Judges 7:1-7; Acts 10
May 9, 2021
- Identifying God work in the world
I want you to think back to May 9, 2017. What did you do that day exactly four years ago? I am not going to give you anything else about the day – not the day of the week, the weather, any current events at the time. Do you remember ANYTHING about the day? If you are like I am, you do not remember a thing about the day. No, notta, nothing. I could not tell you much of anything about the whole month, probably. Now, here is the thing: if we do not remember anything about a particular time or circumstance or if we cannot recall anything meaningful about a specific occasion, would that mean God was not present then and there working that perfect, gracious love in our midst? If we cannot recall anything memorable about a time in our life, was God absent from that time?
On the one hand, we would say no, of course not. It seems a basic assumption that God is never absent but is always present. Perhaps we might not perceive God’s presence, but that does not mean God is not busy at work in the world and, particularly, in our lives right then and there. However, this begs the question whether we should ever be missing what God is doing. If God is at work in the world right around us, it seems absurd to think that we would be oblivious to that. Certainly, we should be ever vigilant looking for God’s hand in our lives, but it turns out, that hand might be harder to see than we might expect. This seems odd to me. If God is doing something right in front of me, I am not sure how I can really miss it, but I do. Today, we are going to talk a little about how can better find God’s working presence around us.
The Bible has the same problem we do, if we can call it a problem. If you read the Bible straight through, it seems like God is always doing something – every page, ever chapter, nearly every verse. God is all the time doing something, and the Bible is the record of this work. I think this gives us the misleading impression that God was somehow much busier back in the old days with pillars of fire, lightnings and whirlwinds, burning bushes, prophets leading the charge, voices from on high, or angels announcing all kinds of instructions. But, when you stop and think about the actual timeline in the Bible, there were periods of hundreds of years when nothing was recorded. Apparently, nothing noteworthy from God’s design was kept in the living record from those periods. In those centuries, the people either did not see what God was doing, or they did not bother to pass that on to the next generation. In other words, generations came and went without ever recording God’s presence, their experience of God’s work, or even their own existence in the scriptural witness.
This is the backdrop for today’s lessons, the first of which is part of the story of Gideon. We looked at another section of this story recently, but this chapter really is distinctive because God directly addresses the root question: how will people know God is at work? Sure, God is there to save the people of Israel, but God’s intent is to get the credit.
Gideon has his massive army to go to war against the Midianites. According to the text, Gideon has 34,000 troops to go to war. This is great news for Gideon who liked to know that God was with him. He is the one who had all of those tests before (remember the fleece among other tests). I hope you heard God’s response here, however. With that many people fighting for Gideon and Israel, it would be easy for them to think that they had won on their own might. They were going to win; God had already decided that. What was truly important, though, was that they knew it was God who delivered them and not their own strength. Therefore, God had Gideon shrink the army. First, it was the people who were nervous. MORE THAN TWO THIRDS OF THE ARMY WENT HOME. The 10,000 that were left were still too many, though, so God devised another way to winnow the troops down. This is one of my all-time favorites in the Bible. The people who lapped water like dogs got to stay. Polite society people had to go home. I have absolutely no idea the significance of people who lapped water rather than cup it and bring it to their mouths, whether the lappers were more aggressive or something, but they were the 300 left who were going to win one for God and Israel.
What stands out is God’s insistence that the military force be SO small that no one will miss that God was behind it. This was the work of the Lord God Almighty – don’t mistake it for anything else. It seems like God’s purpose is to work in ways that cannot be mistaken for anything else or in ways that jump out as obviously to us as the hand of God. Big picture is that this is exactly how Jesus being crucified as our Messiah and Lord is described in Paul: foolishness to Greeks and a stumbling block to the Gentiles. It jumps out, though, because of its absurdity to everyone. How could salvation come through something that actually looks like failure, but that is precisely what our Holy and Loving God did – show us true victory through the appearance of defeat; we received life through what looked like death. God’s love is able to do anything, even bring someone back from the dead. Our amazing God does amazing things.
So Gideon was brought along into this grand plan of overcoming the entire Midianite army with 300 men and God. And he was just trusting enough, just faithful enough, just willing enough to do it. God used that encounter to free the people and to show them, again, that God was truly faithful.
Hundreds and hundreds of years later, the Apostle Peter was living in a new world. He just did not realize how new it was. Jesus was resurrected from the dead to new life, and the disciples were now apostles commissioned with spreading the good news of God’s salvation through Jesus. God was at work, even in Caesarea. Imagine the last place you would expect to find people of the faith. That’s Caesarea. Herod the Great had made Caesarea a port for the world with an artificial, manmade harbor that was an engineering wonder. This made Caesarea the commercial hub for that area. The Roman headquarters for the area was also there. It was a Roman town that felt very Greek. It was not Jewish, at all, but there were Jews there, and there was one man in particular who was fascinated with the Jewish people and their religion. He was not Jewish, himself, but he was a Roman Centurion (in charge of 100 men). This was Cornelius.
Luke believed this is one of the most important stories in his Book of Acts. He told it here with vivid detail, then in chapter 11, and referred to it, again, in chapter 15. No one had scroll space to waste back in those days. Luke really thought this story is important because God is doing something really big between Peter and Cornelius. This is so big that none of us would be here today without this story.
It is hard to appreciate just how insane it is for Peter to go to Caesarea to a Roman officer’s house, let alone enter the house, let alone talk to the man, let alone receive him as a brother in faith, let alone baptize the man and make him part of the family as a gentile. Peter would have never thought in a million years that he would have been in that situation – ministering to the very enemy who killed his Messiah, our Savior. But the craziest part is not what Peter did or what Cornelius did. They were just there and willing to see what God might do. The craziest thing is what the Holy Spirit did. It showed up in a might way and gave the gifts of the Spirit to the Romans who responded to the Holy Spirit and used the grace of spiritual gifts. It was proof that God was at work right then and right there in them.
What made this so bizarre to the Jews was that they had a longstanding understanding that the Spirit of God would not work in and through Gentiles. The Spirit of God was for Jewish people, the people of the Covenant, the children of Abraham, people of the Law, people of the faith, God’s chosen people. In this encounter, though, we learn the greatest lesson in a beautiful way for how to see the hand and heart of God in work in the world around us. All we have to do is be open to it. Notice that neither Peter nor Cornelius was praying for the Spirit or calling for the Spirit or even expecting the Spirit. They were simply open to finding God somewhere between them and it happened. Peter was open to going where he was invited, and Cornelius was open to hearing from Peter in his home. God did the rest.
Don’t you want to know where God is and what God is doing? Don’t we all desperately want to know that God is at work right here and now? And yet, I cannot help but wonder just how often we are closed to the Holy Spirit or what God might be doing. Maybe we don’t really expect anything, want anything, or just assume God is occupied elsewhere. We are too busy to pay attention, and we end up doing for ourselves.
Of course, God has a way of getting our attention when things fall apart and we are made more open. Sometimes we are undone and must look to God’s presence, but wouldn’t it make sense to not wait until we are on the ropes to look to our Lord? Wouldn’t it make for better lives for us to see God’s grace walking alongside us every day? This means opening ourselves to seeing God in our daily walk. This means honestly and deliberately being willing to encounter God wherever we are, whenever we are, and in whatever we are doing. This means finding God in unexpected ways like in our stories today. To find God, we need open, open, open hearts and willing spirits to invite God’s presence. We will see God clearly.
Gideon was willing and ready. His people were saved. Peter was willing and ready, and Cornelius was willing and ready. The world was changed when the Holy Spirit showed up. The message of God’s Good News went to the nations and made us one in Christ. All because they received God’s work in love. Sisters and brothers in our Lord, help me find the heart and hand of God in our midst as we open ourselves up to seeing what God is doing in this very moment. To God be the glory. Amen.