"When There Are Too Many Voices"

     Dear Friends in Christ,  

    How many of you have ever been to the Illinois State Fair in Springfield?  Please raise your hand.  It’s been years, actually decades, since I’ve been there, but I’d love to go back sometime because I have so many fond memories from there.  You see, when I was in high school, our band, the Staunton Marching Bulldogs, was designated the official Illinois State Fair band.  That simply meant that we would stay there for a whole week and do concerts twice a day.  The rest of the day was ours to enjoy.  And with such a vast playground at our fingertips, it wasn’t difficult to find things to do.  My favorite place to go was called Happy Hollow.  I don’t know if they even have that anymore, but basically it was a typical carnival midway with lots of attractions and lots of games to play, most of them offering prizes of stuffed animals, some small, some big, and some absolutely huge.  And oh how I loved to try to win those prizes.  The only problem was, I wasn’t very good at it.

    One night, however, I was as bound and determined as ever that I was going to come home with one of those big stuffed animals.  So I filled my pockets with money and told myself I wouldn’t quit until I either won or ran out of money.  Well, guess which of the two happened first.  I ran out of money.  The carnival barkers got the best of me.  “Step right up, young man, and try your hand at this game.  Knock down these milk bottles with this softball.  Could anything be simpler than that?”  (Of course, he didn’t tell you that those milk bottles were full of lead and didn’t go down very easily.)  Then I’d move on to the next one:  “Flip your nickel in the air and get it to land on one of these platters and win your mom a teddy bear.”  And on and on it went.  There were so many voices that night, each one clamoring for my attention, promising me the moon, but really only wanting my money.

   You know what I could have used that night?  I could have used another voice, a guiding voice, like maybe that of my big brother or my dad who could have steered me clear of those hucksters and gotten me through that gauntlet of temptation with my money still in my pocket.  And I suspect you could use the same kind of help, my friends, because our everyday lives are like a veritable midway of voices calling out to us: infomercials telling you that you need to order this piece of exercise equipment to tone up your flabby midsection; ads on TV and in the newspapers telling you that you need to buy this particular vehicle to really be happy; catalogs telling you that you need to order this new outfit or piece of jewelry to look your best; critics telling you that you all the things you’re doing wrong and none of the things you’re doing right; tempters telling you to touch her or call him or drink this or smoke that.  Indeed, those voices are coming at us all day long from every conceivable direction, aren’t they?

   So wouldn’t it be nice if there was another voice that would be louder and stronger and clearer than all the others, the voice of a father, the voice of a big brother who could drown out all the rest?  Well, the good news for today is that there is.  And we’re going to listen to that voice this morning as we continue with the sermon series on Jesus that I’ve been preaching this year entitled “The One and Only.”  And boy, if anyone knows what it’s like to be surrounded by voices, it’s Jesus.  He was all-too-familiar with the voice of temptation oozing from the lips of Satan; the voice of criticism coming from the Jewish leaders; the voice of pride coming from his own disciples who frequently argued among themselves as to which of them was the greatest.  Later on in his life he would hear the voice of betrayal from Judas, the voice of denial from Peter, the voice of rejection from the multitudes.  And in our text for today, we learn some important and valuable lessons about how to deal with the voices that surround us.  Hence the title of my sermon: “When There Are Too Many Voices.”  So let’s turn our attention now to this familiar story that finds Jesus climbing to the top of the Mount of Transfiguration with 3 of his disciples, Peter, James, and John.

   And the first thing we want to note today is how important it is that we tune God in.  Our text begins by saying: “About eight days after Jesus said this, he took Peter, John and James with him and went up onto a mountain to pray.”  Did you catch that, my friends?  Jesus went up on that mountain to pray.  I find that interesting because we’re so often good at coming up with excuses for not praying, aren’t we?  For example, have you ever said or at least thought to yourself, “You know, I’m so busy.  I just don’t have time to pray.”  If anybody didn’t have time to pray, it was Jesus.  He was one busy man – healing the multitudes, preaching the Gospel, traveling from village to village.  And yet he took time – no, he made time – to connect with his Father, to tune God in.  Now think about that for a moment.  If prayer was that important to Jesus, shouldn’t it be that important to us?

   Or how about another excuse we sometimes use: “I don’t need to pray.”  Now none of us would ever say it quite like that, but sometimes we imply it.  Some people see prayer as a sign of weakness.  It’s something that only the soft-spined, insufficient, weak-kneed people of the world do.  Yet Jesus, who could still a storm or send demons scurrying or heal a leper with a simple command, did not think of himself as so self-sufficient that he didn’t need to spend time with his Father.  And neither should we.

   Or maybe you’ve felt this way before:  “I’m too unimportant to pray.  There’s no way God would ever give me the time of day.”  You might even point to our text and say, “Look who’s present on that mountain.  Besides Jesus, you’ve got Moses and Elijah. Those are some pretty heavy hitters from the Old Testament.”  And that’s true.  But don’t think for a moment, my friends, that God only tunes in to the seemingly important people of the world.  The Bible is full of one story after another that shows him taking note of those who are small and insignificant, meek and lowly.  Before Moses became the mighty deliverer who led the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt he was just an 80-year-old sheepherder tending his father-in-law’s flocks in some remote wilderness in the land of Midian.  And then what about David, that young shepherd boy whom God used to defeat a mighty giant and to become one of Israel’s greatest kings, if not the greatest.  And then there was that humble maiden from Nazareth, that teenage Jewish peasant girl named Mary whom God used to give birth to his Son.  So never think that you’re too small or unimportant or insignificant to spend time in his presence. That’s what he wants you to do.  That’s what he invites you to do.  “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”  So tune God in.

   Then a second lesson we learn from our text is this: Be still before God.  Actually Peter teaches us this lesson, only in a reverse sort of way, for much of the time that he was on that mountain he was anything but still.  After Jesus’ appearance had changed and his face began to shine like the sun and his clothes became dazzling white and Moses and Elijah had joined him, Peter wanted to get busy.  He said, "Master, it is good for us to be here. Let us put up three shelters--one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah." (He did not know what he was saying.)”  Wasn’t that just like Peter?  He always felt he had to say something, that he always had to do something.  He didn’t understand that sometimes it’s just good to be still, especially when you find yourself in the presence of that which is so awesome and so holy. 

   And you know what, my friends?  If we don’t learn from Peter’s mistakes, if we don’t take the time to be still before the Lord, we might very well miss out on the message that he’s trying to communicate to us.  Kind of like the surgeon who saw one of his elderly patients at the shopping mall one day.  This fellow was kind of hard of hearing but most importantly he was a very sick man who had a very bad heart.  Yet when the surgeon saw him, he had on a flashy new outfit, a big smile, and a very attractive young lady on his arm.  The surgeon couldn’t figure out what was going on, so he went up to him and said, “What are you doing?”  And the man said, “Well, I’m just following your orders, Doc.  You said to go out and get a hot mama and be cheerful.”  To which the doctor replied, “No, no, I said, you have a heart murmur so be careful.”

   Well, my friends, unless and until you are still before the Lord, unless and until you give him the opportunity to speak to you through his Word, his voice will not be heard above the din of all the other voices in our world that are begging for your attention.  In fact, speaking of God’s Word, did you know that it even includes some beautiful passages about being quiet before the Lord?  Isaiah 30:15 says: “"In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength.”  In Ps. 37:7 David says, “Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for him.” And Hab. 2:20 says: “The LORD is in his holy temple; let all the earth be silent before him."   

   So tune God in, be still before him, and then one more thing: Turn God up.  In our text, as Peter was fumbling for the right words to say, God the Father kind of clears his throat and interrupts him.  And he cuts to the chase.  He takes the microphone from Peter, as it were, and booms out what needed to be said about Jesus.  Even though two of the greatest personalities from the Old Testament were present with him on that mountain, the Father makes clear which of the 3 is the preeminent one as he says of Jesus: "This is my Son, whom I have chosen; listen to him."

   That was the Father’s way of saying that in the midst of all the voices that surround us day in and day out, there is really only one voice that matters.  It’s not the voice of Tom Brokaw or Katie Couric.  It’s not the voice of Barack Obama or Nancy Pelosi.  It’s not the voice of Mohammed or Buddha or Confucius.  It’s the voice of Jesus because like Peter once said, he has the words of eternal life.  In fact, he is the only way to eternal life.  He’s the one who conquered our great enemy death by his victorious resurrection that we celebrated last month.  He’s the one who has been granted all authority in heaven and on earth.  So listen to him.

   When you’re struggling with self-doubt or your self-image and you’re feeling as though you’re nothing more than a pitiful excuse for a human being, listen to him and he will tell you that you are so special and so important that if you were the only person alive when he walked this earth, he still would have gone to the cross for you.  He still would have died just for you.  When you’re burdened by anxiety and you have fears about tomorrow, listen to him as he invites you to cast all those cares and all those anxieties on him because he cares so much for you.  When you wonder whether your marriage is worth fighting for and saving, listen to him for he tells you in his Word that he is able to do immeasurably more than anything we could ever ask or imagine according to his power that is at work within us.  When you wonder whether you should stay morally pure while all of your friends are doing the opposite, listen to him because he knows what it’s like to face temptations of every variety.  Turn him up and turn the other voices off.  And you will find that he will never steer you wrong.

   Many years ago a tribe of American Indians had an unusual rite of passage that their 13-year-old boys would go through.  It would begin with a big feast, after which the boy would be blindfolded, led out into the woods, and left at the base of a tree where he would be instructed to remain all night long with the blindfold on until he sensed that the sun was rising.  Needless to say, that could be a rather frightening experience for such a young boy.  But when morning would come and he would finally would remove his blindfold, do you know what he would discover?  He would find that his father was sitting only a few feet from him, protecting him from any wild animals that might have otherwise attacked him. 

   I share that story with you because I have a hunch that some of you may be thinking right now, “I know what you’re saying today, Pastor, about listening to God, but I don’t ever hear God speaking to me, so how can I listen to him.”  And to be honest with you, I don’t hear him speaking in an audible voice either.  But just like that Indian father was right by his son throughout that dark night in the forest, so also our Heavenly Father has promised to always be near us.  And yes, he does speak to us.  He speaks to us through his written and preached Word; he speaks to us through the voices of godly friends and advisors; he speaks to us through the inner promptings and urgings of the Holy Spirit.  The important thing is that we tune him in, that we be still before him, and that we turn him up so that his voice can be heard loudly and clearly above all others.

      Amen.