What is Faith?

Delivered June 24, 2012

Hebrews11:1-6    Video

One of the Summer Sermon Suggestions that I received from a member of the congregation was about faith. Her exact sermon request was that I speak on the importance of Faith, how to have faith, how to develop faith. My mind went immediately to the premier biblical definition of faith in Hebrews 11. “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” But before I get into this scripture, I want to review some other definitions of faith. Some are inspiring like Oswald Chambers: “Faith is deliberate confidence in the character of God whose ways you may not understand at the time.” Thomas Aquinas said, “To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible.”  Martin Luther King Jr. said, “Faith is taking the first step even when you don't see the whole staircase.” 

There are also less flattering definitions. Friedrich Nietzsche said, "Faith is not wanting to know what is true."   Mark Twain is even more to the point: "Faith is believing something you know ain't true." And of course the great philosopher Archie Bunker said, “Faith is something you believe that nobody in his right mind would believe." As I have mentioned more than once, I do a lot of reading of books and articles written by those who do not have faith. I like to be challenged by those who do not share my religious convictions. What good is reading books or articles by people that agree with you? You don’t learn anything; you aren’t confronted with the weaknesses in your positions. I like to read books by people who think I am completely wrong, people who will challenge my assumptions and poke holes in my reasoning. So I read a lot these days by atheists, skeptics and humanists. They challenge me at the core of my beliefs. They make me think, which is something that most popular Christian writers these days do not do. But as you can imagine, they don’t value religious faith.

Richard Dawkins wrote in the New Yorker, “Faith is one of the world's great evils." (THE NEW YORKER, Apr 2, 2006, p. 80.) He wrote in the God Delusion, “Faith is an evil precisely because it requires no justification and brooks no argument.” He said elsewhere, "Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence.” "Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence."  I recently read a book entitled “Divinity of Doubt: the God Question” by Vincent Bugliosi. He writes:  "The word faith is a euphemism for hope and speculation. Indeed, the definition of faith is belief in the unknown. And if I may borrow a clichéd term, I, for one, have never had much faith in faith. Since faith is an acknowledgment that the truth is unknown, it is nothing more than wishful thinking, and the wish is no evidence of anything beyond itself." Christopher Hitchens, the recently deceased notorious antitheist said, “Faith is the surrender of the mind; it is the surrender of reason, it is the surrender of the only thing that makes us different from other mammals. It’s our need to believe and to surrender our skepticism and our reason, our yearning to discard that and put all our trust or faith in someone or something, that is the sinister thing to me. Of all the supposed virtues, faith must be the most overrated.”

Today I am going to talk about faith, which is the basis of Christianity, under two categories. First is what faith is NOT. The other is what faith IS.

I. What is faith NOT? It is not believing something is true in spite of evidence to the contrary or without evidence. It is not wishful thinking. It is not a delusion. Dawkins entitles his best-selling book “The God Delusion.” Freud entitled his famous essay, “The Future of an Illusion.”  Faith is not a delusion or illusion. I am not saying that some religious people are not deluded. Many are. People believe some really strange things. I mentioned in an earlier sermon about a book I just read entitled “Why People Believe Weird Things.” People DO believe very weird things. Faith in God is not like believing in UFO’s, Bigfoot or The Noch Ness monster – or Santa Claus, the tooth fairy or the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Faith is not wishful thinking.  It is not wishing something were true so much that you ignore the facts and put aside common sense and convince yourself something is true when it is not. 

Faith is not irrational. Faith is not anti-science or anti-reason. Unfortunately, in much of the popular cultural discussion of religion, faith is put over against science as if they were in conflict. This is due mostly to the creation - evolution debate that is constantly rehashed in the media and in school boards across the country. Can you be a person of faith and a scientist? Yes, of course! As I have stated before from this pulpit, I was a geology major in college before I went into religion and I see no contradiction between the two. I have no problem accepting the scientific theory of the big bang, the fact that the earth is 4.6 billion years old and the universe is 13.7 billion years old. There is no conflict in my mind between those facts and the statement in our scripture lesson today that “By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible.” I love science. It fills me with awe and wonder. I think that medical science is one of the greatest things that ever happened in the history of civilization. Faith is not anti-science or anti-intellectual. Faith is not believing in something against the scientific evidence. That is misguided religious dogma. I am not defending dogma this morning; I am defending faith.

II. What is faith? I already quoted the most well-known biblical definition in our Epistle Lesson: “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” The word “substance” is an exact translation of the Greek word used in the text. It is composed of two parts – sub means under and stance is to stand.  It means literally “to stand under.” The word “understanding” is the exact English equivalent. Faith is a way of understanding, a way of knowing. It is a way of knowing God, of experiencing God. Other translations render this word certainty, assurance, confirmation, or confidence. It is a way of knowing.

Here I have to resort to my personal experience. I experience my faith as a kind of spiritual faculty. We have five bodily senses; sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste are physical faculties. Faith is a spiritual faculty like intuition and conscience. We all have known things intuitively, even though we cannot explain how we know them. We know things are right or wrong through our conscience without having to refer to a set of moral laws or principles. Faith is knowing the reality of God. It is not crazy for me to say that I perceive God, I know God, that I am aware of the presence of God. To me it is like being aware of the presence of light or air. I have a difficult time understanding how anyone cannot sense the presence of God. God is clearly here now. I am not making a theological statement; I am describing an experiential awareness.

I admit that this is something that cannot be scientifically verified. For many people if you can’t measure it and demonstrate it with scientific data, then it isn’t real. I disagree. Faith is more like music or art than science. This is why religion has historically been expressed through the media of music and art. Would you say that music is not real or art is not real? You could measure the ingredients in paint and the way it is applied to canvas. You can measure the decibels of music. But that doesn’t get you anywhere closer to experiencing the power of art or music. Art and music communicate something real to our hearts, our minds, our souls. And it prompts an emotional and spiritual response from us. Faith is like that. Faith is the apprehension of spiritual reality. Our text calls it “the evidence of things not seen.” It is convincing evidence of God even though we cannot see God. It is not historical evidence nor scientific evidence. It is not legal evidence that will hold up in court. You cannot prove the existence of God.  But we can know God, apprehend the spiritual reality of God by the spiritual faculty of faith.

Atheists will call this wishful thinking, imagination or hallucination. There is no way I can disprove that. I might be hallucinating when I sense the presence of God. Maybe the atheists are right, and I have been deluded into thinking that I experience a God which does not in fact exist. I might be crazy as a loon. Crazy people generally don’t know they are crazy, and I might be one of them. But I don’t think I exhibit any other symptoms of mental illness. What is more likely – that the 97.5% of the world’s population who are religious are deluded into believing in a spiritual reality that doesn’t really exist or that the 2.5% of the world’s population that are atheists are deluded? Maybe the two and a half percent are right and everyone else is hallucinating; but it is more likely that the 97.5% are right, and the 2.5% are somehow missing it.

There are more color blind people in the world than atheists. 3.5% of the world’s population are color blind! Are the colorblind right and the color sighted wrong? Maybe atheism is like colorblindness. Maybe some people are God-blind; they really do not have this ability to perceive God just like some people cannot perceive color. I don’t know. Maybe that is not the best analogy. The apostle Paul seems to say in Romans that everyone has the ability to perceive the existence of God, but some choose to reject that knowledge. He says, “²⁰ For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, ²¹ because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened.” But in any case faith is awareness of spiritual reality.

But awareness is just the first step. It is what you do next that is important. Faith is the response to that awareness that God exists. Our passage says, “he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.” Believing God exists is the first step; next is to diligently seek Him. If Paul is right then everyone knows God exists whether they admit it or not. Faith is the next step of trusting the God that you perceive as real. Hebrews 11 gives a list of people who responded in faith to the God they believed was real. Abel responded in presenting an acceptable sacrifice, Enoch responded in living a life that pleased God, Noah responded in building the ark, Abraham responded in obedience, the list goes on. Faith is responding positively to whatever perception you have – however dim – of the reality of God.

For some people God’s presence is very strong and clear. For others it is much dimmer and less certain. But whatever measure you have of the reality and presence of God, respond to that positively. Seek more of the real presence of God. Our passage says to “diligently seek.” That is more than a casual interest. The person who asked me to preach on faith asked how to have faith and how to develop faith. This scripture says to seek God and he will reward you. Jesus said, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.” Moses said in Deuteronomy, “seek the LORD your God, and you will find Him if you seek Him with all your heart and with all your soul.” God says in Jeremiah, “you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart.” Our text in Hebrews says, ““he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.” We have faith by diligently seeking God. 

Our faith becomes stronger by exercising it. Faith is a spiritual muscle. It is strengthened by use and weakened through lack of use. Many people’s faith has become atrophied through lack of exercise. You know that if you lay in bed for a few months or years your ability to walk will be severely compromised. The same with walking in faith. You can’t have faith if you don’t exercise it. The more you exercise it, the more you develop it. Historically Christians have understood that certain spiritual disciplines increase faith. They are like physical therapy for physical weakness. We can do spiritual exercises. Richard Foster has a well-known book called the Celebration of Discipline where he lists 13 spiritual disciplines. He categorizes them into Inward Disciplines: meditation, prayer, fasting and study; Outward disciplines: simplicity, solitude, submission, and service: and Corporate Disciplines: Confession, worship, guidance, and celebration.  That book is a good place to start. I might lead a study of that book in the fall or spring, if there is an interest.

Faith is not just plopped in your lap fully developed. Faith needs to grow and develop. You have to want it. We have to seek it. It is like anything else in life. You have to give time, energy and attention to your faith. I think that the reason that the American church is so weak is that people don’t work at developing their faith. There is no mystery to it. If you want faith, then you need to dedicate yourself to developing faith. It is never too late. 

Be a Barnabas

Delivered June 17, 2012  Video

Acts 11:19-30

On this Father’s Day I want to talk about one of the men in the New Testament. I don’t know if he was a father or not, but he was a godly man. His name was Barnabas. Barnabas may not the first person you think of when you start naming famous men of the Bible. He was not one of the apostles. He did not write any of the gospels or letters in the New Testament… probably. I had a theology professor in seminary who thought Barnabas was the author of the Letter to the Hebrews, but there is no solid evidence for that conclusion. You won’t find many churches named after Barnabas. Parents don’t name their children after him. When you think of Barney (short for Barnabas) you think of a purple dinosaur on the children’s show or a character on the Flintstones. But I am preaching on the biblical character of Barnabas today because he is a good role model to ponder on this Father’s Day. And also a man in our congregation asked me to preach about him as a Summer Sermon Suggestions request. In any case I thought that Father’s Day was a good time to preach on a man of faith and integrity. We could do worse than to be a Barnabas.

Barnabas first appears in scripture Acts 4; Acts 4:36 gives us some basic information about him. It tells us that Barnabas was not his real name. That was a nickname given to him by the apostles. His birth name was Joses or Joseph, but people called him Barnabas, which means “son of encouragement.” That immediately gives us an insight into his character. He was an encourager, and I will say more about that later in this message. The verse also tells us that he was a Levite, which means that he was a Jew from the priestly tribe of Levi. It also tells us that he was from Cyprus, which is an island in the Eastern Mediterranean, northwest of Israel.

Barnabas was a traveling companion of the apostle Paul. His name appears over twenty times in the Book of Acts and several times in the letters of the apostle Paul. I think he was probably an impressive looking guy. I will tell you why. There is a scene in Acts 14 where Paul and Barnabas are on their first missionary journey in Asia Minor, modern day Turkey. The apostle Paul does a miracle of healing a crippled man in Lystra, and the people of the town respond by assuming the two missionaries are Greek gods who have come to earth with supernatural powers. Let me read you the verse: “¹¹ Now when the people saw what Paul had done, they raised their voices, saying in the Lycaonian language, “The gods have come down to us in the likeness of men!” ¹² And Barnabas they called Zeus, and Paul, Hermes, because he was the chief speaker. ¹³ Then the priest of Zeus, whose temple was in front of their city, brought oxen and garlands to the gates, intending to sacrifice with the multitudes.”  They thought Barnabas was the Greek god Zeus! They could have speculated that he was any of the many Greek gods, but they chose Zeus. Zeus was the ruler of the Olympian gods, and he is always pictured as a very impressive figure. So I assume that Barnabas was likewise a pretty impressive looking guy.

With this background information, let’s get into our text for today. There are four things I want to say about Barnabas this morning. All four points can be found in our NT reading for today from the Book of Acts. The first three are listed in Acts 11:24, which describes Barnabas with these words: “²⁴ For he was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and of faith.”

1. First, Barnabas was a good man. This is a general statement of character. Let’s get specific. The first time Barnabas appears in scripture is in Acts 4. It was the early days of the church. People were caught up in the enthusiasm of the new Christian movement. People shared of their material possessions freely with one another. The church was so generous with each other that it says that there was no one in need as a result. In this context the passage specifically mentions Barnabas, “And Joses, who was also named Barnabas by the apostles (which is translated Son of Encouragement), a Levite of the country of Cyprus, having land, sold it, and brought the money and laid it at the apostles’ feet.”

He was known as a generous man. A good way to tell the character of a person by how they spend their money. Talk is cheap. Many can talk a good game when it comes to faith, but you can tell if people are serious about God by how they spend their money. I am not just talking about how much they give to the church, even those I obviously think this is important. You can also tell by how attached they are to their money, and how willing they are to give to others in need. Jesus said that you can’t serve both God and money. The apostle John says, “But whoever has this world’s goods, and sees his brother in need, and shuts up his heart from him, how does the love of God abide in him?” Barnabas heart was not closed to those in need; he had a loving heart. He cared about people. At the end of our scripture passage for today it refers to Paul and Barnabas going around to the churches collecting an offering for the poor in Judea. It does not surprise me that Barnabas would be a leader in this relief effort. He was a good man.

2. Second, it says that Barnabas was full of the Holy Spirit. This tells us the source of his character.  There are lots of good people in the world. I am not so close-minded as to think that you have to be a Christian to be a good person. I have known a lot of good people of other faiths and good people of no faith. I read a book a couple of years ago (I actually borrowed it from one of the church members here) by Greg Epstein, the humanist chaplain at Harvard University. It is entitled “Good Without God.” It makes a case for what most of us already know, that morality is not the monopoly of religious people.

Although statistics seem to show that religious people are more generous to charitable causes than secular people. The 2011 book  American Grace: How Religion Unites and Divides Us, Robert Putnam, professor of public policy at Harvard (and by the way is not a religious believer) and coauthor David Campbell unpack two massive and comprehensive surveys into religion and public life in America. The authors found “On every measurable scale, religious Americans are more generous, more altruistic and more involved in civic life than their secular counterparts. They are more likely to give blood, money to a homeless person, financial aid to family or friends, a seat to a stranger and to spend time with someone who is ''a bit down''.  I see this as the Holy Spirit inspiring us beyond our natural generosity. In the same way we can say that the source of Barnabas’ generosity was his spirituality. He was full of the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is God. In Christian theology the Holy Spirit is the third person of the Trinity, the one who indwells believers. Christians understand morality as coming from God and coming through us. Even though the Scriptures talk about God-given law and an innate human conscience, when it comes to spiritual living it is understood that God is living his life through us. The Holy Spirit indwells us and guides us and leads us. Our morality is not a matter of obeying rules out of guilt or fear; it is a matter of allowing God the freedom in our lives to do what he wants. It is a spontaneous work of the Holy Spirit working through our lives. So it is not so much a matter of rules, laws, or even ethical principles; it is a matter of the Holy Spirit of God having control of our lives. That is the type of person Barnabas was; he was full of the Holy Spirit.

3. Third, this verse says Barnabas was “full of faith.” This verse tells us “²⁴ For he was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and of faith.”  He had faith in God, but a unique characteristic of Barnabas faith is that he had faith in people. By that I mean that he had faith that God was working through other people and not just himself. I want to give a couple of examples of this, because it is important to understanding this man. One example was his support for Saul before he was the famous apostle Paul. You probably know Paul’s dramatic conversion on the Damascus Road. Paul was then known as the Pharisee Saul. He was a notorious persecutor of the church at that time. He had gone on a trip to Damascus, Syria, to arrest some Christians. But on the road to Damascus he had an experience of the risen Christ. By the time he got to Damascus he was a Christian. He was baptized in Damascus and immediately began to preach the gospel that he had opposed previously. He was so effective in converting Jews to the Christian faith that the Jewish leaders there plotted to kill him. Saul had to be secretly let down over the wall in a basket at night.

Saul then went to Jerusalem to see the apostles, but the Christians were not convinced that his conversion was real. They remembered him as the one who persecuted them. They thought his conversion was likely just a ruse to infiltrate the church and get the names of all the Christians to destroy the church completely. Acts 9: ^26 “And when Saul was come to Jerusalem, he assayed to join himself to the disciples: but they were all afraid of him, and believed not that he was a disciple.” This is where Barnabas steps in. This is the second time he appears in the Book of Acts. The next verse says, “²⁷ But Barnabas took him, and brought him to the apostles, and declared unto them how he had seen the Lord in the way, and that he had spoken to him, and how he had preached boldly at Damascus in the name of Jesus.” Barnabas was the only person who would stand up for Saul. This was the type of person he was. He believed in people; he believed that God was at work in people when no one else could see it.

There is another story like this. It has to do with the young man known as John Mark, who later would write the Gospel we know as the Gospel of Mark. Paul and Barnabas had brought this young man with them on their first missionary journey. But it was too much for the young man. He left them halfway through the trip and went home. Later when they were planning their second missionary journey, Barnabas wanted to bring John Mark with them again, and give him a second chance. But Paul would not hear of it. Let me read you what it says in Acts 15:37-40. “³⁷ Now Barnabas was determined to take with them John called Mark. ³⁸ But Paul insisted that they should not take with them the one who had departed from them in Pamphylia, and had not gone with them to the work.³⁹ Then the contention became so sharp that they parted from one another. And so Barnabas took Mark and sailed to Cyprus; ⁴⁰ but Paul chose Silas and departed, being commended by the brethren to the grace of God. ⁴¹ And he went through Syria and Cilicia, strengthening the churches.”

Once again Barnabas stood up for the underdog. Paul should have known better. Barnabas had done this for him at the beginning of his ministry. But Paul was not like Barnabas; he could not see that Barnabas saw in Mark. Barnabas was special in this regard. He had faith in people – in God working in people. This is an important quality to have in ministry. Some pastors and church leaders think they have to do it all. If they don’t do it, then it won’t get done in the church. At least it won’t get done right. That is when the church gets in trouble – when too few leaders have too much control. I think that is what is wrong with the Roman Catholic hierarchy, and what is wrong with Protestant megachurches centered on a strong central pastor. The church is by nature egalitarian, not authoritarian. We are all equal here. This is part of the Protestant principle of the priesthood of all believers. The church is all of us working together, and no part of the body can say to another that we don’t need them. Paul himself realized this later when he wrote those words about the Body of Christ to the Corinthian church, but he had not learned it yet. Barnabas had.

4. Fourth, Barnabas was an encourager. In our passage in Acts 11, news came to Jerusalem that some Gentiles had believed in Christ. This was very controversial at this time. Right before our passage the apostle Peter had to defend to the other apostles his action of baptizing the Roman centurion Cornelius and his family. Now some more Gentiles had believed in Christ in Antioch. They wanted to send someone to check it out. Who else would they send but Barnabas? Our passage says, “²² Then news of these things came to the ears of the church in Jerusalem, and they sent out Barnabas to go as far as Antioch. ²³ When he came and had seen the grace of God, he was glad, and encouraged them all that with purpose of heart they should continue with the Lord.”

Do you see what he did? It says that he came and “saw the grace of God” in these people. Here is that same quality that we talked about before; Barnabas saw in Saul and then Mark. He could see the grace of God working in people’s lives as well. And it says that he was glad when he saw it. He rejoiced in the grace of God working in people’s lives. This is a wonderful quality to have. Some people are so self-centered and self-occupied. Their lives are all about them. Things have to be their way. It is their way or the highway; Paul was like that on many occasions. But Barnabas was open to see new things that God was doing. He could see the grace of God working in people’s lives, and he rejoiced. Barnabas was the type of person who tended to be in the background. He did not call attention to himself. It wasn’t all about him. It was about the grace of God working in other people.

He supported other people and encouraged them. Our text says, “When he came and had seen the grace of God, he was glad, and encouraged them all that with purpose of heart they should continue with the Lord.” He was an encourager. We might call him a mentor. This was so much a part of who he was that they gave him the nickname ‘Son of Encouragement.” “Son of” in Hebrew simply means to share the qualities of. The apostles James and John were called by Jesus “Boanerges,” which means the “sons of thunder” because of how loud they were in their zeal for the gospel. When they preached it sounded like a thunderstorm happening. Barnabas was a “son of encouragement.”

Specifically it says that he “encouraged them all that with purpose of heart they should continue with the Lord.” Not only was Barnabas full of faith, but he encouraged people to persevere in their faith. That is much needed these days. A lot of people do not continue in their faith. They do not persevere in the spiritual life. They drop by the wayside. When the going gets tough, many people give up when it comes to faith. Like John Mark did on the missionary journey; he gave up and went home. But Barnabas sought him out and encouraged him to try again. The church needs encouragers like Barnabas. The church needs men to be encouragers to other men, especially young men. Women need to be encouragers of women as well, especially young women. There is a need for Barnabases. May we all in our sphere of influence be like Barnabas and “encourage them all that with purpose of heart they should continue with the Lord.”

How To Pray

Delivered June 10, 2012  Video

I John 5:14-15; Matthew 7:7-12

                This summer I am preaching on suggestions that you have submitted. One suggestion I received was about prayer – how to pray, what to ask for, and what to do when God seems far away. This is a big topic that could be a whole series of sermons, but I will do my best to tackle the main issues this morning. I am going to address the topic under five types of prayer.

Richard Foster wrote a book entitled Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home. If you are interested in learning more about prayer, this is a great introduction. In this book he lists 21 different types of prayer. In my opinion that is a bit too detailed – at least for a sermon. Most writers will list four or five basic types. Even Foster feels the need to divide his 21 types into three categories – moving inward, upward, and outward. I will mention five basic types of prayer.

I. The first is Praise, also called Adoration. That is how we start worship every Sunday morning. Our first hymn is a hymn of praise. For me this is the most natural and instinctive form of prayer. It is born of awe and wonder. When I stand on a mountain summit or the edge of the Grand Canyon or on the seashore or stare into the starry heavens on a clear night, I am overwhelmed by the wonder and vastness of the natural world. It naturally produces in me praise for the Creator of this universe. I experience God powerfully in Nature, and I think that most people do. Many who don’t connect to church, religion and communal worship feel this sense of the power and presence of God in the natural world. It drives me to worship God, to praise God, to honor God without any ulterior motive. I am not trying to get anything from God. It is simply glorifying God for being God. This feels like pure worship to me. As far as how to do it, it can’t be contrived. Just let your heart and the Holy Spirit lead you into the presence of God.

II. The second type of prayer is Confession, also called Expiation, Contrition or Repentance. This is one step beyond praise. If we are in the presence of God for very long, then we become aware of ourselves in relation to God. We become aware that God is holy and we are not.  The prophet Isaiah had a vision of the holy God in Isaiah 6. He hears the seraphim singing “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; The whole earth is full of His glory!” Then his immediate reaction is to say this: “Woe is me, for I am undone! Because I am a man of unclean lips, And I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; For my eyes have seen the King, The Lord of hosts.” This is the natural human sense of sin and unworthiness in the presence of a holy God. This is the impetus behind all religion. There is an innate sense of separation between us and God. There is an Otherness to God. The great Swiss theologian Karl Barth spoke of God as “wholly other.”

What do you do with this sense of sin and unworthiness? This is where you get different religious approaches. There is a strong movement these days in our country and the world against acknowledging any sense of sin. They will talk about mistakes or crimes or things not being helpful, but they don’t like the idea of sin or guilt. They say it is too negative; they think it is unhealthy and unnatural. They say that the real problem is not that we are sinners, but that we believe in the concept of sin. Therefore many people will now deny the reality of sin. They say that if we get rid of the feeling of sinfulness and guiltiness, then everything will be alright. They say that there is no such thing as sin; it is all in our heads, and we should never feel guilty. Guilt is a waste of time; just change your mind about it, change your thinking, reject the concept of sin, and everything is alright.

That seems a bit Pollyannaish to me and a denial of reality. It is like putting makeup on cancer and saying everything is okay. The gospel says that sin is real. It is not a psychological hangup or a spiritual misunderstanding. Sin is real; it is serious and needs to be addressed. It is addressed by confession of sin and receiving the forgiveness of God. With this experience of forgiveness we can leave guilt behind. Confession deals with sin in a very open way. Confession is being completely honest with God. The very first step in Alcoholics Anonymous and all the twelve step problems is admitting you have a problem. If you don’t admit the problem, you can’t get anywhere in recovery. It is the same with sin and our relationship with God. If we deny that there is a problem of sin, then we can’t take the first step in the spiritual life. The apostle John says, “⁸ If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. ⁹ If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

III. The third type of prayer is Petition or Supplication. This is asking God for something. If it is for ourselves it is normally called petition; if it is for someone else it is called Intercession. This is probably the most common form of prayer. In fact the most frequent word for prayer in the Greek NT means simply “to ask.” This is the type of prayer where we run into problems because we ask and we do not receive. The problem of unanswered prayer seems to fly in the face of biblical teachings. Jesus says in our Gospel Lesson, “⁷ “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. ⁸ For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.” John says in our Epistle Lesson: “¹⁴ Now this is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. ¹⁵ And if we know that He hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we have asked of Him.” Jesus says in the Gospel of John “I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father. You may ask me for anything in my name and I will do it." In our Gospel Lesson Jesus even goes on to say, “ ⁹ Or what man is there among you who, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? ¹⁰ Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent? ¹¹ If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!”

But that is not the way it seems to work in our lives! We ask and many times we are not given. We pray and our prayers don’t seem to be answered. And the more we pray these prayers, the further away God feels. And we begin to wonder if God hears our prayers, if prayer is just a waste of time, or even if there is a God that hears our prayers. Preachers and theologians give all sorts of reasons for unanswered prayer. They say it is because we don’t ask in faith or we don’t ask according to his will. James says, “When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.”

People come up with other reasons to explain unanswered prayer. Some say that God always answers prayer. It is just sometimes he answers yes, sometimes no and, sometimes wait. People say that God doesn’t always give us what we ask but always what is best for us. Others will say that God works in mysterious ways – that his ways are higher than our ways and his thoughts higher than our thoughts. They say that we can’t understand why God does not answer some prayers, but we must trust that he is doing what is best for us. These are all different ways that we can explain why God does not seem to answer our prayers.

I wish I had some better answers for you that explains unanswered prayer. When I was younger I had the answers. When I was a young Christian one of the first teachings I gave at our college Christian fellowship was on how to get what you pray for. I had it figured out. I am much more ignorant now than I was forty years ago. My answer now is that I do not know. But I keep praying. I keep asking for healing for people. Sometimes they are healed and sometimes not. I ask for the resolving of problems in people’s lives, in my life and my family and in the world. I don’t worry about the answer any more. I leave that in God’s hands. That is how I have resolved it. I accept what is. I can’t figure out the problem of evil and suffering: why God allows bad things to happen – especially to children, to the innocent and helpless. The theological and philosophical answers I have studied don’t satisfy me any longer. But I keep praying because that is all I can do. If we believe there is an all-powerful benevolent God, then we will ask him to do things. I will leave the answers to God.

I will tell you my approach of this topic of petitionary prayer. I don’t think prayer is about getting God to do what we want him to do. I think that is the basic misunderstanding about prayer as petition. Prayer is not magic. It is not knowing the secret formula of just the right words with the right motives and the right faith and asking in Jesus’ name and presto, we have the answer to our prayers. Prayer is not getting God to change his mind or to do something that he would not do otherwise. It is not getting God to do us a favor because we have been good and faithful. It is not somehow having the proper spiritual technique or expertise to maneuver God to do our will. Prayer is about God getting us to do his will.

Prayer is not about changing the will of God. It is about discerning the will of God, praying according to the will of God, and doing the will of God. The apostle John says in our Epistle Lesson: “Now this is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. ¹⁵ And if we know that He hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we have asked of Him.” The key phrase here is “according to his will.” Jesus says, ““And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father. You may ask me for anything in my name and I will do it." The important phrase is “so that the Son may bring glory to the Father.” Prayer is not about us; it is about God – the will of God and the glory of God. Petitionary and intercessory prayer is about us surrendering ourselves and our will to the will of God.

Unanswered prayer can therefore be seen not as a problem, but as the best answer to prayer. Perhaps the best thing that can happen to us spiritually is for our prayers not to be answered. As long as we try to get God to do what we want, we are on the wrong track. We are living an illusion - the illusion that we know best or can be in control, if we just get this prayer technique figured out, that if we can master the art of prayer, then we can get what we ask for. Sorry, if that is true, I don’t know how to do it. In my experience God will do what God wants. We can get angry at God for not doing what we think he ought to do, or we can surrender to God and let God be in control of the world and your life. That is the real purpose of prayer – to get us to do the will of God and be the answer to prayer.

IV. The fourth type of prayer is Thanksgiving. This follows naturally upon what I have been saying. If everything is working out according to the will of God - if even what we perceive as evil, bad, and wrong, is somehow God working out things for good - then we can honestly thank God for all things. The apostle Paul says, “In everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” If we get to this point of really being able to give thanks in all circumstances (as another translation renders this verse) then we have come to the point of true faith.

V. The fifth type of prayer is Contemplative Prayer. I have saved the best type of prayer for last – Contemplative prayer. We can also call it Communion with God or even Unitive prayer. This is where I spend most of my time in prayer. I don’t spend much time giving God advice on what he ought to do. I don’t spend much time telling God what is going on in my life. I figure he knows. God is omniscient. He is not going to learn anything from me. He even knows all my sins. It is important that I acknowledge them and repent of them, but I don’t spend a lot of time there either. I don’t spend a lot of time talking at all. God knows what I have to say before the words are on my tongue. When you know someone really well you can finish each other’s sentences. When you have been married for thirty or forty years, you know each other’s thoughts. That is the way it is with God. God finishes my thoughts before I finish thinking them. The psalmist says, “O Lord, You have searched me and known me.² You know my sitting down and my rising up; You understand my thought afar off.³ You comprehend my path and my lying down, And are acquainted with all my ways.⁴ For there is not a word on my tongue, But behold, O Lord, You know it altogether.”

I spend most of my time simply being in the presence of God. I can do that at any time and in any place. I think this is the purpose of prayer. The purpose of prayer is to develop intimacy with God - knowing God, loving God, having fellowship with God, friendship with God, becoming one in heart and mind and soul with God. Jesus prayed this for us. He prayed for us on the night before he died, “Holy Father, keep through Your name those whom You have given Me,^[b] that they may be one as We are…. that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me.” This is what prayer is about. We come from God and return to God. And while we are here on this earth we are to know God and make God known.

The Other Brother

Delivered June 3, 2012 Video

Luke 15:25-32

Last autumn I preached at the Sandwich Fair on the stage at 8:30 on Sunday morning. It was fun, and I plan to do it again this year. I preached on the stories in the Gospel of Luke chapter 15 – the story of the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son. This last story is better known as the parable of the prodigal son. I did these in three short sermonettes, interspersed with music that the Reads played and sung. I omitted the second part of the story of the prodigal son – the parable of the older brother. I just didn’t have the time. That is not unusual among preachers. The other son is often neglected in the telling the story of the prodigal son. He is the Rodney Dangerfield of Bible characters; he don’t get no respect. So today I am going to dedicate this whole message to him. I am going to talk about the other brother, the older brother of the prodigal son. He is the nonprodigal or the unprodigal. He does not get equal time in most sermons, so he will get his full share this morning.

Unfortunately to tell his story I have to at least tell his younger brother’s story briefly in order to put it in context. And there may be some of you who don’t know the story. A certain man had two sons. The younger son got an itching to leave the farm, to go places and see things. He wanted to see the world, make his fortune and never look back. So he asked for his inheritance that he would normally receive when his father died. Surprisingly his father gave it to him, and off he went to a far country. And there it says “he wasted his possessions in prodigal living.” The word prodigal means “to spend money or resources freely, recklessly, wastefully in an extravagant manner.” He is like the person who wins the lottery and is broke again in a few years.

After a few years of living it up, a depression hit that country. His money was gone, and in order to survive he had to take the lowliest job he could find. He realized what a mess he had made of his life, and he hoped that perhaps he could return home and work as a servant on his father’s estate. At least he would be better off back home than he was there in the far country. So he set off to return home, rehearsing his apology to this father the whole way. When he got within sight of his home, suddenly his dad came running down the dirt road. This father hugged him, and wouldn’t even listen to the speech he had prepared. He called the servants to kill the fatted calf and hold a feast to celebrate that his son, whom he thought he would never see again, had come home.

That is where the story of the other brother begins. Up to this point he is not even mentioned. The prodigal gets all the attention. Preachers will wax eloquent about the unconditional love of the father, who symbolizes God. They will talk about how it doesn’t matter what you have done and what a mess you have made of your life, God the Father welcomes you with open arms, forgives you, and invites you back into his family and into his heavenly home. It is a great story and these are all wonderful points, and like other pastors I have preached it often. But what about the other brother? We are going to look at the story of the other brother today. I am going to describe this man under three headings.

I. First he was the Good Son. He was the oldest son. Psychologists have linked certain personality traits to birth order.  Psychologist Kevin Leman says about firstborns: “Firstborns are natural leaders. They tend to be reliable, conscientious and perfectionists who don't like surprises. Although, firstborns are typically aggressive, many are also compliant people pleasers. They are model children who have a strong need for approval from anyone in charge.” There is no middle child in this story so I will skip over that description and go on to the last born.  He says, “Babies of the family are social and outgoing, they are the most financially irresponsible of all birth orders. They just want to have a good time. … These kids love the limelight. While lastborns may be charming, they also have the potential to be manipulative, spoiled or babied to the point of helplessness.” We have three children. When I read the traits of first born, last born and middle children, I see a lot of resemblances to our three children. Birth order also helps to explain what is going on in this biblical story.

The older son in this story was the good son. He is the obedient son. He says to the father in our story: “Lo, these many years I have been serving you; I never transgressed your commandment at any time.”  That is the firstborn. He is the responsible one. He is hard working. When the prodigal comes home, this older brother is out in the field working. He is out there all the time the reunion and preparations for the party are going on. He didn’t even know that his brother had come home until the end of the day. He was walking home after work, and he heard all the music and partying, and wondered what was going on. “²⁵ “Now his older son was in the field. And as he came and drew near to the house, he heard music and dancing. ²⁶ So he called one of the servants and asked what these things meant.” This is the kid who always did the right thing. He played by the rules.

When Jesus was telling this story he probably had the religious leaders of his day in mind as his models of the older brother. It is always important to remember the audience that Jesus is telling his parables to. The opening verse of this chapter tells us “Then all the tax collectors and the sinners drew near to Him to hear Him. ² And the Pharisees and scribes complained, saying, “This Man receives sinners and eats with them.” ³ So He spoke this parable to them….” It seems to me that Jesus is saying that religious folks, and especially religious leaders, tend to be more like the older brother than the younger brother. Maybe that is why we tend to overlook the story of the older brother; it hits too close to home. I am a firstborn. I am an older brother, and I am a religious leader. So I have a double reason to be oversensitive to the faults of this older brother. Perhaps many religious people do.

Religious folks tend to value obedience to God. We sing the hymn “Trust and obey for there’s no other way to be happy in Jesus than to trust and obey.” That is what the older brother did. That is what the younger brother did not do. He broke all the rules but was welcomed home as if he had done nothing wrong. Religious people put a high value on ethics. I watch a show every week on PBS entitled Religion & Ethics Newsweekly. The two – religion and ethics - naturally go together. Religious people place a high value on morality and responsibility. We confess our sins and try to do better. We talk a lot about justice. We try to be unselfish and to make this world a better place. We try to be good people. We are – I will speak for myself here – I am the older brother.

II. Second, the other brother was the Angry Son. Look how he responds when he hears that his younger brother has come home broke and that his father has thrown a welcome home party for him as if he were a returning hero. The servant tells him “‘Your brother has come, and because he has received him safe and sound, your father has killed the fatted calf.’ The older brother responds in the next verse: ²⁸ “But he was angry and would not go in.” Why was this older brother so angry? I think there was a lot going on in this guy’s head and heart. For one thing he was “out of the loop.” He did not even know this reunion was going on. He had to ask a servant what the music and laughter was all about. That could not make him feel good. Next to his father he was the second in command, and here he is not even informd what was going on. No one like feeling like an outsider, being the last person to know something, being the one that people forget to tell. That is how the other brother felt.

He also felt unappreciated. Listen to what he says to his father when the father finally comes out of the party to talk to his oldest boy. “‘Lo, these many years I have been serving you; I never transgressed your commandment at any time; and yet you never gave me a young goat, that I might make merry with my friends. ³⁰ But as soon as this son of yours came, who has devoured your livelihood with harlots, you killed the fatted calf for him.’ He feels like he has been taken for granted. He has been slaving for his father and for the family business, and his dad never threw him a thank-you party. He feels like life has been treating him unfairly. He does not think it is right that his reprobate brother gets all the attention and love whereas he has done all the work.

A lot of people feel this way about God. I have known Christians who felt like God had treated them unfairly. They felt like they had been good Christians – they believed in God, worshiped and served God, and yet God didn’t seem to keep his end of the bargain. God let a loved one die. God let a serious illness strike them or their family. They thought that if they were faithful and did what was right, then God would protect them and their family –give them what they needed to live and keep them from harm. When that didn’t happen, they got angry. Then when they saw bad people, who scoffed at God and did not try to do what was right, blessed with money and wealth, then that rubbed salt in the wound. They cried “Foul. Unfair. Unjust. This is wrong, God.” They get angry at God and won’t go into his house anymore.” That is what the older brother did, and what some people do today. They are angry at God. They are angry with those sinners in the church. That older brother thought he was just as good if not better than his brother or any of those people having a good time in that party. And he was mad that he was not appreciated the way he ought to be. He was the angry son.

III. Third, this other brother was the Accepted Son … and didn’t know it. Now we come to the climax of the story. In the parable of the prodigal son, the climax was when the prodigal finds himself in the arms of the father, forgiven and accepted unconditionally. For the older brother it is a very similar scene. Once again the father goes out to meet the son. But this time the son will not embrace his father. He is not repentant and will not come into the Father’s house. But still the Father goes out into the darkness of the night to get him. Verse 28 says, “Therefore his father came out and pleaded with him.” This father should not have to plead, but he does, because he loves his sons – both of them. He loves his older son just as much as his younger son. Listen to what the father says to him in verse 31 “And he said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that I have is yours. ³² It was right that we should make merry and be glad, for your brother was dead and is alive again, and was lost and is found.’”

He says “You are always with me.” We are always with God. People are looking for God. They say they are on a spiritual search; they are seeking to know God. But the reality is that we are always with God. We are always in the presence of God,, if we just open our eyes. That is my definition of heaven – being in the presence of God. My definition of hell is the absence of God. When Jesus described hell he described it as “outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.” That describes the older son pretty well. He has willfully stayed out of the party, which in this story is the symbol for heaven. He put himself into self-imposed exile, staying in the darkness outside while a party of forgiveness and joy is going on inside. Apparently all the time that the younger brother was away, the older son felt excluded and unloved, and he is only expressing it now. He spent his life trying to earn his father’s love, but doesn’t feel like he has it. And he resents the obvious fact that his no-good brother has received this love. So the father comes out into the darkness and says, “I have always loved you and always been with you. Please come into the house.” This older son was always loved and accepted but didn’t know it.

Next the father says, “All I have is yours.” The older son complained that his father never even gave him a goat to have a party with his friends. But the father says, “What do you mean? All I have is yours!” That is literally true. Remember that early in the story the father divided the inheritance between his two sons. Furthermore the inheritance laws gave the firstborn a double potion. The older son got two thirds of the estate, and the prodigal son only one third. Yet this older son still felt like he had nothing. He felt poor. I know people like this - who are rich materially but they feel poor. They always feel insecure, like they don’t have enough. That is the way many of us are with God. The truth is that we are rich in God – in spiritual things. We are sons and daughters of the King. The Kingdom of God is ours, now. But like the older son, we don’t realize it.

Finally the father says to the son, “³² It was right that we should make merry and be glad, for your brother was dead and is alive again, and was lost and is found.’” The older son resented the forgiveness and welcome extended to the younger son. Some people don’t think it is right that God forgives people after they have done terrible things. It doesn’t seem fair that the murderer on death row can confess his sins and be forgiven by God, and be welcomed into heaven just like people who have tried all their lives to live right and serve God. It seems unjust and unfair. Jesus in this parable is saying that we need to get over it. That is what the grace of God is all about. And God offers that grace to all of us – the good son and the bad son, those of us who are the prodigal and those of us who are the firstborn. To all he comes into our darkness and meets us in our sin and pleads for us to come in and join the resurrection party. “³² It was right that we should make merry and be glad, for your brother was dead and is alive again, and was lost and is found.’”