An old Chinese proverb says, “May you live in interesting times.” That has certainly been the case for the world this past year. Mark Bowden, editor of The Gazette in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, offered this observation about the year we have just come through: “The world was wracked with pain in 2005, enduring a parade of natural disasters, and, of course some of the pain was self-inflicted — war, terrorism, rebellion, violence, crime, drug abuse, business fraud. . . . There is never a slow day in the news business.” He was thinking of things like the Terri Schiavo case last year which bitterly divided the nation. He was remembering the terrorist attacks all over the world. Among the most memorable were the attacks in London on three rush-hour subway trains and a bus which killed 56 people on July 7. The war in Iraq dragged on with daily reports of terrorist bombings and the deaths of more American soldiers, as well as Iraqi civilians.
Then there were the hurricanes that ripped through the South. Katrina, Rita and Wilma were just three of many storms that left communities devastated and lives disrupted. Katrina, a category 5 storm, killed more than 1,300 people in five states, ravaged the Mississippi Gulf Coast and set off flooding that submerged 80 percent of New Orleans, forcing the largest urban dislocation in U.S. history.
Toward the end of 2004 an earthquake hit off the island of Sumatra in the Indian Ocean and was the most cataclysmic natural disaster of the modern era. For much of 2005 world relief efforts focused on the area where more than 300,000 human lives were lost. Then this past October an earthquake shook portions of Pakistan, Afghanistan and northern India. It leveled entire towns, killing some 87,000 people, and leaving more than 3 million homeless. The catastrophic quake, which measured 7.6 on the Richter scale, was followed by more than 1,200 aftershocks.
Now we are looking at floods in some parts of the West and dry winds and forest fires in other western states. One thing is hardly over before we are hearing of another, and a lot of people are wondering what is going on. What is going on? If you ask those in the media they will paint the most frightening scenario possible. Bad news sells, so we hear a lot of it. Michael Crichton recently wrote about how the press has overplayed predictions of disaster. He writes, “Paul Ehrlich predicted mass starvation in the 1960’s [due to over-population]. Sixty million Americans starving to death. Didn’t happen. Other scientists warned of mass species extinctions by the year 2000. Ehrlich himself predicted that half of all species would become extinct by 2000. Didn’t happen. The Club of Rome told us we would run out of raw materials ranging from oil to copper by the 1990s. That didn’t happen, either.” He also wrote about the stories that warned us about magnetic fields and how things like fluorescent lights were putting our health at risk. But it wasn’t long until magnetic fields turned out to be good for you and people were wearing magnets in their clothing and putting them in their shoes. And we all remember the predictions of gloom and disaster in the year 2000 about the “Y2K problem” that was supposed to plunge the world into darkness and destroy the economies of the world. But when we awakened on January 1, the lights came on, banks opened and planes stayed in the air.
How do we as Christians respond when the media plays up their “end of the world” script? Earlier in the year they were saying that gas to heat our homes was going up by 70%, and gasoline and other shortages were going to cripple the economy. The bird flu was supposed to wipe out millions all over the world. If we listened to the world it would be sitting in a dark corner with a blanket over our heads. The message of the Bible is a message of faith. It is positive and faces the future confidently.
I love the story of Joshua that we read together today. It is the story of a group of people who refused to be paralyzed by the dangers of the times in which they lived. The simple story we have read together today points out many lessons for us, but we will look at only a few. The first lesson is: Our faith in the future is built on God’s faithfulness in the past. Many people are familiar with the crossing of the Red Sea, but not as many are familiar with this crossing of the Jordan river when the people of Israel came into the promised land. But it was the dramatic story in their history of God’s deliverance from Egypt and parting the Red Sea that gave them the faith to be able to cross the Jordan. It was God’s powerful hand of deliverance in the past that gave them the faith to face the challenges in their future. They knew they were going to face dangers in the future, but they knew they were going to face them with God — a God who makes a way even when there is no way. There was no way through the Red Sea. There was no way through the Jordan. But God made a way. There is no way through the things you may face this year, but God will make a way. He has helped you in the past and he will be there in your future.
That doesn’t mean it is going to be easy. God is always faithful, but doing his will is not always easy. I was impressed again this year as I read the account of God’s covenant with Abraham. God makes amazing promises to Abraham. He promises to be with him, and even though he is childless to make his offspring as numerous as the grains of sand on the seashore or the number of stars in the sky. But he also tells him of the difficulties that await him and his people. He says, “Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and they will be enslaved and mistreated four hundred years” (Genesis 15:13). The future is not for the fearful or faint of heart. There are difficulties ahead, challenges and dangers. But the Lord says to us what he said to Joshua, “No one will be able to stand up against you all the days of your life. As I was with Moses, so I will be with you; I will never leave you nor forsake you” (Joshua 1:5). He says to us what he said to Isaiah, “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze. For I am the Lord, your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior” (Isaiah 43:1-3). There will be high waters and hot fires, but the Lord will be with us and save us.
Over and over in the book of Joshua we hear these words: “Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged. Be strong and courageous.” That is what God is calling us to do — be strong and courageous. And the reason we can be strong and courageous is because our faith is grounded in a faithful God. He has brought us through more than we thought we could bear, and saved us from more than we will ever know.
We have just come through the season of Advent leading to Christmas. Advent is a time of waiting — waiting for God to come and act on our behalf — to bring the Messiah, our Savior and deliverer. It occurred to me this year that there were two groups of people during the time of Jesus. One which waited as they placed their hope in God changing the political climate and making their nation sovereign, and the other group which waited and saw Jesus as the fulfillment of the promises of God — the One who ushered in the Kingdom of God. The first group saw the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple and became sorely disillusioned and angry at God, blaming him and saying that he was doing nothing. The second group went throughout the world excitedly telling the world that God had shown up and spreading the Good News of what God had done, in spite of terrible persecution. Their joy and faith changed the world. By God’s grace, I want to be a part of that second group that believes God, lives in joy and helps to change the world, in spite of the difficulties and dangers of life.
The second lesson from Joshua is: Our faith determines our Future. If Joshua and the Israelites had given up and sat down, they would never have known God’s help and deliverance. Their future would have been very different. They would not have inherited the promise. How do we know that? Because that is exactly what too place with their fathers. God had miraculously delivered the previous generation from Egypt with signs and wonders, they crossed through the Red Sea on dry ground, but they would not trust God to lead them into the future and into Promised Land. They whined, whimpered and complained. They were afraid and refused to believe God, in spite of what he had done for them in the past. They sat down and cried, and God let them sit there in the desert for forty years. However, their children were willing to believe God, and therefore they miraculously crossed the Jordan and entered the land that God had promised to them.
What we learn from this passage is that God is not going to do it all for us. The Israelites of the previous generation passed through the Red Sea after God parted the waters and the dry ground appeared. But this time the water did not part until the priests actually placed their feet in the water. And there was not only water in the river, it was at flood stage. The water was raging. The priests came closer and closer to the swirling water’s edge, but nothing happened until they actually stepped into the flood. God was helping them to grow up in their faith. He did it all for them in the past, but now he was asking them to take a new step of faith. That is what he is asking you to do. God is helping you to understand that the dangers and difficulties ahead are to be an adventure in faith. He says to you what he said through Jeremiah: “For I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future” (Jeremiah 29:11).
The real dilemma for most people is not trying to believe that God exists, but trying to believe that God is good and trustworthy — that he has their best interest at heart and will not let them be harmed in the future. The temptation for many people is not to become an atheist, but to believe that God does not care, or that he is weak, or mean. It is not so much the question of whether God exists that torments us, but the temptation to say to ourselves, “Oh, so that is what he is like.” The real fear is not that God is not here, but that he is vengeful, unpredictable and capricious. We do not stop believing in him, but we stop believing we can depend on him. The temptation is to become disillusioned, disappointed and disenchanted with God. When he permits difficulties to come in our lives, we become resentful toward him. For many people the question is not about whether they have been forgiven by God, but whether they have forgiven God. That happens when he doesn’t meet our expectations or answer our prayers the way we thought he should, and we realize we cannot control him.
But it is our faith that determines our future. We can actually change the future. When we place our faith in God, God becomes a part of our future, and we inherit a new future. Because Joshua and the Israelites trusted God, they inherited the land and walked into their new future. It was not without great difficulties, but it was with great reward. The same is true for you.
The third lesson we learn from Joshua and the Israelites is that when God proves faithful: We need to build an altar of faith for future generations. Joshua had twelve men go into the dry bed of the Jordan river and take out twelve large stones, one for each tribe of Israel, and built an altar with those stones. Joshua said that the purpose was, “to serve as a sign among you. In the future, when your children ask you, ‘What do these stones mean?’ tell them that the flow of the Jordan was cut off before the ark of the covenant of the Lord. When it crossed the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. These stones are to be a memorial to the people of Israel forever” (Joshua 4:5-7). Future generations would learn of God’s faithfulness and understand that they could place their trust in him as well. The purpose of the altar was so that they could praise and worship God, and that their children would ask the right questions and learn the right lessons.
It is important to share with your children stories of the faithfulness of God from your life. It can be done in many ways: write a document to be read, keep a scrapbook, create a photo album, make or build something that is a symbol of what you have been through and what God has done. This was a common practice in the Bible. We sing the song that says, “Here I raise mine Ebenezer; hither by thy help I’m come,” but most don’t know what it means. It is from a story in the Old Testament. The Philistines, Israel’s enemies, gathered against Israel to engage them in battle. Samuel the priest was offering a sacrifice as the Philistines approached, and the Lord thundered from heaven, throwing the Philistines into confusion and panic. They fled from the battlefield, and Samuel took a large rock and set it up as a reminder. He called the stone Ebenezer, which means “stone of help,” and said, “Thus far has the Lord helped us” (1 Samuel 7:12). Every time an Israelite saw that stone they were reminded of what God had done for them in the past and gained hope for the future.
Maybe you need to set up an Ebenezer, a “stone of help” — a writing, a plaque, a picture, a marking, an object, a trip, a celebration. Think of some creative way that you can mark a significant event in your life where you say, “This far has the Lord helped us, and we know he will take us the rest of the way.” Let it be a permanent testimony to those who come after you.
When Rachel Strayer [my granddaughter] was healed of her cancer, the Strayers [Jeremy and Lisa] held a celebration to mark the event. Several of you were here for that celebration. It was our Ebenezer. The event was recorded on video and with photographs. I use my family photos as screen savers on my computer, and those pictures frequently are on the screen. It never fails to create a feeling of deep gratitude to God and a reminder of his faithfulness. We remember that God is our rock of help.
Hudson Taylor was a missionary and founder of China Inland Mission. In his home he kept a plaque with these Hebrew Words on it: EBENEZER, meaning “Stone of help,” and JEHOVAH JIREH: “The Lord is my Provider.” One looked back at what God had done and how he had helped in the past, and the other looked forward to how he believed God would provide in the future. One reminded him of God’s help and faithfulness, and the other helped him to focus on God’s provision and assurance of help in the days to come.
As this new year begins, let’s raise an Ebenezer to God’s faithfulness in the past, and let’s believe that God is Jehovah Jireh, our Provider.
Rodney J. Buchanan
January 8, 2006
Mulberry St. UMC
Mount Vernon, OH
www.MulberryUMC.org
Rod.Buchanan@MulberryUMC.org
