July 26, 2020                                                                         Text:  Deuteronomy 7:6-9

Dear Friends in Christ,

            In the fall of 1983 I was a freshman at Illinois State.  I lived in the Manchester dorm.  One night looking for something to do, we decided to go to the Normal Theater, which at the time showed movies that had been out for a while.  The cost was only a buck or two.  The movie that night was one we didn’t know a lot about but took a chance on.  It was Tender Mercies starring Robert Duvall.

            In the movie, the main character Mac Sledge played by Duvall was a former country singer divorced and alone.  He is a defeated man who wakes up in a run-down motel run by a young widow named Rosa Lee.  She has pity on him and lets him work there for his room.  She didn’t see anything good in him, it is purely grace.

            What happens?  Mac begins attending church with Rosa Lee.  He hears the Gospel and is baptized.  Does he feel different after Baptism?  No.  This part Hollywood got right.  Everything didn’t suddenly fall into place.  Life was still challenging.  He makes contact with a daughter, now age 18, he barely knew.  She dies in an automobile accident.  Despite this tragedy and other questions he has, he does not lose his faith.  God surprises Mac with his love and Mac comes to see himself as the object of the tender mercies of the Lord.

            In our text for today, God chose Israel – God has chosen us – not because He saw anything good in us.  He chose us to be His simply by His grace.  We are the objects of God’s unfettered love, his . . .

“TENDER MERCIES IN CHRIST”

            The text opens this way, “You are a people holy to the Lord your God.  The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth.  It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples.” (v. 6-7)

            We love numbers, don’t we?  We think if something has the numbers, they must be doing everything right.  The worthy should gain something.  We even do this in the church.  I just ran across some of our attendance numbers from 9 years ago and we had double on average of what we have in the sanctuary today.  Has the church changed the way we have done things?  Have we stopped preaching and teaching the Gospel in its truth and purity?  Has the Pastor while aging, lost his marbles?  No, no, and hopefully no! 

            Remember how Paul worded it, “God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise…the weak to shame the strong…the lowly things…the despised things.”  Our lower numbers have actually allowed more worship opportunities in our current environment.  God does not measure success by human methods.  On the contrary, it works this way . . .

            “But it is because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.” (v. 8)

            “The Lord loves you.”  What wonderful words.  The Lord loved the Israelites and He loves us.  God’s love is not like human love.  It does not change with the moment.  When God makes a promise He keeps it. 

            God loved his chosen people in spite of their rebellion.  His tender mercies in Christ give us that same love.  We have spurned that love with worshipping idols in our hearts.  We forget God’s love toward us.  We go down a different path than the Lord’s.  We make an exodus from His church and Christian fellowship.

            Bring us home Lord.  We need your tender mercy.  “Know therefore that the Lord your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations.” (v. 9)

            These verses again put before us that there is only one God.  The God who reveals himself to us in the tender mercies of Christ.  The triune God.  He is also the faithful God.  That is what we must hold on to every day of our lives. 

            God’s keeps His covenant.  He forgives our spurning of His love.  He welcomes us back from our Exodus.  He is with us in our not so pleasant moments.  It took a lot of heartache but the Israelites made it to the Promised Land.

            Are you living a heartache?  A marriage challenge?  A child rebelling?  Looking for a future when society is stuck in neutral?  The tender mercy of Christ is here for you.  It helps you in the pain.  It relieves you in the stress.  It helps you focus on the Promised Land in the distance.  You can trust the Lord to keep His promise.  He will take us to be with Him that we may be where His is.  God does not lie.

            Oh, yes . . . the tender mercy of God in Christ.

                                                                                                Amen.,     

July 19, 2020                                                                                 Text:  Romans 8:18-27

Dear Friends in Christ,

            Listen, do you hear it?  Creation is groaning.  Wednesday night between 6:30 – 7 p.m. in the Central Illinois burg of Argenta, creation came with a boom.  Lightning struck somewhere near my dad’s house after we had finished dinner.  It was loud and got us all out of our chairs.  If not a lightning storm, then an earthquake or hurricane or drought or floods.  Listen.  Creation is groaning.

            The groans of humanity continue on – differing thoughts and opinions on most everything.  Add to it the taking over of cities and rioting and unemployment and despair and suicide rates jumping.  The family structure continues to break apart.  Listen.  Humanity is groaning.

            Creation and humanity are frustrated.  They are waiting for their groans to be given meaning.  Who will speak for us?

“CAN THE GROANING BE OVERCOME?”

            God’s Word, like it always does, steps into our world today.  The Spirit speaks words that help to overcome the groaning.  Paul heard the same groans we hear.  He makes an honest assessment of the health of the world and God’s people.  He compares our suffering to the future He has waiting for us.  The Lord determines that the future outweighs the groaning and the suffering.  He even says that this groaning may have a purpose.

            Paul begins the text with a promise of glory.  He gives us a picture of the groaning surrounded by the promise of God’s future glory.  Even when we don’t understand our groans, in them we discover the promise of God.

            Creation has been decaying since a fruit party took an awful turn in a garden.  Creation and man broke that day.  They would be at odds with their Creator.  The ground would be cursed.  The groaning would be loud.  But into the picture steps our Lord.  His word through St. Paul uses the word “hope” six times in our text.  God’s last word is not judgment but hope.  We will have relief from our groaning.  It can be overcome – hope is on the way.

            Paul also makes us aware there is something wrong with humanity.  The Holy Spirit lays the law on our hearts and we groan at the mess we can make of our lives.  We groan when we say something inappropriate.  We groan when we treat someone badly.  We groan when we start to lose hope.

            Where is a place you hear a lot of groaning?  During natural childbirth.  It made one father comment, “Put me under, and I’ll name the child after the anesthesiologist.”  There is pain but also extreme joy when that child is born.  There is the hope, in the child you caress in your arms. 

            Yesterday many of us endured some slight pain – a needle going into our arm – to provide hope for a cancer patient or accident victim or a mother hemorrhaging during childbirth.  The suffering provided the hope.

            Biosphere 2 was a scientific experiment to create a man-made environment on earth that might be re-created to sustain life on Mars.  The scientists created a rain forest, as well as ocean, tropic, and desert environments.  Eventually, they observed that the trees growing in the biosphere began to fall down.  The problem?  In this manufactured environment, there was no wind, and without the stress of wind, the trees did not grow strong roots.

            Our suffering and groaning, the pain we go through, can strengthen our faith and draw us closer to God who we depend on in our weakness, as we wait for the future glory that He has promised us. 

            The suffering provided the hope.  It came through on a hill, where a man was crucified between two thieves.  He suffered pain and groaning.  Even the creation suffered that day as darkness and an earthquake enveloped the world.  A curtain was torn in two and people were frightened.  Where was the hope?  How could the groaning be overcome?

            God would give man a two-day period to think this over.  What had been done to Jesus?  How they had treated Him.  By Sunday morning hearts had to be aching, bodies had to be groaning.  Then hope came out of a tomb.  Hope appeared to other human beings.  Hope walked along the road.  Hope ate with the disciples.  This hope, in the person of Jesus Christ, overcomes our groaning.  This hope is stronger than our pain.  This hope overcomes our bad behavior.  This hope gives us a purpose and a future. 

            Why do I describe our present groaning as “a blip in our lives?”  Am I just trying to be clever, imaginative?  No.  The truth is spoken.  The Word of God is firm.  Our future hope is a forever and ever experience in the land of the living.  What we hear today are only temporary groans.  We look forward to the song of the saints.  The chorus we join around the Lamb of God.  How about a smile?  Our full adoption as sons and daughters of the King awaits.  The groaning is overcome.

                                                                                                                        Amen.