July 17, 2024
• Rev. Glenn Mcdonald
You know, it's such a joy to have gotten Rob's invitation to join all of you this morning. I mean, this this is a sign of hope that a Presbyterian can preach in a methodist chapel. It's good to be together. When our oldest son, Mark, was about 14 years old, Mary Sue took him to our pediatrician for his annual checkup.
A little after asked an interesting question. Had we ever taken Mark to an eye expert to to have his vision really checked out by a probe? Well, no, Mary Sue said Mark had not really ever complained about his eyesight. There didn't seem to be any evidence that anything was wrong. Well, that might be a good idea to do it at some point in the future, our doctor advised.
Well, Mark's sister Katie needed to have her eyes examined, and we thought, well, we'll just put Mark in as part of a kind of a joint appointment. And then we could check that box with the pediatrician next year. We are nothing if not compliant parents. The eye doctor pointed out that Mark's eyes are not particularly level. They were kind of cocked.
Now nobody's eyes are completely level from the left to the right side of the face. But I could really see that that Mark's eyes were were in a very different place. You can look at someone for 14 years and not notice something like that. The doctor said, I'm going to prescribe prism lenses for Mark. I think it's going to make a big difference in his vision.
We were all together as a family a few weeks later when Mark got his glasses and put them on for the first time. I will never forget that moment. He went, oh my gosh. There's only one of everything. When you put it on some of these prism lenses, you see essentially they're uncorrected vision. And when I put on my son's brand new specs, I saw double mark.
Have you been seeing double for 14 years, dad? Aren't there two of everything? Well, no wonder you were so lousy in Little League. Well, I learned to hit the ball on the left. What's amazing is that our son wore those brand new glasses for about 30 days, took them off and never put them on again. He said they made the world look empty.
It's a cartoon world, is the way he put it. He was so used to seeing double that he chose to go on seeing the old way. In fact, he's still doing that today. This fall he will turn 46 years old. He's a software designer here in Indianapolis. And Mark, all day long looks at two screens. He drives to work on two streets.
In fact, if you see my son coming, I recommend you get out of his way. He. He sees two of you. He's married to two women and doesn't even embrace that part of Mormon theology. And when our first grandson was born, Mark could be forgiven for thinking he was the father of twins. You know, it's remarkable how you can become so used to seeing things in a certain way.
Then it's hard to adjust to reality, even when it's staring you right in the face. Once we have framed our thoughts around life's most important questions, once we have chosen to see or to believe a particular story or narrative that seems to make sense of all of life's details, it can be really difficult to transform the way we see and the way we think.
When it comes to stories that clarify life's meaning, the most important story you will ever tell is the story that you tell yourself about yourself growing up or becoming a mature adult may be defined as gradually facing the truth that we will never tell ourselves the right story unless we have allowed God to transform form the ways that we think.
Here's the good news if you change your story, you change your life. And by God's grace, we can receive the gift of a mind transformed by God's Word. Problem? Of course, is that even when God gives us new spiritual eyeglasses, even when we have the opportunity to believe the very best story about God's intentions for our lives, it is not an easy thing to give up the ways that we have always pictured reality.
Americans, for instance, are stunningly overconfident when it comes to spiritual things. This is what's called the self-serving bias. It's a blind spot with regard to our integrity. The best way to describe the self-serving bias is to point out that most of us think all things considered, that we're doing a pretty good job in life and knocking it out of the park.
But a lot of other people we know are living really messed up lives. Did you know that 25% of all high school students placed themselves in the top 1% when it comes to social skills? And that in a recent poll of 800,000 American high school students, not one, I mean, not one student put themselves and the lower half of American students.
Did you know that 88% of college professors believe they should be ranked amongst the top educators in North America, and that 90% of pastors are convinced they are above average preachers? Well, of course we are. About two decades ago, U.S. News and World Report during Easter week after a really interesting question of its readership. The question was, who do you think is most likely to go to heaven?
Well, it wasn't a surprise that Mother Teresa, who was alive at the time, came in first. 79% of respondents thought Mother Teresa was in pretty good spiritual shape. What's really interesting is to recognize that 21% of Americans, Gong and Mother Teresa. Who came in second? Why? Oprah Winfrey, of course, at 66%, followed by Michael Jordan at 65%, general Colin Powell 61%.
And in a pattern that seems to have remained consistent throughout most of her life, Hillary Clinton split the election and got just over 50% bill, her husband following behind at 46. Newt Gingrich, his nemesis at 40%. Further down the scale, Dennis Rodman at 28%. After all, he is an alien. We learned in the movie Men in Black and O.J. Simpson, at 19%.
Now, here's the real kicker. Those same respondents were asked, so do you think you're going to heaven? A whopping 87% said yes. Leaving Mother Teresa in the dust. Americans are nothing if not spiritually confident. And one of the reasons it's so important to allow our minds to be shaped by God's Word is that we need a serious dose of reality.
All too often we overstate where we stand with God. But here's a huge irony a great many of us also understate where we stand with God. After all, if we're willing to take a fearless inventory of our failures to keep promises, our incapacity to tell the truth are struggles with purity in our minds and our motives. We're going to quickly find ourselves wondering why God even give us, any of us a second thought.
The closer we draw to the heart of God, the more we find ourselves overwhelmed by insignificance. Why would God ever call us into his ranks? To spread the good news of God's reign in the cosmos, and to help heal this broken world? Well, the answer is that God routinely calls nobodies and transforms them into his somebodies. God takes those who are insignificant and overcome and even uses their weaknesses to display his power.
Like the men and women we find in Scripture, we can choose a better story. And there's no better example of that than the obscure shepherd, the youngest boy in a family of eight boys who turns out to be the most important character in the Old Testament. We're talking, of course, about David takes 66 chapters of the Bible to tell David's story.
And everything begins in this text that we heard just a few moments ago with two characters. Samuel. This is the the last of the judges. He's the voice of God in this period of spiritual history. The last voice that will be heard for a while like that. And then there's Saul, this tragic first monarch who who rose up like an ascending rocket with his weight, reputation and possibility.
And then came crashing down with cowardice and disobedience, throwing the entire nation of Israel into spiritual and political chaos. Look again at verse one. Lord says to Samuel, okay, how long are you going to be sad? How long are you going to grieve for Saul? Because I've rejected him now as king. So fill your horn. Be on your way.
I want you to go to a man named Jesse. He lives in Bethlehem. He's got eight boys, and one of them is the choice to be the one after my own heart. Saul has been this massive disappointment. It's time to move on. So Samuel heads for Bethlehem, which at this point in the history of Israel, is not much more than a wide place in the road.
Jesse lives here, and he has to be awestruck that Samuel is coming to his house to meet with his family. So he takes seven of his sons and brings them. And we pick up the story and verse six where we read. When they arrived, Samuel saw Eliab and thought, Surely the Lord's anointed stands before the Lord. Now we gather from this verse that Eliab must be a really impressive fellow.
This is a guy who can get things done. He is the president of the student council. He is the captain of the lacrosse team, and he drives around in the Cadillac Escalade. John Ortberg suggests that the Hebrew for Eliab means you demand. Because all his life people have looked at the firstborn and said, oh, you demand. His father is going to send you the man.
Samuel walks in and looks at him and says, he the man, and God looks at 11, says he, not the man. First Samuel 16 seven. One of the signature verses of the Bible, great memory verse. The Lord says of Samuel, do not consider his appearance or his height. For I rejected him. The Lord does not look at the things people look at.
People look at the outward appearance. The Lord looks at the heart. God's not impressed with business cards, portfolios, or who has the most followers on Instagram. Jesse therefore brings out son number two, a beaver dam. And he goes on. Then son number three is Shammah. And after that number four through seven. And Samuel squints at Jesse and says, the Lord has not chosen any of these.
Are these all the sons you have? That is such an interesting question. I mean, maybe there's another Jesse Samuel's thinking in the greater Bethlehem Metro phone book. who might also have eight boys. is there anybody else? Look at the father's response in verse 11. Jesse sniffs, well, there's the youngest. He's out back tending the sheep. Now, the Hebrew word here for the youngest is honkytonk, and it means runt.
The run to the litter. We didn't even ask him. He's nobody. He's nothing. Father has apparently never even imagined that his children might be equally significant. Does he doesn't even ponder the possibility that the youngest ought to be in the room after all. he needs to be out back taking care of the sheep. Now, as followers of Jesus, we have a very romanticized understanding of sheep tending.
And that's from the 23rd Psalm and from Jesus identifying as the good Shepherd. But the truth is that sheep tending was a boring, dirty, and demeaning job, and it was fed in the minds of most people only for those who were in the lowest rung of a family or a community in Bible times. Birth order was a very big deal.
Tremendous favor was given, especially to the oldest child, the oldest son in particular. Now, how many of you with show of hands are not the first born in your family? And I'm joining you because I'm a middle child. How many of you agree with me that first born children are spoiled, undeserving brats?
Bill Butterworth has tried to imagine what it must have been like for Jesse and his wife to look at their family picture album. So they open up the album and they go, oh my gosh, there's lab. There is. When he was born, there he is. 30s later. Here's another picture of him opening his eyes there. Oh, he's closing his eyes.
Here's the grandparents coming in. Oh, there's this first diaper change. Yes. then you move on. There's this first tooth. And and when he gets on the trike and he goes to school, and you know how it is with parents and a firstborn child and a camera. Turn the page. Oh, look, there's been a day of. And there's when he was born and there's when the grandparents met him.
Is this great and of school picture and shamar and they're all. Look, Sharma's went to school. David, you know, honey, we've got to get some more pictures of David. Now, the honor normally associated with the birth order is turned on its head. Samuel tells Jesse, go get your youngest son. We will not sit down until he arrives. Oh, this.
This is quite a scene. The other sons are all standing now and they're waiting for the on the front, the baby brother, to show up. They're trying their very best to not to look like runners up one through seven on the bachelorette competition. You know, these are the guys who are not going to receive the rose. They're standing there with those plastered on.
I'm just so very happy for your smiles. The insignificant and neglected David comes. Drive up in his hand me down. Honda Accord. And the Lord says to Samuel, rise and anoint him. He is the one. Long before Keanu Reeves heard that line and the matrix, David is the one in God's plan. David's chosen not because of what anybody else sees in him.
Up until this moment, he has apparently been insignificant. Even the people who knew him well, but not to God. Now, perhaps you have felt insignificant, not good enough, or hidden from view and the eyes of your own parents, teachers, pastors, friends, people that you really wanted to impress. Well, here's the good news. The verdict of other people has never been God's final word about who you are.
Author and sociologist Tony Campolo baptized in a little Baptist church when he was nine years old. Not long after that, the congregation fell on hard times. Membership radically declined, and they eventually closed the church well deep into his ministry. Campolo had the chance to go to Baptist denominational headquarters and said, do you mind if I look up the records for for my little church?
Oh, please go right ahead. And he he turned to the page that recorded the year of his own baptism, and he writes, and there was my name, and there was the name of Dick white. He's now a missionary. And Bert Newman, now a professor of theology at a seminary in Africa. Then I read the summary for my year.
It has not been a good year for our church. We lost 27 members. Only three joined and they were just children. That congregation didn't have the vision to see what was right in front of their eyes. They were they were just children. But those three boys have changed the world. So who are you? What relationship or achievement or stroke of luck are you counting on to define your identity?
You can choose a better story. Your call is not to seek honor and personal triumphs or beauty or winning some Powerball jackpot, but by believing the word that God has spoken over you. The only way for us to embrace the true story of our lives now, not the one that says, oh, I'm right up there with Mother Teresa.
Not the one that hangs its head and sighs. My life doesn't matter because I'm the runt. I'm the one no one ever sees is to hear and believe what God says about your life. To try on the spiritual eyeglasses that will allow you to see your life the way God sees it. If you have given yourself to Christ, if you have abandoned yourself to Jesus as best you know how.
Romans chapter eight says that you are forgiven and free from condemnation. That's verses one and two, that all things in your life are working together for good. That's verse 28, that nothing can ever separate you from God's love. Verses 37 to 39, God says in Philippians one six that God has begun a great work in your life, and he's going to finish it.
You are not worthless, inadequate, helpless, or hopeless since Scripture makes it clear you're God's temple. First Corinthians 316. You're God's coworker in the kingdom. Second Corinthians 517 that you may approach God with absolute freedom and confidence. Ephesians 312 and that you're empowered to say, I can do everything to the one who gives me strength. Philippians 413. All of this has nothing to do with how you feel.
This morning has everything to do with what God says about you this morning. And best of all, God's amazing grace removes the fear we sometimes have, that maybe God will change his mind and suddenly revoke these words that have been spoken over us. That our lives are deeply significant because we are loved and treasured by a God who is never going to abandon us.
Did you hear the one about the four guys who were flying in a small plane over a rugged wilderness area? There was a pilot and a nuclear physicist. There was a pastor and a Boy Scout, and they're flying along. And the pilot looked back and he said, hey, you guys, I've got some bad news and I've got some really bad news.
The bad news is I'm looking at the console and I can tell the engine is about to seize up and this plane's going to go down. There's no safe place for us to land. The really bad news is, I honestly didn't think we were going to be facing this this morning. And I only put three parachutes on the plane.
Okay? I'm a husband and a father, and my family would miss me terribly if anything happened to me. So, I'm going to have to take one of those parachutes. And he punched the autopilot in, and it would the plane would go on a few more moments, and he jumped with one of the parachutes. The nuclear physicist said, I didn't think it was important to share with you at the beginning of the flight, but I am the smartest man in the world.
The global intellectual community would be impoverished if anything were to happen to me. It is my moral obligation to survive. He picked up one of the parachutes, put it on, and jumped. The pastor said to the Boy Scout. Look, young man, I've had a wonderful life. You've got your whole life stretching out in front of you.
There's no way I'm taking the last parachute. And he was going to say some other stuff, but the Boy Scout put his hand up and said, oh, Reverend, chill out. The smartest man in the world just jumped out of this plane wearing my backpack. And.
Right now, some of the smartest people in the world are in freefall. They don't know who they are. They don't know what story to believe about their own lives. You'd be different. The most important story you will ever tell is the story that you will tell yourself about yourself. Choose to believe God's good story about who you are in Christ.
For if you change your story, you change your life. Let's pray. Lord, if you would please give us the grace to believe what you're saying. To believe specifically what you say about us. Lord God, now turn our hearts away from the distortions that we have accepted for far too long, and to remember that we are children of a father who treasures us and will never let us go.
We thank you in Jesus Name. Amen.