Fairhaven Sermon 6-16-2024

Well, we have quite a few red letter days this week. First and foremost, as we said before, Happy Father's Day to all the dads. We also celebrate tomorrow the birthday of John Wesley, without whom we would not be here today. And later on this week, Thursday the 19th is Juneteenth.

Of course, our partnership will be celebrating that as mentioned before on Saturday at Hilltop, Juneteenth is actually the 19th, and the 19th is also the 60th anniversary of the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. And then the following day, June 20th, is the first day of summer, which if the weather predictors are right, we will be knowing that it's summer by next Thursday. So we have quite a week ahead of us. For today, though this being Father's Day, I thought it might be good to consider the question, What does it mean to be a man of God? And of course, I personally have no firsthand experience with this.

So I'm going to have to rely on the Word of God, which is always a good foundation. The question, What does it mean to be a man of God? Also I think follows up very well on Cindy's sermon from last week. She spoke in part about the fact that leaders who serve God flourish, while those who seek their own gain falter. And she spoke about the need for all of us to discern between godly men and ungodly men and also discern truth from lies in the public square.

And she also talked about our need to be personally responsible to God for our integrity. And her conclusion, that we should not lose heart, but rather fix our eyes on God, is both solid advice and timely, a timely word. And so in our scriptures for today, we can see these things working out in real life situations. So what is a man of God like? What are his characteristics? We'll take a look at the readings that Kelly just read, from the prophet Samuel, and from David as a shepherd king, and then Jesus, of course, as our teacher and Savior.

We'll start with Samuel. So Samuel's name literally means God has heard. That's how it translates. His mother named him this because God heard her prayers for a son.

And Samuel's life reflects the truth that God hears people's prayers. Samuel is a godly man, and we see this first in the fact that he is sympathetic to others, in this case, towards King Saul. In today's reading, we hear God commanding Samuel to anoint David as the next king of Israel, which was a very difficult thing for Samuel to do. First off, to anoint a king while another king is still living could well be considered an act of treason, and this is not something that was in Samuel's character to do.

And on top of that, Samuel liked Saul personally. He wanted Saul to be a good and godly king. But when Saul deliberately disobeyed God's commands, God told the prophet that Saul's kingship was over. And Samuel, being a loyal friend, was deeply grieved at this.

So Samuel's heart was very faithful to his friendship with Saul, even though, as it turned out, the two men never saw each other again in the land of the living. The next thing we notice about Samuel is that he communicates openly and honestly with God. Samuel is very upfront with God. And this is not always easy, because God is perfect and we human beings are not.

God is all-powerful and we are not. People tend to be a little bit shy around the Almighty, because God is so much bigger and better than we are. But Samuel is not afraid. He is confident in God's love.

And because of this, Samuel does what God tells him to do. He says yes to God. God says, Go and anoint the next king. And Samuel, as much as it pains him, he doesn't argue.

He does, however, ask for more information. He says to God, basically, How can we do this safely? Because if Saul finds out, he will kill me. Which is likely true. But notice that Samuel does not say to God, Please find someone else, or If I do this, I'm going to die.

Instead, Samuel asks for guidance, and then he listens to God's answer, and then does it, both for his own safety and for the sake of the nation. And then Samuel acts with discretion and wisdom. He travels to Bethlehem. He leads a time of worship, as God has instructed him to do.

And the people praise God, and everyone is safe. If Samuel had come to Bethlehem instead and said, Don't tell anyone, but God has told me to anoint David as the king, it probably would have started a civil war. But instead, Samuel speaks peace to the people of Bethlehem, and his real assignment is carried out quietly behind the scenes. We also see Samuel continuing to listen to God's voice as he meets the sons of Jesse, one after the other.

As Samuel meets each young man, God says, Nope, not this one. Nope, not this one either. And finally, Samuel asks, Is this all of your sons? When he's told there's one more, he says, Bring in the youngest, please. And at last, the shepherd king stands before Samuel, and God says, Anoint this one.

Samuel was a servant of God for his whole life. And for all of us, the younger we start serving God, the better. As the old saying says, one of the greatest gifts that we can give our families and our friends and the world around us is a long faithfulness in the same direction. Samuel served the people and God with honesty and discretion and wisdom for his entire life.

And so next we come to David. We meet David both in Samuel's story and as the author of our psalm for today. Now in Samuel's story, we don't actually hear David say anything, but David is caring. We meet him as a young man who has spent most of his life caring for sheep.

And caring for sheep is a common occupation in the Bible. From a social standpoint, shepherds were usually considered to be sort of the bottom rung of the social ladder because their work was hard and dirty and smelly. And it's important to remember that Jesus was called both the son of David and the good shepherd. So if David and Jesus were both good shepherds, and they were, what makes a good shepherd? What does it take to be a good shepherd? Now I don't know any shepherds personally.

I don't know about you, but I figured that was a good question for Google. So out to Google I go and say, What are a shepherd's qualifications? And I was taken to a website written by a working shepherd, and this shepherd named seven things that shepherds need to be, seven qualifications, the seven things they need to be. First off, he said, Tough at heart, because not hard-hearted, but he said, Tough in the sense of being courageous and ready and able to fight off predators. He said, and David himself describes in the Scriptures some of the times that he fought off bears and lions using nothing but a slingshot.

Today shepherds have more sophisticated tools than that, but they still need to be brave and strong in order to defend the sheep. He said, Secondly, they need to be willing to work hard. Shepherds provide food for dozens of sheep at a time, and sheep food is physically heavy to handle. And shepherds also, when sheep get stuck somewhere, sometimes have to pick sheep up bodily and carry them to safely.

So the job is physically demanding. He said, They need to be humble. He said, Even the best shepherd will face hard days and difficult life and death decisions. He says, They need to be willing to learn new things.

He said, Shepherding takes you out of your comfort zone. He said, You need to have great physical endurance. He said, Staying with the sheep in all kinds of snow, rain, sleet, keeping them alive under those conditions. He said, They have to have the ability to observe, to get to know the habits of each sheep personally.

The sheep also know their shepherd as well as sort of a real personal relationship. And then last he said, You have to have the patience of a saint because sheep will try your last nerve and then again on the next day. So a shepherd needs to be tough, a hard worker, humble, willing to learn, great physical endurance, ability to observe and be patient. And David used his time as a shepherd to develop all of these qualities.

And he also developed a profound, intimate, personal relationship with God. David understood that God does all these shepherding things for us. And David reflected God's character when he cared for his sheep. And in addition to this, David knew how to keep a confidence.

His anointing by Samuel to be the next king had to be kept a secret until God's timing was right. And as things turned out in David's life, he defeated Goliath. He ended up entering the service of King Saul as a soldier and as a musician and as the king's son-in-law and as the best friend to the king's son, Jonathan. David kept Samuel's secret for 15 years before he finally became king.

And in all of those years, he served Saul and his family faithfully. And in our psalm for today, David sings the praises of God. This psalm was written as a song for the Sabbath day. So David wrote it for use in worship for a congregation to sing.

And David was a man who knew how to worship. He sings, It is good to give thanks to the Lord, to sing praises to our God most high. Sing of mercy throughout the day and His faithfulness by night. It's 3,000 years later, people are still singing this.

A man of God knows that it's a good thing to sing thanks and praise to God. Then last but never least, we come to Jesus, who is known as the son of David, born in the city of David, Bethlehem. As a man of God, Jesus teaches God's truth to the people. He teaches by way of parables, stories that make people think and ask questions and really consider God's words.

Jesus teaches about the kingdom of God and He says that God's kingdom is like a mustard seed. Now I don't know about you, but I've never planted mustard seeds. I mean, the garden's doing pretty well right now, but mustard I have not tried. But I hear that mustard grows wild in California and out there they consider it an invasive plant.

It can grow up to six feet tall and it's very pretty with yellow flowers, but it grows in dense thickets and basically spreads like crazy. Tough to get rid of once it's growing, they say. Jesus says faith is like that. It starts small and then grows and spreads like crazy.

But we who toss the seeds might not ever get to see this growth. Those of us who follow Jesus, our job is to toss the seeds, the word of God, the story of Jesus, just toss those seeds out there. It's God's job to water and grow the seeds. Our job is just to be faithful in the planting.

And I mentioned earlier that an annual conference that our bishop told us, over 800,000 people in Western PA who have no affiliation with any church or faith, she said, This is it. This is start tossing the seeds. We are not lacking in opportunities. We need to be out there with the seeds.

So we plant the seeds and the seeds start small, small like a young shepherd, small like a baby in a manger. Jesus teaches the people that God's kingdom is real. And it may seem small, it may seem to start small, but it doesn't stay small like that shepherd boy who grows into a king and like a carpenter who saves the world. So what does it mean to be a man of God? Adding all these examples up and putting them together, a man of God is someone who is willing and able to be sympathetic to others, faithful in friendship, communicating openly and honestly with God, doing what God asks him to do, not without questions, but asking questions as needed, listening to God, acting with discretion and wisdom, having made a lifelong commitment to God, speaking peace to people, like a shepherd, being like a shepherd in his care for God's people, singing God's praises, and passing God's truth on to the next generation by tossing the seeds of faith.

Now I don't know that it's possible for any one human being to master all of these things. It's a lot to do, but we can certainly shoot for it. And as we do, when we do, we become a blessing to the people around us, to the world around us, and to the generation that follows us. And so we pray today, Lord, make us faithful.

Help us to be faithful like Samuel and like David and like Jesus to your honor and glory. Amen.