The Anti-Blessings of God
June 14, 2020*
By Pastor John Partridge
Genesis 18:1-15 Matthew 9:35 – 10:23 Romans 5:1-8
How would you feel if you prayed that God would protect you and pour out blessings on you, and what you got was trouble, suffering, and pain? Would you feel protected and blessed?
What if you prayed, in the middle of your pain, for the suffering to end, and it just kept going, and going? Would you feel as if God answered your prayers?
And imagine that you spent your entire life praying for God to answer one specific prayer, one that everyone around you seemed to have answered, and after a lifetime of prayer, you gave up simply because the answer to your prayer was no longer even possible. Would you feel blessed?
Contrary to what we might want, and contrary to what some television preachers might tell you, God isn’t a genie that dispenses wealth and happiness in answer to our prayers like some kind of cosmic vending machine. God is more complicated than that just as our lives are more complicated than simplistic sayings like “earning a living” and “raising a family.” Life can be hard, but we worship a God who understands our needs better than we do and who dispenses blessings that are far more complex than those things for which we might have asked. Rather than giving us things that we think we want; God blesses us with gifts that he knows we will need. Unfortunately, we often find that these “anti-blessings” are gifts for which we would never have prayed and are gifts that we didn’t want.
In Genesis 18:1-15, we hear the story of how Abraham met God, and was given a gift for which he and Sarah, his wife, had prayed for decades. But now, as Abraham and Sarah had given up on that prayer, after both were long past the age of having children, God begins the fulfillment of an almost forgotten promise.
18:1 The Lord appeared to Abraham near the great trees of Mamre while he was sitting at the entrance to his tent in the heat of the day. 2 Abraham looked up and saw three men standing nearby. When he saw them, he hurried from the entrance of his tent to meet them and bowed low to the ground.
3 He said, “If I have found favor in your eyes, my lord, do not pass your servant by. 4 Let a little water be brought, and then you may all wash your feet and rest under this tree. 5 Let me get you something to eat, so you can be refreshed and then go on your way—now that you have come to your servant.”
“Very well,” they answered, “do as you say.”
6 So Abraham hurried into the tent to Sarah. “Quick,” he said, “get three seahs [about 36 pounds] of the finest flour and knead it and bake some bread.”
7 Then he ran to the herd and selected a choice, tender calf and gave it to a servant, who hurried to prepare it. 8 He then brought some curds and milk and the calf that had been prepared and set these before them. While they ate, he stood near them under a tree.
9 “Where is your wife Sarah?” they asked him.
“There, in the tent,” he said.
10 Then one of them said, “I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah your wife will have a son.”
Now Sarah was listening at the entrance to the tent, which was behind him. 11 Abraham and Sarah were already very old, and Sarah was past the age of childbearing. 12 So Sarah laughed to herself as she thought, “After I am worn out and my lord is old, will I now have this pleasure?”
13 Then the Lord said to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh and say, ‘Will I really have a child, now that I am old?’ 14 Is anything too hard for the Lord? I will return to you at the appointed time next year, and Sarah will have a son.”
15 Sarah was afraid, so she lied and said, “I did not laugh.”
But he said, “Yes, you did laugh.”
God visits Abraham decades after he changed his name from Abram, which means “father of many,” to Abraham, which means “father of nations.” By the time of this visit, Abram and Sarah are in their eighties or nineties, or as the passage notes, “already very old, and Sarah was well past the age of childbearing.” And yet, God honors his promises, and when the visitor returns a year later, the impossible has happened and Sarah, the octogenarian, has given birth to a son named Isaac. This is amazing, and miraculous, but imagine the pain that the two of them endured for generations. Imagine introducing yourself as “the father of nations” but having no children. Why did God allow that to happen? Isn’t the creation of these circumstances extraordinarily cruel? What could God possibly have had in mind?
We will come back to that, but now, let’s consider the instructions that Jesus gave to his disciples, and the warnings that he gave them, and us, at the same time in Matthew 9:35 – 10:23.
35 Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness. 36 When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. 37 Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. 38 Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.”
10:1 Jesus called his twelve disciples to him and gave them authority to drive out impure spirits and to heal every disease and sickness.
2 These are the names of the twelve apostles: first, Simon (who is called Peter) and his brother Andrew; James son of Zebedee, and his brother John; 3 Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus; 4 Simon the Zealot and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him.
5 These twelve Jesus sent out with the following instructions: “Do not go among the Gentiles or enter any town of the Samaritans. 6 Go rather to the lost sheep of Israel. 7 As you go, proclaim this message: ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ 8 Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have received; freely give.
9 “Do not get any gold or silver or copper to take with you in your belts— 10 no bag for the journey or extra shirt or sandals or a staff, for the worker is worth his keep. 11 Whatever town or village you enter, search there for some worthy person and stay at their house until you leave. 12 As you enter the home, give it your greeting. 13 If the home is deserving, let your peace rest on it; if it is not, let your peace return to you. 14 If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, leave that home or town, and shake the dust off your feet. 15 Truly I tell you; it will be more bearable for Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town.
16 “I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore, be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves. 17 Be on your guard; you will be handed over to the local councils and be flogged in the synagogues. 18 On my account you will be brought before governors and kings as witnesses to them and to the Gentiles. 19 But when they arrest you, do not worry about what to say or how to say it. At that time, you will be given what to say, 20 for it will not be you speaking, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.
21 “Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child; children will rebel against their parents and have them put to death. 22 You will be hated by everyone because of me, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved. 23 When you are persecuted in one place, flee to another. Truly I tell you, you will not finish going through the towns of Israel before the Son of Man comes.
When Jesus saw the crowds, he had compassion on them because he saw people who, like sheep, were lost, aimless, alone, and suffering from a total lack of unity. To combat that isolation, Jesus sent the disciples into the world to cast out spirits and heal the sick. And while that sounds a bit like sending gallant knights on a brave quest, this blessing, and these gifts, come with a warning that would turn your hair white. Jesus warns the disciples, and us, that the world isn’t going to be appreciative or grateful for the message that we carry. Instead, Jesus frighteningly compares those that carry the message of the kingdom of God to sheep among wolves. The disciples are warned that they will be arrested, judged, hated, beaten by their own churches, persecuted, and made homeless when they do what he has sent them to do. But, at the same time, they will be given gifts from God, be accompanied by God, and be used by the Spirit of God.
These anti-blessings are gifts that none of us want. Jesus isn’t promising that his followers will have wealth, comfort, happiness, and career advancement. He is promising misery, suffering, pain, and death. These are not the things that you would find on a recruiting poster, these are the things that wake you in a cold sweat run screaming into the night.
And so again, just as we did with Abraham, we ask ourselves, “What could God possibly have in mind?”
We find some of the answers in Paul’s letter to the church in Rome (Romans 5:1-8).
5:1 Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2 through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. 3 Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4 perseverance, character; and character, hope. 5 And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.
6 You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. 7 Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. 8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Paul explains to the church that the things we find through our relationship with Jesus aren’t wealth, prosperity, and comfort. What we find in Jesus… is peace with God. Paul says that if we want to learn perseverance, we learn it through suffering. If we want to build character, we build it through persevering through suffering. And if we want to find hope, we find it while we are journeying through suffering and building character. If you ask someone if they would like to learn patience, most will say yes. But we all know that the only way to learn patience, is to live through difficult circumstances that require it. The same is true here. While everyone wants to have hope, and character, the path we follow as we learn them takes us through dark places that are filled with pain and suffering.
So why did God allow Abraham and Sarah to endure, and suffer, for fifty or seventy years while they waited for God to fulfill his promise? Perhaps it is because God needed a man and woman with a specific set of skills and gifts to be the parents of Isaac. Perhaps God needed parents with perseverance, character, and an abundance of hope. God called Abraham and Sarah to be the parents of his new nation, but first he needed them to become the kind of people that Isaac, Israel, and the world, would need.
The same applies to the disciples and to us. God calls us as we are, but to do the work that he has called us to do, it is often necessary for us to become the people that he needs. And the journey from where we are to where God need us to be often passes through pain and suffering so that we can learn perseverance, character, and hope.
So yes, God just might be answering your prayer for his blessing when you are on the receiving end of trouble, suffering and pain.
And yes, when your suffering lasts longer than you had hoped, and even long after you prayed for it to end, God may just be answering your prayer in ways that you hadn’t expected.
While none of us wants these kinds of anti-blessings, God might just be allowing them today so that we can become the people that he needs tomorrow.
Have a great week everybody.
You can find the video of this worship service here: https://youtu.be/8ywdXlDfGjI
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