Sermon Tone Analysis

Faith in God

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Introduction

Today is New Years day.

It doesn’t happen very often that New Year’s Day falls on a Sunday, so it is great that on this first day of 2012 we are gathered here in church to begin our year in the presence of God.

New Year’s Day is a day to look forward.

Yet this day I look forward with a view to the past.

The very first time I ever preached was on New Year’s Day, back in the day when we had a service on New Year’s Day even if it was during the week.

Rev. Henry Voth gave me the chance to preach from this very spot way back in the early 70’s and it was part of what contributed to my career as a pastor.

It is interesting, therefore to stand here today on New Year’s Day and once again share the Word of God not only at the beginning of a New Year, but also at the beginning of my being your pastor.

We are very glad to be starting and look forward to serving in this church.

We look forward to getting to know you and to facing the challenge of being God’s people at PAC.

During Christmas celebrations we played a game called Jenga.

The object of the game is to move blocks of wood from the bottom of the pile and place them at the top of the pile without causing the whole pile to collapse.

The game is a metaphor for life.

We go through life moving blocks and experiencing various things in life and we are often afraid that the whole pile will come crashing down.

Even the beginning of this new pastoral relationship is a little like that.

You don’t know what it will be like with this new guy as pastor.

We don’t know what it will be like to serve in this church.

Many things are unknown as we face a new year and we don’t know whether sometime in this year the whole pile may come crashing down.

Yet the confidence we have as we enter 2012 is that we enter it with a Father in whom we can put complete confidence.

This morning I would like to tell you a story of our experience over the last few months which has caused me to think deeply about what it means to have faith in God.

When we were accepted as pastor couple for this congregation, we knew that it would mean a move into the city.

So we quickly began to process that.

We put a sign up in front of our house and posters up in town and ads on Kajiji and  tried to sell the house.

We called a real estate agent and began looking for a house in Winnipeg.

Well, it didn’t take long to find the house we wanted and we evaluated the risk of buying before we sold, but believed that this was the house for us and had reason to hope that all would go well and bought the house and we are really glad to be living in it.

Yet the sale of the house in Rosenort continued to be a concern for us and many times we were afraid that the whole pile would come crashing down.

As we dealt with that fear, we learned some important things about what it means to have faith in God and I hope as I share this story and some Scriptures that teach us about faith in God, that you will be encouraged and directed as you face whatever is coming in this year.

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I.      Hope

!! A.   In Circumstances

As we began the process of selling our house we were filled with confidence.

Our house in Rosenort is a great house in a great location.

It is a modest bungalow on a nicely treed 2 acre lot.

It has a nice garden on the yard and a river in the back yard.

It is within the Rosenort dike so there is no danger from flooding.

The house itself has a built out basement and a newly remodeled kitchen.

The community of Rosenort is growing because there is a lot of manufacturing in the community.

In the past, houses have sold well and people have even built houses on speculation and sold them.

All of these circumstances gave us confidence that there would be no problem trying to sell the house.

The first few days we had numerous phone calls and we thought that someone would soon come and look at the house and make us an offer.

But it didn’t happen.

We began to wonder what was wrong?

Was the price we were asking wrong?

Was there something wrong with the house?

Our world was shaken up, we were disappointed, we lost sleep and we were afraid that we would run into financial problems.

As this was happening we began to realize that our faith had been in circumstances.

Everything suggested that all would go well and we had hope and faith in that circumstance.

But faith in circumstances failed us.

When Israel entered the Promised Land with Joshua leading them they attacked Jericho with great trepidation, but with a strong affirmation from God that He would give them victory.

They had a sound victory and after celebrating that victory, they prepared to attack the next city, which was the city of Ai.

As they moved forward they believed that they would not have any problem.

The text does not indicate why they thought they would have no problem.

It might have been because of confidence in God, but as they explained their reasoning, it seems that they were also confident in the circumstances.

They sent spies to examine the circumstances and in Joshua 7:3 they reported, "Not all the people will have to go up against Ai.

Send two or three thousand men to take it and do not weary all the people, for only a few men are there.”

The circumstance they were confident in was, “only a few men are there.”

Of course we know that there was more to the story, but at least part of the issue was that they were confident in their circumstances but things didn’t work out the way they expected.

I suspect that all of us have experienced similar things.

We may have come up against some challenge in life.

Perhaps we were looking for a job and we had done everything we could to secure the job we were looking for.

We followed the advice of our parents and studied hard.

We followed the advice of our teachers and took the training that would lead to the job.

We wrote a brilliant resume and believed that because of all these positive circumstances, we would certainly get the job.

Our faith was in the circumstances and we were disappointed and confused when we didn’t get the job we wanted.

It is OK to do things that make for good circumstances.

I do not regret remodeling the kitchen of the house in Rosenort last year in fall, but if our faith is in circumstances, we may well be disappointed.

!! B.   In a Person

For about a month we tried to sell the house on our own, confident of the circumstances but it didn’t sell.

One day I was in the coffee shop and was talking to Ron who told me about a man he knew, who used to work for him and who was now involved in real estate.

Ron told me, “he can sell anything.”

I was comfortable with this man, I knew him, and although he didn’t live in Rosenort, he had and so I was hopeful that he knew the community, knew the rural market, but had access to MLS and other real estate people.

So we contacted him and signed a contract for him to try to sell our house.

Once again we had hope and were confident.

Now our confidence, while still somewhat in circumstances, was strengthened because we also had hope in a person.

We were confident that it would sell soon.

He had contacts, he knew people who were looking and so we waited for the phone call that would let us know that someone was coming to look at the house.

Our hope was high.

A week went by and two and three.

There were a few calls and a few people came to look, but no one made an acceptable offer.

Each day we waited for him to call, but at the end of his three month contract, the house had not yet sold.

Once again we were discouraged.

Once again we lost sleep and wondered why this great real estate agent was not able to sell this great property.

Our faith had been in a person and we were disappointed.

King Saul had not been faithful to God and Samuel had told him that the kingdom would be taken from him.

Samuel died and Saul was on his own with this difficult reality.

One day he was faced with an enemy attack by the Philistines.

We read in 1 Samuel 28:4, "The Philistines assembled and came and set up camp at Shunem, while Saul gathered all the Israelites and set up camp at Gilboa.

When Saul saw the Philistine army, he was afraid; terror filled his heart."

Saul was in a difficult place and he wondered where he could turn and how he would survive this crisis.

He reasoned that if only he could talk to the right person, everything would be OK.

The only problem was that the right person was not alive anymore.

But Saul was desperate and so he went to look for a medium who he hoped would bring Samuel back from the dead to help him.

The only problem was that Saul himself had outlawed this practice and so he had to go in disguise.

When the medium asked him in 1 Samuel 28:11, “Whom shall I bring up for you?” he said.

“Bring up Samuel,” In this situation, Saul was putting his faith in a person.

When Samuel was actually brought up and spoke with Saul, he repeated the bad news he had told him previously and later that day when the battle was engaged Saul died in that battle.

Obviously there was a lot more to this story, but it is clear that Saul was not trusting God, but rather that he wanted to put his trust in a person.

I suspect that many of us have done the same thing.

We notice that something is not right with our body so we go to the doctor.

The initial diagnosis proves to be worrisome, but when the doctor says, I think we can do something about that, we are encouraged.