Posted on by Cheryl Norman

Spiritual Wisdom

Pastor Sherry’s Message for August 15, 2021

Scriptures: 1 Kings 2:10-12, 3:3-14; Ps 111; Eph 5:15-20; Jn 6:51-58

About 30 years ago, before I attended seminary, I led a mental health team who treated residents of 4 nursing homes in and around Tallahassee, Florida. In this work, I learned a hymn I’d never heard before. My colleague who provided music therapy for those who had Alzheimer’s would play this hymn and the patients–even if they could not remember their children’s names–all remembered it and would sing along! I was amazed.

What can wash away my sins?

Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

What can make me whole again?

Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

Oh, precious is the flow that makes me white as snow.

No other fount I know,

Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

Such a great hymn and so true.  We were bought with a price and redeemed by the shed blood of Jesus Christ. Thank you, Lord Jesus!

    Our readings today have to do with gaining true wisdom, spiritual wisdom.  School began this past Tuesday here in North Florida.  The start of the school year always puts me in mind of our hopes that our children’s and grandchildren’s teachers and professors would…

    1.) Recognize and even appreciate their academic talents;     2.) Make allowances for and help them overcome their deficits. 

Some years back, I taught a male student at Santa Fe Community College who could not read.  He failed my first two exams.  After class following the second test, I asked him to verbally respond to the questions.  He knew the information completely.  He could remember the material but was sadly unable to “crack the written code.”  Some of my college students admitted they had never opened a book in high school; others realized, too late, they would have to study more to succeed in college. 

    3.) We also hope teachers and professors will not kill students’ desire to learn, nor their love for their God, their family, or their country.

We also hope that our kids/grandkids would be intent on being fully present; attentive; eager to learn; on time; well-behaved, and disciplined enough not to play games on their laptops or text on their cell phones. Wouldn’t it be great if students all sought wisdom in their educational endeavors? Similarly, wouldn’t it be wonderful if teachers/professors also exhibited wisdom in both the presentation of material in their classes, and in their evaluations of how much their students have learned?

    I don’t know about you but I find it interesting that, just as school is starting, our lectionary readings–which cycle around every three years—contrast the two forms of wisdom, academic or secular wisdom and spiritual wisdom?  It’s no coincidence, but rather a “God-incidence.”

    Our Old Testament reading comes from 1 Kings 3:3-14. It narrates events from 970 BC, almost 3000 years ago.   Having ruled from 1010-970 BC, King David has died.  His two eldest sons predeceased him:  As you may remember from last week, Amnon—son of David’s 3rd wife–was killed by Absalom—son of his 4th wife, for having raped Tamar, Absalom’s sister.  Nine years later, Absalom was slain in a Civil War he had started to wrest the throne from his father.  The next son in line was Adonijah, the son of David’s 5th wife, Haggith.  But God had selected, and King David had crowned Solomon—son of Bathsheba, his 8th wife—as his successor.  (Remember that  David had been the runt of the litter, youngest of 8 boys, when he was chosen by the Lord to be King).  Once again, God jumps the “normal” order of succession to bring about His choice.  After all, the King of Israel was both a political and a theocratic or spiritual king, who ruled at God’s pleasure.  So, despite his birth order, Solomon has assumed the throne.

In some verses skipped, he takes as his wife, in a political alliance, the daughter of Pharaoh and not a believer in the God of Israel. We are told in verse 3 that he loved the Lord. Initially, then, he lived according to the Law of Moses—he kept God’s Law. However, he also worshipped the Lord in Canaanite “high places” which had been set apart for pagan gods of fertility. From the get-go, Solomon seemed to be hedging his bets. He appears to have had a weakness for women, lots of women (having accumulated 700 wives and 300 concubines—many of whom worshipped pagan gods–by the end of his reign). So, over the long run, he did not remain loyal to God. He appears to have thought: I’ll follow the God of my father, David; but what can it hurt to honor other gods as well?

    This practice of mixing pagan elements with worshiping the One True God is called syncretism and is abhorrent to our God.  When I was in seminary, my daughter and I had a friend named Mrs. Wilson.  She was kind and generous to us, but she mixed her Roman Catholic beliefs in with the Hindu concept of reincarnation.  I remember asking her why she would want to risk returning to earth as a cockroach or a rat.  I assured her that Jesus Christ had done all the work necessary for her to reach heaven if she only put her trust in Him.  Such syncretism violates the 1st Commandment.  We are told (verse 5) that the syncretistic Solomon offered a very generous number (1000) of sacrifices to Israel’s God, Yahweh—but in a place devoted to pagan worship.  Thus Solomon ignores the urging of the one who wrote Psalm 111 who says, (verse 1) I will extol the LORD with all my heart, in the council of the upright and in the assembly.  The psalmist implores us to worship our God with single-minded devotion.

    Nevertheless, despite Solomon’s lack of a steadfast commitment to God alone, notice that God still planned to use him and to bless him.  This is good news to him and to us.  Except for Jesus Christ, there are no perfect people.  We tend to align ourselves along a continuum from not at all committed to God to totally sold out to God, and on any given day, we land somewhere in between–and often moving toward one pole or the other.  Even so, God chooses to use us.  How amazing!

That night, God spoke to Solomon in a dream. In what strikes me as a beautiful act of grace, God says to the not-quite-committed new king, (verse 5) Ask for whatever you want Me to give you. If I had been God, I doubt I would have been so generous. This guy is all too human—not as whole-heartedly faithful to God as his father David had been. Why should God trust him? Solomon, though, gives a great answer: Recognizing his limitations, he admits (verse 7), I am only a little child and do not know how to carry out my duties. He honestly admits he knows he is not yet equipped or experienced enough to rule. As Eugene Peterson, in his modern paraphrase of the Bible, restates it, I don’t know the ropes, hardly know the ‘in’s’ and ‘outs’ of this job and the scope of it is intimidating. So please give me a God-listening-heart so I can rule your people well. He has asked for wisdom in judgment and in governmental leadership or statesmanship. He has asked to know what is the right thing to do as he rules. God is so pleased with this request that He rewards him. God notes that Solomon wasn’t moved by self-centered motives: a long life for himself, great personal wealth, or the deaths of his enemies. So the Lord grants his request, (v.12) I will give you a wise and discerning heart, so that there will never have been anyone like you, nor will there ever be. Solomon will be the wisest king—other than Jesus—who ever lived!

However, he fails in moral leadership, in the way he lives his life. He asked for wisdom to govern well, not wisdom to guide his own personal life. That just occurred to me as I studied the passage this week. I had never seen it before. I always wondered how he could have messed up so badly and still been so wise. Under the influence of his foreign wives, he veers off into idolatry, and appears to have suffered from a sexual addiction. Perhaps Paul was thinking about Solomon as he wrote to the Ephesians in our New Testament lesson today (Ephesian 5:15-20). The apostle tells us Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise….Solomon had great wisdom for governing—oh, if we only had that in DC today! But he lacked a firm moral compass, rooted in faithfulness to the Lord. Believers who walk wisely, remain in the will of God. Jesus urges us in John 15:4 No branch can bear fruit by itself [“operating out of human wisdom”]; it [we, the branches] must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in Me.

King Solomon provides such a good lesson to us as someone who starts off pretty well, but ends up badly. Nevertheless, God knew he was inadequate and chose to work through him anyway. In a sense, all of us are inadequate to serve God. We can only go as far and as high as we do on our knees (in prayer and submission to God). We do best when we seek spiritual wisdom, God’s will. Again, the author of Psalm 111 writes, (verse 10) The fear of the Lord [awe, reverence for, respect of] is the beginning of wisdom. My Old Testament professor, Dr. Paul House, put it this way: Wisdom, even God-given wisdom, must be maintained by responsible human faithfulness. Serving God faithfully, according to Eugene Peterson, really is a long obedience in the same direction—us being obedient to accompany God in His direction.

    Jesus shocked His contemporaries by suggesting in today’s Gospel (John 6:51-58) that they feed on Him.  They didn’t understand that He meant spiritually.  We need to establish, nurse, and maintain a deep relationship with Him.  He is our source!  He is our Savior.  As the old hymn says, the shed blood of Christ protects and redeems us.  Recognizing and exhibiting gratitude for His great love for     us is true wisdom.

As your loved ones (or you yourself) begin the new school year, may you (and they) be endowed with Godly wisdom and an obedient heart, remaining faithful to the God who loves, equips, and blesses you.

©️2021 Rev. Dr. Sherry Adams

Posted on by Cheryl Norman

God’s Faithfulness and Compassion

Pastor Sherry’s message for July 18,2021

Scriptures: 2 Sam 7:1-17; Ps 89:20-37; Eph 2:1-13; Mk 6:30-34, 53-36

    One of my heroes of the faith is Mother Theresa.  She was a humble Catholic nun, an Albanian, who went to minister in Calcutta (Kolkata), India, in 1929 at the age of 19.  She taught school there for 17 years, until she had an encounter with Christ, in 1946, in which He called her to minister His love, His compassion, to the poor.  She began, by herself, to meet the physical needs of sick and dying children left on the streets. The Hindu faith ascribes to the notion of karma or fate.  So if you are left to die in the streets, that is your karma and no one is to intervene.  But Mother Theresa knew that Jesus would have us treat others—love others–as we do ourselves and not leave the sick and dying to cope on their own.  Her “hospice” ministry quickly expanded to sick and dying adults, as well.  As other women joined with her, she formed a new order of nuns, the Missionaries of Charity. By the time she died in 1997, she had gathered 4,000 nuns into her order; established hospice and healing centers in 90 different countries; and she had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize (1979).  The Roman Catholic Church elevated her to sainthood in 2006.

    Senator Mark Hatfield tells of touring Calcutta with Mother Teresa and visiting her “House of Dying.”  There he saw dozens of sick children being cared for in their last days, and witnessed the poor line up by the hundreds, daily, to receive medical attention from her dispensary.  Watching her feed and nurse people left by others to die, Hatfield was overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of the suffering she and her co-workers faced daily. “How can you bear the load without being crushed by it?” he asked.  Mother Teresa replied, “My dear Senator, I am not called to be successful, I am called to be faithful.”  As this story illustrates, Mother Theresa is best known for her compassion for “the least of these,”and her faithfulness to God.

    These are the twin themes of our Scriptures today:

    A.  2 Samuel 7:1-17 tells of the time, about 1,000BC, when King David decided to demonstrate His devotion to God by building Him a house (a Temple).  He revealed his plan to the prophet, Nathan, who agreed wholeheartedly.  But, as Nathan was taking his leave from the king, God grabs ahold of him and says, Go back!  Tell David I said “no.”  Furthermore, God adds, whoever said I needed a house?  For years, God had met with His people in a tent!  An advantage of a tent is that it’s mobile.  It demonstrated that God is not confined to one geographic area, as were the false gods and idols known to the people surrounding Israel.  So, God is essentially saying, While I appreciate the thought, I choose not be contained by humankind.  Afterall, He’d appeared to the Children of Israel in a cloud by day, and a pillar of fire by night as they traveled the Wilderness.  It was He who had told them to create the “Tent of Meeting,” in which He was present to them, but never confined.  This remained the case until God allows David’s son, Solomon, to build Him a Temple.  It also remained true until the Apostle John writes, in John 1:14, that–at the Advent of Jesus–The Word became flesh and dwelt (in the Greek, the word means tented; pitched His tent) among us —a tent of flesh!

God denied the gesture but Honored David’s love and devotion. He gives David more than he could have asked for or imagined. First, He calls David “His Servant.” This is a Biblical term of endearment which implies a special relationship with God. It is used only with regard to some patriarchs, several prophets, the nation of Israel, and Jesus. He says to Nathan, Tell David I will build him a house (a dynasty). David already has a luxurious palace. In the Hebrew, the word House (bayith) has 3 separate meanings: (1) It can mean David’s palace (verses 1-2); (2) Yahweh’s Temple (verses 5-7, 13); or, (3.)David’s dynasty (verses 11, 16, 18, 19, 25, 27, and twice in 29). This is the only royal house or dynasty that the Lord would ever sanction in perpetuity.

    Next, God sets out the terms of His Covenant with David, promising:

    1.) I will make your name great (famous/renown)

    2.) I will provide a place for My people (the present nation of Israel is a partial fulfillment of this; the ultimate fulfillment awaits the end of times);

    3.) I will give you rest from your enemies;

    4.) I will raise up offspring to succeed you (he did go on to have a number of sons);

    5.) I will establish the throne of your kingdom forever.  No one will usurp this throne.  The dynasty may fade—which it does–but it will not disappear completely.

    6.) I will be his Father/He will be My son.  This was true of David’s son, Solomon and later, of Jesus.

    7.) I will discipline Him….  David’s wicked descendants are later taken out by the Assyrians or the Babylonians.  When the sin of us all was laid upon Jesus, He is flogged and crucified.

    8.) But I will always love him!

    9.) Your throne will be established forever. The gospeler, Dr. Luke, tells us in Luke 1:32 that Gabriel told Mary, He [Jesus] shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God shall give Him the throne of his father David.

    Needless to say, 2 Samuel 7 is a very important passage in the Old Testament.  It presents the Messianic Hope! Our God is a faithful, promise-keeping God.  He predicted that Messiah would arise from the tribe of Judah, David’s tribe, back in Genesis 49:10.  This theme of “Messianic Hope” is reiterated 4 times in Isaiah, 3 times in Jeremiah, 2 times in Ezekiel, several times in Daniel, and once each in Hosea, Amos, and Zechariah.  Jesus arrives in the New Testament and embodies and fulfills this promise.

    B.  Psalm 89:20-37 is what is called a maschil, an instructive psalm.  The portion appointed for today reviews and commends the Covenant that God made with David (as per our O.T. lesson).  King David will have a son (descendant) who will sit on the throne of the Universe! Verses 34-37 contain God’s promise or oath to King David.  In other words, Messiah (Jesus) will be a descendant of his.  The entire psalm declares God’s faithfulness to His covenant promises 10 times.

    C. Our Gospel lesson, Mark 6:30-34, 53-57, emphasizes Jesus’ love and compassion.  The point at which we find Him today, both He and His disciples are tired.  The disciples have just returned from having been sent out to teach, heal, and cast out demons.  They are euphoric.  But we all know that euphoria is often followed by exhaustion and a need for sleep. Immediately after being reunited, Jesus however is confronted with crowds of people seeking Him out.  So He takes the time to teach and feed 5,000 (probably closer to 15,000, counting women and children).  He and the disciples try again to have a respite, a mini-break, a time-out.  They even escape to sea and attempt to sail away from the crowds.  But the people run around the lake, searching Him out in the seaside towns until they locate Him.  

    We might say that Jesus was at the “Height of His fame.”  Mobs of folks were desperate to find Him in order to be inspired and comforted by His teaching; to experience His healing; and to encounter His love.  Verse 34 tells us…He had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd.  God is love, even when He is tired.

    D. Finally, in our NT lesson, Ephesians 2:1-13, Paul declares some of the benefits to us of our God’s faithfulness and compassion:

Verses 4-5–But because of His great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ, even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace that you are saved.  God sent Jesus to earth to pay the penalty for our sins.  He saved us from the penalty—death—through Jesus’ substituting of Himself on the Cross for us.  The Father so loved us that He created and executed the plan to save our spiritual lives.  He saved us because we could not save ourselves.

    He also (verse 6) …raised us up with Christ and seated us with Him in the heavenly realms with Christ Jesus….Because we are in Christ (we have affirmed our faith in Him), we are heirs of heaven.

Our afterlife is assured!  Verse 7 goes on to tell us that these two great gifts are not due to us but entirely to God.  God has demonstrated His faithfulness to His promises to King David as well as His love and compassion for us.

    Now how are we to respond to God’s faithfulness and His compassion?  Mother Theresa once said, “Not all of us can do great things.  But we can do small things with great love.”  Most of us are not called to be a Mother Theresa.  However, we can each think of some small things we can do for others to demonstrate God’s love.  We can send a card, make a phone call, or take a meal to someone who is ill or to their family as they care for the sick one.  We can mail a card, place a call, or prepare a meal to take to those who are grieving.  Friday, a total stranger paid for my coffee at a hospital coffee shop.  I was visiting one of our parishioners and the barista could not make change for my twenty.  The guy next to me presented his credit card, saying when I thanked him, “Pay it forward.”  We can do kind things like that to pay God’s love forward.

    We can also be aware of God’s great faithfulness to us daily.  We can and should express our thanks and gratitude to Him everyday.  He never leaves or forsakes us.  While people may abandon us, God never does!  We can tell others about how He has been there for us.  This week and always, let us aspire to be known by our compassion and our faithfulness to our faithful and compassionate God. 

©️2021 Rev. Dr. Sherry Adams

Posted on by Cheryl Norman

Faith Like A Mustard Seed

Pastor Sherry’s message for June 13, 2021

Scriptures: Mark 4: 26–32

In 2010, 8 of us from Servants of Christ Anglican Church, in Gainesville, Florida, went on a mission trip to Turkey.  There we worked with a missionary who ministered to Iranian refugees.  Through the missionary/interpreter, I was able to interview a 24 year old man who had recently been baptized.  His name was Navid.  I wanted to know how he had come to faith in Christ.  Now bear in mind that the missionary and his wife had studied Turkish for 1 year, then Farsi—the language of Iranians—for 3.  He would present my question to Navid in Farsi, then share Navid’s answerwith me in American.  It was a time-consuming but very elucidating conversation.  

Navid shared that his father had been an Islamic cleric who was desperate for him to become a pious Muslim. His father went so far as to offer to set him up in his own business—a shoe manufacturing concern—if he would just agree to worship Allah. But, like many young people from Iran at that time, he associated the poverty and rigid governmental controls with his father’s religion, and wanted no part of it. We learned that young Iranians were opting to dive into the drug culture, obtaining high quality drugs from over the border in Afghanistan, or were finding their way to Jesus and other faiths. Navid admitted a peer had approached him to consider Jesus, but he was not interested in any form of religion. That very night, as he slept, he had a dream in which Jesus appeared to him. Jesus told him three times, “I want you to reconsider.” I asked, “How did you know it was Jesus?” He answered, “You just know.”

​Somehow Navid obtained a copy of the New Testament and began attending the only authorized Christian Church in Tehran.  He read the Gospel of Matthew to the end and wanted to be baptized.  The church pastor told him he could not baptize him or they would both be killed.  Soon thereafter, the authorities did find him exiting the church and beat him severely.  He waited 3 days until he was feeling good enough to move and fled the country with his wife, Camilla.  She was so precious.  I asked the missionary to ask her what made her come to Christ.  She too had not been very interested in Christianity until she saw how knowing Jesus Christ had changed her husband.

I tell you this story to illustrate that the Kingdom of God—which is God’s rule over not just us on earth but over the universe—moves forward one person at a time. Sometimes it moves quickly, as with the 3,000 on the day of Pentecost. But I find it usually is a slow work, requiring patience, time to develop relationships, and lots of prayer. Let’s see what our Gospel lesson has to say about the gradual but compelling way in which God’s Kingdom advances.

Mark 4:26-32 contains two parables involving seeds:

​The first, peculiar only to the Gospel of Mark, involves scattering seed on the ground.  No matter what the farmer does, waking or sleeping, the seed “does its thing.”  The man may apply some fertilizer or water, but God superintends the growth!  The seed takes root, then sends up a shoot which erupts through the earth.  This little seedling becomes a stalk, which continues to grow, and then it “bears fruit” or ripens.  The farmer or the planter harvests what God has caused to grow.

​Notice the role of the person.  He or she broadcasts the seed, but he/she cannot really control the growth.  In God’s Kingdom, that part is left up to God.  As St. Paul later writes in 1 Corinthians 3:6, I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow.  This is the same point made again.  We do our part, but real growth only comes from the Lord.

​As a pastor, I consider myself a “water-er,” an irrigation system if you will.  Probably someone before me has introduced you to Jesus.  They spread or planted the seed.  I have then come along to explain God’s Word to you.  I can also demonstrate my faith by the way I live my life and by my personal testimony as to how loving God has changed my life for the good.  This is the kind of irrigation or watering of the Word that I do.  But neither the one who sowed Christ into your life, nor me as the “water-er,” can really control your growth as a believer.  I can’t make you love Jesus.  I can’t force you to read the Bible or to pray daily.  I can’t compel you to tell others who don’t know Jesus yet about how essential He is to your life.  In God’s Kingdom, that part is left up to God the Holy Spirit, and to you, cooperating with Him.  Recall that a young man tried to tell Navid about Jesus.  He rejected that invitation.  He accepted Christ when Jesus Himself appeared to him.  Nevertheless, I believe the unnamed peer sowed a seed that Jesus caused to take root in Navid.  In ways perhaps imperceptible to Navid, in ways inscrutable and supernatural, God then began to work in his life.  Today he has been granted Canadian citizenship, lives up North, and I understand he is now a pastor and a church planter there.  Jesus has really grown his faith, hasn’t He?!

​Consider who sowed into your life:  As we approach Father’s Day, was it your Dad or another Father-figure (a Spiritual Father) who introduced you to Jesus?  Perhaps it was a Spiritual Mother.  My grandmothers told me about Jesus.  My paternal grandmother was a Presbyterian who saw to it that I was baptized at 3YO.  She took me to Sunday School and read me the Bible.  My maternal grandmother was a Pentecostal Holiness who taught me many of the old hymns we sing today.  She also helped me learn to listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit.  Maybe it was the example of a peace-filled or joy-filled Christian friend who convinced you.  You may want to thank whoever it was.

The second parable is the famous one of the mustard seed. My paternal grandmother gave me a necklace containing a tiny, yellow mustard seed, when I was a child. I understood it meant that my faith might start small, but like the tiny seed, it could grow into a large tree if I nurtured my relationship with Jesus. Later I wondered if she meant to remind me that God likes to use little things, even little people, to do great works. Both of these interpretations of the mustard seed are correct, but they also seem just a little too tame!

Consider that Jesus taught in parables in order to challenge people’s thinking. He seemed to delight in overturning their usual assumptions, to frustrate and then transform them–and us:

​1.) It was a hated Samaritan who nursed the Jewish man back to ​​​health.  No Jewish listener in the crowd would have expected the ​​rescuer to be an enemy.

​2.) The shepherd leaves the 99 to go rescue the one lost sheep.  Who ​​​leaves 99 to go after one?  Surely He left other caretakers in ​​​charge or had the 99 penned up in a corral, but Scripture is ​​​silent on this.

​3.) The Father forgives the rascally prodigal son and reinstates him, ​​​while the righteous, well-behaved elder son sulks.  Both sons are ​​disappointments, but the Father loves and forgives each one.

​4.) The last laborer gets the same pay as those who toiled longest.  To ​​our American sensibilities, this seems most unfair!

Pick your favorite parable. Jesus turns human logic on its head. So we want to look for what might be radical about a mustard seed, or for the ways in which Jesus might just be challenging our common conceptions.

What if we have generally interpreted this parable from the perspective of mustard seeds that are cultivated, or “tame mustard” seeds? These are planted in neat rows in order to harvest mustard for medicinal purposes, or to be made into spices and condiments.  This interpretation doesn’t really seem authentic as it involves too much human control.  What if we thought, instead, of “wild mustard” seeds?  These varieties are the Biblical equivalent of Kudzo!  They are a weed that you would hate to take root in your yard or garden.  If you have ever struggled with getting rid of bamboo, or ivy, potato vines, or dandelions, you know what I mean.  Wild mustard just takes over!  (My farmer son-in-law tells me there is wild mustard growing here in Suwannee County!)

​Normally, cultivated or tame mustard grows in shrubs that reach about 3-4 feet high.  Wild mustard can, however, become tree-sized, if allowed to run amok.  Could our Lord be telling us, tongue in cheek, I’m not saying God’s Kingdom grows like a tame and cultivated variety of plant, carefully shaped by humankind into something resembling an English garden (or clipped and snipped to look like Mickey Mouse or Goofy at Disneyworld).  Oh no!  I’m talking about God’s Kingdom reaching out and overtaking people.  Maybe not with allot of noise or commotion.  Maybe not even in a way you and I can see and evaluate as it’shappening.  The Kingdom of God—or God’s reign in the human heart—is notsomething you or I can limit or manage.  Like the seed described in the first parable, it moves at the direction of the Holy Spirit.

Our God looks within and works from within. As with the seed, from the first parable, our growth in Christ starts inside and works up and out. My prayer for you this week is that our love of Jesus may spread, like the Kudzo-like mustard seed, out of Wellborn United Methodist Church into Wellborn, Live Oak, over east to Jacksonville or west to Tallahassee. May our love of Christ transform us and take over our communities. AMEN! May it be so!

©️2021 Rev. Dr. Sherry Adams

Posted on by Cheryl Norman

Depend Upon the Lord

Pastor Sherry’s message for May 16, 2021

Scriptures: Acts 1:15-26; Ps 1, 1 Jn 5:9-13; Jn 17:6-19

​Bishop Alf Stanway was the first Dean President of the seminary I attended in Ambridge, PA (just west of Pittsburgh).  He had passed away by the time I got there, but stories about him abounded.  I learned much that deepened my faith from his approach to life.  One of my favorites came from his tenure as the Principal of a Christian Boarding School in Kenya.  Besides teaching the usual academic subjects, this school also trained the students in skills they could use to make a living.  Alf had just assumed his position as principal when he ​learned they needed someone skilled to teach tailoring.  The only tailors anyone could think of in the area were Muslims.  Alf wanted only Christian instructors at his school, so he worked tirelessly to locate a Christian tailor.   None of his efforts, however, yielded an appropriate applicant.

He was soon called away to attend a conference but found he could not concentrate on the speakers due to his anxieties about locating a Christian tailor to teach his students. He knew he had to let go of his worry and so he prayed that God would take it away. What an interesting prayer. How often do we consider asking God to remove a particular worry from us? Aren’t we usually praying, instead, for the solution to what is plaguing us?

God so completely removed his worry that it was only as he re-entered his office at the school that he remembered he still had no one to teach tailoring. Classes were set to begin in 3 days! YIKES! He greeted his clerk, Joseph, and asked what he thought could be done about a Christian tailor. Joseph responded with a big smile—some Kenyans have very dark skin and very white teeth, so when they smile it is dazzling! Joseph smiled and replied, “There is now a tailor in the sewing workshop. Go see for yourself if you think he is qualified.” While Alf had been away, a Christian tailor had heard of the vacancy and had come to check it out. Joseph had asked for a demonstration of his skills. Alf took a look at the man’s tailoring and hired him on the spot.

Not only had God removed Bishop Alf’s worry, but He had sent him a Christian tailor. God answered the spoken prayer, and also met the attendant, unspoken need.

​Our Scriptures today all remind us that we can, like Bishop Stanway, safely depend upon the Lord:  

In our Acts 1:15-26 passage, Peter and the 119 other disciples are praying. Jesus has ascended into heaven after having told them to wait upon the baptism of the Holy Spirit. So, they obediently meet daily to pray together and to encourage one another. On this particular occasion, the topic of a replacement among the 12 for Judas Iscariot comes up. Peter addresses them all and explains both how Judas’ betrayal of Jesus and his subsequent suicide had been predicted in Scripture, as well as the consequent need for a replacement Apostle. This would be like having a JV or 2nd stringer elevated to Varsity status. They determined that the primary requirement was having been an eye-witness to Jesus and His work. The newly elevated candidate had to have been with Jesus from the beginning of His earthly ministry (His baptism), through His crucifixion and resurrection, and including His ascension–which we honor today. In other words, they were united in searching out a legitimate witness—just as Bishop Stanwaywanted only a Jesus-believing tailor.

The group no doubt talked it over and then arrived at two candidates, Joseph Barsabbas (also called Justus) and Matthias. Both men met the criteria. However, rather than taking a Roberts Rule of Order vote, they enlisted the guidance of the Holy Spirit through casting lots. The idea was that the Holy Spirit would superintend the process and lead them to the “right” person. I experienced how this works some years ago—prior to attending seminary–when I served on a “call committee” whose job it was to select a new pastor for our church. There were 12 of us and we decided all issues by unanimous vote—assuming the Holy Spirit would lead us all into agreement. Over a year, we narrowed our focus from 99 contenders to two. When we tried to take a vote on the final two, we were repeatedly stymied at 11-1. I was the lone dissenter. I believed firmly that I had been told by the Lord to “stand firm” for this particular nominee. Our committee took several votes, all of which resulted in the same impasse. Someone suggested we drop the unanimous rule for this decision, but I reminded them we would need a unanimous vote to do so and I would not agree to such a change until after this decision had been made. (Hadn’t we learned somewhere, “Don’t change the horse in the middle of the stream?”)

Finally, after much frustration and even anger expressed towards me, someone suggested we cast lots. Knowing this was both Biblical and that the Holy Spirit would guide this process, I was willing to go along with it. We agreed to fill a basket with 12 gold wrapped and 12 purple wrapped hard candies, the gold indicating the one candidate, the purple representingthe other. A clerk passed the basket around above our heads and we each had to reach up to draw out our selection. I was there and I saw all 12 of us draw the same color! The probabilities of this happening—without the guidance of the Holy Spirit—are so miniscule as to be impossible. The one we selected was the one I had held out for. But now all of us knew that candidate must have had the approval of the Holy Spirit.

So the lesson is clear, both from Scripture and from my experience 25some odd years ago, that we can depend upon the Lord to help us make a right choice.

Psalm 1àContrasts for us the behavior and destinies of godly and ungodly folks. The godly or righteous person does not…

(1) Listen to those who leave God out of their lives. Six years ago, I was teaching Psychology in a community college nearby. I noticed that my three sections each semester were loaded with the maximum of 35 students. I asked the department secretary why I had so many students when other adjunct professors had fewer. She told me it was because the kids had learned I am a Christian. Students knew of non-Christian professors who would ridicule them publically for their faith. They assumed I was safe, so they piled in. They wisely did not want to listen to—or be graded by—those who exclude God from their lives.

(2) Exclusively hang out with the godless. We need to interact with those who do not know Jesus so them we can tell them about Him. But if we hang only with them, we are likely to be brought down by our associations. Remember when we were either raising teens or when we were a teen. We knew that associating with “bad actors” would probably lead us into trouble. My college students who tried to quit smoking for their “Self-Change Project” I assigned each semester, soon learned they had to stop hanging out with the smokers in order to truly kick the habit. Associating with smokers just continually tempted them to smoke again.

(3) Join in with the jeering of atheists. Similar to point (2), it is all too easy to find yourself a victim of group think; that is of conforming with the dominant views of the group and becoming contemptuous of God if you hang out with a crowd who expresses contempt toward Him.

What the godly person does is meditate on Scripture. This word, meditate literally means chew the cud, like a cow. The godly person reads the Bible carefully and over and over again. Each reading is made with a view toward understanding both what it meant to the folks living in Jesus’ time as well as what it means for us now. As you read a passage, askyourself, “What is God saying to me through this passage?”

The godly person also derives his/her blessings from being planted in Christ, or being born again. This keeps us connected to the vineàJesus.

This keeps us drinking in living wateràJesus. The psalm goes on to state that the ungodly person does not do these things. The ungodly person does not stay connected to Jesus. The ungodly, or the wicked, therefore, will be judged and will perish.

So, the question Psalm 1 provokes is, “Are we going to live like godly persons or ungodly persons?” The choice is ours.

In 1 John 5:9-13, the Apostle John makes it abundantly clear that the key to eternal life is Jesus. We have life if we trust in the testimonies of 3 kinds of witnesses:

(1) People All of those who lived with and followed Jesus. 500 eyewitnesses encountered Him after His resurrection, and countless thousands during His years of earthly ministry. They knew He was/is the heaven-sent Son of God.

(2) God the Holy Spirit He was present at Jesus’ baptism (in the form of a dove hovering over His head), and at work in all of His miracles.

(3) God the Father He audibly affirmed Jesus at both His baptism and on the Mount of Transfiguration. He also restored Him to life in the Resurrection and empowered His ascension into Heaven.

According to John, we have life if we believe in Jesus Christ (verses11-12) And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life.

This lesson is straightforward and clear. We can depend upon Jesus to honor our faith in Him. If we love and believe in Jesus, we are Heaven-bound.

Finally, in our Gospel lesson, John17:6-19, we are eavesdroppers on Jesus’ great intercessory prayer for us believers. He has completed the Last Supper and is probably on His way to the Mount of Olives when He prays to the Father for us (obviously out loud so that John could overhear).

He reports to His Father that He has been obedient to complete His mission: the Rescue Plan. He has said to His followers what the Father told Him to say. He has taught them what the Father told Him to teach. While He came to save the world, He is here praying only for those who believe in Him.

Verse 9 I pray for them [believers]. I am not praying for the world.

Amazingly, we are among His final thoughts before He goes to the Cross.

He also asks the Father to protect us…not to take us out of the world because we have ministry to do; but, rather, to be kept safe from the Evil One and from wicked people while we remain here. He asks the Father to sanctify us, consecrate us. Set us apart as those who believe in the Truth, the Truth He taught us. Jesus makes it clear that He continues to intercede for us and that we have a mission to the world. He defends us to the Father against the accusations of the Devil. He prays for our success with godly living, and in sharing with others what Jesus has done for us.

I hope that you, like me, find this tremendously comforting! Who better to plead our cause than Jesus? As Paul says in Romans 8:31à…If God is for us, who can be against us? And again, in verse 35àWhoshall separate us from the love of Christ? These are both rhetorical questions. They don’t require an answer because the answer is obvious:

no one!

We can depend upon our God because He meets our needs, both spoken and unspoken. He can and does lead us to make wise decisions. He teaches us, through His Word, how to remain connected to the Source of eternal life. He gives us eternal life when we choose to believe in Jesus. Jesus intercedes for us daily before the throne of His Father.

​We can, like Bishop Stanway—and many Christ-followers just like him—depend upon the Lord. Thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord, Jesus Christ! Alleluia, alleluia!

©️2021 Rev. Dr. Sherry Adams

Posted on by Cheryl Norman

The Saving Power of God

Pastor Sherry’s message for March 14, 2021

Scriptures: Num 21:4-9; Ps 107:1-3, 17-22; Eph 2:1-10; Jn 3:14-21

Stories are told—true stories—of both Queen Elizabeth and Queen Victoria pardoning someone who had incurred the death penalty. In Queen Elizabeth’s case, the queen was traveling by barge on July 17, 1579. Not realizing her majesty was cruising through the area, a young man named Thomas Appletree was firing off shots into the air to impress his friends. Unfortunately for him, one of his bullets came within 6 feet of the queen, seriously wounding one of her rowers. The queen offered encouragement to the wounded man while young Appletree was summarily arrested by her guards and later condemned to death. Just as Appletreewas being led to the gallows, however, a pardon arrived from the queengraciously sparing his life. We don’t know her motivations. Perhaps she realized it had been a careless accident, “no harm, no foul.” Or maybe she had an appreciation for the folly of youth. Whatever the case, she let the guy go free.

In Queen Victoria’s case (just 18 years old when she came to the throne in 1837), she was asked to sign some documents, one of which concerned the execution of a criminal. She was reluctant to do this and asked, “And must I be a party to his death?” The Prime Minister answered, “I fear it is so, unless Your Majesty desires to exercise her royal prerogative of mercy.” In a surprising move for someone so young and so new to power, she responded, “As an expression of the spirit in which I desire to rule, I will exercise my royal prerogative.” She wrote, “Pardoned” on the document, and the man was freed.

​In both examples, neither fellow to be executed had any power to save himself.  Instead, both were pardoned by the sovereign authority—really by the saving grace–of God and of his compassionate monarch.

​Our scripture lessons today all attest to the saving power ​of our God:

Numbers 21:4-9 Recounts the 8th and final incidence of the Israelites grumbling against God during their desert wanderings.

No doubt they were tired of trudging across desert terrain, of the unchanging wilderness landscape, and of the food—marvelous though it was! Even a daily ration of steak or lobster would lose its appeal if that were all we had to eat.  So, they declare (v.5)àWe detest this miserable food. Despite the fact that it tasted good (like honey and coriander); was so nutritious that they had no diseases, cancers, or flues for 40 years; and they didn’t have to produce it by digging or hunting. They simply had to gather the flakes from the ground each morning.  Falsely asserting that they had it so good back in Egypt, they grumble one too many times.

Their behavior is what we might call “snarky,” or “snaky,” and certainly demonstrated a lack of gratitude to God. So, in an apt judgment for their lack of appreciation, the Lord sets loose poisonous snakes among them. No doubt these snakes bit the worst of the complainers first, and then struck fear into everyone else. (I mean, think of it! No chairs in the desert to jump up on to get away. No guns to shoot the things! YIKES!) But, when they beg Moses for help, God also graciously provides a curious snake-bite remedy: He has Moses fashion a snake out of bronze and affix it to a wooden pole, which he raises up so it can be seen. He then tells them that if they are bitten, they can look upon the snake on the pole and be healed.

This incident and God’s antidote are actually a foreshadowing, or a typology of Jesus: The snake represents the peoples’ sins, ingratitude and rebellion. The snake—sin–is nailed to tree, branch, or cross. (In the Hebrew, all three words are the same. Any portion of a tree, even a twig, was called a tree.) Jesus, on the Cross, exchanges our sins for His right-standing with God the Father.

Today’s Gospel, John 3:14-15, references and interprets this Old Testament event. Jesus says, Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in Him may have eternal life. In other words, as Jesus explains to the Pharisee Nicodemus–and to us–it will be/was necessary for Him to go to the Cross and to die for our sins. We are set free of the penalty for our sins (death) by looking on Jesus with eyes of faith.

John goes on to say, (3:16) For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, so that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. Notice it says that God loves all, but only saves those who believe in Jesus. Under the Old Covenant, we paid the price for our own sins. We raised or purchased an animal for sacrifice. Our sins were transferred to that animal, which the priest then slaughtered in our presence and burned on the altar. We left sin-free until we sinned again and had to do the same thing over and over. But under the New Covenant, we are forever saved by the power of God through our faith in the sacrifice of Jesus on our behalf. Please don’t miss the symbolism: Sin (not Jesus) is the snake! But through Jesus, our sin is nailed to the Cross of Christ–nothing else has to die and we are pardoned.

In Ephesians 2:1-10 Paul wants us to be mindful of the fact that we have no power, within ourselves, to save ourselves. Just like the two Brits who were saved by the two young queens, we are guilty of being sinners.

Paul writes, (verses 1-3, Peterson’s The Message) It wasn’t so long ago that you were mired in that old stagnant life of sin. You let the world, which doesn’t know the first thing about living, tell you how to live. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience. We all did it, all of us doing what we felt like doing when we felt like doing it, all of us in the same boat. It’s a wonder God didn’t lose His temper and do away with the whole lot of us. Some scholars believe that, without Jesus, we are all failures, spiritual zombies, lacking any ability to bring ourselves back to life.

But the great Good News is that (v.5)àInstead [of doing away with or executing us], immense in mercy and with an incredible love, He [God] embraced us. He took our sin-dead lives and made us alive in Christ. He did all this on His own, with no help from us! Or, as Paul goes on to explain in verses 8-9 (NIV) For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works so that no one can boast.

Another of my heroes of the Christian faith is Martin Luther, the German reformer in the 1500’s. He had an exacting, critical father who wanted him to be a lawyer. Luther aspired to be a Catholic priest instead.

To his father’s huge disappointment, he did get ordained, but suffered from depression—probably somewhat due to having never received his earthly father’s approval. Luther feared he could never be good enough to please God. It is recorded that he read verses 8-9 in Ephesians 2 one day and had a “Eureka moment!” He realized he didn’t have to work so hard to attain God’s favor. No daily confessions–apparently he had attended confession 2-3 times a day trying to overcome his sinfulness. No repeated praying of the rosary day after day and no need to beat himself with a hand-held whip to atone. Instead, he finally realized that God the Father is not like his continually disapproving earthly father. Because of his faith in Christ Jesus, he had God’s favor. Because of our faith in Jesus Christ, we have God’s favor.

Again, Peterson paraphrases Paul so beautifully here (vv.4-7) Now God has us where He wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus. Saving is all His idea, and all His work. All we do is trust Him enough to let Him do it. It’s God’s gift from start to finish! We don’t play the major role. If we did, we’d probably go around bragging that we’d done the whole thing! No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. God loves us, but His holiness and His perfect justice require that we confess our sins to and verbalize our need for Him. He has the power and the grace to then forgive us due to Jesus’ atoning death on the Cross, and to (pardon) save us.

Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22 spells out for us our appropriate response: In verse 1 the psalmist says we want to give thanks to the Lord because He is good to us and loves us. In verses 17-23 he exhorts us not to be rebellious and ungrateful, like the Israelites in the desert. In essence, we are urged to recognize God’s saving power.

The stories of the pardons of the two British queens are very grace-filled, are they not? They were gracious and magnanimous enough to eliminate the men’s punishment. But let’s remember that our God has done them one better. He didn’t just pardon us. He pardoned us thentook our sentence, the death penalty, so that justice was fulfilled and we wouldn’t have to pay the price There’s a contemporary Christian song with the following, relevant lyrics:

Amazing love, oh what sacrifice,

The Son of God given for me.

My debt He paid and my death He died

That I might live.

Thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!

C 2021 Rev. Dr. Sherry Adams

Posted on by Cheryl Norman

We Do Not Lose Heart!

Pastor Sherry’s Message for February 14, 2021

Scriptures: 2 Kings 2:1-12; Ps 50:1-6; 2 Corinthians 4:1-6; Mark 9:2-9

               This past Wednesday, I preached the funeral of D.W. Williams, a 94 year old member of this congregation.  After the service ended, one of his nephews—a man about my age—approached me for conversation.  It turns out he works for Franklin Graham’s Samaritan’s Purse organization in North Carolina.  He told me he is in charge of the distribution of the Christmas shoeboxes we help with annually to a large section of Africa.  In fact, on his last trip over, he contracted the Covid virus in Rwanda, but said he got excellent medical care.  We chatted at length about how fabulously God works through those gift boxes to bring so many children to a saving belief in Jesus Christ.  My particular favorite tale was of the young boy who desperately wanted a black shirt and a black cap.  Those two items were among the bounty in the shoebox he was given.  Only God could make such a thing happen!

         From there, he segued into telling me that not every member of his family at the funeral service was a professing Christian.  This is often the case, so I was not surprised.  It almost seems easier to reach children in Africa, who have so little–with some small gifts—than privileged and highly educated adults in the U.S.

         Paul speaks to this phenomenon—and our response to it—  in his 2nd Corinthians (4:1-6) passage today.  Paul begins by affirming that we have all been given the ministry of proclaiming the Gospel.  We may do this by preaching and teaching, like me, or like Ken and Jenn who evangelize in Eastern Europe each summer.  Or we may share our faith with friends who are open to it, through conversations or writing books—like Jenn or like my son, David.  Or we can reach others by writing and singing worship songs, like Matt Redman, Chris Tomlin, or other contemporary Christian singers and composers.  Or we may witness to others by simply trying to live out a life pleasing to God, letting what we do and what we don’t do be our model to others. I don’t believe we are called to stand on street corners and wave our Bibles at passersby, or to go door to door to try to convey the Gospel.  Jesus didn’t do this.  He spoke to those who were open to His message, and he told the disciples to share with those who were interested, but to shake the dust off their feet and move on when they encountered those who were not. 

         Next, Paul says our ministry is best served if we live lives that demonstrate Jesus’ transforming effect on us.  Listen to how Peterson’s The Message paraphrases v.2:  We refuse to wear masks and play games.  We don’t maneuver and manipulate behind the scenes.  And we don’t twist God’s Word to suit ourselves.  Rather, we keep everything we do and say out in the open, the whole truth on display, so that those who want to can see and judge for themselves in the presence of God.  In other words, we are not hypocrites.  We are not posers or fakers.  We believe the Word we present.  The fellow at the funeral said he could tell I believed in Jesus as I preached.   Though we’re not perfect, the way we live should, as much as possible, reflect well on Christ.

         However we go about it, Paul says (v.1)…we do not lose heart.   We don’t look at our lack of results and give up.  I could tell by watching peoples’ faces and by observing their body language (at the funeral) who was open to the Gospel and who was not.  We remember that even Jesus did not convince everyone in His day.  We remember that we are called to share our faith, but the results are up to the individual and to God.

         And we don’t contort God’s Word to justify things we want that God does not condone.  We don’t add to God’s Word.  For example, you’ve probably heard folks say that, “God helps those who help themselves,” but this proverb comes from Benjamin Franklin, not Scripture.  In addition, we don’t take anything away from it, even if    we don’t always understand or like God’s message.  For example, our culture is at odds with God on the issues of marriage, life, and homosexuality.  God has said that marriage is between one man and one woman, only.  Similarly, God is the giver of life and we are not free to justify the killing of unborn children.  Finally, I have read Romans chapter 1 in the original Greek.  It is very clear there that God is opposed to homosexual acts—both those done by men and by women–just as He is to heterosexual acts of fornication.  I cannot honor God and “shack up” with a man.  The only legitimate place for sexual activity is within marriage.  We must remember, though, that we love the sinner while not excusing the sin.

         Paul goes on to say (vv.3-4) that not everyone is going to understand God’s message.  Paul blames “the god of this world” for blinding people to the truth of the Gospel.  He writes, The god of this age [Satan] has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the Gospel of the glory of Christ who is the image of God.  Satan applies scales to their eyes so they cannot see/perceive the Truth.

Haven’t you heard nonbelievers say, “I read the Bible but I cannot understand it.”  Or, “There are things in the Bible that I just cannot believe.”   When we don’t understand, we ask the Holy Spirit to enlighten us (which is one of His jobs), or to lead us to a pastor or a Bible study to help us get it.  I recommend any Beth Moore study, or for folks to tune into Dr. David Jeremiah or to Dr. J. Vernon McGee, both of whom are excellent at explaining God’s Word.  Again, as Peterson presents it, If our message is obscure to anyone, it’s not because we’re holding back in any way.  No, it’s because these other people are looking or going the wrong way and refuse to give it serious attention.  All they have eyes for is the fashionable god of darkness.  They think he can give them what they want, and that they won’t have to bother believing a Truth they can’t see.  They’re stone-blind to the dayspring brightness of the Message that shines with Christ, who gives us the best picture of God we’ll ever get. 

         Consider today’s Gospel lesson (Mark 9:2-9): John, James, and Peter actually get to see Jesus in His glorified or heavenly state.  Scales removed, or vision transformed, they see Jesus as God’s Divine Son.  There is an otherworldly glow or aura about Him.  He is encompassed with bright, almost blinding light—not light that shines down on Him but light that shines forth from within Him.  If that weren’t enough, they encounter God the Father.  Much as He did in the 40 years of the Israelites’ desert wanderings, He manifests as cloud and fire or bright light.  Additionally, He speaks and they hear, Mark 9:7: Then a cloud appeared and enveloped them and a voice came from the cloud:  This is my Son, Whom I love.  Listen to Him!  Literally, John, James, and Peter see the Light of Christ.  They hear God’s voice and they later, after Jesus’ death and resurrection, faithfully recount this experience.

         Back to Paul, in verse 7 he says, But we have this treasure [the Gospel] in jars of clay [our ordinary/ human minds and bodies] to show that this all surpassing power is from God and not from us.  We are simply messengers of the Gospel to others.  How amazing of God to trust its transmission to us!

         In verses 8-9, Paul reiterates the troubles we may encounter when we share Christ with nonbelievers (as per Peterson): You know for yourselves that we are not much to look at.  [Again, the power of the Gospel comes from God, not us.]  We’ve been surrounded and battered by troubles, but we’re not demoralized; we’re not sure what to do, but we know that God knows what to do; we’ve been spiritually terrorized, but God hasn’t left our side; we’ve been thrown down, but we haven’t broken.  What they did to Jesus, they do to us—trial and torture, mockery and murder; what Jesus did among them, He does in us—He lives!

         The nephew at the funeral commended me for preaching the Gospel even though unbelievers were present.  As I stated last week, I can’t not preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  It was my first ordination vow.

It is also commended to us by Scripture (2 Timothy 4:2), where Paul tells the young pastor Timothy, Preach the Word; be prepared, in season and out of season [the Gospel is clearly out of season in our country today, isn’t it?]: correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction.  For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine.  Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.  They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.

         I believe that time is now.  Many, even in our denomination, have abandoned the wisdom of God for their own faulty perceptions.  In over 40 years of counseling others, I have heard people justify all kinds of sinful things: murder, theft, not repaying debts, committing adultery, and even abusing children or the elderly.  Human beings are remarkably good at justifying whatever they want to do.  But we have a standard, and that standard is the Word of God, the Bible.  May we not be justifiers of immoral behavior, our own or that of others.  May we stand fast for the Gospel!  May we not lose heart, but continue to place our trust in Jesus Christ.  Amen!

©2021 Rev. Dr. Sherry Adams

Posted on by Cheryl Norman

Our God Does Not Forget Us!

Pastor Sherry’s Message for February 7, 2021

Scriptures: Isa 40:21-31; Ps 147:1-11; 1 Cor 9:16-23; Mk 1:29-30

If we were having a conversation, I would ask you to tell me if you have heard this story before.  But, we’re not, so please bear with me if this is a repeat.  It’s the truestory of the Cambodian man whose testimony I heard in a college chapel service and found to be riveting!

In the 1970’s, he was a 16 YO brilliant student, already in medical school at that young age.  One day, he and his friends were recreating in a city park when truckloads of Kmer Rouge soldiers (under the dictator PolPot) descended upon them.  He witnessed his friends to either side of him being shot to death. (They held University ID’s, and the communists were bent on getting rid of all intellectuals, doctors, etc.).  He was spared because—through a bureaucratic snafu, he had as yet no university ID [1st miracle].  Nevertheless, he was taken to prison camp with many others.  The word had spread there that they were all to be executed (You may remember a movie which documented those events called, “The Killing Fields”).  He found himself blindfolded and lined up and realized the executions were being carried out to his left.  He said he cried out to God, “If You exist, spare my life and I will serve you for the remainder of it.”  By a 2nd miracle, they ceased the executions just before they reached him.

         In a 3rd miracle, he escaped into the jungle.  While running by night and hiding during the day, he met a fellow he called, “The Jungle Man,” a 4th miracle.  “The Jungle Man” was a Christian who shared with him his faith in Jesus.  He taught him one Bible verse–probably John 3:16.  (Just think, if you were running for your life, which one Bible verse would you have wanted to have memorized?)  They had to separate for safety, but the Cambodian gradually made it to a refugee camp across the border into Thailand.  In a 5th miracle, he encountered “The Jungle Man” at the camp community water faucet.  “The Jungle Man” then taught him another Bible verse.  Daily, he learned a new verse and shared with whoever-camped-in-his-area would listen. No one had a Bible, but many were hungry to learn of Christ.  There is no telling how many were saved by learning those verses and sharing the love of Jesus with other refugees.  Not so ironically, they took in Living Water around a simple water faucet.

         In a 6th miracle, the Cambodian found sanctuary in the US, in Denver, Colorado.  There, he completed college and seminary—though he didn’t share how that had come about.  Nevertheless, it is clear he honored his promise to God to become a pastor.  I have no idea how many Cambodian refugees found their way to that Denver seminary, but in a 7th miracle, the Cambodian man met there and married a Cambodian Christian woman.

         They completed their studies and returned to Cambodia to preach the Gospel to their countrymen (now a communist country).  They were both arrested on arrival, imprisoned, and denied much food or water.  Like Paul in our 1st Corinthians passage, he believed he could not stand to not preach the Gospel.  Like Jeremiah, he felt his very bones would have to cry out God’s word.  His confinement left him despondent and frustrated with God.  As he grumbled one day, his dear wife reminded him, “Husband, didn’t Paul preach to the walls when he was imprisoned?”  So he began to preach to the walls.  It turned out they were bugged!  Several communist guards who were listening were actually converted! [8th miracle].  In a 9th miracle, they came to him and said,”We can’t let you go, but is there something else we can do for you?”  I might have asked for more food or water, but in his zeal, he asked them to bring people to his prison door so he could preach to them.  He reported that the guards actually went out into the streets and brought people in by gun point!  [10th miracle]  Eventually, he and his wife were released [11th miracle],  and he founded a Christian Seminary in Cambodia. By the time I heard him, he had been leading teaching crusades for Jesus in soccer stadiums in Cambodia, still a communist country [12th miracle].

         I was very touched by his testimony (which I heard in the late 1990’s). It was clear to me that God protected and provided for him over and over again in miraculous ways.  He knew for certain that God had saved him, several times over.   The Cambodian man’s experiences are dramatic and extraordinary, but as our Scriptures today attest, we too can be assured of God’s love, grace, provision, and protection.  Let’s focus on 2 of them:

               1.) Isaiah 40:21-31.  Isaiah is probably my favorite book in the Old Testament.  It is certainly quoted in the New Testament more than any other O.T. book.  Beginning with Chapter 40, the Prophet Isaiah is foretelling the return of the Israelite remnant from their Babylonian Captivity.   Now scholars believe Isaiah prophesied from 750-700BC.  In previous chapters, he predicts the Southern Kingdom, including Jerusalem, will be taken intocaptivity because they abandoned God and worshipped pagan dieties.  God then removed His protection from them and allowed the Babylonians to capture and deport them in 586BC.  Now, in chapter 40, Isaiah predicts that 70 years later God will bring them back home.  This had been meant as a punishment for their spiritual adultery.  In His mercy, however, God fully meant to later restore them.  In fact,God assures them in this message that, when the time comes, they will be able to pack up and set out in confidence.  WHY?

         a.)Because of His power and His sovereignty.  Afterall, He is (v.22) enthroned above the circle of the earth.  The sky and its stars are His canopy, His tent.  In Verses 22-24, he says essentially that God rules and overrules the decisions and the actions of rulers.  They only come to power because He allows it.  And when their reign ends, they disappear like dandelion seeds dispersed by wind.

         b.) And because He does not forget about us or fall asleep on the job! In verse 27, we learn thatGod knows where they are and what they need (He knows this about us too).  In verse 28, he proclaims that The Lord is the everlasting God.  This means He’s not dead! He’s not even retired!

He hasn’t abandoned us or left us to fend for ourselves.  Psalm 121:4 echoes this:  He who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep….Later, in verses 7-8, the psalmist declares, The Lord will keep you from all harm—He will watch over your life; the Lord will watch over your coming and going both now and forevermore.  I don’t know about you, but I find deep comfort and reassurance in these passages.

         c.) Finally, if we wait upon Him (hope/trust in Him), God will renew our strength.  Isaiah 40:29 says, He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak.  And in verse 30 (saving the best for last; this is one verse I would memorize to share), But those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength.  They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not grow faint.  Do you know that God gave the Israelites strength to walk back to Jerusalem from Babylon, a journey on foot of 1678 miles!  He did the same for the Cambodian pastor.  Like Paul, the Cambodian fellow felt compelled to preach the Gospel.  Like Paul, God gave the Cambodian the power to preach and an audience to preach to.  So too can we assume He will also strengthen us if we ask.

         2.) Mark 1:29-39.  Look at the renewed strength Jesus gave to Peter’s wife’s mother!  She was sick, He healed her, and she popped right up and fixed Him supper.  From the perspective of one laid low this past week by a reaction to the Covid vaccine, I can now appreciate more fully how complete was her healing.  I spent two days in bed recuperating, while she immediately felt good enough to get up from bed and cook.

         The same was true for Jesus.  He taught at the Synagogue, chased out some demons, then He healed untold numbers of sick and demonized after sundown (once the Sabbath had ended).  Surely He was tired!  But rather than sleeping in late the next day, He got up early and went off alone to pray.  He knew that it was His connection to His Father and the Holy Spirit that renewed His strength.  Sure, He was/is God and we are not.  But He was/is human too, with human needs and frailties like ours.  I think Mark is emphasizing for us what Jesus modeled:   the necessity of a prayer connection with Our Heavenly Father, our Source and our Strength.                                                  

         Over the course of this next week, I urge you to focus on the encouragement our God gives us for those times we grow weary or overwhelmed.  We tend to think, “I can’t!” or “It’s awful!”  and forget that God is able.  Like with a deck of cards, pick a worry, any worry:

         a.) Your health; the Covid or other illnesses or concerns.

         b.) Your finances; the direction of the economy;

         c.) The moral decline of our culture;

         d.) The bad behavior or poor choices of a loved one;

         e.) The bad behavior or poor choices of our political leaders;

         f.) A mental condition or an addictive pattern with which you currently                     struggle, etc.

Let’s remember that none of these issues is a surprise to God. None of these is too difficult for Him to handle.  None of these is outside His expertise or His control.  This week, let’s practice trusting in the God of Isaiah, of St. Paul and of the Cambodian pastor.  Our God is never asleep at the wheel!  He knows what is going on in our lives and what we need.  When we trust in Him to provide and protect, He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak.

Thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord, Jesus Christ.  Alleluia!  Alleluia!

©2021 Rev. Dr. Sherry Adams

Posted on by Cheryl Norman

Let There Be Light

Pastor Sherry’s Message for January 10, 2021

Scriptures: Gen 1:1-5; Ps 29; Acts 19:1-7; Mk 1:4-11

Genesis 1:1-5 Imagine, for just a moment, that there were no light at all.  We would experience that deep darkness in which, like the blind, we could not see anything around us.  If you have ever visited one of the big underground caverns, you may have experienced them turning off all of the lights.  You would remember that you could not even see your hands in front of your face!  How disorienting!  We wouldn’t be able to see obstacles or dangers, like drops in the floor, dangers, or evil-doers.  We might find ourselves becoming very afraid.   This was exactly the situation before God began His great acts of Creation (but of course, no one but the Trinity was there).

Don’t you wish, however, that God had chosen to share more with us about the Creation events?  His account is remarkably brief…one chapter, 31 verses.  It is an abridged, “Reader’s Digest” version of what transpired.  The story is told that a newspaper editor got onto one of his writers for being too wordy in an article he was preparing.  “Cut it down,” he rumbled to the man.  “After all,” he continued, “the story of the creation was told in Genesis in 282 words.”  The reporter shot back, “Yes, and I’ve always thought we could have been saved a lot of arguments later if someone had just written another couple hundred.”

Nonetheless, God has given us the essentials:

1.) He created all things;

2.) He created them out of nothing (ex nihilo; He used no raw materials);

3.) Because He made all things, He is thus sovereign over, or more powerful than, all things.  Most pagan religions deify nature  (inventing gods of trees, rivers, the sun and moon, etc.).  But these 1st verses of Genesis tell us that all of nature was created by God. 

 4.) Additionally, verse 3 tells us He first created light, but does not reference the sun or the moon and stars.  Those familiar forms of light were not created until the 4th day.  Let There Be Light!  So, what light is He talking about? 

I think Rev. 22:3-5, describing the New Jerusalem, gives us a clue. No longer will there be any curse.  The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and His servants will serve Him.  They will see His face, and His name will be on their foreheads.  There will be no more night.  They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light.  So, either God shone His light into the darkness; or He may have been creating morality, good vs. evil; or He may have been creating the dawn of enlightenment/knowledge, the beginning of understanding God’s place in the universe as well as our own.  We really don’t know which—until we arrive in Heaven, it will remain what the nuns in my four years of Catholic Girls School referred to as a “holy mystery.”

         Psalm 29 Is a psalm of praise to God written by King David.  In it, David extols the power of God’s voice, which sounds to him like a thunderstorm.  God’s voice is powerful enough to break the cedars of Lebanon (the largest trees of that day, perhaps like our Sequoias).  God’s voice is powerful like lightening.  God’s voice is powerful like an earthquake.  David doesn’t directly say so, but we can certainly begin to comprehend the power contained in God’s voice.  It rumbles like thunder or like the roar of turbulent seas.  We know the Israelites heard God’s voice and were so frightened that they then said to Moses, in effect, “You talk to Him; His voice scares us.”  Certainly his voice would have to be powerful to be able to simply speak creation into existence.  This week a friend, Isabella, told me she had heard God’s voice.  She had made a total mess of her life when she was younger and was very distressed when she asked the Lord, “Are you there?”  (She was worried that He might have abandoned her because she had abandoned Him.)  She said she immediately heard, right by her ear, a soft, “caramel” voice say, “Yes.”  God may often thunder, but He also occasionally speaks softly.

         Because of His great power, God—David assures us in verse 10– …is enthroned as King forever.  He is eternal.  We can ignore Him if we choose, but He will never be replaced, dethroned, declared incompetent, or suffer a coup.  No one will successfully invoke the 23rd amendment against Him. Back in the ‘70’s or ‘80’s, they tried to say He was dead. I remember a Time Magazine cover that proclaimed, “God is dead!”  But they were wrong! We can depend upon Him being very alive and very much available to us.  And, verse 11àWe can depend upon Him to give us strength, and to bless us with His peace—even in the midst of political turmoil, plagues like the Covid, widespread fear and unrest, etc.

         Building on the fact that God is our creator (Genesis 1), and adding in Psalm 29, we can come to Him in faith, no matter our dilemmas; we can depend upon Him to hear and to help; and we can trust that He is both powerful and in charge, no matter what is going on in our families, communities, nation, or even internationally.  He is the Light of the World.  Let There Be Light!

         Acts 19:1-7 Doesn’t appear to fit with the Scriptures just cited.  Paul is evangelizing the city of Ephesus (3rd Mission trip). He had cruised by earlier, as he was winding up his 2nd journey.  But this time, he stays there for 2 years, teaching and preaching Jesus Christ.  When he arrives this second time, he finds some believers.  They had been brought to Christ by the preaching of Apollos.  Apparently Apollos had only learned of John the Baptist’s baptism of repentance, the preparation for Jesus’ coming.  So Paul asks if they have also been baptized into the Holy Spirit.  They didn’t know what this was.   In a sense reminiscent of “we don’t know what we don’t know,” they had not heard of Jesus because Apollos did not yet know of Jesus.  Thus, they were not saved, nor were they “in Christ.  Additionally, they were unaware of the Holy Spirit.  This, then, is where Paul begins with them.  Let There Be Light!  (the Light of Enlightenment).  Paul teaches them and then baptizes them into the Holy Spirit.  Even as “baby Christians,” they begin to speak in tongues and to prophesy.

         We too, if we are in Christ and have been filled with the Holy Spirit, can demonstrate the gifts of the HS.  God has Let There Be Light in and through us.  In other words, our all-powerful God empowers us to strengthen His church.  He empowers us to have a powerful impact on others.  As Scripture says, God is able to do immeasurably more than all we can ask or imagine due to His power at work in us. 

This past Tuesday, I had my annual sonogram on my liver done at Shands Hospital in Gainesville.  A radiology tech there told me that benign cysts like mine are with aperson from birth and that they do not reduce in size.  However, my cyst has decreased by about half in the past two years.  She asked me what I had done to reduce it.  I responded that I had done nothing.  The unexpected improvement is due to Jesus acting through your prayers for me.  As an obvious non-believer, she was skeptical, but perhaps God will usemy testimony (my healthier liver) and your prayers to bring her to Christ!  Let There Be Light!

         In our Gospel lesson, Mk 1:4-11, John the Baptist baptizes for repentance from sin, announces Jesus is coming, and then baptizes Jesus.  Notice, he has been heralding the coming of Christ when Jesus shows up.  God thus demonstrates that John the Baptist is a legit prophet. He predicts what will happen, and it happens.  By the power of God, Jesus has taken on human flesh, humbles His sinless self, identifies with our sinfulness, and agrees to be baptized.

         The other two members of the Trinity show up as well:  The Holy Spirit in the form of a dove descends upon Him.  Then God the Father speaks from heaven His approval of Jesus.  Let There Be Light!  This Jesus is someone really special!  Mark 1:11 records the Father declaringàYou are My Son, whom I love; with You I am well pleased.  Our powerful, Creator God has so loved us that (John 3:16)…He gave His only begotten Son, so that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life.

         This 2021 New Year, let’s not allow our attention to be focused on the events of this world, but praying for the world, let us focus on the power and strength of our God!  Let there be the light of Christ in our lives.  Let His light shine through us so that others catch it.  Lord, Let There Be Light in our dark world!  Let There Be Light!

©2021 Rev. Dr. Sherry Adams

Posted on by Cheryl Norman

We Can’t Outgive God

Pastor Sherry’s Message for December 20, 2020

Scriptures: 2 Sam 7:1-11, 16; Ps89:1-4, 19-26; Lk 1:26-38

How many of you are aware of the Jan Karon series about the town of Mitford, in western North Carolina, and the pastor there named Father (Fr.) Timothy Kavanaugh?  Karon has now published 14 books in this series.  They are “clean,” Christ-centered, and heart-warming stories. In seminary, many of us hoped to serve at a parish like Mitford (the church there is called “Lord’s Chapel”).  We would have done much better, however, had we hoped we would be more like Fr. Tim himself.  Karon’s Fr. Tim is modest and self-effacing.  He is honest but also tactful.  He is inordinately patient with the elderly, children, and even unruly pets.  He displays a great sense of humor.  He has a pastor’s heart for his people, and he clearly loves Almighty God!

I recently read the 12th book in the series titled Somewhere Safe with Somebody Good, and what I found to be most noteworthy is Fr. Tim’s remarkable prayer life.  Fr. Tim frequently lifts up the needs of his parishioners.  He prays with them, he prays for them while engaged in other activities, and his favorite come-back for a prayer request is, “Consider it done!”  A Bible-believing Episcopal priest, he has memorized many of his denomination’s beautiful prayers called “Collects.”  Quite a few were written by Archbishop Cranmer following the Protestant Reformation in the mid-1500’s.  Fr. Tim wakes up and ends his days reciting them.  He praises God when things go well.  He often prays what he calls the prayer that never fails: Lord, thy will be done….

Isn’t it true that most of us pray for help when our world is looking grim?  Or we pray to know God’s will when facing a big decision.  We may even remember to thank and praise Him for the wonderful moments, the miraculous events, the blessings in our lives.  But do we ever think to ask Him what He’d have us to do bless Him?  “Lord, how can we give back to You?”  Or, “What could we do that would please You?”

Today’s Old Testament lesson (2 Sam 7:1-11+16) sheds some light on what tends to happen when someone wants to gift God.

We are presented with King David, who lived about 1,000 years before the 1st Coming of Jesus.  Though he was a member of the tribe of Judah, he united all12 tribes to form the nation of Israel.  He also established Jerusalem as his capital.  With God’s help, he subdued all of Israel’s enemies and, at the time of this passage, is experiencing an unprecedented period of peace.  Furthermore, he brought the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem and danced before it, worshipping God as it entered the city.  He composed some great worship music, many examples of which are preserved for us as Psalms.  As you can imagine, our passage finds him very grateful to God for having blessed him in all of these ways.

My favorite Bible Commentator, Dr. J. Vernon McGee, suggests it might have been on a rare stormy or rainy day that the king spent some time and energy comparing his situation in his palace with that of God’s in the Ark.  He may have fretted, “Here I am sitting in this lovely cedar-lined palace, dry and warm, while God’s Ark sits out in the rain.  That is hardly right.  Why don’t I build God a house?”  Truly, the “tent” which held the Ark was not covered.  Nevertheless, David doesn’t pause to ask God if this is something that will please or bless Him.  He just assumes it will.  To King David, it probably seemed like a slam-dunk.

Even the prophet, Nathan, agreed with the idea, saying essentially, “Great concept!  Run with it!”  But God grabs ahold of Nathan and says, Go back!  Tell David I said “no.”  Furthermore, God adds, whoever said I needed a house?  For years, God had lived in a tent!  It has the advantages of being mobile, flexible, and portable (Other people groups in that day believed their local gods were confined to one geographic area; but the Hebrew God went all over the place).  God is saying, essentially, I appreciate the thought, but I will not be contained by humankind.

Afterall, He’d manifested as a cloud by day, and a pillar of fire by night.  When He gave directions for them to build the “Tent of Meeting”—in which He met with and spoke to Moses and Joshua– He was present but not confined by the tent.  All of this was so until God allowed David’s son, Solomon, to build His Temple; and until informs us in John 1:14–The Word became flesh and dwelt (tented; pitched His tent) among us–a tent of flesh!

God denied the gesture but honored David’s intention.  He then proceeds to give David more than he could have asked for or imagined.

  1. First, He calls David “Servant.”  This is actually a Biblical term of endearment indicating a special relationship between a person and the Lord.  Typically it is used only with some patriarchs, the prophets, the nation of Israel, and Jesus.
  2. Next he tells Nathan, “Tell David I will build him a house” (dynasty).  David already has a luxurious palace.  The word House is bayith in Hebrew.  It has 3 meanings:  (1) David’s palace (vv.1-2); (2)Yahweh’s Temple (vv. 5-7, 13); and (3)David’s dynasty (vv.11, 16, 18, 19, 25-27, 2 times in 29).  This is the only royal house that the Lord would ever sanction in perpetuity.
  3. God then sets out the terms of His Covenant with David.  God promises:

    1.) I will make your name great (famous/renoun)

   2.) I will provide a place for My people;

  3.) I will give you rest from your enemies;

4.) I will raise up offspring to succeed you;

5.) I will establish the throne of your kingdom forever.  This means that God would not allow anyone to usurp David’s throne from him.  It also means that while the dynasty may fade, it will not disappear completely.

6.) I will be his Father/He will be My son.  God will father Solomon after David passes away.  And later, God will be/is still the Father of Jesus.                         

7.) I will discipline Him….God allows David’s wicked descendants to be taken out by the Assyrians or the Babylonians.  And much late–though He was without sin–Jesus is flogged and crucified.

 8.) But I will always love him!

9.) Your throne will be established forever:  In Luke 1:32–Gabriel says to Mary, He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God shall give Him the throne of his father David.

         This 2 Samuel 7 passage is a very important section in the Old Testament as it expresses the Messianic Hope!  Our God is a Promise-Keeping God.  He placed the scepter (symbol of kingly power and rule) in the tribe of Judah way back in Genesis 49:10.  This Messianic Hope is reiterated time and time again in the Old Testament: 4 times in Isaiah; 3 times in Jeremiah; 2 times in Ezekiel; and once each in Hosea, Amos, and Zechariah.

Additionally, this passage shapes our Christian understanding of Jesus Christ:

  1. He is a son of (descendant of) David;
  2. One who will rise up from the dead;
  3. He is the capstone or cornerstone of the House of GodàJohn 2:19–Destroy this Temple (His body) and I (Jesus) will raise it again in 3 days.
  4. He is the possessor of a throneàRevelation 3:21–To him who overcomes, I will give the right to sit with Me on My throne…
  5. He rules over an eternal Kingdom:
  6. Jn 18:36–Jesus said, My Kingdom is not of this world.  If it were, My servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews.  But My kingdom is from another place.
  7. Matt 28:28–And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.
  8. He is the Son of God:
  9. Mark 1:1–The beginning of the Gospel about Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
  10. Acts 9:20–At once [Paul] began to preach in the synagogues that Jesus was the Son of God.
  11. He is also the product of an “immaculate,” miraculous
  12. conception since God is His Father.
 

Now what does this mean to us today?  For one thing, our God keeps His promises, both to David and to us!  Jesus Christ, God’s Son, is descended from King David’s line.  He thus fulfills all of the Old Testament prophesies about His identity.  Just as He was the hope for David (and for many down through the ages), He is our hope, right now!  He has made us for relationship with Himself.  He loves us with a steadfast and loyal love. He is faithful and true.  He will never leave or forsake us.

For another, we can never out-give God.  Jesus Christ died on the cross to save us from the penalty for our sins.  The great temple built by Solomon (later rebuilt by Herod the Great) is gone (destroyed by the Romans in 70AD, and not yet to this day rebuilt.)  The point of that is thatGod’s house is not a building!  Now, it’s us.  By the indwelling power of His Holy Spirit, our bodies are God’s temple.

I think the literary character, Fr. Tim Kavanaugh, truly demonstrates how to live and pray in a way that honors God.  As we approach Christmas this week, let’s come to God with grateful hearts.  Like dear, humble Mary, let’s seek to do God’s will at all times.  And, while we can’t out-give God, let’s ask Him how we might bless Him this Christmas.  Amen.

©2020 Rev. Dr. Sherry Adams

Posted on by Cheryl Norman

Using Our Talents

Pastor Sherry’s Message for November 15, 2020

Scriptures: Judges 4:1-7; Matt 25:14-30

A pastor friend tells the story of his brother, Tony, and their elderly Aunt Mildred.  Aunt Mildred was getting along in years, so the two brothers bought her a motorized recliner.  You know the kind, it pushes you up and out of the chair so you don’t have to struggle to stand.  Soon after gifting her, Tony went to see how Mildred liked her new chair.  “Tony,” she says, “I’m having a lot of trouble getting out of my chair.”  Puzzled, Tony replied helpfully, “Let me check on the motor.”  Mildred then told him, “Well, that won’t do no good.  I never plug it in!”  Dumbfounded, Tony asked, “Well, whyever not?”  To which Aunt Mildred replied, “Well, what if the power goes out whilst I was a-laying back in it?  I wouldn’t never be able to get out of it!”  I love this story because it demonstrates so well how fear, and a lack of faith, can prevent us from using the blessings, the “talents,” God has given us.

Our OT and Gospel lessons today give us two examples of what God thinks of those who do not trust in Him enough to utilize the talents He has given us for building up His Kingdom. In our OT lesson, we have the only example of a woman called to lead the nation of Israel, Deborah the Prophetess.  She was called and equipped by God to lead during the time of the Judges.

The backstory is that Joshua has died at 110 years of age without a follow-up human leader.  The Israelites had not yet been governed by a king.  Their leader, to date, had been a man like Moses or Joshua, selected  and directed by God)   Even though the people promised Joshua three times (recall our OT passage from last week), they would remain obedient to God, within 40 years, they had taken up idolatry and forsaken the LORD.  As a result, the Lord would then allow a Canaanite people—Amorites, Amonites, Moabites, Midianites, or even Philistines—to oppress them.  They would then call out to the LORD for help.  He would reply by raising up a judge to lead them in defeating their enemy.  They would thank and praise Him.  But, shortly, once the threat was over, they would again forget about their loyalty to God.  And the 40 year cycle would begin all over again.  Deborah, a woman, was the 3rd such judge God provided.

Who was she?  She only takes up two chapters of Scripture in which we learn the following about her:

            1.) She was a wife to Lippidoth.  We know nothing of him, except that he seemed to have recognized God’s call on his wife’s life; and he did not appear to resent her influence or power. 

2.) She was “a mother of Israel,” out of the tribe of Ephraim.  While this may imply she had children of her own—if so they are not mentioned in Scripture–it certainly means she nurtured and cared for the nation.

            3) She was a wise counselor.  People came from miles away to seek her wisdom and advice.

            4.) She was a renowned judge like Judge Judy, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, or Judge Jannine Pirow.  Instead of sitting at the city gates to hear cases, verse 5  tells us she sat beneath a palm tree named for Her–the Palm of Deborah–located between Ramah and Bethel.

            5) She was a legitimate prophetess.  Like her male counterparts, she was anointed by God, who told her what to say to His people.  She conveyed God’s words to the people and she foretold events accurately.

            6.) We learn in today’s passage that she was a warrior.

            7.) She was also a poet.  She wrote a song/psalm, describing what God accomplished through her leadership—in Judges chapter 5.

            8.) Finally, she was a woman who loved and trusted God.

Notice, she had many gifts/talents.  What did she do with them?  The Canaanite King Jabin had oppressed the Israelites for 20 years. He terrorized them with 900 iron chariots/horses, and an able-bodied general named Sisera.  During this oppressive time, Jabin confiscated all the Israelites’ iron weapons.  The people call out to God for help, and God tells Deborah to send for General Barak of the tribe of Naphtali.  She did and told Barak that God intended for him to lead the people into battle against Sisera.  In V.6 she says to Barak, The LORD, the God of Israel, commands you: ‘Go, take with you ten thousand men of Naphtali and Zebulon and lead the way to Mount Tabor.  I will lure Sisera, the commander of Jabin’s army, with his chariots and his troops to the Kishon River and give him into your hands.

Deborah knows that God is going to give Gen. Barak the victory.  The General doesn’t see how—he lacks faith in God.  His citizen army is outnumbered 10 to 1, and Sisera’s army is much better equipped.  He must have felt like Deborah was essentially telling him to prepare for his death.  He does eventually agree to go as directed, but only if the prophetess will go with him.  Is he afraid?  Or is he simply clear that he needs the counsel of the one who hears from God?  Since he doesn’t really seem to trust her or God etirely, she tells him God will give the victory (over Gen. Sisera) to another woman (Jael, the wife of a weapons maker).

Judges, chapter 5, is called Deborah’s Song:  Some Biblical scholars call it “one of the oldest and finest pieces of Hebrew poetry.”  In it, Deborah gives God the glory for their victory.  Deborah walked in faith to free her people from oppression.  She used her gifts of leadership to direct the Israelites into battle, despite overwhelming odds and the prevailing customs for women of the time.  Because of her obedience, God gave Israel another 40 years of freedom and peace.

In our Gospel lesson, Matthew 15:14-30, Jesus provides examples of two who utilize their talents for God and one who does not.  In His parable,the master (probably God) leaves his assets in the hands of threestewards/servants (believers).  He appears to have doled out his assets according to the degree to which He trusts in their abilities and their motivation.  One very able fellow gets 5 talentsàA talent back then was equal to 1 years’ wages; for the purpose of illustration, let’s say a years’ wages were $30,000.  That would mean this 1st guy has been entrusted with 5 times that or $150,000.  The next gets 2 talents, or $60,000;and the 3rd gets 1, or $30,000.

When the Master returns, He expects them to account for how they invested His money during His absence.  The fellow who had 5 talents invested them wisely and wound up earning double or $300,000!  The guy with 2 also invested wisely and doubled his earnings, netting $120,000.  The faithless guy hid his 1 talent, so he gained nothing.  Although he was honest and returned the $30,000 in tact, the master was angry because he could have at least deposited it somewhere and earned interest on it.  The Master commends the first two dudes, but He has nothing but contempt for the third.  This guy was either so lazy as to not use the talents at all.  Or perhaps like Aunt Mildred, he was too afraid to fail, so he did nothing (safe but unproductive).  This guy then gets thrown into the outer darkness, (v.30)…where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth—not a pleasant place!

This is not a story about investing money wisely.  It is about utilizing the skills and the ministry gifts we have been given to build up God’s Kingdom.  Notice, all are called to account—this is the “White Throne Judgment” at the end of time:  Those who have used their gifts are blessed now and in the afterlife; while those who have not are chastised and punished.  Those of us who believe in Jesus Christ will be clothed in His righteousness, so we will not be reminded of all of our sins in this judgment scene.  Instead, we will probably be asked how we did at loving God and others (The Great Commandment), and whether or not we used our talents and gifts to benefit God’s Kingdom (The Great Commission).

So what is the point for us today?  God uses people who trust in Him.

Do you trust God?  Are you willing to be obedient to Him, even when the situation seems difficult or impossible?  If He can use an unarmed army to defeat a vastly superior force, He can master any situation we bring before Him.  God expects us to use the talents He has given us to bless others.  Are we doing that?  May it be so!

©2020 Rev. Dr. Sherry Adams