Message; Making Bread in the Midst of Chaff!
Some days, it seems like God calls us to hit the bricks, to get off our posterior and live. Really live. Living in and with Him, and if we are, then we are given the resources, tools, and skills to do incredible things right in the middle of bedlam, anarchy, and chaos. Like making bread on a campfire in the middle of floating ash, dust, and chaff, somehow with God it works out.
But in spite of that good news, I still struggle.
You know it seems sometimes that we live in impossible times. Some of us are just barely getting along, living in God’s light in a clouded, crowded, confused world of sin, and a society bent on chasing after itself. It’s all we can do sometimes not to lose hope in ourselves and our culture. That is when we need to step back and realize that we need our God even more than ever.
It is hard for us sometimes to concentrate on the business at hand. Living God-centered lives in the middle of all the bedlam and anarchy fueled by selfishness, fear, and sin. With the world and its adherents, literally flying helter skelter in every direction we look, seeking to gain advantage over the competition. Those who seek to replace the one, true, and only God, our Lord, with self-made gods, and worldly instituted favored flavors of fashions of the moment. Yea, that’s our environment… the world at large in summary.
And rest assured, this mess that we find ourselves living in… is nothing new. Please let me take a moment to share with you some thoughts our God had and has, about man-made stuff, and the foolishness of paying heed to it. As I read, please see if you can see any similarities to our present day. Reading from Isaiah 44:9-20:
9 All who make idols are nothing,
and the things they treasure are worthless.
Those who would speak up for them are blind;
they are ignorant, to their own shame.
10 Who shapes a god and casts an idol,
which can profit nothing?
11 People who do that will be put to shame;
such craftsmen are only human beings.
Let them all come together and take their stand;
they will be brought down to terror and shame.
*Interrupting Isaiah to say; this kind of behavior is alive and thriving in our own world of today. The sad thought I have is that we can’t even begin to count the ways we create the things in our own lives that we replace God with. On to an explanation of how Idols are made by mere humans with verse 12;
12 The blacksmith takes a tool
and works with it in the coals;
he shapes an idol with hammers,
he forges it with the might of his arm.
He gets hungry and loses his strength;
he drinks no water and grows faint.
13 The carpenter measures with a line
and makes an outline with a marker;
he roughs it out with chisels
and marks it with compasses.
He shapes it in human form,
human form in all its glory,
that it may dwell in a shrine.
14 He cut down cedars,
or perhaps took a cypress or oak.
He let it grow among the trees of the forest,
or planted a pine, and the rain made it grow.
15 It is used as fuel for burning;
some of it he takes and warms himself,
he kindles a fire and bakes bread.
But he also fashions a god and worships it;
he makes an idol and bows down to it.
16 Half of the wood he burns in the fire;
over it he prepares his meal,
he roasts his meat and eats his fill.
He also warms himself and says,
“Ah! I am warm; I see the fire.”
17 From the rest he makes a god, his idol;
he bows down to it and worships.
He prays to it and says,
“Save me! You are my god!”
18 They know nothing, they understand nothing;
their eyes are plastered over so they cannot see,
and their minds closed so they cannot understand.
19 No one stops to think,
no one has the knowledge or understanding to say,
“Half of it I used for fuel;
I even baked bread over its coals,
I roasted meat and I ate.
Shall I make a detestable thing from what is left?
Shall I bow down to a block of wood?”
20 Such a person feeds on ashes; a deluded heart misleads him;
he cannot save himself, or say,
“Is not this thing in my right hand a lie?”
And it is just like that with all of the things that I have selfishly, or through arrogance or fear replaced God with, and by my own ideas of what is divine, sacred, or holy. But they can’t be, because they come from me and I am nothing, and God is everything! I only become kind of something when God is at work using me, but then I am only His tool or implement, that God is accomplishing His will in the lives we live in.
And as we learned last week, if we don’t say yes to God’s prompting, He will use another to our own discredit and loss. That’s why we must not lose sight of God’s Word, and His instruction from the scripture that Raland read in the Call to Worship today from Isaiah 44:6-8;
6 “This is what the Lord says—
Israel’s King and Redeemer, the Lord Almighty:
I am the first and I am the last;
apart from me there is no God.
7 Who then is like me? Let him proclaim it.
Let him declare and lay out before me
what has happened since I established my ancient people,
and what is yet to come—
yes, let them foretell what will come.
8 Do not tremble, do not be afraid.
Did I not proclaim this and foretell it long ago?
You are my witnesses. Is there any God besides me?
No, there is no other Rock; I know not one.”
And since God knows everything, and our God does not lie, it is safe to say there is no other Rock for our salvation to cling to in this sea of sin in which we find ourselves living in. Even when the numbers of false gods, and wayward worldly schemes seem to multiply beyond comprehension or your ability to count, our God is alive, robust, and actively engaged in our world.
And even when it seems like we are trying to live God centered lives with all the distractions of the world raging around us. Sometimes it seems like we are: Making Bread in the Midst of Chaff!
I think of chaff when grain is harvested and being separated from the stuff that blows off with the breeze in every direction. When it’s being threshed and separated for use. Like threshing the crop on the farm, sometimes it seems like we are forced to buckle down and produce good fruit with God even when the world is chasing itself in every direction all around us. Or fixing that dinner at the campfire and, Making Bread in the Midst of Chaff! Or dust, flies or ash. Or maybe just barbequing in my case! In real life, only God can keep our finished product from being overcome with all that junk the world is swarming around us.
For confirmation that our journey is not a lonely walk, through life’s challenges, adversity, and temptations, we have the Apostle Paul’s instruction to the young upstart Church in Rome two thousand years ago. The Church back then like us today housed people who were daily having to overcome all kinds of challenges, and live in the midst of people who either didn’t have a clue who God is, or outright hated the idea of His morality and goodness.
Please let me share with you from Paul’s letter to that Church, reading from Romans 8:12-21;
12 Therefore, brothers and sisters, we have an obligation—but it is not to the flesh, to live according to it. 13 For if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live.
*Interrupting Paul to say; notice how Paul is speaking to the readers in plural. God is always speaking to all of us not just to me as if I were all alone. Yet, each of us at the same time, have a personal one-of-a-kind relationship in and with the Lord, and when we bring that reality to the Body of Christ, our Church, we become the fertile ground of nourishment for each other in the Lord, even in the midst of weeds, sin, and chaff. On to verse 14;
14 For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God. 15 The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.” 16 The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. 17 Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory…
And as God’s children, our Lord equips each of us with the tools, skills, faith and hope to be fruitful in our service in God for each other. And even when it seems like the world is losing its collective mind, chasing after all sorts of things that just don’t satisfy, build up, or edify, … we are not alone! We must remember that fact! Not alone!
As heirs of God, and co-heirs with Christ, the challenges that we are going through, the hardships that you are enduring, and the isolation that you feel at times from a world in rebellion, is the result of your commitment to follow our Lord. God bless you!
In fact, our living in and among a world of sinners is only dwarfed by the fact that the chief sinner in your own life, is looking right back at you in the mirror each day. Add the fact that none of us can look into the heart of another to judge the saved from the condemned (only God can perform that task), and things begin to become understandable. Paul continues His instruction at verse 18;
18 I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. 19 For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. 20 For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.
Regardless of if the people around you know it, understand it, or believe in it, all of God’s creation is looking for something better in life than the useless junk of the moment. We offer a much better way for all of humanity, and it is a way free and clear from the bondage and the decay of sin from a fallen world.
Some day our Lord will sort all this nonsense from our real purpose in life which is to praise, glorify, and magnify His precious name forever. When the weeds and grain will be sorted and accounted for in due order as instructed in today’s Message Reading from, Matthew 13: 36-43;
36 Then he left the crowd and went into the house. His disciples came to him and said, “Explain to us the parable of the weeds in the field.”
37 He answered, “The one who sowed the good seed is the Son of Man. 38 The field is the world, and the good seed stands for the people of the kingdom. The weeds are the people of the evil one, 39 and the enemy who sows them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the age, and the harvesters are angels.
40 “As the weeds are pulled up and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of the age. 41 The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. 42 They will throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. 43 Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Whoever has ears, let them hear.
What I hear is our Lord’s explanation that there are things in play, forces at work, and battles of good verses evil taking place on a celestial stage in which we have no capacity to comprehend on our own. That’s yet another reason why we need our Lord. And when God speaks of retribution, and fire, and gnashing of teeth, we must take heart, because it is God telling us that He is going to make all of this chaff, sin, debauchery, and heartache right.
A further lesson I glean from today goes back to the prelude I read this morning from Matthew 13. This time I want to read verses 27-30;
27 “The owner’s servants came to him and said, ‘Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?’
28 “‘An enemy did this,’ he replied.
“The servants asked him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’
*Interrupting just to say; here it is, perhaps one of those reasons we have been struggling to understand why God allows what seem to be monsters to live among us in life. Verse 29, the answer to pulling out the weeds among us;
29 “‘No,’ he answered, ‘because while you are pulling the weeds, you may uproot the wheat with them. 30 Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn.’”
As always, our God has our best interest but in this fallen world in which we live, and our fallen natured from which we comprehend, we struggle to understand that God puts the perfect people in our lives at just the right time and place. Even monsters are amongst the lambs to teach, mature, and edify us, if we are willing.
Easy proposition? No, absolutely not! But real, and that’s why we need our Lord and each other, who He has giving to us, for our survival! More to follow later, but for now, it is my hope and prayer my beloved, that you get an opportunity to step back and reflect on the deep things God is sending into your life, even the hard stuff, for your ultimate benefit and growth in Him.
Amen!
Benediction, Romans 5:1-5;
1 Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, wehave peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2 through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. 3 Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4 perseverance, character; and character, hope. 5 And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.
Amen!