Sermon 2-14-10

Heavenly Father, we gather in Your House this day and thank You for Your forgiveness. We thank You that we have a relationship, a oneness with you. We thank You for Your great love and we thank you that Your love is such that you pursue us, you reach out to us, and you personally speak to us through Your words in the Bible. And now, Lord, as we hear those words, as we hear You speaking to us, may Your Holy Spirit give us understanding, wisdom, and application to our lives today. And we pray this in the Name of Jesus. Amen.

Luke 11:28 tells us that we are blessed when we hear God’s word, “Blessed are those who hear His word and obey it”; there is a blessing when we actually guard it, keep it in our hearts and obey. Our readings this morning begin our Lenten season and they really help to clarify what is going on in life. The Old Testament reading this morning has great words of promise from the Book of Amos. We sometimes forget that God does nothing without first revealing to His people, his prophets what He is going to do. So often we think God is confusing, that He doesn’t make sense, and ask why He would do this or that. But as we have seen over the years in Bible Study, God does absolutely nothing without first revealing what He is doing.

Old Testament – Amos 3:6-8 When a trumpet sounds in a city, do not the people tremble? When disaster comes to a city, has not the LORD caused it? Surely the Sovereign LORD does nothing without revealing his plan to his servants, the prophets. The lion has roared - who will not fear? The Sovereign LORD has spoken – who can but prophesy?

Our second reading is one of the great, lost passages in the Bible. Even people who study the Bible intently sometimes don’t recall this story. It’s a story about Eutychus and the strange things that happened to him as he was listening to Paul speak. This is one of those hard-to-explain passages and we will talk about this in the sermon today.

Epistle – Acts 20:7-12 On the first day of the week we came together to break bread. Paul spoke to the people and, because he intended to leave the next day, kept on talking until midnight. There were many lamps in the upstairs room where we were meeting. Seated in a window was a young man named Eutychus, who was sinking into a deep sleep as Paul talked on and one. When he was sound asleep, he fell to the ground from the third story and was picked up dead. Paul went down, threw himself on the young man and put his arms around him. “Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “He’s alive!” Then he went upstairs again and broke bread and ate. After talking until daylight, he left. People took the young man home alive and were greatly comforted.

So what do we have so far? We have seen that God does nothing without first revealing what He is doing. Even in those strange situations like what happened to Eutychus, God is still at work. How do we know that he is at work in these situations? We know because His Word tells us that He is in John chapter five, our Gospel Lesson.

Gospel – John 5:16-20 So, because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jews persecuted him. Jesus said to them, “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I, too, am working.” For this reason the Jews tried all the harder to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God. Jesus gave them this answer: “I tell you the truth the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does. For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does. Yes, to your amazement he will show him even greater things than these.

Sermon –

Thursday afternoon I was visiting with a couple of our members, a couple very active in the church and they told me about their neighbor who they were trying to show that God is alive and that He cares and answers prayer. The situation they told me about was this: the wife was giving a birthday party for her husband last summer and the party was going to be held outside. There was rain in the forecast so she prayed that the rain would be held off until after the party – which it was – thank You God!! So she gave her testimony and most people said “Boy it’s great that the rain stopped!” But her unbelieving neighbors said to her, “I have trouble worshiping in and believing in a God who would stop rain for a birthday but would also let a baby starve to death.”

How would you answer that one? That’s one of those confusing things about our walk with God, it’s one of our confusing things about life, and that is what we are going to attempt to answer over the next seven weeks during our Lenten Series. We are going to try to make some sense about life and make some sense about what God is doing so we can help people like our members’ neighbor, help to lead them to Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. For the next seven weeks of Lent we are going to use the Seven Principles or Seven Realities taken from Experiencing God by Henry Blackaby to try to make some sense of life.

The first principle is: God is always at work around us. You may be you are thinking, “What good is this? I’ve already taken Experiencing God and I already know these principles!” Well, I’ve taken Experiencing God twice and I review these principles every couple of months. Every time I review them, life makes more and more sense. So that’s what we want to do, lead you on a journey so that life makes sense.

The first principle, God is always at work around us, are Jesus’ words in today’s Gospel Lesson. Now you may say, “That’s exactly the problem! If God is always at work around us, and God is a God of love, then why does He let babies starve to death? Why do bad things happen to good people? Why do good things happen to bad people? Why doesn’t God, who is a God of love, intervene and help in all these tragedies? What’s going on? ” Well, the answer to that question is found right here in this little black box.

When you look at this little black box, you can see that it’s a dual CD player; it plays two CD’s at a time. Pretty neat, don’t you agree? But when we examine it more closely we see that it’s just a plain old cardboard box, painted black to make it look like a CD player; there’s absolutely nothing inside. If you want to play a CD, this box has absolutely no purpose, it’s worthless. But if you run a furniture store and sell home entertainment centers, this is pretty valuable. You want something that looks like a CD player for your display and this is perfect - it’s cheap, it’s convenient, and if someone drops it or steals it, there’s no problem - it’s perfect! It all depends on your purpose.

And that’s how it is with God. We have to understand God’s purpose and we get confused because we don’t understand it. In our minds, God’s purpose should be that only good things happen to Good people, that only bad things happen to bad people, and that a God of love reaches down and clears up all the problems.

But that’s not God’s purpose. We all know what God’s purpose is because we talk about it here all the time. It’s Luke 24, that repentance and forgiveness of sins would be preached in Christ’s name around the world so that people come to know Jesus as Lord and Savior. God is always at work around us doing His purpose. He is at work turning turn you and me into a PEG – a Person Experiencing God! That’s what God wants – He wants us to experience Him.

And in order to experience God, we have to be driven to Him; we have to say, “I’m at my wit’s end, I can’t free myself from the bind I’m in, life is tough, life is difficult, I don’t understand. Who can make some sense of this?” God can. God needs to have those problems happen so that people are led to Him, so that people are led to the solution to all their problems, Jesus Christ, so that people confess sin and turn to Him. And then they begin to become a PEG – a Person Experiencing God! They begin to experience God’s forgiveness and they begin to experience the power of the Holy Spirit in their life; that’s what God is out to do. He wants you and me to experience Him every day so that our relationship with Him grows and so that our love for Him grows.

Let’s review this because if we have these basic principles down, we can begin to make sense of life:

Principle 1: GOD IS ALWAYS AT WORK AROUND YOU

God’s purpose: To turn each of us into a PEG – a Person Experiencing God

Now let’s go to the Bible and look at those verses in Acts Chapter 20 which seem very confusing. Again, God’s purpose is that Eutychus, Paul, and all the people at the meeting would actually experience God. Looking at this situation we might say, “Boy, that God of love certainly is confusing, why does He let Paul talk so much at the meeting? Why does He let Paul go on, and on, and on; why doesn’t He just shut him up? And why does God have Eutychus sitting in the window? Why doesn’t He send someone over to tell him that sitting in the window is dangerous? And since no one is does that, why doesn’t God intervene and keep Eutychus awake or tell him to go home and go to bed?” As Paul talked on and on, Eutychus got sleepier and sleepier and you might think that God would have sent someone over to wake him up – after all, God is a God of love – right? Well Eutychus drifts off, falls asleep, and, as his body relaxes, we wonder why God let him fall out the window, down three floors to his death - he could have fallen the other way into the room! Why does God do that? He’s so confusing!

Well we have to know what God’s purpose is and God’s purpose is to turn Eutychus, Paul and all the other people there into PEGs – a People Experiencing God. So Eutychus drifted off and fell to his death. People gathered around, Paul went over him and prayed and Eutychus came back to life! Incredible!

And at that point, because of all that bad stuff that happened, the people became PEGs, that evening they became People Experiencing God. They know now that Paul’s message isn’t just a bunch of baloney. They know now the God of Paul raises people from the dead and that Jesus really is the Savior. Eutychus, Paul, and the rest of the people there experienced God’s power, they experienced God bringing someone back to life. Does the story make sense now? It makes perfectly good sense when you believe that God is always at work around us and when you believe that His purpose is to turn all of us into PEGs

Now let’s look at a modern-day story. This happened about three weeks ago to Miss C, a daughter of my friends. Miss C is a student at Boston College and about three weeks ago she slipped on the ice and broke her leg in two places. This meant surgery and weeks in a cast. The new semester had just started with all that entails and what is she going to do, why would a loving God let this happen, particularly because she is a church member, she professes Jesus as Savior, she prays. What is God doing?

Well, God is always at work around us, He’s at work in Miss C’s life and He is out to turn her into a PEG – a Person Experiencing God so that she is a testimony to all those students around her! Here’s what happened – Miss C realized that she was in a real bind, that she needed God’s help. So she went to Him in prayer and began seeing the ways that people have been there for her, the people that God has put in her life to help her, and two events stood out in her mind.

Event number one: her computer broke! Why would a loving God, just as she has two broken bones in her leg and is incapacitated, let her computer break? Because God is always at work around us and He’s out to turn her into a PEG – a Person Experiencing God. She needed to get her computer fixed and she knew there was a store in town that would give you a computer to use while the repairs were being done. So she went to the shop, stood in line for 45 minutes with a broken leg, and guess what? They were out of computers! But she was told, “Oh, don’t despair, there’s another store on the other side of town that will do the same thing for you.” So she went there, stood in line, and that store didn’t have any computers either!

Why would a loving God do that? It’s because God is always at work around us. It’s because God wants to turn people into PEGs. So Miss C went home and gave all this to God in prayer. Then she thought she might as well give her computer one more try and guess what??? Her computer started working and has been working ever since! She actually experienced God! He helped her with her computer problems and now she is a PEG – a Person who has Experinced God! She has a testimony!

The second event was the time frame for the removal of the cast. Her cast is supposed to be on for about another five weeks, which is about a week or two longer than the doctor originally said. She asked the doctor why the cast was going to be on for eight weeks when he originally said it would be on for six or seven weeks. He said it was simply a scheduling problem, that he was booked up on the day it was supposed to be removed and she should make an appointment for the following week, the eighth week. After she went home, the doctor’s office called and said that there had been a cancellation for the week before, that she could have an appointment, get the cast off, and life could return to normal.

And do you know how Miss C is looking at this? She is going to get the cast off in seven weeks. The number seven is the number of God. She knows that God is always at work around her, she knows that God arranged the cancellation, she knows that she has experienced God again. And in joy she passed this along to her friends and to her mother and father, who passed it along to me, and I’m passing it along to you. And we all become PEGs – People Experiencing God!

And now life begins to make sense. PEGs – People Experiencing God – that’s our God’s goal. Probably the lesson Miss C will remember the most from her years at college is her broken leg and that she could call upon her God who is always at work around her; that through all the difficulties and all the problems He was there and He did something. He turned her into a PEG so that she could actually experience Him. And as she goes on through life, with all its problems and difficulties, with all the unbelievers around trying to discourage her in her faith, she will know that God is always at work, even in the most difficult situations. Because of what she learned in college, she will know that God is out to show that He is at work turning people into PEGs, People who are Experiencing God.

Prayer -

Heavenly Father, we thank You and praise You for your principles. Thank You for the passage from Amos really clarifying that You are at work in our lives, what Your purpose is, and that You do nothing without with first revealing your purpose. Thank You Lord. Help us to carry this with us and to meditate on it. In those difficulties and problems of this week, help us to see you working. And we pray these things in Jesus’ Name. Amen.

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