180909 Sermon on 1 Kings 17:8-16 Matthew 6:24-34, September 9, 2018 (Trinity 15)

180909 Sermon on 1 Kings 17:8-16 Matthew 6:24-34, September 9, 2018 (Trinity 15)

Psalm 14 begins with a line that perhaps you are familiar with: “The fool has said in his heart, ‘There is no God.’”  I’ve heard this line quoted by Christians when they are engaging atheists who promote the idea that there are no such things as gods—that everything has come about by chance from eternally existing matter.  According to King David, the composer of this psalm, they are fools because they explicitly say, “God doesn’t exist.  There is no God.”  But what David means with this sentence is by no means exhausted by only applying it to outright atheists.  That is way too restrictive of an application.  The fools that David is speaking about here are not just a few militant atheists.  He is speaking about all people as they exist by nature and according to their old Adam.

Perhaps you are thinking, “That doesn’t describe me.  I don’t say that God doesn’t exist.  No such words have ever come out of my mouth.”  And I don’t doubt that.  Probably nothing so wicked has ever been said by you.  But King David does not say, “The fool has said with his mouth, ‘There is no God.’”  Rather he says, “The fool has said in his heart, ‘There is no God.’”  David is speaking about an internal reality—in the mind and in the soul.  That is something quite a bit different.  There are a whole lot of evil things that we hide in our mind and soul and we do not broadcast it to the entire world with our mouths.  If people knew everything that went on inside our heads we would all lose our good names and our good reputations.  We would have no friends and our families would be offended by what we have thought about them from time to time.  Really only a very small portion of what goes on in our heads makes it to our mouths.  The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.”

But again, you are probably still not convinced that you are actually guilty of this kind of thing.  I’ll try to show you that you are indeed a fool by asking you just one question: “Why do you sin?”  Why have you and why do you do what you know is wrong?  If you were smart you would know that there is a God who sees all and knows all and hates every trespass and every disobedience and therefore punishes those who commit sin.  In the end, nobody gets away with anything.  Even if we are not punished eternally in hell for our sins because of the intercession of our Savior Jesus, at the very least we will still endure bitter shame and heartache for all that we have done.  Sin never helps anybody.  It might seem as though it gives you some advantage or some fast fleeting pleasure, but we cannot escape the punishment that is due.  God threatens to punish all who break his commandments, therefore we should fear his wrath and not do anything against them. 

Smart people would avoid sin at all costs.  Fools say in their hearts, “There is no God.  I will be helped and blessed and happy even though I know this is wrong.  Everything will turn out fine in the end.”  We are no different than our first parents, Adam and Eve, who saw that the fruit looked delicious and that it held out promise for making them wise.  So they disregarded God in their hearts, took the fruit, and ate it.  You have all had similar experiences where your desire overruled your awareness of God and his will.  It’s almost like Satan blinds us and makes us deaf so that we become utter fools who believe that God does not exist.

So you should all be able to see that you are fools who have said in your hearts, “There is no God.”  The only other alternative is that you have had a perfect awareness of God and his commandments and have never done anything against them.  And I know that isn’t true of any of you.  But today, because of the readings we have, I’d like to consider a little different way that we act as though there is no God in another realm.  We all know of our failings morally.  Explicit transgressions come to mind.  But what about our day to day life?

In our Old Testament reading Elijah meets a widow in the town of Zarephath.  There wasn’t any social security back then, so widows and orphans were greatly affected by the loss of income that the man of the house otherwise would have provided for them.  The woman and her son were poor.  On top of that, God had afflicted the land with a terrible, scorching drought.  Shortages of food hit the poor first, because they aren’t able to afford the high prices that the scare commodities are going for.  Elijah asks the widow for some water, which she is happy to supply, but then he also asks for some bread.  That’s a problem for her.  She doesn’t have any to spare.  Her situation is so desperate that she was gathering the fuel necessary to have one final meal with her son.  But Elijah tells her to make some for himself first, and then fix something for herself and for her son.  He promises that God will not allow her flour or oil to run out before the drought has been lifted.

You have to take this woman’s situation very seriously in order to see how difficult it would have been to comply with what Elijah was asking of her.  None of us have been even close to the situation she was in.  Essentially she was being asked to take the food out of her dying son’s mouth to feed this prophet.  How could she know that he was speaking the truth?  And why couldn’t Elijah have produced some flour and oil in advance, instead of eating first and supply later?  Common sense and reason would have told her that this is foolhardy, but she put her trust in the Lord.  She was flesh and blood like any of us, and so she would have had the same thoughts that we have, but perhaps unlike us she believed that the Lord was God, that he exists, and that she would not be disappointed for putting her trust in him.

In our Gospel reading Jesus is preaching the Sermon on the Mount.  He is telling the people that they should not worry about what they will eat or what they will drink or what clothes they might or might not have.  God clothes the grass of the field and feeds the birds of the air.  Will he not much more cloth and feed you, O you of little faith?

Theoretically at least, I think all of you would acknowledge that what you have comes from God.  It’s similar to the way that I think all of you would acknowledge that God exists.  But what is going on in the heart, and what is being played out in your actions?  That’s a different story.  Truly believing that God exists means that you do not need to fret and scheme and covet like the Gentiles do in order to get ahead in life.  You don’t need to just think about your own pocketbook and your own wealth—fighting for every last cent that you can get or that you can keep.  When you believe that God exists, and that he actually does stuff, you can be set free from your foolish belief that your wellbeing is all up to you and your actions, and so you better get as much as you possibly can.

Practically speaking, what does this mean?  To speak generally, believing that God exists and that he does stuff means that you can afford to be generous.  You don’t have to get the lowest price that you can possibly get when you are buying stuff, and you don’t need to get the highest price that you can possibly get when you are selling stuff.  The content of the Law is that we are to love our neighbor.  We can and we should love our neighbor when we are buying and selling.  We should do our best to find a fair price, and if we have to err, then why not err on the side that is to our neighbor’s benefit instead of our own?  Of course it goes without saying, then, that we should not lie or deceive so that we can get more for ourselves.  For example, if your mechanic says that your car is going to blow up within a few thousand miles, then you better not hide this from the one to whom you are selling your lemon.  For most people it is a terrible temptation to keep their mouth shut so that they can get as much as they possibly can.  Fight against this, for it is nothing other than greed.  It isn’t business savviness or smarts.  It’s just good old fashioned greed masquerading as virtue and honor.

But, you might say then, “Won’t I go broke if I live like that?  Won’t I go broke if I am always looking out for my neighbor’s interests more than for my own?”  Well maybe now Jesus’s words might take on a whole new meaning for you: “Do not be anxious about what you will eat or what you will drink or what you will wear.  Seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be added unto you.”  What good does it do you to say with your mouth that you believe that God has given you all your stuff, but to believe in your heart that he doesn’t do a darned thing and that it’s all up to you to scrimp and steal?  It is not enough just to say in our heads that we believe that God exists.  We have to be prepared to be like that widow of Zarephath, who was generous even though she had so very little because she put her trust in the Lord.  That widow was not a fool, even though many people would think that she was foolish for what she did.  She was wise as she waited on the Lord.

Living in such a way where we wait upon the Lord and put our trust in him does not necessarily mean that we will be filthy stinking rich.  Consider this woman’s life.  She lived paycheck to paycheck, you might say.  She still had to pray daily that God would give her her daily bread, day by day.  But she was richly blessed in ways that are not always so easy to see with the naked eye.  Surely, she was blessed spiritually with healing for her unbelieving heart.  And although she didn’t have the nicest stuff, she always had enough.  God did not let her go hungry.  That is something that we can count on for ourselves as well.

Living generously while also living frugally is the Christian way.  St. Paul says that godliness with contentment is great gain.  And don’t be put off by those who say that this is a foolish way to live—that you have to claw your way to the top of the heap or else you won’t have anything.  They don’t believe that God exists and that he does stuff.  God is able to make it so that the bin does not go empty and the jug does not run dry.  He can stretch your meager paycheck like you wouldn’t believe. 

How so?  There are countless ways, but I will give you a few specifics so that you can see what I’m talking about.  He can make it so that you don’t have to do car repairs or house repairs.  He can make your lawn mower run longer or bring some new ventures for income to your door.  On the other hand, God is also able to empty your pockets very efficiently of all that you have worked so very hard to get.  He can find stuff that you will need to spend your money on until you are more impoverished than you would have been if you lived more generously.

At the end of the psalm with which we began today where King David is speaking about us fools who say in their hearts that there is no God, there is an interesting statement that is applicable to what we have been talking about today.  He says to these fools: “You shame the counsel of the poor because he puts his trust in the Lord.”  The worldly wise, the high and mighty, think that it is sheer stupidity to believe that God will give you what you need to eat and drink and what to wear.  They believe that nobody gives it to you, you have to take it.

And so there will always be this conflict between the unbelieving and the believing.  Unbelievers will think that the actions of the poor Christians are foolish.  The poor Christians, for their part, have learned about their own unbelieving foolishness that makes them no different from the unbelievers, but they have been enriched by God with knowledge of him and his good will towards.  Therefore the Christians will say of those who live as though their greed is what blesses them that they are being foolish.  Each side calls the other foolish.  And you can’t ride the fence.  You must either side with the worldly wise or with the simple believers.

This conflict won’t be sorted out until Judgement Day, when everything will be revealed.  That is when all people will see that our God is wise and generous beyond belief—that he gives daily bread to everyone without our prayers—even to all evil people.  Then the unbelieving will see that they have been tricked by the devil to believe that they would be better blessed by disobeying God’s commands rather than by following them.

See to it, then, that you do not remain a fool who says in his heart that there is no God.  There is a God and he means business.  Knowing him and trusting him is more beneficial and more precious than mountains of silver and gold.