Ark, What Ark?

Jeremiah 3:14-18

This week the sermon may seem a bit disjointed. You may listen and think that I am chasing rabbits all over the place; but, actually I am not. As I read this text and reflected on it the themes seemed to jump around as well, but yet still they are all tied together. That being said let me lay a map out for you to follow on this journey through the text. First we will discuss the History of the Hebrew people that led them to this point. Then we will look at the thought of “return”, third we will consider the metaphor of “shepherd”, fourth the “Ark”, and finally “Jerusalem”. In the end I hope to tie these disjointed thoughts together and at the same time apply them to our lives.

Let us begin by looking at the text:…

HISTORY
If you remember back to our study of Genesis last fall you may remember how Abraham and Sarah were the parents of Isaac, and the grandparents of Jacob. Now Jacob wrestled with God at the River Jabok in Gen. 32:22 and his name is changed to Israel, the one who strives with God. Jacob had 12 sons whose families eventually formed 12 tribes – the 12 Tribes of Israel.
Over time they became enslaved in Egypt but through the leadership of Moses and the direction of the God of their Ancestors, YaHWeH, they were once again freed and they gradually returned to the Promise Land, the land of their ancestors of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel. In Joshua 15 – 19 we see the division of the land to the 12 tribes and some of the half-tribes. Over the years they were led by various Judges and military leaders, both men and women, but eventually they wanted a King. In fact Judges 21:25 tells us that “In those days there was no king in Israel; all the people did what was right in their own eyes.” Samuel tells us about the rise of the Kingship of Saul, then David, and finally Solomon. Under David the kingdom united. They experienced great wealth and military victories. It was a great time for the Israelite people. It is the time of David that the people would look back to as their “Golden Age” and wish to return to. It is to the stories of David that future generations would look to as they awaited the Messiah.
After David and Solomon the Kingdom began to divide and eventually the Northern 10 tribes, now called Israel, seceded from the Southern 2 tribes, called Judah, where the capital city of Jerusalem was. Gradually the North first and later the South began to fall away from God and worship other gods. As they look at their own history they blame themselves for their destruction as they feel that God removed the protective blessing from them and they fell to the enemies around them, namely here the Babylonian Empire. The North fell first but Judah held on until 587 B.C. when it fell, Jerusalem was sacked, and the Temple was destroyed.

Jeremiah now writes to these exiled Hebrew people to give them a message from God, a message to challenge them and to give them hope.

RETURN
Jeremiah’s message is a command, an invitation, and a plea to return to God. To turn from the worship of themselves, to return from the worship of their false gods, to return to the life of promise that God had offered the generations before them.
In a sense it was also a call to return to the land they had been promised. Many of the leaders of the country had been removed from the land and exiled to Babylon. The Babylonians had a theory that to defeat a nation or kingdom you should remove the best and brightest, imprison them for a while but then incorporate them into the life of your society. As a result, the people are scattered, their customs forgotten, and their gods replaced with the worship of Babylonian gods.
But the Israelites were different. It seems that in exile they were drawn closer to God. Jeremiah and Hosea continued to bring messages to them, both in the exiled region of Babylon and in the homeland. They knew that they needed someone to lead them, to guide them, to shepherd them back to God.

SHEPHERD
Let’s think about the metaphor of a shepherd. What is a shepherd? One who leads the sheep. And what are sheep? The dumbest animals on the face of the earth! You can train a dog. You can teach a cat, somewhat. A horse and a cow can be left alone and they will go to the ponds for water and the pastures for grazing. If a cat or dog gets dirty they will clean themselves, but what about a sheep? If a sheep gets dirty it will stay dirty until the shepherd cleans it. If a sheep is thirsty it will wait for the shepherd to guide it to the waters. The sheep are helpless, they have absolutely no defense.
The Hebrew people compared themselves to sheep in need of a shepherd. They knew that they were helpless without God and a guide, a leader to shepherd them. And they needed to remember that God was with them.

ARK
That is the significance of the Ark of the Covenant. Many of us remember the movie “Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark” so we have an idea about what the Ark was. It was a box overlaid with Gold which contained the commandments from God. It was placed in the Holy of Holies and was a designated place where God would meet with the people. It was a visible representation of the presence of God with the people of Israel. But here we see that the Ark will not be remembered by the people. It will be a thing of the past. They will no longer need the Ark to know that God is with them, rather the presence of God will be with them and they will know it.
They will no longer need something to remind them that God is with them for Jehovah will be their God. A God who will meet with them, not on the lid of a beautiful box, but rather in the city of Jerusalem.

JERUSALEM
Ahhh, Jerusalem, the beautiful city of God. It is a place where Israel and Judah once gathered together in Worship of the Lord. And, it is a place where all the world would one day gather together in worship of the Lord.

CONCLUSION
So, now that we understand the passage from the standpoint of the people to whom it was written, what can we gather from this passage? What is the message for us today?

Are we so different from the children of Israel? Have we not forsaken God and followed our own gods? Not the gods of Baal, or other named gods, but instead we have followed the gods of money, the gods of sensuality, the gods of self and power. After September 11, 2001 a prominent African American pastor made the comment that “America’s Chickens had come Home to Roost” meaning, I assume, that the attack on our country was the result of our foreign policy in the Middle East and our domestic treatment of minorities. Though I may not agree with what Rev. Wright meant by that phrase, today I think that “our chickens have come home to roost.” As we have placed our faith and our trust in the all mighty dollar we have finally found that the dollar can not be our shepherd. The pursuit of wealth at all costs can not be sustained and as a nation, and for some of us as individuals, our chickens have come home to roost. Now, even those who stayed true to God have felt the pain of those who worshiped the god of money.

I can hear God now, calling us to return to our foundation.
I can hear God calling us to the promised life that was offered to us so long ago.
I can hear God calling us to forget about the Golden Years that we think we remember and return to the God who will bless us regardless of the years.
I can hear God calling us to forsake the worship of wealth and to use our financial abilities to glorify God and to grow the Kingdom of God here on the earth.
I can here God calling us to Jerusalem. That place that, 2000 years ago became the place where Judah and Israel came together. That place where all nations return to worship the Lord…

God is calling us back to the Cross. You are invited on a journey to this Cross. This week we will begin our Lenten Journey to the Cross with Ash Wednesday. We will spend Six weeks reflecting upon our lives and our devotion to our Lord. In the end, we will find ourselves at the foot of a cross on a hill outside Jerusalem where we return to find our salvation in the One that unites all under one banner, the cross of Christ.

What Good is a Promise

Galatians 3:15-18

Sometimes we have lights go off in our mind. We suddenly make a connection, often in the study of History, which ties our lives to the lives of the past. I made that connection this week.

Here is how it worked… Galatia of the Bible is in Asia Minor, near the modern day region of Turkey. It like all the other lands of the Bible seem so distant from us and from our European past. It is almost as though we speak of a different world when we speak of “Bible Times.” At times we may as well be speaking of Atlantis.

BUT… Did you know that many of you were quite likely related to the very people to which Paul addressed this letter? Let me ask you this? Do any of you recognize or celebrate your Celtic heritage? What about your Pictish or Gaelic heritage? Let’s move through the centuries and think about some other names for these regions such as Scottish, Irish, Welch, Italian, French, German.

By 400 years before Christ much of Europe was settled and controlled by the Celtic peoples. One Celtic group you may recognize were the Gaul’s of modern day France. The Gaul’s settled much of France, Italy, and over into Thrace, Cappadocia, and other regions west of Mesopotamia through the 3^rd Century BC. The region in Asia Minor where they ultimately settled came to be known as Galatia. They flourished and over the years a governmental system was developed, business was good, the land was fertile, and they became a great people in the region. However by the end of the 2^nd Century the Roman Empire had overtaken them and by the time of Christ they were simply another province of Rome.

Today we read the letter that Paul wrote to the people of the northern region of Galatia, the ethnic Gaul’s. It was our European ancestors who received the Gospel of Jesus as preached by Paul on his missionary journey through Asia Minor with Barnabas.

Originally these people worshiped a group of gods, not unlike the Roman and Greek Pantheon. They were so devout that when Paul and Barnabas came to them and healed a man that had been crippled from birth; they thought they were Zeus and Hermes. Acts 14 tells of this story and we know that as a result of this and other incidents there were Gentile churches planted in and around this region. These pagans, these Gaul’s, these Celt’s heard the Good News and were converted.

They had given up their religion for the Gospel Paul preached but then, as is often the case, someone came along behind Paul preaching a different Gospel. These that came along after Paul introduced to them the Jewish customs, history, and law and told them that they could only be followers of Jesus if they believed in Christ and followed the Jewish Law. That is why Paul wrote to our ancestors, to teach them that the law does not offer salvation, but rather condemnation.

So, let’s talk about the law. Can the law be kept? Have you kept all the law? I think not. Do you know anyone who had kept the law? If you think so, read through Deuteronomy and Leviticus again and see if you followed all that is in it. The point is that it is impossible to follow all the laws that are recorded. Think about our own times…

Have you ever sped in a car?

Have you ever misunderstood a law or not known about a rule and broken it, on accident?

It has happened to all of us, physically and spiritually. Roman’s 3:23 tells us that “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”

We have all failed. End of discussion. Or is it?

To hear some tell of the story of Salvation, God created we humans, we messed up in the Garden, God gave us the law and we broke it, so God had to do something else to help us out since we couldn’t kept the law. I think I may have even put it pretty close to that before myself.

But would it surprise you if I said that salvation in God was never associated with the law? Look back at our passage… it keeps talking about a promise and an inheritance if Abraham. Let’s look at those promises:

Gen. 12:3 “…in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

Gen. 15:6 “and he believed the Lord; and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness.”

Because of his faith, Abraham was promised to be a great nation and that the salvation of the earth was to come from among his seeds, his offspring, his descendents; not from all of his descendents but from one seed, one offspring, one descendent, that is Christ.

The promise of salvation came long before the law. Abraham’s righteousness had nothing to do with the law, it had to do with his faith. You see, the promise of God both preceded and superseded the law.

We heard the passage from Romans 3:23 and I know I have quoted it so many times when talking about salvation, but I don’t know that I have ever sat down and read the whole passage. Even though we know better, we still seem to focus on the law, on our failures. But let’s look back to that passage and the verses that surround it, Romans 3:21-26.

You see, once again, it is not the law that saves us, it is faith, or as we read it in Ephesians as well as here in Romans, it is grace through faith in Jesus Christ that we find that we are made right before God.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not saying that we should throw the law out, be they the OT laws, the NT laws, or the laws of our society. The laws are there to help us. They are there to guide us. They are a gift to help us be better people as we relate to God and to one another.

BUT… our salvation is not found in these laws, it is found in the promise that was first given to Abraham. It is found in the faith that we have in God, through Jesus Christ, that because of it we are reckoned as Righteous.

What good is a promise?

What good is the promise that Paul reminded our ancestors about some 2000 years ago?

What good is the promise that we are reminded of today?

The Good is that the promise is as available to you today as it was to your ancestors in Galatia 2000 years ago, and to your ancestors in Europe 1000 years ago, and to your ancestors here in the New World some 500 years ago.

It is the same promise that has been passed down from Abraham to Isaac, to Jacob and on through the years.

It is a promise that if you believe in God and place your faith in Jesus Christ, you will be saved.

And that’s when the real journey begins.

Salvation is not a destination, it is journey.

Will you join us on that journey today?

Am I Worthy?

Luke 3:1-20

Who would you name as a “Perfect Christian?

Conservative Political/Religious Leader

One who actively fights against moral wrongs

Maybe it is a Liberal Leader

One who stands against injustice for the poor

A preacher you see on TV

Joel Osteen who, even though you are

worshipping with 16000 of your closest

friends it feels as though he is talking strait

to you, and he make you feel so good.

Evangelist like Billy Graham

Crusades introduces tens if not hundreds

of thousands to the Lord.

Or a Saint like Mother Theresa

Spent her life in the orphanages and leper

colonies of Calcutta. A woman who, in a

1993 Presidential prayer breakfast had to be

helped to the podium where she stepped up on

a block and still had trouble seeing over the

lectern. Yet, when she began to speak in the

seemingly frail broken English she began to

speak to and convict then President Clinton of

the evils that were taking place within our

country. And she did it with love and grace.

They were all great but none could hold a candle to the one we call John the Baptist. He has been called “The last and greatest of the Prophets of the Old Testament.”

A Nasserite from birth.

Most would only take the vow to be a Nasserite for a short time. It was too difficult to keep. In addition to other vows that a priest would take they also had to abstain from not only alcohol but from any thing that came from the fruit of a grape. They were not allowed to even go close to a dead body. They couldn’t cut their hair while under the vow. Most could only do it for short bursts of time, but John was a Nasserite from birth.

And here comes John from the wilderness, “preparing the way of the Lord”

Prepare for Obama in Wortham

Likewise prepare the way for the kings of ancient middle east

He may have been smoothing the way for the Messiah to follow him but he sure didn’t do it with soft words.

Brood of Vipers – wilderness fire driving out the vipers – they were fleeing from the wrath to come.

He told them not to rely on their ancestry of Abraham to save them. It seems God is grateful for all that is done in his name by our ancestors but still God is asking, what are you doing? If your life isn’t baring fruit than you will be cut off, sifted out and burned up. – Image of the Threshing floor.

I fear that many times we act like these Jews of old, thinking that our allegiance to our great country, or to the Methodist Church, or to Christianity as a religion, or to this church or that church is where our salvation lies. As long as I belong here and am a part of that there then I am saved.

But let me tell you just as John said and just as Jesus taught, Unless you have a relationship with God, through Jesus Christ then all your allegiances and alliances will have no bearing on your outcome. And if you are not bearing fruit, then, well, God help you.

John’s message wasn’t only fire and brimstone “repent and Believe” – It was also a message of justice and righteousness

Help those in need, treat others honestly and fairly

It is not too crazy to think of J.B. as the perfect follower of God with all he said and did. After all even the people around him though he might be the One. The Messiah. But John distances himself from the Christ by saying that he isn’t even worthy to be the lowest slave to the Messiah. It was common for the lowest slave or servant of the house to be responsible for removing the masters shoes and cleaning his feet.

Ironic – John not worthy to untie the thong of Jesus’ sandals yet just three years later Jesus would remove his own robe and tunic, wrap a towel around his waist and perform the very act that John felt unworthy to even perform. Jesus, the Messiah, God in human form, would humble himself to the lowest point of humanity. Isn’t that ironic….

Well, anyway, John, As great as he was, is far from Christ like. And if John isn’t good enough then who can be? The answer is no one. Am I worthy? Of course not.

So, What?

3 points to take from John the Baptist today.

1. God is looking for repentance – More than just a change of direction. Also a change of belief and a change of action

2. The world is looking for bold leadership, not passive guidance.

Bishop Lowery – “We have gotten too nice”

We don’t want to offend anyone

We are afraid to boldly proclaim the truth to a world that is dying and going to hell.

3. If J.B. isn’t even worth to be a slave for Jesus, how in the world can we, with all our sinful ways ever expect to come to Christ?

-We don’t have to, Christ came to us all we have to

do is accept his invitation to God

-Thank God – it isn’t our righteousness that saves us.

Eph. 2:8-9 – For you have been saved by grace, through faith, and this is not of your own doing; it is a gift of God – not the result of works so that no one may boast.

IT is our acceptance of God’s free gift of grace that saves us.

All my life I was taught I was saved from….?

But instead I have discovered that we are saved to…?

Saved to produce fruit

Saved to show grace

Saved to build the Kingdom of God

Saved to be yeast in the dough

Saved to be a light in the darkness

We may not be worthy, good night, even J.B. wasn’t worthy, but Jesus met John in the wilderness, just Like Jesus has met you in the wilderness of your life

and because of that meeting with God, we have been given a second chance – or for some of us it’s a third chance or fourth chance, or fifth chance…

Maybe that next chance is being offered to you right now and you need to accept that opportunity to live for God, to turn from your old ways and live a new life in relationship with God.

Maybe you know that you have been living with God and it’s time to start living for God – living a life that bears fruit.

Maybe you recognize that God has called you to be a leader, a bold leader, and it’s time to speak up about injustice, maybe it’s time to speak up about your relationship with God