Waiting On The Lord Pentecost 19A, Proper 25 October 23, 2011 Deuteronomy 34:1-12; Ps 90:1-6, 13-17; 1 Thessalonians 2:1-8; Matthew 22:34-46.

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Tyrone Nelson Chapman
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1 Waiting On The Lord Pentecost 19A, Proper 25 October 23, 2011 Deuteronomy 34:1-12; Ps 90:1-6, 13-17; 1 Thessalonians 2:1-8; Matthew 22: Introduction: It s been forty years since God led Israel out of Egypt. The journey should have taken mere months but instead decades have passed. Early in their Exodus God led them to the border of the Promised Land but they exhibited more fear in the people they were to conquer than faith in the God who had led them thus far. For their lack of faith God sent them deep into the wilderness until the entire generation, except for Moses, Joshua, and Calib, that once lived in Egypt had died. God cleansed the nation of its slave mentality and through the hardships of life in the wilderness created a warrior generation. They ve come to the border of the Promised Land through what is now Jordan. They are camped on the east side of the Jordan River waiting for God s command to enter the land. For forty years they have been waiting on God s time. Now, that time is upon them. Now, they no longer need patience. They need courage and complete trust in their God. How Patiently Do You Wait On The Lord or anything for that matter? To wait for

2 something to happen requires patience, sometimes even it requires faith. In our Old Testament lesson today we read about the death of Moses. Moses is allowed by God to see the Promised Land but cannot enter it. The only one of the original generation to enter the land will be Joshua. God had originally promised the land to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as part of a covenant with them. They, in turn, served and waited on the Lord, but they never saw its fulfillment. Moses sees the land but is not allowed to enter. It is not always easy to wait on the Lord. After Monday night s Vestry Meeting I read an from the Bishop, the essence of which is that our church is going to be moved from an aided parish status to that of a mission church. The reason is that we have not, after three years, been able to grow financially enough to become self-sufficient. The Diocesan rules don t allow a congregation to remain on aided parish status more than three years. If, after that amount of time, they still need financial assistance from the diocese then they must be re-identified as a Mission Church. As such, we will continue to receive financial assistance and my title will change from Rector to Vicar. 2

3 For three years, our Senior Warden, Don Kennon and I have been praying and waiting on the Lord to grow our church so we would be self-sufficient; but it hasn t happened yet, though we are growing and I thank God for each of you. This year s Stewardship Campaign s theme is Resourcing God s Work Through Holy Cross. While we are waiting on the Lord s timing we are also committing ourselves to serve Him with our Time, our Talent, and our Treasure. James, the brother of Jesus, wrote in chapter one of his letter to us: Consider it pure joy, my brothers (and sisters), whenever you face trials of many kinds, because the testing of your faith develops perseverance - or patience (:2, 3). Waiting on the Lord means that we agree to operate on his time-line. Our Psalm today says in verse 4, For a thousand years in your sight are like yesterday when it is past and like a watch in the night ; and in verse15, make us glad by the measure of the days that you afflicted us and the years in which we suffered adversity. Seldom does God operate by our time-line, for his ways are not our ways. God is always doing things behind the scene, working all things together for good, for those who love the Lord and are called according to His purposes (Romans 8:28). So, waiting on the Lord 3

4 certainly calls for recognition that God is God, and we will probably need to grow in our ability to be patient. We lose a job, or we are suffering economically, so we pray to God for help we have to wait on the Lord. Our marriage falls apart and we pray to the Lord for help in putting it back together - we have to wait on the Lord. We get a bad medical report and we cry out to God for healing and then, we wait on the Lord. We have a child who is not going in the direction he/she ought to go and we pray for God to get hold of him, or her, and then we wait on the Lord. Early this morning, I was earnestly praying for more insight on this topic of waiting on the Lord. It s an important topic because it touches our lives in so many ways. In my prayers I was reminded of The Inter-connectedness Of Faith, Hope, and Love that St. Paul mentions in 1 Corinthians 13:13. To wait on the Lord requires that we absolutely have faith in Him like Moses did. Do you have faith in Him to be able to work all things together for good for you? To have faith in Jesus means you trust him. When someone asks you, do you believe in Jesus they might mean, do you believe he lived? Or, they might be asking, do you really believe Jesus can get you to heaven; do you trust Him for 4

5 that? Do you trust him to answer your prayer for help and will you grant him the time needed to deliver you from your distress? If you are not trusting to God to be at your side, then in whom are you hoping to help you? Faith leads to hope. We humans absolutely need hope in our lives. We just don t flourish in hopeless situations. The Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi was captured and killed this week. This was a man who exuded confidence during his lifetime. I suppose he was an ego-maniac, but at the end, when he was wounded and captured when all hope of escape was gone he was begging for his life. He had no hope in the Lord and was begging for this life to continue. We need faith in our Lord because it keeps hope alive in us, but even more importantly We Need Love. God, who is love (1 John 4:7, 8), created us in His image. Therefore we are creatures who need love, and who need to love, because love is at the core of our souls. In today s Gospel lesson Jesus issues the Great Commandment (Matthew 22:37-40). It is not a commandment to slay demons, or drive out evil in the land. It is, rather, a command to live by the power and ethic of love. We are to Love the Lord our God with all 5

6 our heart and with all our soul and with all our mind, and with all our strength ; and we are to Love our neighbor as our self. We cannot have the patience required to wait on the Lord to work all things together for good if we do not love him. The only way a lot of marriages survive one partner waiting for the other to grow-up is because love holds them together long enough for God to do his thing. So, I ask you this morning, how is your love life with Jesus? You don t have to be in love with him for Him to still be your Lord, but it sure makes for a better relationship. After all, the Warden is the lord of all the prisoners under his command but I doubt they love him. Conversely, Jesus wants us to have a love-relationship with Him. In Isaiah, God says, Yea I have loved thee with an everlasting love. God already loves you, and proved it through Jesus. Jesus loves you enough to have died for you. Do you love him enough to allow Him to be Lord of the situation you are in? We don t want to end up like Moses, seeing heaven but not being allowed to enter it because we didn t wait on the Lord during this lifetime. Do we love Him enough to worship, serve, study, fellowship, witness to others and pray in His Name? Then wait on the Lord however longs it takes? 6

Life is not JUST a Test

Life is not JUST a Test Luke 4:1 Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, left the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. 1. Why did the Spirit lead Jesus into the wilderness