Podcast Preview
This past Sunday, we celebrated one year of worship at Hope Lutheran Church. It has been so humbling and amazing to see God working in this church and through this church! That is worth celebrating!
But how do you celebrate? And what exactly do you celebrate? Do you celebrate numerical growth? Do you celebrate a journey? Do you celebrate specific events in the church’s young history? I’ll give you an insight into the say I’ve been thinking lately. How do you take a spiritual community at a key juncture and move them forward God’s way? I chose to answer that question through the text chosen for tomorrow’s message.
I could’ve chosen a psalm of praise, or a word of comfort, a message of togetherness, or a text of mission, but I didn’t. I chose a text that tells the account of how a lot of people died, until they didn’t anymore. It’s from 2 Samuel 24. If you’ve never read it before, read it here. It’s 2 Samuel 24:15-25. It’s the story of how a lot of people died until they didn’t anymore.
Here’s my rationale. I picked it because I want you to understand that hope isn’t just a community that is about love, or just a place to be known, and this isn’t just a place where you can serve and be kind to others, this is a place where your death gets life. Here’s what I’m hoping to show you tomorrow: this church is different than the temple, and it’s better than the temple. Because you get to come here and receive. Because the only thing those people did was wait for the greater David to come. You know what you get to do? You get to receive him now. You receive him. It’s what we do here.
I’d say that’s worth celebrating! One year. A whole year of receiving EVERY WEEK, the forgiveness of God. And many more to come.
2 Samuel 24:15-25
15 So the Lord sent a plague on Israel from that morning until the end of the time designated, and seventy thousand of the people from Dan to Beersheba died. 16 When the angel stretched out his hand to destroy Jerusalem, the Lord relented concerning the disaster and said to the angel who was afflicting the people, “Enough! Withdraw your hand.” The angel of the Lord was then at the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite.
17 When David saw the angel who was striking down the people, he said to the Lord, “I have sinned; I, the shepherd,[a] have done wrong. These are but sheep. What have they done? Let your hand fall on me and my family.”
David Builds an Altar
18 On that day Gad went to David and said to him, “Go up and build an altar to the Lord on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite.” 19 So David went up, as the Lord had commanded through Gad. 20 When Araunah looked and saw the king and his officials coming toward him, he went out and bowed down before the king with his face to the ground.
21 Araunah said, “Why has my lord the king come to his servant?”
“To buy your threshing floor,” David answered, “so I can build an altar to the Lord, that the plague on the people may be stopped.”
22 Araunah said to David, “Let my lord the king take whatever he wishes and offer it up. Here are oxen for the burnt offering, and here are threshing sledges and ox yokes for the wood. 23 Your Majesty, Araunah[b] gives all this to the king.” Araunah also said to him, “May the Lord your God accept you.”
24 But the king replied to Araunah, “No, I insist on paying you for it. I will not sacrifice to the Lord my God burnt offerings that cost me nothing.”
So David bought the threshing floor and the oxen and paid fifty shekels[c] of silver for them. 25 David built an altar to the Lord there and sacrificed burnt offerings and fellowship offerings. Then the Lord answered his prayer in behalf of the land, and the plague on Israel was stopped.
