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Location: Hattiesburg, Mississippi, United States

Sunday, October 08, 2006

Pentecost 18 10/08/06 Text: Jeremiah 11:18-20; James 3:16-4:6; Mark 9:30-37 Title To Bend the Knee

Pentecost 18
10/08/06
Text: Jeremiah 11:18-20; James 3:16-4:6; Mark 9:30-37
Title: To Bend the Knee.

This past Wednesday evening I had a wonderful experience with a group of people I was meeting with. It was exciting, and it will be a long time before I forget it. But more about that later.
God’s Word can be confusing, and at times hard to apply to our lives. Today’s readings are no exception. So I want to go over them one at a time this morning. You might want to follow along in your Service folder.
I am going to start with the Old Testament text from Jeremiah 11:17-20. “The LORD Almighty, who planted you, has decreed disaster for you, because the house of Israel and the house of Judah have done evil and provoked me to anger by burning incense to Baal. Because the LORD revealed their plot to me, I knew it, for at that time he showed me what they were doing. I had been like a gentle lamb led to the slaughter; I did not realize that they had plotted against me, saying, "Let us destroy the tree and its fruit; let us cut him off from the land of the living, that his name be remembered no more." But, O LORD Almighty, you who judge righteously and test the heart and mind, let me see your vengeance upon them, for to you I have committed my cause.”
Now that particular text is pretty straightforward. God has directed Jeremiah the prophet to tell the people that because of their sins against each other and God, that they are going to be punished. It is no surprise that some of the people got together to plot a way to kill him. He tells them that God revealed the plot to him and that they need to remember that he is only the messenger. Jeremiah tells them that they brought this on themselves. Having said that Jeremiah trusts in God to do what is right in regard to his enemies.
What is it that we can learn from what we just read? Well, for one thing, we can learn that a messenger of God can get in mighty deep trouble when he delivers God’s words of condemnation to sinful people. Secondly, it appears that if you are innocent of any wrongdoing that you can ask God to have vengeance on your enemies. After all that is what Jeremiah did. The problem is that no one is innocent of any wrong doing against God. Those are things we can learn from that text, but is that what God really wants us to learn from this particular reading?
Now, let us read our second reading from God’s Holy Word. James, 3:16-4:6. “For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice. But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere. Peacemakers who sow in peace raise a harvest of righteousness. What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don't they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something but don't get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. You adulterous people, don't you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. Or do you think Scripture says without reason that the spirit he caused to live in us envies intensely? But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says: "God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.”
Well, let’s see what we can learn from this particular Scripture reading. First of all, we see that those who have true wisdom, the wisdom from Heaven, are pure, peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere. Well that leaves us all out.
Second, we learn that quarrelling, coveting, and fighting comes from inside us, our sinful self.
Third, we learn that might not be receiving what we desire from God because we are not praying with the right attitude. What that means is that our sinful self wants what it wants and not what God wants us to have. If you are honest with yourself, think back to the last time you prayed. What did you pray for? And what was your attitude during that prayer? Did you pray for God to grant you what you were asking, so that he would be glorified, or did you leave God out of the prayer, except for praying to him of course, as you asked God to do something for you or one of your loved ones? If you did, you were praying with the wrong attitude
Fourth, we can learn that the Holy Spirit is not satisfied with someone being a part time Christian. You know, a Sunday morning Christian. He jealously desires us. He will not share us with anyone else, and that includes our sinful self.
While those are all good things, but I am not sure that they are what God wants us to learn from His Holy Word as James wrote them down for us.
Now let’s take a look at our Gospel reading Mark 9:30-37. “They left that place and passed through Galilee. Jesus did not want anyone to know where they were, because he was teaching his disciples. He said to them, "The Son of Man is going to be betrayed into the hands of men. They will kill him, and after three days he will rise." But they did not understand what he meant and were afraid to ask him about it. They came to Capernaum. When he was in the house, he asked them, "What were you arguing about on the road?" But they kept quiet because on the way they had argued about who was the greatest. Sitting down, Jesus called the Twelve and said, "If anyone wants to be first, he must be the very last, and the servant of all." He took a little child and had him stand among them. Taking him in his arms, he said to them, "Whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me does not welcome me but the one who sent me."
There is a lot in that reading that we can learn from, for we see that the disciples just did not get it, even after he told them what was going to happen. They still thought Jesus was going to be an earthly king and they wanted to be a part of the action. You know, be exalted above others. And what about us, do we really get it? Do we really understand the significance of Jesus death and especially his resurrection? I think that way too many times we suffer needlessly because we just don’t really understand what Jesus has done for us.
What really jumps out of his particular Gospel reading though is that we are to care for little children, because when we do so, we are living our Christian faith. But, again, is that the lesson that God wants us to learn from the Gospel reading or is there something else he wants us to learn?
Remember at the beginning of the sermon I told you that this past Wednesday I had an experience with a group of people that I would not forget easily. Let me tell you about it, for it truly was a wonderful experience.
The group I was with, and by the way you can be a part of it, was the Wednesday evening Bible study group that meets at 7pm. We were studying the Scripture lessons for this morning. I don’t know about them, but I was just not getting anywhere that night. It was frustrating. Oh, there were a lot of things to learn from the texts, most of them I just mentioned, but we all agreed that as good as they were, we just had not found the nugget that God wanted us to find that night.
So we kept on working until 8 O’ Clock, the time we usually call it quits, when all of a sudden, an amazing thing took place, it seemed like everyone got the same idea, at the same time. No, it was not to quit and go home.
It was the realization that all of the lessons talked about one thing, the importance of being humble. James tells us in the last verse of the reading he wrote, "God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble." In the Greek language to be humble means literally “to bend the knee.” This is a somewhat different idea than what we think of as being humble.
Our idea of being humble is to be modest, as in being unassuming in our behavior, being without pretensions, or showing respect and deference toward other people. That is our definition but is it God’s? I don’t think so.
The problem with our definitions of being humble is that a person does not have to be truly humble to look humble or act humble. . Acting humble can be used to get one's way. In other words, being humble does not have to come from the heart, but from the desire to use others for one’s own benefit. That kind of humbleness leads to pride.
The humbleness that God is talking about in his Holy Word is the “to bend the knee” toward those that are of no use to us. In Jesus’ time, a young child had no worth. In fact if the father did not want the newborn child, all he had to do is get three of his neighbors to agree with him and then he could leave the child outside to die of exposure. There was no punishment for taking the life of the baby.
So when Jesus picked up a young child and then held the child in his arms, it was a sign that even those of no worth, were worth much to him. That's why he told his disciples, “Whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me. And whoever welcomes me does not welcome me but the one who sent me.”
He wanted them to know that true humility can only come from him, because his humility came from the father who sent him. Jesus bent his knee to his Father. So we are to bend our knee to Jesus which then enables us to bend our knee to those of little or no worth to us. And we all know who they are, don’t we, for they exist in our families, our neighborhoods, our communities, our world, and yes, here, even in our congregation.
True humility can only come from obeying the commands of God, not because one wants to use another for one’s own benefit, but because one is motivated by the love of the Jesus Christ, who loved the unlovable as he showed us when he came to this earth to be born as a baby completely dependent upon others for his care.
Jeremiah bent his knee toward God when he said that he trusted God to judge his enemies righteously. He did not have to see that his enemies were tried and found guilty by an earthly court. God would do what is right and so whatever he did was alright with Jeremiah.
Being humble, or as the Greek says “to bend the knee” is what allows a person to receive the forgiveness that God so wants to give them. That is why James tells us, “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”
Humbleness then comes only from salvation, for it is only when one has “bent the knee” that they are in submission to God and his will. Humbleness allows God to pour out his grace, the grace he so wants to give us.
My dear brothers and sisters in Christ true humbleness, as well as salvation, can only be given to you by our resurrected Savior, who came out of that tomb victorious so long ago. Death did not hold him just as death cannot hold you, for you are joined to him in your Baptism, and you will be raised from your grave on that last day when he returns in all his glory. That is a good thing. Rejoice, I say rejoice, and be glad in the Lord. Amen