Sermons

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The Long and Short of 40
June 25, 2000
Pastor Dan Baumgartner

I want to read a story from I Kings with you, and put it alongside the story which Cal read earlier about Jesus’ temptations.  The link between the stories is that they both refer to the time period of 40 DAYS.  Turn with me to I Kings 19:1.  The background to the story is that God’s great prophet Elijah has just triumphed over 450 prophets of Baal, a Canaanite god.  In doing so, he turned the Israelite people back to the One true God, but also upset the wicked King Ahab and Queen Jezebel.

I Kings 19:1-13

I’ve had a big joke with my kids for four or five years.  I slowly trained them to refer to me as their “young, strong, good-looking Dad.”   That worked well until a year and a half ago when I hit the big 4-oh.  Immediately upon my 40th birthday, one of the kids instantly switched it to “my OLD, strong, good-looking Dad…and you’re getting weaker.”

I’m intrigued with the number 40.  Not 40 just as in years old, but the number 40. It appears all over the Bible.  Now, there are several numbers which are used repeatedly in scripture, like 7 and 12.  But 40 has a particular use…it always deals with TIME.  One author says it is a span of time “sufficient to accomplish what needs to take place.” 

Perhaps 40 caught my attention because I’ve had a number of conversations in the last year with people who feel themselves turning “middle-aged.”    This is a time of life which calls forth major questions, reevaluations, career changes, friendship adjustments and uncertainty about one’s faith.  But these things aren’t limited by just age, to be sure.  Major life changes of any kind -- upcoming weddings, decisions on school, career moves, various stages of children, wondering about marriage, illness -- all of these can lead us to times of confusion, learning and crises of faith.  And it seems that the time period of “40” most often deals with people in these situations.  Follow with me as we look at several of the Bible’s 40s, and the profound questions they ask us.

We’ll start with Noah, way back in Genesis.  After Noah had listened and obeyed God, he and his family got into the boat… “and on that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened, and rain fell on the earth 40 days and 40 nights.”   Waters rose and covered the mountain tops, Noah and his family and animals in the ark were lifted up…and all the living things on the face of the earth were wiped out.  Why?  God was grieved that the inclination of people’s hearts was always evil.  And so God uses the 40 DAYS to wipe clean the earth, to cleanse it and start over.  And so Noah’s 40 DAYS cause us to ask, “Lord, where is it that I need you to wash me clean, to wipe away dark and evil that isn’t what you intended?”

Or think about Moses.  Moses climbs Mt. Sinai and has this “aha” experience of intimacy with God.  As he is there on the mountain top, the cloud of God’s glory envelopes him like a climber on Mt. Everest.  To the people far below, God’s glory looked like “a consuming fire.”  Moses stayed up there with God, reveling in that close presence for 40 DAYS.  God spoke to him and drew him close, and gave him the stone tablets for the people.  But when Moses came down, the people were chasing other gods and he got so mad, he smashed the tablets.  Ten chapters later, Moses goes back up the mountain again.  And he is there, yes, 40 days and nights without eating or drinking.  God gives him a second set of tablets, and Moses learns something about God’s patience, that God is a God of the second chance.   Moses’ 40 DAYS ask us “Where is it that I need God to give me a second chance, to start new and fresh with me?”

Or Elijah.  We just read about Elijah, God’s all-star prophet who defeats 450 others by believing in God’s power over everything else, including the political rulers and corrupt system.  Elijah is at the top of his ministry game. Yet in the very next breath, Elijah loses his courage, assumes his career is over and runs away.  In fact, he runs away for…40 DAYS.  At the end of the 40 days, Elijah is ready to hear God.  Not in the wind, or the earthquake, or the fire that God had used before, that he was familiar with.  No, Elijah hears God in a new way…in quiet, in a voice so small he needed the ear of faith to hear it.  At the end of 40 days, God teaches him to listen in a new way, refocuses him and puts him back to work.  Elijah’s 40 days ask us, “Where do you need God to refocus you, to call you back?  Could God be communicating in a different way than you’ve experienced?  What would that be?”

You remember Jonah.  We spent a couple of weeks with him a month ago.  You’ll remember that Jonah was called by God to bear a message for the city of Nineveh.  There was a slight delay while Jonah ran away from his mission, but eventually he made it to Nineveh, walked into the city and simply said, “40 more days and Nineveh shall be overthrown.”  Those 40 days were very key.  They forced the Ninevites to look to their future.  They could no long be so absorbed in the “now,” couldn’t focus only on the present.  They had a future, and they needed to live in the light of that future.  They needed to change.  And so Jonah’s 40 DAYS ask us, “How are you living?  Is there change which God is asking for, but you have been avoiding?”

You see the pattern.  40 DAYS is a period of time sufficient to accomplish what needs to take place.  In the New Testament, we continue to be informed by 40.

In the story Cal read of Jesus’ temptations, Jesus is called out into the wilderness to fast for 40 DAYS.  At the end of those days, he is tempted by Satan.  He is forced to clarify his identity, his call, and his own heart.  Would he follow the road God had laid out for him?  Satan pushed him to believe many of the same things our culture and our world pushes us towards:

• Satan pushed him to believe that God could not provide what he needed.
• He pushed him to doubt that God was really there.
• He pushed him to desire his own spotlight, his own fame and power.

These 40 DAYS were a time of preparation, of clarifying. Jesus’ 40 days in the desert asks, “Are you going to trust in God, or in things that the world holds up as important?”

In the book of Acts, we’re told that the appearances of Jesus AFTER his death and resurrection lasted…40 DAYS.  They were a critical 40 days for the people who followed Jesus.  The 40 days reassured them that God was doing a new thing.  Sure, maybe in their mind's eye they believed that Jesus could take away the sting of death, that he was calling them to dance in a new kind of kingdom.  But once Jesus was gone, those doubts set in so quickly.  And then…he appeared, he convinced, he taught, he opened eyes, he equipped.  And when he finally did leave, promising the Holy Spirit would come soon…he left a very different group of followers.  They were reassured that God truly would never leave them alone.  These 40 DAYS of Jesus' call out to remind us that we are not alone.

Forty is an important number in the Bible.  And for us.  It seems to often represent a time period that is slow, or boring, or painful, or confusing.  Perhaps you are in one of those times…if not, you have been or will be.  Times where you wonder: “Where is God?  What comes next for me spiritually?  The things I have tried before don’t seem to be working.  Am I doing what I’m supposed to be doing with my life?”  When the 40 days comes, the questions seem to outnumber the answers.  But there are a few things to hang onto as well:

First: Being in the 40 days may be boring, painful or confusing.  But it does not mean that God is not at work.  And we need to look for what He is doing.  God is working on us and in us.  But we don’t always realize it on our own.  We may need the help of our brothers and sisters to see it. 

I just came back from a couple of days with my study group of four from seminary days.  One guy is teaching at a school and working with Young Life in a barrio, a neighborhood in Merida, Mexico, near Cancun.  One is a Ph.D. student at Baylor in Waco, Texas.  One is the Associate Pastor of a large church in Scottsdale.  Once a year we meet together for 2-3 days to study and pray and play.  We take time to share our whole year in one sweep.  And we invite each other to look into our lives, to ask hard questions.  And we listen to what the others pick up on, where they see bitterness or doubt, where they see passion, where they see God at work, and what He might be doing.  We need each other to see what God is doing.  It’s one reason I think it’s so important to be in small groups, home groups, Bible studies, mentoring relationships…places where people know us well enough to help us see God in our lives, to see what the 40 days is doing.

Secondly…the 40 days puts the “unspectacular” parts of life into a whole new light.  God is at work at least as much in the day-to-day, in the struggles…as in the successes and accomplishments everyone wants to talk about. 

You’ll notice that the colors in the front of the church today are green.  That means we are in a part of the church calendar called “Ordinary Time,” as opposed to Lent, Easter, Advent, Pentecost, etc.   Ordinary Time.  Yecch.  What a name.  “We’re now in the mundane time of the year, the plain and dull time, and it lasts half a year!”  Just for your information, today is the 12th Sunday of Ordinary time.

Now the word actually doesn’t mean “mundane.” It refers to a kind of counting.  You math whizzes will remember that cardinal numbers are those like one, two, three, four, etc. Ordinal numbers are first, second, third, fourth, etc.  “Ordinary” comes from ordinal, and is just a means of counting the “non-holiday” time: “first Sunday, second Sunday,” etc.  

But it strikes me that it IS also ordinary in the way we most often use the word.   Most of the year is NOT a “highlight,” a holiday or spectacular moment.  The Bible’s 40s read very much like ordinary time.  Day in, day out time to grow, to mature, to wrestle and be shaped.  We need the rhythm of the everyday to ground us.  God meets us in the morning walk around the neighborhood, in the Psalm read over morning coffee, in the bus ride to work, in the meeting of a new friend.  God uses the ordinary to shape and teach.  We are works in process, and God uses the ordinary to change us.  In the 12th century, Brother Lawrence lived in a monastery, and we have ended up with some of his writing in a book called "The Practice of the Presence of God."  He wrote, “Sometimes I imagine myself as a stone, set before a sculptor from which he will carve a beautiful statue.

Lastly…the 40s of the Bible call forth both BEING and DOING.  Activism and contemplation, hands-on ministry and prayer.  The 40s of the Bible remind us that all time has a purpose.  God WILL accomplish in us what He wants.  Sometimes in the still, small voice that Elijah needed to listen for.  Sometimes in the action of a Noah, building a boat amidst the mockery of his neighbors.  Sometimes in the changed lives of the Ninevites, but sometimes in the quiet days of preparation before Jesus faced the temptations.  Our lives will need to be both centered in listening prayer, and responding to what we hear by how we live.  The church has need of both.  At Bethany we need both.  We need Saturdays of prayer and trips to monasteries and Holy Week times of quiet and listening.  We also need to be out in our community, and caring for those who are homeless and open to God having us house a refugee family.   The 40s provide time and preparation for both quietly being and actively doing.

Forty is time with a purpose, God’s purpose.  It is time for us to look and listen for God, to ask ourselves questions:  Am I living the way I want to be?  What is God trying to teach me right now?  We live in the shadow of 40, because 40 says that days don’t go on forever.  The 39 days are lived in the knowledge that number 40 will come.   The present is lived in the light of the future. And since our future lies in the hands of a loving God made visible in Jesus Christ,  we can live the present with our eyes wide open to see God in the midst of life.  All of life.  The spectacular.  The ordinary.  The 40.  Amen.