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The following message is preached by Reverend Dr. Bruce Wheeler Thielman from the pulpit of the historic First Presbyterian Church of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The message is entitled "The Riches of the Short-Changed." We shall continue in worship by giving attention to the reading of the Word of God,

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the book of Numbers chapter 7. I begin the reading at the verse which is numbered 1. "On the day when Moses had finished setting up the tabernacle and had anointed and consecrated it with all its furnishings and had anointed and consecrated the altar with all its utensils, the leaders of Israel, heads of

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their fathers' houses, the leaders of the tribes who were over those who were numbered, offered and brought their offerings before the Lord, six covered wagons and twelve oxen, a wagon for every two of the leaders and for each one an ox. They offered them before the tabernacle. Then the Lord said to Moses,

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'Accept these from them that they may be used in doing the service of the tent of meeting and give them to the Levites, to each man according to his service.' So Moses took the wagons and the oxen and gave them to the Levites. Two wagons and four oxen he gave to the sons of Gershon according to their service, and four

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wagons and eight oxen he gave to the sons of Merari according to their service under the direction of Ithamar, the son of Aaron the priest. But to the sons of Kohath he gave none because they were charged with the care of the holy things which had to be carried on the shoulder. And may God bless to us and to

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our understanding this reading from his word. Pray with me. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen. Once upon a time, long ago in a land far away, there lived a man named Moses and he had a problem. Moses and those who worshipped under his leadership praised

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God in a tabernacle which was a very large tent-like structure consisting of many parts. There were curtains and there were coverings and there were rods and there were brass pillars and there were the implements of the Holy of Holies including the altar. Scholars have said that the combined weight of all the

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parts of the tabernacle would have exceeded several tons. And this is what gave rise to Moses' problem because you see from time to time the tabernacle had to be moved and the question was how to move so many parts and so much weight. Some of the friends of Moses, in an attempt to be of assistance to him,

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offered to him six wagons and twelve oxen. And Moses, guided by God, accepted these gifts and selected the sons of Levi to transport the tabernacle. Those three sons were Gershon, Moreri, and Kohath. Now interestingly enough, Moses did not divide the carts and the oxen equally among the three sons. Had he done

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that, each of the sons would have received two carts and four oxen. But that is not in fact how Moses divided the carts and the oxen. To Gershon he gave two wagons and four oxen. To Moreri he gave four carts and eight oxen. And the scriptures say that to Kohath and to the sons of Kohath he gave none. It

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sounds, doesn't it, as if Kohath and his children were decidedly shortchanged. But if you take a longer look at the story, you discover that they were shortchanged. They received no carts and no oxen because of a special excellence in faith which was theirs. As a matter of fact, Kohath and his family was given the high

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and lofty privilege of transporting the sacred vessels from the tabernacle, the golden altar, the laver, and the other tools which were used in the act of worship. These things were too sanctified and too holy to be carried in an ox cart. They had to be carried by hand over the shoulder. And it was to Kohath and to his

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progeny that this privilege was given. In other words, what seems at first glance to have been a deprivation turns out to be a sign of special dignity. And as I thought about that, certain implications of it have come to my mind and heart, given me, I trust by the Spirit, to share with you this morning. The first

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implication of this story is that being shortchanged is often not a slight but a salute. Two weeks ago, the entire musical world was saddened with the death of Herbert von Karajan, considered by many to be the greatest orchestral conductor of our time. Von Karajan made magical music that no one has been able to

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match. I re-listened to some of his recordings and read some things which he had written, which were at hand, as an act of remembering him. And I came upon a place where in an interview he was asked, "What made a really great conductor?" And he responded by alluding to a brief passage from the third act of Wagner's

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Der Meistersinger von Nuremberg, where Stolzing asks Hans Sachs what it takes to be a really master singer. And Sachs replies, "It is not when you are young. It is not when the spring of your life sings in you. It is when you are mature, when you have gone through illness and pain and difficulty in marriage. Those

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who sing through those kinds of things, they are the real masters." And von Karajan went on to add, "Greatness in anything must be preceded by suffering." Now that leads me to observe that people who are shortchanged in life are often shortchanged in some form of suffering, and yet there comes out of those people

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a special splendor which would not be theirs under any other circumstances. It is as if God says to these great sufferers, "I'm going to allow this burden to come upon you because I know that you can make the most of it." Now mind you, I am not saying that the sufferings and the burdens, the

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brokenness and the hardship of life which comes upon us is given to us by God. God gives only good gifts. The hardships and the uglinesses of life are part of the sin of life, which is the fruit of the behavior of humankind and not of the will of God. But what the Scriptures teach us is that God never

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allows any more of this suffering or hardship or difficulty to come to anyone than that person is able to handle with God's help. And if this is so, then the implication is very strong that when you encounter those who suffer a very great deal, you are encountering those to whom God has said, "I will allow you to bear

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this because there is in you a special capacity for greatness." I know this is a hard saying for some of you to hear, but out of more than three decades in the ministry, I would say that as I've encountered people who suffer a great deal, one of two things happen. They either become bitter or they become

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better. And in my experience at least, those who are the children of God, Christians, almost invariably become better. Let me illustrate that inversely. Have you ever noticed how our society has a tendency to look upon people who have great suffering, people who have great difficulty or disability, with a

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certain kind of pity? If our society notices them at all, and of course many people don't notice them, but if they are noticed, they are always noticed with a kind of a pathetic response. Look at these telethons which we see periodically on the television set. And people who bear heavy burdens are the

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focus of these telethons as money is being raised to minister to them or the particular needs which are theirs. And the implication which comes across so strongly in those telethons is that these poor static souls, these helpless, these dependent, these scared, these lonely people, if they don't get our

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dollars, they're not going to be able to be fully human. I hope you respond to those telethons with giving. I give to every single one of them. But I will say to you this morning that I do not give out of a sense of pity. I do not give out of a sense of pathos. As a matter of fact, when I look at these people, I'm often

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stunned by their courage. I'm amazed by the way they hold fast with fortitude to the living of life. I find myself absolutely awed by their bravery and humbled by the fact that they have so much to bear and yet they bear it with such beauty and such power. I meet bereaved people who come through their

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heartbreak with a smile even as they're weeping. I know people who have heartbreaking problems at home and who minister there but who minister to others outside their homes as well. I see poor people who give more in terms of percentage and sometimes in terms of actual dollars to the helping, the

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charitable support of others, than those who have ten times their resources. I know individuals who are hated because of the color of their skin or because of some other equally ignorant prejudice and yet they continue loving. I know people who are faithful and are confronted with ridicule and belittled

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because of their faithfulness and yet they endure. And when I see these people, I want to say to them, "I don't think I could do what you do. I have to have carts. I have to have oxen. You do not have these things. You go through life shortchanged and yet there is a beauty about your ministry which far exceeds my

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own. You are much greater than I." When I contemplate Milton in his blindness and Beethoven in his deafness and Elizabeth Barrett Browning in her invalidism and Edison in his deafness, when I watch on television a young baseball player in the minor leagues who has the role of pitcher and yet has only one arm or see

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a young football player trying out for a team to be the kicker and he has no toes on his right foot, when I see men playing basketball in wheelchairs, when I watch blind people walk through the very midst of this city at the busiest hours on the busiest days with courage and grace and see them reach out to help others and

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not ask for help for themselves, I find myself not struck with pity but humiliated before the grandeur of their spirits. They may be shortchanged, but oh what riches are theirs. I think there's another implication here and that is that people who are so

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shortchanged can often touch others in a way which is altogether unique. You noticed in the story that Kohath and his children carry the sacred vessels of the tabernacle by hand. Now no one else was allowed to touch those items. This was a special privilege given to Kohath and his children. You see these

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vessels were sanctified, they were set apart for the most holy use, but the children of Kohath were allowed to carry them in their arms and on their shoulders. They could touch what others could not touch and it seems to me when I look at the shortchanged in life that many times doors are open to them that

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are not open to other people. I remember on the night before I was to have my heart surgery that a young nurse came in to see me. She was a very sweet, perky youngster and she told me she was going to tell me all about the operation and what would follow after it. And I must say that I thought to myself, "Sweetie, I

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don't think you have any idea at all about this. I'll listen to you, but I'm afraid that I'm in a different situation in life than you know." And then she said, "But before I begin, I want you to know that I've already had the surgery that you've had." And with that she opened the top three buttons on her uniform and

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showed me the beginning of her scar, which people who've had heart surgery call her zipper, showed me the beginnings of her zipper. And you know suddenly she had my total attention. Why? Because I knew that she'd been where I was going. I knew that she'd felt the pain I was going to feel. I knew that she

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had gone through the anxieties that I was going through and would go through in the process of recuperation. No one else could have touched me at that moment as she did, because she had been where I now was. And that's the special gift I think which belongs to these short-changed people who are so rich.

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They have about them the ability to touch the holy and to touch it in us. Simone Weil said on one occasion that the extreme greatness of Christianity lies in the fact that it does not seek a supernatural cure for suffering, but seeks instead a supernatural use for suffering. And I think the children of

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Kohat grasp that. And if I may, I would point out that it's right here that the Church makes one of its biggest mistakes. You know, if I were to give all of you a slip of paper this morning and ask you to list on it what are the five principal functions of a minister, I imagine that on every list at some point

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on that list would come the notation "to visit the sick and the suffering." Yet you know that's nowhere taught in the Scriptures. It nowhere says that those who are set aside to the ministry are to be particularly engaged in calling on the sick and the suffering. All Christians are to do that, not just the

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paid ones. And there's a good reason for that. The fact of the matter is that when a paid professional calls on some sick and suffering person, that's one thing. But when someone calls on them, not because they're paid, and when that someone has gone through the very same thing that they are presently going

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through, there is much more of a ministry there than there is in the visitation by any reverend. If I am called, for example, to go to minister to a home where, let us say, a son has died, what am I supposed to say? I've never had any children, let alone a son, let alone a son who has died. And yet there are members of this

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congregation who have faced precisely that storm and know how to speak to others about coping with it. You see, when you hire somebody else to do good deeds for you, you many times miss the fact that you could do the deed far better than they can do it because you have walked somewhere that they've never

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walked. And you also get the opportunity when you do the deed to be blessed by the doing of it. The Scriptures teach that the function of the minister is to preach the Word, to teach the people, and to counsel and support them in order that they might be ministers to others. You know, what I'm going to say now may

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come as quite a shock to some of you, but the fact is that we as a church, as a team, are not to be made up of 1,200 coaches and five players. We're supposed to be a fellowship of five coaches and 1,200 players. There are many places that I am called and go where I'm asked to minister to

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circumstances I've never encountered in life, and yet within the riches of this people I doubt if we can come up with any experience that has not been known by one or more of you. And the church that grasps this principle changes the whole nature of its fellowship and is transformed, for the riches of the

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shortchanged are brought to the fore and they can touch what other people cannot. And one last reflection and then I'm done. It seems to me that the shortchanged often do not see the results of their service. In the book of Numbers, at another place, it tells us that the children of Kohath never saw these items

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that they carried. They were carefully wrapped by the priests and given to the children of Kohath and transported, but then they were given to the priests again who took them in to the holiest parts of the tabernacle and there unwrapped them and put them to their sacred place and to their sacred use. And

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the children of Kohath never actually saw the things that they were carrying. And just so it seems to me, many of these people who suffer a lot in life and yet have a beautiful ministry in spite of it, these people who are rich even though they're shortchanged, these people who can touch what others cannot touch, many

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times folks go to them in their hour of pain, but when the pain is gone and pleasure has come, they do not go to them any longer. So the children of Kohath do not get to see the results of their labor. I've been thinking a lot this week about a dear little old soul named Carrie McClure who was the financial

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secretary of the first church I was ever called to serve. She was 76 years of age when I went there. I got to know her very well when I went there because, well you see there were some members of the Board of Trustees who were opposed to my coming to that church, even though the congregation and the session had voted

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unanimously for me to come, they were opposed and so they refused to pay my salary for the first three months I was there. And I got to know the financial secretary very well during that time and she was managing to pay me by drawing money out of other funds until the trustees learned where the authority of

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the church lies and things were corrected once and for all. She was a very dear, dear lady. She'd been widowed many years before and was always one of the first people to call upon anyone in the church who had been widowed. She knew what to say and what to do. I remember once, and I think I told you of this

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before, of how she fell and broke her wrist and it was very painful and I was driving her to the hospital and as we pulled in to the emergency parking area she said, even in the midst of her pain, "Well, I wonder what things God has for us to do here today." You know I only heard Terry McClure ask for any one thing in

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all of the ten years that I worked at that church, but a number of times I did hear her say, sometimes to me or sometimes to others, "You know, I hope I never lose my sight." Her mother was blind for the last 20 years of her life and she hoped that she would not be blind in the same way and that's exactly what

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happened. She became totally blind. Many people would say short-changed, but oh what a blessing she was to others. And how people would come to be blessed by the words and the example of Terry McClure, even when she went to our Oakmont home, they would travel there to be ministered to by her. But the sad thing

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was that many times after she would minister to them, share those riches she had, they would never come back to say thanks. I was in California by that time, but when I would come to visit in Pittsburgh I would stop by to see her. And I remember her saying to me on one occasion, "You know, one of the good

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things about being blind is that it helps you see God and it helps you see others also." She was part of the family of Kohat. I can see her now, little short lady, stout, very round face, pink and white, blue eyes, white hair, snow white, which she wore very very close to her head, and always with a beautiful and a

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radiant smile. I knew her for a lot of years, but I don't think I ever really came to understand her until I became familiar with the creed of the Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine on 34th Street in New York City. I stopped in once because I'd been told about their creed and it's on the wall in

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their reception area. And when I read that creed, I came to understand Carrie and a lot of other short-changed people that I know. It goes like this, "I ask God for strength that I might achieve. I was made weak that I might learn humbly to obey. I ask God for health that I might do greater things. I was given infirmity

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that I might do better things. I asked for riches that I might be happy. I was given poverty that I might be wise. I asked for power that I might have the praise of men. I was given weakness that I might feel the need of God. I asked for all things that I might enjoy life. I was

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given life that I might enjoy all things. I got nothing that I asked for and everything I had hoped for. Almost despite myself, my unspoken prayers were answered and I, among all people, am most blessed." Gershon and his children got carts and oxen. Moreri and his children got carts

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and oxen. Kohath and his children got no carts and no oxen. But they had the riches of the short-changed. They could touch what others could not touch and they rejoiced even in the glories that they did not see. When you look at life like that, burdens become blessings, labors become loves, and service becomes

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a song. And these, in the end, are the people who live most happily ever after. Let us pray. Our Father, we pray for all those who know special burdens, hardships, agonies, pains, and brokenness in life. Thou hast allowed these things to be part of their

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experience. Enable them to enrich themselves by these things so that they might become not slighted but saluted for the special winsome witness which is theirs. Give us a holy awe and reverence before the splendor of their courage. May they touch what we cannot touch, walk where we cannot walk, bless where we

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cannot bless, and may they, even at those moments when they feel most unappreciated and ignored, know that though they do not see the fruits of their ministry, there are such fruits and they have laid up for themselves great treasures in heaven. Hear our prayer. Bless us and them for Jesus' sake. Amen.

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Amen. [silence]