Success and Humility—Judges 8: 22-27a, 33-35; I Cor. 3
Some folks are their own worst enemy. The very moment they find success and stability they do everything in their power to sabotage it. I’ve had a few friends like this. One found great success in her work, but she spent one regrettable night getting drunk and ruining all that she had built. Another bought a house and settled down, only to spend so much money decorating he could no longer afford the house. A final one got married in a beautiful wedding to a beautiful wife. Then two years later, he decided marriage just wasn’t for him. Sometimes we just can’t help ourselves. We read in our scripture for today where both the Israelites and Corinthians found success then walked themselves right back into a painful humbling. There are three things in these scriptures to watch out for because they harm our diligent and consistent walk of faith: distractions, immaturity, and a lack of investment.
First, we face distractions on our walk of faith. Part of God’s deliverance in Judges was to remind the people that God is God, and they owe their faith and obedience to God and not all these other idols. Yet, Gideon makes a sacred ephod, and the people immediately begin worshipping it instead of God. Then, as soon as Gideon is dead, the people went right back to worshipping Baal. They were distracted away from God and away from any honor to Gideon. Likewise in the Epistle for today, the people are distracted from following Jesus, and they begin to follow Paul, Apollos, and other human leaders.
Being distracted is easy for us. We indulge ourselves in self-reliance, exciting new teachers and preachers, someone who is making headlines, the newest, easiest socio-religious movement. All the while there is a tried-and-true faith with a centuries old instruction manual right here for us. Too many times, we are swayed by the new and exciting church or preacher. We are swayed by something fun and cool that we hear in sermons. But right in front of us is a scripture that we have to read and reason out for ourselves. God didn’t give us a solid brain to be tempted by whatever. We are expected to use it to reason and think about God’s word to us.
Some of us are distracted by bad theology we grew up with that is simply not in the Bible. I’ll give you an example. I believed until I was an adult that there was a chapter and verse that said, “Love the sinner, hate the sin.” But that idea was someone’s interpretation and discussion, not actual chapter and verse from the Bible. Recently I watched a very judgmental preacher talking about the scripture, “Judge not, lest you be judged.” He flat said, “That’s not what that scripture is saying. It’s correct to judge people.” It is distracting from God’s mission when we reinvent God’s word to say what we want out of it. In the law we have a specific term in Latin, “Res Ipsa Loquitor,” which means, “The thing speaks for itself.”
The words of Jesus don’t need us to fix them, update them, re-invent them, or even parse them out to suit our needs as a society, and especially as a society inundated by politics. That is a distraction from our call to Love God and Love Our Neighbor. We cannot find ourselves so lost in the weeds that we forget Christ’s ultimate call to us in how to live as faithful people in this world.
Distractions often come from a place of immaturity. I don’t mean that as an insult or put down, but discernment is something we learn as we grow. Paul offers some very pointed words to the Corinthian church, “Dear brothers and sisters, when I was with you, I couldn’t talk to you as I would to spiritual people. I had to talk as though you belonged to this world or as though you were infants in Christ. I had to feed you with milk, not with solid food, because you weren’t ready for anything stronger.” Gideon faced the same problems. The people still were not mature enough to accept Gideon as Judge and having some kind of direct connection to the will and word of God. They wanted him to be king just like all the other peoples.
I remember the first time I walked in to try a case in Bibb County, 13 years ago. I walked in feeling like the smartest and best in that whole courtroom. My supervisor started asking me detailed questions about how I was going to prove different parts of my case. It only took a couple of minutes to figure out how immature, unprepared, and lacking in knowledge I really was.
That’s why we often need the saints of the church, who are tried and true, to help us. Paul was there to provide guidance in this first letter to Corinth. He understood they were new and needed help. He understood they thought they knew all, but trials and tests would challenge them enough to remind them a guiding presence was needed. Faith is a place where we are ever-growing. We cannot fully figure it out here on earth. The goal is to grow in knowledge and wisdom, overcoming and surpassing infancy and needing milk. Old timers often used to say, “Chew on it for a bit,” when we needed to think about something. Sometimes it’s the trials and troubles of life that teach us the most of how to be wise and mature in faith. But to be faithful, we must push ourselves to grow.
Lastly, the way to overcome distractions and grow from our immaturity is to be invested. Paul writes to the Corinthians, “Anyone who builds on that foundation may use a variety of materials—gold, silver, jewels, wood, hay, or straw. But on the judgment day, fire will reveal what kind of work each builder has done.” Paul is using a lot of allegory, metaphor, and other literary stuff here to make a simple point. When God assesses your work in this world, will your life show you built for the kingdom, or that you caused more harm than good?
If we follow Jesus, we work for healing, we work to redeem and love, we work to bring others back into the fold of grace gently and patiently, we feed others, and we walk in faith for the kingdom, not for ourselves or others, but for God. Gideon, through all his doubts, he need for signs, and his struggles, ultimately followed God and served the people of God. Paul, who began his life a persecutor and destroyer of the church, lived his life for the kingdom of God. Both invested in God’s work, in the faith they proclaimed, and in serving those whom God called them to serve.
It’s easy to bring less than our best. It’s easy to operate on about 50%, or to let a lot slide in our walk with God. It’s easy not to care at all sometimes. Being invested is a lot harder. And being invested consistently throughout or lives, is impossible unless we lean on God’s strength. But every day is a new and fantastic opportunity to live for God in this world, and to find some way to share Jesus, whether it is in food, prayer, healing, comfort, or hope. Every day is a good opportunity to love God and love our neighbors.
Many years ago, I heard a sermon entitled, “A Celebration of the Unsung Saints.” The pastor talked about our love of conversion stories, much like Paul’s. We love to hear how someone was suffering in the depths of sin. Or as a friend of mine says, “I was not suffering under the burden of sin, I was enjoying myself, till Jesus got ahold of me.” And very often the worse the sin, the more horrific the worldliness, the more exciting and enticing the conversion testimony is.
But rarely do we jump up and celebrate those who have quietly served the church and kept the faith for years or even decades. They don’t have a wild, hair-raising story. They’ve simply loved God, loved their neighbor, and served the church without hesitation or failure. Distractions, immaturity, and being uninvested can often derail our faith and walk with God. But praise be for those solid saints who pray, nurture, encourage, invest, and diligently walk in faith their entire lives.
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