Humbly Grateful

February 19, 2024

This evening we bid farewell to one of Sinclairville’s saints. ZoAnn Shields was a pillar of Park church, matriarch of her family, and lover of little children. She rocked, sung to, and prayed over entire generations of infants and toddlers in the church’s nursery. I’ve known Zoe for more than forty years, watched her raise her children, love little tykes, and struggle with her health. 

I learned something from (not about…from) Zoe tonight, a quote that bears repeating. “We can be grumbly hateful or gratefully humble.” The rearrangement of just a few letters makes all the difference. Simple. Memorable. Applicable. 

It’s not just the rearrangement of letters, though. Hateful to grateful and grumbly to humbly requires a rearrangement of priorities, a complete change of heart the likes of which only come through a faith in Jesus Christ…similar to Zoe’s. 

So which will it be? Grumbly hateful or humbly grateful? Choose wisely. Choose Jesus. 

Encouragement

 February 18, 2024

This morning’s sermon was about Epaphroditus, one of Paul’s helpers whom he sent to Philippi to encourage them in the faith. When I first read this text, it seemed quite unpromising to me, but God is faithful and drew my attention to a single word Paul used as explanation for sending this man to this church. He said it was NECESSARY to send him to you. Earlier, Paul talked about wanting to encourage the Philippian Christians because they had heard Paul was in prison and that Epaphroditus had been seriously ill.

My point is simple: encouragement is not optional. All of us face times in our lives, situations that feel overwhelming, discouraging, and difficult. We do our best to keep trudging on, but life can wear you down. Everyone at some point or another needs encouragement. It may be that teenager being cyberbullied, the single parent worn out with two jobs and three kids, the person with chronic illness, the one who failed miserably and now feels there is no future. Sooner or later we all need encouragement.

It’s not necessary to have “the right words.” Your presence is more important than your platitudes. Just be there for them.

Two questions follow: 

1. Who has been an encourager to you?
2. Who do you know who needs encouraging?

You can be the vessel through whom Jesus speaks encouragement to someone this week. Do it. It’s almost impossible to go through a week without meeting someone who needs encouragement. As Paul said, it’s not optional. It’s necessary.

Priestly Sin

 February 17, 2024

Someone once asked a preacher if it didn’t bother him that there were things in the Bible that he didn’t understand. “It’s not the things in the Bible I don’t understand that bother me,” he replied. “It’s the things I do understand that bother me.”

That’s how I feel about the Scripture I read this morning:

“If the anointed priest sins, bringing guilt on the people, then, concerning the sin that he has committed, he shall bring a young bull without defect for Yahweh as a sin offering.” —Leviticus 4:3 

When I was pastoring, this, more than any other Scripture bothered me. The thought that my sin would bring guilt upon those entrusted to my pastoral care scared me. It would be bad enough to someday have to stand before God and give account of myself; to be responsible for guilt I’ve brought upon others was almost more than I could stand. 

The worst words to hear would be for someone who sat under my teaching to say, “Your sin led me to sin.” I want someday to stand before God and be ab;e to say, “Here am I and the children whom the Lord has given me! (Isaiah 8:18).

Sacrifices

 February 16, 2024

It was nothing like the pictures I saw as a kid in Sunday School. The priests in charge of the Hebrew Tabernacle were depicted wearing pristine and almost glistening white robes. Everything was neat and tidy like the Baptist Sunday School I attended. The scenes described in the Bible were anything but. The Tabernacle must have looked more like a slaughterhouse.

Bulls, goats, sheep, calves, birds were all ritually slaughtered, their blood caught in bowls. They were butchered, parts to be burned on the altar, parts to be given to the priests. Fact is, there were LOTS of animals sacrificed every day. It was a dirty, smelly, bloody business. There must have been quite a cacophony of bleats, bellowing, birds screaming, and priests shouting commands to one another. The price exacted for the nation’s and individual’s sins was ugly, violent, and unsettling. 

In today’s sanitized religious world, the cost of our sin is almost hidden away. As Christians, we know Jesus died on the cross to pay for our sins, but that was long ago, and apart from Mel Gibson’s portrayal of the crucifixion in the movie “The Passion of the Christ,” we know very little about such things. The ugliness and devastating destruction of the human soul caused by our sins is lost on us; we have such a shallow understanding of good and evil, especially that which is in our own hearts, that we cannot fathom the depth of God’s love nor the cost of our salvation.  

Sin is gruesome. It’s ugly. It’s destructive, demeaning, and demanding a sacrifice unimaginable so we can be set free. Ponder the sacrifices in Leviticus 1 and 2, and take time to turn from sin and humbly give thanks for the great love of Christ to which they point. 

Behind the Door

 February 14, 2024

Happy Valentine’s Day! It seems a bit incongruous that this year, Valentine’s Day falls on Ash Wednesday. Are we supposed to repent for falling in love? Linda and I celebrated Valentine’s Day by me leaving her at the airport. She flew to Virginian to care for a friend who had major surgery yesterday. If you knew how little Linda likes to travel, and how she dreaded doing it by herself, you would know the meaning of Valentine’s Day. Her time in Virginia, away from the home she loves, is a true gift of love. We’ve had fifty-three of them together, so I guess we can sacrifice one for a friend.

My thoughts for this evening actually go back a couple days. Our daily reading through the Chronological Bible have been a bit challenging recently, as they have focused for a couple days on details of the construction of the OT tabernacle and the vestments for the priests. Aside from being extravagantly expensive and beautiful, it has been hard for me to glean much from these chapters. So I turned to my gratitude calendar to help me focus my thinking. The offering for the day was “three gifts found behind a door.” Hmm.

The first two were easy. For me, the first gift behind a door was the warmth of our home when I come in from a rather chilly outside. Sitting by the fire is a heavenly experience, and I get the first indication of that warmth as soon as I open the front door. The second gift behind a door is actually the first in importance: Jesus said, “I stand at the door and knock. If anyone opens the door, I will come in to him, eat with him, and he with me.” Sometimes it feels like there is a wall between Jesus and ourselves. In fact, there is; it’s our sin. But there is a door in that wall, and Jesus is knocking, waiting for us to answer so he can come in and wash away the sin and the filth accompanying it. The Gift behind that door is Jesus himself! You can’t get any better than that.

I had trouble coming up with the last gift behind a door. It took me two days before it dawned on me. Actually, it sang to me. For Christmas, Linda gave me a gift I had been wanting for years—a cuckoo clock! On the hour, the little door opens, the bird pops out and sings. It’s whimsical and utterly nonessential, but when that door opens and the bird pops out, I smile, and am thankful.

Three doors, warmth, wondrous salvation, and whimsey. I am truly a blessed man. One other door awaits; In a few days, the automatic doors to the airport will slide open and on the other side will be my Valentine, my wife.

Belly-crawling

 February 13, 2024

I should have known better, but I was only a dumb, naive kid. 

Today when I interviewed with the Jamestown Striders to become a mentor to an at-risk boy, one of the questions was, “Have you ever been arrested?” I suppose with our current drug epidemic, it’s getting harder to find people who answer in the negative, but I answered that I had not. On the way home however, an incident when I was about eight years old, came to mind; thus the above comment on being a dumb, naive kid.

A friend invited me to go with him to pick strawberries in a field behind our house. Today the area is all suburban tract housing, but back then, the new construction hadn’t extended to behind our own yard. Fields lay beyond. 

I should have suspected things were a bit fishy when my friend told me we would be crawling to the strawberry patch on our bellies, but again, I was a dumb, naive kid. I instantly became a smart, experienced kid when while enjoying a particularly juicy strawberry, a pair of shiny black shoes suddenly appeared in front of me. I looked up into the not-so-smiling face of a member of the local constabulary. I wasn’t arrested, but that might have been easier on me than being taken to my parents. Those strawberries weren’t quite so appealing thereafter.

The good news is, at eight years of age, I was too young to be arrested, even for a misdemeanor. It might not go so well with me if the scenario were repeated today. As I write, I can think of no profound lesson other than be careful who you listen to, and if a friend says you need to crawl on your belly to reach your goal, you might want to find a different friend.

Rest

 February 12, 2024

“Now therefore, I pray, if I have found grace in Your sight, show me now Your way, that I may know You and that I may find grace in Your sight. And consider that this nation is Your people.” And He said, “My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.”

—Exodus 33:13-14 

Things weren’t going so well for Moses. While he was on the mountain receiving the Ten Commandments, the children of Israel were cavorting around a golden idol. God saw it all and was ready to destroy them all until Moses intervened. God relented and told Moses to get ready to lead Israel into the Promised Land. Moses however, wasn’t quite so eager to do so…unless God promised to go with him. Israel had already proven themselves to be a stiff-necked, recalcitrant people, and Moses wasn’t about to try to handle them himself.

So God agreed to go with him, but how would Moses know for sure he would do so? After all, God couldn’t be seen with human eyes, and it’s pretty hard to be sure someone is with you if you can’t see them. To ease Moses’ concerns, God gave him a way of knowing: “I will give you rest.”

If I am feeling overwhelmed, over tired, and worn out, it is an indication that a distance has opened up between God and me. If the sign of his presence is rest, restlessness is a sign of God’s absence. God is only absent when I have crowded him out of my life with my busyness, my sin, or my negligence. Restlessness is a warning sign to step back and take stock of the state of my soul. Rest even in the midst of activity is the sign of God’s presence. Jesus himself undergirds this with his statement in Matthew 11:28 

“Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” —Matthew 11:28