| November 15, 2009
From The First Baptist Church in America pulpit – Providence, Rhode Island “A Man After God’s Own Heart” (2 Sam 24:18-25)
It’s hard to document when this country became what seems like a “do it for me” society, instead of a “do it yourself” culture. But it feels to me like that’s where we are. Maybe we just slid into it. People keep getting spam emails telling them they have inherited several million, just send info to get it. Yeah right. Crooks do stuff like that because somebody will always bite the “something for nothing” deal. When are we ever gonna learn? There is no free ride in this world and: everything in life worth anything, costs something. And lucky us, if some things happen to fall in our lap without cost, somebody else already paid it for us.
You might enjoy things like a full moon, twinkling stars and autumn leaves without cost, but Somebody paid the price (capitol “S”). Even God “rested from his labors on the seventh day from the work he had done,” and still people persist in grabbing a bargain. They’re already listing “black Friday” sale items! You got to live a little while to learn love is not free. The real thing is quite costly. To have love you have to give it. It has to be eased into and takes lots of effort, self-investment and must be sacrificed for ahead of time. People who are out to keep or compromise, will not know love. Desperadoes have a hard time “letting somebody love them.” Look around at these 50 year marriages; you know they had to pay the price of living with somebody, to achieve such longevity. To mold a lifelong marital relationship, it doesn’t just happen. That’s Hollywood. Couples have to adapt and learn to bend, without breaking and forgive in spite of imperfections and overlook flaws. Anybody think that’s easy?
Everything that matters in life, comes with a price. Freedom? Somebody paid a price at the cost of their lives. Education? We’re talking years. Think of the time and expense to graduate from college. The cost is astronomical. To win the World Series, or make it to the Super Bowl? You’re going to play hurt and pay the price of long practices, enduring foul weather, and hours of “skull practice” before you get that ring. What about church? The fellowship of faith that has been passed down to this congregation is unique and bordering onto 400 years. By the grace of God and the sweat of a lot of good people, it has persisted from generation to generation, but not without cost. Religion has never been and never will be an effortless enterprise. Nor is anything else that’s worthwhile. Sacrifice is inherent to the nature of Christian faith. It runs in the opposite direction of an “eat, drink, and be merry” civilization. Everywhere you go you will pay to get in. Rock concerts, entertainment, sports, the government. California residents just got hit with a mandatory tithe – 10% from each paycheck.
Yet people come to church to give their money to something they believe in. In the early days of the synagogue, giving has been a part of the worship of God. Even when people were poor, still they gave. There once was a time when people believed they ought not come before the Lord God empty-handed. Maybe it’s a good exercise to stop and think about why we give to the church. I can only speak for myself. My Daddy taught me to give to the church as far back as I can remember. We’d take our Bibles and our offering envelope to Sunday School. And to this day I don’t give because the church would close its doors if I didn’t. This church existed long before I received my annual box of offering envelopes.
We give because God has blessed us individually and corporately. We give through this church because we are grateful to God for the opportunity to be here. We give not because the church would go bankrupt if we didn’t. I’ve seen many a former church member get bent outa shape and quit giving to the church. But the Church goes on because even if they stop, God keeps going. If we quit sharing our faith, He’d “raise up stones” to do it! We’re all different. But giving is something in which everybody is alike. We’re not blessed with equal talents, but we can all give as we’ve been blessed. Nobody, not even heaven likes a freeloader. What we have may be little or much, but we oughta offer something in gratitude.
Like King David in today’s text from II Samuel. The monarch took a trip out to the farm, wading through the barnyard to speak to Aruanah. He was there because somebody has sinned. This time it was the king himself. But the issue was stewardship. Israel’s mightiest warrior had been a poor steward of God’s goodness to him. In those days they held to a cause-and-effect theology. Sin had consequences. Because Israel’s leader had initiated the sin and his people cooperated in it, the judgment of God had fallen upon the nation in the form of a pestilence.
As David watched the avenging angel approaching Jerusalem, he prayed for his people: “Lo, I have sinned, and I have done wickedly; but these sheep, what have they done? Let Thy hand, I pray thee, be against me” (2 Sam 24:17). The Lord heard David’s prayer, forgave him and sent a prophet with instructions to build an altar on the threshing floor that belonged to Araunah the Jebusite. He was working when David came in. Try to imagine the surprise this guy must’ve felt when he looks up from shoveling manure to see the king of Israel standing before him. Naturally he wanted to know why the King was there.
David explained that he came to build an altar of sacrifice to avert the plague. Araunah said, “Whatever is mine is yours. Take this threshing floor as sacred ground; and these oxen as a sacrifice. Use my tools for the wood. I give you this sledge as fuel. All of this I offer free of charge. The contrast was striking: David, tempted by grandiosity; Araunah, tempered by generosity. It surely made an impact on the king. What a deal! Something for nothing. But David was a bigger man than that. He wouldn’t go for it. “I will not offer burnt offerings to the Lord my God which cost me nothing.” David’s gracious attitude is what made him “a man after God’s own heart.” The sin was mine, the prayer is mine, so the sacrifice ought to be mine too. God has no grandchildren. But he had a Son, who took his cue from his ancestor David. Salvation never comes to anyone by relying on somebody else’s sacrifice. Forgiveness comes when we give that which costs us something.
In order to give us this faith tradition in which we now stand, father Abraham became a wandering nomad, never achieving his goal this side of death, and on the way agreed to sacrifice his only son Isaac. In order to give us the law, Moses paid the price for giving up a life of ease down in Pharaoh’s Egypt, to assume the thankless task of liberator. In order to give the children of Israel the land in which they dwell, Joshua had to spend his days fighting the Caananites to possess it. And Jesus carried his cross up Calvary’s hill on our behalf paying the supreme sacrifice for all time. More recently Baptist forebears bled for their convictions, paying the price for the religious liberty we enjoy.
But we can’t continue to exist off their sacrifices. We have our own prices to pay in our time as well. Anybody out there willing to say: “I will not offer burnt offerings to the Lord my God which cost me nothing?” When I think of how God has blessed me, how far God has brought me, how long God has kept me, or how much longer God promises to keep me, I have to say with ol’ David, “I will not anything to the Lord my God which cost me nothing.”
When God has given us so much how can we offer him so little? When David contemplated God bringing him from the pastures of Judea as a “ruddy-faced shepherd-boy,” to rise to become the King of Israel, how could he offer any less? When he recalled the classic confrontation with Goliath the giant, the protection from the a paranoid King Saul, when even his own son Absalom rose up against him and broke his father’s heart; how he persevered even through the fires of the Bathsheba debacle, it’s understandable why David would say: “I will not offer burnt offerings to the Lord my God which cost me nothing.”
For such a one inspired to write:
To think about all that, and offer nothing at all or else some cheap, easy sacrifice on somebody else’s nickel... And before anybody complains about “all they ever talk about in church is money.” Lest any of us starts whining about somebody asking us to consider the biblical practice of tithing, or poor-mouth about being asked to give of your bounty, put yourself in David’s place this morning: think about how much God has given to you, count your blessings and if we have even an ounce of gratitude within us, we’ll have to say with David, “We will not offer to the Lord that which cost us nothing.”
Yeah that’s the kind of man whose sins God overlooks, because he had a good heart. Would that we had more like him! Because anybody “after the heart of God,” knows we can only offer to him the best we have to give, because that is what he has offered to us. I hope ya’ll remember that next Sunday -- Re-commitment Sunday, when we come forward to lay our pledges on the altar table ... and join the church again for another year.
Providence Prayers: 11-15-09
We like to think of ourselves as self-made people, but we are interdependent, owing so much to so many to get where we are. We think we are reasonable people, but we have our blind spots with the best of them, conscripting our minds in the service of our prejudices. We’d like to think we are free, but we can’t overlook our bondage to our material possessions that we chase around so much with abandon. We hope to be fully alive, but way too busy to enjoy the “abundant life” Jesus died to give. We may even think of ourselves as religious or at least “spiritual,” but we know we continually “fall short of the glory of God,” and not above using our faith to justify a selfish life.
For the sick, we ask Thy healing touch; for the lonely, Thy companionship; for the weak, Thy strength; for the undecided; Thy wisdom, for the bereaved; Thy comfort. Hold to their high purpose, these who would be faithful in being committed to “come into Thy courts with gladness, their sacred vows to renew,” despite the pressures of apathy and financial strife.
That Thou should love us when we find it so hard to love ourselves; or believe in us, after we have blown so many chances to do well; or graciously welcome us, when we bring so little in return ... is more than we can understand. All we can do is accept Thy love, revel in Thy grace, and voice our gratitude to Thee, which we now do together. Through Christ our Lord ...
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