What God must think when he thinks of you
You--who seem shocked to hear your name called
In such an intimate way
By such an intimate one.
Did you know when you took that unnecessary time yesterday
While checking email, reading feeds, and chatting online
That the extra time was the difference
Between helping a stalled-out motorist or not?
What did you think God's will was?
To promote yourself
Or to be open to God
To help those in need
To reveal God through you?
As for the stalled-out motorist:
He received help from an agnostic
Before you could arrive to follow God's will for you.
(Not that you would have stopped anyway
Even if you had been in the right place at the right time.)
You went to work, lived a safe life, kept to yourself
While the motorist learned from his guardian angel
That everything is chance--
A lucky meeting brought him help
In his time of need.
Too often we focus on the greatest commands in terms of the greatest doctrines--those things that set us apart from others. But when Jesus was asked what the greatest commandment was, he answered relationally. The greatest commandment is to love God and love others.
How would your life be different if you started listening to and following Jesus?
[Download a copy of the sermon notes for Sunday at the bottom of this post.]
Jephthah had it all. He had it all but gave it all away because he couldn't back down from a fight.
Jephthah's mother was a prostitute and his brothers forced him into exile because they refused to share their inheritance with him. But from that beginning Jephthah built himself up and gained a reputation as a mighty warrior, so much so that the tribal elders called on him when they needed deliverance from the Ammonites.
Jephthah agreed to lead them and even received empowerment from God's Spirit to enable him to be victorious. But he didn't combine that with cooperation on his part. Instead, he focused on his need to be vindicated and tried to "work a deal" with God--he vowed to sacrifice the first thing he saw when he returned home if God would allow him to be victorious.
But hadn't God already provided for his victory through his own Spirit?
Of course, tragedy struck when Jephthah arrived home and his daughter was the first thing from his house to come out to meet him. So he followed through on his vow and sacrificed his daughter, rather than repenting over his rashness and calling upon God's mercy.
Instead of learning humility as a result of this, he also allowed a challenge by the trouble-making Ephraimites to get under his skin to the point where he engaged in a civil war with them. The result was not pretty--42,000 Ephraimites were killed.
Jephthah's legacy is a legacy of violence, sacrifice, and killing, all because of his pride.
Jesus reminds us that it's far easier to be prideful than it is to be humble. In Matthew 6:1-18, he points out a number of ways we can live by pride instead of trust in God. He challenges us to focus inwardly on our faith, to keep our focus on God, and to live out a simple faith.
The way of Jephthah leads to a dead end. The way of Jesus leads to life.
Sermon Notes: Judges 10-12 (Jephthah)
We often talk about "waiting on God." The Psalms (27:14) instruct us to do this, the biblical teaching about prayer concurs (Acts 1:4, 14), James (4:13-15) demonstrates how rushing ahead to make our own plans can lead to failure, and our own experience tells us that this is true.
But what does "waiting" actually mean? What does it infer or imply?
We can take one of two approaches in waiting upon God. First, we can take it absolutely literally and do nothing until we hear from God. Hearing from God can take the form of receiving a word of guidance or an answer to some question. We can sit back and put the burden on God to come through for us.
Or, second, we can cooperate with God, serving him and working towards an answer that we may only partially know but that will become clearer as we cooperate with God while waiting upon him. We can pray but continue thinking, working, and making plans all while being open to God as we wait upon him.
In Judges, there are four deliverers who receive empowerment by the Spirit of the Lord. The Spirit of the Lord serves two purposes in Judges: first, in the practical experience of the deliverer, and second, in the narrative, as a way of structuring the reaction of Israel to God.
The first deliverer to have the Spirit come upon him is Othniel (3:10-11). It results in immediate success. The last judge to have the Spirit come upon him is Samson (13-16). He does impressive things but only "begins" to deliver Israel (13:5). In between, the Spirit rests upon Gideon and Jephthah, both of whom deliver Israel but almost immediately turn back to the idolatry and violence Israel sought to be delivered from.
What caused this? It was the attitude each took towards "waiting upon God." Gideon hesitated when the Spirit came upon him; he tested God twice (6:34-40). Jephthah started well but faded quickly, making a rash vow intended to gain God's favor, which he already had because of the Spirit. Samson called upon God only for personal revenge against those who offended him. Only Othniel appears to have functioned properly with the presence of the Spirit.
If hesitation, rashness, and self-seeking slowed down or prevented the work of the Spirit, then it was the cooperation of Othniel with the Spirit that enabled the Spirit to flourish.
God desires to work in and through us. He desires to work with us. But this won't happen if we don't work with him.
Wait upon God, but understand that waiting still means working, cooperating with God to be his agent of change in this world.
In Judges 8, Gideon was tempted by his pride. He came home a great military leader and was no doubt enjoying the praise of the people. When they made him an offer to be their king, the temptation to give in to pride overcame him in the worst way: he both spoke and acted like a hypocrite.
He told the people he would not be their king because God would rule over them but he immediately worked to build himself up with kingly authority. He constructed a royal vest out of gold and hung it up for the people to worship. The bible tells us this vest became a "snare" for Gideon and his family.
It haunted him because he acted to build himself up but ended up bringing the people down.
Pride is dangerous. It causes us to think more highly of ourselves than we should and to do stupid things to build ourselves up in front of others.
We should learn from the example of Jesus, who in Matthew 4:1-11 faced the temptation to give in to pride and accomplish his goals by taking shortcuts. But Jesus showed that the way forward is through serving, not presiding over, others, and keeping your focus on God at all times.
Contrast these two examples, and follow Jesus.
Sermon: Pride and Temptation (Judges 6-8)
I know the title is a cliche. But it's so true and relevant when you stop to examine your life.
How do you live as a follower of God? On Sunday we talked about Gideon and how he worked through and overcame fear in order to serve God. He delivered Israel through a great military victory. But in the end his pride caught up to him.
Israel came to him, wanting to make him king. Gideon stood his ground and told them that God would rule over them. But then he turned around and immediately began acting like a king, issuing orders and making a "royal ephod" that he hung up as an idol for the people to worship.
He led the people astray because he didn't "walk the talk." He pretended to be a spiritual leader, even sounding the part, but didn't back his talk with action.
You know you're in trouble when your actions don't line up with your words.
Watch your life closely to make sure you are not seeking accolades and praise from people.
Watch your words closely to make sure you aren't puffing yourself up to gain followers to promote yourself instead of God.
One of the biggest challenges we can face is to think too highly of ourselves. Jesus faced this temptation from Satan in Matthew 4:1-11 and Gideon faced it from the people he served in Judges 8:22-27.
In Gideon's case, he had come a long way--from being fearful of God to serving God, back to fear and then more serving, and finally becoming a military hero who delivered Israel from their enemies.
But his success may have gotten to his head. When he was asked by the Israelites to rule over them he appeared to answer well: "I will not.... The LORD will rule over you." Then he proceeded to undo the wisdom of his statement by collecting gold items from the Israelites to make an ephod. An ephod was a type of clothing, but Gideon set it up as idol.
Judges tells us the people worshiped this idol and prostituted themselves before God.
Gideon is a warning to us. He represents those who speak a good game but don't back it up with action. Worse, he represents those who seek to appear spiritual through their words while deceiving people and building themselves up through their actions.
Jesus, on the other hand, was the perfect combination of words and actions. When he was tempted by Satan in the wilderness, he spoke the right words but also backed them up by mainting his focus on God.
Be careful how you live--worship God, speak well to others, and watch your conduct so that no one will be deceived by your actions after listening to your words.
File: Study Notes for Judges 6-8 (Gideon)
One way of understanding Gideon's story in Judges 6-8 is through a cycle.
There is a pattern throughout the book of Judges that indicates the Israelites moved through a cycle of committing evil, being turned over to a foreign nation by God, as punishment for their evil, being oppressed and crying out because of the oppression, being rescued by God through a deliverer (a judge), being at peace while the deliverer was living, and finally reverting back to evil after the deliverer dies, thereby starting the cycle all over again.
Gideon exists within this cycle and is a deliverer raised up by God. (We may, of course, question whether he was a good deliverer or not.)
His story also takes place in the context of a cycle. Gideon is called by God (6:1-12) but tests God because he is fearful (6:13-24). He then serves God (because God "passed" the test; 6:25-32) but falls back into fear and tests God again (6:33-40). He overcomes his fear (7:1-15), serves God and receives victory (7:15-25) but falls back into sin because of his arrogance and self-sufficient ways (ch. 8).
He bounced back-and-forth between serving God and serving himself.
These two cycles in Judges indicate to us that we, too, can become trapped in a vicious cycle, going back-and-forth between serving God and serving ourselves. We need to watch ourselves and avoid temptation.
In Matthew 4:1-11, Jesus overcame temptation and served by God by maintaining his focus on God and worshiping him, referring to teaching from Deuteronomy to bolster his faith. We, too, should keep our spiritual eyes on Jesus and his teaching in the bible to keep strong in our faith to overcome the cycles of sin and faith in our lives.
What cycles do you identify in your life?
There is a qualitative difference between opacity and transparency.
Translucency stands in the middle and is a step in the right direction
but the goal, the telos, is the thinnest line.
Opacity is dark, unclear.
Unfocused, it stumbles and reaches but does not find.
It thinks it looks good, elegant--
but because it absorbs the light there is nothing to see.
Not so the transparent.
Here, the thinness between what is hidden and what is real
is revealed for what it really is--
we see through the real into a deeper real.
The translucent stands in between,
reflecting some
absorbing some
becoming thinner
or thicker.
[Yesterday's sermon is available for download at the bottom of this post.]
My sermon yesterday focused on Abimelek in Judges 9 and Jesus' teaching in Luke 17:1-4 to discuss how we influence people either positively or negatively. Abimelek was Gideon's son and was unhappy at how his family's name was being remembered so he set himself up as a judge. To cement his authority, he killed his 70 other brothers. Then he was appointed king over the people because of his "great" show of power. He further cemented his status of a positional, authoritative leader by becoming a war criminal when he burned down a tower with everyone still in it.
Abimelek points out the negative way of influencing people: seizing power and "leading" from a position of authority.
In contrast, Jesus taught us to watch ourselves and never be the reason someone is influenced negatively. Maybe he had Abimelek in mind when he said this. He taught us that we influence people relationally, not positionally or authoritatively. We can boss someone around and have them do what we say, but grudgingly...and the effects won't last.
Or we can take the way of Jesus. Befriend people, teach them gently, love them, and influence them by the way we forgive people and go out of our way not to cause others to stumble.
So we can be like Jesus...or be like Abimelek. How do you influence people?
Sermon: Influence (Judges 9 and Luke 17:1-4)
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