HOME Mission History Worship Sermons Photos Contacts Directions Links

Miracles?

 Numbers 27:12-22

October 5, 2003

Joshua Appointed Moses’ Successor

¹²The LORD said to Moses, “Go up this mountain of the Abarim range, and see the land that I have given to the Israelites. ¹³When you have seen it, you also shall be gathered to your people, as your brother Aaron was, ¹⁴because you rebelled against my word in the wilderness of Zin when the congregation quarreled with me.^£ You did not show my holiness before their eyes at the waters.” (These are the waters of Meribath-kadesh in the wilderness of Zin.) ¹⁵Moses spoke to the LORD, saying, ¹⁶“Let the LORD, the God of the spirits of all flesh, appoint someone over the congregation ¹⁷who shall go out before them and come in before them, who shall lead them out and bring them in, so that the congregation of the LORD may not be like sheep without a shepherd.” ¹⁸So the LORD said to Moses, “Take Joshua son of Nun, a man in whom is the spirit, and lay your hand upon him; ¹⁹have him stand before Eleazar the priest and all the congregation, and commission him in their sight. ²⁰You shall give him some of your authority, so that all the congregation of the Israelites may obey. ²¹But he shall stand before Eleazar the priest, who shall inquire for him by the decision of the Urim before the LORD; at his word they shall go out, and at his word they shall come in, both he and all the Israelites with him, the whole congregation.” ²²So Moses did as the LORD commanded him. He took Joshua and had him stand before Eleazar the priest and the whole congregation; ²³he laid his hands on him and commissioned him—as the LORD had directed through Moses.

The year was 1772.  A truly impenetrable fog had settled down over the city of London. In a dismal apartment in the heart of a crowded and dingy section of the city, a man stood gazing into his fireplace.  Suddenly, overcome by desperate emotions of discouragement, gripped by fears he could not name, he throw his cloak around him and rushed out the door.

Carefully, he groped his way across the pavement and felt for the iron horse’s head hitching post that had been custom maid for the front of his home.  Guided by the curb of the sidewalk, he made his way to the nearest corner, where he knew a horse drawn cab was always waiting.

He opened its door and ordered the driver, “To the Thames River, sir!”  In his deep depression and desperation, there seemed no way out but to jump from the bridge!

The ride should have taken 15 minutes, but after an hour and a half of muddling through the impossibly dark and foggy streets, they realized they were hopelessly lost.  In desperation, and utter frustration, he decided to get out of the cab and try to come up with another way to do the ugly deed. 

He paid the driver his fair and lunged from the cab.  As he dropped from cab to the street corner, he bumped up against a pole and fell to the ground.  He grabbed the base of the pole and began to pull himself up, thinking to himself only that he hated his life so much, he was such a failure he couldn’t destroy himself without humiliation and failure.  When he was almost upright, he lifted his hand to put it on the top of the fairly short pole when he suddenly, began to laugh!  He fell to the ground and he couldn’t stop laughing!  The pole he had used to pull himself up from the damp, cold and muddy ground was the horse head, hitching post that was planted on the sidewalk in front of his own house.  After almost two hours of looking for the Thames River in which to drown himself, he had ended up in front of his own home!

In that moment, he rushed back into his own home, as fast as he could in the dark fog.  He sat himself down in front of the dying embers of the fire and wrote these words,

God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform;

He plants His footsteps in the sea and rides upon the storm.

You fearful saints, fresh courage take; the clouds you so much dread

Are big with mercy and shall break, in blessings on your head.

His purposes will ripen fast, unfolding every hour;

The bud may have a bitter taste, but sweet will be the flower.

Blind unbelief is sure to err, and scan His work in vain;

God is His own interpreter, and he will make it plain.[1]

If you recognize the lyrics but aren’t sure where you’ve heard them, let me remind you…  We just sang that hymn at the beginning of today’s worship service.

Mr. Samuel Cowper, the depressed and suicidal man who ended up writing this hymn, didn’t just see what happened that dark and bleak night in 1772 as a funny and unbelievable coincidence.  He saw it as a miracle of God a sign of God’s grace.

Sally was only eight years old when she heard Mommy and Daddy talking about her little brother, Georgie. He was very sick and they had done everything they could afford to save his life. Only a very expensive surgery could help him now . . . and that was out of financially not an option. She heard Daddy say it with a whispered desperation,

"Only a miracle can save him now."

Sally went to her bedroom and pulled her piggybank from its hiding place in the closet. She shook all the change out on the floor and counted it carefully. Tucking the coins in her pocket, she slipped out of the apartment and made her way to the corner drug store.

She waited patiently for the pharmacist to give her attention.  But he was too busy talking to another man, to be bothered by an eight-year-old. Sally twisted her feet to make a scuffing noise.  She cleared her throat. No good. Finally she took a quarter from its hiding place and banged it on the glass counter. That did it!

"And what do you want?" the pharmacist asked in an annoyed tone of voice. "Can’t you see I'm talking to someone!"

"Well, I want to talk to you about my brother," Sally answered back in the same annoyed tone. "He's sick and I want to buy a miracle."

"I beg your pardon," said the pharmacist.

"My Daddy says only a miracle can save him now . . . so how much does a miracle cost?"

"We don't sell miracles here, little girl. I can't help you."

"Listen, I have the money to pay for it. Just tell me how much it costs."

The well-dressed man who had been talking to the pharmacist stooped down and asked, "What kind of a miracle does you brother need?"

"I don't know," Sally answered. A tear started down her cheek. "I just know he's really sick and Mommy says he needs an operation. But my folks can't pay for it . . . so I have my money.

"How much do you have?" asked the well-dressed man.

"A dollar and eleven cents," Sally answered proudly. "And it's all the money I have in the world."

"Well, what a coincidence," smiled the well-dressed man. A dollar and eleven cents . . .that’s the exact price of a miracle to save a little brother.  Then he said, "Take me to where you live.  I want to see your brother and meet your parents.  Let's see if I have the kind of miracle you need."

That well-dressed man was Dr. Carlton Armstrong, renowned surgeon who specialized in neurosurgery.  The operation was completed without charge and it wasn't long until Georgie was home again and doing well. Mommy and Daddy were happily talking about the chain of events that had led them to all that had transpired.

"That surgery," Mommy whispered. "It's like a miracle. I wonder how much it would have cost?

Sally smiled to herself. She knew exactly how much a miracle cost... one dollar and eleven cents... plus the faith of a little child.[2]

Do you believe in miracles?  Both of these stories have been passed down through the ages as urban legends and examples of God’s miraculous grace. 

However, the truth and authenticity of each has been disputed as well.[3] [4] But whether or not these two particular stories are entire or even partially true, I wonder if you believe that such things can come true?  Do you believe in miracles?

Personally, I don’t disbelieve that such things may be true.  I certainly believe that God is capable of inspiring a cabbie to drive around in circles for a few hours until an obviously distraught man decides he doesn’t want to go to the Thames River on a dark foggy night after all.  I certainly believe that a renowned surgeon can be inspired to save the life of a poor sick little boy.  I can certainly accept that for each of the people touched by salvation, the word miracle can be acceptable.

I also believe that this year, we all together will celebrate and commemorate a miracle.

Whether or not these other two stories are authentic miracles stories, We here have been part of a miraculous story of our own.  This is certain!  Let me tell you this story:

On October 25, 1912, nineteen individuals in the Salem, New Hampshire area, met to make known their aspirations in the establishment of a church wherein they could worship God and nurture their faith and still maintain and preserve their Armenian culture and traditions. In these humble beginnings, they strove to keep alive their religious traditions and expose their children and grandchildren to their unique heritage and customs.

A great deal of sacrifice was necessary to achieve this goal, none of which would have been successful without the effort of the Executive Committee elected that day under the guidance of Rev. Kapriel Bedrosian.

Help was first sought, and attained, from the Congregational Conference, presently known as the United Church of Christ. A land grant was obtained from the Northeastern Street Railway Company. Within a short time the church was built, and dedication services took place on November 12, 1913.

As the years passed, God’s blessings were shown in the growth of church membership and the strengthening of spiritual living in the community.

In time, the Ararat Church merged with two other churches: Bethel Armenian Church of Methuen, Massachusetts, in 1965; and the Armenian Congregational Church of Haverhill, Massachusetts, in 1977

These are the first few stanzas of a miracle story that is still unfolding with each passing day.

Do you remember the other story of God’s grace that I began a little while ago, when I read from the Old Testament book of Numbers about Moses passing on the leadership of the people to Joshua?  Yes, The story of the Ararat church began just over Ninety years ago, in 1912, but the story of God’s miraculous grace amidst the Armenians who gathered together in 1912 truly begins as far back as in the story of Moses and Joshua.  It begins perhaps even farther back than that, in the gracious care God showed Abraham as he left his homeland in Ur and later in Haran and went out down to the land of Canaan in obedience to a God who spoke to him face to face.[5]  It goes back as far as Adam and Eve and the creation of the universe.

The miracle story of God’s grace winds through the lives of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph until their people settle in the land of Egypt.  It is a story that we picked up today as Moses turns over his reigns of leadership to his young friend Joshua, and Joshua leads them from the wilderness into the promised land.

God’s grace stays with those people, and his miracles and goodness follows them all their days until Jesus himself and his disciples bring the good news of God’s grace and love to all the nations and to countless lands.

Through Jesus, twelve anonymous men and countless other men and women too are drawn from their ordinary lives to plant the seeds of God’s continuing grace in new lands, among peoples who had never heard of the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses and Joshua.  Among the Armenians in lands both distant and isolated for those people called by the original twelve and distant and remote to us who are the ultimate recipients of that grace.  But not only to the Armenians did that original group go, but to all the races and all the peoples of all the lands they could get themselves to find, and all who heard of the miracles of God’s grace themselves made heroic efforts to prolong the miracles.

Imagine what some in that group that gathered ninety hears ago in this neighborhood must have thought about planting a church and expecting it to grow within walking distance of their own farms and homes?  There were less than twenty people gathered at that first meeting in 1912.  They were all first generation arrivals to these lands.  There was already an Armenian Evangelical church up and running in nearby Lawrence.  They didn’t have any land to spare for a church structure.  What made them think they could start a whole new venture and make it work?  Can you imagine the discussions and doubts that must have passed among those early pioneers?  Perhaps there were some who were totally against the idea.  Perhaps there were others who were more devoted to the idea and more committed to the belief that God was good and by grace would lead them through inevitably difficult days to their own miraculous destiny.  Who were those strong positive voices?  Who were the men and the women who cast the deciding votes to make these hopes and dreams miraculous reality?  Were they Vartanians?  Were they Jamgochians?   Were they Matoians, Peters, Danielians Donabedians; Garabedians, Kachadorians, Darians, Khanjians, Akmakjians or Avedisians?  Certainly there were folks from these families and a dozen others who participated in those early miraculous years who were the ones whom God used to perform the earliest miracles, finding and procuring the land from the Northeast Street Railway Company, planning for and building this structure within which we’ve met today and calling a pastor to lead them all with a span of less than a year?

And those were only the first of many miracles in the last 90 years!

What does it take to maintain and sustain a ministry such as this one for ninety years?  Do you remember the difficulties we read about in the book of Numbers for what happened when Moses was called by God to step down from leadership?  Moses had led the people of God through the wilderness for forty years in their faithful search for the Promised Land.  However, in the end, he was not allowed to enter because of anger and disobedience.  He is commanded by God to pick his own successor.  He picks Joshua and presents the situation to the gathered people of God.  What must they have been thinking?  After forty years, Moses wouldn’t enter the Promised Land with them?  After all that care and leadership, now they would have to rely on Joshua?  What must the priest Eleazar, to whom Moses presented Joshua for annointing, have thought?  What did Joshua himself think?  Was he eager?  Was he confused?  Did he want to go hide from the responsibility?  Had he been patienty awaiting his opportunity to lead the people and assume the role as their leader?  What other challenges faced these people at this moment of transition in their lives?  Were they all faithful and confident that God would watch over them as He had in the past?  Or were there still many worried, troubled folks who couldn’t imagine how they’d survive this new upheaval in their long troubled lives?  Yet God responded to all of these doubts and fears.  Joshua proved an able leader and over the centuries, many more such godly leaders were called forth from the people to lead them.  God’s grace and miraculous care followed the people of God even through trials and tribulations to come.

In Salem 90 years ago as well, the challenges were profound.  And yet, by God’s miraculous grace they overcame them.  And as the years progressed questions similar to those of Moses’ and Joshua’s people would haunt many of the Ararat founders as well.  Yes, Rev. Kapriel Bedrosian helped the original founders gather and plant the roots of the early community.  But what would happened in 1918 when he could no longer stay?  What would happen when in 1925, Rev. Vahan Tamzarian, a man who had been ordained in this church and took the leadership of this church as his first call died while still pastor?  What would happen in the early 1950’s when the pressure mounted and it was decided that Armenian would no longer be the only language spoken in worship?  Would the old-timers accept that?  Would the concession be enough to keep young people coming to the church?  What would happen in 1965 and again in 1974, other local Armenian Evangelical churches merged with the Ararat church?  Would transitions be rocky or smooth?  Building expansions and capital improvements, leadership scandals, financial and legal troubles, the changing of the community from farming to residential community, and countless other challenges both minute to overwhelming faced this congregations over the near century of its existence.[6] 

Yet through all the challenges, tribulations, doubts, fear and trouble, the Ararat Armeian Congregational Church is here now, strong, stable, with good leadership in all its ministries, with wonderful children’s programs, with a view towards growth in its size, ministry, spirituality and worship and signs that growth is indeed happening.   Through all the decades God’s mercy has been alive.  God’s miracles have been plentiful.

Samuel Cowper wrote the words 230 years ago,

“God moves in a mysterious way, his wonders to perform;

His purposes will ripen fast, unfolding every hour;

The bud may have a bitter taste, but sweet will be the flower.”

As we celebrate the anniversary of this church this month, let us rejoice in God’s miracles and give thanks for God’s grace and the gift of the sweet flower of this church.

Amen