Our Faith, God’s Amazing Grace, Jesus’ Everlasting Arms (Prophet Margins – Part X)

Sermon Title: Our Faith, God’s Amazing Grace, Jesus’ Everlasting Arms

Good News Statement: God calls us to work on our Faith

Preached: Sunday, September 18, 2022 at Dogwood Prairie UMC & Seed Chapel UMC

Pastor Daniel G. Skelton, M.Div.

 

Scripture (NKJV): Philippians 2:12-16: Today’s scripture reading comes from the words of Paul, in his epistle to the people of Philippi, and from the Prophets of Elisha, Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, and Jeremiah. We will be reading from Philippians chapter two verses twelve thru sixteen. Listen to the warning from Paul…

Light Bearers

¹² Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; ¹³ for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure.

¹⁴ Do all things without complaining and disputing, ¹⁵ that you may become blameless and harmless, children of God without fault in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, ¹⁶ holding fast the word of life, so that I may rejoice in the day of Christ that I have not run in vain or labored in vain.

This is the Word of God for the People of God; And all God’s people said, “Thanks be to God.”

 

Introduction:

So I know it’s not even fall yet, trick-or-treaters haven’t knocked on your day yet, and a turkey hasn’t found its way to the oven yet, but stores, social media, and even people are reminding us that Christmas is just around the corner. As a matter of fact, Christmas is only 98 days away! So, to join the club, I thought I would share with you all a Christmas joke this morning!

A little boy wants a bike for Christmas really badly, but the kid is a real bad seed, and he knows it. He writes a letter to Jesus. “Dear Jesus, if I get a bike for Christmas, I’ll be good for a whole week.” He thinks about it, crosses out what he wrote, and says, “I can’t be good for a whole week, I’ll be good for five days.” He crosses that out and writes, “I’ll be good for four days.” Then he thinks again and says, “Can’t do that.” He gets down to one day and says, “I can’t even be good for a day.” Then in frustration, goes in his mother’s room and get the statue of the Virgin Mary, wraps it up in a blanket, puts it in a paper bag, throws it in the closet and says, “Dear Jesus, if I don’t get a bike for Christmas, you’ll never see your mother again!”

Over the course of several weeks, we have journeyed with the Prophets Elisha, Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, and Jeremiah. Each of these prophets has taught us something about our faith. They have taught us that our faith is not perfect all the time. They have taught us that our faith is not always easy to maintain. They have taught us that our faith is challenging and loving, chaotic and peaceful, filthy and clean, and faltered and righteous. They have taught us that our faith is tested on a daily basis, no matter where we are or what we are doing. They taught us that the faith of God will find us on the margins of life. They taught us that maintaining the faith of God will take work. Through the words of these prophets, who were just fine living their normal life, doing what they wanted to do when they wanted to do them, and practicing a way of living that was simple and marginalized, we were reminded of a faith that gives us strength to face tomorrow. From this faith we can do what the Easter Hymn “Because He Lives,” reminds us, “Because he lives, I can face tomorrow; because he lives, all fear is gone; because I know he holds the future….”

These prophets draw our attention to the righteous promise of God’s living water in our life, the amazing grace that sets us free, and the promises of Jesus upon which we stand. However, we must be willing to work on our faith. We must be willing to be made clean, to check our faith alignment, to see our fruit, and to know that our cracks and brokenness can be mended by God’s amazing grace. We all have faith; but are you willing to work on your faith?

Opening Prayer:

            Let us pray… God of our faith, we know at times our faith wavers; it strays away from your word and amazing grace. So Lord, through this message today, help us to strengthen our faith as we listen to your words. May your faith prop us up on our leaning side. May my words fall to the ground as your words settle in the hearts of all those before me. In Your name we pray, Amen.

 

Body:

In 1987, George Michael released a song titled “Faith.” It held the number-one position on the Billboard Hot 100 chart for four weeks, and according to Billboard Magazine, was the number-one-single of the year in the United States in 1988. While writing about his want for a love interest but then realizing that the timing wasn’t right, “I gotta think twice before I give my heart away,” he sings in his chorus something that we should all be singing on a daily basis. George Michael sings, “Cause I gotta have faith; I gotta have faith. Because I gotta have faith, faith, faith; I got to have faith, faith, faith.” What George Michael sings about is what the Prophets of God tells about in their writings. We gotta have faith.

We began our faith journey be looking at the story of Naaman and Elisha in 2 Kings 5:1-14. In this particular story, the foreign Commander Naaman is advised by his wife’s servant girl to go see the Prophet Elisha, who took the place of the Prophet Elijah (2 Kings 2). Naaman takes the advice of the servant girl and travels to Elisha who encourages Naaman to wash in the River Jordan so that he would be healed of his leprosy. At first Naaman refused. But then his servants convinced him to ‘Wash, and be clean’?” (2 Kings 5:13). So Naaman went down and immersed himself seven times in the Jordan, according to the word of the man of God; his flesh was restored like the flesh of a young boy, and he was clean (2 Kings 5:13-14). From the story of Naaman, we are reminded that we, too, need to be washed and made clean; that our faith needs a deep cleaning from all the hate, evil, pride, lust, and jealously that we accrue throughout our life. The time has come to be washed and cleansed so that your faith guides you towards greener pastures and rivers of righteousness and to places where you can soar on the wings of eagles, run and not faint, and walk and not grow weary. “Wash and be clean.” Reverend Adam Hamilton wrote prayer for his congregation that is meant to be read while you take a shower: “Lord, as I enter the water to bathe, I remember my baptism. Wash me by your grace. Fill me with your Spirit. Renew my soul. I pray that I might live as your child today, and honor you in all that I do.”

After being washed and made clean in the River Jordan, we found ourselves in the presence of the Prophet Amos. God asked Amos, twice, “What do you see?” (Amos 7:8). The first time Amos answers, and says, I see a “plumb-line” (Amos 7:8). Usually a plumb-line is used to measure how vertical or true a structure is. However, God does not want Amos to check how vertical or true a structure is, but how true the faith of God’s people is. Remember, the people of Israel have wavered from their faith a time or two: worshipped a golden calf and other idols. God needs Amos to see what is really taking place, what is really happening on earth. God needs Amos, like He needs each of us, to see where our faith is, to see what is causing our faith to become frayed, knotted, twisted, or kinked. What does your faith look like?

The second time God asked Amos, “What do you see,” (Amos 8:2) Amos simply said a basket of summer fruit. This wasn’t a ripe and beautiful basket of summer fruit that some of us put on our tables to bring freshness and color to the room. Instead it was a basket of rotten fruit. God likens the basket of rotten fruit to the faith of the Israel people. God saw their faith dwindling away because of their wicked ways. The people’s faith was what Paul describes as the Fruit of the Flesh: hatred, contentions, and jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, heresies, envy, lust, and pride (Galatians 5:19-21). The faith of the people was far from a ripe basket of summer fruit. This story of Amos reminds us that we need to pay attention to what may be causing our faith to rot, to become sour and bitter. The rottenness may be stemming from the Spirit of the Flesh, from certain individuals who are constantly testing your patience, or from certain events in your life. What is causing rottenness in your faith?

After Amos, we encountered Hosea. Hosea, son of Beeri, (Hosea 1:1), was called to trust God’s plan for his life. Hosea begins his ministry by being told by God to marry a prostitute named Gomer (Hosea 1:2). Hosea, unlike prophets before him, didn’t get a shot behind a podium. He didn’t get a test run speaking to a king or to a nation. He didn’t even get the opportunity to turn a staff into a snake and lead people to the Promised Land. Instead, his first call to Prophet-hood was to get married.

Our introduction to Hosea reminds us that our faith should reflect our willingness to trust God with our whole heart (Proverbs 3:5). But how many of you would be able to trust God if God told you to do something that was against your very nature? God told Hosea to marry a prostitute, someone broken and lost and to bring her back to wholeness. Sometimes trusting the plans of God is confusing and tough, but we must remember what we sing in our hymnals today. We sing, “When we walk with the Lord in the light of His Word, What a glory He sheds on our way! While we do His good will, He abides with us still, and with all who will trust and obey. Trust and obey, for there’s no other way to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey” (Trust and Obey, #467 in The UMH). Through trust, Hosea’s life was changed and filled with love. Through trust, the people of Israel received God’s love. Through trust, Gomer’s heart experienced unconditional love. Through trust in God, we, too, can experience a love from God that changes our life and builds our faith. We must trust what God has in store for us if we want our faith to grow.

When we trust in God, we realize that God will never lose hope in us even when we continue to rebel against Him. Remembering His children and their wicked ways, God makes it very clear that He continues to be in their life strengthening, helping, guiding, blessing, and granting them “cords of kindness and bands of love” although they have rebelled against Him. God is going to be there for you even when your faith seems to lose steam and motivation. And God is never going to stop loving you; you “gotta have faith.”

Pressing forward, the Prophet Isaiah taught us that in order to live out our faith we must strive to “learn to do good.” Our faith is an extension of Jesus’ words to his disciples, “In everything do to others as you would have them do to you….” (Matthew 7:12). Faith is a means to living out the Golden Rule. It’s about bringing good news to the poor, proclaiming release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, [and] setting free those who are oppressed (Luke 4:18). It’s about “loving the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself” (Lk. 10:27). It’s about fulfilling the prophecy of John Wesley, “Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as you ever you can.” The time has come to bring goodness back into your life and into the life and hearts of those around you as you strive to have a faith that is sweet, ripe, and beautiful and good in the sight of God. But maintaining such faith, will take work.

James states to the people, in his book, “Faith without works is dead” (James 2:26). Faith takes work, dedication, commitment, endurance, patience, and care. If we don’t take care of our faith, it will become a broken cistern that leaks the living water of God. Over time our faith will crack and the cistern in our heart will become fractured or it some instances shattered: it will leak the living water of God. We are, as Jeremiah notes, “broken cisterns that cannot hold water.” Our brokenness may stem from too much pressure, unexpected life changes, doubt, fear, worry, chaos and uncertainty, defeat, weariness, temptations, trials, tribulations, and unrelenting anger and pain…and the list could go on and on. But those cracks can be mended. Your faith can be restored: it can experience a new birth, a new freshness, a new promise of Christ’s unconditional love that is found in the “new heaven and the new earth” (Revelation 21:1).  Your faith can me mended if you take time to do the work of what God needs you to do.

The work of faith includes, willing to be made clean,  seeking out and asking for forgiveness; to be willing to see what God needs you to see and to be the agent of His creation; to be willing to help Him change the heart of those who are weary, lost, confused, and broken-hearted; to  be willing to know that God will never abandon you and that God will always love you; to be willing to produce a bountiful harvest of Christ’s salvation; to be willing to have the Holy Spirit mend the cracks in your faith; and to be willing to do the work of praying, sharing the gospel, worshipping the Son, and serving those around you. Without works, your faith is dead. God needs you to maintain a faith that is everlasting, but are you willing to do that?

All of you have the faith of God in your heart. This faith will help you fulfill the words of Paul, who wrote to the people of Philippi, “Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure. Do all things without complaining and disputing, that you may become blameless and harmless, children of God without fault in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, holding fast the word of life…” (Philippians 2:12:16). Your faith is what will bring light to this world, it will bring hope to those who are lost and broken, and it will bring the word of life to all God’s children. But you must be willing to do the work that God has called you to do—to trust Him, obey His commands, and be the disciple that He needs you to be.  It will be rewarding, maintaining a God and Spirit-filled faith, but it will also be challenging. Speaking of challenging, I leave you with this story:

Conclusion:

“A pastor of a small church would occasionally call on one gentleman to pray, and every time this one particular guy would pray, he would end with the strangest statement, “And, oh Lord, prop us up on our leaning side.”

Finally, the pastor pulled him aside, and he said, “I love the way you pray, but I don’t understand your little closing phrase. What are you talking about – prop us up on our leaning side?” He responded, “Well, Pastor, I’m a farmer. I live out on the farm and, you know, I live in the country. I’ve got an old barn, and it’s been there a long time. It’s been through a lot of weather, and a lot of storms, and a lot of bugs have eaten at it.”

He said, “I got to looking at it one day when I was riding on my tractor, and I noticed that it was leaning to one side. So I thought to myself, oh my goodness! The barn is leaning, and it’s a matter of time before the whole thing falls.

He continued, “So, you know what I did? I went and got some pine beams, and I propped it up on its leaning side.” He said, “It still leans, and probably always will. But I propped it up on its leaning side. And it’s not going to fall down because I propped it up on its leaning side. And I got to thinking about it.

When I was on the tractor, Pastor, and I was riding in the field, I thought about the kind of year I’ve had, and some of the storms I’ve been through, and some of the people that are bugging me, and eating away at my joy and eating away at my spirit. And I just got to thinking, you know, I’m still here! I’m still standing after all that stuff I’ve been through. The storms, and the howling winds – they couldn’t topple me. I’m still standing by the grace of God.”

He concluded, “From time to time, I find myself leaning. Leaning toward my old desires, leaning toward anger, leaning toward becoming bitter or hateful at the people who are bugging me, or leaning toward going back to the old habits and the old life I used to have. And when I feel myself start to lean toward that tendency, I just remember that old barn, and I pray out loud – “Lord, thank you for propping me up on the leaning side.”

If only that little boy who wanted a bike would have had faith in himself, then maybe he wouldn’t have had to bargain with Jesus. If only we can remember that when our faith is low, we can ask God to prop us up on our leaning side, then maybe we would have the will to embrace His amazing grace, stand on the promises of Jesus, find refuge in his everlasting arms, and allow the Holy Spirit to refresh our faith every day. If only we took the time to pray, to worship our Lord and Savior, and seek to serve and not be served (Matthew 20:28), and do the work that God is calling us to do every day of our lives, then maybe our faith would be as mighty as mustard seed (Matthew 17:20).  With this kind of faith, “nothing will be impossible for you” (Matthew 17:20).

But it will take work. We all need the help of God in our life. We all need to rebuild our faith. But we must be willing to do what He has called us to do. What is God calling you to do today? How can He prop up your faith? What will it take for you to shout from the mountaintops, “I have faith!”

Closing Prayer:

Let us Prayer… God of faith, your prophets have given us a message, and that message is simply this: we must be willing to work on our faith. We must love you, trust you, listen to you, and follow your commands for our life. As we follow you, O Lord, may our faith be strong and ever true so that we can be a living and holy presence for all those around us. May we all be willing to work on our faith. In your name we pray, Amen.

 

Benediction:

As you find your faith being tested this week, know that God is still working in your life. God will do whatever He can to prop you up on your leaning side. May God bless you this week, and may His love and light shine down upon you as you strive to strengthen your faith and bring hope to His children. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit go transforming lives as you live well and wisely in God’s world. And all God’s people said, Amen. Amen. Amen.