Endurance: David, Samuel, Jephthah, Samson, Barak, Gideon - Faith and the Next Generation 10 - Let Us Go On To Live By Faith

2 Samuel 7:1-27 Psalm 48:1, 10-14 Hebrews 11:1-3, 30-12:3

August 18, 2019 Tenth Sunday After Pentecost Dr. Edwin Gray Hurley

Kentucky poet, Wendell Berry, begins his poem “Our Children Coming of Age” with these lines,

“In the great circle, dancing in And out of time, you move now Toward your partners answering The music suddenly audible to you

That only carried you before and will carry you again.”i

The dance we are seeking to enter and continue is the dance of faith, trusting in the unseen presence and power of a loving and gracious God, whom we know, and follow, trust and love as our Heavenly Father, made known supremely to us through our blessed Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Over these summer Sundays we have been reminded of those great heroes and heroines of faith who have gone before us, a hall of fame list going back thousands and thousands of years to the very beginning days on earth, those named in the Letter to the Hebrews chapter 11 who span thousands of years before Jesus Christ, who in the fullness of time, at just the right time, was sent by his Heavenly Father and ours to be the great pioneer and perfecter of faith for all time. Looking to him, going forward to him, that is our call as people of faith, especially as we begin a new school and ministry year together. “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith…consider him who endured.”ii

Through these summer Sundays we have recounted some of the stories about these great heroes and heroines starting from the very first naturally born children- Cain and Abel, through the tenacious Ark builder Noah, on through the great Patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and his sons, Joseph in particular. We remembered stories about the great liberator and lawgiver Moses. Larry Michael preached about him. Moses is followed directly by a prostitute named Rahab, whom Daniel Killilea so astutely brought to light, helping us see her as a real person beyond simply her stereotype identity. Then last week Elizabeth Goodrich brought us across the Jordan under the leadership of Joshua.

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Today we wrap up the long chain of faith, the dance from one generation to the next with this fast-paced staccato list, Whenever you hear a preacher say, “Time would fail me,” run for cover. The preacher is warming up for a final round. “Time would fail me,” is actually short- hand for, “I have a few things yet to add before you get to your dinner!”

You may have heard of the man who on Sunday brought his non-churched friend to worship for the first time. The friend kept asking about the meaning of different parts of the service. What does the confession of sin mean? He explained, “The congregation confesses their sins and receives the assurance of pardon, being reminded that we are forgiven by God through Jesus Christ.” When the choir stood to sing, the friend asked, “What does that mean?” He explained, “The choir is helping the congregation to sing praises to God, joining with them in songs and hymns and then leading them in a beautiful anthem,” like the one we just heard. When people stepped up to read from the open Bible, the friend asked, “What does that mean?” He explained, “The Bible is the Word of God. Our authority. It contains the great stories of faith and is our guide for faithful living. We read from it every Sunday.” Then, when the pastor stepped into the pulpit and dramatically removed his watch and placed it on the pulpit, the friend asked, “What does that mean?” The man said, “That? That means absolutely nothing!”

Watch out when a minister says, “Time would fail me.” The preacher to the Hebrews quickly ticks off this list, “Time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets.” It is quite a list, and some of these, (Samson, Barak and Jephthah come to mind), are quite bloody, brutal stories from the book of Judges. These are stories filled with violence and murder: a peg nailed through a sleeping man’s skull. Even within the family, Jephthah, to express gratitude for a military victory sacrifices his own daughter! But what they have in common is that each of them responds with faith.

Among them there is David: great red-headed King David. He too has battle scars and scenes of failure, but David is supremely a man of faith. Throwing in David with this bunch is a bit like throwing in George Washington with John Tyler, Franklin Pierce, Andrew Jackson, or Chester Arthur. Yes they were all U.S. Presidents, but their levels of heroism varied considerably.

The diversity, the flaws and foibles from this list in Hebrews both inspires us, for the great faith they demonstrated, as well as gives us hope, knowing that if sinners like these, so like us in many ways, could yet be people who kept faith, so can we!

The Hebrews Preacher wants to encourage these struggling Christians in Rome of Jewish background in their own walk of faith, calling them to persevere and to endure for the long haul. He says - Faith is not a flash in the pan; ask Jesus into your life and go your merry way. Faith is a life-long journey, and we are called to hold fast through triumph and tragedy, endure.

The list describes those who triumphed; “conquered kingdoms, administered justice, obtained promises and shut the mouths of lions.” But also it describes those who experienced tragedy, “were tortured, mocked, flogged, chained and imprisoned, even sawn in two, killed by the sword, were destitute and dressed in goat skins.” Regardless, triumph, tragedy, whatever may come your way, the preacher says, hold fast to your faith! Endure! That is the message to 3

the Hebrews and to us. An important message to hear and heed at a time of new beginnings with the starting of school, and this time of terrible unrest and polarization across our nation and world. In times like this- hold on to your faith!

Although the list is long, today let’s zero in on this one person in particular who stands out above all the rest, one about whom we hear quite a bit in the Bible, David. The historical books of the Old Testament First and Second Samuel, First Kings, First Chronicles, all tell exhaustively of the remarkable way God raises up this obscure shepherd boy and brings him from the sheep fold to become the great uniting King of Israel, replacing the broken King Saul, and then followed by his son the wise King Solomon. The Book of Psalms is largely attributed to David.

We could lift up so many stories about David, from his days of playing the harp for Saul, defeating Goliath, to his days in the wilderness, his rise to become the uniting King of the Northern and the Southern Kingdoms, on to the tragic story of his adultery with Bathsheba and murder of her husband Uriah, his less than ideal parenting skills with his children. However, the story we heard from 2 Samuel 7 brings us to the decisive turning point in David’s life. Walter Brueggemann identifies this story as “the dramatic and theological center of the entire Samuel (David) corpus…one of the most crucial texts in the Old Testament for evangelical faith.”iii

David is at his peak. He has defeated all his enemies. He has united Judah and Israel, brought the two kingdoms together. He has established his capital in Jerusalem and built his palace. Everything is going swell; good times are here again. Truth be told – David is rather full of himself, and David thinks, “Gosh, I really ought to do something nice for God who has made all this possible.” So he decides to build God a house, a temple. He shares his vision with the prophet Nathan, “See now, I am living in a house of cedar, but the ark of God stays in a tent.” Nathan, with hardly a thought, seconds the motion. Sounds like a good religious thing to do. Build God a fitting house! Nice.

But that night Nathan gets a vision from the Lord ordering him to go tell David this is not how it is going to play out. David will not build God’s temple. God goes on to rehearse how he has led David from the sheep pasture, to victory over his enemies and made him great, and how through David, God has established a place for his chosen people to live and brought in this wonderful time of peace.

But the fact is, God says, “David is not going to build a house for me.” That is the heart of the message. Instead, says God, “I am going to build a house for David.” Oh a temple will be built; it’s on down the line a few more years, and David’s own son Solomon will be the one to do it. What David needs to learn and appreciate is that all this that has happened, and all this that will happen, is God’s doing, not David’s. God says,

“I the Lord will make you a house. When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your ancestors, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come forth from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be a father to him, and he shall be a son to me…I will not take my steadfast love from him.”iv 4

David needs to be reminded, and we need to be reminded, that God is Sovereign. God is King. God is Lord. God is in charge. Through all that unfolds, God is at work. Not everything that happens is God’s will, but God is at work in and through everything that happens. As my great teacher and mentor, Dr. Bryant Kirkland of Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York City told us in preaching class at Princeton, “You want to give God a good laugh, just tell him where you won’t go!”

David learns an important lesson when he has his temple-building wings clipped, reminded that God is Lord, and David is not. David is used mightily in God’s unfolding purpose, but God sets the limits and the limitless future. God will establish David’s descendants. So for another thousand years David’s house grows and continues, good kings, bad kings; Israel rises, becoming a great empire; Israel falls, taken into exile. Yet, Israel continues, returns home again, and the ruined Temple that David’s son Solomon built is rebuilt. David’s house continues from generation to generation all the way down to the days of Caesar and the Roman Empire, when a carpenter from Nazareth named Joseph goes “to the city of David to be registered with Mary.” Why? “Because he was descended from the house and family of David.”v There she gives birth to her firstborn son, and they name him Jesus.

As Frederick Buechner put it,

“He had feet of clay like the rest of us if not more so - self-serving and deceitful, lustful and vain – but on the basis of that dance alone, you can see why it was David more than anyone else, that Israel lost her heart to and why, when Jesus of Nazareth came riding into Jerusalem on his flea-bitten mule a thousand years later, it was as the Son of David that they hailed him.”vi

It is an amazing thing, this chain of faith, this dance continuing from one generation to the next. The story is told and retold. The chain continues. The dance goes on. Through triumphs and tragedies, times of joy, times of sorrow, still the chain continues. The dance goes on. As we sing,

“The church of Christ in every age, Beset by change but Spirit led, Must claim and test its heritage, And keep on rising from the dead.”

That friends, is where we come in, and not as an addendum, a post script, but as part of the central story. You see, this chain of faith, this dance, is incomplete without you. You and I are needed to keep the dance going. Great as these heroes and heroines of old were they did not see the completion of the Kingdom. That completion awaited the coming of Jesus, his suffering, his victory.

But not Jesus alone. Even Jesus by himself does not complete the kingdom. He needs you. “Apart from us, they would not be made perfect.” Yes Jesus is the one perfect sacrifice, the great high priest to whom we look continually. But apart from us, Jesus’ kingdom would be empty and incomplete.

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A beautiful statue of Jesus in a church in Germany was smashed during the Second World War by Allied bombing. They found many of the body parts and put the statue back together. But no hands were found, and instead a sign was placed before the statue reading, “I have no hands but your hands to do my work today.”

The chain of faith needs you and needs me to be complete, to work out in our time and place the way Christ calls us to live and to love. We must enter into the dance as his partner.

Here is how one who followed the Lord put it;

“One night I dreamed a dream. As I was walking along the beach with my Lord; across the dark sky flashed scenes from my life. For each scene, I noticed two sets of footprints in the sand; one belonging to me and one to my Lord.

After the last scene of my life flashed before me, I looked back at the footprints in the sand. I noticed that at many times along the path of my life, especially at the very lowest and saddest times, there was only one set of footprints.

That really troubled me, so I asked the Lord about it. ‘Lord you said once I decided to follow you, You’d walk with me all the way. But I noticed that during the saddest and most troublesome times of my life, there was only one set of footprints. I don’t understand why, when I needed You the most. You would leave me.”

He whispered, ‘My precious child, I love you and will never leave you. Never, ever, during your trials and testings. When you saw only one set of footprints, it was then that I carried you.”

Think of the chain of faith that has been South Highland through these 130 years. One generation passing on the torch to the next. Take some time to look at the names on the ends of these pews, in the windows of the chapel, on the World War II plaque, along the walls of the sanctuary, in many of the rooms throughout this building and on the columbarium in the memorial garden. The names like the heroes and heroines of old, these are real people, flesh and blood people, who lived and loved, followed in faith, fell short, yet by grace through faith brought the Kingdom of God just a bit further along, and now they have entered into the fullness of that faith forever. Remember them, and remember you are joined together with them in this great chain, this great dance.

A touching scene, some years ago, we were at the Bluegrass Inn in Nashville. The band played all the favorites, “Orange Blossom Special”, “Rocky Top”, and “Foggy Mountain Breakdown”. Then for their last selection they struck up “Will The Circle Be Unbroken?” All the crowd rose from their tables, and we made one big circle around the room, all sorts of people from all sorts of backgrounds, one I remember was a downs syndrome little girl. We were all swaying arm in arm, and singing, “Will the circle be unbroken? Bye and bye Lord, bye and bye. There’s a better home a waiting, in the sky Lord, in the sky.”

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The circle need not be broken! Remember Jesus, pioneer and perfecter of our faith. Run the race; He endured. Through Him, so will you!

Amen!

i Wendell Berry, “Our Children Coming of Age” quoted by Thomas Long, Interpretation Commentary – Hebrews, p.125 ii Hebrews 12:1-3 iii Walter Brueggemann, 1 and 2 Samuel, p. 253, quoted by Eugene Peterson in Leap Over A Wall,, p.166 iv 2 Samuel 7:12-15 v Luke 2:3-7 vi Frederick Buechner, Peculiar Treasures,, p.24