"Mountain Moments, Timeless Truths"

Psalm 95:1-7

 ¹ Come, let us sing for joy to the LORD;
       let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation.

 ² Let us come before him with thanksgiving
       and extol him with music and song.

 ³ For the LORD is the great God,
       the great King above all gods.

 ⁴ In his hand are the depths of the earth,
       and the mountain peaks belong to him.

 ⁵ The sea is his, for he made it,
       and his hands formed the dry land.

 ⁶ Come, let us bow down in worship,
       let us kneel before the LORD our Maker;

 ⁷ for he is our God
       and we are the people of his pasture,
       the flock under his care.
       Today, if you hear his voice,

 

      Dear Friends in Christ,  

   For just a few moments I want to take you back to a time and a place that many of you have not been to for a long while and that some of you may have never been to.  It’s a time and a place where life was a lot simpler and the pace was much slower, where there were no cell phones, no computers, no televisions, which means no ESPN, no CNN, no Cardinal games to watch, no shows like “Survivor,” “American Idol,” “Dancing with the Stars,” or “So You Think You Can Dance.”  In this time and place people seemed friendlier to one another, They smiled more and complete strangers often times stopped and visited with each other as though they’d known one another all their lives.  Without all the distractions I mentioned earlier, couples and families would take long walks together at night, read books, or just sit around a fire and talk with each other.

   I know that it’s hard for many of you to imagine such a time and place, but how far back do you think you’d have to go to find it?  Thirty years?  Fifty years?  Sixty years?  How about a couple of weeks?  For what I just described to you is what Marilyn and I by God’s grace and goodness experienced on our vacation a few weeks ago when we spent 4 days and nights in Glacier National Park in Montana and 3 days and nights in Waterton Park just over the border in Canada.  In the lodge where we stayed in Glacier there were no TV’s in the room; in fact, not even in the entire lodge.  There was no cell phone service – you had to drive about 13 miles to find any.  There was no access to computers so I could check my daily influx of email messages.  The pace was slow, the people were unbelievably friendly, and the evenings were spent reading books or watching a mother moose and her baby splash in the water across the lake or just talking to one another about things that matter most in life.  And our days were spent hiking – 70 miles of hiking during the 7 days we were gone.  And as God has so often done before, he spoke to me on many of those hikes, not in an audible voice, but in that soft gentle whisper that I’ve come to recognize, and he taught me lessons – sometimes in powerful ways, sometimes in amusing ways – that I believe he wanted me to pass on to you.  So this morning and next Sunday, we’re going to be taking a look at six of those lessons as I share with you a 2-part sermon series that I have entitled “Mountain Moments, Lasting Truths.”

   And the first lesson that God taught me on our vacation was this: Expect the unexpected.  Now this happened in so many different ways, from the amount of daylight we experienced where it was light till about 10:30 at night and again by 4:30 in the morning (show picture that Marilyn took at 10:30 of mountains behind our lodge).  It happened on one of our hikes around a peaceful lake called Lake Cameron when all of a sudden Marilyn and I heard an avalanche take place.  We didn’t see it but we definitely heard it.  It happened when we rounded a bend in the road one day and saw this mother bear with her 2 cubs, one black and one brown.  But most of all, the unexpected happened on the way to our lodge from the airport where we went from sunshine to ominous looking clouds to rain, then sleet, then a pretty heavy snowstorm, only to end up at this Mount Sinai looking scene once we reached our destination. 

   Well, every one of us here today knows that life can sometimes throw us some pretty big “unexpecteds,” right?  In fact, the past year, more than any other in my ministry, has been marked by them, from Melba Leuschke’s unexpected mystery illness last December that caused her to become progessively weaker until finally it claimed her life to Jerry Broom’s unexpected infection that resulted from his open heart surgery last October and that has led to six more surgeries since then to Carole Rehfuss’ unexpected cancerous tumor that showed up back in February and has caused all kinds of problems for her to Erlene Hahn’s unexpected complications that resulted from her carotid artery surgery to the unexpected rains that have inundated our area this spring and kept the farmers from getting their crops planted. 

   And while there are many Christians today who feel that they should be miraculously sheltered and exempted from life’s unexpecteds simply because of their relationship with Christ, nowhere in the Bible does God tell us that.  In fact, he tells us just the opposite.  He tells us to expect the unexpected.  In Psalm 34 David writes: “Many are the afflictions of the righteous.”  In Acts 14:22 we’re told: “Through much tribulation we will enter the kingdom of God.”  And nobody could have stated it more clearly than Jesus himself did in John 16:33 when he said: “In this world you will have trouble.”

   This was one of the messages that came through the cantata that the choir did back on May 30 and 31.  In fact, one of the narrator’s parts put it this way: “There is not a single person in this room who is not experiencing problems.  The question is not ‘if,’ but ‘how bad?’  Not a person in the Bible was without trials.  Not Paul, not King David, not even Jesus…no one!”  And oh how true that is!  Look at every major personality, every faithful man or woman of God, in Scripture – Noah, Abraham, Joseph, Moses, David, Jeremiah, Daniel, Mary, Peter, Paul, and yes, even Jesus himself – and you will clearly see that their lives were marked by expected and unexpected events that shook the very foundations of their faith.  But in every one of them, God was faithful and he carried them through those tough times and brought incredible good out of them, just as he has promised to do for us.

   So expect the unexpected in life.  And when it comes, hang on to God for dear life like an anchor in the midst of the storm.  Then the second lesson God taught me on our vacation was this: Don’t believe everything you hear or read.  During the weeks leading up to our vacation, I became concerned that perhaps we were attempting this trip a bit early, that there might be so much snow on the trails that we wouldn’t be able to do any hiking.  So after checking trail conditions on the Internet and getting a rather discouraging report there, a couple weeks before we left I called Glacier National Park and got a hold of one fellow who just laughed at me when I mentioned some of the trails we were hoping to hike.  In fact, when I mentioned one in particular, he said that there was still 10 feet of snow on that trail.  He said that we’d be able to hike some of the shorter trails but that the ones in the higher elevations would definitely be off limits.  And we so took his words to heart that we spent 3 hours in my office one night trying to plan out a completely different vacation to some other destination where we wouldn’t have to worry about all that snow we’d been hearing about.  But too many things were set in place and it was too late to change them, so we determined we would go through with our plans and do our best to make the most of it. 

   All I can say is that I’m glad we did because when we arrived at our lodge, the snow we were expecting to see everywhere was confined only to the higher elevations, creating scenery more beautiful than what we had seen the last time we vacationed there seven years ago.  We were informed that all the trails were open and that while some had snow on them, people were still hiking them.  So don’t believe everything you hear or read.

   And that’s important to remember because we live in an age where vast amounts of information are being transmitted each day by means of the Internet.  And some of that information is blatantly false.  In fact, on my computer I keep standard responses that I send to people who email me stories or supposed facts that have no foundation of truth to them whatsoever but that have reached the status of what we now refer to as urban legends.  For example, The Federal Communications Commission is not threatening to pull all religious programming off the air in response to a plea by the infamous and now deceased atheist Madelyn Murray O’Hair.  That rumor has been floating around for more than 25 years now and resurfaces every now and then.  Also, it’s ok to accept the new $1 coin because contrary to what certain emails would have you believe, the words “In God We Trust” were on the originals, though they were on the edge rather than the face and were a bit difficult to read.  However, as of earlier this year those words are now printed on the front of the coins.  And contrary to another popular email making its rounds on the Internet, Jesus did not fold his burial napkin after he rose from the dead to indicate that he was coming back as some Jews do after a meal because that napkin was not a dinner napkin but rather a piece of cloth tied vertically around his head to keep his mouth closed.  It was most likely folded by Jesus to show that his removal from the tomb had not occurred as a result of grave robbers who would have never taken the time to fold it.

   And just as we can’t believe everything we hear or read on the Internet, so also we can’t believe everything we hear or read from those who present themselves as Christian speakers or leaders or authors.  Just because a person has written a book that is sold in a Christian bookstore or has a weekly television or radio broadcast does not mean that he or she is proclaiming the truth of God’s Word.  Jesus warned us that in the last days there would be lots of false prophets running around who would be proclaiming a false gospel, like the gospel of prosperity which says that if you’re a Christian and you send your money to that particular ministry then all your problems will disappear and God will bless you with health, wealth, and prosperity.  The Apostle Paul warned that in the last days there would be leaders who would arise and who would tell people what their itching ears want to hear.  But then he added that we are to have nothing to do with them. 

   So you can’t believe everything you hear or read these days.  Instead, I would encourage you to have the same mind-set as the Bereans that are mentioned in Acts 17:11 where it says: “Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.”  Imagine that!  They had none other than the Apostle Paul preaching and teaching in their midst, but they didn’t just accept what he said as gospel truth.  Rather they held it up against the ultimate standard of God’s truth as found in Holy Scripture and if it matched up with that, then they accepted it.  We should do no less, my friends.

   Then the third lesson that God taught me on our vacation was this: Follow in the footsteps of the trailblazer.  As I mentioned before, there were some trails that had snow on them.  In fact, so much snow that the trail itself was not visible anymore.  So the only way you could know where to walk was to follow in the footsteps of the ones who had walked before you. 

   We need to do the same.  We need to walk in the footsteps of godly parents and grandparents, pastors and teachers, friends and fellow church members, who have made clear by their examples and their lives that Jesus is Lord and Savior.  And speaking of Jesus, he was the greatest trailblazer of all.  He blazed the trail from heaven to earth and back to heaven again.  And if we follow in his footsteps, if we trust in his trailblazing abilities that he makes clear to us in John 14:6 when he declares himself to be the way, the truth, and the life, then we’ll arrive safe and sound at our heavenly destination.

   Now admittedly, there will be times along the way when we stumble and fall, just as happened to Marilyn a few times on those snowy trails (show pics).  But when those times come along, the best thing we can do is to pick ourselves up again, brush ourselves off with the cleansing blood of Jesus, and get back on the trail again so that he can continue to lead us to our heavenly destination where we will never stumble or fall again and where we will enjoy his glorious presence forever.

   So just to review what we’ve talked about today: Expect the unexpected.  Don’t believe everything you hear or read.  And follow in the footsteps of the trailblazer, especially the greatest trailblazer of all, Jesus Christ.  Next week, I’ll have 3 more lessons to share with you as we continue our look at more mountain moments and lasting truths.  Until then, may the peace of God that passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus at all times. 

            Amen.