This was written for and given at the Wanda UMC on October 20, 2019! The Scripture is from Exodus 34: 1-14…

 

It was the fall of 1965 when Dad bought our 23-acre farm northeast of Edwardsville. We had two small fields in the front where we grew various crops over the years, but the largest part of it, by far, was a Huge, steep hill that ran next to and behind the house and barns, which we divided into two separate pasture areas. Eventually we built a road up and around the back part of the hill and built a small pond on top of it, but most of it was just too steep to do much of anything with. However, dad always liked for things to ‘look’ as nice-and-tidy as possible, so we experimented with ways to mow even the steepest parts of it. The very steepest was at the rear of the property, and a tractor would just spin its tires trying to climb up. We finally found that by hooking-up the sickle mower, which only weighed around 400#, we could drive up around the front of the hill on the field-road we’d built and go straight down that section Very Slowly. The tractor would still slide towards the bottom, but with a little care and common sense it was doable.

My best friend in high school, at Edwardsville, was the youngest boy in a Catholic family, and his oldest brother was much, Much older than he was… So-it-was, that he actually had nieces and nephews close to his age… indeed, the oldest niece was in the same class in high school as We were, and the others stretched out back from there! Through him, I was at their home a number of times, helping with various projects during that time, and even dated the second-oldest girl on two different occasions!

After he and I graduated, That family split-up and I got called to help them move. I suppose it was sometime during that process that I’d invited the second youngest girl and her friend to come out to the farm for a ‘break’! Thinking to impress them, I hooked the big, old hay-wagon up to the tractor and gave them a ride up to the top of the hill in the back pasture, and once up there I thought I’d Really give them a thrill and go down the steep part!

I didn’t think about the fact that that wagon weighed around 15-1800#… a Whole lot more than the sickle mower that we would use to mow it!! At the top, I told them, “OK, the tractor will slide a bit, but don’t worry about it!”, and started down. Suddenly, the tractor started sliding a Whole lot sooner than I had anticipated… and it kept sliding Faster! Since there was a fence at the bottom, I angled it just enough to be able to make that turn, but I was moving pretty-good by then…remember, hitting the brakes would do No good if the wheels are already sliding! And Then… the right wheel went into a small wash-out hiding in the grass, and that heavy wagon on the back just pushed the tractor right on over! I managed to jump off, but the left wheel bounced off of my right leg as it came over and hit the ground, sliding the short distance on to the bottom of the hill.

The two girls on the wagon were perfectly fine, but had had a front-row seat to all of this… The tractor engine was still running, but the controls where buried in the dirt, so I screamed, “Get out of here before it blows-up!?!” They jumped off of the wagon and started running, with me limping along behind them as best I could…

Fast Forward to 2016.

With the coming of the internet and the increased speeds of the computers I was building, I had made efforts, through the years, to ‘catch-up’ with some of the people I knew back in my schooldays! In the spring of that year I had ‘friended’ another person with the same last name as my best friend and his nieces & nephews, and we would ‘like’ each other’s postings from time-to-time. Towards the end of the summer I messaged her and asked if she knew any of the ones that I knew in high school, and she answered, “Do you remember taking two girls out to the farm and giving them a ride on a wagon?”

 

(OOHHH!!) 🙂

 

And so-it-is, we got married that New Year Eves Day!! Now, part of the reason that we ‘rushed’ so to get married was that I had been without any health insurance for some years, and my blood pressure and diabetes was wildly out-of-control and she wanted to get me onto her Military benefits, including Mostly free healthcare. I had told her, up front, that I anticipated that I had 1-2 years to live yet, and she wanted to dispute that! But it was She who had neck surgery that next fall, as well as some other minor surgeries through the winter… Indeed, it was while taking her to a follow-up appointment for one of these at the VA hospital in downtown St. Louis that I asked her, “If you thought you were having a heart attack, where would You go?” And so, after finishing her appointments, I drove to the new St. Elizabeth Hospital in O’Fallon, walked into Emergency, and said, “I either ate something really bad, or I’m having a heart attack….” A week and 5 by-passes later they let me go home again. And two weeks after That I had a case of shingles!! I think That was worse than the surgery!!

But, by spring we had bought a used tractor & mower and I got out to cut her yard, AND managed to get to the ‘shop’ in Wood River to use the push mower over there on occasion. She, though, had still more issues and smaller surgeries, and this last May had her 4^th hip replacement surgery… Which put me into the position of full-time caregiver! The surgery went fine, but her muscles had had to be moved around and reattached, and there just was not enough ‘mass’ to hold that new hip in place properly as yet! One month after the surgery, I had gone to bed on one end of our house, with my phone next to me, while she stayed up watching TV on the other end. I was awakened by the phone ringing, and when answered, heard her screaming in pain and crying for me to come help her! Yes, it had come out, and it was Not a pleasant experience. After an ambulance ride to Barnes, some ‘special’ drugs, and a long night and next day, I took her home and we started the healing again. One month later it did it again!! This time I insisted on going to Des Peres, where they did the original surgery, and in a much calmer atmosphere, she had it put back into place yet again. Needless to say, I was Very uncomfortable leaving her alone to go do chores, or shopping or whatever… and it didn’t help when I would sometimes call and not get an answer! She had a Real Bad habit of leaving her phone in the other room and couldn’t hear it… I Knew this, but the only thing I could do was drop what I was doing and drive back to Troy to make Sure!! In September, her surgeon went back in and installed a different style ball-and-socket that is much more difficult to come out of place, and we started the healing process all over again!

Now, I’m telling you all of this to explain why when my Primary Physician suggested that I might benefit from some counseling, I agreed… and One of the first things my New Dr. suggested was that I write an entirely New sermon from scratch!!! And here we are!

You see, for all of my past accomplishments and achievements, I had hardly written Anything new since around 2009-10. The main exceptions to that were the occasional ‘arguments’ (I liked to call them ‘discussions’) that I would sometimes get in to on Facebook. And if I had not have already known, I would certainly have learned at that time that you can NOT use Scripture to back-up an argument with someone who doesn’t believe in the Bible!! I finally decided that those types of ‘discussions’ were not accomplishing anything but getting me stressed, and so I just quit doing it! But the few talks that I have given here through the years, as well as some I did while at another church, were all reworks of ones that I had given way-back-when. And even though many of them are Very good and worthy of repeating, I needed to see if I still had it ‘in me’ to write a new one!

Let me interject here, briefly, how I often decide what to talk about… A ‘Lectionary’ is a ‘suggested’ rotation of Bible verses, often on a three-year schedule, that will, according to the people who put them together, cover what They consider to be the necessary ‘highlights’ of the Bible. The speaker is in No Way Required to follow these suggestions, and there are several versions of them out there. The one I use, when I choose to, is printed in our Methodist ‘Book of Worship’. What I Like to do is print up all of the suggested verses for a given week and print them, in Large print, to read and ponder their meanings, and how, or IF, they connect, or correlate, to one another.

One of the fairly major accomplishments that I Did manage to get done this summer was clearing out one of her extra bedrooms and setting-up a private office area for myself. I even brought over my ‘main’ computer from Wood River, bought two larger monitors for it, and transferred all of my printers from Wood River as well! And one of the first things I opted to do in my new ‘digs’ was to put together a series of my old articles and sermons into a cohesive story I wound-up calling ‘What We Learn’. So far, I have gone through almost three full reams of white paper, four long ‘sets’ of staples, and a large number of black toner cartridges… I even invested in another new laser printer that was capable of printing both sides of a page without me having to count, separate, collate, and run through manually each page and chapter! For all of that, I have only managed to print and distribute around 50 copies of my ‘book’, and have been working on getting them out for people to read and critique for me. Some of the early copies I passed out here, as I had them, and when Cala went to Des Peres for her last surgery I passed them out to the nurses and doctors as I could. I even packaged several and mailed them to a number of people, including family, of course.

Now, family members swooned over it… as one would expect. And to date, every clergy member and/or preacher that has read it has been very impressed! Both my ‘Primary Physician’ and Cala’s surgeon have read it and stated how well-thought-out and clear it was about the point I was striving to make. But other than that, I am aware of only one person who has actually taken the time to read it, and That person has not had the time to discuss it with me! And I’ve had to ponder the question, ‘Why?’ And my pondering has lead me to believe that it is because it IS so ‘Biblical’!

So when I read these verses from Exodus as the first of this week’s ‘suggestions’, I immediately Knew what I had to talk about… God’s Law!!!

President Theodore Roosevelt once said that, “A Thorough knowledge of the Bible is worth more than a college education.”

As I researched that online, I found a site that had asked atheists what They thought about that statement. One of the kinder ones that I can mention here said that Roosevelt was an idiot for saying something like that, and that anyone who believed it was a greater idiot! I guess that makes me a pretty big idiot… at least in Their sight. ‘Remember what I said earlier about trying to use Scripture to argue a point to someone who doesn’t believe in God, or that the Bible is His Holy Word?

To be sure that people understand what my little booklet is about, I have started adding a ‘Warning’ to the cover… It reads, “Warning! Contains words, phrases & verses from ‘The Breathed Word of God’. May cause behavior, emotional and/or physical changes.” NOW they are forewarned about some of the content!

If you remember the story of Moses and the Ten Commandments, you know that when Moses came down from the mountain and found God’s chosen people worshipping a golden calf as their god, Moses was so angry he threw the stones down and shattered them! But God wanted them to have an actual copy of His Law… It was Important to Him that His people understand and obey that law, and so they needed an actual unchanging copy. So God has Moses make two new stones and come back to the mountain, where God wrote, yet again, the Words that he wanted His people to obey!

In verses 6 & 7 of today’s Reading, the Lord calls out to Moses that He was, “

“Yahweh!* The Lord !

The God of compassion and mercy!

I am slow to anger

and filled with unfailing love and faithfulness.

I lavish unfailing love to a thousand generations.*

I forgive iniquity, rebellion, and sin.

But I do not excuse the guilty.

 

I don’t think enough people believe that last line… “I forgive iniquity, rebellion, and sin. But I do NOT excuse the guilty.”

When Cala’s surgeon talked to me about having read my book, his main comment seemed to be how ‘Theological’ it, and I, was! He said, more than once, how Brave he thought I was to put something like that ‘out there’! I honestly wasn’t sure what he was referring to, and I didn’t want to impose any more on his time than I already had… after all, we were there for Cala’s follow-up visit, when HE brought up the subject of the book! But I suppose he took it as some kind of condemnation of homosexuality… and I have wondered if some others might have as well… But in actuality, Nothing could be Further from the Truth! My book is not about Any sin in particular, but about Reading, Understanding, and Obeying the ‘Breathed Word of God’!

Our ‘Call to Worship’ this morning was another of the ‘suggested’ Lectionary verses for this week… Let me read just verses 5 through 8 from the NIV and see if you can pick out the connection between it and the verses from Exodus…

 

Ps 99:5-8

Exalt the Lord our God

and worship at his footstool;

he is holy.

6 Moses and Aaron were among his priests,

Samuel was among those who called on his name;

they called on the Lord

and he answered them.

7 He spoke to them from the pillar of cloud;

they kept his statutes and the decrees he gave them.

8 O Lord our God,

you answered them;

you were to Israel a forgiving God,

though you punished their misdeeds.

There is a Whole lot more I could say about this, but I’ve already taken too much of our time this morning… Let me just add a short story about last summer’s ‘Annual Conference’ in Peoria…

Due to the vote that the ‘General Conference’ took during the Special session’ held in St. Louis last winter, the Bishop had us all meet Friday evening and discuss some of the ramifications of all of it, and how we thought it might affect the direction of the Methodist church from here.… Eventually we broke into small groups to fully discuss all of it… My group consisted of myself, two younger men who were both Clergy, and four women who were my age or older… just good, solid ‘women-of-faith’! I was Totally surprised by the attitudes and concerns expressed by the women of the group, and so told them this story…

“Suppose I was an adulterer. When that fact became known, would you attempt to rewrite the ‘Word of God’ to accept my sin as OK? Or would you come to me expressing your love for me and concern for my soul if I continued in my sin?” One of the ladies protested, “But That’s in the Bible!” I said, “It’s the SAME Verses!!” They all got a very confused look on their faces… They were strong matrons of their various congregations, but did not know what the Bible says!

And THAT is what my book, and this talk, is all about… We have Lost our knowledge and understanding of the Bible! And because of that we are Far too prone to accepting false teachings that sound so nice that we Want to believe… and just Don’t Know what the Truth is!

I’m sure most of us have heard or read, the saying, “Hell is not full of people that God rejected… Hell is full of people that rejected God!”

You may also have heard that, “When the Bible says “do not lean on your own understanding,” (found in Proverbs 3: 5) the Bible is being serious. Your heart is deceitful, your emotions fluctuate, your understanding does not see the overall, big picture. God never lies, God never changes, God knows all. Trust Him.”

And some years ago I wrote, ““MY God is not fallible! He asks us to love Him above all others, and to love our neighbors as ourselves… He also gives us some guidelines of things to do, and some definite things to not do! However, MY God Is a Jealous God… He does not ask much of us… But what He asks, He demands!! It is NOT given to any one of us to rewrite His Word on any account… To do so is nothing short of the handiwork of Satan!”

In the 8 & 9th verse of our text today we read how, “Moses immediately threw himself to the ground and worshiped. And he said, “O Lord, if it is true that I have found favor with you, then please travel with us. Yes, this is a stubborn and rebellious people, but please forgive our iniquity and our sins. Claim us as your own special possession.”

READ your Bible! Understand what it says! Accept the Love that God has to give! And obey the commands that we have been given! And then SHARE all of that with as many people as you possibly can… because That is Also what we have been Commanded to do!!