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Grace, mercy, and peace be unto you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, the text for this morning comes from the Gospel reading. Will you pray with me?
O Lord, give us faith to walk where you are sending, on paths unmarked, eyes blind as to their ending, not knowing where we go, but that you lead us, and with grace precede us. You, Jesus, you alone deserve all glory. Our lives unfold, embraced within your story. Past, present, and future, you the same forever. You fail us never. In the name of Jesus, amen.
You may be seated.
I need you to contemplate something this morning and think about it. And what it is that I want you to think about and contemplate is how your loving and heavenly Father has shaped you with your life’s experiences. You see, you’re covered with the fingerprints of your heavenly Father. For he has shaped you and molded you and, more importantly, your faith through the experiences that he has shoved upon you and through the experiences that you have boldly went where angels fear to tread. Both has God used in your life, and you know it. Contemplate those for a moment.
Because it was your God’s plan, his adventures for you. Not your own, that he allowed those things to come in your life. That he used them to shape you. And that your faith was benefited from them. Amen.
Even the things that benefited your faith the most were probably the things that were not so fun, that brought frustration, disappointment, and even despair.
Now that’s focusing on you. Now I want you to consider another of God’s adventures in your life. For God has also placed you in other people’s lives, many of whom you did not choose, but God chose. And many of them you chose and have been hurt deeply by. Think about how God used you in their life.
Some of the examples that you can think of you feel very proud of, that God used you. And also other examples you can think of where you completely biffed it and did not do very well and caused them pain or sorrow by your actions and your words, no matter how well-intentioned you may have been. Either way, the main focus is, as we prayed right before we began the sermon, that is, God is the one leading you in your life.
You are not on your adventure. You are rather on the Lord’s adventure, and he’s the one who is bringing you along, sometimes willingly, sometimes kicking and screaming. It was that way in the first example in this morning’s readings. Amos.
Amos did not wake up and have this revelation when he was a young boy saying, “Today, I’ve made the decision. I’m going to become a prophet.” He was content and enjoyed being a herdsman and a keeper of sycamore figs, the text says. He was not raised as a prophet’s son. He served God by being a herdsman and a keeper of sycamore figs. That was his role. And God blessed him. But that was not God’s adventure for him for all of his life.
God’s adventure for him was to pull him out of that and to place him as a prophet. And not just a prophet to his own people, but a prophet to the people of the northern kingdom. He was from the southern kingdom during that divided kingdom era of Israel. Israel being the northern kingdom, Judah being the southern kingdom.
And not only did he pull him from his secure, safe, and predictable life as a herdsman and keeper of sycamore figs, but he also put him as a prophet during the midst of both of these kingdoms’ high days, tall cotton times, when there weren’t problems and there weren’t issues. So when he preaches, as he did regarding Jeroboam, Jeroboam didn’t want to hear him. “Get him out of here. He’s preaching nothing but negativity and bad news.”
Can you imagine what Amos must have thought? “And you called me to do this. What were you thinking, Lord?” That is the Lord’s adventures, isn’t it?
Well, it is the same with you. Now, not all the facets are the same between you and Amos. That’s a given. But it’s the same with you. God’s purpose has been and is still being fulfilled in your life, even counter to your own desires. You and I did not choose many of the paths and adventures that God has chosen for us, and yet God placed us in that path and in that life.
You and I did not choose the people with whom he has given us to interact, and yet God has given them to us with whom to interact. Some of our own choosing and some obviously not. Now, I’m not saying you can choose friends but you can’t choose family. But the point being this: When it comes to the Lord’s adventures, you and I cannot grasp the totality of what God is doing in our life and what God is doing in someone else’s life through us and our own issues.
Yes, it’s not as if Amos stood out among all the other possibilities for prophets that God goes, “Ooh, Amos looks like a good choice.” God just said, “Nope, you’re the one,” of his own volition.
Can you imagine when you think about things that happen to people’s lives? Adam and Eve are getting ready for bed one night, and they go, “Honey, what do you think we did wrong with Cain? Why do you think he would choose to kill his own brother? Why?” They didn’t ask for that to happen to them, did they? Could they be blamed for that?
I’ve heard my parents and I’ve heard you as parents blame yourselves. That’s a long way to go, isn’t it?
And let’s think about Joseph. Joseph, during those nights in prison, could have thought, “What did I do to tick off my brothers? Oh yeah, I was kind of pompous that one time. Was that the reason that I’m in jail? And why did Pharaoh’s wife falsely accuse me? What are you doing that for, Lord?” That was God’s choosing and God’s adventure for Joseph, Amos, and you as well.
All of this is all a part of God’s great will because it had all to do with your faith, not with your person, not with your physical abilities, not with your mental abilities, not with your physical abilities, not with your standing in society, but with your faith is he most concerned.
It is your faith that he wishes to shape. And it is your faith that he does not want to lose. Enter J. the Bee, John the Baptist. He was on his last of the Lord’s adventures for him. As he sat in that prison cell, who knows how many weeks or months that he sat there?
And when you sit there with nothing else to do, he was not insulated from sin. He was a sinner. So you know Satan was working mighty hard on his mind and his heart while he sat there in that prison. And you know self-doubting arises in sinful human beings like you and like me. Self-loathing and all kinds of other self-centered things.
While he was standing there, do you not think that John the Baptist could have thought, “Maybe I should have said it in a more tactful manner than I did. Then I could still be out there preaching rather than in here rotting.” Or did John the Baptist think, “Was I overzealous in pointing out specific sins? Could I have taken them aside privately and maybe done it better? Then I could still be out there preaching.”
Because he could have ultimately thought, “What in the am I to God now? Sitting here in this prison and not out there preaching, what good am I?” It seemed as if his death had no meaning, but it had all the meaning. Here’s how.
John the Baptist’s death was almost a year to the day or to the month of the last and the greatest of all of God’s adventures in Christ Jesus. And in the same way that it was the same man, Herod, who put John the Baptist to death, it would be the same man, Herod, who would coordinate with Pilate to put the Son of God to death.
I don’t know what John thought as he sat there in prison. I can only imagine. And I don’t know what you think about when you get ready to go to bed and reflect upon yourself. I don’t know certain things in the day that cause your mind to go down a rabbit hole you wish you didn’t go down with your mind, but you do.
And knowing those paths and those thoughts, you know this most important will of God for you: He paid for your mistakes. You see, what Herod kept him from being righteous was that he feared more what other people thought of him than he feared God.
And that’s why he was willing to listen to a tramp to give a head of a godly man to a tramp’s mother on a platter. That is some sick stuff that you can’t even create. It’s truth. And Christ died for Herod. And Christ died for Herodias. And Christ died for Herodias’ daughter and paid for their sins. And Christ died for you.
Paul said it another way. He predestined you for adoption through Jesus Christ. Listen to this: According to the purpose of his will. And we can add toward you. That is his will toward you, that you should not die the death or go on the adventure of all time.
Because Christ lived out that perfect life and responded in each example of his life in a way that you never responded nor I ever responded faithfully. And for all those times when we could say, “Did I overstate it? Did I understate it? Should I have stated it at all?” For all those times did Christ die so that you are fulfilling his will.
He goes on. Not only according to the purpose of his will, but according to the praise of his glorious grace with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. In him, we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our sins, according to the riches of his grace. In him, we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will.
All of those things that God has brought into your life that you didn’t ask for, and all of those things which God has allowed to transpire in your life for whose responsibility you are, did God die for—to make you his child and to make you forgiven.
You see, God uses you. Uses you at your best and brightest from your perspective and uses you at your worst and ugliest from your perspective. God uses you. And though we would wish to think we were some glorious and sacred vessel, we’re just a tool. But a tool chosen by his great love. A tool predestined to be his child. A tool used by him and his hands, which cover you with his fingerprints of blood so that you don’t sit around in self-pity and so that you don’t sit around in self-aggrandizement, so that you sit in joy, bathing in his forgiveness and grace.
Never forget that. Adam and Eve had to be comforted by such grace as they questioned themselves and everything about their life when they looked upon the first grave ever dug in the world. Joseph had to have thought about this and have been comforted by this each step of his life. Amos, who was not a prophet, was raised up to be a prophet and had to be comforted by these same words.
And now you. You who are on the Lord’s adventure, just like I am, and we will be on the Lord’s adventure till he calls us home. In spite of us, he will accomplish his will. With us, he will accomplish his will.
So either way, God be praised. He accomplishes his will, but he wishes to accomplish his will in you, most importantly, for salvation. That is what he wills in your life today. Your salvation and peace.
Never forget that. In the name of Jesus, amen.
The peace of God which passes all understanding keep your hearts and your minds on Christ Jesus to life everlasting. Amen.
