049. Many Happy Returns

Our message today is about how God gently calls us back to Him no matter how much we’ve messed up.  The Bible verses we’re using are in Joel 2:12-18 and we’ll read them this time from the Good News Bible.  ---  Way back then, God’s people had turned their backs on Him, but God patiently kept calling His people to return to Him.  The same applies to us today.

Joel 2 verses 12 to 18 in the Good News Bible starts with the subtitle,

Pp     Joel 2:12-18     A Call to Repentance

So here’s what it says in this call to repentance.

Pp          V12    “But even now,” says the Lord, “repent sincerely and return to Me with fasting and weeping and mourning.   V13     Let your broken heart show your sorrow;  tearing your clothes is not enough.”  Come back to the Lord your God.  He is kind and full of mercy; He is patient and keeps His promise;  He is always ready to forgive and not punish.  

Pp      V14     Perhaps the Lord your God will change His mind and bless you with abundant crops.  Then you can offer Him grain and wine.    V15    Blow the trumpet on Mt Zion;  give orders for a fast and call an assembly!  

Pp     V16    Gather the people together;  prepare for a sacred meeting;  bring the old people;  gather the children and the babies too.  Even newly married couples must leave their homes and come.  V17    The priests, serving the Lord between the altar and the entrance, must weep and pray: “Have pity on Your people Lord.  Do not let other nations despise us and mock us by saying, ‘Where is your God?’”    ----

And finally, verse 18, ------

Pp     V18    Then the Lord showed concern for His land;  He had mercy on His people.”

Friends, no matter how much we’ve messed up in life, God gently calls us back to Him.  He calls us back to be re-united with Him.  He wants us to come back and enjoy real joy and peace and happiness.  He wants us to return to Him.

So we’re going to give this message today a title I’ve taken from a preacher called Clayton Bell.  We’re going to call it …

Pp        MANY  HAPPY  RETURNS

So God is asking us to return to Him, and every return is a happy one. ----

----    Jim Carlton was a fairly successful businessman. His father had been successful before him, and Jim had inherited a great deal of business knowledge by helping his father in the family timber business. Jim's parents were also good people. The family business was closed on Sabbath, because of their commitment to a wonderful God who loved them and gave His Ten Commandments in the Bible to be a blessing to them.

When Jim was young he was baptized and his parents promised to pray for Jim and to bring him up to follow the Lord, and they did a pretty good job. Theirs was not an overly pious family, but worship at church was one of their “must-do’s”, and family prayers around the breakfast table were short but sincere--a few verses of Scripture, a short discussion, and a brief prayer about the day's events.

Jim made a personal decision to follow Jesus and also to support his church with his talents, his time and his gifts.  He didn't set any academic records at high school or break any sports records, but he was a good student and did reasonably well.

After finishing high school, he went to college and majored in business and minored in fun.  That was better than some of his classmates, who reversed their priorities.

It was there he met Sally Warren. She was no class beauty, but her spirit of caring, her love of life, and especially her love for Jim hooked him. He fell hard, and they were married a few months after they graduated.

At the wedding ceremony,  the minister asked Jim, "Will you take Sally to be your wife, to live together after God's ordinance in the holy estate of marriage? Do you promise to love her, comfort her, honour her, and keep her in sickness and in health? And forsaking all others, will you keep yourself only for her as long as you both shall live?"  Jim answered with a very positive, “I do.”

Then Jim repeated his marriage vows: "Sally, before God and these witnesses, I take you to be my wife, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better or worse, in abundance or in want, in sickness or in health. I will love and cherish you according to God's plan and purpose until death separates us. To that end I pledge you my faithfulness.” ------

Jim's older brother had already entered the family timber business, so Jim decided on another direction. The timber company carried a modest supply of general hardware items, so Jim's father and brother agreed to break out the hardware trade into a separate company.

Jim found himself up to his ears in nuts and bolts, screwdrivers, hammers, electrical tools, and all the other paraphernalia that go with them. He was also up to his eyeballs in debt to the bank. It was a big day when he secured the loan and signed on the dotted line, promising that he would make monthly interest payments and one annual payment on the principal. And he loved every minute of it, though he was scared to death.

On Jim and Sally's third wedding anniversary, little Jennifer was born. Neither words nor photographs could capture the joy in Jim's heart as he held his precious child. When Jennifer was 3 months old, Jim and Sally met with the minister and received instruction on the meaning of a dedication service. The next week at church, the two parents stood before the congregation, reaffirming their faith in God and promising to teach their child all the wonderful principles God has laid out in His love letter to us – the Bible.  Three-and-a-half years later they repeated this routine with a son they named Jim after his father. --------------

Without either Jim or Sally's realizing it, life was becoming more complicated. Their city was growing. The opportunities for educational and athletic participation for their children were multiplying. Jim was received into the local country club, became the coach of his son's soccer team, and Sally joined a women's Bible study group.

The hardware business provided a comfortable living, but they had to manage around the slow building times carefully. Jim followed his father's habit of keeping the business closed on Sabbath, but because he was so tired by the end of the week it was easy for him to sleep in on the week-end and skip church.

After twelve years, life had become a rather predictable routine. Food, sleep, work, kids, occasional church, and rarely a night out with his wife. -----Come to think about it, why bother? Why bother to take her out? She had gained a little too much weight, and she took him a little too much for granted. And he was noticing how much more attractive some of the younger women were than they used to be, down at the country club pool. His imagination began to wander with his eyes.

Jim had been asked to join a local civic club, and he never missed. They had strict attendance rules, and if he missed too often, he would be dropped from membership. Then the nominating committee from the church asked him if would serve as a deacon, and he agreed but with some misgivings. How could he make all of the meetings and still do his work?

So life became cluttered, predictable, and boring.  ------

Then Jim's imagination, which had been following his eyes, gave way to action, and he had an affair. When Sally found out about it, she sued for divorce. Then Jim's life, which had been cluttered, predictable, and boring, now became even more cluttered, not quite so predictable, and utterly miserable. In the depths of remorse and depression, he went to see his minister and said, "Preacher, how could my life have gone so wrong?"

-------------

How would you have answered Jim? -------------

Step by step, Jim had walked away from God. – He was a back-slider. -  Now a back-slider doesn’t run away from God, or jump away from God. – No, a back-slider slides away from God, just a little at a time.  It seems hardly noticeable.  Step by step, Jim slowly drifted away from God.  The Bible calls a person like that a ‘back-slider’. --------

Now throughout all of history, …

Pp        When God’s people turned away, He called them to return.

-------  The land of Palestine used to be a naturally beautiful land, full of variety and incredibly productive. When the nation of Israel occupied it, according to God's promise, it was described as flowing with milk and honey. God had entered into a covenant, an agreement with Abraham. He renewed that agreement with Isaac and Jacob and Joseph. The terms of the agreement were that God would bless Israel, give them a land of their own, protect them from their enemies, give them victory over aggressors, and bless the land with abundant produce. The people's part of the agreement was to honor God, never enter into idolatry, and keep His commandments.

God raised up Moses to lead the children of Israel out of Egypt into the Promised Land. The Ten Commandments were the basic moral expectations placed upon the Israelites as their part of the agreement. And Israel prospered as a nation, reaching its political and social high point under the rule of King David.

Solomon had peace during his reign, and he held the kingdom together. He added beauty and culture to the land. But there was one flaw in Solomon's reign: he fell into the trap of Middle Eastern royalty, directly contrary to God's clear prohibition against interfaith marriages, and he married daughters of neighboring monarchs for political reasons. They brought their own religions with them and ended up corrupting Solomon and the people of Israel. Idolatry and strange religious rituals lured the hearts of God's people away from the true God and His commandments. -------    Everything went downhill from there.

So God sent his prophets to call the people back to Him and to His commandments. The message of the prophets was sometimes delivered like a preacher speaking to his congregation, and sometimes the prophets would quote God. Listen to Isaiah the prophet speaking for God in…

Pp    Isaiah 44:22   "I have swept away your offenses like a cloud, your sins like the morning mist. Return to me. I have redeemed you.”

Again, Isaiah, looking into the future says in …

Pp     Isaiah 35:10     "The ransomed of the Lord will return. They will enter Zion with singing. Everlasting joy will crown their heads. Gladness and joy will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee away.”

Then the prophet Jeremiah picks up the theme, …

Pp     Jeremiah 24:7     "I will give them a heart to know Me, that I am the Lord. They will be My people, and I will be their God; for they will return to Me with all their heart.”

 Another prophet Hosea continues the theme in his book. …

Pp    Hosea 6:1      "Come, let us return to the Lord. ….He will heal us. …. He will bind up our wounds.”

----   Listen to Malachi, …

Pp     Malachi 3:7    "Ever since the time of your forefathers, you have turned away from My ordinances and have not kept them. 'Return to me, and I will return to you,' says the Lord."

Do you hear the repeated refrain, the repeated word?    Return. Return. Return. Return. --- 

And you know something?    Every return was a happy one. ----

I say happy because happiness was the end result, even though the process of returning may have been emotionally traumatic and led through valleys of tears.

The prophet Joel says, “Return to the Lord, for He is gracious and compassionate.” 

I think Joel in the Bible puts it the most clearly.  …

Pp    Joel 2:12,13      “‘Even now,’ declares the Lord, ‘return to Me with all your heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning.’   Rend your hearts and not your garments. Return to the Lord your God, for He is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, and abounding in love.”

-------  The occasion for Joel's message was an invasion in the land by a horde of locusts— grasshoppers, if you will. And he understood it to be the judgment of God upon the people for their disobedience, because they had forsaken His commandments. They had turned to worshipping idols.

People who have seen a plague of locusts report it is absolutely unbelievable. The sky is literally darkened by the swarming grasshoppers. It’s impossible to walk without stepping on them and slipping. They eat every piece of vegetation, and when they have passed through an area, it looks as if fire has burned it, except it is not blackened by ashes.  -------   Here's how Joel describes it in …

Pp     Joel 1:6,7    “A nation has invaded my land, powerful and without number. It has the teeth of a lion, the fangs of a lioness. It has laid waste my vines and ruined my fig trees. It has stripped off their bark and thrown it away, leaving their branches white. …”

Pp      Joel 1:4     “What the locust swarm has left, the great locusts have eaten, what the great locusts have left, the young locusts have eaten. And what the young locusts have left, other locusts have eaten.”

Pp    Joel 2:3   “Before them, the land is like the Garden of Eden. Behind them, a desert waste. Nothing escapes them.”

------  That is exactly how Jim felt about his life.  Something had come in and nibbled away at his life and left him utterly desolate. The commitment and the love he had felt for his wife and his children had been thrown away. Most of what he had acquired he lost in the divorce settlement. The momentary excitement that he felt in his adultery had been replaced by a

deep sense of guilt. And the good name that he had acquired in the community had been replaced with quiet but deep disapproval and isolation. The locusts of lust had eaten it all. --------

And Jim wept bitter tears of repentance.

-----   If you read between the lines of our text, you’ll see the heartbeat of God--the heartbeat of God longing for the return of His people: “Return to the Lord your God for He is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, and He relents from sending calamity.” --------

You know friends …

Pp   Satan wants us to believe two big lies about God.

There are two big lies that Satan has been perpetrating ever since the Garden of Eden. …

Pp    1.   The first lie is that God is mean, vindictive, a spoilsport whose main role in life is to keep us from being fulfilled and happy--when we step out of bounds, He takes delight in making us pay.

Pp     2.    The second lie is that God really doesn't care what we do--probably doesn't know. And if He does, His business is to forgive us. He’ll always forgive no matter what, so it really doesn't make much difference how we live and what we believe.

----- Most religions err on one side or the other. ----  If you look inside your heart, you may find that you lean one way or the other: "Really doesn't make any difference what I believe or how I live. We don't know what God is like. And if He knows about us, He probably doesn't care. But He probably doesn't know about us anyway.” ------

Or on the other side, that sense of constant fear that is based upon thinking that God is vindictive, a spoilsport--the last thing He wants for us is our happiness.  ------

Friends, you and I can find great comfort in the words of the psalmist who said, …

Pp    Psalm 103:6-14    

"The Lord works righteousness and justice for all who are oppressed. He made known His ways to Moses, His deeds to the people of Israel. The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love. He will not always accuse, nor will He harbor His anger forever.”

Pp      “He does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities, for as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is His love for those who fear Him. As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us.” 

Pp      “As a father has compassion on His children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear Him.”       And I love this:        “For He knows how we are formed, and He remembers that we are but dust.”

------  The truth is that …

Pp       God longs for the return of His children who wander away.

-----   The heart of God longs for the return of His children who wander from Him. When Jesus told the parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin and the lost son, He was saying that God is like the shepherd who leaves the ninety-and-nine sheep in the safety of the sheep pen, and goes looking for the one that is lost. God is like the woman who loses one of ten coins, and she doesn't rest until she has turned the house upside down to find that one lost coin. God is like the father of the wayward prodigal son who rejoices and throws a party when his wandering son comes back home. -----

Can you feel the heartbeat of God in that? Can you understand what God meant when He asked, “ ‘Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has born? Though she may forget, I will not forget you,’ says the Lord.” ------   The longing of God is that we keep our agreements with Him, for He wants to forgive our wanderings and to pour out blessings greater than we could ever imagine.

But God doesn't force Himself on us. He invites us. He who stands at the door of our hearts knocking, will never – let – Himself - in.    He loves us but He won’t force Himself into our lives.  We have to open the door.

In conclusion, when Jim looked back over his life, he was struck by all the agreements he had made—the promises he had made that he hadn't lived up to. The report card of his life was rather dismal.

The agreement that he had made with God when he took Sally as his wife for better or for worse, richer or poorer, in sickness or in health, forsaking all others keep yourself only for Sally— What was on his report card?   An ‘F’ for FAIL.

The covenant that he had made when he stood with Sally and the children in baptism to pray with and for them and to teach them the truths about Christian faith and to live before them an example that will make them want to follow Jesus Christ—F.

The vows he had taken when he joined God’s church, vows to support the church by his attendance and his time and his money and his other talents—F.

But what promises had he kept?

He kept his promise to the bank to pay his interest and his loan.

He kept his promise to the country club to pay his monthly bills on time--after all, the embarrassment of having his name posted up when he was delinquent in his dues was pretty strong incentive.

He kept his promise to the civic club. He was there every week.  

Suddenly Jim realized where he had gone wrong. His preacher didn't even have to tell him. He had taken seriously only his financial and social obligations. He had not taken seriously his covenant with God. And there in the quietness of his minister's study he wept; he wept tears of remorse and repentance. And he claimed the forgiveness of his heavenly Father. -----

And it was a happy return. -------

The rest of Jim’s life has not yet been written. Will Sally take him back? Will his children love him again? When a person sows wild oats, God doesn’t usually allow a total crop failure. But at least Jim has returned to where he should have been in his relationship to God. ----- There are some things about our past we simply can’t undo--you can’t unscramble eggs. But you can start where you are and go back to God and to the promises that you had made.  -------

Where are you in your relationship to this heavenly Father who wants so badly to bless you beyond all human imagination? -------

Please stand while we pray to our wonderful God.

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