Love Believes All Things

A Sermon Based Upon 1 Corinthians 10: 1-13

By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership

Epiphany 4, Year (B),   February 1^st,  2015

…God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it. (1Co 10:13 NRS)

A strange thing happened on the way revival services last year at Flat Rock.   As the guest musicians were warming up, I looked up and noticed that one of the lead singers had a pistol strapped to her waist.  It was a very big gun; military style, black and obvious.

When her boyfriend joined her up front, I noticed he was packing the same kind of pistol.  When he came back to sit down in front of me, right before the service started, I asked about the weapons.  

        “Are ya’ll deputized or something?”      

         “We’re residence of Yadkin County.”   

        Not being satisfied, my wife asked him again.   “Now, why did you say you were carrying guns while leading worship? “  

        His answer came again, without apology:  “We’re residences of Yadkin County.”

What amazed me even more were the words they were singing.  “Lord, protect us….  Or something to that effect”  I wondered why would you need the Lord’s protection when you already brought your own?      I told you it was strange.

STRANGE THINGS HAPPEN

Strange things happen in life.   Sometimes they happen quite unexpectedly.  Other times they are more predictable,  like the strange thing that happened in today’s Scripture reading from 1 Corinthians 10.   It’s about something that happened on the way to the Promised Land.   The Children of Israel cried out for God to deliver them.   God did.  They followed God in a cloud.  They followed God and passed through the sea.   They followed God in baptism.   They all ate of the same spiritual food and drank from the same spiritual rock----Jesus Christ.   But the Scripture then says,  “The people sat down to eat and drink, but then rose up to play….” (10.7).   This means they were redeemed, they were saved,  but then they started to over indulge themselves and lost their salvation.  We don’t know all that they indulged in, but the text tells us that “some of them gave into sexual immorality”.   Tragically,  it concludes, due to their lack of discipline and self-indulgence, 23,000 of them fell to their death in a single day.

This strange thing that happened in Israel, and can happen to us---any of us.   Every Baptism starts off full of faith and belief.   Just like a marriage begins full of faith.    You know the story.  The proposal.  The wedding.  The bride.  The dress.  The bells.   The cake.  The hopes, dreams, vows and pledges.   Weddings are remarkable moments of faith and belief:  “I pledge you my trough,” is an old English way of saying,  “I put my whole faith in you!”     That’s how every marriage begins, but it’s not, unfortunately, how every marriage ends.   “Until death do us part!”  is not how most marriages end.    I wish all marriages, all relationships, all promises, and all possibilities could end that way, but it’s just not what human reality is.

Strange things can happen also, on the way to raise a child, or when you take a job, or when you move into a community, or when you go back home.   Strange things can happen that makes everything turn out differently than you had hoped.   Even such strange things can happen in a ministry or to a church.   Recently, Mars Hill Church in Seattle, Washington, a large church with 13 locations, and one of the largest and fastest growing churches in the U.S., voted recently to dissolve its churches and ministry.    It ceased to exist on December 31th, at the end of last year.   What happened?   It all began with an attempt to get the pastor, Mark Driscoll, to submit to the leadership of the elders.   He decided to resign instead.   Evidently everybody lost faith in everybody else.  

THE “STRANGE” RETURN TO UNBELIEF

Strange things happen, and they can even happen at church, to a disciple, to family, to a marriage, or to people like us.   What is this strange thing?  In one word we can name it.   We call it unbelief.     

This ‘trail of tears’ goes all the way back to one of Jesus’ own disciples, Judas.  For some reason, this trustworthy fellow, a fellow whom everyone trusted, even once trusted with their money ---- this trusted fellow, one day, lost faith.   He had even been trusted by Jesus, who must have seen great potential in him.   But then on the way to Jerusalem, or one the way to the Great Commission or maybe on the way to save the world, unbelief happened to Judas.   He lost faith.   He lost faith in the gospel.   He lost faith in the Kingdom of God.   He lost faith in Jesus.  After betraying, Jesus, we read that finally, Judas even lost faith in himself.   We are told that full of remorse and regret, Judas went out and hung himself.  

This is the kind of tragic end that can come to those who lose faith.  Paul ‘does not want us to be unaware’ of what happened to Israel, or to Judas, because the same kind of thing happen to us.   We can lose our way.   We can turn against the one who gave himself for us.   I know it sounds impossible, but it happens.  “Now these things happened”  Paul says. “They happened to serve as examples for us….”   Can you hear the seriousness in Paul’s voice?  “We must not put Christ to the test…..Some of them did, and were destroyed!”   You can’t get any more serious.   It’s not a pleasant thing to think about---to think of the possibility of losing faith in God, losing faith in each other, or losing faith in yourself--- it’s certainly not pleasant, but for our own good, we need to think about it, Paul says. “These things were written down to instruct us….because “if you think you are standing, watch out that you do not fall.”  (10.12).

The most discouraging story of lost faith came from of a personal close friend of Billy Graham, the former youth evangelist Charles Templeton.   It is said that Templeton was not only a friend and preaching partner with Billy Graham, but Templeton may have even been a better speaker.   He had more education.   He preached more sermons, went more places, and touched as many, or more lives than Billy Graham.   Then something happened.   After having increasing doubts about the Bible and about the Christian faith, Templeton lost his faith.   In his final book, Farewell to God, Templeton explained why he abandoned the pulpit and became an agnostic.    In short, he lost faith in almost everything---the truth of the Bible, the truth about Jesus, the truth about any claims of truth from God.   Templeton lost his faith and with it the faith lost Charles Templeton.

Lee Stobel,  a news reporter turned preacher,  did an interview of Charles Templeton, just after Templeton turned 80 and had written the book.   It was five years before Templeton died in 2001 of Alzheimer’s disease.  Stobel wanted ask Templeton once more:

         “What do you think of Jesus?   “He was,” Templeton began, “the greatest human being who has ever lived. He was a moral genius. His ethical sense was unique. He was the intrinsically wisest person that I’ve ever encountered in my life or in my readings. His commitment was total and led to his own death, much to the detriment of the world. What could one say about him except that this was a form of greatness?”

Stobel was taken aback. “You sound like you really care about him,” I said.

        “Well, yes, he is the most important thing in my life,” came his reply. “I . . . I . . . I . . . ,” he stuttered, searching for the right word, ‘I know it may sound strange, but I have to say . . . I adore him!” . . .

        ” . . . Everything good I know, everything decent I know, everything pure I know, I learned from Jesus. Yes . . . yes. And tough! Just look at Jesus. He castigated people. He was angry. People don’t think of him that way, but they don’t read the Bible. He had a righteous anger. He cared for the oppressed and exploited. There’s no question that he had the highest moral standard, the least duplicity, the greatest compassion, of any human being in history. There have been many other wonderful people, but Jesus is Jesus….’      

        “Uh . . . but . . . no,’ he said slowly, ‘he’s the most . . .” He stopped, then started again. “In my view,” he declared, “he is the most important human being who has ever existed.”

That’s when Templeton uttered the words I never expected to hear from him. “And if I may put it this way,” he said as his voice began to crack, ‘I . . . miss . . . him!”    With that tears flooded his eyes. He turned his head and looked downward, raising his left hand to shield his face from me. His shoulders bobbed as he wept. . . .   Templeton fought to compose himself (http://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justintaylor/2013/05/09/charles-templeton-missing-jesus/).

LOVE IS STRONGER THAN UNBELIEF

I find it sad, but I really don’t find it strange or surprising, that a brilliant, educated, talented and gifted man like Charles Templeton lost his faith.  What I find strange is that many brilliant, educated, cultured people like Templeton,  have doubts, but then work through them---not by denying them, but by thinking deeper, harder, longer and going further, until they find a light at the end of their own tunnel of doubt.   Charles Templeton never found that light.   But many people do.   What makes the difference?    Listen again, to what else Paul writes about going through the test of faith:  “No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone.  God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, BUT WITH THE TESTING HE WILL ALSO PROVIDE, THE WAY OUT so that you may be able to endure it.”  (10:13).

What I find even stranger than unbelief are the stories and testimonies of people who keep believing in spite of some of the things that happen to them.   Here in this text, we read about those 23,000 Israelites who fell in the wilderness, but what is even stranger, is that about the same number of Israelites who left Egypt finally entered the Promised Land.   That means about 600,000 thousand males, or nearly 3 million people in total,  left Egypt, and according to census, was also about the same number of people, who one generation later, made it through, and entered into the promised land.  

This is why Paul can remain optimistic, even after he warns about those who might “fall” or lose faith, that “God is faithful…”    This is why he also says that God “will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out…..” (10:13).  How can Paul promise something like that?   It’s not that Paul knows everything.  It’s not that Paul’s knows you, or me, nor does he know everything about God.   No, what Paul knows is one sure thing: “God is love”.  Because God is love, God loves and God believes in us, and if we know his undying love,  we can keep trusting,  keep searching,  keep asking, and keep trying,  so that we too, can keep the faith because we know the love.    

Again, it’s strange and tragic that some people lose faith.   It’s stranger still, that many of the people, even people who have almost nothing, have an easier time keeping faith, than those people who have most everything.   It’s not doubt,  struggle, or poverty that causes people to lose faith, but it’s, according to Paul, idolatry.   We lose faith, not because we lose it, but because we put our faith in something else.  “Flee, the worship of idols”  (10:14), Paul continues.  It’s not what we go through, but it’s what we decide to trust that determines the outcome of faith. 

It’s always heartbreaking to learn of someone who loses faith, but also think of the people who keep on believing, keep on trusting, or keeping enduring, in spite of everything that happens to them?   I think of people who get married and they have tremendous differences---are opposites in most everything, but even with all the friction between them, it keeps lighting a match of passion between them.   Or I think of parents who have children---children who have been wayward and worrisome, but in spite of everything, the parent keeps hoping, keeps praying, and never loses hope for their child.   I also think of people, who have struggles, problems, insurmountable difficulties,  illnesses and all kinds of misfortune, but they keep getting up in the morning, put on a smiling face, and they keep doing the best they can to get through the day, to hold on, to keep up the good fight even to their final, last, dying day. 

How do people keep faith like this?  Paul had the answer:  “God is faithful!”   God is faithful because God is love.   When you love, or when you know you are loved, nothing can stop you from believing in what love has chosen to believe in.   Love is gullible in this way, not because love is stupid, but because love is not based on facts, not based on reality,  love is not based on good or bad,  but love is based on faith---true faith---real faith—undying faith---trusting faith---loving faith.   Love believes all things because love is everything.   If love stops believing, there is nothing else to love, just as there is nothing else to believe. 

When Karl Barth, the greatest known theologian in the world of the last century, came to America in the 1950’s, a skeptical reporter asked him, “Sir, you’ve written many great volumes about God, but how do you know it is true?”  Barth only thought a brief moment and said,  “Because my mother told me so.”   You could revise that song to say, ‘Jesus loves me this I know, for my mother told me so….”   When you think about it, that is most correct,  because it is love that keeps us believing.    It doesn’t matter how high a stack of Bible’s you have, if you don’t have love---a loving family,  ---loving parents,  ---loving people around you,  and a loving church community---you have nothing.  Nothing is worth believing without love, and love makes just about anything worth believing.  

Lewis Smedes has written that “Love is the power to believe, more than the evidence requires.”  (Love Within Limits, Eerdmans, 1978, p. 100).  Love causes us to look beyond the evidence now available and to peer into the heart of everything.    Until we look deeper into our souls, our hearts, and our heads, we cannot find the way back to trust, faith and belief.  Our lives are lived in such a way that knowledge, truth and reality have become much too shallow.   Without having deep roots, even small storms can do us great damage.   We need go deeper.  We need to think deeper.   We need to drink from a much deeper well.   We need belief that reaches beyond the facts of life and extends beyond the faith we currently have.   Paul tells us that it is love that holds us together so we can deal with the facts and keep the faith, no matter what new experience we encounter.   We can deal with the facts and not lose faith because we know that there is nothing more important that we will ever come to know or experience in life, than what true love has shown us.    When you have love, you believe---and you can keep on believing, because “love believes all things.”    Amen.