Breaking Down Barriers:
Establishing God's Goals for Your Life

Pastor Burcham ’s Sermon

 Sunday, May 6, 2007

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

The temporary construction sign said “I-80 West Use Left Lane.” I think not. I knew better than that. I’ve been on this stretch of highway dozens of times. I affectionately call this stretch of highway “The Land of Perpetual Construction” because it’s always been under construction. Twenty some odd years ago when I was in St. Louis going to seminary coming back to Michigan, it was under construction. Last fall, it was still under construction. And I seem to believe that five years from now, it will still be under construction. I’m talking about that little stretch of highway just south of Chicago. Maybe you know it. It sort of loops around Lake Michigan, skirts into Indiana and then goes up into Michigan state itself. Land of Perpetual Construction.

I was coming back home from Michigan, coming back to Iowa so I needed to be on I-80 West. The sign said “ Use Left Lane.” I don’t think so. I knew that both lanes, the right lane and the left lane, would veer off to the north and to the west and take me onto I-80 and bring me home. So with a smug smile on my face, I cruise past all the fools in the left lane just crawling along. I’m just cruising along. Then a sign that sort of wraps it up said, “I-80 West Left Lane Only.” Oh, sure, I know better than that. So I just keep on going, thinking of myself how proud my family will be when we get home ahead of schedule.

Then I notice something different up ahead that wasn’t there the last time I took this route. They had constructed a cement barrier between the left lane and the right lane. Now that was a strange thing to do. But undaunted, I didn’t care. Cruising along at 70 miles an hour watching all of the fools in just standstill traffic, I just keep on going and so does this cement barrier between the two lanes. All of a sudden, something else new happened that wasn’t there the last time. The right lane was veering off to the north and the east. I needed to go to the north and the west. But there was this cement barrier stopping me from going to the north and the west. Long story short, 45 minutes, three freeways, quarter of a tank later, I’m back on the same stretch of highway in the left lane.

Have you ever been just positive that you were right? You just knew you were going in the right direction. You knew you were choosing the right path all of a sudden to find out that you were dead wrong. My Friends, that’s what happened to Saul and the reading we just had a few moments ago. Saul was convinced, I mean utterly convinced that he was doing God’s will. He believed he was following down the pathway God had set for us, that this is what God had called him to do. He was a Jew. He was fully trained as a Pharisee and he saw all those who called upon Jesus Christ as their Savior as a blasphemy to God Himself. And so he set upon his mission in life to eradicate Christianity. He started in Jerusalem and he was moving his way into Damascus to arrest anybody who called upon the name of Jesus, to have them thrown in jail or even better yet, to stand by like he did with Stephen and watched them be stoned to death. He was convinced that’s what God was calling him to do. It took a flash of light and a voice from heaven to change his mind.

Now if we look back on Saul’s life, we would see there were signs along the way, where God was directing Saul, God was pointing him in a different direction but he didn’t pay attention to the signs. It wasn’t until God got his attention through the flash of light and a voice from heaven did Saul get on the right road.

Even today, God puts up signs for us in our lives, that is, God is still leading us and directing us. We have to pay attention to the signs. If we don’t pay attention to the signs, we’re going to end up going off on the wrong highway. We’re going to end up going off in the wrong direction and who knows, maybe God will have to have a Damascus-type experience for us to pull us back onto the right road. See, it all comes back to paying attention to the signs. If we want to be on the pathway that God has set for us because after all, God has said He has plans for us, plans for us to prosper, plans for us to work in His kingdom, if we’re going to be on that road, we have to pay attention to the signs.

There are three things I’ve noticed about signs, whether you’re on the highway or whether you’re trying to navigate through life. The first one is signs need to be read. I know that seems self-evident. Well, of course, signs are meant to be read. Ask yourself this, though. How many signs do you simply ignore? I’m not talking about advertisements. I’m not talking about businesses. I’m talking about road signs. How many road signs do you pass by on a daily or weekly basis that you just simply ignore? You assume you know what they say. Classic example for that. Any of you who travel 86 th Street north of here up by I-80. I do everyday because that’s where I live up there. So I know all about the construction that took place last summer and fall. You see, they decided to put in clover leaf entrances onto the Interstate. Previously, if you were going north on 86 th Street and you wanted to go west, you would turn left. And if you’re coming south and you wanted to go east, you’d turn left. Well, they wanted to eliminate that because that was snarling up traffic even though they had a left-hand turn lane, so they put in clover leafs now so you just turn right whichever direction you want to go. Sounds like a wonderful idea, right. Except for the first morning they opened up the new ramps. Now they had no less than three signs that said “No Left Turn.” They put barricades along the left-hand turn lane. If that wasn’t enough, they put up a portable sign, you know one of those huge 10 x 20 guys and it said, “No Left Turn.” Twenty minutes I sat in traffic as dozens of cars turned left. You see, they just didn’t read the signs. Signs are meant to be read. And we have signs from God all around us.

A few weeks ago, Pastor Meyer talked about God sightings, that God is closer than you think, that we can feel His presence. Many people e-mailed back to him and said, “I’ve had a God sighting this week. You’re right.” You see, instead of just chalking things up to coincidence or happenstance, open up our eyes and see that God is actively involved in our lives, but we have to pay attention to those signs. We have to read those signs. If we don’t, we end up going off in the wrong direction.

Saul is a classic case of that. Saul had all the signs he wanted. For instance, if we go to Acts 22, “Now Saul,” and if I slip into calling him Paul, you all know he later became Paul, he writes this, “I’m a Jew born in Tarsus of Cilicia but brought up in this city,” he’s talking about Jerusalem, “under Gamaliel.” Gamaliel was a famous teacher at that time, trained up a lot of the religious leaders. He says, “I was thoroughly trained in the law of our fathers and was just as zealous for God as any of you today.” There are two things we can pick up on that. He was living in Jerusalem under his tutelage of Gamaliel. If you do the math on that and you follow the years back, that would mean Saul was in Jerusalem at the same time Jesus was. Those instances that Jesus came and visited Jerusalem unless that happened to be the time when he was out of town, Saul would have been in Jerusalem at the same time. Talk about a God sighting in the literal sense. He could have seen Jesus himself. He could have sat at the feet of the Son of God and learned from Him but he missed the sign. He didn’t read it. Further than that, he’s thoroughly equipped and knowledgeable about the scriptures, the same scriptures Jesus used to prove Himself to be the Son of God, to be the coming Messiah, the same scriptures that Saul would use later on to prove that Jesus is the Messiah. He had all of those scriptures in front of Him but he missed them. He didn’t see the signs. He didn’t read the signs God had put in front of him and so he goes off in the wrong direction and instead of promoting Christianity, he tries to destroy Christianity.

Well, sometimes when we miss the signs, God will kind of rachet it up a little bit and He’ll grab our attention. So He did with Saul. A flash of lightening, a voice from heaven, blind for three days, God got his attention and put him back on the right road.

You and I need to learn to read the signs, to have those God sightings in our lives and to pay attention to them. If we stop paying attention to them, God just might ratchet it up a little bit. I would guess that each one of us has had a Damascus road type experience. No, we probably didn’t have a flash of lightening and a voice from heaven but we’ve had those experiences where all of a sudden, God grabs us and gets our attention. Maybe it’s that sudden illness. Maybe it’s the accident where you walk away with no injury but you’re not sure how. Maybe it’s the loss of job you describe that you’ve also now lost your identity. Maybe it’s the broken relationship. It may be any kind of thing that sort of shakes up your world and makes you take a deep look at yourself and a deep look at your life and say, “What is it God wants me to do?” You see, sooner or later, God’s going to pull your attention to the signs He puts in your life. You have to read them.

But we also have to interpret them. Signs are meant to be interpreted. That is, what is the sign actually saying to me? What’s it trying to tell me to do? Now, I’ll grant you, some signs are rather self-evident. I’m thinking of “I-80 West Left Lane Only.” That’s pretty self-evident. But put yourself in downtown Chicago or downtown St. Louis or Detroit where all of the freeways come together. Have you been in those situations? You have a plethora of signs up there, each one pointing into a different direction. It takes a minute. In fact, you need a navigator next to you to make sure you’re going off on the right exit and you’re heading in the right direction. You have to interpret the signs. And as we have God sightings and we see God moving and nudging and sort of directing us, we have to make sure we’re interpreting those signs correctly.

There are three ways I think you can do that. There are three checks you need to run through. The first one is check your agenda. What I mean by check your agenda is are you interpreting the signs to do what you want to do? Are you more interested in how you want to see your life proceed or how God wants to see your life proceed? Is this your agenda or is this God’s agenda? It’s a difficult question to ask. I think maybe a guiding principal for that comes from Saul later on when he wrote a letter to the Philippians. He says, “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit.” So that’s the filter you can run it through as you’re saying, “I think God is leading me in this direction.” But ask yourself, “Is this just my own ambition? Is this just what I want to do and I’m going to justify it by saying that God is leading me in this direction or is this truly what God wants me to do?”

I have to believe that Saul fell into that trap. In one of his letters, he tells us that he was considered a Jew among the Jews, a Pharisee among Pharisees, and then he says this, “I was advancing in Judaism much faster than any of the others my age.” Saul was an up and comer. Politically, socially, religiously, he was the man to keep your eye on. He was advancing. Did that taint his interpretation of God’s signs? Did that taint his interpretation of God’s word and His nudging him? I would say it did.

As we read the signs, we have to run it through the filter of Philippians 2:3. “Is this about God or is this about me?” If it’s about God, then that’s the pathway I need to be on.

The second check is you have to check in with God. You have to check in with God through prayer. “God, this is what I’m seeing happening. Is this really where you want me to go?” Isn’t that what Ananias did? Ananias gets this vision from God. God says, “I want you to go to this guy named Saul. He’s blind. I want you to cure him and baptize him.” Now imagine the shock of Ananias because Ananias knows all about Saul. So what does he do? Does he argue with God? Not at all. He’s checking in with God. “God, let me make sure I have this right. This is the same Saul that threw people in prison in Jerusalem, the same guy who stood by and watched Stephen be stoned to death because he confessed faith in your son. He came here with marching orders to arrest people like me and throw them in jail. Is this the same one? Are we on the same page, God? Is this the guy you want me to go to?” You see, he’s checking in with God to make sure he understands correctly.

You and I have to do the same thing, especially those big decisions in our lives. We have to say, “God is this really where you’re leading me?” And then wait for God to answer that prayer. And He answers it in any number of ways, by nudging us or maybe by someone else coming and talking to us. There’s any number of ways in which God can nudge us and lead us and confirm, “Yes, this is the direction I want you to go.”

The third check is you need to check in with a fellow believer. You need to check in with a fellow Christian, a fresh set of eyes, a new perspective, an unbiased perspective, to sit down with them, maybe over coffee or lunch and say, “You know, I have a major decision here and I think this is where God is leading me. Now these are the things I’ve been noticing in my life. Am I interpreting them the right way? Or am I looking at them maybe through a different perspective?” And then they can pray with you and they can give you their insights. In the end, I think that through that process, you can say, “Yep, that’s where I believe God’s leading me. That’s the direction God wants me to go.”

And once you’ve decided that’s what the sign is saying, you need to follow it. You need to do what God is telling you to do. You need to follow and go along the direction He’s leading you. Now sometimes that’s not easy because sometimes the signs are telling you to do things that you’re just not sure about. Often times, God will lead us into doing things that are outside of our comfort zone. God will challenge us. God will ask us to step out in faith. There’s only one way we can follow the signs God puts in front of us, that is, it’s going to take trust and it’s going to take courage and they work hand in hand. We have to trust God and we have to have the courage from God to step out and actually follow that path. You see, we have to trust God and say, “God knows better than I do.” This is where our faith gets put into action. If we really believe God is directing us a certain way, that God wants us to go down this path, then we have to put our trust in God and say, “All right. Even if it’s something I don’t want to do and something I’m not sure about, I’m going to trust God.”

The greatest example of that has got to be our Savior, Jesus. It has to be the greatest example of trusting in the pathway the Father set before Him. Jesus came to this earth with a mission. He had a path the Father had set before Him. Jesus perfectly understood that path. He perfectly read all of the signs that led Him straight down to the cross. And we find Him the night He’s arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane. He knows the crucifixion awaits Him the next day but even more than the crucifixion, He understands the debt of sin of all of mankind, including yours and mine, is going to be laid upon Him and He’s going to make the payment of that sin and He’s going to literally go through hell for all of mankind so we don’t have to and we can be with the Father in heaven. Jesus understands all of that. So what does Jesus do? He checks in with the Father. He says, “Father, am I understanding this correctly? Is this where you want me to go?” Isn’t that really what He’s doing when He says, “If there is a way this cup could be taken away from me,” isn’t He saying, “Is there another path? Is there another way we can accomplish this, Father?” Because as a human being, certainly Jesus didn’t want to go through the pain and the agony of the cross and all that would mean, so He checks in with the Father. “Is there another way?” But He ends that prayer with trust. You know how He ended it. “But not my will, your will be done.” Three times He checks in with the Father. Three times He demonstrates His trust and courage.

Could you imagine the consequences if Jesus had not done that? You and I would still be in our sin. Jesus could have made a case of why He needed to stay on earth. The disciples needed more training. He could have made a case of why the angels should rush in to rescue Him to show His people the power and might of God. There are any number of things Jesus could have come up with to justify why He wouldn’t go down the path God has set before Him but He trusted in the Father. He trusted the Father’s way was the right way and because of that, He made the payment for our sin. Because of that, you and I have a reservation in heaven and one day we’ll spend an eternity with Him.

God is going to call upon you sometime to trust Him, to step out in faith. He’s going to lead you down a path. You’re going to say, “I’m not sure about that.” But He’s going to ask you to step out and that’s going to take courage. Sometimes it’s going to take a lot of courage to step out and believe that God’s leading you.

Let’s check in with Saul one more time. Let’s talk about a man of courage. A man of courage, he had it coming at him from both sides. He comes to faith in Jesus so he goes to the Jews who are Christians and he says to them, “I’ve had a miraculous event in the course of three days. Now I’m a believer in Jesus. He’s my Savior, too.” How many of them do you think believed him? There was a whole passel of them who didn’t. They wouldn’t trust him. Would you trust him? I wouldn’t trust him. No way. This was the guy who was watching Christians be killed. He was the one who had maybe your sister put in jail. No way. So he had the Jewish Christians looking at him skeptical at best, so then he goes back to the traditional Jewish people and says, “Listen, I have news for you. I want to convince you I was all wrong. This Jesus really is the Christ.” Well, now he’s the traitor. He’s gone over to the dark side. He’s on the wrong side of the fence. More times than not, they seek to kill him, take his life from him. He is losing on both sides and if you trace through the New Testament, it never ends for him. He always has somebody on his back. That took courage to walk down that path God had set for him, to trust in God and to have the courage to walk down that path. That courage was outside of himself. It reveals that in Philippians. It’s in Chapter 4. He says, “I can do everything through Him who gives me strength.” It’s the only way. He says, “The only way I can do this is through Jesus Christ who gives me strength.”

My Friends, there will be times when we’re going to have to repeat that passage as a mantra. “I can do this through Him who gives me strength.” There will be those times in life where God is leading you down a path that will be challenging, that you’ll wonder where God’s going with all this but yet you’re convinced in your heart that’s the right way. And the only way you’ll have the courage is for God Himself to give you that courage.

But I have to tell you, when you get on the road God has set for you, when you trust Him and you have that courage and you step out in faith, there’s nothing like it. Because you’re not relying upon yourself and you’re not relying upon anybody else. You’re relying totally on God and totally on your faith in Him. That’s when your relationship with God just soars. That’s when your faith really matures is when you courageously, trustingly step out in faith and go down the pathway you just know God has laid in front of you. That’s having God’s goals as your goals.

It all starts with the signs, whether you’re navigating across the country or whether you’re trying to navigate through life. You have to read the signs. You have to see them. You can’t ignore them. You have to make sure you’re interpreting the signs correctly, which means you have to run it through the checks. And then finally, trusting in God, you have to follow the signs. Amen.

Copyright 2007 Gloria Dei Lutheran Church