Howdy. Well this week's been a bit of a busy week. I ended up spending a few days over in Florida.
So for the guys that I missed getting a chance to see on Friday night, a brewery night, my apologies.
I promise you I am more than happy to have a beer with you next month.
But it was a very busy week. Spent a few days focusing on how to train people in an evangelistic mindset.
So how it is that we prepare to gather people beyond just this particular building and just this particular group.
And how to reach out and to bring others to know Christ Jesus and to live that out in their lives.
It was a great opportunity. Plus some of the other Lutheran pastors were there and so it was a good chance to get to know them as well.
Because it's very easy for pastors to get very kind of closed off in their churches.
But while I was out there, I went and saw a friend of mine that I'd grown up with.
He had lived at the camp that I would go to every summer. And he and his wife and their kids are living out in Florida.
So I drove over and apparently they have a deer farm now.
It's a fascinating place. The deer will come up and eat the corn out of your hand.
Apparently they will eat out of my hand but not out of my friend's hand.
So yeah, just a little bit cooler in that regard.
But with it though is this is the guy that I knew that saw me at the times whenever.
I mean childhood is just ridiculously awkward.
And this is the person where we would go out and try to be out and he had a coyote whistle.
And he was like, oh, I want to try to call the coyotes.
And then we realized that they're coming and we're like, we probably shouldn't be out here and ran back inside the cabin.
Or the guy that was constantly trying to figure out, okay, just take the fishing pole, just put it in the water.
And still couldn't figure out why I can't catch fish. So it's not just Luke that apparently can't teach me how to fish.
It's apparently everybody. Nobody seems to be able to teach me how to fish.
And this is the guy where he had a bumper on his car that was flared out.
And his idea was, hey, as long as I just run into a tree, it should be able to shove it back in.
And he tells me five seconds beforehand. I'm like, can you let me out?
Oh no, we're dry. Okay, we're about to hit it now.
Believe it or not, it worked. And believe it or not, I survived.
With it, though, is this is the guy that saw me during these awkward times.
And it also reminded me of what it was like to be at camp.
And turned out that this trip was right before the 50th anniversary of the camp that I grew up going to.
I used to go to Sandy Creek up in the Washington on the Brazos area.
And going there is that, honestly, I always felt a struggle when I'd be at camp.
Because the thing about camp is that I always see that there were all the athletic kids that were able to do all the camp games and everything.
And I'm kind of like, I mean, back then I was not the athletic specimen that you see in front of you today.
Don't laugh that hard. Okay.
Well, you can laugh a little. But with it, though, is I could not keep up with any of those sports back then.
I didn't have friends from the same church going to camp.
So I didn't really know the people there as well.
And it was constantly trying to memorize verses.
There was always somebody better at it than I was.
And so going back to the 50th anniversary in some ways was this thing that I was starting to dread.
Because I'm thinking, great, this is like a high school reunion kind of a thing.
You're like, I don't want to go. Yeah, I don't want to see all those people again.
Well, the thing is, though, is that one of the old campers that I had been a counselor for had found me and said,
I'd like for you to go for this 50th anniversary.
And I'm like, how do you say no?
But then realizing how he had found me is that he had been thinking to himself,
hey, I need to catch up with my old camp counselor, Jason.
And then he was watching a video showing different whiskey tastings.
And he sees this guy on one of the videos.
He's like, that guy looks a lot like my old camp counselor, Jason.
I should reach out to him.
And he started telling me about this.
I was like, is this Scout reviews?
He's like, yeah, yeah, that's me.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
No, my buddies are like, hey, would you like to do whiskey tasting?
And I ended up being the comic relief.
But it went pretty well. And because of whiskey tastings,
I ended up finding my old camp student that was there.
But realizing that that idea of whoever you are, whatever you may be thinking of it,
is going to end up being on display one way or another.
And that ends up being something that you can't avoid.
And that's this image that's in my head when we think about what's happening in numbers.
You see, the people were traveling, they'd already left Egypt.
The people of Israel had already left Egypt.
And they're going from this mountain, I think it was Mount Hor,
and they were going over to the Red Sea.
But they have to go around Edom.
A descendants of Esau.
So there's kind of a weird tension between these groups that are kind of distant cousins.
But as they're going around, the people are grumbling.
They're complaining. They're upset.
It's like, why are we out here? Why are we doing this?
And God is like, fine, if that's the way you want to be.
And he sends fiery serpents that are biting the people.
And some of them are even dying from it.
Now, of course, we are Texans.
We know what it is to be bit by things that make you feel like you're on fire.
Ours are in tiny little ant form.
So, yeah, when you see those things like in a little ball during a flood,
and you're like, do not go near those things.
Apparently, theirs not quite as terrible as a Texas fire ant, in my opinion.
But the fiery serpents biting them are reminding them that they are continuing to ignore
what God has promised and continuing to complain about what it is that he's doing.
So what is it that as they say, please, Moses, talk to God,
there's got to be some way to be saved from this.
And God says to Moses, yes, make a serpent out of bronze and put it on a pole.
And everybody who looks at that serpent will live.
They're not going to not get bitten, by the way.
But they will live through it.
And this seems like a really strange thing.
Why are you putting a graven image of an animal up on a pole that you're supposed to be looking at
and that's somehow going to save you?
But the thing is that there were two parts to it.
One is that as they looked at the serpent, they remembered why they were in that situation in the first place.
It's reminding them of what they had caused to be there.
But second is that while you're being bit by snakes, what's going to save you?
I'm going to look at a pole.
That's somehow going to make it okay.
Well, it is if you actually believe what God has promised.
If you are looking to where God has promised.
That's the thing about this, though, is that oftentimes what we do is we can take the blessings that God has given us
and we can sometimes make them into an idol.
You see, what ends up happening is that this serpent on a pole ends up becoming something that is referred to as the Nuhushetan.
The Nuhushetan ended up becoming an idol for the people of Israel.
The thing with it is that later on they stopped paying attention to that this pole was meant to remind them of their sin
and that they had to trust in God's mercy.
And instead, what are they doing?
The people of Israel ended up later on making offerings to the pole.
Completely missed the point in the first place.
And so what happens is that King Hezekiah has to come and take that pole and destroy it.
Because the thing with this is that what has been used as something helpful can sometimes become harmful in a different context.
You see, it's easy to worship what blesses us and let it be something that distracts us from God.
See, we can sometimes pick things that are in our lives like habits or people or even our personal belief systems.
And we can make those into things that we end up worshiping, that we end up following.
How many times do we end up seeing some sort of a social media influencer which apparently is a job?
I thought that was just made up, but apparently it's an actual career nowadays.
But a social media influencer with a video that is telling you,
Hey, I started doing this every single day and now I'm beautiful and amazing and smart and everybody loves me.
And don't you want the same thing in your life if you would just do these exact same habits, which I can tell you about from 999.
And that somehow whatever they have figured out is going to now magically fix everything in your life, even everything on the inside.
Because of course, as long as you're beautiful and smart and loved by everybody, then of course on the inside everything will be figured out too.
But sometimes also even people.
Is that there may be a person that has genuinely helped us in our life or genuinely said something or done something admirable.
Someone that we genuinely like, Hey, I appreciate this. And then what do we end up doing?
Is that oftentimes we can turn it into now I have to follow along with anything and everything this person has said,
or I have to completely just disregard what I know is right because of who it is that I'm following.
Which it doesn't really matter who it might be, but anyone who says that they're the only one who can fix something who isn't God.
Be wary. Please be wary.
But even our belief systems.
See, we make sure at least within the Lutheran church by and large, there are definitely some exceptions,
but by and large is that we fully believe that we are not going to come up here and tell you how you vote and how your politics run.
Because each and every one of you has a very good reason for why it is you go in the direction that you do.
And for various reasons, that is the direction we don't want to go in.
But what is funny is whenever we discuss something that someone might think is political.
But the thing with this is that we are called to continually look at what we think, what we believe in light of what God is wanting us to consider.
So my hope is that for every one of you is that we're continuing to ask you to look at what you assume to be true.
And what you think must always be good and just pause and say, is that actually what God is saying today?
Whatever your leanings might be.
And that's the thing with this is that we can oftentimes take these things that we trust in.
And we can use them the opposite way of how God has intended them.
See, seeing the bronze serpent was meant to humble the people.
It wasn't a way for them to feel that they were in control.
How readily do we think we're in control and then we get shocked and surprised.
But what is it that God ends up doing?
See, God ends up taking those sins, those issues, those struggles.
God ends up taking those parts of ourselves and puts them up on a pole because he wants us to look right at them and consider what he's doing in our lives.
Oh, he can go back one.
I actually don't like this kid.
I give him a hard time. I don't want to look at his picture often.
Because this kid, whenever I think about him and I remember him and I look and I see that photo in front,
is it's reminding me of someone who kept trying to prove himself to everybody else.
That somehow he thought he would be safe and secure in life as long as he could just somehow convince people to like him.
Whether he was smart enough or he got enough pins or badges on his little Cub Scout uniform,
or whether somehow he could say the right thing at the right time.
That kid kept trying so hard just to make everybody happy.
Or other times whenever I look up and I see this guy,
and this guy who never actually had a lot of self-esteem,
basically would look in the mirror and is like, that guy, wow, why is he such a dumb, ugly guy?
And spent so much time focused on certain individuals in his life to the exclusion of others.
Waiting to somehow feel like he had arrived as long as he thought that he was being approved.
Or this guy.
This guy who has at least a little bit better taste in t-shirts,
who ended up going over there to Montana and ends up somehow offending his friends so much
that he doesn't end up talking to him for about five years.
And then wondering what it was that he had said in the first place that was such a terrible thing.
Or maybe this last one.
This guy here who apparently has worse taste in hats.
But as much as he knew that he was conquering mountains and teaching and leading youth
and was able to somehow manage to find a place in the world,
he still keeps saying, God, I know that you may be doing stuff in my life,
but I could not possibly imagine how you could be leading me to be leading any of your people.
Because that guy couldn't see anything other than the flaws.
And when I look up and I see myself, is that I try to run from those photos
because I don't want to think about those struggles from before.
But the thing with this is that God doesn't have these things here just because they're meant to continue to haunt us,
but rather is because he wants us to look and say, I want you to see what I was doing in your life the whole time.
I want you to know what it was that I was doing all along.
That your flaws, that your struggles, that the things that keep haunting you
were ways in which I was continuing to show myself through you.
And I realized that that was the same thing this last week, is that there I was around some pastors
that I had even graduated from seminary with.
And that out of all these years, that about a decade of it, I hadn't been doing the same work that they had been doing.
And that it was this thing where it was just hard to see it in front of my eyes.
But the thing with this is that it wasn't about any of that.
It was that I was spending my time, as Jesus says in the Gospel, in my mind thinking I'm hiding in the darkness
and that I was afraid of the light.
But the thing about the light is that the light does show everything.
It does make everything clear and apparent to us.
But that doesn't mean that we have no place in it.
What it is, is that God is also now showing this is also what I'm saving you in the midst of and through and from.
And that God is saying that this flawed person is my child.
And I have plans for him and I have plans for you.
And that's the thing about the light and the darkness.
Is that we're not called to now ignore or pretend that all those serpents are never there.
That image, that animal that had continued to haunt us and to strike us from below.
But rather is that Jesus is saying I want you to look and see.
And that's the thing about Jesus being lifted up on the cross is that when we see him there,
we see one of us.
We see in him ourselves, but we then see what's even harder is we see the one that we put up there.
And we took all of that, all of what we have pent up, all the things that we want to avoid.
And we just look to blame someone and we're going to crucify him.
And he says, because I love you, I will let you.
And that's the thing about this is that as we look to that is that we don't just see the things that we wish we could hide from.
But we also see the forgiveness that comes with it.
See, what are we afraid to see?
That God wants to use not only to humble us, but also to bring us to repentance and to true change.
I don't know what it is that causes your mind to struggle.
I don't know what it is that you can't quite get off your mind.
But as much as we think about hiding in the darkness is that God puts right in front of us and says, I see this too.
But I also love this person.
I want you to grow through it.
And I want you to become more of the person I always intended you to be.
So instead of hiding from it or pretending it doesn't happen, may we see it?
May we know it?
And may we change not because we've got it figured out, but because that God who is up on that tree for us is changing us.
And making us each and every day into the person he's called us to be.
Thanks be to God.