The Promises of God: Messages
from the Mountain
Exodus 24:12-18, Matthew
5:1-11
“Buenos Dias!” I said to the roofers from South of the Border on top of our Sanctuary each day this week. And they smiled, but one said in clear English, “Good morning to you.”
And so after that first day, I would say to him: “How you doing?” It is a question we ask in the South. And he said to my query: “Blessed, Very Blessed! Thanks. And how are you doing?”
And I thought about his response. “Blessed, Very Blessed.” Jesus said to the disciples: You are blessed!”
It was the day he spoke the Beatitudes.
He was on the mountains surrounding the sea of Galilee…
There is an intriguing parallel between Jesus and Moses. They both spent quiet a bit of time on Mountain tops in the presence of God. In Exodus, Moses is on the Mountain for 40 days and 40 nights to receive the tablet of stone on which is engraved the Ten Commandments.
In Matthew, Jesus is on the mountain in the night of the transfiguration when Moses and Elijah appear with him. And it is on the mountain when Jesus deliveries the Ten Beatitudes. Now, Jesus probably didn’t detail all of these in one teaching moment. More likely this is a compilation of many times when Jesus taught the disciples. Matthew writing for a Jewish audience gathers them together because he is drawing a close parallel to Moses. Moses and Jesus go up on mountains. Never mind 1200 years separate their lives. And each delivers 10 lessons for living. Mosses the Ten Commandments, Jesus the 10 Beatitudes.
So Matthew, and he is the only Gospel writer who does this, places 10 Beatitudes on the lips of Jesus.
And he is saying, You who are my Disciples, How blessed!
Blessed are you when you mourn, for you will be comforted.
Blessed are you who are persecuted, for yours is the Kingdom of Heaven.
Blessed are you who are humble, for you shall inherit the earth.
Blessed are you who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for you will be satisfied.
Blessed are you who are pure of heart, for you shall see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for you are called the sons
of God. They shall obtain mercy.
Jesus looked out in the crowd and saw the people and he spoke God’s good word. He saw a family dressed in black with tears in their eyes and said, “Blessed are you that mourn, for you will be comforted.” Did you see during the President’s speech the long and emotional embrace of the emotional mother of a Marine who had died in Iraq and the young Iraqi woman who had voted? The price of freedom was affirmed in that long embrace of two strangers. The young Iraqi woman had showed her purple finger to the crowd. It was probably not the first time someone had given their finger to an American President, but it was the first time he returned the jester with a smile as the purple finger said “thank you.” And the long embrace of a free Iraqi woman, who had lost her family, and the mother of the Marine, who had lost a son, spoke volumes.
And Jesus, said: “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.”
Jesus looked out among the crowd and seeing a teacher of the law he said: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled.” As we begin this coming week, the season of Lent, we will acknowledge that there is in our heart a burning desire to know God, to experience him. And that in his words is the wonderful promise that those who hunger and thirst for righteousness will be satisfied.
Jesus would have looked out among the crowd and saw a Jewish teacher and admired his diligent search for truth. Oh, he called most of the Pharisees “white washed tombs, “because they were pretty on the outside, but inside were filled with dead men’s bones.” Yes, he did not like hypocrisy. Pretending you were something you were not didn’t set well with Jesus. But as he looked out at the crowd, he saw the wrinkled brow of a woman trying to make sense out of her life and a man in a teacher’s robe trying to understand the deep mysteries of the Universe, and he said to them: “You will be satisfied.”
And Jesus looked out on the crowd and saw a woman standing by herself. She knew she had done wrong and obviously everybody else in the town had known of her “mistakes.” It’s sad how the bad that we do lives long after we have changed, but the good is interred with our bones.”
And Jesus looked out among the crowd and Jesus saw a soldier without his sword and dagger, listening to Jesus’ every word. Here is one who employed by the Roman authorities was strong and sometimes mean and would just as soon take you life as look at you. And Jesus said: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the sons of God.
Summary: Now one thing about the Beatitudes, they are conditional blessings. They come when certain things are done.
If you mourn, you will be comforted.
If you hunger and thirst after righteousness, you will be satisfied.
If you are pure of heart, you shall see God.
If you are a peacemaker, you will be called the son of God.
Now I know, about the unconditional love of God. Thank heavens for his unconditional love of the likes of us, because we do wrong more than we do right, we cover well about 6 out of 10 of the commandments and think we are not doing so bad. But here in the beatitudes, God’s blessings are interestingly conditional. This is true in other places in the Bible:
“If my people, who are called by my name, will repent of their sin and turn from their evil ways, I will hear from heaven and will forgive them of their sin and I will heal their land.”
Jesus said: “Unless you repent, you will perish.” Therefore, for those of you who desire to be comforted, who want to be peacemakers, who hunger and thirst after righteousness, who repent of your sin and intend to lead a new life, following the Commandments of God and walking from henceforth in his holy ways; draw near with faith.
One wonders at times if their life will count for anything. Does what we do make a difference? Will we make a contribution to God’s Plan for the earth on which we have been privileged to live or will we just live and work and then die? Will we live out our days and then be just gone? Perished from the face of the earth?
Leo Buscaglia’s book, Bus Nine To Paradise in which he identifies life tasks, “To Live, To Love, and To Leave A Legacy” has been definitive in my life. The title itself challenges and directs me.
The Bible teaches that God created us. And even before we were conceived he had a need for us and then we were shaped for his purpose.
Rick Warren in his book, “The Purpose Driven Life” observes that “God knew us before our parents knew us!”
The New Jerusalem translation of the Bible renders one of our Psalms: “He knitted us together in the limbo of our mother’s womb.”
Thus K. Gibran wrote “Your children are not your children, they are life’s longing for itself. They come not from you, but through you.”
To Abraham, the father of the Judeo/Christian family, of which we are a part, God said: “Go from your country and your kindred to a land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.” There in Genesis 12th chapter is recorded one of the early great promises of the Bible. Abraham chose to be obedient to God’s instruction and God fulfilled his promise and made him in his old age, a father of an entire nation of people.
And Jesus, in his time, promised that “whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.” “God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God sent His Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.”
When you live in Christ, you are a part of something a lot bigger than just what you see. When you are in the family of God and live out your life in obedience to the plan of God, you are involved in something that will be going on long after you have vacated your post of duty.
So if you want to overcome the fear of perishing from the face of the earth without leaving a mark, without leaving a personal legacy, then get involved in something that is so big it will outlast you. Grab hold of Jesus Christ and hold onto his vision of a new society where people love one another and you will have hold of something which will take a life time for you to complete and even then, someone else will probably have to finish the job, but you would have be a part of an eternal, everlasting plan. Dream great big dreams for our God is a great big God. He is the Creator of the Universe!
Leave a legacy of a world at peace, a nation that values human rights, a church where Christ is experienced by the love we share for one another.
You can blow this business of human living! You can make a mess out of it. And yes, you will perish! Start taking drugs. Don’t care for anyone but yourself. Stop worshipping. Stop praying. Stop trying. And you will perish!
Others have and you can join their ranks.
Oscar Wilde was a poet, playwright and novelist. He was a man of unlimited potential. He was born in 1854 and won scholarships and was educated in Britain’s best schools. He excelled in all of his studies and was honored as “First in Greats” at Oxford University. He wrote many plays and they became very popular and earned him a heap of money and he became the toast of London. His talent seemed limitless. One critic called Oscar Wilde“ our most quotable writer” since Shakespeare.
But in time Oscar Wilde at the end of his life, was broken and miserable. He would end up in jail. He lost his family, his fortune, his self-respect and his will to live. He died bankrupt and broken at the age of 46.
From jail he wrote the following:
“The gods had given me almost everything. But I let myself be lured into long spells of senseless and sensual ease. I grew careless of the lives of others. I forgot that every little action of the common day makes or unmakes character and that therefore what one has done in the secret chamber one has someday to cry aloud on the housetop. I ceased to be lord over myself. I was no longer the captain of my soul. I ended in horrible disgrace.”
Howard Hughes at the age of 18 years of age, found himself an orphan because his mother died when he was 16 and his father, who was the head of a company called Hughes Tool Company, died of a heart attack. Hughes’ father had built his company from the ground up and gotten in on the oil drilling business in Texas in the early turn of the Century, 1901-1924. Hughes' father had invented and patented the rotary bits for the oil drills. The drills revolutionized the industry and raked in the early Texas oil money. Hughes father once said: “We don’t have a monopoly. People who want to drill for oil and not use the Hughes bit can always use a pick and shovel.”
Well, upon the father’s death when Howard was 18, the company made Howard Hughes one of the richest persons in the world. He was one of the nation’s first billionaires. There was a time when Howard Hughes, Jr. would have been called a success because of his wealth. He was creative and productive and moved into aviation and the movie making industry.
But today the name of Howard Hughes is not a story of success, but of a broken life. He was unable to sustain any long-term relationships. His marriages didn’t last. He turned to drugs and isolated his life and died a horrible lonely death locked in a penthouse apartment in South America. He died alienated and alone. A broken life of unfulfilled potential.
God the Creator has created you like Himself to be a Creator and you have the power to impact the outcome of your life and those who love you. You do not have to travel the pathway of Oscar Wilde or Howard Hughes. Your future is not a place toward which you are going; it is a place you are creating by the decisions of everyday.
Benjamin Franklin once observed: “One today is worth two tomorrows; what I am to be, I am now becoming.” This is the reason a few years ago I wrote the book “Become the person you want to become.”
God gives us gifts and graces and opportunity and then we have to do something with it.
To truly be successful, and not perish from the earth, you must use the gifts and graces and opportunities God gives to you. You must be obedient to God’s leadership in your life as Abraham was. For people like us, we must constantly rededicate our life to Jesus Christ, less we perish.
So therefore, I encourage you, I implore you to get hold of something huge and dream. Sometimes I worry that we do not call upon those in our faith tradition to do enough or to be enough or to sacrifice enough for the cause of Jesus Christ. We tend to be soft, looking for the easy way. We have had young people who were well able to serve the Church and advance the Kingdom of God but they have chosen to go into careers where they might make more money or it just looks easier. To choose the way of soft under footing over against God’s purpose for one’s life is to travel the easy road to nowhere. Are you making a difference in the world? Are you making a difference in the lives of others? Or are you living for yourself. Are you supporting Christian causes?
We have seen on television the results of Islamic fundamentalist religious terrorist’s suicide bombers, almost every day. Such misguided hatred. We have seen this kind of ignorant vengeance in the past in the Crusades of the Middle Ages and in the Japanese’s Kamikaze pilots of World War II. We have seen this in Pensacola when two individuals killed medical personnel who were associated with the medical practice of abortion.
Such a sad state of affairs when misinformed individuals violate the commandments thinking they will inherit eternal life. The only thing I can admire about such craziness and obesity is that they had the courage to give their life for a cause greater than themselves. They did the wrong thing for the right reasons, but they had courage. Do you?
In the season of Lent, with the death of Jesus on a Cross, we are taught that sacrifice is significant. But we also are taught that when the sacrifice is done for the right reason and the right way, the Reward is out of this world and you will not perish!
God’s love for us is often discovered in unexpected places, when we least expect it, and during unusual circumstances.
There is a rather interesting word which has been coined in our time to describe “Unexpected blessings”. And the word is “Serendipitiy” A Serendipity is an unexpected blessings which happens to us all of a sudden when we are least expecting it.
We used to have a Sunday school class that was called the “Serendipity” class. Over the years the history of Sunday School Classes in First Church have often changed. We have had names of individuals like “The Duell, Wesley, Lipscomb” We have over the years had other names but when some of these individuals were arrested or divorced or absconded with funds, the names were changed, and I will not recall the names in order to protect the innocent. And today we no longer have the Serendipity Class, but we do still experience serendipities because we live in a world of unexpected blessings. Surrounded by God’s divine graciousness.
Sure unexpected tragedies also occur, no one denies that, but for those who have eyes to see, even in the midst of tragedy, blessings are discovered. I recall that Paul once wrote: “Suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us.” Was the crucifixion of Jesus a tragedy or a blessing?
Serendipities are everywhere. Who knows you may experience God’s love in this Church, this very day. You may discover that you don’t have to be good enough or earn God’s divine grace, but just accept the fact that God created you, redeemed you in Christ and is changing you by the power of the Holy Spirit right now.
Serendipities are all around us but only those who see realize they are on holy ground and take off their shoes.
In l947 a young shepherd playing around the caves on the cliffs surrounding the Dead Sea in the Middle East, discovered some old clay jars which contained one of the most significant archeological discoveries of our time, referred to as “The Dead Sea Scrolls”. The scrolls written in four different languages have pushed our ability to read the original writings of Holy Scripture a full 1000 years back into the time of Jesus. You can view some of the fragments of Scrolls and learn of the story in a rather marvelous display in the Mobile Exploreum. Frankly, I saw the the display in Jerusalem and with the new electronic means of displays and communication of the story, you learn more in Mobile than in Jerusalem. The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls was truly an unexpected blessing—a serendipity.
This year it looks like we will have two spring seasons if not more. Last fall after the Hurricane dealt harshly with us, and stripped our trees and plants to the bare bark, their appeared new growth. In October we had spring time. Already we are beginning to see the early signs of spring growth and the early azaleas. And the other day I was surprised by the appearance of the robins. They have once again returned. In spite of Hurricanes, broken trees and smashed relationships, A’s and B's and F's, marriages and divorces, wars and births, new jobs and deaths, “The Robins have Returned”. Even though our neat little packaged world has been destroyed and nothing this year is quite like we envisioned it might be, The robins are back. God’s love is like that, in spite of our silly, foolish and intelligent ways. God’s love is steadfast. The Robins always come back. It is a serendipity that occurs every year.
In the Old Testament stories of the history of God’s people, you often discover God’s unexpected mercies. In the stories of the time when the Hebrews traveled between slavery in Egypt and life in “the Promised Land”, they wandered like hungry, thirsty nomads in the trackless desert. When they were without food, bread appeared in the morning. When they were thirsty, fresh water was discovered.
Astute Biblical scholars has discovered that there is in the dry Sinai wilderness desert a Middle Eastern plant that secrets a liquid which produces a small wafer, bread like substance each night to be gathered in the early morning. And along the shallow waters of the Gulf of Aqaba where the desert blends into the edge of the salty waters of the Sea, they have discovered that freshwater springs bubble up. In the edge of the sea, surrounded by undrinkable, saltwater, there is fresh drinkable water. You can wade out into the salty brine and there drink living water flowing from underground springs. Such discoveries don’t explain away what the Bible describes as a miracle of God, it only verifies that God’s unexpected blessings are all around us, for those who have eyes to see. Some of you are sitting beside one of God’s miracles.
One day in a Samaritan village, John tells in the scripture stories of Jesus, there is a lonely woman who has been married 5 times who is at the community well at midday, gathering water for her family. Jesus speaks to her which is unusual to say the least…She went to the well expecting nothing, but encountered God’s accepting love. A serendipity.
Water was crucial for the wandering Hebrews in the desert and for the Samaritan woman at the well. Water is crucial for every living being. We found that out on September 16, 2004 when we didn’t have any water.
When I was growing up in Marengo County, there was a man who dug wells and was known for his ability to locate underground water by the use of what he called a “water witch”. A “water witch” was a stick that looked like a chicken’s wish bone. And old Sam would walk around on the land with the “water witch” pointed parallel to the ground until all of a sudden it would begin to tilt toward the earth. Strangest thing I have every seen. Sam would mark a spot and begin in another place and see if it brought him back to the same place, and sure enough when he cross-referenced his location of the underground water, he marked the spot and started digging the well and so far as I know, he found water every time. I watched that process, with my Dad, a number of times but always with a skeptical heart. My Dad would say, “Well it works”. Old Sam sometimes drank a bit to much and I had seen him unable to walk a straight line. (There’s no one from Marengo County here today is there? There are not many of us? But I didn’t want to talk about one of your relatives if you happened to be here. If you were from Marengo, you would probably be a distant cousin.) Well, even when old Sam couldn’t walk a straight line, he never missed when he dug his wells. I watched this process a number of times with a friend of mine, Arnold Strickland and we got this idea that if Old Sam could do it and get a hundred dollars, we could do it. His only expense so far as we could tell was a wishbone stick, cut from a tree, a pick and shovel and a 20 foot piece of PVC Pipe, and a bottle of Old Forrester. Well, A rather long story made short, we cut a limb from a tree, borrowed our Dad’s pick and shovel, and went into business with visions of where we were going to spend all the money we were going to make.
Like many of our teenage ventures, we never made a dime, because we could never make the “water witch” work and sometimes we would dig all day long and never strike water.
Well, one summer my mother and I were picking blackberries and ran up on a snake coiled up in the middle of the berry patch. Now the only person more afraid of a snake than myself was my mother, who ordered me to go get my Dad’s shotgun and kill the snake. Well on the way to the house, I remembered that Arnold Strickland had told me that he had heard that a fellow in Demopolis, Alabama was paying a lot of money for poisonous snakes. Something like $129.00 per foot. He would milk their venom and sell it to some medical company. So on the way to the house, I remembered Arnold’s newest scheme of how we were going to get rich and so I called him on the phone and told him “Get that old forked water witch cause you are going to need the fork in the stick because we are going into the snake catching business.
Well another long story made short, Arnold came over with our useless water witch now a forked snake catcher and in time we found the snake again, hiding in the blackberry patch, and pushed the fork over his head, while I held the gun, just in case. Later he said, I was more afraid of you shooting me if that snake had jumped, than I was of him biting me. Arnold caught the snake, put him in a minnow bucket and off we drove to sell our snake and make our first million. We found the place where the snakes were bought and this guy gave us not $129.00 per foot, but 1.29 cents per foot.
Now you are wondering where I am going with this story, and so am I, but where I started going was this: Had Arnold and I made a lot of money selling that snake that day, we would probably still be in Marengo County catching snakes and you would have one less minister. That is an unexpected blessing, a Serendipity, at least for me for I could still be in Marengo County.
The truth is, unexpected blessings often occur when we are least expect them. They happen on the road to somewhere else. Sometimes failures bring new opportunities. Suffering even produces endurance…God’s blessings come to us. Like Robins in early spring. Like the Hebrews on the road to the Promised Land when God gave them water and bread from the parched earth. Like the woman at the well, lonely, frustrated without a healthy relationship, there to draw water and go back to her house and hide, and she discovers “Living water” which brings ultimate satisfaction to her life.
We live in a world, created by God where unexpected blessings happen. Cultivate a habit of expectation this week.
Jesus once said: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after Righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.”