Timothy Egan’s Worst Hard Time is a history book that reads like a novel and chronicles the daily life of the survivors of the dust bowl. Other histories of this time record those who fled from this great disaster but this book records the lives of those who stayed. Timothy Egan is primarily a journalist and writes with a very contemporary and quick style. He reports from his own interviews – the life stories of the survivors. Egan weaves throughout the book personal stories, interviews, historical facts and scientific findings from this time. Throughout the book Egan looks back to the cause of the dust bowl, severe human abuse of the earth and traces the human cost. Egan keeps the reader’s attention with every chapter…I’ve never read a history so exciting.
For the next six weeks we’ll be journeying through the life of Saul and examining his ALIASES. You want to like Saul – but he makes it so difficult. Trying to ascertain his real identity is a bit like nailing jello to the wall. He is so much like Eustace, from The Chronicles of Narnia
that he becomes a dragon and his true self is hardly recognizable. Saul transforms into a dragon little by little with every choice he makes.He changes who he is and has so many masks that know the true Saul is tough. Maybe you feel like that sometimes. Maybe you have some masks or pretenses that change; maybe sometimes you feel like you don’t even know who you are. If so, you’re not alone. We’ll read from 1 Samuel 8 to 28 in this series so I would encourage those of you who asked for reading direction to start reading in 1 Samuel and follow along with us.
King Saul is an interesting character, he comes up in the midst of a dark time for Israel. He is controversial and almost a non-entity were it not for his historical place as first king of Israel and relationship with David. As a matter of fact Saul’s story is only told in 1 Samuel, limited details are recorded mostly his death and genealogy in 1 Chronicles, and he is only mentioned once in the New Testament. Contrast that to David who is mentioned ad nausea in the New Testament. Why?
Part of Saul’s problem is that his entire kingship is set on a faulty foundation…
1. Israel’s kingship is an alias for rebellion. (1 Samuel 8:1-22)
Saul is drawn into a leadership vacuum.
We must understand a few things about the kingship of Israel before we can fully understand who Saul is. The kingship is new and in fact Saul is the first king of Israel. He is one of the three kings of Israel before the kingdom divides into North and South.
Prior to Saul there was the leadership of Moses, Joshua and then the judges. This carried Israel 350 years. They had judges for about 300 years and now Samuel is considered the last judge.
Samuel’s sons are rats – we don’t know much about them. The people look around at the other nations and say, “We want a king.”
Being a father is not a popularity contest and neither is kingship. But, Saul’s kingship is built upon mob rule, popular demand and God’s annoyance. Saul’s poor foundation is the peoples’ choice.
God makes provisions for a king in Deuteronomy 17:14-20, but it’s apparent here that a kingship other than his own was not his desire.
We can contrast this with the kingship of David. When David is appointed king God says, “I have chosen a king for myself” – not that the desire of Israel is set on Saul. David is God’s king, Saul is the people’s king. (1 Samuel 9:16, 20 vs. 1 Samuel 16:1)
2. Saul’s leadership decisions are aliases for sinful motivations. (1 Samuel 13; 14; 15)
The people’s sinful choice for a king is simply a foreshadowing of Saul’s sinful choices.
Saul has poor materials in his own character. (1 Samuel 16:7)
Saul’s character is weak and he make compromising decisions constantly. Sometimes our character is lacking, we make poor choices and our sin soon becomes our identity. We are covered with a very dark alias and become a true spiritual dragon.
3. Saul’s aliases finally cost him everything. (1 Samuel 28)
Saul dies as judgment from God after living a life of rebellion.
Today the consequences of sin and our masks or no less serious.
Saul allows his life to be driven by greed, piousness, fear and revenge.
Saul’s best days are early and he suffers major losses at the end of his life.
Hebrews 12:1 exhorts us to run the race marked out for us. We must endure to the end.
Saul is the opposite of what Paul encourages us to do in 1 Corinthians 9:27, “but I punish my body and enslave it, so that after proclaiming to others I myself should not be disqualified.”
Saul was chosen by God, led other and yet was disqualified. His disqualification that led to the disqualification of his family.
Sin sticks with us in our homes. Sin stains our lives and reputations.
You become covered by it and your ALIAS becomes your identity.
[The story of Eustace comes from C. S. Lewis', Voyage of the Dawn Treader, contained in The Chronicles of Narnia
.]
“I will celebrate our success and the success of others.”
“I will celebrate God’s work in my life and church sharing my joy with all.”
John Maxwell reminds us that if we don’t share our good news no one else will! The church wants to hear to good news, they want to know that we’re doing something and succeeding. With multiple services it is a necessity to be intentional about celebration. Too often some great decision will be made in one service and the others will be clueless. It breathes life into the entire church as they share in the joy of a life changed. I love hearing the response in a service as I announce a baptism from the previous hour. It draws our family together.
We must seize any opportunity for celebration and be as willing to celebrate others as we are ourselves. This promotes team work and builds solid relationships. If you can’t celebrate the success of the others on your team, you have a problem. If you can’t start celebrating, you might need to find another team. Because when one team member wins the whole team wins. I love that our staff is moving beyond our walls. Our worship minister has a website and CD out; our youth minister did a simulcast of a youth rally with other churches. When our ministers’ work is recognized as excellent our church is recognized as excellent and that blesses us all. When a missions team returns from the field and they have stories of the Spirit at work, we should hear those and celebrate God’s work through them.
These celebrations inspire the church and will hopefully move them to new places as they anticipate God’s work. Celebration is a powerful motivator and a great guardian. It moves us to positive places and reminds us that good times are coming even when things get difficult. If you’ve ever worked in the church, you know that too often you hear more negative than good. Celebration is what keeps us alive. It reminds us that God is at work and that he is using us.
“I will allow the Spirit to move me to places on faith.”
Risk equals experiment which equals new. We can’t try something new if we don’t risk the old. This means we try it, don’t have to keep it, but we’ll never know if we don’t try. If you aren’t risking something, you’re not moving on faith. If you aren’t risking something, you’re not trying something new. Risk keeps ministry from becoming stagnant. Risk does not always bring success, but those who risk will eventually find it.
We recently risked a few things at the church. We risked our Wednesday night programming. Last year we tried a talk show format that was a big success. This year we evaluated the old elective format, the new talk show format and asked if they complimented our mission. The leadership decided that the Wednesday night format was reduplication and a competitive strategy with our small groups. So, we moved our small groups into Wednesday night. This was a success, it allowed two new groups to form and moved previously non committed members into committed groups. This was a success. We failed when we tried doing Wednesday nights at the church without food – okay we don’t have to do that again.
Risk allows us to recreate our ministry in a way that is effective and glorifying to God. Risk can be dangerous and can be costly. If you never risk then you’re betting on constancy in culture and that maybe the biggest risk of all.
1. Year In Review – A Year Of Growth Through Challenges
United – We have grown as a family and a team. Our communication has become more transparent and effective with the implementation of CCB and regular pulpit announcements. This has moved everyone to be better in sharing information.
Focused – We have moved to being more clear and intentional about our mission and programming. We have a clearer sense of purpose and it is guiding us to constantly evaluate what we do, (i.e. WNL).
Spiritual – We have seen the Spirit of God move and a great number of people have joined this church and been baptized into Christ. This is shown specifically by an increased hunger from the church for the word.
It is my most desperate prayer that God has grown you this last year spiritually and that you are more intentionally living your faith out. Our best witness will always be a spiritually vibrant congregation which starts with people who have a vibrant personal spirituality.
Paul is telling us, “If you have grown (2:1), then keep growing to maturity (2:2), by putting others first (2:3-4) and following Christ’s example of sacrifice (2:5-8). If we do this then we will join Christ in glory (2:9) and spread his glory everywhere (2:10-11).”
Christ’s motive and agenda that moves him from on high, being equal with God to descending as a slave. This is easily contrasted to Adam who thought he was low (although he was highly esteemed) and desired to be equal to God and it brought about disastrous consequences.
Today is no different a ministry can be derailed by our own agendas and selfishness.
