Romans 10:8b-13 “The Word is Near”

There was a retired pastor who helped out at the church that I grew up in. He was known as the pastor emeritus, and he helped out with worship (particularly when we had communion), he visited, and occasionally, he preached. I honestly don’t remember much about what he said when he preached, but there is one thing that I remember quite clearly. You see, the church had a choir loft off to the side, and the choir would sit in it throughout the service. And he would be up in the pulpit and for some reason he was more interested in looking out at them than he was at looking towards the rest of the congregation. So he would spend the whole sermon looking to the side, preaching to the choir. It always made me laugh. Of course, I have my own issues with eye contact when I preach, as I tend to look above all of you instead of at you, so who am I to talk.

The truth is that in the many sermons I have preached here, for some reason I have not spent a lot of time preaching the basic gospel message. I haven’t spent a lot of time spelling out God’s great love for us, our great need for salvation, Jesus’ great sacrifice to save us from our sins, and the need for us to accept Christ so that we might know salvation. The truth is that I have avoided preaching this message too often because I don’t want to be preaching to the choir. It is something we all know, it is something that we’ve all heard time and time again, it is something that we believe and accept… so why spend the time repeating it.

But it is a message that is worth repeating. It is a truth that is truly center to who we are as Christians, as Christ’s disciples. And every now and then it is worth hearing that old, old story once again.

Let us open in prayer.

I. The Middle

This last fall I got into a discussion with some friends from high school about God’s love. You see, I made the horrendous claim that God loves everyone and they told me that this made them throw up in their mouth. It seems like this was quite a strong reaction to a truth that is pretty clear throughout the Bible, but that is what happened. They also got upset when I suggested that God wants everyone to be saved. How dare I talk about things that God wants to happen that don’t happen. If God wants something, it will happen, they argue. If it doesn’t happen, then it is not a part of God’s purpose, his plan, or his desire.

Some Christians claim that God loves everyone. They like to point out that God wants relationship with everyone. Wow, that makes things easy, doesn’t it? If God loves everyone, no matter who they are or what they’ve done, we don’t really have to worry terribly much. We can just do what we want and live as we like and be assured of God’s love for us.

This is something that Dietrich Bonhoeffer liked to refer to as cheap grace. And it is not a truth we find in the Bible.

There are other Christians who take a different approach. They claim that God only loves the elect. God only loves people who are his followers. They suggest that there are things we have to do to earn the great, great love of Jesus, and as long as we are not doing these things, we are not only un-loved, we are unlovable.

This is something that Saint Paul actually speaks against as works-righteousness. And it also is not a truth we find in the Bible.

II. The Spiritual Laws

The fact of the matter is that the truth is somewhere in the middle. No matter how much it makes my friends from high school throw up in their mouths, God does love everyone. I think that this is a very clear truth throughout the Bible. It is the center of the most famous Bible verse there is: For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son. It’s not that he loved the elect. It’s that he loved the world. The Greek word there is “Kosmon” or Cosmos. This is the cosmos that God loves. It is everything. It is all that he created. God loves this creation completely from the smallest speck of dust to the greatest mountain. And he created each of you and each person in this world and loves you and them completely and unconditionally. God loves so greatly that the Hebrews in the Old Testament came up with their own word for the love of God, a special word that is not used to describe earthly love or love from one person to another… this is Hesed: God’s undescribable love for his creation. This is where the first Christians I mentioned earlier get it right. God does love everyone: even the drug addict, even the prostitute, even the murderer.

Think for a moment about the most unlovable person you know. Think about the person that you want absolutely nothing to do with because you just cannot stand them and don’t know how they could be loved. Now realize that they are loved by God.

Now, unfortunately, some take this amazing, supernatural, uncomprehensable love of God as acceptance or even universalism. God loves everyone so he doesn’t care what we do or how we live. This isn’t how God’s love works. God loves us and he wants what’s best for us. But we don’t always choose what’s best for us. In fact, we often find ourselves choosing the very thing that is worst for us. We choose sin. We live in a broken world and we ourselves are broken. Many of us here have known Christ as long as we can remember. Many of us here cannot remember a point in our lives where God wasn’t a part of them. And even so, we find ourselves to be broken, to be sinful, to be willful, to choose the things of the world over the things of God. How much more those who have never even known that there was a choice.

So, God loves us completely, but we are broken. We cannot enter into right relationship with God because of our brokenness. We have a disease that is destroying us and pulling us away from God and that disease is sin. But do not fear because God found a cure for that disease. The cure was his Son. Jesus came to the world in order to cure us, in order to make us right. Jesus spent his life teaching and preaching and healing and working signs and wonders so that we might know what the heart of God was. Jesus went to the cross to die so that we might know life. God sacrificed his Son to take upon himself the sins of the world. And then the miraculous happened. Jesus was raised from the dead. He conquered sin, he conquered death, he conquered the devil himself. He showed that he was more powerful than the disease that is killing each of us.

And if we believe, if we confess, then we have the opportunity to be healed! By believing in Jesus we are found righteous as he was righteous. By accepting him as our Lord and Savior we are saved. This is the good news of the Gospel.

III. The Word is Near

 And so we come to Romans 10. The word is near to us. The truth is so simple and yet so profound. We are called to profess with our mouths that Jesus is Lord and believe in our hearts that God raised him from the dead. We do this not to earn God’s love. God already loved us, back when we were only a thought in his mind. But this is how we begin that journey towards right relationship with him. This is how we start down the path towards being the people he created us to be.

You notice that I say start down the path and begin the journey. It is important to remember that accepting Christ, entering into relationship with him, is not the end that we seek, it is only the beginning. It is the beginning of an amazing relationship that God wants to have with each of us. It is the beginning of the most romantic love story you will ever know. The love story between your Creator and you.

Paul also tells us that there is no difference between Jew and Gentile—the same Lord is Lord of all. This is old language that blurs the powerful new truth that Paul is sharing. We think that perhaps it means race doesn’t matter. But it actually means something much more profound. You see, back in Paul’s day, the Jews were the good, religious people who kept all the laws and followed all the rules. The Gentiles were those who had not grown up knowing God, who came to Christ and had to figure out which of the laws, which of the rules applied to them. Paul and the early disciples made it clear that it was up to them, the Gentiles, to figure that out for themselves.

Paul is telling us that we need to be careful as the religious folk. We need to remember that just because we grew up following the rules, just because we have been good Christian boys and girls, we cannot lord it over those around us. If God has called others into relationship with him, we need to be willing to meet them where they are and come alongside them as they begin the greatest journey they will ever know. We don’t necessarily have to hold them to the standards we hold ourselves to. We don’t need to judge them and critique them. We can rely on the Holy Spirit to start working on their hearts and their lives and moving them in the right direction. For there is no difference between Jews and Gentiles. The Lord is the Lord of all. Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved! Amen.

Psalm 146 "A Post Election Reminder"

So, this morning I am going to spend some time talking politics. As all of you do, I have good friends, good Christian friends, on both sides of the aisle. I have friends who love the Lord and put his kingdom first who were celebrating on Tuesday night, and I have friends who love the Lord and put his kingdom first who were wondering how things could get any worse on Tuesday night.

I also mentioned last week that there are a number of churches around the country that came together Tuesday night, not to watch the poll numbers, not to wait for the returns to come in, but to join together in Holy Communion, reminding themselves and making a statement to the world that what unites us as Christians is greater than that which divides us politically. I believe that our annual soup and pie supper on election night at this church is kind of a similar event. No, we aren’t celebrating Communion together. But we are coming together in God’s house and leaving our politics at the door as we fellowship with one another and share meal together. And we don’t limit this to ourselves. We invite the whole community in to this fellowship, into this meal. We are taking a stand and reminding ourselves that we are united by Christ and not divided as it sometimes feels we are.

So today we read Psalm 146. It is a psalm of praise. But more than that, it is a reminder of where our trust lies, where our hope can be placed. This psalm is a word of comfort and hope to my conservative friends as they are reminded that it is God who is in control and it is he to whom we place our fealty. It is a word of caution to my liberal or progressive friends as they are reminded that we aren’t to put our hope and trust in earthly saviors.

Let us open in prayer…

1. Trust Not in Princes

So, today’s scripture spends some time telling us where to put our trust. Actually, before it gets there it starts by telling us where not to put our trust. It starts out pretty strong, also. Don’t put your trust in princes or in men. It is easy to see the political message here. It is easy to see this as a reminder that our hope is not in people. But this is something that is much harder to live into. After being told over and over again that this election that we just had was the most important decision that we as a country would make in our whole lifetime. After being told by both parties that if we chose the “wrong” candidate, everything we believed in, everything we held as important, would be taken from us. We’ve basically been living in a world, politically, where we have been told that we are to put our trust in princes. And the truth is that this isn’t only a political thing. The same is true in so many areas of our lives. We are always looking for people to save us. We are always being told that we need to rely on someone else or something else to save us. Better clothes will make us feel more comfortable about ourselves. A nicer car will help us find happiness and joy. Medicines that they advertise on TV will allow us to feel younger and healthier and able to do more than we thought we were capable of. Advertisement, both political and otherwise is all about selling us on our need for a savior. But the advertisements all point us to the wrong saviors.

I remember being a teen. I don’t know about all of you, it may have been a while ago for you, but some of the feelings of the teenage life are still fresh in my mind a quarter century later. I remember being very self-conscious. I remember being socially awkward and not having much self-confidence. And I remember watching commercials that told me that if I wore the right cologne the girls would like me. And so, I found myself buying this horrible stuff that I thought would save me, would cure me of my social awkwardness. Of course it did no such thing. Cologne could not be my savior.

Looking back, I laugh. Cause it seems absolutely ridiculous to me today to think that cologne could save me from myself. Yet I did. But the same thing is true today. We expect things and people to save us, to save this world, to save this country and they can’t. So the psalmist tells us that we should not look to princes for our salvation. We shouldn’t look to people. The mighty fall. Those who we think are invulnerable show their vulnerability. Those who seem undefeatable end up being defeated. Good is not always the strongest.

I’ve talked about this scripture in the context of politicians and advertisements, but there is someone else that you need to realize cannot save you as well. And that is yourself.

The psalmist reminds us why this is. “When their spirit departs, they return to the ground; on that very day their plans come to nothing.” The things of this world are temporary. The greatest plans made by the greatest people in this world will not last. Plus, there is just so much that is outside the control of us and our would-be saviors. A sports star who seems undefeatable ends up getting injured and their career is never the same.

When I was a kid the Seattle Seahawks were starting to try to build a new team, trying to make a name for themselves. They’d had two years without making it to the playoffs and they knew they needed something bold. They hired a loud-mouthed rookie linebacker, Brian Bozworth: “The Boz”. He flew into his first practice with the team on a helicopter. He had the biggest contract that Seattle had ever given up to that point. His trash talking and over-the-top personality rubbed a lot of fans the wrong way. But, I’ve gotta say, he was smart about it. He at one point had shirts made up that said “Ban the Boz” and when Seattle was playing Denver these shirts were sold to Denver fans and the stadium was full of them. The fans had no idea that Boz was actually making money off of them. But the Seahawks had put their trust in the Boz and discovered that he didn’t do much for them. His second year he had a shoulder injury that pretty much ended his career, though he made it into the second game of his third season before he fully retired from the sport. As we look back at the Boz, though, he became more of a joke to us Seattle fans than anything else.

But the fact is that our human heroes will never live up to our hopes and dreams. Their plans will die with them, or often long before them. The mighty will fall and we cannot allow ourselves to put our trust in them, even though everything in our world tells us that we should.

2. Hope in the Lord

So, if we’re not putting our trust in people, if we’re not expecting a politician or a movie star, a sports player or even ourselves to save us; then what do we put our trust in? Someone whose plans are greater than ours. Someone who will never fail. Someone who cannot be surprised by events outside his control: “Blessed are those whose help is in the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord their God.” When we look for someone to help us, the one we can look to with absolute trust, with absolute hope, is God.

The psalm then explains to us why it is that we can look to him. It explains what it is about his character that makes it possible to trust in him, what it is that allows us to rely on him. And the psalm does it in a way that is very poetic, that is very powerful. It is almost a shame to analyze it, it’s almost a shame to take it apart and look at it closely, because it takes away the beauty of the psalm, the poetry found there. But at the same time this is a list of attributes of God that helps us to understand why we can put our trust in him. It’s a good list to have before us.

First, God is the creator of this world. He is the creator of heaven and earth, the sea and everything in them. Think about this for a minute. As you look at the world around you. Everything you see on this world, everything you see in the heavens, everything was created by God. Even the sea, which in the day of the psalmist was seen as chaos and destruction. Even the sea was created by God and everything in it. So, God can be trusted because he has made this world.

But the psalmist goes on to tell us that God remains faithful forever. He created this world and he has promised to be faithful to this world. He made this promise not to give up on this world he created after the flood, when he gave us the rainbow to remind us of this faithfulness, to remind us of this promise.

The psalmist continues. He upholds the cause of the oppressed, gives food to the hungry, sets the prisoners free, gives sight to the blind, lifts up those who are bowed down, loves the righteous, watches over the foreigner, the immigrant, the outsider, sustains the orphan and the widow and frustrates the plans and the ways of the wicked.

We see here an active God. We see here a God who didn’t just start up this world, create it and wind it up like a clock and walk away to gaze from a distance at the world he created. Instead we see a God who actively works for the good of his people. We see a God who takes an interest in the things of this world, a God who wants justice and peace in a world bent against these things.

When things seem hopeless, when the problems faced by you or those around you seem to be beyond your ability, don’t trust the people who say they can fix them. They can try, but they don’t have what it takes. Instead turn to God. Allow God to work, put your hope in him. Allow him to be your help and the receiver of your trust. Our allegiance is first and foremost to God’s kingdom, and he is the one that will bring us salvation.

Numbers 23:27-24:11 “Blessings or Curses”

This church building was built in the mid 50s. And it is the style that most churches were built in the 50s. It’s the upside-down ark architecture. Churches that have been built or remodeled in the last decade or two look very differently. They look like meeting rooms or even theaters. There’s not as much obvious religious architecture in them. The narthex is much more like a lobby than a narthex… there’s often a coffee shop and a fountain… making the church look more like a mall than a place of worship.

I don’t want to get down on the modern architecture of churches here. There’s a reason for it. These churches are being built to appeal to young people who did not grow up in the church, and therefore these churches take their cues from the kind of spaces that young people might be comfortable in. And, unfortunately, the mall is perhaps the holiest place our society has to offer. Here’s a weird fact. God to a mall, go near the food court. Guess what you’ll find there. Probably some sort of tree or some sort of fountain. It’s almost universal in malls. And it’s actually religious. The fountain represents living water, the tree represents the tree of life. Go into modern church buildings, especially the huge ones, and you won’t find a cross, but you’ll find a fountain, you’ll find a tree. They are buying into this same religious imagery.

But not that I’ve attacked modern church architecture, I want to attack the architecture of our church. And, again, don’t get me wrong. I love this sanctuary. But it also says something about us. Like I said, it’s the upside down ark motif. When this church was built, the common understanding of what church was was that we were a place of safety. The world around us was falling apart, turning away from God. But the true believers could find a safe home. They could come in to the ark and be protected from all the craziness outside. They could find safety here. This feels pretty good, doesn’t it? It is nice to have a place where we’re protected, where we’re safe from the sins of the world around us. But there are dangers here as well. When we see the church as a place to protect us from the world, we no longer see ourselves as having a place in that world. We no longer connect with the people outside the ark, and we become irrelevant to them. Today, as we look again at Balaam, we’re going to see that we need to move outside the ark to reach the world with God’s love once again.

Let us open in prayer.

I. Context

Last week we started to look at one of those weirdoes of the Bible, one of those kooky characters that we often skip over because his story is so weird.

Did you know that Balaam is actually mentioned outside the Bible? There are actually writings from the 8th century BC that come from east of the Jordan River that contain prophecies that Balaam made.

If you read Numbers 22-24 just by themselves you might end up with a somewhat positive reading of Balaam. He obviously knows the One True God. He seems to be a prophet or a seer who is clearly in communication with God. It is interesting that when Balak comes to him and asks him to curse the people of Israel, he never tells him who they are. Rather it’s “a people wandering out of Egypt”, almost as if he’s trying to trick Balaam into cursing a people who should really be on his side. Yes, the whole event with the donkey that we talked about last week puts Balaam in a somewhat bad light, but overall, this story tells of a prophet of God who proclaims God’s blessing over the people of Israel.

But when you read the story in the context of the rest of the Bible, you see a slightly different story emerge. Later in Numbers 31 we are told that Balaam was giving advice to the Midianites on how to lure the Israelites away from God. In Deuteronomy 23 we are told that the sacrifices that Balaam had put up were there to try to curse Israel… that Balaam had every intent to curse Israel, but God wouldn’t allow him to. And in the New Testament as well we see Balaam mentioned and reviled as someone who let his greed get the best of him, who put financial gain above following God.

And so it’s important to see the story of Balaam in context of the rest of the Bible. It’s important to see that Balaam is not a saint, and perhaps can be put alongside Jonah as an unwilling prophet. Or even worse, can be described as a pagan diviner or seer who God chose to use.

II. Curses

Despite all this, I want us to put ourselves in Balaam’s shoes for a minute. Let’s get past the question of whether he was an unwilling prophet or a pagan diviner. Rather, let us see him as someone who wanted to curse a group of people who God instead wanted to bless. Think about that for a moment. Think of the people we might want to curse.

As someone once said, “Vengeance is mine, sayith the Lord, but I just want to be about the Lord’s business.” We often find ourselves wanting to be about vengeance. We often find ourselves wanting to watch people or society fail. And maybe, even have a part in that. When we look at the world around us, the “non-Christian” world that is turned so obviously away from God, we might find ourselves wanting to speak prophetically against them. Our kids go off to college and they come back liberal. Hollywood presents a view of life on our TVs each night that makes it seem like the most important thing in the world is to make yourself feel good, which is just not a Christian virtue any way you try to make it one. When we see this, we may find ourselves wanting to be that prophetic voice as a church telling them that they are wrong and evil and going to hell.

It may be easy to see all the problems in our culture, all the things pulling people away from God, and get all prophetic and declare that this world is going to end badly. But being prophetic isn’t always about complaining and cursing. What Balaam needed to learn was that being prophetic can also be about blessing. Balaam went out and began to proclaim a curse upon the people of Israel. People who had turned from God again and again and probably deserved it. But what came out of his mouth wasn’t a curse but a blessing. And he tried again and again he blessed. We are told that the first two times he was actually trying to curse the people. He was using divination and magic and doing all he could to give Balak exactly what he wanted. But to no avail. Out of his mouth came blessings. By the third time, by the time we get to the scripture we read this morning Balaam is no longer trying to curse. He gives in to God’s message and he becomes it.

You see, when we set ourselves as Christians against a society that we live in, when we live our lives trying to curse the society around us, we aren’t able to share God’s love with them. When we do this we aren’t able to have a redemptive presence among them. And yet that has often been the relationship between the church and society.

Last month I encouraged you to make friends who aren’t Christians. To spend time getting to know them, finding out what is important to them, learning to love them. You may not approve of everything they do. You may find yourself very uncomfortable with some of the choices they make, some of the sins they commit so very openly. But don’t automatically speak curses upon them because of their sins. Don’t be another judgmental Christian who comes across as holier than thou. Instead, find a way to be a blessing to them. Find a way to share with them God’s great love for them.

So often we picture God as trying to keep as many people out of heaven as possible. He’s up there, just looking for an excuse to exclude people from heaven. We may feel this way. Those who haven’t accepted Jesus, but who believe in God probably do feel this way. If that were the case, God wouldn’t have sent his son to die on the cross for us. If that were the case, Jesus wouldn’t make any sense at all. Let me be clear. I’m not talking about easy grace here. I’m not talking about everyone getting to heaven no matter what they believe. What I am talking about is the idea that God loves this world he created. God wants what is best for the world. And he wants to be able to bless the world and share eternal life with everyone he can.

And here’s where things get a little crazy. God chose a messed up prophet/seer named Balaam to bless the people of Israel. God chose a messed up nation named Israel, that never seemed to get the concept of what it meant to be faithful to God, to bless the world. God chose a messed up Pharisee named Saul, who was persecuting Christians to be his greatest evangelist. God chose a messed up fugitive from Egypt who was living life on the lamb as a shepherd named Moses to lead the people of Israel to the Promised Land. And God has chosen to use us, a messed up group of Christians, a messed up church, to be a blessing to the world around us. Let’s be that blessing.