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“What are you looking for in a
church?”
That’s how Green Valley Evangelical
Lutheran Church got started back in the fall of 1988. Oh, the first
service was almost a year away. We didn’t have a clue where we
would worship. There wasn’t even any we to Green Valley
Evangelical Lutheran Church. I and my wife, before the church got
started, were members of Mt. Olive Evangelical Lutheran Church. We
thought it would be pretty hypocritical to try to convince other
people they should belong to a church if we didn’t belong to a
church.
After knocking on 500 doors, on the
corner of Eastern and Wigwam, because there was nothing else in Green
Valley south of the railroad tracks, I called it quits. I got a lot
of responses—A Catholic church! A church that doesn’t keep
hitting you up for money! A church with a traditional worship
service. A church with no worship services—“buddy we are the
church for you right now today, you want to sign up?”—I got a lot
of responses, but no answers.
And I started to think, maybe I was
going about this all wrong. I mean, what if everybody wanted a
church that only had Bingo on Tuesday nights? What if they wanted a
church that ran a school, but never had Sunday services so people
wouldn’t feel bad about coming to the church property five days a
week, but shunning it every Sunday? Should I name it Green Valley
Christian Center to cater to everybody who might be embarrassed when
they couldn’t pronounce Evangelical or people who didn’t know
what Lutheran meant? Should we even have a cross in the church—it
might offend some people who might want to get married in our church,
um, worship center, um ministry center!
What counts?
Our text for today tells us
The Lord of the Church Counts
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Numbers don’t count.
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Without Number One.
Incompetent and thoroughly forgetful
Rehoboam, ruler of the Southern Kingdom, Judah, had died and people
had finally noticed his absence enough to make his son, Abijah, king.
Jeroboam, King of Israel, saw this as an opportunity to wage all-out
war against Judah. He assembled an army of 800,000 men for the
campaign to reunite the divided people. Abijah met him with a
hastily assembled conscripted force of 400,000 men of Judah.
What is going on in the heart of
Jeroboam isn’t important any more. We know him well enough to know
a leopard will not change its spots. He is an unbeliever and will
always remain so. But we do have Abijah’s pre-battle speech.
“Jeroboam and all Israel, listen to
me! Don’t you know that the Lord, the God of Israel, has given the
kingship of Israel to David and his descendants forever by a covenant
(4-5)?”
He then went on to list all the ways
Judah was on God’s side while Israel and Jeroboam were bad, bad,
bad. Jeroboam’s side worshipped golden calves as their gods.
Jeroboam’s side drove out the priests of the Lord and appoint as
priest any Tom, Dick or Harry who puts up enough money. But the
people of Judah, “as for us, the Lord is our God, and we have not
forsaken him (10).” They have the true priesthood, the Levites and
a son of Aaron himself serving as a high priest in Jerusalem. Every
day sacrifices are offered to the Lord as the Lord required. God is
our leader, for even his priests are with us to sound the bugles to
start battle. And then he ends his speech with a plea, “Men of
Israel, do not fight against the Lord, the God of your fathers, for
you will not succeed (12).”
Golly, sounds like a lot of those
political speeches a tiny handful of us have been unfortunate enough
to hear—how the speaker’s opponent is bad, bad, bad and he is
good, good, good. Jeroboam’s numbers don’t count. They are
unbelievers. Who knows how many men it takes just to lug those
worthless golden calf statues around the camp? At least Judah’s
priests serve a function—they sound the trumpet for the charge!
And the Temple worship? Well, if it was so hot, why hadn’t Abijah
told his people to knock off all that nature worship that had gotten
started under his father, and continued into his rule? It is
interesting to note that while Abijah is flapping his lips,
Jeroboam’s army makes its final strategic maneuvers and sets an
ambush for the army of Judah, splitting his army up so that half of
them were behind the battle lines of Judah. Evidently the number of
sacrifices daily made in Jerusalem was not going to stop Jeroboam.
The Lord of the Church counts. Numbers
don’t count.
I’ve run across people who swore they
were Lutheran, yet never went to a Lutheran church. I ran across
people who moved out from God’s country, Wisconsin, who were died
in the wool WELS, but as soon as they got out here, they quickly got
a part-time job on Sundays so they wouldn’t have to go to church.
I’ve known people who sleep in church because they’ve heard it
all. Numbers, the outward details of human existence, don’t count
before the Lord of the Church. He is not going to take us to heaven
because we’ve piled up so many hours in worship. He’s not going
to take us to heaven because our family was Lutheran before Luther
was. He’s not going to open his hand of blessing and favor because
we were like two peas in a pod with good-old-Pastor
Wattlesteinbergshkeschmidt back east and golfed with him three times
a week and were on a personal basis with the order clerk at
Northwestern Publishing House and regularly contributed to the
Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary Advancement Fund Annual Appeal Drive.
And it doesn’t count if we’ve got
our name on the membership roster of Green Valley Evangelical
Lutheran Church, and it doesn’t count if we top the list of
contributors to Green Valley Evangelical Lutheran Church, it doesn’t
count if we are on every committee and are at church every night for
every group (even some the pastors don’t know about), it doesn’t
count at all if we don’t count on God. It doesn’t count at all
if we don’t believe. Without faith, that membership list could
just as well be Satan’s passenger list for the next boatload
scheduled for an arrival at Hell. Both Jeroboam and Abijah could
just as well be on that list. And if we only count on what we do,
you and I are on that list.
The Lord of the Church counts. Numbers
don’t count without Number One.
Abijah and company blunder into the
ambush. “Judah turned and saw that they were being attacked at
both front and rear. Then they cried out to the Lord. The priests
blew their trumpets and the men of Judah raised the battle cry. At
the sound of their battle cry, God routed Jeroboam and all Israel
before him. The men of Judah were victorious because they relied on
the Lord, the God of their fathers (14-15, 18).”
When the chips were down, they relied
on the Lord.
To rely on the Lord means to put your
entire weight on him. To lean on him. To let him support you and
carry you. A GI shot in Iraq, passing out from loss of blood, has to
totally rely on his buddies to get him back into the Humvee and stop
the bleeding and get him to the medic to save his life. There’s
nothing he can do—it is out of his hands. To rely on the Lord is
like getting 100% into the airplane, even if you don’t like flying,
and letting them take off without you keeping one toe on the ground!
With God, it’s all or nothing. He demands to be the only one.
And he reveals himself in his Church.
Abijah did have some of that right. Only in the Church does God
reveal himself. Abijah was just confusing the outward church with
the one, holy, Christian Church. Only through believers is that
saving word, the Gospel of our salvation, shared. The clouds don’t
spell John 3.16 out for you on Mt. Charleston. The buoy markers on
Lake Mead don’t mark the way to heaven. Only where believers
gather to hear and learn that Word of God does God reveal himself for
salvation. Only there will people hear the unique message that
salvation is found only in the Lord, not in yourself, not in your
technology, not in your wealth, not in your strength or skill. Lean
not upon your own understanding, the Lord of the Church encourages
us, but trust in me with all your heart and with all your soul and
with all your mind.
But you thought when I said numbers
don’t count without number one, I might be talking about you and
how this church would be such an ordinary place without---YOU!
Well, it would. Without you and you
and you, without you all, this place would make a good echo chamber,
maybe a couple of racquet ball courts. The saving truths of God, as
wonderful as they would be, would leave the angels in heaven saddened
without you and me repenting and believing. Through your faith, the
Lord of the Church will work to extend his Church, to your children
through baptism and continued attendance at Sunday School and worship
services, confirmation class and our ongoing Senior High Youth Group
studies. Through our faith, the Lord of the Church will extend his
Church as you invite others to come and see what you have found about
Jesus, our Savior. Through your faith, the Lord of the Church will
deepen your faith and the faith of others as we gather to worship and
share this Christian life with each other.
The Lord didn’t rout the armies of
Israel that day with thunder and lightning, fire and brimstone, with
hailstones the size of basketballs. He routed them through the hard
efforts of that out-numbered army which, for all their warts and
wrinkles, relied on him to give them the strength to keep on fighting
for the survival of their people and the survival of God’s promises
of a Savior coming from their people.
The stakes are just as high today.
The Lord of the Church Counts
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Numbers don’t count.
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Without Number One.
After all these years, I still find the
church I am looking for, Sunday after Sunday. A church where the
Lord counts and because he counts, he makes every one of our lives
count.
Rev. Don Pieper is a minister in the
Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod. He has devoted his life to
sharing the Gospel of Christ to all of Gods people. For more
information about the Green Valley Evangelical Lutheran Church visit
us at www.gvelc.com
or call 702-454-8979 .
Ask for Pastor Don or Pastor Matt. |
