Strange Witness
Notes
Transcript
Have you ever read or watched “the Lord of the Rings?” If you have, then this story will be familiar to you. But if you haven’t, I won’t ruin the whole thing… but you should go home and spend 18 hours watching the movies because they are just that good.
The story actually begins in a single novel called the Hobbit, where a little creature named Bilbo Baggins is sent on an epic quest by a mysterious wizard. Along his journey he ends up finding a very strange piece of jewelry — a ring. Shortly after finding the ring he meets a strange character named Gollum, who, as it turns out, is the person who lost the ring.
Throughout the rest of the story and the epic narrative that encompasses 3 more books, we find out that this was no ordinary ring. It is an item called “the ring of power” which was forged by a very wicked dark wizard with the power to enslave the entire world and all of its realms.
After the dark wizard Sauron was defeated, the ring was lost, to be discovered by a young creature — Gollum. The ring’s power consumed him and turned him into a wretched creature whose entire existence was wrapped up in one thing and one thing only — the ring. Or as he called it “the precious.”
This obsession rotted him to the core, and while Bilbo, and then his nephew Frodo possessed the ring on a quest to destroy it forever, Gollum was driven by his maddened desire for it to chase down and reacquire the ring by any means possible and necessary.
The story of Gollum is meant to show us the real toll that idolatry takes on our souls. Idolatry is like that big bad cardinal sin that always rears its ugly head in the Story of God as well. It’s something that humans just seem to always find ourselves battling. It compromises our ability to truly live out a life of Christian witness in our world, and it’s something that must be addressed if we are going to live out the call that God has placed on our lives.
We are continuing our series called “Strangely Warmed” today. This series is based on an Idea that the founder of Methodism, John Wesley, wrote about when he was really wrestling with his faith. You see he had his doubts that Jesus could save a guy like him — which is really ironic because he was at the time an anglican priest who had dedicated his life to the practice of ministry. But John had fallen on some hard times and had some difficult experiences both in colonial America and on the boat that brought him to and from England.
So one fateful night he went to a meeting of some Moravian Christians at a place called Aldersgate, and in that place God touched his heart — and he felt that it was strangely warmed. That moment set the tone for John’s lifetime of ministry and witness to the world — a witness that changed the world and the landscape of the Christian faith forever. What happened in that moment was the assurance that Jesus could and does change hearts and lives.
This heart that is strangely warmed is a product of what theologians call “justification” and is the work of what John Wesley called “Justifying Grace.” It’s the grace of God working in the heart of a person that causes radical change — it’s how a person can go from a heart of stone to a heart that is tender and strangely warmed. And we know that this has occured because of the change that occurs in a person’s life and the way a person lives. We call this change, their witness.
Now we really like to try to make this process “neat” and say it happens once and then never needs to happen again. But that just doesn’t seem to be the way it works. We are humans. We constantly are in need of a reminder when we begin to turn away from God and start to bear a witness that is less Christ like than we are called to. And usually when we are turning away from God, it’s because we are turning our affections towards something else.
Take for example, the life of our dear friends, the ancient Israelites. For most of their history they struggled with their loyalty to worshipping God and God alone. If you were here last week, we looked at the birth of a young boy named Samuel. Samuel was born during a period of time called the Judges, which was a really tough time for Israel. They struggled internally — they were really bad at being obedient to God — and they struggled externally — they were consistently threatened by a seafaring people on the coast called The Philistines.
So what’s consistently happening is that they are in political, social, and spiritual turmoil and then their enemies attack. Then God raises up a Judge to unite the people, restore order, defeat the Philistines, and call the people back to the worship of God and God alone.
And that’s where we find ourselves in the text today. The boy Samuel has grown up and is now a pretty well respected man in Israel. The Philistines attack and capture the Ark of the Covenant, which is a really important thing. It houses the Law Code that Israel received at Mt. Sinai and it lives inside the tabernacle at this point. It is believed that this is where the presence of Israel’s God dwells.
And now the Philistines have it, and they brought it to Ashdod, placing it beside their god Dagon. The next morning, Dagon was found fallen before the ark, and after being repositioned, it fell again, this time with its head and hands severed. The people of Ashdod suffered from tumors, prompting them to decide the ark could not stay. They moved it to Gath, where panic and more tumors ensued. Finally, the ark was sent to Ekron, where the inhabitants feared for their lives and demanded its return to avoid further calamity. So the Philistines are like get this thing out of here and they send it back to Israel with some Gold to say “we’re sorry.”
So then we find ourselves here:
And the people of Kiriath-jearim came and took up the ark of the Lord, and brought it to the house of Abinadab on the hill. They consecrated his son, Eleazar, to have charge of the ark of the Lord.
From the day that the ark was lodged at Kiriath-jearim, a long time passed, some twenty years, and all the house of Israel lamented after the Lord.
Then Samuel said to all the house of Israel, “If you are returning to the Lord with all your heart, then put away the foreign gods and the Astartes from among you. Direct your heart to the Lord, and serve him only, and he will deliver you out of the hand of the Philistines.”
So Israel put away the Baals and the Astartes, and they served the Lord only.
So basically Samuel is like listen, if you want the ark here among you, you’ve got to declare utter and undivided allegiance to the Lord. Or it’s not going to go well for you — as you’ve seen in the past and the Philistines just experienced.
So Israel is like yeah… we’ve been messing up. We’ve been worshiping these other Gods Baal and Astarte. Look at all these idols we have of them. We should get rid of them.
Then Samuel said, “Gather all Israel at Mizpah, and I will pray to the Lord for you.”
So they gathered at Mizpah, and drew water and poured it out before the Lord. They fasted that day, and said, “We have sinned against the Lord.” And Samuel judged the people of Israel at Mizpah.
When the Philistines heard that the people of Israel had gathered at Mizpah, the lords of the Philistines went up against Israel. And when the people of Israel heard of it they were afraid of the Philistines.
The people of Israel said to Samuel, “Do not cease to cry out to the Lord our God for us, and pray that he may save us from the hand of the Philistines.”
So Samuel took a sucking lamb and offered it as a whole burnt offering to the Lord; Samuel cried out to the Lord for Israel, and the Lord answered him.
This is really important, because it shows us an important aspect of Samuel’s ministry. What the text kind of veils is the role that Samuel plays. It says in english that he prayed for them, but what the Hebrew means here is that Samuel interceded on their behalf. As a priest this is Samuel’s role — to talk to God on behalf of the people and say, listen — they repent, lets turn things around for them. And this is really important because it points us to the role of Jesus. Jesus is the one who does this for us now, when we commit ourselves to him. More on that in a bit, let’s finish the text.
As Samuel was offering up the burnt offering, the Philistines drew near to attack Israel; but the Lord thundered with a mighty voice that day against the Philistines and threw them into confusion; and they were routed before Israel.
And the men of Israel went out of Mizpah and pursued the Philistines, and struck them down as far as beyond Beth-car.
Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Jeshanah, and named it Ebenezer; for he said, “Thus far the Lord has helped us.”
So the Philistines were subdued and did not again enter the territory of Israel; the hand of the Lord was against the Philistines all the days of Samuel.
God responds, and Samuel’s response to God’s help is to create a memorial, a witness, to what God has done in response to the repentance of the Israelites.
If I were to ask you all, how many of you have worshipped an idol in your life, what would the response be? I’d not be surprised if not many answered in the affirmative. It’s not frequent that we bow down before statues of other Gods.
But this is human nature. We might not bow down to statues, but we sacrifice a lot of the affection and allegiance and love that we are called to show to God by giving it to other things.
We love things. We love cultural icons. We love political identities and politicians and agendas. We love cars and boats. We love money. We love careers and we love status and we love power. In some circles we brand these “money, property, and prestige” which always pull us away from our primary purpose in this world — which is to serve as Witnesses to God’s goodness in our lives and as Witnesses to God’s great love for all of the people of this world.
The question becomes… how do we address this reality?
Well we address it the same way that Samuel led the Israelites to address it. It begins with being honest with ourselves and with our communities about the ways that we have been deceived by and led astray by some form of idolatry or another. In what ways has our desire for or allegiance to money, property, prestige, political identity, social philosophy, etc caused us to compromise our Christian values? What is it that you place in front of God in your life? What’s keeping the main thing from being the main thing?
Then we do what Samuel told the people. We put those things away. If they are destructive, we rid ourselves of them. If they are just something that we have placed in an improper place of priority, we reprioritize. Listen, if the results of the election tempt you to be less than Christ-like in the way you carry yourself in the world or interact with you neighbors, you may need to evaluate if following Jesus is more important to you than following an agenda.
And here’s the thing, we don’t do this alone. We do this under the power of Jesus who intercedes for us. The power of idols is too strong for us alone. At the end of the quest to destroy the ring of power, even Frodo — the most kind hearted and virtuous of all the creatures of Middle Earth succumbed to the allure of the Ring of Power. He was unable to rid himself of its evil alone — even at the pleading and the insistence of his constant companion.
Like Frodo, we need more help than we are able to give ourselves. And when that help arrives — in the form of God’s grace working in our hearts — to make them strangely warm — it is then that we are able to witness to this world around us. We take the ordinary pieces of our lives — like Samuel with a rock — and we use it to show this world “look what Jesus has done with me.” These are the broken pieces of my life that God has redeemed. And God, this Jesus who rearranged and warmed my heart can rearrange and warm yours as well.
There’s 2 old hymns that remind us of these truths. One says “here I raise mine Ebenezer” and another that says “They will know we are Christians by our love.” These are how we live a life of strange witness. We say look at what God has done — let me show you what God is doing.
Friends, let’s be a people with a witness that says “these people, this church, they follow Jesus first.” Let that be our witness. A church who says look what God has done for us — lets show this world what God is doing for you.
