"Eighteen Inches" Joel 2:13
- Elder, Dave Padley, preached this message on August 27, 2023.
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Audio Transcript
Well, good morning. I’d like to thank you all for coming out this morning to hear me preach. I’m sure the church picnic and baptism had nothing to do with it.
You know, this is the second time I filled in for Pastor Robert. Him and his wife Mary are over in Turkey right now visiting there daughter and grandchildren. Remember them in our prayers and wish them well. But this is the second time I’ve had the sermon and since they didn’t impose a lifetime ban after the first one, I’m back again for round two here. You know, if you looked at last week’s bulletin, you saw the title of My sermon was 18 inches.
And I had a lot of people guess this week what 18 inches was. Brad Rhodes. Well, that’s a cubit. We talk about cubits. No, that’s not it.
And that so I knew I like picking a title that you can’t figure it out and you have to come and listen to see what it’s all about. So let’s have a word of prayer. Lord, I just thank youk this morning for the message youe laid on my heart to give this morning. I just thank youk for the wealth of experiences I can draw upon and how youw’ve been such an interval part of my life for so many years that I’m just telling it, that’s the way I’ve lived it. Lord, help me do the job that’s worthy, that people will listen and may it take root in their heart.
In your name we pray. Amen.
Back on January 30th, year 2000. We survived Y2K. We’re still around. The Tennessee Titans played the St. Louis Rams in Super Bowl 34 or XXXIV as NFL would like you to have it. And the game came down to the final play.
The Titans had the ball on the 10 yard line with six seconds to go. They score a touchdown, they win the Super Bowl. They don’t, they lose. So quarterback Steve McNair dropped back and he threw a pass and Kevin Dyson caught it on the five yard line. He turned to the end zone about the three, he starts getting hit with all his strength and might.
He reaches out with the ball as far as he can to the goal line. And he came up a half yard short, 18 inches, the size of a nice walleye.
You know, all that work and effort for the last eight months had ended up with nothing because it came up 18 inches short. The difference between being a Super bowl champion, where they give you the Lombardi Trophy, have a big parade in your honor. And they give you these big, huge, ugly rings that no one ever wears. That and just being a footnote in history that nobody remembers. Does anybody remember who lost last year’s Super Bowl?
Philadelphia Eagles. I had to look it up.
18 inches. Well, I’m not here to talk about football or Walleyes, but how 18 inches can have even a bigger impact than the difference between being a Super bowl champion and just first loser back. Around the time of that game, Dan Johnson was pastor here, and he asked the congregation to give them a favorite Bible verse of theirs, and he would preach a sermon on it. He did five or six sermons, if I remember right, and they were really great verses. There’s a lot of great verses in the Bible.
And I remember John 14, 1, Let not your hearts be troubled. Or Romans 8:37. We are more than conquerors. Well, I submitted one, too, and you just knew it’s going to be different. And he never got around to preaching that sermon that I wanted.
So me being a DIY guy, I’m preaching the sermon I always wanted today.
And when I was putting this together, thought did occur to me. Boy, I sure hope that wasn’t the reason why Pastor Dan left.
Well, my verse is rather obscure. It’s in the Old Testament. In all my years of going to church, I’ve never. I can’t recall it ever being mentioned, much less a whole sermon being based upon it. But in my study Bible, you know, at the beginning of each book, it has who the author was, a summary, the time frame and list, key verse.
And for my book, the key verse they list is the one I submitted. So I’m not totally off the wall here on this one, I don’t think. No more than usual, anyway. But. So anyway, even though it may not be very familiar, I think it’s a verse that everybody who calls themselves a Christian needs to examine and apply, apply to their lives, to use as a measuring stick how they’re doing.
The verse is found in the book of Joel. J O E L. In the Old Testament, Joel was what is called a minor prophet. Not that he’s not important, it’s just that his time of ministry was rather short, not extensive like Elijah or Jeremiah. Well, Joel was called around 800 BC to go to the nation of. Of Judah, the southern kingdom, and tell them to turn from the idolatry and turn back to God.
Their need to repent. They had become prosperous and had become complacent. They didn’t think they needed God anymore. That happens a lot with us when things are Going well in our life, we somehow come up with the idea that we maybe don’t think we need God quite as much as we did before.
Well, that’s not true. And the verse I pick is Joel 2:13, and it isn’t even the whole verse. It’s just the first six words. I’m not a very complicated person, really, and I just like to keep it simple. Those six words are rend your hearts, not your garments.
Say it with me. Rend your hearts, not your garments. Again. Rend your hearts, not your garments. Well, what does that mean, really?
Well, first of all, to rend means to tear, to rip you rip your heart and open it up to God. The most famous incident in the Bible about something being rent is the moment Jesus died on the cross. When he had breathed this last. The curtain in front of the holy of holies, as Bible says, was rent, torn from the top to the bottom, signifying how God had come down from heaven to earth and tore that curtain away. So we no longer needed a high priest to enter on our behalf.
We could come there directly ourselves. The New Covenant. A lot of religious leaders of those days, whether they were Christians or prophets of baal, and even some people today like to go around putting on a good outward show. They walk around shouting and flailing their hands and back in those days, they would rip their clothes, tear them, rend them. Some would even cut themselves so they bleed.
They to try and demonstrate their passion, their zeal, their fervor for worshiping God. But Joel is saying here, if that’s only as deep as it goes, it really isn’t worth very much. A famous line from Shakespeare’s play, as you like. It is for all the world’s a stage and all the men and women but players be Are we just good actors? Do we like to tear our clothes?
Is it just an act? As a Christian, we need to be careful that we are not just actors, but truly devoted followers of Christ to make sure that we are rendering our hearts, not just our garments. It’s important to have a heart that is rent, to be torn that God has entered into. Because what is in our heart really controls just about everything we do and say. The Bible contains many great verses about the heart.
Matthew 5:8. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Matthew 6:21. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. Both of these were from the Sermon on the Mount, worthy of the entire sermon just in himself.
But today I want to look at four other verses in the Bible that Speak about the heart. The first is in Exodus 8:19. This is when Egypt was being inflicted by the plagues. And Moses asking Pharaoh to let his people go. And Exodus 18, 8, 19 reads, But Pharaoh’s heart was hard, and he would not listen to them.
As the Lord had said, in order for your heart to be torn, it first needs to be soft, not hard like Pharaoh. I need my assistant to come forward. Johanna.
Well, I forgot my thing, so we’ll substitute this. Now, you’re pretty strong, right? Yeah. Can you rip this paper and to just rip it in half? Yep.
That’s okay. We’ll put it. We’ll tape it back together. Have you been working out or something? That seemed pretty easy.
You can do that all the time. Well, what I had was first was three sheets of paper. Not paper, but paper for wiping stuff that I wet. They could be torn really easily like bounty. But you take those same sheets of paper, I put them in the free.
Same wet sheets, I put them in the freezer. Now they’re cold and they’re hard. Can you tear that in two?
Well, you weren’t supposed to do that, But it was a lot harder. You can’t just. It got soft between services. But that’s what happens, though, when things become hard and then they become cold, they become hard. And if our hearts become hard and cold, they can’t be as easily rendered or torn.
Just like all our relationships with people, our spouse, our children. If we neglect it, don’t keep feeding it, it will grow cold and it will grow hard. Having a hard heart didn’t work out very good with Pharaoh, and it won’t work out very good with us either. Don’t let your heart grow cold. Have one that’s warm and soft that can be easily rendered.
I want to ask Hunter, because he got it right the first time. But first, who do you consider the most wisest man in the Bible? Most people would say Solomon. Although when I read about his 700 wives, that cast a little doubt on that, I like my approach better. Just get one really, really good one.
Amen. But where did that wisdom come from? Was he some kind of super genius? No, it’s because he’d found favor in God’s sight. And God asked him, what do you want?
And instead of asking for riches or the death of his enemies, Solomon said he wanted to be wise. Not the most intelligent man in the world, the Albert Einstein of his day, but wise. We read in 1st Kings 3, 9. It says, so give your servant a discerning heart to govern your People to do and to distinguish between right and wrong. Then in verse 12, so God said to him, I will give you a wise and discerning heart so that you will.
There will never be anyone like you, nor will there ever be. That’s what wisdom really is. Being able to distinguish between right and wrong seems rather simple, but not a lot of people seem to be able to do that days. And sometimes the line between right or wrong gets kind of blurred. A couple months ago, I mowed the church lawn here.
And when I finished, I stopped down to Kwik Trip. I needed to pick up a couple of things. I got four things. One was a box of donuts. Don’t judge me.
But anyway, so I got the four things. They said $7.58, and I took my Quick Trip credit card and get the discount and paid, got back my truck and started driving away. And I got to thinking, $7.58, that just doesn’t seem to sound right. Well, I bought this, I bought that. And I made the turn at the end of the street and yeah, that was wrong.
They missed something. And so then I get to the end of the street. There’s a stop sign. I’m right in front of Mr. Wilson’s card shop there. So I can’t go straight ahead and drive into that.
So I got two choices. I can turn to the left and circle back to Quik Trip and correct the mistake, or I can turn to the right and head home.
I turn to the right because in my mind I had all kinds of explanations as well. I got the truck and trail. There’s hardly any room to park there. They made the mistake, not me. I didn’t do anything wrong.
That they make tens of millions of dollars a day in sales. They’ll never miss that I’m the only person in the world that would ever know about that mistake. That was the problem. I knew about it, and I didn’t have a leap button in my brain that I could erase it. So I made it as far as the Presbyterian church and I wheeled into the parking lot, zip around and head back to Kwik Trip.
And I thought to me occurred later that if somebody was there watching, what was that all about? But anyway, I went back and took me five minutes, had a different clerk try and explain why I owed him more money. And we got it straightened out. But, you know, I’m of the opinion that there’s a price at which everybody will sell their integrity and honor out if the price is enough. I just figured a $4.38 bag of orange juice was higher, wasn’t as high as I was willing to go.
But sometimes, like I say, it can be blurred. What seems to be right, that seems to be the wise thing, isn’t it’s okay to be smart. I love to surround myself with smart people. You get a lot farther ahead in life than hanging around stupid people, I think. But, you know.
But, you know, knowledge, intelligence comes from the head, but wisdom comes from the heart. Sometimes we just do the smart thing or the wise thing because we can get away with it. On our rafting trip, we just got done going down the Colorado river for six days. There was a guy on our group, he was from New York, Roy. He was your stereotypical New Yorker.
He had the heavy accent, and he was loud and boisterous. He was a great guy, though. But he told the story when he was going to college, and he was more into having a good time than studying. And he had to have a paper on Moby Dick, and he didn’t want to bother reading that. But somebody told him, if you go up to this fraternity down the road here and for 10 bucks they’ll give you a paper, he can hand that.
So that sounded like a good deal to him. So he goes and pays 10 bucks, gets a paper, turns it in, gets back on top, was A plus. Well, that worked out really well. Then the teacher wrote next to it. I always thought this paper deserved an eight plus when I first wrote it seven years ago.
So now I’m giving it one. So I don’t think I got the A.
But anyway, you want to be smart, go to school and study hard. You want to be wise, rend your heart, rend yourself, and have a discerning heart, a heart that knows the difference between right and wrong. Now, Luke 24, we’ve got another verse beginning in verse 13. Now, on that same day, two of them, that’s meaning believers, or most likely disciples, were walking to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem. They were talking with each other about everything that had happened, that meaning the resurrection.
And as they talked and discussed these things with each other, Jesus himself came up and walked along with them. But they were kept from recognizing him. Then skipping ahead to verse 28. And as they approached the village to which they were going, Jesus continued on as if he were going farther. But they urged him strongly, stay with us.
For it is nearly evening, the day is almost over. So he went in to stay with them. When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it, and began to give it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him and he disappeared from their sight. Now this is the key part here.
They asked each other, were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the scripture to us? You see, your heart will always hear from God long before your ears will. We hear with our ears, our head, but we listen with our hearts. Hearing is merely picking up the sound waves that are coming to us. And sometimes it’s just in one ear and out the other.
But listening, listening takes time. Time to absorb, to digest and to understand what is really being said, whether it’s from God or a person we know. Don’t just hear, but have a heart that takes time to listen. Finally, the last verse I’m looking at, but I’m not anywhere near the end of my sermon, so don’t get. Well, it’s not this short.
Finally, I want to look at Matthew 12:34 and this. I did the King James Version because that’s the way I learned it as a kid. O generation of vipers, how can you, being evil, speak good things for out of the abundance of the heart? The mouth speaks later in Matthew and a couple verses down it says, for by your words you will be acquitted, or by your words you will be condemned. Our words have a big impact for years.
I always was of the belief that everyone could benefit if they had a four second delay from what their mind came up with and what came out of their mouth. That you could like stop some of those things before sort of a built in censorship. Well, of course that isn’t possible. And even if it was, it really doesn’t address the root cause. And that’s what is in our hearts to begin with.
Maybe like Shakespeare said, we’re just being good actors. If we get time, we can polish our words to fit our particular image that we’re trying to portray. But what comes out spontaneously we don’t have time to think about is probably closer to the truth, what is really in our hearts. There was one time, I remember when I spoke without taking time to think what it was I was going to say. And that was when I had my accident five years ago after I’d gotten run over and was laying on the ground gagging and gasping for breath.
I was sure I only had a few moments to live and there was nothing I could do about it. But what I could do, I could speak my last words on earth. I didn’t have time to think because I had seconds maybe. So I just Opened my mouth to see what would come out. And I said three things in a row.
I said, thank you, God, for a wonderful life. Please take care of Diana, my wife. And finally I said, I don’t want to. I really don’t want to die in this cornfield. Not today.
Then I just waited. Well, obviously I didn’t die. It’s only through a total miracle, which is a story for another day. But I was laying in the hospital the next 23 days. I thought about what I had said.
You have a lot of time to think in 23 days in the hospital. And I was kind of thankful and pleased. What had come out spontaneously, first I thought was I was thankful to God. You always want to be thankful to God. Secondly, I thought of others, my wife before myself.
I was more concerned of what it would do to her than to me. And thirdly, I wasn’t afraid to share what was on my heart openly and honestly to God. We should always come to God that way. Be willing to tell us what we actually are thinking. At some point in our lives, we will say our last words.
Maybe to an individual we know, or maybe just to nobody we really know. They are just our last words. But sometimes we do. Diane and I went to see Jamie Rowe last month. A month ago, a few days before she passed.
And we knew it would be the last time we’d be able to talk with her this side of heaven. So we made sure she heard from us directly how much she had meant to us and how much she was appreciated. It was hard, but we’re glad we could do it. But that’s not the way it usually goes. We don’t know when our last words are.
Down on Main Street, Lodi. I think everybody who lives here knows where Vern’s Appliance is. And before it was Verne’s Appliance, back in the 60s and 70s, was Bender’s shoe Store. How many remember Bender’s Shoe Store? A couple people.
I’m old enough too, but Ed Bender had emigrated from Germany after World War II and opened a shoe store. And I remember always as a kid, that’s where we’d go and get our shoes. And he had this heavy German accent yet, you know. But I always liked him. He seemed like a very nice man to me.
And across the street where the thrift shop is now was Gordy Jewels Golf Filling Station. And then there was Marcroft Motors, the Ford dealership, not Bushnell and couple built down the street was Weber’s Bakery. And there was Paul Dalton’s dry cleaning. And this is days before Lucy’s Cafe, a quick trip or pit stop. And a lot of times the guys around mid morning 10 o’ clock would come over to Gordy’s gas station and just kind of shoot the breeze, have a soda or something in that.
And one day Ed went over there and Gordy was washing the hearse for Homrie Funeral Home. And Ed asked, well, who you getting the hearse ready for? Gordy. And Gordy jokes, we’re getting ready for you, Ed. And everybody had a good laugh about it and went back to their work.
Well, later that afternoon, Ed had to go to Milwaukee to pick up some supplies for the shoe store. On the way home on I94, he had a car accident, was killed. Now of course, Gordy had never met anything malicious, but Gordy was one of the nicest men you’d ever want to meet. But I can’t help but think he wished he hadn’t said what he had said. That was the last word he said.
To add his friend, there’s a flip side to this too. Your last words. Our Florida pastor told of last February getting a call that a longtime member of the church was nearing the end. He was in his late 80s. So Pastor Youth went to the hospital.
They met the family outside the door to his room and they said, well, you can go in, but we’re not sure he’ll know who you are.
So Pastor went in and the man’s eyes lit up and said, oh, Pastor David, I’m so glad to see you. The man had been a pharmacist by trade, but had led several mission trips to Africa. And they talked for about 15 minutes. And Pastor Youth said their conversation kept getting interrupted by the man just blurting out, hallelujah, thank you Jesus. Hallelujah, thank you Jesus.
Pastor David said, he must have said that 25 times in that 15 minute conversation. One doesn’t have to wonder too much what was in that man’s heart. It was obvious. I like that story because it reminded me of the last words I ever heard my father say.
He said, jesus has been so wonderful to me.
Those are great words to remember your dad by. That’s why we need to try and make sure that everything we say is kind, loving, encouraging, uplifting, just in case they are indeed the last words we’ll ever say to that person. People these days speak a lot of mean, angry, hateful words. I mean a lot. There was a very provoking super bowl ad this year that was a montage of photos of people Facing off, screaming at each other.
There’s no sound, just the pictures, but you could see the hate and anger in their eyes and their faces. And there was all sides of the political spectrum, people yelling at police, people yelling at Black Lives Matter demonstrators, people on the abortion issue for or against. And this photo montage ran for about 45 seconds and then at the end, it just was a simple six word sentence there for us to remember. Jesus loves the people you hate. Powerful message there.
So we also need to be careful what comes out of our mouths. Render your heart. For out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks well. Finally getting back to my sermon titled 18 inches. Not a very long difference, much difference distance.
But besides being difference in a Super bowl, it can also be the difference between heaven and hell. I heard a sermon long ago where a preacher said he didn’t really become a Christian until he had what he called an 18 inch conversion. You were right, Jane. I didn’t want to tell that. You guessed it right.
18 inches. When Jesus Christ moves from being in your head down to being in your heart, you can know all about Jesus. But until you’ve rendered your heart, opened it up, let him in. That Jesus has moved those 18 inches, that it really means anything at all. You want a heart that is warm and soft.
You want a heart that is wise and discerning. You want a heart that will listen. You want a heart that speaks love and kindness fluently. Then render your heart. One of the finest secular speakers I ever heard was a professor from the University of Nebraska.
I forget his full name. It was John something. First heard him like probably 45 years ago. Diane and I had just been married a couple years and I went to a convention down at the Concourse Hotel in Madison. And There was about 300 farmers and their wives there.
And this man, he was a professor of psychology specializing in counseling farm families. I heard him again about 15 years later. Oh, I remember that guy. And I heard him again a third time about five years after that. And besides being a very good speaker in his own right, he really kept the audience attention because we could all relate to the subject matter that he was talking about making a farming family work.
He talked about the challenge involved a father having to work with his son, a son having to work with his father. What happens when a farm boy marries a city girl? Fortunately, I married a farm girl, so that went smoothly. But things like that. And he told one story, he had a lot of stories, and they were just.
They’re all true, you know. And one I Still remember in particular, he told about how good the wife was in getting her point across. The husband came in after chores one morning and it was his birthday. And there in the kitchen counter was this huge present. He looked at it.
That’s mine. Yes, that is. But you can’t open it until this evening. Well, you know who would like to open it then? Everybody wants to open their present.
Okay, could wait. So he comes in at noon. There it is sitting there right in the open again. He looks at it, he starts to get excited. It’s like, wow, that’s big.
This is like the fanciest wrapping paper ever seen. A big bow on top that was just perfectly tied. But that must be some present. And so fall. Finally evening came and it was time for him he could open it up.
So he took and he undid the wrapping paper and the bow and opened the top of the box and he looked inside and there inside was nothing. He looked, and before he could say anything, she said to him, I just wanted to show you what you’ve been giving me in our marriage this past year. Something that looks really nice on the outside but has nothing on the inside. It’s just an empty box.
The professor’s point was, make sure you’re giving your spouse something of value all the time. Now we can continually, as Christians, we need to ask ourselves, what am I giving Jesus today? We can put on a really good outward show of our devotion to everyone around us. We can tear our clothes, holler, shout, and do all of the Christian things a person is supposed to do from sunup to sundown. But if we’ve never rendered our hearts that Jesus has moved those 18 inches, then all we are really giving him is an empty box.
Jesus deserves more than just an empty box. Joel 2, 13. Rend your hearts, not your garments. Let’s pray.
Lord, it was hard for me to write this sermon because when I look at my life, I see how often I fall so short of living this out. I need to do so much better. And if anyone here today has never really rended their heart, that Jesus Christ needs to move, make that 18 inch move. I just pray that they’ll ask you this morning to do that. It’s really simple.
All you need to do is ask. And the rewards of a life of serving and being devoted, truly devoted to Christ mean, will mean so much. As David wrote in the Psalms, create in me a clean heart. Lord, we all need to make that move to have our hearts soft and tender that can be easily rent in your name. We pray Amen.