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Archeologists were digging in the ancient ruins of the
Middle East. They came upon some pottery fragments with some
difficult letters to decipher. They called in the language
experts to help. Do you know what it said? "Alas, alas, things
are not what they used to be." Someone has said, "I am 100
percent in favor of progress...It's all this change I'm
against."(1)
But change is a part of life, isn't it? According to
Harper's Index, the average American will hold eight different
jobs and will live in THIRTY different homes. An estimated 4,000
scientific words creep into our language each year. Westinghouse
calculates that the so-called half-life of an engineer is only
ten years - one-half of what an engineer learns in college will
be outdated within a decade.(2) Half the nations on earth did not
exist in their present form just 25 years ago. Change. It is no
wonder that people have such trouble coping.
Now we are in the midst of summer. Our search for spiritual
excellence continues as we focus on the equipment the Lord has
given us to succeed in that quest...the armor of God. We began
with the Belt of Truth, DIVINE truth that God loves this world
and sent Jesus to redeem it. Then the Breastplate of
Righteousness, GOD's righteousness, the promise of a relationship
with this world God loves that will never falter. On to the
Shoes of the Gospel of Peace, GOD's peace, the peace that passes
understanding, the peace that a child feels snuggled up to Mommy
or Daddy in the midst of a midnight storm.
As we have been pointing out over these weeks, this armor of
which Paul speaks is GOD's armor, not ours. If we rely on OUR
truth to hold us together, we are often led down the primrose
path - our truth is often relative (Was Japan an enemy or a
friend?). If we trust OUR righteousness, scripture reminds us
that it is worth nothing but filthy rags. If we try to calm
ourselves with OUR peace, there is no calm at all - things change
too much and too quickly.
But this week we come to the Shield of Faith and are
suddenly confronted with a problem. If this is God's armor, what
in the world is God's faith? That makes no sense. Well, this is
one of those rare times when I am very glad that Presbyterians
require Hebrew and Greek as a part of a minister's training. In
this case, the Greek clears up the problem. The word we have
translated as FAITH here is translated equally well as
FAITHFULNESS. Nowhere in scripture do we ever find reference to
God's FAITH, but those sacred pages have God's FAITHFULNESS writ
large between every line.
It starts in the very beginning, the story of creation. No
matter how someone chooses to interpret those stories in the
early chapters of Genesis, the message is that this world did not
just happen. There was a divine purpose behind it and a divine
order to it.
Years ago, there was a children's book which bore the
fascinating title, The Chance World. It described a creation in
which nothing could be counted on. The sun might rise or it
might not; or it might appear at any hour; or the moon might come
up instead. When children were born they might have one head or
a dozen heads, and those heads might not be on their shoulders -
there might not be any shoulders - but arranged somewhere in
place of a hand or foot. If a boy jumped up in the air it was
impossible to predict whether he would ever come down again.
That he came down yesterday was no guarantee that he would do it
tomorrow. Things were different everyday - gravitation and
everything else changed from hour to hour. Today a child's body
might be so light that it would be impossible to get down from
the chair to the floor, but tomorrow, the force might be so great
as to drive it through a three-story house and dash it to pieces
somewhere near the center of the earth. In this chance world
cause and effect were wiped out; natural law was annihilated.
What would happen in a "chance world?" Everyone would go crazy.(3)
But we do not live in a chance world. The sun DOES come up
in the morning and the moon comes out at night. Natural law is
not repealed, whether we understand it or not. America's most
famous inventor, Thomas Edison, once said, "No one can study
chemistry and see the wonderful way in which certain elements
combine with the nicety of the most delicate machine ever
invented, and not come to the inevitable conclusion that there is
a Big Engineer who is running this universe."(4)
Is that the faithfulness that Paul says will shield us from
all the evil that would bring us down? Part of it, perhaps. But
as Jesus said, "He he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the
good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous."(5)
The orderliness of creation is nothing more than EVIDENCE of the
faithfulness of God. But for believers, there is more.
To explain that, we can focus on two parables, one from the
Old Testament, one from the New. In the Old Testament, there is
a remarkable story about the faithfulness of God in the little
book of Hosea. If you recall the details, the prophet Hosea was
instructed to take himself a wife - not some sweet young thing,
but a prostitute named Gomer. No doubt he started off with high
hopes, but they were soon dashed - this leopard was not about to
change her spots. She ran off. He went after her. He gave her
presents. She ran off again. He went after her again. She bore
three children, presumably NOT Hosea's, but none of that
mattered. Hosea never gave up on Gomer. The message of the book
is that God never gives up on the covenant people, no matter how
low they go. No matter how UNfaithful we are, GOD will ALWAYS be
faithful.
The New Testament parable is the one which has been called
the greatest short story ever written, the Prodigal Son. As you
recall, the boy came to Daddy and asked for his portion of the
inheritance. Loving father that he was, and no doubt against his
better judgment, Dad gave it to him, a major sacrifice in a day
when the only security in old age was in the form of accumulated
assets. Junior took off, blew the money in what scripture calls
"riotous living." He ended up so down and out that he was
reduced to trying to survive by caring for pigs, about the most
degrading thing a good Jewish boy who would have never eaten pork
could have imagined. Finally, as he sat in the slop of the pig
sty, the Bible says "he came to himself." He woke up to the fact
that life had not been so bad back home - even the servants lived
FAR better than he was living. So he headed back.
There is a similar story, this one NOT from the Bible, but
an ancient Oriental legend which tells of a man who had a wild
and impetuous son.(6) He became involved with the ruffians of the
village who persuaded him to join them in the robbery of his
father's treasury house. After the robbery was over, his friends
fled with the stolen booty and left him to face the guilt of the
crime alone. The young man was desperate. He was deserted by
his friends and had betrayed the trust of his father. But his
greatest crime was that he had brought public dishonor on the
family name. In a culture where ancestors were worshiped and
family integrity is a sacred trust, this was the worst wrong of
all.
Broken and deeply repentant, he went to his father and
begged forgiveness. Graciously, it was granted. The father
called all the members of the family together to celebrate the
reconciliation and the return of his son. When all had enjoyed
the banquet to the fullest, the father stood and lifted his cup
of rice wine for a toast. But as the son drank deep the contents
of his cup, he suddenly grabbed his throat, and with a look of
pain and disbelief on his face, he fell lifeless across the
table. The son had been poisoned. The father with ceremonial
dignity nodded to the guests. Each in turn graciously and
politely bowed to the father as they silently left the banquet
hall. All was now put right. The son had paid the price of his
pardon with poison. His honor had been restored. The family
integrity was reestablished. The unfortunate incident was
closed.
As you know, the Prodigal Son in Jesus' story was also
welcomed back by his father. There was a banquet. The boy was
given the honor of the best robe, a ring to signify a place of
authority in the household, shoes to lift him from the status of
barefoot slave. No, there was no poison this time, just more
love than that boy would have ever imagined. The point of the
story was the same as that with Hosea and Gomer: no matter how
UNfaithful WE are, God is ALWAYS faithful, and God's love for us
never changes. Lamentations sings it: "The steadfast love of the
Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new
every morning; great is your faithfulness. 'The LORD is my
portion,' says my soul, 'therefore I will hope in him.'"(7) And
the hymn writer echoes back:
There is a verse you probably learned in Sunday School which
you hear regularly when it comes time for the Prayer of
Confession in worship. It comes I John: "If we confess our sins,
he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse
us from all unrighteousness."(9) God is FAITHFUL...to forgive.
This is the Shield of Faithfulness that Paul says will protect us
if spiritual excellence is what we want. Our own faithfulness
will not do it - it falters too often. Even the best of us are
forced to admit how often we fail.
Some of you may have heard me tell of the legend of the man
who came to the pearly gates and was told that to gain admittance
to the celestial city, he would have to ascend a flight of
stairs. He was handed a piece of chalk and instructed to write
one sin or shortcoming from his life on each step as he moved
higher. No problem...for awhile. After a bit, he stopped - he
could not think of any more sins he had committed. As he stood
there, he saw a figure coming down the steps toward him. With a
start, he recognized the Archbishop of Canterbury. "Your grace,"
he called out, "have they turned you away from the city?"
"Not at all, my son," he gruffly replied as he hurried past,
"I am just coming down for some more chalk." Even the best of
us.
The Shield of Faithfulness...GOD's faithfulness. God hangs
in there with us, ready to restore the relationship broken by our
own failing, even when, like the Prodigal Son, we hit rock
bottom.
There is a true story of a Catholic priest living in the
Philippines, a much-beloved man of God who once carried a secret
burden of long-past sin buried deep in his heart. He had
committed that sin once, many years before, during his time in
seminary. No one else knew of this sin. He had repented of it,
but had suffered years of remorse for it, had felt no peace, no
inner joy, no sense of God's forgiveness.
There was a woman in this priest's parish who deeply loved
God, and who claimed to have visions in which she spoke with
Christ, and he with her. As might be expected, the priest was
skeptical of her claims, so to test her visions he said to her,
"You say you actually speak with Christ in your visions. Let me
ask you a favor. The next time you have one of these visions, I
want you to ask him what sin your priest committed while he was
in seminary."
The woman agreed and went home. When she returned to the
church a few days later, the priest asked, "Well, did Christ
visit you in your dreams?"
"Yes, he did," she replied.
"And did you ask him what sin I committed in seminary?"
"Yes, I asked him."
"Well, what did he say?"
"He said, `I don't remember.'"(10)
"If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will
forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness."
The great truth of the gospel is that, even though we are
compelled to acknowledge our sins - guilt feelings are part and
parcel of human nature - we are not condemned to bear them
forever. The faithfulness of God's forgiveness is a shield
against being beaten down into the moral mud of the pig sty of
this world's evil. Best of all, that awful day at Calvary has
freed us from our sins' eternal consequence.
Yes, it is sometimes difficult to cope, to barely hang in
there, much less pursue any spiritual excellence. Life sometimes
seems as if it tumbles in around us - nothing is nailed down
anymore. Enemies become friends. Jobs change; homes change;
truths change; people change. Only God never changes, and that
is the shield that protects us from everything...even ourselves.
Let us pray.
O God, we confess to our own unfaithfulness. We do our
level best to be obedient servants, but fail more often than we
care to admit. We are grateful that you are faithful. Help us
to share that good news with a world that needs to hear. In the
name of Jesus. Amen!
1. Pastors' Professional Research Service, 1/89-2/89 2. Pastors' Professional Research Service, 9/88-10/88 3. Paul Lee Tan, Encyclopedia of 7700 Illustrations, (Rockville, MD, Assurance Publishers,1979), p. 487 4. ibid., p. 484 5. Matthew 5:45 6. from Richard Carl Hoefler, And he Told Them a Story, (Lima, OH, C.S.S. Publishing, 1979), p. 70 7. Lamentations 3:22-24 8. Thomas O. Chisholm, Copyright 1923, Renewal 1951, Hope Publishing Co., Carol Stream, IL 9. I John 1:9 10. Bruce Larson in Robert Lee Davis's, A Forgiving God in an Unforgiving World, (Eugene, OR, Harvest House Publishers, 1984) 11. T. O. Chisholm
Great is Thy faithfulness,
Morning by morning new mercies I see.(8)
Lord unto me.(11)
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