GRACE IN THE DEEPEST VALLEY

Scripture reading Job 1  

The context for this message is a congregation of people made up of many walks of life, but who all, at one time or another, have dealt with suffering in their lives. This is an attempt to help them make sense of the inexplicable issues that face each of us.

 Throughout history, the story of Job has held a morbid sort of fascination for people. It is one of those stories which grips your insides as you hear it and you ask yourself ” What would I do if that happened to me?” All this destruction happened to Job and his household in just one day?  How would I explain the apparently senseless string of horrors that befell a servant of God. A sculptor who sought to answer that question, created the figure of a man, clothed with ragged clothes, the whole body twisted in agony, a man looking defeated, yet with his eyes upraised, and there at the bottom of the statue is the inscription, ‘Though he slay me, yet will I trust him.” That was the sculptor’s way of translating into stone the message that Job gives to us.

How can we deal with the agony which is a part of everyone’s life? One thing is for sure, We need to hear the words of Job in chapter 13, Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him.

Have you ever noticed that there are large gatherings of people when there are weddings to celebrate?

But who is there with the spouse who is left with a sense of defeat when the marriage ends?

Where are all the friends who welcomed a new baby when the new baby has grown up into a 20 year old who rejects his parents?

Where are the people who will be there for the young person who is seeking to maintain a life of sobriety following his alcoholic treatment program?

You see, it isn’t just in the moments when something like what happened to Job takes place, it’s in the moments of agony we all experience that we need to have an anchor. As the old hymn puts it, In times like these, we need to be sure, be very sure that our anchor holds and grips the solid rock.  ( see https://namethathymn.com/christian-hymns/in-times-like-these-lyrics.html )

I want to invite you to think about this with me for a while this morning as we consider what it is to experience grace in the deepest valley. As we read together this morning, Job was a man who was a God fearing man. And he had great possessions. And he had 10 children.

But one day, in the councils of heaven, Satan proposed to God that this man was serving God only for the  sake of his possessions. Satan suggested that if God would take away all that Job had, he would soon be as pagan as anyone on earth. And in the verses which follow, we see tragedy after tragedy befall Job all on one day. But rather than curse God, Job says, “The Lord gave, And the Lord took away, blessed be the name of the Lord.” Now if we would go on and read more in the book of Job, we’d see that Satan was not yet through with Job. And his health is taken away, his wife tums on him, and then three so-called friends come to comfort him. But their words hold very little in the way of comfort.

 For the next forty chapters, Job and his friends carry on a debate as to why this has happened in Job’s life. And the only comfort the friends give is the encouragement to confess his sin. They tell him that this has only happened because God is angry with Job and has become his adversary. That’s what Job’s friends tell him. Chapter after chapter, they give Job some very good theology about sin and its effects in our lives. They go on for many chapters about the idea that justice is served by having sin be punished in this life and in the next. And do you know what the problem with their thinking is? The problem is that they are right. Except that this is not the case with Job.

Job, meanwhile, defends his integrity. He insists that he has done nothing that would have made him the adversary of God and he wants to know from God what it is that he has done to deserve this. And his three friends are quick to point out how sinful everyone is and that Job must never say that he has done nothing worthy of punishment.

Nevertheless, Job maintains his integrity and he even goes so far as to challenge God to tell him just what it is that he has done to make him deserving of what has come upon him. Job is called to suffer, but he refuses to believe it is deserved.  Here is the definition of suffering I keep in my mind:  Suffering happens when there is a deep conflict of wills. That happens with our friends and enemies, and it happens with God. But we need to be aware of how our will is in conflict with another will. Then we will see the source of the suffering in our lives.

You see, the first chapter of Job is in the Bible for a very important reason. It is there as a revelation from God to inform us about the suffering that God’s people so often must go through. And it tells us that the reason for our suffering is not because God has something against us, so to speak, but it is because Satan is our Adversary. If we would translate that name from the Hebrew we would discover that The name of Satan means Accuser or Adversary. That is his identity.

It is not God who is the adversary. it is Satan. Job and his three friends all saw God as Job’s adversary in the events of the day when everything was taken from him. All thru the book, even though Job maintains his conviction that he can trust God, he has the feeling that with friends like God who needs an enemy. You and I too, in the midst of our lives, no matter what age we are, we have some moment which we identify as our deepest valley. We have had some experience which has caused us anguish. Children have those days and they continue all thru our lives. Just when we think we’ve sunk to the lowest depths we could ever sink to, we find God calling us to walk even deeper in the mire. And we find our lives being inundated with grief and trouble. But this word from God says to us, Don’t ever think of me as your Adversary!

At the end of the book, Job and his friends are taken to task by God for their thinking about God and his character. God wants them, and us as we read this book, to realize that when one is a child of God, God is Father, he is not adversary. Satan is the Adversary and he holds some pretty awful power to do some pretty dreadful things to God’s children and he did them to Job. But the reason the Adversary has is to separate God’s children from God. To get them to think of God as their adversary. To set God over against the human who is suffering so that they do not tum to their Father for aid, but turn in on themselves and so suffer more and more as they fight against the Adversary who is not an Adversary.

When suffering comes into our lives, we need to be sure our anchor is cast on the solid rock of God’s love in Jesus Christ. We need to be sure that we cry out to God for his grace for us in the deepest valley. Suffering is never an easy thing for us to go through. We need all the support and encouragement we can get to withstand our adversary who believes that suffering can drive us away from our commitment to God. That’s what Job 1 tells us.

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Two Shepherds

Zechariah 11 : 4 FF

Context for this sermon is the congregation at an established church with about 150 attendees. Materials for this sermon come from commentaries and from intro to OT books and from my ponderings on the chapter. Who Is Zechariah and Why Is He Saying This?

4 This is what the Lord my God says: “Shepherd the flock marked for slaughter. 5 Their buyers slaughter them and go unpunished. Those who sell them say, ‘Praise the Lord, I am rich!’ Their own shepherds do not spare them.

6 For I will no longer have pity on the people of the land,” declares the Lord. “I will give everyone into the hands of their neighbors and their king. They will devastate the land, and I will not rescue anyone from their hands.”

7 So I shepherded the flock marked for slaughter, particularly the oppressed of the flock. Then I took two staffs and called one Favor and the other Union, and I shepherded the flock. 8 In one month I got rid of the three shepherds.

The flock detested me, and I grew weary of them 9 and said,

“I will not be your shepherd. Let the dying die, and the perishing perish. Let those who are left eat one another’s flesh.”

10 Then I took my staff called Favor and broke it, revoking the covenant I had made with all the nations. 11 It was revoked on that day, and so the oppressed of the flock who were watching me knew it was the word of the Lord.

12 I told them, “If you think it best, give me my pay; but if not, keep it.”

So they paid me thirty pieces of silver. 13 And the Lord said to me, “Throw it to the potter”— the handsome price at which they valued me! So I took the thirty pieces of silver and threw them to the potter at the house of the Lord. 1

4 Then I broke my second staff called Union, breaking the family bond between Judah and Israel. 15 Then the Lord said to me,

“Take again the equipment of a foolish shepherd.

16 For I am going to raise up a shepherd over the land who will not care for the lost, or seek the young, or heal the injured, or feed the healthy, but will eat the meat of the choice sheep, tearing off their hooves.

17 “Woe to the worthless shepherd, who deserts the flock!

May the sword strike his arm and his right eye! May his arm be completely withered, his right eye totally blinded!”

 I’ve got some good news and some bad news.

Of course, when we hear those words, we immediately think of the next line, which do you want to hear first? The good news or the bad news? It was like that back in the days of Zechariah the prophet. There was the good news he had to offer the people to whom he spoke and there was the bad news. And the problem was that most of the people who were listening to him would not have been able to figure out, was he telling them the good news or the bad news? What was this guy talking about? And who does he think he is anyway?

I think we do well to try to understand Zechariah by first looking at who he was as a person.

Zechariah was a man who seems to have come to the prophet’s place, not as a man seeking it, but who found the prophet’s office seeking him. His background is such that he was born to be a priest.

In his day, your bloodline was everything when it came to being a priest. It was on the basis of your parentage that you became a priest. Zechariah was the son of a priest. So his every day life was bound up with the worship of God most high.

 His whole life would have been a preparation for the day when he would stand at the gate of the temple to receive the offerings from God’s people and to bring them to the altar and sacrifice them there. He knew the looks on the faces of the people who were bringing these offerings to God. He knew how much they loved the Lord by the looks on their faces.

Those who loved the lord with all their hearts were bringing their offerings as a way to show how sorry they were for their sins, and to seek to be made right with God. But there were others who as they brought their gifts were doing so only to be seen by the right people. The temple in his day had been a makeshift place at first, but then at his and another’s prophet’s urging, a new temple had risen and so each day he served the Lord at that new temple.

 While he was serving at the altar in that new temple, Zechariah began to realize something. Maybe it was the Lord laying this on his heart, or maybe it was just something that began to weigh on him as he would make his way home in the evening.

There were so many of the leaders of the people who didn’t seem to care about the population as a whole. Instead, it seems to him that they were just looking out for their own good and were using their positions of authority to literally tear the flesh off the people they were leading.

So, the word of the Lord comes to Zechariah as he surveys the scene before him. He becomes more than the person who offers the sacrifices for the people. He becomes more than the person who prays for the people. He becomes a prophet. And he speaks his mind concerning the abuses he sees. And it has to do with leadership. Yes, leadership.

Leadership among the people of God and leadership among the people as a nation. He sees something that he knows is really wrong. And he knows God is calling him to bring it to the attention of the people, and especially the leaders. For God calls him to say, Pasture the flock marked for slaughter. Fatten them up for the traders.

Those who listen to Zechariah know that he is referring to the sort of thing going on among the people of the land. For those who population by seeking to make money off of them. And it was relatively easy to do in his day. Corruption was rampant.

A well placed bribe here and there got the king’s officials to look the other way while the local officials wreaked havoc on the local economy. They would think nothing of trading off their old ox for a nice young man who had strong shoulders and could work hard. They thought nothing of taking advantage of their position of leadership to get rich.

In fact, they saw their wealth as evidence that God was smiling on them.

Now what’s a self-respecting prophet to do in such a situation? Zechariah lays out two scenarios for the people. He begins with God bringing in a new shepherd for the flock. This new shepherd will be one who cares for the sheep. This new shepherd will be a good shepherd. He will rescue those who are marked for slaughter. He will take care of them in the pastures as they are meant to be cared for.

He even brings with him two new staffs. One he calls favor or grace and the other union. What they seem to stand for is the idea that when the good shepherd cares for the people, he will not look at them as a way to be made rich, but as a way to make the sheep rich with his favor or love. Their lives would be better because the good shepherd was seeking to have them experience his love. And the other staff tells them that this shepherd who works on God’s behalf will bring about a new community where union is the word of the day everyday. No more seeking to separate and divide. No more trying to play one off against the other, but community where all will flourish.

 Now as I hear that, I think of it as good news. But Zechariah has some bad news for those who listen to him. For God shows him that such a good shepherd would be rejected and despised by the very flock he came to help. So Zechariah takes the staff he had that symbolized his favor and he broke it. Telling them that God was taking his promise of love from them. If they wanted so badly to go their own way, then so be it. If they really like having others take advantage of them, then he would give them over to even their neighbors. And it would be a dog eat dog world for everyone. It would be a world where community was broken as well.

And so that staff too is broken to signal the end of God’s seeking to bring community to these people. So is the good news, now bad news? Or is there some other news that might be even worse?

Zechariah goes on to another picture of the flock. Now the good shepherd has been replaced by a terrible one. This bad shepherd would no longer care if one of the sheep got lost. That was the least of his worries. Or if one of the lambs would go scampering off in the wilderness, nobody would even think about going off to find that lamb. And he surely would try to help those who were healthy to stay that way, wouldn’t he? Well, no. Who cares anyway. It’s only a stupid sheep, this bad shepherd says to the people sitting at his table feasting on the flesh of the ewes.

 But when that worthless shepherd comes on the scene, what happens to the good shepherd? What happens to the one who tried to help the flock but was rejected by them? What now for that shepherd? When someone renounced his position as shepherd, he could not demand his last paycheck. So the shepherd goes to those who are the leaders it seems, and he says, give me my pay. And they weighed out to him thirty pieces of silver. He called it a handsome price at which they priced me.

 It was the price of a human person. If you were the owner of an animal that killed a person, you had to pay the family thirty pieces of silver as a way to make up for the loss of that person. Thirty pieces of silver was equal to about one half of a year of pay for the typical laboring man. That is what the good shepherd received as the leaders got rid of him so they could go back to the fleecing of the flock. It was a prophecy that, my guess is, Zechariah did not know would one day come true in the life of God become man, whose name is Jesus.

For he is the good shepherd. In fact he calls himself the good shepherd. And he tells us that the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. Which is just what happened. He laid down his life. And those who were leading the people of God in the days of Jesus were those who were fleecing the flock for their own gain in relationship to the Romans.

They sold out the leadership positions that God had entrusted to them and in turn thought nothing of paying Judas 30 pieces of silver as the price on the head of Jesus. As he received it, another person died. Not some stranger, but the one from whom he had become estranged, Jesus the good shepherd.

You see, greed is a terrible thing. It is, we are told in the Bible, idolatry. It is putting another God in the place that belongs to the true God alone. Zechariah is still speaking to us today. So often we see those who are given the responsibility to lead taking advantage of the very ones they are to nurture with their leadership. But, Zechariah tells us, if God sends us a shepherd who will care for us, we would reject him.

 As a song from Kris Kristofferson back in the 70’s put it, I guess if he came back, we’d just string him up again. We don’t want the good shepherd. We prefer those who take advantage of us. As a philosopher has said here in the US, the good thing about our electoral system is we get to choose our leaders, the bad thing about our electoral system is that we get the leaders we deserve.

 Nobody wants Jesus as our shepherd until we are ready to renounce our own wills, renounce our own greed and allow Jesus to be the shepherd of our souls. Greed dominates our own thoughts, always hoping to strike it rich. But the truth of the matter is, that God would make us all rich in our lives if we would just surrender to Jesus.

 The thirty pieces of silver put as the price on his head was put there by us. And we took the money and one from whom we were totally estranged died, Jesus died.

Oh, I long for the dawn of the eternal Sabbath promised in the Scriptures. The Sabbath is a day I define as a say when we have no cash value. None is looking at us to make money and we aren’t looking at someone else to make money. We are just living here together. Oh, for the day when we can leave the greed for more behind and turn instead toward the good shepherd who will come one day to set us all free. To make us all able to live rich lives that do not depend on our ideas of wealth in this world for the experience of richness in the life to come. Oh, come Lord Jesus. Come quickly!

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God’s Song of Life

Scripture reading is Micah 6.

 Context for this message is a congregation living among a community who are in fierce debate about the role of civil government in their everyday lives.  They have been  living in a less than easy economy and in a city where conflict arose over some moral issues among the leaders of the city.

In Paul’s letter to the Romans, he gives us what has become known as the foundation statement about the purpose of government. In that chapter Paul tells us that all authorities have been instituted by God and that they are in place to punish the bad and reward the good.

When Paul wrote that to the Romans I don’t think he could ever have guessed what all would have come from that line. For it has been used by kings and queens over the centuries to justify almost any imaginable atrocity that they could come up with. Of course, it wasn’t necessary for Paul to write those words for the kings and queens to do those sorts of things, but once they started looking to the Bible for reasons, for justification, for what they were doing, Romans 13 became a favorite passage for them to invoke.

 But the issue was not if they could just do as they pleased, but the issue was and continues to be, did the leaders understand that when they were appointed by God to their positions of power that they were then accountable to God?

You see, that is the single most difficult thing for any of us to get a hold on. To whom are we accountable? Too often the answers we come up with are just our own pet ideas. We do not really look to the truth of God in his word to come up with our answers. We look instead to those we think are people who will give us the answers we want.

So that if we are an employer, we tell ourselves that our employees are accountable to us while they are working, but we run the company and so are the top dog so to speak. But to whom are we accountable?

Or. We find ourselves at home and we find ourselves dealing with kids that are less than cooperative and we tell them that they are to give us their respect and their obedience, even to the point of wearing the T shirt, because I’m the Mom or Dad, that’s why. But to whom are the Moms and dads accountable?

 Or We might be like St Augustine writes about in his Confessions.    we find ourselves in a group of our friends and the person who is the leader of the group says, Let’s steal some stuff from that store. And even though you don’t think it’s a good idea, you go along with it since you don’t want to be seen as someone who’s scared to pull it off. But to whom is the leader of the group accountable?

Let’s turn to Micah and the passage we read today. Do you begin to get a sense of what it was that Micah had as his task from God? He was sent to  call the leaders of the people of God to account. And it was not an easy task since these leaders were wearing the T-shirts that said, Cause I’m the king, I’m the prince, I’m the village leader, even ones that said, I’m the preacher, that’s why.

You see, there was a situation going on which was one that looked all too familiar to even us. It was that the leaders thought of themselves as above the law of God and not subject to it. And it was all down the line. It wasn’t just the kings and princes, it was the parents in their homes, and the pastors in their churches that were taking advantage of what they thought God was calling them to and they were not about to be called to account for any of it.

They were gouging the people over whom they were leaders and they felt that it was fine for them to be doing that. After all, they were the leaders. They had been given their place by God and they were going to milk it for all it was worth. And they did not believe they were going to be held responsible for any of the wrong they were getting into. Do you know why? Because they were giving lip service to God all the while. They were telling themselves that as long as  they tipped their hat to God from time to time, that all was going to be OK with them.

What did Micah see going on? One of the most evil things he saw happening was the work of prophet was being corrupted. The work of the prophet was to call God’s people to walk in the Lord’s way, but that’s not what was happening. Instead what was going on was the prophets were getting paid by someone. The  propghets would fawn all over that person and tell them what a good person he, she was. And if someone would refuse to give them some pay for their work, they were looked at as enemies of the prophet. Micah was ashamed to be among their number. He takes them to task for their mercenary attitude.

Then he tells them, vs 6 therefore night will come upon you without visions …. What does that mean? It means that they no longer were going to have anything to offer in the way of hope for the people of Israel. They were giving up their one thing they had to offer to the people— God’s vision of what life could be. They had traded it in for a bowl of soup. And God promises them by means of his servant Micah that their visions were no longer going to be  given to them.

So Micah calls them to repentance. He is given power, he says, by the Spirit of the Lord to declare to Israel his sin. The next several verses tell them what it was that God was so angry bout. They were people to whom all Israel looked for justice, and they despised justice by taking bribes and corrupting the one place here all stood equal before the Lord. Refer to more verses in chap 6

 And in the midst of it all they claimed that God was among them and therefore nothing bad was going to happen to them. Micah was sent by God to tell them how wrong they were.

So what was supposed to happen? How should they approach God? Micah shows them what God was looking for in one of the most memorable verses of all Scripture: what does the Lord require of you? But to do justice, to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God.  We might call that God’s song of Life.

That is what God is looking for among his people. When he looks at us we need to ask ourselves too what this means for us. What does it mean for us to seek out the ways God is also seeking to have us hear and respond to this Scripture? I think there are several thoughts we need to take  home from this: Repentance involves our deepest heart.

 It is not enough to pay lip service to God. The prophet is calling to our deepest hearts and is saying to us, if you want to have God be a part of your life, then your heart has to be in harmony with God’s song of life. Our hearts are too eager to go off on our own without taking God’s harmony into account.

We have to turn away from that desire on our part to sing our own song in our own way. Frank Sinatra had this song, I did it my way ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKRmo30J7vU ) that has been popular for decades now. and return to God with all our hearts. Jesus came into the world to teach us about God our Father. When we look to him and walk in his way, we discover that we are doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly with our God. We sing our life song in harmony with God’s song of life.

 If you ever wonder what it means to do those things, please read the stories of Jesus again in the gospels of Matthew Mark Luke and John. There you will see one who lived with a vision of God and the kingdom of God freshly in his mind. You and I can live with that vision as well if we will just look to Jesus and walk in his way. And third, when we turn to God and walk in his way, he will give us a vision for what his kingdom will and can look like in our lives.

 Give a few examples arising from where you see solo singers and where there is no harmony with God..

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Scripture Reading Amos 5:4=17   Amos Speaks Today

Context for this is the period of time at the beginning of 2001 when a new president was inaugurated in the United States. The congregation is a gathering of strong supporters of the new president.  This is a message in a series on the minor prophets.

Yesterday was a big day in Washington, DC. People gathered from all over the US and indeed the world to be there for the inauguration of Geo W Bush as the next president of the United States. The pomp and circumstance were all intended to remind us that the presidency of our nation is one of the most powerful positions on earth. The one who holds that office is one who by his orders will affect millions of people.

 Over the next several weeks, we will be hearing from the news bureaus in Washington all about the new initiatives the Bush administration will be making to make changes in how things are done in our nation. The challenge of our times is how to make sure that we are dealing with the right things.

 We as a nation are in need, I believe, of hearing from God once again. And especially as we make a transition in our government we are challenged by God to listen again to his prophet of justice and righteousness.

For one thing that is true of Amos, in particular, is his desire to have people who know God to think again about what it means to seek good and not evil.

Let me tell you a little bit about Amos. He was a farmer who lived during a very prosperous time for the country of Israel. He himself was living in the nation just to the south of Israel, a place called Judah. But often in his business dealings he would travel to the northern kingdom to trade there. What he saw going on there disturbed him deep in his soul and one day, God called him to speak out about it. Just imagine this guy, a farmer, not a priest, not a professional prophet, not a member of the nobility. He’s none of those things. Instead he is a business man. He is there in the nation of Israel during a time of a great national show of how good things were.

 But then.  he goes to the place of worship that is to be found there in the King’s temple. It’s located not in the capital, but in Bethel. Now Bethel is about 20 miles or so south of the capital city Samaria. It had been chosen for the location of a temple because of the history associated with the place. For it had been in the fields outside of Bethel that patriarch Jacob had had his dream of a ladder reaching all the way to heaven. He had given it its name.

And so it had become a special place of worship from ancient days. So a hundred years or so earlier, the first king of the ten northern tribes of Israel had set up a golden calf in Bethel and called on his people to worship the Lord by means of that calf. They were told that they were still worshipping the God of Israel, just in a new way. It had become known as the King’s sanctuary. It was the place where if you were anybody, you went to worship there.

And then one day when the crowds were gathering at the place of worship, this farmer shows up in his rough dress. And he begins to speak on God’s behalf. The passage we read this morning is found right in the middle of the book of Amos. It contains in its words the heart of the message of Amos. For he was God’s spokesman calling on his people to seek God and not evil.

 And he had a significant purpose to what he was doing, he was calling them to seek good and not evil so that they might live. God was appealing to his people to turn from the ways they had come to think of as normal. But he could see that normal was not good.

In our own day, we need to hear these words for so much of what passes for normal these days is not what God would want us to be calling normal. He wants us to turn from our evil ways and come back to him and to his laws.

You see, the people of Israel were living in their day as if there were no God. Oh, of course, they would never have said that! After all, they were going to worship even as Amos stood there in the entrance to the sanctuary. But in their everyday lives, you couldn’t tell they were people who wanted to serve God. They were people who were seeking their own advancement. And they were walking all over others in order to accomplish it. And Amos denounces them for their lack of allegiance to God.

Do you know what was happening in their land? The wealthy were oppressing those who were poor. If you were owed fifty bucks for a pair of shoes by your neighbor, he might pay you by giving you the guy who was in debt to him for that fifty bucks. It was a travesty of justice. But the people were used to how life was. And what could you do about it?

The guy owed fifty bucks! Why shouldn’t he be your slave?! You were not the one who forced him to borrow the fifty bucks. At least it was that sort of attitude that was being considered normal. And then they would go to worship and call on God in their songs and their solemn assemblies. And God through Amos tells them that he is nauseated by the noise of their songs. Will you please be quiet says God.

 In its place he called for seeking justice. That is what Amos was all about. He was calling for justice to be found among those who claimed to be the followers of God in our own times as well, Amos is calling us to learn what justice is all about. To learn and love what Justice requires. And then to learn and love what the words ought, should, and must are about.

The point for us today is this. In our land we are about to mark the 28th anniversary of a supreme court decision which this past week was argued to be the settled law of the land. The ruing which legalized abortion in our land has become a flash point of conflict. But in all the rhetoric we need to hear the voice of Amos calling out to the people who are those who would worship God, seek God and live.

 Do not trample on the poor, hate evil and love good, and maintain justice in the courts.

 God is aware of what is going on and he keeps a record and he takes the side of those who are oppressed. And if you desire to have a land in which you live for a long time, then seek God and honor him with your civic life. That goes from the things we do each day all the way to what the nation does in its policy decisions.

Seek good, not evil that you may live says the Lord.

Are we listening to his voice today?