Ezekiel 2:1-5, 2 Corinthians 12:1-10, Mark 6:1-13
July 7, 2024
Every year the 4th of July holiday tends to a nice, relaxing, enjoyable time filled with fireworks and cookouts with family and friends as our nation celebrates its independence. We can only imagine what an exciting day that was in 1776, but the weeks and months that followed were anything but relaxing and enjoyable as the Revolutionary War was in full swing. Determined to crush our nation’s rebellion against them, the British government sent 34,000 soldiers to New York later that July where they routed the Continental Army, led by George Washington. As a result, the Congress fled from Philadelphia, the Continental Army, now low on supplies and manpower, left New York, and the future of America appeared to be pretty bleak. But then Washington took his remaining troops and led them across the Delaware River on Christmas day where he made a surprise attack on the British forces, and against all odds, defeated a larger better trained army and turned the war around.
However, as great as that was, as Christians we have an even more amazing history where Scripture tells us time and time again when things looked pretty bleak, God was still in control as He would equip and send out some unlikely people to carry out His mission to the world. For example, in our Old Testament lesson from Ezekiel, God commissions Ezekiel to go speak to the Israelites as they were living in another country, against their will, because they turned away from God. The Babylonians invaded their country, destroyed the temple and much of Jerusalem, and took them to live in exile in Babylon. At this point there did not appear to be any hope that they would ever return to Israel, and God’s commissioning of Ezekiel doesn’t exactly sound very hopeful as He says to Ezekiel in verses 3-4, “I am sending you to the people of Israel, to nations of rebels, who have rebelled against me to this very day. The descendants also are impudent and stubborn.” Ezekiel’s mission was to encourage the people to turn back to God and believe that someday God would return them to their homeland. This was an impossible task, but Ezekiel did what God asked him to do and as a result some of the Israelites listened and changed their ways, while others did not. However, 70 years later the people of Israel returned to Jerusalem to rebuild their city, the temple, and their spiritual lives. All with the help of a God who never gave up on them and was always in control of everything that was happening, even when things looked pretty bleak.
In our Gospel less from Mark, Jesus goes to His hometown of Nazareth to share the Gospel with them, in particular to let them know that the man they knew as a boy growing up was the Savior of the world, the One who would fulfill the words of Scripture. Even though Jeus performed some miracles right before their eyes as verse 5 tells us, “…he laid his hands on a few sick people and healed them,” the people still rejected Him and Luke’s Gospel tells us that they tried to kill Him. Just imagine how disappointed Jesus must have been to be rejected by people He grew up with in His hometown, and His disciples saw this take place. So imagine how the disciples must have felt when Jesus then sent them out on their own for the first time with the same message. I can’t imagine they were feeling very confident at this moment. If people who knew Jesus rejected Him as the Savior and tried to kill Him, what would complete strangers do or say to them when they shared the same message? Plus, notice the specific instructions Jesus gives to them as they prepare to go in verses 8 & 11, “He charged them to take nothing for their journey except a staff – no bread, no bag, no money in their belts. And he said to them, ‘And if any place will not receive you and they will not listen to you, when you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them.”
I don’t know about you, but when I travel, even on vacation, I always try to pack extra things. I will take extra clothes, in case a shirt gets dirty, or an extra charging cord in case one breaks. Plus, I usually want to look at a map on my phone to see where I am going, and if we have any gift cards for restaurants or Starbucks, I want to make sure I bring those along, as well. But in this situation, Jesus sends out His disciples to share the Gospel message with the entire Galilean countryside with no money, no food, no extra clothes, no hotel reservations, no phones, and no maps. The future of the Christian Church and the faith rested, not on an army, but on 12 ordinary men who struggled with sin, unbelief, and faith. They were going out in small groups of two, to share the message that the grace and mercy of God is found in Jesus. That was an impossible mission for them to do on their own and they knew it, but Jesus was in control and He made it work, even though things looked pretty bleak after the people in His hometown rejected His message.
Finally, we come to our second lesson for today from 2 Corinthians. Jesus has already risen from the dead and ascended into heaven at this point. This text is a letter, written by Paul, to a church in Corinth that is situated in the middle of a well-known sinful city that is struggling with sexual immorality, lawsuits, and false teachers. People were questioning Paul’s authority as an Apostle of Jesus and accusing him of taking the money that small churches had gathered as an offering to help needy Christians in Jerusalem and keeping it for himself. And yet, through all of this, God has not abandoned this church. He leaned heavily on Paul to lead and guide this church and many other churches. But Paul struggled with temptations and sin, he struggled with frustrations and hardships, and he struggled with a thorn given to him by Satan, we learn in verse 7, that never left his side. We don’t know what this thorn was, but he begged the Lord 3 times to remove it, to relieve him of his suffering. But each time God said, “No. My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” The future of this church looked pretty bleak, but this was God’s church, not Paul’s, and God’s grace would be enough to sustain this church. Paul was so impressed with what Jesus did that he said in verses 9-10, “Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”
Throughout the history of our world, and in our own personal lives, we have seen the power, grace, and mercy of our God in the midst of our struggles, weaknesses, and failures. We have rebelled against God as the people did in Ezekiel’s day. We have rejected Jesus as the people in His hometown did. And we have struggled like the people in Corinth did. We have prayed for God to remove suffering in our lives and when it hasn’t happened, we’ve gotten angry and frustrated with God, instead of trusting Him to see how He would use our suffering for good as He did with Paul. We have sinned, we have failed God numerous times, and sometimes it may have seemed like our future with God looked pretty bleak.
But the one thing that the people had to hold on to in all 3 of our Scripture readings was the Word of God. God had promised the people of Israel that someday He would bring them back to their homeland, and He did. Jesus wanted His disciples to trust Him that He would provide for them and protect them when He sent them out, and He did. When Jesus went to the cross, everyone had abandoned Him, even His Heavenly Father, but the one thing He had was God’s Word that told Him, “You will not let your Holy One see decay” (Psalm 16:10). Clinging to that Word, Jesus trusted that His Father would raise Him from the dead, and He did. And in the midst of his struggles, Paul held on to the words of Jesus, who told him, “My grace is sufficient for you,” as he served Him.
God’s Word has been passed down t us, we have been given the gift of faith, but we have also inherited the struggle. The task of living out our faith in the midst of a rebellious people did not end with Ezekiel, and at times it is tempting to give up hope. But I pray that God will remind you over and over again that He has never given up on you. Each day He equips you, as He did Ezekiel, His 12 disciples, and Paul to trust Him and to serve Him, no matter how bleak the situation or the future seems. God will sustain us, until that day when He calls us home to our true homeland – a place with no tears, struggles, pain, sin, or doubt.
