Sunday Sermon

 

Good Rules

Isaiah 56:2

The person who obeys the law about the Sabbath will be blessed, and the person who does no evil will be blessed.”

Does anyone else remember the American Bicentennial? It was my blessing to be a young person at that time and I remember the celebrations and the talk of the freedom that people experienced because America was a nation based on the idea of people being empowered not government. It is a little disappointing that we are now in the two hundred and fiftieth years of America and it just does not seem to have the same sense of celebration that I remember in my youth. Freedom is a fundamental desire of the human heart and we should commemorate any nations that have worked hard to make freedom a central part of who they are. Humans long for freedom because we have a God who wants us free to be the people we were made to be and that is why one of the subjects that often occurs in scripture is the idea of humans being free. We are told that Jesus comes to set us free from the slavery of sin and Paul in First Corinthians chapter ten verse twenty three speaks about our freedom and how it can be misused. A large focus of the story of God’s work with humans is God’s desire to give us real freedom and to empower us to use that freedom in a way that will help us grow and develop as God made us to do. When we allow sin to control us, we live not as free people but as people who are under the control of forces that destroy us and bring pain and suffering to us. The interesting thing is that God also knows that freedom is not easy and can make people very nervous. That is why God gives us a guide of how to get real freedom and how to then handle that freedom. God understands that freedom is not free and if we are to keep the freedom God give us we need wisdom to know what to do. We are blessed in the fact that God not only tells us how to get free but also how to then keep that freedom and that is one of the things that tells us about how amazing our God is and is a reason to worship and praise God. Humans struggle with so many things but we have a God who knows our problems and offers solutions to us. Jesus taught about both the faith we need and how to live as people of faith because faith in God is what sets people free. To trust in the living God is one thing but to know how to live each day as people of faith is much more daunting and so God gives us the wisdom we need to make it through each day. Believers in Jesus have been liberated and know what real freedom is and we should speak of that to those who are still held captive by the evil of sin. Faith in God is the most powerful force in the world that gives freedom to anyone who will trust in God and we need to speak to the world about this God. Knowing God and knowing what Jesus does on the cross tells us so much about what our faith is all about and what we who believe are involved in. Christians are the greatest movement for the setting of people free that has have happened and nothing like can be found in any other place like it.

When our first child was born, I was in grad school and Debbie was working and we were living in the married student housing of the university I was attending. Debbie and I had only been married for two years and we are still trying to understand what being married meant when this child came along and to say we were lost would not be wrong. For Debbie it was a bigger battle then for me because she wanted to be the perfect mother and Debbie never did anything half way. The problem was she had not grown up with a good mother and so had no real idea of how to be a good mother. That is when another woman in married student housing stepped in. She and her husband were older and they already had two kids and another on the way so being a mother was not new to her. Nothing was ever said it just happened but this woman must have seen Debbie struggling because she just began showing Debbie how to care for our child. This humble woman did not make Debbie feel stupid but just dispensed wisdom that was a great help to my wife and child. When I think about how God works I remember this woman and how she stepped in. Because we as humans are broken by sin we lack the ability to make the best choices for our lives but we have a God who wants to step in and give us the wisdom we need. God never forces Himself on us but humbly offers the knowledge we need to make our lives work like they should. The fact is the instructions God gives are a basic explanation of how the universe works and to ignore the ideas and concepts God gives is to bring harm on ourselves. Knowing how important the information God has is God should force us to obey but God only offers the wisdom and we are the ones who must choose to use the information God gives. Our faith is all about a God who wants us to know things about how the world works because that material will make our lives better and I like that about God. Let us look to God because His teachings set us free and help us to build lives of real meaning and purpose.

Recently I have been reminded how dangerous electric power is and now safe it has to be to work every day in our houses. From breakers to GFI outlets there are so many things that it takes to make electric safe to use in our houses and we should be very glad for all of them. Imagine not having electric power to use to make our lives easier. Electric is so useful that we don’t even think about it until we have a power outage. To some degree our verse relates to the same thing about faith that safety devices do for electric. When we stand in eternity no one is going to ask us about our church attendance but at the same time this reminds us there is a blessing in spending time with God. A few years ago I began to think about the whole Sabbath issue and what God wanted in commanding it. Yes, there was the easy part that everyone could see that it was a time to worship and give God the glory He deserved. There was also the component of the sin offerings but there is more then that to the Sabbath and the blessings that flow from it. I think the best place to start is to consider how powerful the very idea of the Sabbath was. How a person thinks about the Sabbath will demonstrate what they think of God and the role He plays in a persons life. When the Israelite people were traveling through the desert, their camp was centered on the Tabernacle to remind everyone that God should be at the center of their lives. Treating the Sabbath day as holy will change how we think about our God. Going to church is the same thing. If we go to church just because it is what we do church will not have same the impact that those who go to church to seek the Holy God. Church attendance does not save us but how we think about going to church and the purpose of going to church will either mean finding the blessing God seeks for our lives or missing an encounter with the transcendent God. There is so much about the Sabbath that God commanded that bring blessing to us without even knowing God has something special attached to the Sabbath. God clearly wants the Sabbath to be a day of rest and that rest is connected directly to God resting after six days of creation. When we have time to rest, we have time to sit and to think about God and what He is doing. On the Sabbath day we also have time to think about the Holy and the sacred and that leads us to thinking about God. Let us speak of the blessing of the Sabbath day.

The importance of the Sabbath is then backed up by the next phrase which tells us that there is a blessing for those who do not do evil. When we hear these words most of us don’t think we do evil so it should be easy to get this blessing but that is not what God thinks. Scripture tells us that our hearts are evil and that without God the only thing that will come out of us is evil and that is where the Sabbath comes in. By obeying the laws about the Sabbath people are set up to over come the evil that is in their hearts and to then find the real blessing God gives. I know that the Sabbath and church on Sunday are not the same but because the law was fulfilled the Sabbath now is found in Jesus and church is where we celebrate Jesus so I want us to think about the power of church to help us deal with the evil that plagues our hearts. Going to church does nothing for us if all we are doing is going to church but if we go to church because it is where we gather to worship the God who saves us the church has great power. The blessing that flows from church is not being in church but that the church helps us better connect with God and our fellow believers. At church we find the place where we are confronted by our sin and also reminded that we are not alone in our struggle for faith and trust in God. Just as how people thought of the Sabbath brought blessing so does blessing flow from church attendance. We are not saved by church but church is where we gather to give God the glory He deserves because He is the one who saves us. Evil cannot be dealt with unless we have God and both the Sabbath in the Old Covenant and the Church in the New Covenant are where we find the strength and faith to deal with the evil in our hearts. Let us find blessing because we do not do evil because we have spent time worshiping and honoring God. Part of the solution to evil is found in both the Sabbath and the church so let us honor God by being in attendance.

What I like about this verse is that it gives us an idea about the process of faith. We all like the idea of faith but the actual doing of faith is hard but God who knows how hard faith is gives us the wisdom to understand what is going on. Learning to trust God takes real work but God has given us what might be called short cuts to building faith. Each of the rules and laws God gives us has a purpose and is meant to help us build our faith in the living God. We do not have to have great faith all at once but if we follow the process we find in this verse we will see that we and grow and develop in our faith over time. Our verse shows us that as we learn one concept another will flow out of that and we can build a love for God that changes us and the world around us. Obeying does not save us but obeying what God teaches us will help us to be people who find the hope and peace God wants us to have.