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January 21, 2007
Trusting Jesus When the Chips Are Down
Deuteronomy 1: 1, 9-18/John 11: 1-4, 17-27
January 21st, 2007
I have never played Poker, but I remember the term, “when the chips are down.” I know that it is not a good thing when the chips are down. I think it means the pile of chips you’re winning is down, and you’re losing the game. When your stack of chips is up, you’re winning; down, you’re losing.
We read the Bible so many years after any part of it was written to get guidance from God on how to live today. Our Old Testament reading this morning might have been chosen to give us wisdom in how to “run” a church, not only when the chips are down, but all the time. Choose responsible people to help the pastor lead the congregation in following God’s ways.
But I chose this passage for Moses’ remarks about when the chips were down, when he found disappointment in his task. The leadership sometimes stood against him. Even his brother and sister led revolt against him. How many biographies of pastor’s I’ve read that included sad reports of opposition, even revolt in the congregation.
When we run into difficulty with people at church it reflects on God. There were moments in Moses’ life with Israel when he stood between them and God. It was a most difficult position. We’d like to think that fine and happy relationships might be the ordinary state for God’s people walking in God’s ways. But Paradise remains around the next bend in the road.
In the lesson from John’s Gospel we read this morning we see extreme disappointment with the Son of God on the part of two of His best friends. They knew Jesus would rally to their need immediately when He learned their brother Lazarus was very ill. After all, they were close friends with Jesus.
But He could scarcely have let them down more. Jesus arrived at the graveside four days after Lazarus was buried. Talk about disappointment with God! I’m not sure they knew Jesus’ full theological description as the Nicene Creed puts it, completely God and completely man, but they knew His works were the work of God. Who but God can heal all kinds of sick people, feed masses of hungry people using minute amounts of food. He could even raise the dead.
When the chips were down Moses, Mary, and Martha didn’t find God leaping to their rescue. They trusted in God with the chips down, but He didn’t leap to rescue them in a timely way. Let’s look more closely at these Bible accounts that were given to us for our instruction.
First we read from the Book of Deuteronomy Moses’ reminiscence of how things had gone with him and the people of Israel as he neared the end of his life. He looks back and says, “I said to you [way back forty years ago] I am not able alone to bear you . . .How can I bear alone the weight and burden of you and your strife?” It was the strife in particular that got him down.
Moses dictated or wrote this second book, a reminiscence of his forty years with Israel that we call the Book of Deuteronomy [which means Second Law] from the east side of the Jordan River. He looked across the Jordan at the Promised Land we now know as the nation of Israel, knowing he’d never step foot on it. This was a heavy loss for him we can imagine.
When we listen to the haunting Negro Spiritual “Deep River, my home is over Jordan,” it is the view of Moses looking across into a land on which he would never set foot. The American slaves who were brought to this continent from their homes far away in Africa read the story of Moses and recognized that the great Law Giver of the Jewish people suffered a plight like their own. The theme of the Exodus has meant a lot to African Americans. How the forbears of recent generations of African Americans longed for freedom on the other side of their Jordan River. How they longed for something that would come to their children generations later. They could only dream about it. Were it not for great people like Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr., that Jordan would not have been crossed till years later.
Moses, the man of God, who went up to Mt. Sinai and received the Ten Commandments on two tablets of stone, who established the pattern of worship Israel would follow for years to come, was denied the right to enter Canaan. Why? Three times in the early chapters of Deuteronomy Moses tells Israel that God held it against him on their account so that he did not get to set foot in the land God promised to Abraham. He was blamed for what they did even though his personal life was a spectacular exhibit of closeness to God. In His personal disappointment that is echoed in the Book of Deuteronomy was due to the continual difficulty he had with the Israelite people. Many generations later Moses would be venerated nearly to the point of idolatry. But within his own lifetime there was continual antagonism, rejection, and even revolt led by his brother and sister.
Not only that, but also Moses thinks back and remembers He had to contend with God as well as the Israelites. The predicament of God becoming weary of Israel to the point of planning to wipe them out as a people put him in a terrible fix. We read that Moses argued with God and changed God’s mind about this. What kind of Ultimate Being is it that a man can debate with and win? “What kind of God are you? Moses must have wondered. Are You an Ultimate being? Are you like we are, a Man writ large in the heavens?
Well, part of the interest of the strange passages that tell of Moses’ argument with God is that it gives us a clue to what was involved when God created Adam in His image and likeness. Yes, we are like God, and yes God is something like we are.
Though we find it scandalous to imagine that God the Creator of everything, whose mercy is from everlasting on those who fear Him, can change His mind out of disgust when His people show how badly they need His mercy, the Bible does not blush to tell us this. God got tired of remembering that, as the Psalmist put it, “We are dust.” I intend no irreverence in saying this. The Bible teaches it.
Moses was in a terrible predicament. He did not doubt that God existed, but wondered what kind of God could on the one hand have the power to create heaven and earth with all that is in them and beyond them, and on the other hand vacillate in His mind about His plan set forth in the promise to Abraham centuries before?
Sometimes you and I are puzzled by things. The way we expect God to be is defined by how God “lets things happen.” I hear Christian friends ask, “What is God doing in your life?” I know they mean mostly, “What good stuff is happening for you?” Suppose I answer, “God is testing me terribly right now.” Maybe if someone asks you, “What is God doing in your life?” and you answer, God is tormenting me,” they’d reply, “No, it’s not God tormenting you. It’s the devil.” Or maybe they’d think, “You’re reaping what you sowed.”
But Moses was not reaping what he sowed. And it was not the devil after him. It was God testing his mettle when he was given the task of being the mediator between Israel and their God. These were not made-up tests, but real ones. The people did not need to be instructed to give Moses trouble or to disobey God’s commands. Israel’s behavior has its parallels in our own.
In our finest moments we think how lovingly God is in control. But when life becomes hard, we wonder about God. I have heard some of you speak to me your sorrow at how things have gone for you. The trials that have come to you have come unearned, it seems, or you’re getting worse than you deserved.
Indeed, in the Bible itself we read that haunting question, “Why do the righteous suffer and the wicked prosper?” It is a theme echoed in the Psalms. Where is God when it hurts? a popular Christian writer asked in a book not long ago.
Before proposing an answer to this that I hope may be helpful, let’s turn to the other passage of Scripture we read this morning.
We read again part of the familiar story of the death of Lazarus, and Jesus’ interactions with him and his two sisters, Mary and Martha. These two women, very dear to Jesus, thought they were playing with a “stacked deck” as they saw their brother become very ill. Most people gave up on life in those days when terminal illness hit. But they had Jesus on their side. He loved them. They loved Him. He’d take care of Lazarus’ illness. Lazarus would soon be in the pink of health.
In the next chapter of John’s Gospel, which describes something that happened later—is mentioned here as a clue to how close Jesus was to this family. Mary showed her affection to Jesus very tenderly by anointing his feet with expensive ointment and wiping them dry with her hair. Her reasons seems to be different from the gratitude that made the unnamed woman in Luke 7 care for Jesus in much the same way in a far different setting. We don’t know that Mary was a conspicuous sinner, showering on Jesus her gratitude for forgiveness. She was simply a uniquely close friend.
John mentions this later act of affection here to help us recognize the intensity of the affection that passed between Jesus and this family in better times.
But look at how oddly Jesus responded when he heard Lazarus was very ill. In effect Jesus seemed to suggest, “He’s not all that sick.” He kept on doing whatever he was doing two more days. It is so odd to read in verse five: “When he heard that he [Lazarus] was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.” If you love someone, don’t you jump at the chance to help them in their time of need? What kind of love was this from Jesus? The disciples must have thought, “Jesus knows Lazarus isn’t as bad off as his family imagines. It’s just a passing flu or a cold. He’ll improve. Mary and Martha are a bit hyper.”
All the while in the next few verses we learn that Jesus knew full well that Lazarus was very ill. Oddly Jesus told His disciples, “Lazarus is dead and for your sake I am glad I was not there [to heal him while he was still alive.]
Well, Jesus and His disciples got to Bethany four days after Lazarus had died. Meanwhile Mary and Martha had watched their brother sink rapidly. They saw him lapse into a coma and die, knowing that if Jesus had come right away their brother would not be edging toward death. What kind of friend was this on whom they had showered such intimate care—opening their home to Him and His disciples, treating them to hospitality as they’d extend to their own family.
Finally, they heard that Jesus was coming. In deep disappointment Mary, who would later anoint Jesus’ feet, sat at home. She didn’t go to meet Jesus. What was she thinking? What kind of friend is Jesus? But Martha, her sister, ran to meet Jesus. She said the obvious, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”
What kind of consolation was it to hear Jesus’ reply, “Your brother will rise again.” She found no consolation now in the doctrine of the resurrection at the last day. She ran to get her sister, Mary and told her quietly, “The Teacher is here and is calling for you.” She didn’t call Jesus, “Lord,” but “teacher.” Mary came quickly, overwhelmed with disappointment in Jesus. But she speaks to Him still as she had before, “Lord if you had been here my brother would have not died.”
It is at this point that we see one of the most moving images of Jesus, the Man as well as of Jesus, God made flesh who could bring to life that which was dead before. In a moving passage John tells us that when Jesus saw Mary crying, and others with her, He was moved in his spirit and troubled. Then the shortest verse in the Bible, “Jesus wept.” Jesus wept. Why? Is it not because even though He knew all the power that resided in His word, in His touch, aspects of His Deity, He also knew the full weight of sorrow—theirs and so His too.
We know what follows. Jesus brings Lazarus to life again. But we also know that Lazarus did not live forever after that. Before Lazarus and his sisters would die, Jesus Himself would suffer abandonment by His heavenly Father, and He would go to His death without God the Father intervening to rescue Him.
In both these scenes of Moses’ life and Mary, Martha, and Lazarus with Jesus it seems to me we get a picture of how near God is to life. But God does not respond to our needs in a timely way we think. Is this perhaps because the present distress is not the whole of life God? We would all love it if God were to swoop down and fix everything at the moment. If God would immediately fix me so I don’t have cancer anymore, or fix the misery of my marriage, or change the hearts of those that are making my life very difficult, how much easier it would be to trust in God.
My personal experience has been that people don’t respond this way when God seems to fix problems. They are apt to think it would have happened even if they had not prayed. God knows this about us. Sometimes God fixes our problems, making things seem to go well for a long span of time. But in the end death comes to us all.
I believe God wanted Moses to learn that God’s idea of the fulfillment of His covenant with His people needs a lot more than one lifetime, or even of many generations to fulfill. There would come a time when Moses would see God was as good as His word. We might see this as pie in the sky thinking. But who can deny that life’s importance reaches far beyond what any of us experience in a moment, or a week, or even a lifetime.
When Jesus let Mary and Martha suffer momentary grief before raising their brother to life—for a while, He wanted them to see a picture bigger than the affection they enjoyed from Him, and He from them. The love of God for His Son, Jesus, in fact, had to still let the great Plan unfold, that sent Jesus to the cross.
But beyond the cross, and beyond your present difficulty, there stretches the loving purpose of God that is only for our good.
The Apostle Paul ends the great Resurrection passage in I Corinthians by writing, “Be steadfast, immoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, for you know that in the Lord your work is not in vain.” So we are to keep on keeping on, whatever the moment is bringing to us.
How often I have been fortified by this truth when things were really tough as a pastor, or when sickness overwhelmed our home. And each of you has your own version of distress to work through. But in your distress, keep on keeping on being faithful, steadfast, immoveable in your commitment to doing the business of life God has given you to do. Those who resort to bitterness, who give up, miss the good that God always seems to steal through the gray clouds for us.
Perhaps as you think of the life of Moses and of Mary and Martha’s disappointment with Jesus at the moment, you may see your life flash before you. Then claim for yourself the good that God holds before all who trust Him, whether their names be Moses, Mary, Martha, or any other name by which we are called.
Let us pray: O Lord, to speak of things beyond our knowledge can seem glib in the face of sorrows. Grant to us the patience to run well the course that is set before us. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Pastor Stuart D. Robertson
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, IN 47906
Posted by faithpres at January 21, 2007 09:27 AM