Pastoral Letter 69

Dear Members of St. Andrew’s Uniting Church, Friends and Adherents,

Grace and peace to you all.

With God’s grace and having no COVID restrictions, we are not wearing masks, we will be singing during our services and enjoying our fellowship and morning tea after the service. Still, we are not using our hymn books and the pew Bibles, but all the hymns and readings are projected on the screen. We are not certain when our cleaning requirements will be back to normal, but we are glad that our premises are being cleaned regularly every week and sanitised every second week.

We should thank God that we are able to come together and worship.

If you are not planning to come to our Sunday’s face-to-face worship, please join us following the Order of Service that you have received, light a candle, worship, and pray with us.

Next Sunday is the Uniting Church’s 44^th Anniversary and according to our tradition for the last eight years, with the exception of 2020, we are going to have combined service with Lane Cove Uniting here in Longueville. I urge you to make an effort to come and join our face-to-face worship and share some time with our neighbouring Uniting Church.

Please contact me if you need any kind of support or hear about a development with any member of the congregation and continue to pray for our services, programs and activities. Also, if you wish, please make a donation to the Exodus Foundation June appeal.

Krikor

MESSAGE

God Looks to the Heart

I Samuel 15: 34 – 16:13

It has been more than fifteen years that I have been watching the NRL. I love watching the games, and I’m amazed by the players’ abilities and their great athleticism. Being from NSW, we’re happy with the record-breaking win of the Blues. I am sure that in the recent few weeks both coaches were trying to make the right choices in forming the teams. They chose the team according to their appearance and ability. This is done to get the best results when the games are played with the intention of winning the competition.

This kind of action is just one example of how we can begin to believe that appearance and ability are everything! Our culture does everything to enforce this idea, regardless of this notion being false outside the sport domain. Icons, superstars, the wealthiest and most well-known people are those with the best appearance and ability.

Heroism today is all about who others think we are and has very little to do with who we really are.

And yet in the emptiness of our appearance driven society, people are hungering for something deeper.

The reality is that people are looking for someone to look up to. Someone who stands out as being different than the rest of the crowd, not because of their style and glamour but because of what’s on the inside. We’re looking for someone who stands heads and shoulders above the crowd, not because of their appearance but because of their heart.

Over the years the lives of great Biblical characters have been taught from pulpits, Bible Study and Sunday School rooms. But somewhere along the line, many of these “saints” have been elevated to such a point that they are untouchable.

What we all too frequently fail to realize is just how human they were. Rather than their humanity and faults being a discouragement or a warning from imitating them, they should in fact be an inspiration to us allowing us to recognize how much like ourselves they are.

We will look at the life of one of the most well-known Biblical characters. It’s a story of heartbreak, grief, murder, adultery, friendship and betrayal. It’s the story of a man we know as David.

Before we can really get into the life of David, I felt that it was important that we step back and set the stage for what took place in our scripture readings. We need to understand that the Israelite people lived in a day and age in which they were governed directly by God. They had prophets and judges who served as God’s mouthpiece to the people and priests who made sacrifices for the people. But they had no great ruler, as we know, at least not on this earth.

As they looked around at neighbouring countries, they became jealous of them because they all had kings that they could see and they could approach but the Israelites’ King was in the Heavens. Last week we saw that the people wanted a king.

In spite of their prophet Samuel’s warnings about all the problems a King would cause them, the people insisted and so God gave them Saul. Saul was what you would expect in a King. The scriptures tell us that he stood heads and shoulders above everyone else. He was a handsome man and very strong. He was the kind of person who demanded your attention and your respect. He was an obvious choice, and the people were excited to have him.

But Saul failed. It didn’t take long for Saul to begin screwing up. He stopped seeking God’s direction and began taking things into his own hands. The very last verse of I Samuel 15 says that “The Lord was sorry that he had made Saul king.” God literally regretted his choice. And so, the final point as we set the stage is that God chose a replacement. That’s where our story picks up today. We’re told that God spoke to Samuel, the very prophet who had anointed Saul as King and told him to get up and go to the house of Jesse in the town of Bethlehem, where Jesus was born many years later as a descendant of David. Imagine Samuel’s fear. What if Saul heard that he was anointing the next King, when still he was in power? Like in Lebanon in 1988, we had two Presidents at the same time during the Lebanese civil war.

So, God worked out a plan whereby it would appear that the reason for his visit was to worship and offer a sacrifice. Samuel got up and filled his horn with oil which he would use to anoint the new king (the same thing the prophet had done for King Saul) and headed to Bethlehem where he was greeted by the town fathers who are worried because usually the visit of the prophet often brought a word of warning or punishment from the Lord. But Samuel assured them that he had come in peace. And invited Jesse and his sons to worship with him.

We’re not told exactly where this worship occurred or even if Samuel told Jesse and his sons why he was really there but there’s a strong possibility that he at least told Jesse because he had Jesse present his sons one at a time to him. The text tells us that Samuel was sure the first boy that was presented, Eliab, was the one. But God said: “Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The Lord does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” One by one Jesse presented his other six sons and somehow God communicated the same message to Samuel about everyone. I can only imagine Samuel’s confusion as the last was presented and God again said: “No”. He turned to Jesse and said: “Is this all?” There was one more; he was out in the fields taking care of the sheep. Notice that Jesse hadn’t even thought to bring him in. He certainly wasn’t king material. His dad and brothers knew that. But Samuel was insistent and so he was brought into the house and suddenly this young nobody became somebody.

It’s hard for us to understand exactly why David would have been an unlikely candidate for king but let me give you three reasons to help paint the picture.

First, David had an undistinguished family tree. His grandmother was an immigrant and among his ancestors was a woman almost executed for adultery. What kind of kingly lineage was that? His bloodline just wasn’t right.

The second thing that made him such an unlikely candidate was that he was in the wrong place in the birth order. He was the youngest son. In David’s day and age, the birth order determined their lot in life or fate. The youngest child was a very unlikely prospect for success.

And finally, David already had a job. The oldest son when he was of age would begin working with his father on the farm as soon as his younger brother was old enough to tend the sheep. This succession would continue until the last son would ultimately become the family’s shepherd. David’s place in life was already determined. He had a job; he was a shepherd boy and apparently was good at that job from what we’re told later on in his life.

If we had been living in the farmhouse next door to David’s family on the Judean hillside, we probably wouldn’t have even known the name of Jesse’s youngest son. His dad didn’t even think of including him until Samuel asked him if there were any more. Jesse rubbed his beard and said: “Oh, yeah, there’s my youngest. Almost forgot about him.”

The story of David is a story of right seeing. It’s a story which challenges us to look beyond outward appearances to a person’s heart and character. God saw something in David that no one else had seen. The Hebrew word that is used when the text tells us that Samuel looked at Jesse’s sons implies that he looked but didn’t really see. There’s a difference. Samuel, Jesse, and Saul all missed what was ultimately important to God.

Unlike the qualifications we look for when we choose teams on the playground or in the gymnasium, our God looks for something completely different.

God looks at character not appearance. The text tells us that God doesn’t see as we do, but God looks right through our facades and our pretence to see our heart. That should both inspire and frighten us. It should inspire us when we feel that we are judged by others according to our abilities or our appearance to remember that it’s what’s on the inside that counts. And it should frighten those of us who have survived by pretence when we know that what’s on the inside doesn’t match what we claim to be.

God also chooses certain people for certain tasks because God values the will not the ability. God isn’t interested in how much you can accomplish, in how talented you are, what God’s most interested in, is whether you’re willing to do whatever it takes to serve Him.

The truth is, God delights in taking those who have the will, but lack the ability in and of themselves, and using them to bring about the miraculous because, finally…

God sees possibilities when others do not, because we confuse appearance with reality.

The sad reality is that people confuse appearance with reality. They don’t see what really counts because they don’t take the time to look beyond the beauty or lack thereof that is skin deep.

But we serve a God who sees possibility in us when everyone around us tells us we can’t! We, at Longueville, are a good example.

As David was in the fields tending the sheep, I’m sure he had no idea what his future would bring. The reality is the same for us: The future is seldom clear to us. If it were, life wouldn’t be any fun. If I knew what next month would bring then I’d have to worry about it today, and I have enough to worry about today.

The story of David, I believe, points to the truth that God has a plan for our life no matter who we are and what abilities we have. If we place ourselves in God’s hands, He can and will do great things through us.

The key to fulfilment and contentment in life is being who God wants us to be. The key to fulfilment is not money or possessions or good looks. It’s what’s on the inside that counts. When we realize that and open ourselves to what God wants to do in and through us, we can find the abundant life that Jesus promised us.

The story of David and Goliath talks about overcoming the giants in our life. And David, that little shepherd boy was able to do great things. Yes, indeed he failed at some point, but he became the greatest king of Israel. As God’s chosen and anointed king, David achieved a lot and he became the father of Jesus, meaning Jesus being from his descendant and was called ‘Son of David’.

Yes, David didn’t have the required appearance, but had a great heart and God looks to the heart of men and women and not to their appearance.

“For the Lord does not see as man sees; for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart” (I Sam. 16:7).

Amen!