¹ Joab son of Zeruiah knew that the king’s heart longed for Absalom. ² So Joab sent someone to Tekoa and had a wise woman brought from there. He said to her, “Pretend you are in mourning. Dress in mourning clothes, and don’t use any cosmetic lotions. Act like a woman who has spent many days grieving for the dead. ³ Then go to the king and speak these words to him.” And Joab put the words in her mouth. ⁴ When the woman from Tekoa wentto the king, she fell with her face to the ground to pay him honor, and she said, “Help me, Your Majesty!” ⁵ The king asked her, “What is troubling you?” She said, “I am a widow; my husband is dead. ⁶ I your servant had two sons. They got into a fight with each other in the field, and no one was there to separate them. One struck the other and killed him. ⁷ Now the whole clan has risen up against your servant; they say, ‘Hand over the one who struck his brother down, so that we may put him to death for the life of his brother whom he killed; then we will get rid of the heir as well.’ They would put out the only burning coal I have left, leaving my husband neither name nor descendant on the face of the earth.” ⁸ The king said to the woman, “Go home, and I will issue an order in your behalf.” ⁹ But the woman from Tekoa said to him, “Let my lord the king pardon me and my family, and let the king and his throne be without guilt.” ¹⁰ The king replied, “If anyone says anything to you, bring them to me, and they will not bother you again.” ¹¹ She said, “Then let the king invoke the LORD his God to prevent the avenger of blood from adding to the destruction, so that my son will not be destroyed.” “As surely as the LORD lives,” he said, “not one hair of your son’s head will fall to the ground.” ¹² Then the woman said, “Let your servant speak a word to my lord the king.” “Speak,” he replied. ¹³ The woman said, “Why then have you devised a thing like this against the people of God? When the king says this, does he not convict himself, for the king has not brought back his banished son? ¹⁴ Like water spilled on the ground, which cannot be recovered, so we must die. But that is not what God desires; rather, he devises ways so that a banished person does not remain banished from him.

–2 Samuel 14.1-13 (NIV)

We get a wonderful glimpse at the heart of God in today’s lesson, with the punchline coming at the end of the passage. First, some background. This story falls in the greater context of the aftermath of David’s disastrous affair with Bathsheba. Not only was David guilty of adultery, he also had blood on his hands when he had Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah, killed so that David could avoid the death penalty that came with the conviction of adultery. God forgave David because David repented, but David was living with the consequences of his behavior and his household would never again be the same. David’s second son, Absalom, had killed David’s first son and Crown Prince, Amnon, in revenge for Amnon raping his half-sister (who was Absalom’s sister), Tamar. Now Absalom had fled Jerusalem to avoid being killed for his own murderous act and this threatened the stability of the newly formed kingdom of Israel (see 2 Samuel 11-13 for all the lurid details; it is simply heartbreaking to read).

This brings us to today’s passage and we are reminded in a powerful way of all that can go wrong (and has) with the human heart. And things have not changed much in the last 1100 years or so, have they? Take away the historical context and its accompanying names and language in the story above and you could find stories like this in today’s tabloids and news media. The human condition has not improved much, much as we might like to fool ourselves into thinking otherwise. We may have gotten more sophisticated in our denial and language, and certainly we have advanced technologically, but the human condition essentially remains the same and not even our vaunted scientific advancements have been able to fix that.

But right when we are about to get discouraged we read the last verse of today’s lesson. The wise woman had technically distorted the truth about bloodshed (see Genesis 9.6) but she got right to the heart of the matter by focusing on the mercy of God. We would be wise to do likewise. Make no mistake. God will not be mocked nor will his justice be denied. God is wholly good and cannot countenance evil in his Presence. But as I have said repeatedly here, God created us for relationship with him, not for destruction, and that is why he became human, suffered and died on a cross so that he could bear the just punishment for our sins himself, thereby giving us our only hope and chance to live with him forever.

Human sin brings about alienation, both with God and each other. You can’t find a better example of this than in today’s story and the sad aftermath of David’s affair. Yes, God remained faithful to David and his dynasty despite their egregious sins. But God did that because God is God and God is faithful, not because of David. True, David remained a man after God’s heart, presumably because he did not follow other gods despite the impressive catalog of his other shortcomings, and we can take heart in that as well. But the consequences of David’s sin remained.

And where there is alienation from God there is perforce exile, and where there is exile from God there is perforce death because God is the only Source and Author of life. Yet it is to the glory of God that he has intervened on our behalf to rescue us if we only have the good sense to accept his offer to put our whole hope and trust in Jesus Christ so that he can change us and make us into his own image so that we can become truly human, the way God created us to be.

By itself, the human condition is a hopeless one and none of us much care to think about that. But that’s like whistling through the graveyard. Our denial doesn’t change anything! But take heart and hope because that is not the end of the story as the wise woman in today’s lesson reminds us and as the cross of Christ bears powerful affirmation and testimony. The cross is God’s symbol of justice and speaks volumes about God’s great love and intentions for us.

If you have not already done so, do yourself a favor and say yes to God’s merciful offer to you in Jesus so that you can begin to really live and be the person you were created to be. It make get hard for you at times but don’t let your difficult times distract you so that you lose sight of the wondrous love and mercy God has for you. After all, a God who can forgive David and call him a man after God’s own heart has the capacity to forgive even the worst of us. That is a God worth loving and obeying!

²⁰ [God said] I have found David my servant;
with my sacred oil I have anointed him.
²¹ My hand will sustain him;
surely my arm will strengthen him.
²² The enemy will not get the better of him;
the wicked will not oppress him.
²³ I will crush his foes before him
and strike down his adversaries.
²⁴ My faithful love will be with him,
and through my name his horn^[f] will be exalted.
²⁵ I will set his hand over the sea,
his right hand over the rivers.
²⁶ He will call out to me, ‘You are my Father,
my God, the Rock my Savior.’
²⁷ And I will appoint him to be my firstborn,
the most exalted of the kings of the earth.
²⁸ I will maintain my love to him forever,
and my covenant with him will never fail.
²⁹ I will establish his line forever,
his throne as long as the heavens endure.

³⁰ “If his sons forsake my law
and do not follow my statutes,
³¹ if they violate my decrees
and fail to keep my commands,
³² I will punish their sin with the rod,
their iniquity with flogging;
³³ but I will not take my love from him,
nor will I ever betray my faithfulness.
³⁴ I will not violate my covenant
or alter what my lips have uttered.
³⁵ Once for all, I have sworn by my holiness—
and I will not lie to David—
³⁶ that his line will continue forever
and his throne endure before me like the sun;
³⁷ it will be established forever like the moon,
the faithful witness in the sky.”

³⁸ But you have rejected, you have spurned,
you have been very angry with your anointed one.
³⁹ You have renounced the covenant with your servant
and have defiled his crown in the dust.
⁴⁰ You have broken through all his walls
and reduced his strongholds to ruins.
⁴¹ All who pass by have plundered him;
he has become the scorn of his neighbors.
⁴² You have exalted the right hand of his foes;
you have made all his enemies rejoice.
⁴³ Indeed, you have turned back the edge of his sword
and have not supported him in battle.
⁴⁴ You have put an end to his splendor
and cast his throne to the ground.
⁴⁵ You have cut short the days of his youth;
you have covered him with a mantle of shame.

⁴⁶ How long, LORD? Will you hide yourself forever?
How long will your wrath burn like fire?

–Psalm 89.20-46 (NIV)

In today’s psalm we have some interesting “on the ground” theology that shows us some interesting interaction between God and his people. Don’t let the historical context and accompanying language get you distracted so that you miss its message. First, we notice that the psalmist praises God for his faithfulness. God promises to bless David and his heritage, even if David’s offspring are unfaithful. Yes, God will punish that unfaithfulness but he will remain faithful to his promises to David nevertheless. So far, so good.

But here is where it gets really interesting. Note carefully how God’s people interpret this promise. Israel equates God’s promise to remain faithful to David with military victories. In other words, God’s promise to remain faithful has been interpreted in a way that fits Israel’s preconceived notion of God’s faithfulness so when that notion is violated, God’s people wonder what is going on.

Likewise with us. We still like to try and fit God and his working into our preconceived notions of what he should be doing (usually in ways that work out nicely for us–imagine that)  instead of paying careful attention to the whole of Scripture and what it says about God’s faithfulness. This would be one reason why so many reject Jesus as God’s Messiah. He just doesn’t fit our expectations and preconceived notions about what a Messiah should look like or do. And let’s be honest. The notion of a crucified God is indeed rather mind-blowing.

But it is precisely here that we should stop and take a hard look at ourselves and our preconceptions. If we do, we are likely to find a jaw-dropping love being poured out for us on a cross–God’s very love for his wayward and rebellious people. The overall narrative of Scripture is about God’s rescue plan for his rebellious human creatures and how more often than not we have said no thank you to God, again in part because God is not behaving in ways that we expect or anticipate. But through it all, God is good to his promises, i.e., God remains faithful. Thanks be to God!

This also has an application for our prayer life. If we try to pigeonhole God to act or answer us in only certain ways, we will inevitably be disappointed. We are not all-knowing or eternal. We don’t have God’s perspective or his constancy. We are fickle and changing, profoundly broken, and often get our priorities mixed up. God is not plagued by any of that. So when we pray, we really have to be careful not to pigeonhole God in our requests. Of course we are all going to pray for our loved ones to get healed, etc. But we have no right to say to God that he is unfaithful when our prayers are not answered as we want, hope, or expect. To do so effectively means that we think we know better than God.

I have no idea why God chooses to answer some prayers and not others. Of course God will not answer patently bad or blatantly selfish prayers. But not all unanswered prayer is selfish or bad. What I do know is this. God is faithful, just, and merciful, and God knows far better than I do how to run his creation. I must therefore be content with that and get to learn about God and his character so that my preconceived notions, hopes, and fears do not hijack my love for God or blind me to God’s love and faithfulness toward his creatures and creation.

What about you? Are you trying to make God into your own image and make that the only basis on which you agree to love and worship him? Or do you know God well enough to trust him in any and every circumstance of your life? How you answer will determine the quality of life you are living (or not living).

In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Last week we looked at some reasons why we wrestle with God and saw that in one form or another, we can expect to keep on wrestling with God, even after we decide to put our whole hope and trust in him through Christ. Today I want to look briefly at a variation of this theme of wrestling with God by looking at it in the context of faith, one of the three virtues Paul identifies as enduring even into the New Creation (cf. 1 Corinthians 13.8-13). If we are indeed justified by grace through faith as Paul reminds us in today’s Epistle lesson—and surely justification by grace through faith is one of the core Christian doctrines—we would be well advised to spend some time talking about and reflecting on our faith, wrestling with it if we have to, so that we understand what we can do to build it up and what has the potential to destroy it.

We can all identify with Peter in today’s Gospel lesson. Impetuous as they come, Peter wants to know if it really is Jesus that he and his fellow disciples are seeing walking on the rough seas to get to them. And so Peter wants Jesus to let him come to him on the water, no small feat if we think about it. After all, only Jesus is Lord of creation and therefore it is only reasonable for us to expect that he has the power to walk on water. In effect, Peter is asking Jesus to allow him to exercise his faith and things go fine as long as Peter keeps his eyes on Jesus. But Peter doesn’t do this. He starts looking at the waves and realizes just how impossible is his situation. In other words, Peter reverts back to the tried and failed model of self-help and he begins to sink.

Thankfully, however, Peter had the wherewithal to cry out to Jesus to help him before it was too late, before he actually sank and drowned, and Jesus responded immediately with both a word of rebuke and assurance to his impetuous and flawed disciple who wanted very much to love and follow him but didn’t quite know how, at least at first. This is precisely why we can relate to Peter because every one of us in this room have been through storms in our life that have caused our faith to waver. Some of us are in the midst of those raging storms right now.

But what exactly do we mean when we talk about faith? The writer of Hebrews tells us that faith is the confidence in what we hope for and the assurance about what we do not see (11.1). Paul tells us that faith itself is a gift from God (cf. Ephesians 2.7-9). Yet like with any of God’s gifts, we have to take it and do something with it. Consequently, faith is not blind nor is it unquestioning because faith always seeks understanding. It is based on knowledge and bolstered by our power to reason. We have to know God so that we have some reasonable basis to have faith in him and we see this illustrated in today’s Gospel lesson. Peter wanted to believe that it was Jesus who was coming to help them and so he asked for a demonstration of Jesus’ power. And had Peter kept his eyes on the Lord instead of letting his surroundings distract him, he would have had his faith rewarded in full. Yet, even when Peter became distracted and afraid so that his faith wavered, we must pay attention to the fact that Jesus rescued him anyway. Likewise for us. Jesus doesn’t let a wavering faith prevent him from rescuing us when we are drowning in the sea of life and cry out to him to save us.

And while we do not have Jesus here in the flesh, we do have his Spirit living in us and we do have the biblical record of his mighty deeds and acts. That is why it is important for us to understand that the Christian faith is rooted in history, that it is an historical faith. This allows us to see God at work, demonstrating his power to deliver his beleaguered and frightened people, and providing us with examples to form and bolster our faith.

So, for example, it is vital to our faith to believe that Jesus’ death and resurrection were actual historical events and thankfully it has been demonstrated consistently that we can have confidence in the historical accuracy of both the OT and NT. Believing that Jesus actually did die and that God raised him in a mighty act of restorative power gives us a real basis for faith in his ability to accomplish anything. If God really can create things out of nothing and really can raise us from the dead, is there anything he cannot do?

Consequently, when we know the biblical narrative of God’s rescue plan for his fallen creation we have a firm basis, with the help of the Spirit, to believe that even now, even in the darkest of circumstances, God is at work for our good, just as he has always done for his people. In other words, we can have confidence in what we hope for and the assurance about what we do not yet see. When we have historical and present knowledge of that love and power at work, we really can have a faith that sustains us through anything that life can throw at us.

So what can we do to strengthen God’s gift of faith to us? I will touch on three of the most important things we can do and if you have followed the logic of my argument you can predict what is coming. The first thing we must do is to acknowledge that we have to actively cooperate with God’s gift of faith. In other words, we have to do our part to allow him to strengthen and bolster it through the power of the Spirit living in us.

We start to do this by acknowledging that there are forces and events that are actively working to destroy our faith in us, not least our own pride and hubris. Yes, the storms of life can potentially destroy our faith. But surprisingly so too can success. We start to fool ourselves and think we alone are responsible for our successes, either through our cleverness or hard work (or both). But our pride can blind us to the fact that everything we have in this life is a gift from God.

This is essentially what happened to Joseph’s brothers in our OT lesson today. They were jealous of their younger brother Joseph and sought to take matters into their own hands. They didn’t ask God for guidance in this matter. Indeed they couldn’t because their intentions were evil! So they relied on their own cleverness to resolve a problem. You see, they didn’t have an adequate conception of God. They didn’t think God was big enough to call them on their wicked deed. But they were wrong. Their pride had blinded them and diminished their faith. Likewise for us. We must always be on guard against our pride overcoming or diminishing our faith.

Second, and related to the point above, we must seek to do the things that cultivate and nourish our faith. That means we must drink deeply of the narrative of God’s rescue plan contained in Scripture so that we have plenty of examples of God’s great love and power at work among his people. This knowledge will help us when we are smacked in the face by the storms of life because the biblical narrative can give us the Big Picture to help us endure and persevere in the midst of our raging storms.

Consider again the story of Joseph. We humans are finite and fallible. We are time and space bound and do not have the comprehensive and eternal picture that God has. This can lead us to some very wrong conclusions as the story of Joseph reminds us. If we were to just read the story from today’s lesson, we would think things didn’t turn out too well for Joseph and initially they did not. He was sold into slavery and ended up in Egypt where he was falsely accused by Pharaoh’s wife after he refused her sexual advances toward him. But if we turn to Genesis 50 we see a different story. When Joseph is reunited with his brothers and they realize who he is, Pharaoh’s right hand man, they are rightly terrified that he is going to take revenge on them.

But Joseph did not. He tells them that although they meant him harm, God turned it into good by making him Pharaoh’s chief adviser. Joseph believed this happened because God intended to use him to help rescue God’s people Israel from the worldwide famine that had afflicted them. But even Joseph didn’t have a big enough picture because he too was human. God ultimately called his people Israel to Egypt so that he could rescue them from their bondage and show the nations that he was God. Knowing these kinds of biblical stories and examples, combined with the benefit of 20-20 hindsight, can allow God to help us weather our current storms when we don’t know how things will turn out or when they turn out badly. That is why it is so important for us to drink deeply of the biblical narrative on a regular basis.

Last, we must keep our eyes on Jesus just the way Peter initially did because Jesus has a proven track record of loving and rescuing his hurting people. But this too is easier said than done because we are a distracted people and it is easy to shift our gaze and attention elsewhere, just the way Peter did.. That is why it is so critical for us to live life together as Christ’s body so that we can help each other keep our eyes on Jesus and remind each other that he is big enough to meet our every need. To do this with any kind of effectiveness we must get to know each other as intimately as possible so that we can develop a trust for one another so that it is possible to share our burdens with each other. We’ve seen that start to happen right here in this place and that is surely a healthy sign that the Spirit is living among us as Paul reminded the Corinthians (cf. 1 Corinthians 3.16). We were created for relationship with God and each other and we ignore that gift at our own peril. God makes a difference for us so that we can make a difference to others.

Faith is God’s good gift to us and it is an integral part of Christian living. But it does not always come easily nor is it something we can just take for granted. Life is too hard and we are too profoundly broken for us to do that. As we have seen, we must do our part to cultivate and nurture God’s gift of faith to us, just as we must do with any of his gifts. But when we do our part, we realize that our faith is not in vain. God has overcome the evil in this world in the cross of Christ and promises one day to set things aright finally and completely. In the meantime, our faith in this claim gives us hope and purpose for living, a hope and purpose that is built on a strong and firm foundation of faith based on biblical knowledge and Jesus Christ himself. Living faithfully is hard work but it is the work of life and when we engage in it we do so with the firm hope and knowledge that we have Good News, now and for all eternity.

In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

¹¹ The Pharisees came and began to question Jesus. To test him, they asked him for a sign from heaven. ¹² He sighed deeply and said, “Why does this generation ask for a sign? Truly I tell you, no sign will be given to it.” ¹³Then he left them, got back into the boat and crossed to the other side. ¹⁴ The disciples had forgotten to bring bread, except for one loaf they had with them in the boat. ¹⁵ “Be careful,” Jesus warned them. “Watch out for the yeast of the Pharisees and that of Herod.” ¹⁶ They discussed this with one another and said, “It is because we have no bread.” ¹⁷ Aware of their discussion, Jesus asked them: “Why are you talking about having no bread? Do you still not see or understand? Are your hearts hardened? ¹⁸ Do you have eyes but fail to see, and ears but fail to hear? And don’t you remember? ¹⁹ When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many basketfuls of pieces did you pick up?” “Twelve,” they replied. ²⁰ “And when I broke the seven loaves for the four thousand, how many basketfuls of pieces did you pick up?” They answered, “Seven.” ²¹ He said to them, “Do you still not understand?”

–Mark 8.11-21 (NIV)

In today’s lesson we see another effect of a hardened heart–prejudgment. Despite all the “signs” Jesus had given folks, his healing of the sick and lame, his feeding of the masses, et al., Jesus’ opponents still wanted a sign as evidence of his divine authority. They had it in their minds that Jesus could not possibly be God’s messiah because he did not fit their preconceived notions of who and what messiah should be. In other words, they had prejudged Jesus and he was not about to have anything to do with them because of that. We can surely understand this because when others prejudge us (as one did to my wife and me last week) it does not feel very good.

We see the same kind of thing happening in some folks today. Jesus doesn’t fit their preconceived notions of who he might be or who God is. Others prejudge Jesus because his values and the values of the kingdom do not mesh with their own. For some, Jesus couldn’t possibly be God’s messiah because they do not believe that God exists.

In so thinking, Jesus’ opponents have violated the primary rule for enjoying healthy relationships. They do not respect him for who he is and honor that. Instead, they have attempted to make him (and God) into their own image and that just won’t do. No wonder Jesus seems like some unreal or fictional character. This is what happens anytime we delude ourselves into thinking we know better than God or when we make human reason with all of its flaws and potential for fallibility the final arbiter of matters of truth and religion. And that is terribly sad for those who think thusly because they cheat themselves out of real living.

But as Jesus reminds his disciples, when we do not try to pigeonhole him and make him into our own image, he can exceed our wildest hopes, dreams, and expectations. He can heal our diseases and calm our fears. After all, he is the very Lord of creation. Is there anything he cannot do? And yet even those closest to him failed to get it for the longest time. It would take his death and resurrection for his followers to really begin to see who Jesus is. Likewise with many of us and so Jesus continues to ask us the question  he asked of his disciples in today’s lesson. “Do you still not understand?” Sadly, many of us must answer, “No. I don’t get it. I don’t understand.”

(As a sidebar, if you ever have wondered if the Gospels are made up stories and/or figments of human imagination, or if they were written to paint Jesus and his followers in the best possible light, pay attention to this story and dozens of others like it in Mark’s Gospel. There is no sugarcoating of the disciples here and this is all the more remarkable because there is good evidence that Mark got the content for his Gospel primarily from Peter, the first of the Jesus’ twelve disciples.)

Yet we have hope because we have been promised his Holy Spirit to live in us and lead us into all truth. The Spirit never forces himself on us or compels us to act against our will–that is just not the nature of love–and so we must actively cooperate with him and be humble enough to accept our place in our relationship with God. So when we do cooperate with the Spirit and humbly submit to God’s will and trust his good love and providence in our lives, we can have confidence that we are equipped to become truly human and agents of Jesus’ healing love and redemption. What a great opportunity and privilege that is!

Think on these things, especially if you profess to take your relationship with Jesus seriously. Ask the Spirit to help root out any vestiges of a hard heart that might still be in you. Look for evidence that you prejudge people and things on a regular basis. If you find that evidence, then you have some serious work to do with the Spirit’s help. It is difficult work but when, by the Spirit’s help, you are able to overcome your hard heart, you will find what it means to be truly alive and truly human.