 years until Othniel dies and Israel begins a new love affair with the nations around them and their pagan gods, worshipping them alongside God. God allows King Eglon of Moab to have power over Israel. The Israelites are oppressed for 18 years and then cry out to the Lord for help.

The Lord raises up a deliver for them, a left-handed man from the tribe of Benjamin named Ehud. In the story of Ehud, there are a number of puns, some crude humour, and even mockery in this story, beginning with the Lord choosing a left-handed man from a tribe of Benjamin: Benjamin means “Son of my Right Hand.” The right-hand side was considered the side of power and privilege. Later in Judges, we discover that left-handedness is quite common among the people of Benjamin. It makes me wonder why left-handedness becomes seen as something wrong or at least undesired. In Matthew, when Jesus talks about the separation of the sheep and the goats, the goats, those who have not accepted Jesus are placed to the left, while the sheep are placed on the right, the side of power. My brother is left-handed and in the Christian school they forced him to learn to write with his right hand. At the start of this story of deliverance we ask, why focus so heavily on Ehud left-handedness?

Ehud is sent to take Israel’s tribute to King Eglon of Moab, a humiliating task. Ehud is resourceful, making a double-edged sword, about 1 1/2 feet long, and straps it to his right thigh to sneak it past the guards who would have checked out his right thigh less closely since most people are right-handed and would have strapped a sword or dagger to their left thigh. The Lord uses Ehud left-handedness to allow him sneak a sword into the king’s throne room!

To the Israelites, this story is a comedic story of deliverance. God often mocks those who serve idols, listen to Isaiah 44, “The blacksmith takes a tool and works with it in the coals; he shapes an idol with hammers, he forges it with the might of his arm. He gets hungry and loses his strength; he drinks no water and grows faint. The carpenter measures with a line and makes an outline with a marker; he roughs it out with chisels and marks it with compasses. He shapes it in human form, human form in all its glory, that it may dwell in a shrine. He cut down cedars, or perhaps took a cypress or oak. He let it grow among the trees of the forest, or planted a pine, and the rain made it grow. It is used as fuel for burning; some of it he takes and warms himself, he kindles a fire and bakes bread. But he also fashions a god and worships it; he makes an idol and bows down to it. Half of the wood he burns in the fire; over it he prepares his meal; he roasts his meat and eats his fill. He also warms himself and says, “Ah! I am warm; I see the fire.” From the rest he makes a god, his idol; he bows down to it and worships. He prays to it and says, “Save me! You are my god!” They know nothing, they understand nothing; their eyes are plastered over so they cannot see, and their minds closed so they cannot understand. No one stops to think, no one has the knowledge or understanding to say, “Half of it I used for fuel; I even baked bread over its coals, I roasted meat and I ate. Shall I make a detestable thing from what is left? Shall I bow down to a block of wood?” Such a person feeds on ashes; a deluded heart misleads him; he cannot save himself, or say, “Is not this thing in my right hand a lie?”

The writer of Judges makes sure to tell his listeners that Eglon’s a very fat man; a huge obese king sitting on a throne in all his royal finery, like Jabba the Hut. But Eglon is a very vain king, something very common among powerful rulers. Ehud arrives with his men, offers the tribute from Israel, leaves with his men, but then sends his men away while Ehud makes his way back to the king, saying that he has a secret for the king’s ears alone, so Eglon allows Ehud to come back in, after-all his guards have already checked him for weapons.

Eglon sends his attendants way and Ehud comes close, “Your Majesty, I have a secret message from God for you.” Eglon leans forward to get up and while he’s in this helpless position, hands on the arms of the throne, pushing his massive body up, Ehud draws his sword from his right thigh and stabs the very fat king right through the belly. Eglon is so fat that the handle of Ehud’s sword is swallowed up by the king’s belly. A horrible stink fills the throne room, as the king’s bowels are unleashed, and he fills his royal robes with a smelly mess. As the stink fills the room, Ehud escapes through the porch, locking the doors behind him.

While the Israelites listening to this story of Ehud and Eglon roar with laughter, they laugh even harder when they hear that the guards come to the door of the king’s throne room, too embarrassed to knock because it smells like the king is going to the bathroom. Every child listening to the Jewish elder telling this story of God’s deliverance is now laughing so hard the tears are flowing from their eyes! Eglon’s gods can’t save him from a single Jew! How often do today’s false gods seduce us to worship them alongside God? Whose voices are tickling our ears, what’s going on in our hearts that causes us to listen to them?

Meanwhile, back at the palace, after a really long embarrassing wait, the servants finally get brave enough to unlock the door where they find King Eglon lying on the floor in his own mess, dead. Ehud escapes and calls the men of Israel to fight against their oppressors. They take possession of the fords of the Jordan so that Moabites cannot get reinforcements from home, like what the Ukraine was doing when they destroyed that Russian bridge going onto the Crimea, making it more difficult for the Russians to move troops and equipment into the battle area. The Lord gives Ehud and his men victory, “At that time they struck down about ten thousand Moabites, all vigorous and strong; not one escaped.” Moab now becomes subject to Israel, a complete reversal of Moab’s oppression of Israel. For the Israelites, this is an amazing story of deliverance through an unlikely deliverer with much laughter directed towards Israel’s enemies and gods.

The Lord uses an unexpected person to save Israel, a left-handed man from a right-handed tribe. We should not be surprised that the people we tend to look up to the most, are often not the ones God uses to accomplish his plans. When the Lord chooses young David over his older brothers to become the next king of Israel, we’re told that the Lord looks at the heart rather than the looks or popularity of the person he chooses to accomplish his plans.

God always stays true to his covenant promises to us, yet he will often surprise us in who he works through. This is part of the reason so few people recognized Jesus when he comes, even though the prophet Isaiah had told them years earlier that when the Judge comes, “He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.” Ehud goes up against Eglon on his own, only rallying his men behind him after Eglon is dead. Jesus goes up against Satan on his own, defeating him, not with a sword, but through a completely unexpected sacrifice on the cross so we can have freedom and life.

It looks like Jesus is totally defeated; it’s only when we come to an empty grave that we discover that the Lord uses the unexpected to defeat Satan and keep his covenant to send the world a saviour. We all need saving, we’re often more like the Israelites than we want to admit, chasing after all the little gods around us, all the shiny glittery promises our culture promises us if we only accept their truths over Jesus’ truths and call on our lives. We’re often attracted to the big, bright, and glitter over the simplicity of loving God more than anything else and loving our neighbours with sacrificial love.

Paul talks to the church in Corinth in 1 Corinthians 1:26–29, “Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him.” Jesus continues to use unexpected people and ways to build his kingdom, calling us to follow him and trust in him alone. If this is hard for you, ask God to give you the wisdom, the faith, and the strength you need to trust more deeply in him.

 

Baptism—Washed Clean by Jesus--Mark 10:13–16

 

This morning it’s really special to be able to baptize Wren, even though she has no idea of what was going on, or why this stranger poured so much water over her. Wren doesn’t realize yet that her mom and dad love so much that they want nothing more than for her to know Jesus; that they are so excited to accept and obey Jesus’ invitation to “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.” Wren doesn’t need to know what is going on here because her baptism isn’t about anything she’s done, it’s happening because she is part of the church family, because God is the one who chooses us even before the world began; it’s all about God reaching down and drawing us closer to him. I also love how Jesus shows us how important it is for us as adults to have the wondering, awe-inspired, completely trusting heart of a child as we receive the kingdom of God, “anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.”

Jesus’ invitation here always reminds me of how special baptism is and how baptism reveals to us the depth of Jesus’ love for these children and us, and the kind of relationship he invites us and our children into. This relationship centers around the cross, as the Heidelberg Catechism reminds us in Question and Answer 69, “How does holy baptism remind and assure you that Christ’s one sacrifice on the cross benefits you personally? The answer is, “In this way: Christ instituted this outward washing and with it promised that, as surely as water washes away the dirt from the body, so certainly his blood and his Spirit wash away my soul’s impurity, that is, all my sins.”

This is all about being able to get a new beginning in life because of Jesus. If any of you have walked down hard roads and gotten beat up, scarred, and feel as if your soul can never really be clean or acceptable, the sacrament of baptism reminds us that Jesus’ sacrifice and the Holy Spirit can wash away all our sins. This is the hope that comes from following and accepting Jesus as your Lord, the place where you can find the strength and courage to go through life on Jesus’ path. Paul shows us the depth of Jesus’ love and what his sacrifice means in his letter to the church in Rome, Romans 6:4, “We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.”

The image of being buried with Jesus through baptism so that we may have a new life comes out of the stories of the Exodus and entrance into the Promised Land. Baptism is a sign that we’ve become new people, we’ve gained new identities in Jesus, just as Israel went down into the Red Sea as a throng of slaves with little to no self-discipline and came out the other side of the Red Sea a freed people that the world now knows belong to God. Then 40 years later, after learning more of who God is and who God is calling them to be, shaping them through their time wandering in the wilderness, the Israelites went down into the Jordan River as nomadic wanderers and came up the other side of river into their new home, even though they still had a lot of work to do in claiming it with the help of God.

It’s the same for us, in the same way, baptism shows us that we are freed from the hold that sin and Satan have on us and that we are now children of God, a sign that we are washed clean and being made pure. When we come to Jesus, we come to him with our whole selves, we really don’t have a choice since Jesus knows us better than we know ourselves. Jesus knows every deep and dark secret we have, every stain on our soul and heart, with all our brokenness and hurt, and he welcomes us anyway. We’re all in that place, though some of us have a need for more healing and cleansing than others, but none of us come to Jesus without needing some washing clean, some healing, some need for hope and grace.

What I’ve learned over the years is that many people want to be able to clean themselves, to not have to rely on anyone, not even Jesus to get things right with God. They will try to change themselves; they will focus on doing all kinds of good things to change God’s image of them, they will be more generous so that God will look at them better. But the reality is that we cannot clean ourselves, that no matter how much we might become more like Jesus in one area of our lives, there are always other areas in our lives where we may not even be aware of how much needs to happen for us to become more like Jesus. Often, the more we become more like Jesus is some areas of our lives, the temptation for pride to grow because we believe it’s because of our efforts that we’ve become better people, becomes stronger. This is why Jesus has sent the Holy Spirit, to work with us on our life long journeys of becoming more like Jesus, and this is why the Holy Spirit also keeps pointing us to Jesus and grace and how much we need Jesus to clean our hearts, minds, and souls through his sacrifice on the cross.

As we come to meet Jesus at the foot of the cross, we discover that this strange phrase, “to be washed by Jesus’ blood” means, as the Catechism reminds us, that “God, by grace, has forgiven our sins because of Christ’s blood poured out for us in his sacrifice on the cross.” As we come and receive the kingdom of God like a child, confessing our sin and need for Jesus, the Holy Spirit is working in us, washing away the dirt that stain our hearts and souls with, renewing us and transforming us as we begin walking on the path that Jesus has laid out for us: this is what repentance looks like. The Holy Spirit draws us into a new life filled with cleansing, healing, and building us up in strength and hope to become more and more like Jesus: this is what sanctification is all about, another churchy word.

This all happens as we’re part of this church family, a part of the Body of Christ. Bowen and Rebekah know that as Wren has been baptized into Jesus and the church, they also need all of us to walk alongside them as they raise Wren and all their other children to know and love Jesus and accept the call Jesus gives them to come to him. Bowen and Rebekah were deeply touched when August Luymes challenged us as a church to remember our baptismal promises as a congregation and church family to welcome Wren in love, and to promise to pray for, encourage, and help nurture Wren, and all our children and youth in the faith.

We baptize our children as part of a church service to remind us that each one of the children in our church is part of each one of our families too as we are all together Bethel Church family, that our parents need and rely on each one of us to help them raise their children to know and love Jesus and accept Jesus’ call to come to him. Raising children today is hard because there are so many influences from outside the home and faith community that are filling our children’s hearts and minds with things are only partially true, or sometimes even outright lies. There is so much in our culture that is good and wonderful, but also many things that hurt our children, and us as adults.

Our value or worth is not determined by our looks, our popularity, by what we have or wear, or the identities that society has determined are most important for us to accept. Our value comes because we’re created in the image of God, our value comes from knowing that God loves us so much that he sent Jesus to take our sin on himself and wash us clean through his blood. We are precious because God has chosen us to be his and will never un-choose us. This is why we make the promises to parents like Bowen and Rebekah that we will be part of helping their children to see their worth, and to find the truth of who they are, through the eyes and heart of Jesus first.

Christian artist David Crowder sings in his song, Come as You Are, “There's hope for the hopeless and all those who've strayed. Come sit at the table, come taste the grace. There's rest for the weary, rest that endures, Earth has no sorrow that heaven can't cure. So lay down your burdens, lay down your shame; all who are broken lift up your face…. Come as you are, come as you are, fall in his arms. Come as you are, there's joy for the morning.” The invitation this morning is to come to Jesus just as you are; he can wash you clean and give you new life and a new identity in him.

A Deep-Seated Thanksgiving: 1 Thessalonians 3:6-13

Paul’s letter to the church in Thessalonica is filled with encouragement and teaching on how to follow Jesus well. Paul had to flee the city when his life was threatened, but Timothy had remained behind to care for the church. Now Timothy has come to visit Paul and has brought back a really encouraging report about how they were doing, yet there were a number of things Paul also still needed to teach and encourage them in.

This is a letter that comes from Paul’s heart, a letter that shares with them his deep thanksgiving for their faith in Jesus which brings him deep joy in his own relationship with God, “Therefore, brothers and sisters, in all our distress and persecution we were encouraged about you because of your faith. For now we really live, since you are standing firm in the Lord. How can we thank God enough for you in return for all the joy we have in the presence of our God because of you? Night and day we pray most earnestly that we may see you again and supply what is lacking in your faith.” Paul’s filled with gratitude and thanksgiving here and it’s all based in relationships: their relationship with him and their relationship with God.

Today is Thanksgiving Day, it’s actually a government holiday, not a church day. Thanksgiving should not be just a one day a year thing, Biblically, thanksgiving is a way of living. On Sundays, when we spend time in worship to confess our sin and ask for God’s forgiveness, every time we hear God’s words of forgiveness and grace, our response is to turn to God and Jesus in a spirit of thanksgiving, and ask how then shall we live to show our thanksgiving to God for what Jesus has done for us on the cross and for the gift of the Holy Spirit that keeps drawing us to Jesus. Our thanksgiving is rooted in our relationship with Jesus, leading us to welcome the Holy Spirit to transform our lives and ways of seeing the world. We’re transformed from looking at the world and life from the perspective of what can I get out of it, to how can I be part of the way Jesus is bringing in his kingdom of peace and shalom. We are changed from self-seeking to sacrificially asking Jesus to use us to be a blessing.

Thanksgiving is also at the heart of our confessions; the Heidelberg Confession begins with the question, “What is your only comfort in life and in death?” The answer lies in our relationship with Jesus, “That I am not my own, but belong—body and soul, in life and in death—to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ. He has fully paid for all my sins with his precious blood, and has set me free from the tyranny of the devil. He also watches over me in such a way that not a hair can fall from my head without the will of my Father in heaven; in fact, all things must work together for my salvation. Because I belong to him, Christ, by his Holy Spirit, assures me of eternal life and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for him.”

Chuck Colson writes that there are two kinds of thankfulness. “One is secondary, the other primary. The secondary sort is thankfulness for blessings received. Life, health, home, family, freedom, a tall, cold lemonade on a summer day — it’s a mindset of active appreciation for all good gifts.” These are the things that make life enjoyable. The problem, as Jonathan Edwards taught, is that “this gratitude doesn’t come naturally — if at all — when things go badly. It can’t buoy us in difficult times. Nor, by itself, does it truly please God. And, to paraphrase Jesus, even pagans can give thanks when things are going well.” This is so different from what Paul experiences here, “Therefore, brothers and sisters, in all our distress ad persecution we were encouraged about because of your faith. For now we really live, since you are standing firm in the Lord.” Paul’s hurting, yet he’s still thankful and grateful because the people he loves are in relationship with the Lord!

Jonathan Edwards goes on to talk about a deeper kind of thankfulness, “gracious gratitude.” This is the thankfulness that we’ve just seen Paul express, a thankfulness rooted in who God is and in our relationship with Jesus, and through Jesus, with each other. This is about being thankful for God’s character, his goodness, love, power, mercy, grace, and his never giving up on his people, even when we receive no benefit or favours from God that we can see or touch. We see its real evidence with the Holy Spirit working in a person’s life as they live out and express their faith in Jesus no matter what’s happening in their lives, good or hard times.

Paul encourages us in Romans 8, “If God is for us, who can be against us.... Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written: “For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” This is the heart of our thankfulness, the reason for living life with a spirit of gratitude; our relationship with Jesus rooted in his sacrificial love for us.

Ann Voskamp writes, “Gratitude is at the center of a life of faith. It sounds too simple to be true, but isn't that the sign of all deep truth: so simple we're tempted to dismiss it, and so hard, it is exactly what God uses to change our hard lives.” To live into gratitude, all it takes is one small switch in how you look at life; instead of looking at what you don’t have, instead look at all the things you have and thank God. I know that if you are in advertising, this might bankrupt you, if you’re shaped by our culture, you might say that I’m crazy, but if you’re looking for joy and contentment, if you’re looking for something better, you won’t find it in more stuff, instead you’ll find it in better relationships, beginning with your relationship with Jesus. Mary Jo Leddy writes that in radical gratitude, “We begin to recognize what we have rather than what we don’t...we awaken to another way of being, another kind of economy, the great economy of grace in which each person is of infinite value and worth." Living with a strong spirit of gratitude leads to healthier stronger relationships making us healthier and stronger too.

I read a comment from an online site, “People who are filled with such radical gratitude are unstoppable, irrepressible, overflowing with what C. S. Lewis called “the good infection” — the supernatural, refreshing love of God that draws others to Him. And that, more than any words we might utter, is a powerful witness to our neighbors that God’s power is real, and His presence very relevant, even in a world full of brokenness as well as blessings.” When gratitude sits deep in our hearts, it shapes everything we do and say. A spirit of gratitude can transform our families, creating strength even though all our families have warts and stresses. Cultivating a spirit of gratitude for each other can bring healing and hope, even though it might not happen overnight.

People notice in positive ways when we approach life with a spirit of thanksgiving and it helps us build strong relationships with our neighbours as they see how the presence of the Holy Spirit transforms how we see and relate to the world we’re in. A spirit of gratitude can change our culture’s perspective of the church being filled with hypocritical judgemental angry people. It’s a shame that this is how so many people see us today, but Jesus can change how the world sees us through how we allow his Spirit to change us.

So, as you gather, or maybe have already gathered over tables filled with food, surrounded by people you love and care for, and after having worshipped our God and the gift of Jesus and the Holy Spirit, may we all walk through the days and weeks ahead looking to recognize all God’s blessings, especially those of relationships and friendships, and then allow his blessings to flow through us into the communities we live in. May the Lord bless you to be a blessing this Thanksgiving Day and always.

 

Othniel—The First Judge: Judges 1:1-3; 2:1-4; 3:5-11

 

A little background to begin this journey through the book of Judges over the next few months. After the death of Moses, God appointed Joshua to lead Israel into the Promised Land to conquer it. The book of Joshua reveals a God who keeps his promise to his people to bring them into the land and help them defeat their enemies. The people begin to experience God’s promised rest and blessings. At the start of the book of Judges, there is still work left to do to finish conquering the land. The people turn to God and ask, “Who of us is to go up first to fight against the Canaanites?” and God tells them, “Judah shall go up; I have given the land into their hands.” A pretty straight forward command, Judah is called to go up to fight.

Judah gets ready to fight and does a smart thing militarily, they ask their brothers, the Simeonites, to come fight with them. The more the merrier and the greater the guarantee of victory, right? Just one problem here, they’re not really listening to God, God didn’t say Judah and Simeon go fight, he tells Judah to fight. The people are beginning to show that they are going to hedge their bets when it comes to listening to God, showing they don’t completely trust God. They depend on their own strength and wisdom; a sign of things to come. Yet God blesses their battles and they take the hill country, including Jerusalem. We also meet Othniel for the first time as he wins Caleb’s daughter in marriage by capturing the city Kiriath Sepher.

Israel is defeating the people of Canaan, but they always seem to stop before completely driving them out, choosing to allow some of them to stay, taking some of them as slaves or restricting them to specific areas in the land. God is frustrated with his people. He’s always with them in their battles, giving them victory, but the Israelites can’t be bothered to finish the conquest. God’s frustration comes out when he sends an angel who tells the people, “I brought you up out of Egypt and led you into the land I swore to give to your ancestors. I said, ‘I will never break my covenant with you, and you shall not make a covenant with the people of this land, but you shall break down their altars.’ Yet you have disobeyed me. Why have you done this? And I have also said, ‘I will not drive them out before you; they will become traps for you, and their gods will become snares to you.”

Did you hear what God is saying here? He’s telling his people that when they don’t obey him, what they’re doing is failing to remember who he is as their God, failing to remember that he rescued them from slavery, but he’s also telling Israel that he’s never going to break his covenant with them, he’s never going to give up on them, but there are consequences to their failure to remember and obey. The consequences are that God’s going to allow the people of the land to stay in the land alongside the Israelites and their gods are going to become traps and snares to them. God is telling them outright that they’re going to keep on rejecting him for other weaker gods.

God has the power to defeat these pagan peoples and their gods, but because of Israel’s disobedience and insistence on doing things their way instead of God’s way, God allows them to be tempted by the other nations and their gods, knowing that they’re going to end up captured and snared by them again and again. This is the main story of Judges; Israel rejects God, they cry out to him, he saves them, but then they go back to their old ways and other nations’ gods again, starting the whole process of punishment and salvation over again.

Following God his way takes bravery combined with a deep trust in God and his call on our lives. When God tells Judah to go up against the Canaanites, it takes courage for a smaller tribe to simply listen and go and do as God said. It takes bravery and a deep trust in Jesus to follow in his way, to love so deeply that you love even your enemies and those who persecute you because you hold to very different values and morals than the world around us, it takes bravery to forgive deeply when you’ve been hurt or betrayed. This doesn’t mean you put yourself in unsafe situations, but forgiveness is hard, it’s easier to hold onto hatred and make sure they get back what they deserve, and maybe even a bit more. It takes bravery to be generous when you are stretched, trusting that Jesus will provide whatever we need.

Sure enough, Israel gets tangled up with the gods and people around them, even marrying their sons and daughters to the daughters and sons of the pagan peoples around them. As a youth pastor and father, I would often remind my students that dating someone who doesn’t believe in Jesus is not evangelism and that it will probably be more likely that they end up out of the church than they bring their girlfriend or boyfriend to Jesus. That’s what happens here, the Israelites get so comfortable with the pagan gods and goddesses, they get so comfortable around the pagans that they become pagan themselves, worshipping the Baals and Asherahs along with God, doing the same evil as the nations around them. God gets angry and gives them into the hands of Cushan-Rishathaim, whose name actually means Cushan the Wicked.

God does this so that his people will come back to him, and sure enough, after 8 years of being under the fist of Cushan the Wicked, Israel cries out to God. God, in his faithfulness, responds by sending his Spirit onto Othniel, son-in-law to strong faithful Caleb. Othniel becomes a judge, a leader of the people of Israel and leads them into battle against Aram and the Lord gives Othniel victory over Cushan the Wicked. This becomes the pattern of the book of Judges: Israel gets comfortable with the other nations, dabbles with their gods, mixing worshipping Israel’s God with the gods of the nations, God gives them over to the other nations, basically saying that if you prefer their gods to me, they can have you, Israel then realizes they’ve messed up bad and are suffering the consequences of their choices so they cry out to God for salvation and God sends a judge to lead them to freedom again and the people have peace for a while, the judge dies and the people start getting comfortable with other gods again and the pattern repeats all over again.

The great message of hope in Judges is that God, that Jesus, is continually faithful to us even though we fail time after time in loving him with all our hearts, souls, minds, and strength, even though we are continually seduced away from Jesus by the philosophies and gods of our culture, often even conflating the gods and philosophies of our culture into Jesus, mocking Jesus by shaping him into who we want him to be to suit our own beliefs and wants.

Jesus has every reason to walk away from us, and yet he loves us so much that he went to the cross to save us from our sin. He reveals his power over sin, death, and Satan by rising up from the grave and now is with God in heaven waiting to return and establish his kingdom; banishing Satan, sin, and death forever while completely renewing and restoring us, filling us with his new life, healing all our brokenness, our hurts, our pains and sorrows. Can you even imagine the power of Jesus’ love in you, the power to give you a hope and grace filled life, forgiven of every single sin you’ve ever committed.

This is the strength and hope that carries us through life, knowing that we’re sinners at heart and we keep getting tempted to take our eyes and focus off of Jesus and onto ourselves or something else that seems shiny and brighter than Jesus. But Jesus doesn’t give up on us, he stays faithful to his promises to us to never abandon us and has provided us with the presence of the Holy Spirit in us, part of why we read the Belgic Confession about God’s providence. The Holy Spirit keeps working in us to show us how the shiny and bright will always fail us, but that Jesus never will. The Spirit works in often quiet ways: a friend who sticks with us when others walk away, a parent who keeps praying for us, a nudge to pray ourselves, or a reminder of a Bible story that won’t go away. The Spirit doesn’t give up on us either, even when the consequences of our sin make it feel as if Jesus has given up on us. Forgiveness and grace walk hand in hand, Jesus’ forgiveness calls us to repentance, to changing our path to walk Jesus’ path.

Judges is going to show us that we can always come back to God, to Jesus and Jesus will always hear us, always have compassion on us, and always welcome us back while calling us to obedience so we can know Jesus’ peace and healing.

 

Paul and Timothy—Mentoring the Next Generation of Leaders: Acts 16:1-5

 

On Paul’s second missionary journey, Paul takes Silas with him after his disagreement with Barnabas over John Mark. While on this missionary journey, Paul comes across a young man named Timothy, whose mother is Jewish and a believer and whose father is a Greek. Paul sees something in Timothy and so invites Timothy to join him and Silas. In order to make things easier for Timothy and himself, Paul circumcises Timothy because of the Jews in the area. When you read Paul later on concerning circumcision, we can see that Paul is still fairly early in his own growth around this whole new idea that God loves the Gentiles and has chosen to embrace Gentiles as he has embraced the Jewish people.

Paul, Silas, and Timothy are travelling to the churches Paul and Barnabas have already planted to bring the Gentile followers of Jesus the decisions made by the apostles at the first Synod of Jerusalem: that faith in Jesus calls them “to abstain from food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from the meat of strangled animals and from blood.” These were areas where the Gentiles had particular weaknesses and things the Jews had big issues with as they revolved around who do you worship, holiness, and magic power transference showing a trust and dependency on yourself instead of God.

As Paul, Silas, and Timothy travel from city to city and church to church, Timothy is able to see how Paul interprets Scripture and how it points to Jesus. He watches how Paul preaches, builds relationships in order to plant churches, as Paul mentors Timothy, teaching him about Jesus and how Jesus fulfills the prophecies from the Hebrew Scriptures.

It's in the letters to Timothy from Paul that we get a deeper picture of their relationship and how Paul is Timothy’s mentor. In Paul’s first letter to Timothy, he begins by writing, “To Timothy my true son in the faith: Grace, mercy and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord,” and then a few verses later, “Timothy, my son, I am giving you this command in keeping with the prophecies once made about you, so that by recalling them you may fight the battle well.” There’s a close bond between the two of them, so much so that Paul feels like a father to Timothy, wanting to see Timothy do well and know Jesus well. Even though Timothy is quite young, he quickly gains Paul’s trust and becomes a trusted companion and colleague for more than 17 years.

Paul’s goal is to nurture the “gift of God which is in you through the laying on of my hands.” It seems rather appropriate to talk about mentoring on a day when we’ve just ordained a new deacon. Along the way, different people have influenced the faith of Pete, whether it was his parents, Sunday School teachers, cadet counsellors, perhaps teachers or a man in church who took an interest in Pete and helped him understand more about Jesus and his own gifts. In the church, mentoring is there to help a person discover gifts that the Holy Spirit has given them, and then to help them grow their gifts and use them, whether in the church or our community. When Paul needed someone to return to Thessalonica to encourage the new believers there, he sends young Timothy. Later on, Paul sends Timothy to Corinth, where he preaches for some time. Paul mentors Timothy and then quickly has Timothy begin to use the things he’s learned from Paul.

Even when Timothy becomes a pastor, Paul continues to write Timothy, mentoring him through words of encouragement and guidance. Once you’ve had the joy of being in someone’s life as a mentor, there’s a connection that will always remain and opportunities to continue to offer encouragement, guidance, and blessing, especially if you hear that they might be struggling. We see this is Paul’s letters to Timothy. In 1 Timothy 4, Paul offers words of encouragement as it seems that there are those in the church who don’t take Timothy seriously because he’s young. “Command and teach these things. Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith and in purity. Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to preaching and to teaching. Do not neglect your gift, which was given you through prophecy when the body of elders laid their hands on you. Be diligent in these matters; give yourself wholly to them, so that everyone may see your progress. Watch your life and doctrine closely. Persevere in them, because if you do, you will save both yourself and your hearers.” Paul reminds Timothy that his example of how he lives out his faith is the most important thing and to hang in there.

When the church empowers its youth, young adults, and those new to the faith, to lead and use their gifts quickly in the church, when it actively encourages and builds them up, it creates a life and energy in the church from the Holy Spirit. There are generational differences and gaps, always has been and always will be, how many of our parents and grandparents didn’t shake their heads and mutter about how the youth of today aren’t like us when we were young? How often don’t those of us who are older say or think the same thing right now? Times change, society and culture change, and it’s our young adults who understand it. They’re the ones who can, together with older and more experienced members of the church, lead the church well in speaking into our culture and community about Jesus in ways they can hear and understand.

We mentor our youth and young adults in the faith so that they can have an answer for what they believe. Danny Q on the website A Plain Account writes, “I’ll always remember a moment in one of my evangelism classes where the professor kept pressing the point that part of what evangelism means is that at some point, we’re going to have to say words about Jesus to someone else. This came up within a larger conversation about mission and witness where words like practices and “just being present” and justice were tossed around. It was a good conversation, but I haven’t been able to shake the reality that something about what it means to be a follower of Jesus means that I say something about it. This hit me even harder when my kids were born. What will I say about Jesus? How will I talk about God? Will it stick? Will they stay a part of the church? How does our learning how to speak, or making the story our own help them learn how to do it?”

Jesus came from heaven and became a person just like us, so that he could take the curse of sin on himself so that we can come close to God the Father again, Jesus also came to mentor a group of young men to carry on his work. We receive forgiveness, we experience hope, we find new life and strength in Jesus through the Holy Spirit. But we need to tell the world, we need to learn how to talk about Jesus. Paul knows this and he encourages Timothy in his second letter, “I give you this charge: Preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction. For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. But you, keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry.”

What I love about mentoring is that mentors help us prepare for the good times in life and especially the hard times. Mentoring often begins with people praying for our young adults and youth. At YMLT we talked about having prayer cards for our young adults, give prayer cards to the older congregation members to pray for them, something everyone can do. Paul encourages Timothy, and through his own life experience, lets Timothy know that he needs to continue to invest in his gifts of teaching and leading, but some will reject his teaching because the gospel call is one of love, forgiveness, and of sacrifice and even rejection. It’s in those times that we lean on the wisdom and life experience of our mentors, leaning into the reassurance that we can make it through the difficult times because Jesus doesn’t abandon us and will give us the strength and wisdom we will need, often working through others around us.

When Paul is imprisoned in Rome, it’s Timothy he asks to “come before winter” to comfort him. Mentoring relationships often turn into life long relationships that bless both persons. Jesus mentored his 12 disciples, but in the mentoring, Jesus was blessed through their friendship, no longer considering them servants, but friends, a beautiful gift that comes from mentoring. May the Lord bless you and lead you into mentoring, whether as a mentor or a mentee. The blessing will be for a life time.