Message: Hold on if Many Say: Bad is Good. It Aint!
Once again as on every Sunday, the call has gone forth, the invitation placed for all to see, and open to the willing. I speak today to you my beloved family, the doyens, yes you the notables of royalty both male and female, inheritors of the universe. And this is not hyperbole, exaggeration, and big talk aimed at the entertainment value of a Sunday morning, but a call to arms for God’s Royal Family to heed God’s message to fight the good fight for a better life.
And the Blue Bloods I speak of are not restricted to this room, for you are the envoys of this message to the world around you. The people that make up your beautiful lives. And it all begins with our remorse of past junk by leaving it behind, and excitement for the future by embracing our new adventures together you and I, in and with our Lord.
Today I am excited to talk with you about the fact that repentance is not some end of the world tragedy that we sometimes connect with self-inflicted torture, pain and suffering, or our very deaths. No, that kind of thinking tries to limit our thoughts to instant gratification, and not the long-term enjoyment that real life provides.
Yes, there is death involved, but it is only in letting go of the bogus ideas we had in the past of what actually made us happy in life. Leaving behind the familiar (non-satisfying second hand leftovers from the ash pile), for the new enjoyment that comes with awakening, renewal, and health.
What I am talking about, has been in the forefront of debate by people like you and I for millennia. And throughout those thousands of years, the Lord has been reaching out to all of humanity, reasoning with us to look at life in a healthier way. Goodness and holiness rather than the paths of greed, selfishness, fear, pettiness, thoughtlessness, and injury. This leads my thoughts back to today’s Call to Worship. Reading again from Isaiah 55:1-9;
1“Come, all you who are thirsty,
come to the waters;
and you who have no money,
come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
without money and without cost.
2 Why spend money on what is not bread,
and your labor on what does not satisfy?
Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good,
and you will delight in the richest of fare.
*Side Note; This is a favorite passage for me because God is saying in so many words; why are you spending all you have (blood sweat, money, and sole) on stuff that doesn’t even really make you happy, when I will give you everything you need without costing you your soul, or your eternal life? Great question to ponder the rest of your lives my beloved family, because it gets to the root of who we are and what we might achieve in Him who is creator of all. Continuing now at verse 3;
3 Give ear and come to me;
listen, that you may live.
I will make an everlasting covenant with you,
my faithful love promised to David.
4 See, I have made him a witness to the peoples,
a ruler and commander of the peoples.
5 Surely you will summon nations you know not,
and nations you do not know will come running to you,
because of the Lord your God,
the Holy One of Israel,
for he has endowed you with splendor.”
** Side Note part deux; As members of God’s family, we are called to share the Good News with the people God places in our every day lives. You don’t have to get up on a soap box and preach, you don’t have to debate hecklers that exist everywhere. Because God has called you to live, enjoy, and cherish the beauty He has provided, by living your new found life openly, happily, and thoughtfully caring for others entrusted to you. Moving on to verse 6;
6 Seek the Lord while he may be found;
call on him while he is near.
7 Let the wicked forsake their ways
and the unrighteous their thoughts.
Let them turn to the Lord, and he will have mercy on them,
and to our God, for he will freely pardon.
*** Once more; This is where our repentance of, and separation from that old life of death, by saying good bye to the stuff that did not satisfy, and trading that old junk for a new reality… comes into play. This is where we trust in the Lord’s mercy, and work daily at being better people by walking humbly with and in our Lord.
Continuing on now, our God is going to remind us of a key point in our faithwalk in and with Him. The Lord will repeat the reason why we need to trust in Him as our Higher Power, our reference point of reality;
8 “For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways,”
declares the Lord.
9 “As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.
That Statement from God; speaks volumes! And is the new reality that we can believe and bank in. Now I have something to help hold me together when I struggle to understand the hard things about our God. We all have those struggles with the things that tie us in knots; the suffering of children, the carnage in the world.
By knowing our God has those things figured out, cuz He’s God, and we are not, I will trust in Him, and not in my own selfish, self-righteous, self-absorbed, self. And that is a constant battle!
David understood this inner battle we all have, and his own need for God. By living in the joys that come from the guiding deliverance, and our dependency on the Lord’s goodness, and living in and with that portable Sanctuary called our heart, the Lord follows us as He accompanied David in his Faithwalk.
David continues to instructs us on his reliance in the Lord, and how we might have a deeper relationship with God, in Psalm 63:1-8. A psalm of David’s, composed out in the desert;
1 You, God, are my God,
earnestly I seek you;
I thirst for you,
my whole being longs for you,
in a dry and parched land
where there is no water.
2 I have seen you in the sanctuary
and beheld your power and your glory.
3 Because your love is better than life,
my lips will glorify you.
4 I will praise you as long as I live,
and in your name I will lift up my hands.
5 I will be fully satisfied as with the richest of foods;
with singing lips my mouth will praise you.
6 On my bed I remember you;
I think of you through the watches of the night.
7 Because you are my help,
I sing in the shadow of your wings.
8 I cling to you;
your right hand upholds me.
David, is able to repent of past sin, and trust in the Lord, and in the process, grow in the Lord because of the renewal that comes from repenting, trusting, confiding, and then living in and with our Lord.
David is one of the Old Testament’s precursors of our Lord Jesus Christ. Showing us how our Faithwalks can grow in our understanding of right and wrong, and who is our God. Of course, he isn’t anything close to the goodness, holiness, caring, sharing, provisioning teacher our Lord is… But David is our example of how each of us might grow in the Lord one step at a time, over time.
Like us, David was bombarded with the popular conceptions of the time. People invoking good as bad, and bad as good. Even David was caught up in his own sin, and rationalized to himself why it was ok to get rid of Uriah, in order to have Bathsheba to himself. You can almost understand how it must of played out for David, being popular and the King. Saying to himself, “it’s good to be King”; until it’s not. Reminding all of us to; Hold on if Many Say: Bad is Good. It Aint! Truth does prevail in time.
And if the results of our actions in life are compared to a tree producing fruit, David’s actions in the Bathsheba and Uriah episode initially produced poison apples to barrow a prop from Snow White and her pals. His actions and attitude, produced murder. He sent Uriah into the thickest battle and then had him deserted to die.
Bad fruit, all around. But David also shows us how we might turn something bad, into a teachable moment. Like all of our sin in life, we can grow from our mistakes by coming to the Lord in repentance. Asking for the Lord’s forgiveness, and those we have hurt. It doesn’t make what we did go away, that’s already taken place. But it can be a means for us and others to grow in God’s grace.
Our Lord would continue to instruct us in how our actions reflect on what’s going on with our inner selves. In today’s Message Reading, the Lord once again is instructing the Children of Israel two thousand years ago, and you and me today, about our issues with sin, and what our sinful actions are like. Reading again from Luke 13: 1-8,
1Now there were some present at that time who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. 2 Jesus answered, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? 3 I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish. 4 Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them—do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? 5 I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.”
*Side Bar; Just when we begin to think that we are better than others, our Lord has a way of humbling us. Often the humbling of our arrogance is more painful, the longer it takes to get our attention.
Jesus is using the turmoil and calamities of just regular living to describe how life really is. The Lord is first instructing us that we all suffer in life and it is not a reflection on one’s sin being greater, but a fact that we all must work at our sin issues with our Lord. Here are the two immediate examples:
- The Galileans; who had been killed by Pilot’s solders had their blood mixed with their offerings to God were no worse sinners than you and I.
- The 18 killed at the pool of Siloam; where part of a tower fell on people presumable ritually washing before attending the Temple. And stuff happens to all of us, even the “devout”.
In other words, we all have work to do on getting a handle on our sin problem! To put it in perspective; are the people suffering in Ukraine, along with the young boys from Russia, any worse in their sin than you and I safe in the recesses of our beautiful country? No! That only helps us deny our own many sin problems.
We all must take a good hard look at where we are in our walk in the Lord and ask Him humbly to help us grow in Him. That imperative was relevant in our Lord’s time and remains important in our walk in Him today. Continuing now with verse 6;
6 Then he told this parable: “A man had a fig tree growing in his vineyard, and he went to look for fruit on it but did not find any. 7 So he said to the man who took care of the vineyard, ‘For three years now I’ve been coming to look for fruit on this fig tree and haven’t found any. Cut it down! Why should it use up the soil?’
8 “‘Sir,’ the man replied, ‘leave it alone for one more year, and I’ll dig around it and fertilize it. 9 If it bears fruit next year, fine! If not, then cut it down.’”
Like a fruit tree or David’s behavior with Bathsheba and Uriah, when our actions (fruit) become full of sin and death, we become worthless wood, fit only with the fire. But the supreme gardener of the universe (our Lord) is providing us each day to work on our fruitless lives, and to start thinking about someone, and something beyond our selfish selves.
How are you doing in your relationships with other people? And with God for that matter. It’s never too late, until it’s too late. But He stands ready to forgive, and as for the relationships in your life, those people you are struggling with… The Lord want’s you to work on them. Plain and simple. For Reference, look back to the last five verses in the previous chapter before today’s Message Reading in 13 Luke. Go to Luke chapter 12. Reading Luke 12:54-59;
54 He said to the crowd: “When you see a cloud rising in the west, immediately you say, ‘It’s going to rain,’ and it does. 55 And when the south wind blows, you say, ‘It’s going to be hot,’ and it is. 56 Hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of the earth and the sky. How is it that you don’t know how to interpret this present time?
57 “Why don’t you judge for yourselves what is right? 58 As you are going with your adversary to the magistrate, try hard to be reconciled on the way, or your adversary may drag you off to the judge, and the judge turn you over to the officer, and the officer throw you into prison. 59 I tell you, you will not get out until you have paid the last penny.”
I spend more time on the weather app. of my phone than I do in deep concern for making things right with the people I have let down in life. You have within you to work on those relationships, that mean so much to our God. In most cases repenting, and making things right, or at least better is a beginning. Saying and meaning I’m sorry!
And when your inner self tries to justify your sin problem by saying that everyone else is doing what they want in life, that doing good is bad, and everything seems upside down… Well, my hope and prayer for you is to; Hold on if Many Say: Bad is Good. It Aint! Never was. Just an illusion provided by the father of lives, who is thriving in our current society. The only thing that has changed and evolved seems to be our ability to delude ourselves.
God stands ready to walk with you and to help you change a fruitless life into a bounty that feeds all around you.
Amen!