Sermon 15th January 2012

Today, our Curate, Gill Tayleur, preaches based on the reading from Joshua 1: verses 1-9.

It was a dark and stormy night, the brigands and chiefs began to fight. And one said, Antonio, tell us a story. Antonio said, It was a dark and stormy night, the brigands and chiefs began to fight. And one said, Antonio, tell us a story. Antonio said, It was a dark and stormy night...

When our kids were little, Trevor used to tell them that story, as his father had to him.

And of course it was a joke because the story doesn’t go anywhere, just round in circles, rather annoyingly.

We’re thinking about stories this morning. Louie Giglio, a North American Baptist pastor wrote:

Life is the tale of 2 stories, one finite and frail, the other eternal and enduring. The tiny one – the story of us – is as brief as the blink of an eye. Yet somehow our infatuation with our own little story – and our determination to make it as big as we possibly can – blinds us to the massive God-story that is unfolding all around us. We can live our entire life completely oblivious to the grand story of the Creator of the universe that is being played out all around us. It’s the story of God and his marvellous and extraordinary dealings with humankind. It’s The Story of life and love for all time. It’s God’s story, his story, and we can play a part in it! All of his-tory is ultimately His Story, God’s story.

(Thanks to the North American Baptist pastor Louie Giglio for some of that train of thought.)

... ... ...

This morning we’re thinking about God’s story, His-story, in the history books of the Bible. Last week Cameron introduced this series on the Bible, and we looked briefly at the first type of literature it contains, the law or Torah, the books from Genesis to Deuteronomy.

In those books we read about creation, God’s relationship with humankind, how people rebelled against him, and the beginnings of God’s rescue plan to re-establish a relationship with humanity. God made a covenant, the deepest sort of binding promise, between himself and a particular people, the Israelites. They would be his own special people, through which he would reach ALL peoples everywhere.

This week we’re looking at the history chunk of the Bible - that is the books of Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1 & 2 Samuel, 1 & 2 Kings, 1 & 2 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah and Esther.

They cover about 1000 years of history, from when the Israelites went into the promised land of Canaan with their leader Joshua, to life there under judges and later kings, the splitting of the nation into 2 rival kingdoms, the downfall and exile in both, and Judah’s return from exile. This history involved many ups and downs, twists and turns – but through it all, it’s the story of God, God’s relationship with his people. It’s a God story, His story, history.

The reading we just heard at the very beginning of the book of Joshua is when God’s people were on the brink. On the brink of entering the land God had promised them, where God’s people would live as he said, in relationship with him as their God, living his ways and obeying his law, with his presence and blessing.

The book of Joshua tells the story of the Israelites taking and settling in the land, starting with the miraculous crossing of the River Jordan and the fall of Jericho.

This isn’t the time to go into it in detail, but I must briefly acknowledge how our modern ears are disturbed by God’s command to destroy the former inhabitants of the land. To us it sounds like ethnic cleansing. But God is not motivated by prejudice. Moses said “the Lord is going to drive these nations out before you because they are evil.” In his holiness, God was provoked by the awful wickedness of the Canaanites, who practiced child sacrifice, idolatry and immorality. He knew that his people would be corrupted by such evil if it was allowed to stay in the land. And that is exactly what eventually happened. The Israelites failed to destroy the Canaanites completely and they were a corrupting influence for many years.

So the book of Joshua tells the story of the Israelites taking the land, and in time it was divided into the 12 tribes of Israel, the descendants of Joseph and his 11 brothers.

The book of Joshua ends on a similar note to the one it started on, that the people needed to live as God’s people, in obedience and relationship to him, in order to know his presence and blessing.

That’s Joshua. Then there’s the book of Judges, which continues the story after Joshua dies. It makes depressing reading, as the people rebelled against God’s rule again and again. They turned from God to worship other gods. God responded by allowing them to be defeated by their enemies. So they cried out to God for help and he raised up a judge, or ruler, to lead the battle, defeat their enemies and restore peace to the land. But it never lasted long. The people turned away from God again and the cycle was repeated, many times over.

There were 12 judges, military leaders, who also made judgements, and some were prophets. You may know the stories of Gideon, Samson and Deborah, and their enemies the Philistines, Canaanites and Mideonites. The judges were a motley lot, some of very dubious character, but God delivered his people through them anyway.

The next history book is Ruth, a short story of a widow whose devotion to her mother in law, her faith in God and integrity in hostile circumstances were recognised and rewarded by God. This happened in the time of Judges. It showed that God’s goodness extended beyond his covenant people the Israelites.

In the book of 1 Samuel, we see that Samuel was the greatest judge to rule Israel. He served God all his life but when he grew old he appointed his wicked sons as judges in his place. The elders of Israel came to him and demanded that he appoint a king to rule them. They said, “like all the other nations”. God was angry because he knew that their motivation was wrong – they wanted a king instead of God rather than a king under God. Despite their bad motivation, God gave them what they asked for and Saul was anointed king. But the people were not blessed during his reign because he persistently disobeyed God. God therefore rejected him as king.

The focus moved on to David, who had already been anointed as King Saul’s successor. That God was with him was seen early on in his life when he defeated Goliath, the mighty Philistine. But there were problems for David. Saul was jealous of him and tried to kill him. David was forced to live as a fugitive until Saul died in battle and then David became king.

2 Samuel

At last Israel had the kind of king God wanted: David was “a man after God’s own heart”. But David was not perfect. His lust led him to adultery with Bathsheba and then to have her husband murdered. But for most of his life David tried to be faithful to God, and so God blessed him and the people through him. At first, only his own tribe of Judah acknowledged David as king, but a few years later all Israel followed. He established Jerusalem as the capital city and there was peace in the land. The Ark of the Covenant, symbolising God’s presence and rule, was brought into the city. David ruled, not independently of God, but under him. Jerusalem was the city of David, but also city of God. Even so, there were prophesies from God of a king far greater than David to come in the future.

In the book of 1 Kings, Solomon succeeded David as king and ruled wisely, bringing more security and prosperity to the land. A temple was built, providing a permanent symbolic dwelling place for God. These were the best times ever for Israel. It looked as if all God’s promises had come true: God’s people were in the promised place, enjoying his rule and blessing. But it didn’t last. Solomon married many foreign wives and began to worship their gods. After King Solomon died civil war broke out and the kingdom began to disintegrate.

In 2 Kings, soon after Solomon’s son Rehoboam came to the throne, the 10 northern and eastern tribes rebelled against him and set up their own kingdom under Jeroboam. Israel had been united for 120 years under Saul, David & Solomon, but then it was divided. The Northern kingdom, confusingly, was called Israel, with the capital Shechem, later Samaria. The Southern kingdom was called Judah, with its capital Jerusalem. There were occasionally good kings in both kingdoms, but the general direction of their history was downwards. The decline in the north was obvious from the very beginning: Jeroboam was concerned that his people would want to go to Jerusalem in the southern kingdom to worship God, so he built 2 alternative shrines, each with a golden calf to worship!

The end came in 722BC, 200 years after the kingdoms divided. Because of the people’s unfaithfulness to God, he allowed the Assyrians to attack Samaria and destroy it. The Northern tribes never again had a separate existence. Their descendants were the Samaritans, despised by Jews in Jesus’ time.

The Southern kingdom did little better. Even though they had the temple in their midst, the people turned to other gods. There were some periods when they were more obedient to God, e.g. under King Josiah, but the change was not deep enough. The people had repeatedly broken their covenant with God by unfaithfulness and so could not be allowed to stay in the promised land. They were invaded by the Babylonians in 597BC and some inhabitants taken away to exile. Ten years later Jerusalem and its temple was destroyed and more exiles were taken to Babylon.

These were sad, sad times, when God’s people were in exile, not enjoying his rule or his blessing.

The books of 1 & 2 Chronicles cover much of the same history as Samuel and Kings, but from a somewhat different viewpoint. And the last history books are Ezra Nehemiah & Esther.

6 decades after the exile had begun, the Persians defeated the Babylonians and allowed the exiles to return to Jerusalem and rebuild their temple. Only a small number made it back to their homeland, and they faced great opposition when they did, but eventually a new temple was built under the priest Ezra’s leadership.

Soon afterwards, Nehemiah led a party to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem city. They did so, but it was all nothing like as great as it had been in Solomon’s day. They were still waiting for the prophesied golden days of David’s descendant king to come.

The last history book is Esther, who married a great king. When God’s people were in danger, she was brave and asked the king to help them, so God’s people were saved.

And they are the history books!

They tell the story of God’s dealings with his people. The story of God’s love and faithfulness despite their repeated unfaithfulness and disobedience. Again and again – and again! – the people turned away from God, and only when his presence and blessing was withdrawn from them, did they turn back to him. And he forgave and accepted them, again and again and again, because his love was – and is - never ending.

In the history books of the Bible, we keep reading that God’s blessing was dependent on the people’s obedience. The covenant between God and the Israelites meant that the people were under God’s authority, his care, protection and blessing, and thus owed him their love, trust and obedience.

What is this blessing that’s tied up with obedience? Often it’s portrayed as success, victory or prosperity, as it was in our Joshua reading. But we know from other parts of the Bible, like Job who was faithful to God but suffered terribly, and of course look at Jesus who was the ultimate in obedience and faithfulness to God, and see how he suffered. We know from them that the blessing we are promised isn’t necessarily material prosperity – it’s God’s presence. “I the Lord your God, will be with you wherever you go” God said to Joshua. Jesus spoke of trials and suffering for his followers, even that they had to lose their life and die for him – but promised “I will be with you always to the end of the age”. So the blessing that obedience to God brings, may include material blessing, but ultimately it’s God’s presence, which is after all the best blessing of all and lasts forever!

Cameron said last week that all of the Bible points to Jesus, he’s its real focus. There are several ways in which the history of the Israelites we’ve galloped through this morning points to that ultimate focal point of history, Jesus, but I don’t want to steal the thunder of future preachers looking at prophesy and wisdom, as the history books provide the context for them. All I’ll say for now is that the story of God’s people living under judges and kings, was only a sort of preview or sketch of what was to come in Jesus. David was the best king they had, but he was just a shadow of the one true mighty king to come, Jesus. Jesus didn’t rule that land as a king during his life on earth, but he is the ultimate ruler of all history, including us today. He rules with wisdom, justice, mercy and love, and living under King Jesus brings the greatest blessings of all. When history is wound up at the end of time, everyone will see and bow before his kingship, and live under his kingship for all eternity. Maybe more about that in another future sermon, the one on the apocalypse.

But for now, we need to wake up to God’s story as The Story, and to God’s invitation to us to join him in it.

Louie Giglio again: “We don’t have to. We can spend our days trying to hijack the story of God, turning it into the story of us. Inverting reality, we can live every day as if life is all about me, as if life is my own fleeting one act play.

We all have to make a choice. We can choose to cling to starring roles in the little stories of us, or we can exchange our fleeting moments in the spotlight, for a supporting role in the eternally beautiful epic that is the Story of God. Abandoning our story and embracing God’s story, will allow our little lives to be filled with the wonder of God, as we live for his worship and service. And joining our small stories to his, will give us what we all want most in life anyway – the assurance that our brief moments on earth count for something in a story that never ends.”

Playing our part in God’s story, HIS story, is the most exciting way to live! It’s what we were created for! To make our short, little life story part of God’s story. His love and faithfulness reach out to us, today, as they reached out to the people we read about in [the Bible] here, so that we can say YES to God, to living for His worship service and glory. It’s not about you, or me, it’s all about him.

So, will we recognise God’s story as His story, as THE story of life and take up his invitation to play our part?

Then let’s pray:

God of history, God of all space and time, we acknowledge that you are supreme in all creation! We want to play our part in your story, of the life and love you offer us. We want to surrender our story, our lives, to you, for you to weave into your purposes in history. Show us what that means for each one of us today. In Jesus name, Amen.

Thanks to Louie Giglio’s book “I am not but I know I AM” and Vaughan Roberts’ book “God’s Big Picture”.