As I finish my sermon for tomorrow this evening I wanted to share a few excerpts from it with you. Before you read further, let me issue a disclaimer. Although I don't read my sermon, I do type it out word for word each week. The exercise of typing it and reading over it several times gets it into me so that I am then free to preach it without relying so heavily on my notes. I take the written notes with me into the pulpit but basicallly use them as a reference.
So, the disclaimer is this - when I am writing a sermon, I envision myself standing in the pulpit speaking the words that are going onto the page. Thus, writing a sermon involves writing to be heard, whereas writing all other blog posts involve writing to be read. These are two different things and I think you can see the difference as you read this.
Having said that, tomorrow I am preaching on Genesis 8:20-22 - when Noah came out of the ark after the flood. The main point is on the redemptive historical significance of Noah's sacrifice and God's promise to not flood the earth again, even though man's heart remains evil. One minor point of focus and application toward the end of the sermon involves explaining what verse 22 means to us. Though it is minor I find it interesting and thought I would share it with you.
I would be remiss if I didn't mention that these thoughts were triggered from teaching I heard from my all time favorite seminary prof - Richard Pratt. I'm not name-dropping, just trying to give credit where credit is due. I also should point out that where I have deviated from the good prof taught me, he isn't necessarily to blame (though he might be!).
Also, these are just a few excerpts from this part of the sermon - if it appears a little choppy its because I cut and pasted, not wanting to bore you with the whole thing.
God’s Gift of “Sameness”
Let me explain what I mean by “the gift of sameness” because I know that this is not a phrase you have probably ever heard of.
Look at verse 22:
“As long as the earth endures,
seedtime and harvest,
cold and heat,
summer and winter,
day and night
will never cease.”
This is saying that, as long as the earth endures, the earth is going to run on a regular schedule. It is going to run on a predictable schedule. It is going to run on a schedule where the same things happen over and over again.
From this point on, every year there will be a time of seedtime and a time of harvest. There will be times in the year when it is hot and times when it is cold. There will be predictable patterns of summer and winter.
There will be day and night. And notice these things will never cease until the world passes away.
This is a blessing, this is a reward.
This is a great blessing, but the reason I am belaboring the point is to point out that what God calls a blessing, we often call a curse.
We tend to complain when life gets too regular and gets to be too much of the same old stuff. We want excitement in our lives, and adventure.
You hear it when someone asks you how you’ve been and they answer “Oh, same ol’ same ol’” with a bit of sigh in their voice, as if to say, “oh how boring and unexciting my life is.”
We go to the same old job every day, come home to the same old husband or wife every day, wash the same old dishes every day, do the same old laundry every week, and go to the same old church every week.
Over time we begin to think that the really significant people in life are the ones who are in the news or in Hollywood, and the reason they are significant is because of all the exciting stuff they do.
There’s a Christianized version of this Hollywood myth and that is the myth that the really significant Christians are the preachers and missionaries – the ones who speak to hundreds, maybe thousands, the ones who cross continents, face down headhunters, cross raging streams and see villages of people come to Christ.
The Christianized version of this myth is that, if I grow up in the church, raised by loving parents who teach me the word of God, and if I come to Christ at an early age, then my testimony is not as sexy and exciting as the testimony of the one who was rescued by Christ from the gutter. Now, we praise God for all those who are rescued by Christ from the gutter, but we ought to be especially thankful for those Christ kept from going too far into the gutter.
So, we resent and curse our ordinary, regular lifestyles that are filled with the same old stuff, yet God calls that the blessed life.
Think about this for a moment folks – what God calls a blessing, we call a curse.
In I Thessalonians 4:11 it says:
Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business and to work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody.
This verse is a direct command and has a universal application - we are to be ambitious to lead a quiet life, to mind our own business and to work with our hands.
We are commanded to be ambitious to lead a quiet life, not an adventuresome life, to mind our own business, not everyone else’s and to work with our hands – to just go and do our jobs well.
The quiet, uneventful, regular life is the blessed life. I know that sounds so foreign to everything you have heard, but I can tell you that it is true on the authority of God’s word.
Randy Frazee is the author of a good book I just read called “Making Room for Life.” He talks about being in Israel on some kind of bus tour and driving through the countryside and seeing many Bedouins out in their tents. He felt sorry for them. They lived a very hard life – after spending their entire life in the sun, working hard, battling the elements, their skin got leathery and wrinkled and they looked terrible. The tour bus driver made an offhand comment that the average Bedouin lives to be 100 years old. Frazee was floored. Here were people living in the harshest of environments, without the benefits of the hygiene we enjoy, without the benefit of modern medical care and they were outliving us by over 20 years on average.
The reason they lived so long is because they had a very regular schedule, they had tight knit social groups and they had virtually no stress. They did the same thing every day of their lives. Every day of their life they would get up at dawn, work all day, come in at dusk, eat dinner, spend time with the family, go to bed and get up and do it all again the next day.
The quiet, regular, life is the blessed life.
Have you been going to the same old job at the same old place for years now and is it getting boring? It’s a blessing – if you don’t believe it’s a blessing talk to the person who just got laid off and wishes they could go to any job tomorrow.
Are you tired of washing the same old dishes every day – those dirty dishes are a symbol to you of God’s provision for you. They remind you that you had food today. There’s millions of people around the world today who won’t have to do dishes because they didn’t have any food.
Are you tired of doing the same old laundry every week? If your family is like ours, laundry is like rabbits, you put a little bit in the laundry room and it multiplies. That laundry is a reminder to you that you have a home full of kids, whereas there are millions of people in the world who would love to have a child but can’t. Or think of those who have lost children who would give anything to wash that kid’s muddy socks one more time.
All of these things, and many more, are a sign of God’s blessing upon your life. Sameness, ordinariness, regularity is a blessing from God.
We dare not call a curse what God calls a blessing.
I hope you will go home and let every task you perform at work be an occasion for thanksgiving to God. This includes those things you are doing for the 9999th, and 10000th time. I hope you will utter a prayer of thanksgiving for every dirty dish you wash, and every dirty sock you pick up. I hope you will give thanks to God for the heat in summer and the cold and winter, for the sunrise and the sunset, because all of these are reminders to you that God has spared you from judgment and given you a world that is regular and predictable, and that allows you to serve Him.
Remembering all the while, that not only was your salvation purchased by the blood of Christ, but everything you need in this life is a gift from his hand.
Recent Comments