(Sermon by Pastor Michael D. Schultz 07/01/07)

INTRODUCTION:

Summer’s always an interesting time for churches.  Ask any treasurer how the offerings usually are through June, July and August – regularly thin.  Rather noticeable is the higher number of empty seats during the worship service.  And getting things done or even covered around church?  The volunteer force seems to dwindle because people often use summer months to catch up on things they can’t do during the busier seasons of the year.  Welcome to Sola Fide?

No, welcome to Jerusalem in the 500’s B.C.  To start with, there’s only a small handful of Israelites coming back from Babylon to a still decimated Jerusalem, then there’s a temple to be rebuilt, and finally compound the problems by the fact that most of the handful of Israelites who have come back are more wrapped up with building their own houses rather than God’s.

Those were discouraging days, and if we look about us and sense any of that same kind of discouragement, this is not the time for the pep talk that says, “Come on, I know we can come together and do this.  We can tackle anything we put our minds to.”  No, times like those always call for a promise from God.  Zechariah 13 brings that promise to you:

The Lord of Hosts is going to brandish his sword and strike with it.  He’s going to pull the rug out from under his people’s feet.  He’s actually going to take them out of the frying pan and dump them into the fire.  And this is good?  This is going to get them going?  Much of what these three verses say sounds paradoxical, like this is the right time for it but it’s the wrong speech.  I invite you to find out otherwise and to pay attention to a promise from God that tells you that…

Having The Rug Pulled Out From Under Your Feet

…is a good thing.  It means God’s at work to get your eyes on Jesus and to make your faith stronger. 

There’s a stone sculpture on the base of a lamp stand outside the U.S. Supreme court building, a sculpture which is an ancient depiction of justice – a woman wearing a blindfold, holding a sword in one hand and a set of scales in the other.  Justice prevails when the sword is used to balance the scales.  If you take the four thousands years from the creation of the world to the crucifixion of Jesus, how could the Lord’s sword of justice have stayed in its sheath for all that time?  Four thousands years of rejection and rebellion – how patient had God been in balancing the scales!  Didn’t the flood teach anyone anything?  Wasn’t any lesson learned from the flames of Sodom and Gomorrah? 

All that time, God sees the weight of sin pressing one pan of the scale flat on the floor, a cry for justice, and his sword remains still?  By the way, your sins and mine that tip the scales and call for justice – the needless swearing that passes for “shop talk;” the dirty joke that passes for “a good gut-buster;” the books of the Bible that I still have no idea what’s in them – oh, well; the laziness that we rename as boredom; the things in our daily schedules that so frustrate us but the way we view them is such a far cry from faith in God – what about the sins of ours that tip the scales?  What shall we make of our efforts to climb into the empty pan and to balance the scales – we jump up and down on the empty pan and the scale just laughs at us: “You can’t balance that!”  What’s it mean for the world and what’s it mean for you and me if God says, “Sword, time to wake up.  Time for justice to be served”?

The sword of the Lord is flashing about, we’re weaving and ducking and wincing and closing our eyes and that sword strikes not the people whose sins have cut them off from God but the one person who is closest to God, the Good Shepherd, the Son of God.  You heard Jesus’ cry beneath that sword in Psalm 22.  “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”  God forsook him.  Four thousand years of rebellion and rejection in the Old Testament and 2007 years (so far) of rebellion and rejection in the New Testament disappeared when the Good Shepherd was struck dead.  Jesus died.  Justice prevailed.  And you survived.  Easter morning when Jesus rose, God the Father said, “Look at those scales now.”  Even as can be – God’s justice satisfied because Jesus was crucified.  How good is that!

Zechariah 13:7 was fulfilled on Maundy Thursday evening.  When the Shepherd was struck, eleven disciples headed for the hills.  Eleven men said they would never desert Jesus, and eleven men did.  The lives of those eleven men still speak to us today, because their self-absorption and self-confidence has been ours.  But Jesus kept his date with them in Galilee, just as he’s keeping company with you and me.  If they could look back at desertion like theirs and know that Jesus forgave them and restored them and retained them, then we can look back at rebellion like ours, whatever it has been, and know that Jesus has forgiven us and restored us and is retaining us. 

There isn’t anything good about self-absorption and self-confidence making you fall flat on your face in sin, and we’ve done that, but when the rug has been pulled out from under your feet and you’ve taken that sinful fall, there’s something awfully good about the good Lord forgiving you and at the same time training you to get your eyes off yourself and on Jesus. 

It’s the kind of training that pays off when being a believer in the Lord puts you in the minority and God himself puts you in the fire.  “In the whole land,” declares the Lord, “two-thirds will be struck down and perish; yet one third will be left in it.”  Those are not strict fractions of the whole world’s population.  They are terms that talk about majority and minority.  Most will shrug off the Shepherd who was struck for them and will perish. 

Consider yourself blessed that you’re in the minority of those whose hearts God has changed to repent and believe the good news.  And consider yourself blessed when you find yourself in the minority of believers and then God throws you into the fire.  In whatever ways he knows it to be necessary, God’s going to keep pulling the rug out from under your feet, so that you never get lost in self-absorption, so that you never get comfortable in self- confidence.  You needn’t go looking for trials, but don’t curse God when they come.  He is kind enough to pull the rug out from under your feet to make your faith stronger, so that when you hit the ground and hit the ground and hit the ground again and you can’t get up, you learn to cry out to him before you ever try to get up. 

Fire refines precious metals.  Trouble refines your precious faith.  When the fire of trials is burning and you’re in it, when there are discouraging times and you don’t see any way out of them, God’s plan is working perfectly.  He’s your way out.  When the fire is stoking hot, he turns his voice all the way up.  “You are my people!  I’ll never, no, never, no, never forsake you!”   As few as we are in this world and as troubled as we may be in this world, the Shepherd who was struck for us lives and reigns and has given us one sentence that wins the day:  “The LORD is our God!”

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