May 23, 2004

"Simple Truths"

I have a great story to share with you this morning, supposedly a true story that happened just last year about a lawyer who bought a very expensive box of cigars, two dozen of them. They were so expensive that he took out an insurance policy against their destruction by any means, including fire. Having taken out the policy, the lawyer sat down and smoked all two dozen cigars, and then filed a claim with the carrier, claiming that the cigars were destroyed in a series of small fires.

He didn’t deny smoking the cigars, but still maintained that they were destroyed by fire, so the policy should pay off.

Of course, the insurance company denied the claim, so the lawyer sued, and they headed to court. To make a long story short, the judge ruled in favor of the lawyer, saying that while the claim was frivolous, the insurance company had issued a policy guaranteeing the cigars against loss by fire, and did not specify what kind of fire. Unwilling to go to the expense of an appeal, the company wrote a check. Now here’s the catch. When the lawyer cashed the check, they had him arrested for arson and fraud, saying he deliberately set fire to the cigars with the intent of destroying them.

The lawyer was sentenced to 24 months in jail and fined $24,000. Doesn’t that just restore your faith in God? Here was a person who was guilty of dealing in bad faith, and he got what was coming to him. But some of us have been guilty of dealing in bad faith with God, too. Any business transaction is a two-way street of faith, and while I hesitate to make our relationship with God sound like a business deal, faith is a two-way street, too. Faith is what I want to talk about this morning on this, the fourth stop in the sermon series Building the Christian Character.

We’ve talked about kindness, and patience, and last week peace, but the glue holding the pieces together in hard times as we build is faith in a God who’s got the whole world in his hands.

Today is a day I’ve been looking forward to for some time now, the baptism day for Chelsea. In a few minutes, Chelsea, I’m going to ask you to say that you have faith in Jesus, that you believe that he really does walk with you every day of your life. But before we do that, I want to let you in on a little secret, except that it’s not really a secret at all—while you have faith in Jesus, Jesus has faith in you. There’s nobody else like you in all the world. God has made you special, with special gifts, and he has faith that you will use those gifts to do good things in the world.

That’s really a simple truth—so simple that Mister Rogers said it to children on TV over and over and over. You’re special. You’re unique. And God adds to that by saying, “I’ve got something special for you to do in the world.” It usually takes people awhile to figure out what that something special is, but the first step in building our faith in God is to accept this simple truth—that we’re important to him.

Chelsea, before you were born God got a picture in his mind of what you would be like, and then he started work. The Bible tells us that God knew all of our names, knew who we would be, before he ever put a single star in the sky, and then when it was the right time, he knit us together in our mother’s womb. God knows all about your special gifts and talents, because he’s the one who put them there. Naturally you’ll wonder what is the special something he wants you to do, and I don’t know the answer. Nobody does. That’s why we all have to have faith that he’s going to speak to us and tell us what part he wants us to play in his plan for the salvation of the world.

The Book of James is a lot like the Gospel of Jesus (who, by the way, was probably his brother.) They deal with simple truths. Jesus never was one to get into intellectual discussions with his followers. He never asked them, “Do you agree with me?” He usually said something along the lines of “you’ll understand later.” His verbs are punchy active verbs: “Go.” “Do likewise.” “Follow me.” “Be healed.” “Take up your cross.” He was interested in action, in discipleship, which, reduced to its bare bones, means doing what he said.

James writes that faith and actions go hand in hand—that a person’s faith is made perfect by his actions. Sometimes that gets misinterpreted; some people say that James means that our good works save us, and that’s not true. We are saved by the gift of God’s grace. But our actions reinforce our faith, and make it stronger. In other words, the more we do for others, the more we love God. Think of it as exercise. We might well live to be 80 without ever pumping any more iron than a knife and a fork, but we sure aren’t going to be very strong, are we? No, that’s why James writes that faith without actions is dead. So the second building block of faith is the willingness to put our faith into action.

The third part of building faith is being willing to live lives of surrender. How many of you have ever known somebody with an ego so big that you just wanted to say, “Does your neck hurt from carrying around an ego that heavy?” Sure, everybody knows somebody like that. Maybe you are somebody like that. Somebody who lives secure in your own little fortress, reliant on your own abilities. The problem with being in a fortress, though, is that nobody wants to surrender a fortress.

The more we rely on our own abilities, the more we remove ourselves from God. There is a store about Sven from Sweden, who got himself a job painting highways when he first arrived in this country. This was before the days when machines started to paint the lines. On the first day, Sven did a fantastic job. He painted two miles of straight, even lines down the center of the road, and his boss was delighted. On the second day, however, he only painted one mile. Still a good total. The third day he painted only half a mile, and the boss was getting upset.

Finally on the fourth day, Sven only managed to paint a quarter mile of road, and the boss called him to read him the riot act. “Sven, you did a great job the first day, but ever since then your work is getting less and less. What’s going on?” And Sven replied, “I been gettin’ farder and farder away from the paint bucket.” Don’t ever get too far from God, but surrender control of your life to him.

Step four in building faith is to enlarge our imaginations and try to grasp even a little that we worship an awesome God who is far beyond our scant powers to comprehend him. Sometimes all we can do is sit back and laugh in delight at how awesome God is, and how weak and puny are we humans who defy his will. That’s why is Psalm 2 the author says “Why do the nations plan rebellion? Why do people make their useless plots? From his throne in heaven the Lord laughs and mocks their feeble plans.”

Some of the great stories in the Bible about faith rewarded are found in the Book of Genesis. And one of those stories that often gets overlooked is that of Sarah. God came to Abraham and made him a promise—that he would have a son, an heir. That meant that Sarah, his wife, would have to have a baby. And Abraham rolled on the floor with laughter. “How can that happen,” he said. “I’m 100 years old and Sarah is 90 years old.” But God doesn’t like people who laugh at him; he said, “No, you will have a baby, and you will call him Isaac.”

Now shortly thereafter God came back to Abraham, this time in the form of three angels. Abraham and Sarah welcomed the strangers warmly. This time God makes his promise where Sarah can hear him: he says, “I will come back to you soon, and Sarah will have a son.” This time Sarah starts to laugh, but it’s the same punch line: “How is this possible when I’m so old?” Now God is getting really peeved. “Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?” he says, and Sarah, knowing it’s not good to make the boss mad, tries to lie. “I didn’t laugh,” she said. “Yeah, you did,” God replies.

Now here’s the key to having faith in God’s promises. Even when we laugh, God delivers on what he says. He means what he says. Sarah did conceive, she did have a baby boy, and they named him Isaac, which means, “He laughs.” Now Sarah is laughing in joy, not irony. Her laughter has turned from the cynicism of unbelief to the delight of faith. She has heard the promise. She has given birth. She has believed it all and she has laughed about it all. What better response than joyful laughter can we give to this promise-making, promise-keeping God?

But of course, we don’t always feel like laughing, do we? Sometimes we feel more like crying. In times of trouble it’s hard not to cry, and that’s when we need our faith to sustain us most of all. No faith in the world has had more to say to people in times of trouble and anxiety than Christianity. But our faith has something to say precisely because it recognizes "the dark times" in our life. It is like the paintings of Rembrandt. Whereas many modern painters enjoy bright canvasses of nothing but light colors Rembrandt's masterpieces use darkness to accentuate the light.

By faith we reclaim the promises of God when things look their darkest. Basically God’s promises come down to two main points: He is walking with us in this world, and he is preparing a home for us in the next world. Whenever we pray to God, we express faith in those two promises. But we need to make sure that our lives are in alignment with God’s will. In other words, are we living the way God wants us to live? Gentlemen, what do you do when your car is out of alignment? Sure, you take it to the shop and have it lined up. What happens if you don’t get it lined up? It ruins the tires and maybe damages the whole front end.

The same thing happens if our lifestyle is out of alignment with God’s will. It ruins our prayers. It ruins our confidence in God’s promises. King David prayed, “Search me, Oh God, and know my heart. Try me and know my anxieties. See if there is any wicked way in me and lead me to life everlasting.” Reveal my sins to me, cleanse me of them and lead me into your will—that’s a prayer that expresses our faith in a God who cares. That’s a prayer that he will answer. When our life is lined up with God’s will, we can have the faith to confidently claim his promises.

Look again at our Gospel reading this morning: “So Jesus answered and said to them, ‘Have faith in God. For assuredly I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be removed and be cast into in the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that those things he says will be done, he will have whatever he says. Therefore I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them.”

Of course, sometimes we show our weak faith by doubting God’s ability to answer our prayers. Have you ever done that? We say that the same God who parted the Red Sea, who softened Pharaoh’s heart to free the Hebrew slaves, who made Sarah a mother at age 90, that same God lacks the power to pull you out of whatever hole you’re in? The same Jesus who gave sight to the blind and healed lepers and raised a little girl from the dead, he doesn’t care about you, one of his precious children? Forgive me for being blunt, but who do you think you are?

Throughout his ministry, Jesus focused our attention on asking God to meet all our needs. He showed us that God is eagerly waiting for us to ask him in faith so that he can answer. Jeremiah says, “Call to me and I will answer, and show you great and mighty things that you do not know.” All he wants is that we believe he can do it. Is that too much to ask? No request is too big for God and no request is too small. If we care about it, God cares about it. The question is, what’s our attitude? Do we have enough faith to confidently claim his promises?

Which brings me to my last building block of faith. Recognize miracles when you see them. Open your eyes and see that out God is great.

Does anybody here watch the Antique Roadshow on TV? This is a show where people bring in the stuff that’s piled up in their attic or garage, and an expert will look at it and appraise its value. Some people go away excited because something they thought was junk has a lot of value, and some go away crushed because their heirloom antique is really just a bad copy that’s worth only a couple dollars.

On one of the episodes a man came on with an old Indian blanket, explaining that the blanket had been in his family for many years. But it was in good shape, and someone had said it might be worth a few hundred dollars, so he decided to have it appraised. The expert asked what the blanket had been used for, and he explained that it had been covering furniture in the attic. The expert smiled and explained that this was a mint-condition example of a hand-woven Navajo blanket that to a collector might be worth three hundred to five hundred thousand dollars. The blanket was worth far more than the man’s entire house was worth.

Do you catch the point here, folks? We stumble around in life with blinders on, not recognizing the simple truth that is all around us—100 million miracles really are happening every day. This lack of recognition, to be able to see heaven in the petals of a daisy or the bright blue eyes of a newborn baby, this is what blocks our faith from growing. If we could only tap into that faith a little, then we really could move mountains for God.

Kierkegarrd, the great philosopher, told a parable about Duckland. It was Sunday morning and all the ducks dutifully came to church, waddling through the doors and down the aisle to their pews where they comfortably squatted down. When they were well settled, and the hymns were sung, the duck minister waddled to the pulpit, opened the Duck Bible and began to preach, “Ducks! You have wings, and with your wings you can fly like eagles. You can soar into the sky! Use your wings!” It was a marvelous, elevating duck sermon, and all the ducks quacked their agreement—and then they plopped down from their pews and they waddled home.

Chelsea, dear child of God, have faith that God has given you wings to fly. Have faith that God has faith in you. In baptism God adopts you as his own daughter and washes you clean of sin. From this moment on, look around you with the eyes of faith and see the wonder of 100 million miracles happenings every day. And let all God’s children say Amen.