Romans 8:19-25 "The Earth Waits"

I. Preparing for Death

There is a show on The Learning Channel right now called “the Monastery”. In this show five people at different places in their faith, or lack of faith, agree to spend 40 days at a Benedictine monastery and you watch as the monastic life changes them. It is an interesting show, to say the least. In last week’s episode the group went out to a cabin about a mile from the monastery proper where one of the monks has lived as a hermit for the last thirty years. He spends his life praying and making rugs. The visitors asked him about what it is that he sees himself doing there. He responded by telling them that he is preparing for his death. One of the guys commented on how sad and depressing that was. Basically, he had spent the last thirty years of his life preparing to die. The hermit got a beautiful smile on his face and a distant look. He said, “You say that as if it were a bad thing. It will be a great adventure.”

This hermit, in spending thirty years in constant prayer, realized that he has something to look forward to. He is waiting in expectation for what comes next for him.

Today’s scripture tells us that the earth, the world around us, is waiting in expectation for Christ to return! The world around us longs for Jesus to come back. And I look at us as Christians, as Christ’s followers, and I realize that many of us do not share that same expectation and excitement.

The fact is that we, I, have too much going on in this world. We’re too attached to the world around us, too unwilling to let them go. I have again and again found myself saying, “Jesus, I’m ready for you to return; but not until…”

II. The Last Days

Did you know that the authors in the New Testament referred to the time that they were living as “the last days” or “the end times”? Now many Biblical scholars have said that the New Testament authors truly believed that Jesus would be returning within their own lifetime. These scholars say that since it is clear that Jesus did not return and it has been two thousand years now and Christ has not yet returned, that they were wrong to think that they were actually living in the end times. What is actually funny is that many of these same scholars will go on to say that though the writers of the New Testament were wrong in thinking that they lived in the end times, when we look at the world around us we realize that we must be living in the end times ourselves. Every generation of Christian has looked at the world around them and believed that they truly were in the last days, though those who had come before them were not.

But, you see, I believe, as many of you do, that the Bible is the Word of God and therefore when Paul or the writer of Hebrews refers to living in the last days, then they were actually living in the end times. But that means, then, that people have been living in the end times for almost 2000 years. It also means that we don’t know how much longer we will live in the end times. This means that we need to redefine our understanding of what the end times are. They cannot be a few days or years leading up to Christ’s return. They need to be something more. And that something more seems to me to be the fact that whenever the Bible talks about living in the end times it talks about having a great expectation for what is to come.

We are people of the end times. This doesn’t mean that Jesus will return tomorrow. He might, but we just don’t know. What it does mean is that we should be longing with our whole heart for him to return tomorrow.

III. Longing

When we look at the world around us; when we see famine and war and strife; when we see people turning away from God and his ways; what is our response to this world? Do we get caught up in the strife ourselves? Do we just realize that this is the way of the world and try to make do? Or do we join with creation in waiting in eager expectation for Christ to return?

Today’s scripture is about the world longing for Christ’s return. It tells us that the earth groans, that it is in the pains of childbirth as it waits for Christ. In the passage from Revelation that we read this morning we see that something great is coming. There is going to be a new heaven and a new earth and all that is broken and lost will be made new. The earth around us, like us, will have to die so that it can be reborn into a new earth that will feel no war again, no famine again, no pain or suffering again.

Do we truly feel the excitement of that longing for what is to come? Or do we allow ourselves to get so caught up in the world around us that we don’t pay much attention to the world to come?

I’ve read a few books about reaching out to today’s young. One thing that is mentioned in numerous books is that the “if you should die tomorrow” question doesn’t really work too much anymore. You see, people today aren’t very interested in what is going to happen when they get to the throne of judgment. They are much more interested in what God can do for them today, in the world. This actually makes sense. We as a world aren’t teaching our young to think about the life to come, and therefore they are much more interested in the world as it is today. And so, when we reach out to non-believers, we are encouraged to talk about how God can impact your life here on earth as well as focusing on what he will do for you after you die. But, the danger is that we could go too far in one direction. We could become so temporally focused, we could become so focused on this world today that we forget to wait in eager expectation for Christ to come again.

But let us look again at today’s scripture… “The earth waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the earth was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.”

As Romans usually is, this is dense and packed and confusing. But, as Romans usually does, it is saying something powerful. Because of sin, the world was subject to frustration. Because of sin, the world is in bondage to decay. But the world can look forward to liberation from this. The world can look forward to the glorious freedom of the children of God.

The world, the earth, and we who are in it, are living in the end times, the last days. What this means is that we are living in a place of already but not yet there. We are already the children of God. We are already saved, adopted into the family of Christ. We are already God’s followers, the body of Christ. But we are not yet complete, we look forward with hope to the completion of this in our lives.

We are called to look with eager expectation for Christ’s return. But we are also called to reveal ourselves as God’s children before this world and bring about God’s kingdom on this world. It will truly never happen until Christ returns, but as Christ’s body we are called to work towards it happening.

This means that as we look at the trouble in the world around us we can feel sorrow at what we see. It means that we can long with our whole heart for Christ to come again and bring an end to war, famine, hunger, sickness, evil. But it also means that we are called, as Christ’s body to work in this world today to lessen each of these things. We are called to be peacemakers. We are called as Christ’s body to bring an end to war. We are called to feed the hungry and the stranger. We are called to bring an end to hunger and famine. We are called to care for widows and the sick and those in prison.

We live in the end times. This means that we are already and not yet there. We long for Jesus to bring his peace to this world as we work in this world to bring about Christ’s peace. We know that we cannot truly put an end to the problems of this world, but we also know that God can and will work through us to bring healing to this world. The earth waits for the sons of God to be revealed. It is waiting for the end, where Christ returns and brings an end to the suffering it has faced. But it also waits for us, God’s children, to bring God’s love and peace to it.

So let us live with the same eager expectation that the earth has. And let us work in this world to be Christ’s body and bring Christ to those who need him. Amen.

Deuteronomy 6:4-9 "Mezuzah"

Today’s scripture tells us to take the commands of God and bind them to our doorposts. Jews throughout history have taken that command very seriously. I want to read to you from a book about how they do so:

A mezzuzah [sic] (Hebrew for ‘doorpost’) is a cylinder of metal or wood put aslant on the right-hand doorpost of the house. Inside is a rolled fragment of parchment on which is a summary of the Deuteronomy command: ‘Remember God and love him with your all.’

Anyone going in our out is obliged to remember it and may stretch out their hand toward it, and kiss the hand. In such a house the whole course of life ought to be subject to the authority of God’s word.

A tale is told of a Gentile buying a house from a Jew, and noticing the mezzuzah, asking its significance. ‘This is a mezzuzah,’ the Jew explained. ‘Inside the case you see is a scroll on which are written the most sacred and holy words of the Jewish law.’

When the transaction was completed, the purchaser of the house was interested to see if the mezzuzah would be taken with the outgoing family. But no, the mezzuzah stayed, and every day he saw it on his way in or out, until finally his curiosity would hold no longer. With a small screwdriver he removed the case, opened the tiny parchment with trembling fingers, and read:

‘HELP! I am being held prisoner in a mezzuzah factory.’

(From Celtic Daily Prayer by the Northumbria Community, pg 542-543)

It seems that the mezuzah is a great way of following the letter of the law without getting to the point of the law. Hopefully people living in a house with one do pay attention to the words inside it. Hopefully they do allow themselves to recite the beginning of the great commandment every time they touch the mezuzah, but my fear is that they might just allow themselves to go through the motions. I mean, what is the point of having the words written on your doorframe if you never look at them.

But I’m not attacking the Jews or the custom of the mezuzah here. I think it’s a beautiful thing. And how many of us do the same thing. We have a Bible or maybe even multiple Bibles throughout our house, but we never open them up and read from them, learn from them, allow them to change us.

Let us open in prayer

I. Inspired for What?

We are taught that the Bible is the Inspired Word of God. It says so in 2^nd Timothy 3:16. “All Scripture is God-breathed (or inspired) and useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness.” In seminary, as we began to study the language that the Bible was written in, Greek, we discovered something interesting and quite a powerfully different way to read this scripture. It’s all about the word “and”.

You see, we usually read it as “All Scripture is God-breathed; period. And all Scripture is useful for teaching, rebuking… etc.” When we read it this way we assume that the word and is separating two separate thoughts about scripture. But there is a much more interesting and more accurate way to read it. The word “and” could be separating the words “God-breathed” and “useful” All of a sudden this scripture takes on a deeper meaning. All of a sudden it is saying, “All Scripture is inspired by God for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness and all Scripture is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness.”

What is the difference? Well the first reading allows us to set the Bible down in our houses and keep it closed and feel that we are honoring it just by having it on display somewhere. The second reading forces us to open up the Bible and spend time in it and allow it to do in us what it is inspired and God-breathed to do.

Saying that the Bible is inspired is letting ourselves off the hook. Saying it is inspired allows us to argue with people in the culture war about the importance of the Bible without allowing the Bible to impact our own lives. But when we say that it’s inspired to do something, we then force ourselves to open the Bible and spend time with it and allow it to change us to our very being. This is what Hebrews talks about when it tell us about the power of the Word of God. And this is why Deuteronomy 6 tells us to take God’s commands so very seriously.

II. What do we do?

“These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.”

I find this passage in Deuteronomy to be powerful and yet interesting. You see, there is something left out of this list of the things we are supposed to do with the commandments. It never tells us to obey them. Now, there are other places in Deuteronomy where it is made clear that we are called to obey the commandments, but that is not the focus of this group of verses. God wants us to obey his word, but, truthfully, that is just not enough for him. Now you could say that maybe God is asking for a bit too much, I mean, obedience is hard enough, now he expects us to spend time talking about his word in our homes and on our journeys. I mean, who is this God? What, does he expect our lives to revolve around him or something? Well, yes, he does. Just a little further down in Deuteronomy 6, in verse 15 we are told that God is a jealous God. I must say that that is not the normal thing that I think of when I think of God.

The words that come to mind when I am thinking about God usually are: loving, just, good, Father, righteous, holy, Almighty, all-knowing. But jealous? I’ve got to say that that is an interesting one. And it doesn’t only appear here. Last Sunday, when we read from Joshua 24, the same thing was said about God. He’s a jealous God. He expects us, his people, to be faithful to him.

Well then, it’s a good thing that we’re a New Testament church. Since Jesus came, God gave up his jealousy, right? Jesus came to forgive our sins so we no longer need to worry about being faithful, right?

Well, not exactly. It is true that the word “jealous” doesn’t come up in describing God in the New Testament, at the same time it is made clear that God has a certain expectation for his people. We are called to stay true to him and be faithful to him and put him first.

And so we are told that we are to spend time with God’s word and with God’s commandments and we are to work to get to know God as best we can.

But today’s scripture isn’t about obeying the commandments. It’s about sharing them with your children and teaching them and using them to teach, rebuke, correct and train in righteousness; just like it says in 2 Timothy. We are to raise up our children with scripture. We are to find opportunities to discuss what it says around the table at home and when we are journeying. When we lie down to go to bed, we are supposed to discuss the scriptures and also when we awake. The scripture isn’t telling us to think about the scripture when we lie down. It’s telling us to talk about them.

Our scriptures are not me-and-God. They’re not private. They’re to be shared with those around us. Private time with God is important, but it cannot be the only part of your faith. Worship is good too, but the sermon format is very one-sided. I stand up here and preach, and lecture. There is not much time for discussion. Yet it is often discussion over scripture that truly brings out depth. When people see scriptures from each other’s perspectives they are able to see something new and wonderful.

III. Physical Faith

And then today’s scripture makes this importance of the scriptures something physical. “Bind these commandments as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.”

You see, physically acting out something gives it more weight and makes it more real to many of us. My sister once went skydiving; something I’m not sure I’d be terribly comfortable doing. She tried to describe to me what it was like. The description was lost in the translation. It didn’t make much sense to me. Then she showed me a video that was taken of her and her friend as they jumped out of the airplane and fell, screaming, towards the earth. I got a much better idea from watching her skydive than she could tell me. But, to truly understand what it is like to skydive, I’d really have to get in an airplane myself and then jump out of it. Thankfully, there are some things in life that I don’t feel that I need to truly understand, and skydiving is one of them.

If someone tells you that scripture is important to them, that’s one thing. Okay, you have to take their word for it. But you might not really understand what it’s about. Now, if you visit that person’s house and run across a mezuzah in their doorway or see a dusty Bible on their bookshelf, you will take them more seriously because they are physically showing their commitment to the commandments. But if they then begin to share with you about the scripture that is so very important to them, if they begin to engage you in discussion about what it means to be a follower of Christ, if they are living out the faith in their own lives, then this is how you will truly come to understand what it means to take the scriptures seriously.

So, how seriously do you take God’s scriptures? The fact that you are here today tells me that you’ve already come through that first group. You’re someone who claims to take scripture seriously. That’s a good start. I would imagine that most all of you have a Bible at home somewhere. How often do you open it to read its words? That’s the next step. But let us follow today’s scripture even more by finding time to spend discussing scriptures with each other. Let us focus on sharing God’s truth with our children and our families and our friends. I’m not talking about being obnoxious with God’s truth. I’m talking about discussions with people. I’m talking about asking questions of those around you about what they think a scripture is trying to say. I’m not talking about preaching, I’m talking about having conversations about God. It can make for some of the most interesting conversations you could imagine. And you will discover that not only will you learn things but God will use you to teach others things as well.

So, let us take God’s inspired word seriously. Let us realize that when we are told that it is inspired, that doesn’t mean that it’s holy and needs to be put in a place of honor somewhere in our house. Instead let us ask what it is that scripture is inspired to do and let us be about the business of doing that very thing. Amen.

Joshua 24:14-18 "Joy in the Service of God"

I. A Choice is Given

Today’s scripture is one of those places in the Bible where things are laid out so very clearly that it is hard to miss the point that is being made. But let me set the scene for you anyway.

The people of Israel had spent generations as slaves in Egypt. God sent Moses to them and they were delivered from that life of slavery. They wandered for forty years in the wilderness as the generation of slaves in Egypt died away and their children grew. Then God brought them into the Promised Land. After having wandered their whole lives, they were now entering a land that was to be their own. People who should have defeated them in battle inhabited it, but God was with them and again and again, they were victorious in ways that proved to them that it was God delivering this land to them. And now, they were ready to go and settle this land, and Joshua, Moses’ successor and their leader, gathered them together and gave them a choice.

He starts out by telling them to “Fear the Lord and serve him with all faithfulness… But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served beyond the river, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living.” And then comes Joshua’s great pledge of faith and faithfulness, “But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”

The people are given a choice by Joshua and by God. Are you going to serve the God who has been so faithful to you or are you going to get caught up in your surroundings and follow other paths. The people, resplendent in the glory of their victories, pledged to serve God. They were at that high point where God was so very real to them and they knew for a fact that they could practically see him. So they pledged to serve him completely.

But the story goes on past what we read this morning. Joshua doesn’t believe the people. He knows how fickle they can be. He continues on, “You are not able to serve the Lord. He is a holy God; he is a jealous God. He will not forgive your rebellion and your sins. If you forsake the Lord and serve foreign gods, he will turn and bring disaster on you and make an end of you, after he has been good to you.”

The people respond even more vehemently, “No! We will serve the Lord.”

Joshua responds to this by basically saying, “God’s going to hold you to this. You claim a lot in this time of joy, but God is going to remember your promises in times where it is harder to follow him.”

II. Easy Faith / Hard Times

You see, there are times in all of our lives where it is easy to have faith. There are times that we all have where God is so very clear to us and so very real. I went through a time like this in high school. I was a part of a prayer group where powerful things were happening. I was at a place, spiritually, where I felt that I could actually feel God’s Spirit within me. I thought that faith was easy because it wasn’t faith. I believed in God because I felt him. I knew he was there and therefore it didn’t take any faith at all to believe in him. It was during this time that I truly decided in my own life to serve God. I had been a Christian long before this, but it was during this time that I truly felt the call to ministry and decided to accept the call.

But this certainty of God did not remain. In college I began to question my understanding of God. I never really questioned him, but I didn’t any longer trust my ability to sense his call. There were a couple things that led to this, some of them academic and intellectual, some of them personal and relational. Academically, I began to read Biblical study that I didn’t necessarily agree with. And I discovered that some of it was as reasoned and logical and spiritually sound as what I believed. Oh, there are people out there who are attempting to tear down the Bible and its message, and they are easy to dismiss when you see where they are coming from, but there are people who are equally passionate about following God’s will in their lives and yet they see that following God in a completely different light than I do. And their reading of scripture is just as legitimate as mine.

And relationally I watched myself attribute my own feelings and emotions to God and claim that God wanted something that in truth I wanted. I found myself using God as an excuse to do what I wanted. And I realized that as I did this I did not realize that I was doing this. I realized that I could no longer trust myself to sense God, my own emotions got in the way too much… but I still longed to serve him.

And so faith became something new to me. It became something different. It became surety of what we hope for and certainty of what I could not see. I could no longer see God’s call on my life, I hoped it was still there, but I wasn’t sure. There is a concept that has entered Christian theology. It comes from a 16^th century priest. The concept is that of “the dark night of the soul”. It is that time in your spiritual life, that time in your walk of faith where it seems that God is not with you. It is that time of wilderness where God seems to have abandoned you. Often, in Evangelical circles, we are told that this time is not supposed to be a part of the spiritual walk, but in truth, when we look at God’s followers in the Bible they each go through it. There are times in our lives that God seems distant, unknowable, unreal. These are the times where faith is really needed. These are the times where we truly need to decide whether we are going to stay faithful to the promise we made to follow God.

And as I felt this dark night of the soul in my own life, Joshua’s choice was put before me once more. Do I serve God or do I serve the distractions that this world puts around me?

III. Joy in Service

Joshua calls for us to serve God even when it is not easy. He encourages us to be faithful to a God that will not always seem to be faithful to us. He tells us to trust God even when God doesn’t seem trustworthy, or at least, when we don’t seem capable in trust.

But there is something more to Joshua’s choice as well. He isn’t just calling for us to have faith. He isn’t just asking us to believe in God. He is looking for service in our lives.

How do you answer Joshua’s choice? Are you ready to serve God? You see, we don’t necessarily see it here in Joshua, but there is good news as well. There is joy when you commit to serve God. There is peace when you find yourself serving God in whatever way you can.

I don’t know why, but we so often don’t allow this joy of service into our lives. I think it might be because of fears we have. During my time of questions and unknowing, I didn’t mistrust God. I mistrusted myself and other Christians. I didn’t think we were capable of truly knowing God and his will. I doubted myself and this kept me from truly finding the joy that is serving God. But there are other doubts we have when it comes to serving God.

A song by a Celtic Christian group, Eden’s Bridge, poetically asks these questions: What if I am too small? What if I am too weak? What if I should lose my way? What if I cannot serve? What if I cannot give? If I fail who will be there for me?

We not only question ourselves, we question God. We don’t necessarily trust that he is great enough to make up for our weaknesses. But God is and he will.

Perhaps we choose not to serve God not out of fear but out of busyness or because we already have too many other commitments. And so I put before you the same question Joshua put forward: Who are you going to serve: the God above or the gods of this world? Saying that you are too busy to serve God is putting a god of this world before the Lord. Saying that you are too weak or small to serve God is saying that you don’t trust God to be with you. But when you show God trust and when you put him first, you will discover a wonderful gift from God. You will find a joy in the service. You will find that God is strong enough to make up for your inadequacies. And you will find yourself used in ways that you never thought possible.

Today is All Saints Sunday. It is the day that we especially remember the saints who have gone before us. I think they can be the best example of people who found joy in the service of God. They faced hard lives and worked through difficult times and yet they chose to follow God and serve him. And it is so much their examples to us that have grounded our faith so well. And they found a joy in their lives as they turned them over to God and lived out lives of service. We can only hope that we might be the same kind of examples to those who come after us.

There is joy in the service of God. If we take Joshua up on his choice and choose wisely; we will find a joy that we did not know existed. I encourage you to discover that joy for yourself by finding ways in which you can serve God in your own life: be it at church, at your job, in your family. Open yourself to the possibility of service of God and watch as he makes opportunities available to you. Amen.