Message 10-22-06

 

Series:            The Bible

Scripture:            Colossians 3:16, 17

 

Title:                                                    The Story

 

 

I want to be able to hear God.

There are days in my life when I’ve messed up and I want to hear that I’m forgiven. And when things are a wreck I want to know there’s someone who hears me when I can’t take it anymore. There are days when everything falls into place and when I say, “thanks,” I want to know that it is going somewhere, to someone.

I want to be able to know God and to know what God’s about… what’s important to God and that the stuff’s that happening here on the planet that’s important to God.

I think we all want that on different days.

 

I think when we get together like this that we want to know that God shows up. I think that the people who come in who haven’t been in church for a while or don’t come regularly, I think they’re looking to hear whether God is there.

 

How do we find responses to those kinds of concerns or thoughts?

 

Well, the first place that most Christ followers turn to is the Book. The Bible is our word from God.

 

Now what’s fascinating to me is that God didn’t give us a list of propositions that we have to prove and believe and he didn’t give us a list of rules and regulations that we just need to obey. People try to turn this book into those things, but when you just read it as it is, you realize that it isn’t a book of lists, propositions or rules.

 

It’s a story. It’s God’s story. It’s not a story about God. It’s a story by God. It’s the story God told so that we could get the responses to our concerns. Isn’t it interesting that God put it into a story form? Aren’t we all about stories?

 

A very long time ago, long before they started writing down the story God began telling the story. He told how he created everything and he set things into motion so that there would be patterns and rhythms. He created everything that we call everything and he said it was very good. That was God’s assessment of you… “very good.”

And he revealed himself to people and he created them so that they could relate to each other freely and could relate to him freely and we’re told that in the infancy of humanity that people turned away from God.

And we’re told that they kept turning away.

But we’re told, and we’re told this right from the beginning, that God came after human beings, that God came looking for a relationship with human beings. We’re told that he began making promises. Just like there’s weather and seasons and the sun rises and falls – God began to speak promises to the people of our planet to let them know that we could trust him.

 

And people heard him. Not everyone paid attention. There were people who were totally into business and the creation of stuff and work and they ended up creating murderers, people who didn’t care about the lives of others. But there were people who called out to God, people who walked with God and people who obeyed God’s guidance. People who created relationships.

It was tough to follow God sometimes because his ideas were so different from our ideas. As we read God’s story we see how people focused on things like the first son born in the family and God said no, I’m going with the second.

He went with the second son of Adam and Eve–Abel . He went with the second son of Abraham – Isaac. He went with the second son of Isaac – Jacob… what was God telling us in his story? What was he telling us about his opinion of how people should be treated? Was he telling us to think about the other, too? Was he suggesting that we think about our neighbor being as good as we?

God kept talking into people’s lives revealing his story right along with promises. He promised Abraham that he would have a family that would bless the whole earth and a land to call his own. He promised Moses and the people of Israel that he would bring them into that land and settle it and watch over them. And Moses started writing down the story of God.

But the people struggled with God. They got their land but they didn’t want God to rule. They wanted a king. So they got a king, but God still did the choosing. When God chose he didn’t pick the one who was first or even second or even seventh. He chose the one who was left out in the fields. He chose the one who still had “boy” written on his face. He chose the one who could hear him and his story.

And it was probably with this one, David, that people began to collect and seriously write down the story God was telling. This singer/songwriter began taking what God revealed to him and sharing it with the people. “The Lord is my shepherd…” And God promised David that there was going to be a ruler from David’s family that would rule forever. What an odd thing to say since people don’t live forever.

And one thing that God revealed to us about himself through David was that God knows us completely. In his life David was a scoundrel and a murderer and an adulterer but God worked with him. God revealed that it is not how good we are that makes the difference. What makes the difference is the relationship we have and whether it is a real relationship or just some we do sort of. What makes the difference is how good God is.

As the story of God was gathered over the years we hear of a man who lost everything and even more than everything it seemed. We hear of women who could never have children and women who had miracle babies. We hear of women who were unloved by their husbands but who created families. We hear of people who hated God, people who gathered hundreds of priests to work against the worship of God and we hear of people who gave their lives up for God.

We hear of people who knew romance and love so deeply it could only be expressed in aching beauty. We hear of people who threw up their hands over life, claiming it all means nothing. We hear of people who were called traitors by their own people because they told the truth about God and God’s heart. We hear of men and women who administered justice, who stopped the mouths of lions, who quenched the fury of flames and others who were tortured and chained and sold as slaves and put in prison.

 

And all the way through this we keep hearing that there is one who is coming. There is this one who will sit on the throne of David forever. God promises that there is one – one who is described as a shepherd, as a servant, as a priest, as a king, as a martyr, as a sacrifice, as a leader, as a judge, as a counselor and father. There is one who is coming we are told in God’s story and then he comes.

 

The story we find in the Old Testament keeps looking forward to the one who is coming. And the story we find in the New Testament keep looking back to the one who came. The story of God revolves around one life and that is the life of Jesus. Jesus we are told is “God with us.” God himself, we’re told, writes himself into his own story to reveal his true nature. In Hebrews we read that we should focus ourselves on Jesus “the author and perfecter of our faith.”

 

The center point becomes the main character of the story. Jesus tells us that he is our authority. He is the one who interprets the story. And the story Jesus tells involves us in the story. The story moves into the lives of men and women who discover that their main purpose in life is to share the story – what they call “Good News”. We have a full and dynamic expression of that in one man, Paul, who tells us that his story was written into God’s story.

 

And so many more people than Paul moved into the story by God, because now they knew that they were part of the story as they are. This is what’s happening here. People are finding out that they are written into God’s story. God is revealing himself to people and they’re discovering they are in the story.

 

Who do we have here? We have children and moms and dads and grandparents and great-grandparents? We have people showing up who have been in this community for ages and we have those who don’t know exactly where they will sleep tonight. We have wives whose husbands don’t love them. And we have moms who are taking care of children they are choosing to bring into their lives – not because they have to but because they know they can make a difference. We have business people who are working hard on trying to figure out how to keep up appearances and struggling with how God deals with all that.

We have adulterers and cheaters and liars and people who are addicted to various drugs or experiences and rich and poor, and they’re all showing up here because they know that they’ve been written into God’s story and they want it to have a good ending.

 

So here’s the next question. And it’s really a silly question once you think about it. Is it true?

 

An interesting thing happened a long time ago. Novels began to appear in the way we think of a novel – a large story – a piece of art. The Bible scholars of the time recognized that there was something similar in the way a novel captures your attention and the way the Bible does. There was something in the way it told the story of people at a different time and it made you care about them as if they were real.   They recognized the similarity but then they held it off at arm’s length. They didn’t want to talk about it because if they suggested that there was a similarity than people might think that the Bible wasn’t true… just the way a novel is a piece of fiction.

 

But then another interesting thing happened and I’m not say there’s any real connection here I’m just noticing that it took place. A man named Truman Capote wrote a book called “In Cold Blood”. It was a novel about a real event. No one had ever done that before. Not long after that, and it may have been just a coincidence, Bible scholars came back to the idea that there was something about “story” that made sense to us. A whole movement called Narrative theology grew up as people reexamined the idea that God worked in “story.” Aren’t we all about stories?

 

What if Truman Capote wasn’t the first one to tell a true story as a story? What if his novel wasn’t so novel? What if God told a story and it was true? It was true and real and told you what happened but it was a story that you could get into, and what if that was the point? What if the point was to get you into the story?

 

And that is the point. The point is to get you into the story. The point is for you to get into the story and for the story to get into you. The point is for the word of Christ to dwell in you richly. It’s supposed to become part of your daily experience so that you’re able to benefit the world with wisdom and songs and gratitude to God.

 

It’s supposed to lead you into gratitude that God hasn’t missed you, that he’s called you and that he’s written you into his story.