God of Life

Unbelievers living just south of the intersection of Silverado Ranch Boulevard and Bermuda are in for a shock. Today the first Christian church south of Silverado Ranch is opening up--Beautiful Savior Evangelical Lutheran Church. You know its pastor, Pastor Matt Guse. You know many of its members, for a number of them were members here before they set off to start Beautiful Savior Evangelical Lutheran Church.
I would love to be in the homes of the unbelieving people who are living around that new church. What are they thinking? What are they doing now that God has stuck his thumb into their eye with the opening of Beautiful Savior? What excuses will they have now for not going to church?
How can you live almost in the shadow of a church and not be a part of it? It’s not just idle speculation. At one point or another, each one of us, even though we’re members of this church, something is going to keep us from attending, keep us from coming. If we can put our finger on what it is, we can be forewarned and prepared.
God of Life
1.Without despair (7-16).
2.Without guilt (17-24).
When we left the prophet Elijah he was in a secluded canyon, living off bread and meat the ravens daily brought him and the brook which flowed through it. But without rain, the brook dried up. The Lord told Elijah to go to Sidon, a foreign city state on the coast, on Israel’s northwest border. He comes to the village of Zarephath where he finds a woman outside the city gates. She is gathering sticks to kindle a fire. “‘Would you bring me a little water in a jar so I may have a drink? And as she was going to get it, he called, “And bring me, please, a piece of bread (11).’”
A simple request, but, oh!, the chilling answer he gets. “As surely as the Lord your God lives,’ she replied, ‘I don’t have any bread—only a handful of flour in a jar and a little oil in a jug. I am gathering a few sticks to take home and make a meal for myself and my son, that we may eat it and die (12).’”
You can’t be sunk in a deeper despair than this. No uncertainty. No maybes. No other possible outcomes. I am going to bake this little handful of flour for my son and I and then we are going to starve to death.
Despair still grips many, many people. They hit the drugs to escape or snuggle up to a fifth to forget. They go through life being miserable but thinking that’s the way they are supposed to be, because life is hard and then you die. If you look at a lot of the “Good Time Charlies” around, they are only living that way because they don’t think there is anything else and, to be quite honest, what there is isn’t all that much to hoot and holler about, so you’ve got to really sell it.
Does Elijah walk away? Does he apologize and leave her and her son to a terrible death? “Don’t be afraid. Go home and do as you have said. But first make a small cake of bread for me from what you have and bring it to me, and then make something for yourself and your son. For this is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: “The jar of flour will not be used up and the jug of oil will not run dry until the Lord gives rain on the land (14).”’”
And she does what Elijah asks her to do. She trusts in his Word. She is not afraid. And the Lord fulfills his word—the flour does not run out, the jar of oil does not go dry. She, her son, Elijah as her guest and her extended family, stay alive on that food.
The God of life has an answer to despair. That answer is eternal life with him in heaven. He has done everything necessary to make that life a reality for you and me. He sent his Son to break the power of death by his resurrection on Easter Sunday. Jesus promised us his resurrection was the proof that we also, body and soul together, would rise from the dead. Heaven is not a hope—it’s a certainty for all who trust in Jesus as their Lord and Savior.
I can get through anything, if I know heaven is waiting. I can carry the burdens of the day knowing that, if my Lord has died to get me to heaven, it is child’s play for him to get me through my day. I don’t want to glorify the days of slavery in the United States, but for all the hardships the black men, women and children suffered, they were not broken. They had their faith in heaven. They did not give into despair. They kept hope alive through their songs that we white people sometimes sing in church. They kept hope alive and marvelously struggled as God’s children for equal rights under the law. How tragic, that now, when freedom has been won, the great-great-grandchildren of Christian slaves succumb to the despair of drugs and gang violence. Wouldn’t it be an equal tragedy for us, people who have tasted the cup of salvation of our God, would throw him away for a life of despair?
The widow is saved. Everything will be great. Not quite. Some time later the boy grew ill, got worse and died. The woman blames God and Elijah. “What do you have against me, man of God? Did you come to remind me of my sin and kill my son (17)?”
Remember what I said last week about guilty consciences blaming God for natural disasters? Here we’ve got it again. She and her family had been miraculously kept alive by God’s power and goodness, but when trouble comes, she seems ready to give it all up. Even though she has been living a life free from despair, that doesn’t mean that the guilt won’t creep in.
And you know it can happen like that because it does happen like that in our lives. We know we are saved. We know we are forgiven. But we are guilty. We are guilty about how half-heartedly we do our jobs. We are guilty that our parenting skills can boil down to giving the kids money instead of sharing our lives with them. We are guilty that we aren’t with our husbands or wives enough, and then guilty that we don’t want to be with our husbands and wives all that much! Past indiscretions. Multiple marriages. There are as many reasons to feel guilty as there are bones in a skeleton in the closet. I think everyone has them. Everyone. How do you think Peter felt when Jesus asked him three times if Peter loved him? Guilty because he had denied Jesus three times. King David, when he sinned with Bathsheba and lived for almost a year pretending he was a jolly good and pious king, said his bones felt like they were wasting away, his strength was sapped, it was like the Lord’s hand was crushing him all night long. It made Adam and Eve try to run away from God. Why do you think these stories are in the Bible if guilt is not poison to our lives with God? Wasn’t it, finally, guilt that drove Judas to hang himself?
Does Elijah throw up his hands? Does he say there’s no hope? “Give me your son.” He takes the boy’s body into the guestroom where Elijah had been staying. He cries out to the Lord in prayer, stretching himself out on the boy. “O Lord my God, let this boy’s life return to him!”
“Elijah picked up the child and carried him down from the room into the house.” And the mother, beating her breast in the room downstairs hears silence. And then the slow tread of feet down the stairs. The prophet probably couldn’t face her and was wondering what he could say, so he was coming down the stairs painfully slow. “He gave him to his mother and said, ‘Look, your son is alive (23)!’”
“Then the woman said to Elijah, ‘Now I know that you are a man of God and that the word of the Lord from your mouth is the truth (24).’”
What will it take for those people living in the shadow of Beautiful Savior Evangelical Lutheran Church to realize that the word of the Lord is true? It will take the same thing it will take you or me, when out of guilt or despair we don’t feel God’s love, we don’t want to bend the knee in repentance. It will take hopping in the car, coming to church and hearing, once again, about our
God of Life
1.Without despair (7-16).
2.Without guilt (17-24).
Because a life without God isn’t worth living. It can only be filled with despair and guilt. But a life with God, a life of blessed certainty and the freedom of full forgiveness. Why would anybody want to be without that?