Systemic Inspections

    

Read Romans 7:7

Deuteronomy 10

 

What do we do with the law?

The law is good and given to us for our own good. Let’s go to Deuteronomy 10.

And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you, but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all His ways and to love Him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments of the Lord and His statutes which I command you today for your good?

Let’s try this in the dynamic language of The Message.

So now Israel, what do you think God expects from you? Just this: Live in his presence in holy reverence, follow the road he sets out for you, love him, serve God, your God, with everything you have in you, obey the commandments and regulations of God that I’m commanding you today—live a good life.

What do we do with the law?

God is good.

The law is good and given to us for our own good.

The law does not bring us to salvation but to life.

Christ alone brings salvation. The law can’t do that part, but it is excellent to bring life to our salvation.

How?

Let me introduce you to systemic inspections.  We have all been a part of inspections. I’m not talking just military inspections. You may have seen the memes about not understanding buying socks and underwear never to ever use them or even intend to use them. Those who have done a Junk on the Bunk know this.

Businesses and education undergo inspections from which they derive metrics that sometimes influence decision-makers' decisions, whoever they may be.

Football teams watch tape and grade individual performance. Sometimes this performance review impacts who starts next Saturday or Sunday.

I remember the days of vehicle inspections. You not only needed a license and registration to drive. Your vehicle had to be certified as drivable, according to the standards of the state.

During my time in the Corps, I did one major systemic inspection. It might have been the first one the Marine Corps had done. It was on the transition assistance program—the processes we use to transition a Marine from his time on active duty to civilian life.

We missed the mark big time here. The reason—the root cause is that we were and are so fixated on accomplishing the mission that making sure Marines have a good transition out of the Corps got lost in the take the hill mentality so necessary to the Corps.

Marines only saw they were losing a Marine, not that this young man or woman might be the best recruiter ever if we treated these Marines well when they left. A well done good and faithful servant goes a long ways even in this life.

Understand that to do a systemic inspection, you first must have compliance standards. You must do this. Do not do that.  That’s a compliance standard.

Only then can you inspect systems. Not only what works and doesn’t work, but why. Why doesn’t it work?

That’s when you get to root cause analysis for those things that don’t work or in which the person or organization is noncompliant. Root cause analysis is simple once you know the compliance standard.

If someone—a person or group—is noncompliant, the why normally resides in one of three areas.

·       Don’t know

·       Can’t comply

·       Won’t comply

Under don’t know we find three main reasons for noncompliance:

·       Never knew

·       Forgot

·       Tasks implied

Under Can’t comply we find three main reasons for noncompliance:

·       Scarce resources

·       Don’t know how

·       Impossibility

Finally, under the category of won’t comply, we find these three:

·       No reward

·       No penalty

·       Disagree

Some may be thinking, “Thanks, Tom, for the trip down memory lane experiences as Inspector General and Private Consultant, but where’s the biblical lesson?”

To answer that, I must take you to Merida, Mexico. I went on my first recreational cruise in 2014. I had about a year at sea in my 20 years in the Corps, but this was my first fun cruise.

We ported in Progresso and boarded a bus for our excursion. The guide on the bus said that Progresso means progress and as you can see, there is no progress in Progresso. It was mostly an industrial port, but you could catch a ride and see cool stuff elsewhere.

We went to Merida, the capital of the Yucatan. We saw some churches, places to eat, and places to shop where they made some unique things.

While my wife was watching a demonstration, I casually walked around the rest of the store. A very short man came up to me and said, “My friend, let me show you something special.”

He showed me a box of 5 Cuban cigars, still illegal to buy in the United States, but not in Mexico.

He gave me a deal at about $100 plus or minus. I wasn’t interested. I had smoked parts of 4 or 5 cigars in my whole life.

He saw my lack of interest and the price dropped to $50, then $40.

I said, “I don’t even smoke.”

That got the price to $25. Ok, for that price, how could I not buy such a coveted item?

A couple of days later, I am packing our luggage and am down to these cigars. I couldn’t pack them.

It wasn’t because they were illegal to bring into the United States. I was because I couldn’t fit anything else in my suitcase without crushing them.

But Sharman ‘s suitcase still had room.

The next day as we went through customs and immigration, Sharman asked me if we needed to declare anything.

I said, “I don’t.”

I did not know what sin was until the law said, “Thou shalt not have a Cuban cigar.”

Paul’s example was “I did not know what sin was until the law said, ‘Thou shalt not covet.’”

Here’s the seminary example. I thought that I had come up with this on my own until I went to preacher’s school. I prefer a preacher's school to a seminary, as too many people like to substitute the word "cemetery," and sometimes the analogy is too apt

I saw the neighborhood cat every morning before I went into the office. Never once did I think about kicking the cat until someone said, “Don’t kick the cat.”

From that point forward, how could I not think about kicking the cat? I was just told that I couldn’t do it.

Back to the cigars. I got home and smoked one. I should not have done that. I should have kept the pack intact and sold it as vintage because those cigars predated Castro’s regime in Cuba.

He came to power three years before I was born and these cigars had not been kept in a humidor or any other form of preservation.

They tasted like skubalon. That’s dung for those not familiar with the Greek term. I have never smoked skubalon, but I’m confident that what it would taste like.

They were terrible, but the law said I couldn’t have one. The law—man’s law in this case—created in me a desire for what I was prohibited from having.

It also gave me awareness of a compliance standard.

The law, if we know it, creates in us an awareness of the dos and don’ts. If we don’t know God through Christ, we probably don’t know the law very well.

While the law points out the need for Christ, some are ignorant of that need. Most people have heard of the Ten Commandments and can remember a few of them.  Many ignore the first ones that are about God being number one, having no other gods, taking God’s name in vain, and that includes Christians, but most who know Christ know a good part about the Decalogue and other directives.

Sometimes we best remember those most controversial in our time.

For those who know Christ, the law in its fullness is a systemic inspection begging to begin. If we want to fully live, we need this self-analysis.

We are all going to miss the mark at some point and though we are saved, we still struggle with compliance with the law.

The law can’t get us to salvation. Only the blood of Jesus does that in our profession of faith, but the law can show us if we have areas that displease God—the God who created us and the God who saved us from sin and death.

Salvation is not our motivation. We who believe that Jesus is Lord have been saved. Salvation is not our motivation.

Responsive love is our motivation. How do we respond to this unfathomable love?

Mostly by loving one another, but even there we slip up. If we take the time to conduct a systemic inspection, we will see every reason for our non-compliance.

Didn’t know. Well, let’s do more Bible study and study groups.

Can’t comply because I don’t know how. That’s addressed with education and practice.

Can’t comply because of scarce resources. Well, allocate your resources to the work of the Lord first.

How about won’t comply? We don’t see the immediate reward or punishment. There is eternal reward and punishment, but most of our bad decisions stem from being myopic and seeing only the now.

And sometimes, Christians just disagree. There is more of that than you might think. We justify in our own minds that God just missed that one.

But if we have the courage to examine ourselves, we will see trends, systems, and areas where we need the most work. It takes courage. Those in recovery know the Twelve Steps. Step four is to make a searching and fearless moral inventory. That’s tough stuff for people without addictions.

How about laziness when it come to the things of God. How about our comfort zones. I think I’ve done enough for the Lord today or this week or this year. I need some me time.

I will put what I would have tithed to good use. The Lord knows that my kids can’t play their best ball without a $450 bat. Besides, there’s a BOGO—buy one, get one half off.

 Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy. That’s outdated. This is a 24/7/365 ¼ world. The work six and rest one—a day holy unto the Lord—is still the optimal way to live for most people.

You can conduct a systematic inspection of yourself and see where you need the most work, the most help, or a swift kick from a real friend. The law stands ready to assist.

A systemic inspection itself won’t accomplish much. It is a step.

You can do everything in compliance with directives and still not please God. Consider the Pharisees. They knew and kept the rules but didn’t know the Rule Maker well at all.

You can have the worst compliance batting average ever, and still please God if you seek him with everything you have.

So why even bring up this systemic inspection stuff?

Because when we consider the law, the Law Giver packed something into the law that human law can’t.

God’s word judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. His word does what human law can’t.  You know the verse.

 

For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.

Almost every culture and religion has some aspect that deals with self-improvement or self-actualization, or both. The one who seeks God, knows Christ as Lord and Savior, and desires to please him has the tools to become more Christlike.

The question is will the law be a scorecard or a gameplan?

Will our treatment of the law just bring us disappointment at falling short again and again, or will we treat it as the best consultant on the planet?

Companies would pay top dollar or Yen or Euro to have a consultant so well versed in business skills as the Law of Moses and the entire word of God are in our personal development.

Businesses covet a 24-hour-a-day consultant who is available every day and as sharp at zero dark thirty as at 9 am. They’re hoping AI will get them there, and it may help. We have such a consultant but how often does it sit on the shelf or our dashboard or where did I put that thing...

What are we to do with the law now that Christ is our everything?

Put it to use as what the Hebrew people knew it was all along, a guide to good living, a model for living God’s way, or divine words that should be written on our hearts.

Those who think the law is useless miss the all-encompassing love of God. He is evident in the creation itself. He is present in his directives.  His Spirt dwells within us.

We know his fullness in Christ Jesus but we should not dismiss the value of the law.

Some misread the second chapter of Colossians and say that the law was nailed to the cross. It was not the law nailed to the cross but the invoice for our indebtedness—our sin—that Paul says was taken from us and nailed to the cross.

Paul also tells us that the law is without efficacy when it comes to salvation. You can’t get there from here. Only Jesus gets us there.

But having arrived at this condition of salvation, we should concurrently be in the state of living by the law and such living not be a burden.

The law was not given as a scorecard by which we might obtain salvation, but for our own good, especially after we have received the gift of salvation.

We are purposed to bring glory to God’s name and blessed to enjoy him very much. That’s a Presbyterian thing. We get to enjoy God as we glorify his name.

Jesus called us friends because we were more than servants. We knew the will of the Father.

We are servants, but we also enter the realm of friendship with our Lord. We enjoy God as we serve him.

That means that we should also enjoy living by the law in our salvation.

There is another whole line of discourse concerning grace and the law that I will save for another day.  For now, know that the law is your friend and the best consultant you will find on the planet today.

Break out the law and hold a systemic inspection on yourself. The blood of Jesus made us right with God. The law’s counsel will help us live up to that righteousness the best that we can.

Amen.     

Mission Creep: Pastor, Building, or Mission?

 

In my ten years as an ordained elder, eighteen years as an ordained minister, serving on denominational and presbyterial boards and committees, not to mention numerous meetings of the Presbytery and as many General Assembly meetings as I could manage, one theme is recurring in the modern church.  What’s that?

Our discussions center so much on pastor salaries and building funds and expenses. That’s part of the deal, right?

Yes, but it should not be central.  What then? These two are always staring at us in the face.

How about our mission? How about the very thing that every believer is commissioned to do?

How about taking the good news to the world, making disciples, baptizing, and the continuous education of those who respond to God’s call to seek him through the Lord Jesus Christ?

Most of this narrative has been in the interrogative. Let’s jump headfirst into the indicative mood.

Our mission should be front and center of every congregation’s focus.

 But what about funds for the building or the pastor? Same answer.

Mission should be front and center of every congregation’s focus.

Again, what about the building and pastor?

Do we not trust God to provide if we do the very thing that he commissioned us to do?

Are we too comfortable with those who have already come? We got ours and we are comfortable with that.

Come Lord Jesus, come!  We’ve got everyone we care about.

We do VBS and Sunday School and set up a table at the park for a community event, and there is nothing wrong with those, unless they supplant the mission of going into the world with the gospel.

Does that mean we go door-to-door? Sometimes.

More often, it’s greeting someone at Walmart or the Post Office or the people who moved in the apartment next to yours. Oh, oh, oh, that would be uncomfortable. We would be labeled those Jesus people.

Is that so bad?  At least your neighbors would know where to turn when the weight of the world becomes too much to handle on their own.

Our sin and even death have been taken away from us-amen, hallelujah, and praise the Lord.

But how will we respond to this incredible gift?  Will we live unchanged lives hoping to blend in with the world? Are we not strangers in the world?

Is “Well done good and faithful servant” not worth more than our comfort in a world that at best is an Airbnb in our promised eternity?

Our mission must always be front and center in our lives. Always!

American pastors, be ready for resistance. We have become a people of comfort, so much so that we try to fit our primal mission into the comfort zones we love so much.

Remember Jesus telling the rich young ruler to sell everything that he had and give the proceeds to the poor?  But that wasn’t for everyone!

Correct, but it is very much for us if our comfort zones keep us from our mission.

Do I really need to sell all that I have? Not if you can get out and stay out of your comfort zone that keeps you from going into the world.

Get in a new comfort zone labeled “Growing.” We share and it doesn’t go well. We will try again. Maybe we learn as we go. If you want to please God, he will grant you the wisdom you need to do what he has commissioned you to do. Ask him. He is generous. You will grow as you go into the world.

What about the money for buildings and pastors? Look at the congregations that reach out to the community. They don’t seem to have this problem.

Connection? I think so!

Our mission and our commission must govern. How many times must God tell us to quit being afraid?

Why must the leadership of the church be so anchored  in our own understanding? Where is our trust?

Stewardship and integrity of the funds entrusted to us are surely essentials but trust in the Lord must prevail among the leadership or we should not expect to see such trust in those looking to us for the example of faith. Remember the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen?

What about by faith not sight?

The church has experienced mission creep over the past several decades from evangelism to preserving our comfort zones.

We are blessed to have shepherds and buildings but they have encroached on our mission. God will provide both if we are faithful to what he has called us to do—go into the world with good news.

Trust him.

Focus on the mission.

Stop worrying.

Be strong and courageous.

Get out of the pews and deliver good news.

Amen!

How long is Advent?

 

The countdown is getting close to single digits. I know what you are thinking: Soon we won’t have to endure the dad jokes.

Good, I won’t have to explain them to you. You don’t even know how a joke becomes a dad joke, do you?

It becomes apparent. With that dad joke and included pun, let’s get after it.

Over the years I have wrestled with something that I have yet to discern fully.  I don’t know if it is blessing or burden, or both.

In most things that come upon the horizon of my awareness, I see the time, space, and logistics of the thing. We call it the TSL.

No, that’s not a pun that’s just really hard to discern. The TSL of something appears to me like that buck you see on the edge of the treelined at 200 yards or the 75% off sticker on that outfit you can’t live without.

Enough about me. Let’s do this Advent thing.

God made everything good. That was his day job. He did it day to day.

God pronounced everything very good. That wasn’t quite the end of his week. He modeled rest.

Then it all broke. I guess God overslept. No, he didn’t. All-powerful, all-knowing God, sovereign God was fully aware of what happened. Sin entered the world.

But he was on a roll. Good to very good, and now this brokenness. What would be next?

More brokenness. Sin run rampant was the story of humankind.

Then there was something of a cleansing, a rebaselining. Yes, we are up to the flood. What next?

How about a plan to get better? God picked a people by which to jump start this. They needed a name.

How about the Picked People. He threw in some instructions to make us better.

He was putting the pieces back together. He was making us better. We might be good as new if we just read the instructions, a least for a while.

Looking back at the Garden of Eden, most of us guys point the finger at the woman. We blame Eve.

God ask Adam, what’s going on here? Didn’t I tell you not to eat that?

The woman that you gave me gave it to me.

The woman said, the serpent tricked me.

And the serpent didn’t have a leg to stand on. We know the story, mine’s a little tongue in cheek

The guy blamed the woman.

But after God picked a people, we got instructions downloaded on tablets from the Cloud. Others came later through prophets.

 Okay guys, can we admit that this is mostly on us? Most of us aren’t that good at reading the instructions?

But if we put those instructions into practice, we could be put together once again good as new, at least for a while.

So the story of humankind is that we were made good, very good, were broken, and the ultimate goal is to be put back together.

So, the goal is to end up where we started?

I know that I am supposed to trust God over my own finite understanding, but really, this is the goal?

Okay, maybe we are a little better than just good and very good. Maybe we are the best we can be with what God had to work with.

Some of you know what’s next. That’s right, Maxine Nightengale sumed it up.

 And it’s alright and it’s comin’ on, we gotta get right back where we started from.

Through this whole creation business, this whole life business, this entire experience that we struggle with and sometimes figure out for a while, the finish line is the starting line. Really?

Okay, maybe the spectrum is good, very good, better, and best. That’s it?

The world calls us foolish. I’m thinking they might be right. I guess that’s better than remaining broken.

Better, best, six, seven. That’s it?

Do you know where most of the struggles are on this spectrum?  It’s not between the worst and the best. That’s Occam's razor stuff.

There is no dilemma, just a straightforward decision. Choose the best over the worst. Duh.

Rabbit trail time! Many of you know this. I taught this to Marines and inmates in the course of teaching ethics and standards of conduct, so I know you know or should know it, but…

As I’m already on a rabbit trail, I should tell you that Marines do not know the meaning of the word quit, but we’re Marines. We don’t know the meaning of a lot of words.

Marines and inmates understood this. Choosing between right and wrong, good and evil, moral and immoral are are not ethical dilemmas. They are ethical decisions.

A dilemma is a difficult decision between ethical choices. If one is non-ethical or unethical, there can be no dilemma. You might struggle with the decision, but it’s not a moral or ethical dilemma.

Most decisions that are actually dilemmas are between good and better or better and best.

So, could you have an unethical dilemma between two evils?  No.

What about choosing the lesser of two evils? That’s a decision, but not an ethical dilemma.

If you think you have to choose between two evils or two immoral choices, don’t.

But, but, but…. Don’t.

C’mon, Tom, you must have never had to make any tough choices in your life. Have you never found yourself between a rock and a hard place and neither choice was good?

I have found myself between Iraq and Iran. I wasn’t allowed to enter Iran. I did draw a line in the sand in Iran without stepping into it. It’s a guy thing. Don’t dwell on that one.

Let’s get back to this whole creation, existence, life thing and the spectrum is good, very good, better, and best. That’s it?

We end up where we started, perhaps a little more seasoned for making the trip.

Is it all worth the trip?

Do you remember when I shared about my back and forth with God and starting to use the Bible as our curriculum?

I wanted to start much, much earlier. God showed me that his timing was better, right?

No, it was not better. Okay, his timing was the best, right? No. What did I say it was?

While his timing surely included the good, better, and best; these qualities are necessary and included in God’s choice, but they are not sufficient.

In this whole Bible reading thing, his timing was perfect.

Perfect!

In this whole creation and life stuff, our destination is not right back where we started from. Our destination is perfect. It is perfection.

God’s destination for us is perfection. It is a place that we have never been but to which we are predestined. We are destined for perfection. He will finished the good work that he began in us.

As far as God is concerned, we are as good as there. We still have some experiences to experience. We have lessons to learn. We have some troubles to overcome. We have some missions to accomplish, but make no mistake, that is our destination.

In this morning’s truncated journey through humankind’s experience in the hands of our Creator, we come to this age that gets us to perfection.

Jesus would call it the age to come. We have labeled it the Church Age. Cmon, you must have some doctrinal sounding names.

Between the resurrection of the Lord and the age to come, we have Advent. It’s more than four Sudays of lighting extra big candles and some standard readings.

We are preparing the way for the coming of the King.  We are making straight the path.

That explains all the road construction.

We prepare the way in our hearts. Let every heart prepare him room.

As the Hebrew people incorporated a preparation day into their week so they could more fully realize the blessing of the Sabbath; we incorporate this thing we call Advent to prepare for the coming of the Lord.

But he had already come. That’s the whole babe in a manger, silent night, holy night thing, right?

Yes.

So why do we have to get ready if he has already come?

I love the series The Chosen and the actor that plays Jesus. It is very well cast, but for this part, they might want voice over from Arnold.

I’ll be back!

We prepare to celebrate his second coming. It’s sort of like the first one, except we will be singing Worthy is the Lamb more than we sing Silent Night.

And this is just speculation, but it’s a good SWAG—we won’t need words on the wall or hymnals.

We are on our way to perfection. It only comes through Christ Jesus.

Don’t fight it. Embrace it.

Think about both the sequence and confluence of events that get the unborn Savior of the world from Nazareth to the City of David. Many centuries later, the world would call this synchronicity –events and thinking that have obvious connection but no apparent causality.

I believe in coincidence. So, life is just a random sense of events, some of them come together and we see some meaning and purpose in them. We come up with our own theories and we speculate. That’s what the world says.

I believe in coincidence, but don’t universal randomness. I believe in divinely orchestrated coincidence. I believe there is not just a plan, but the plan, and it is rooted in the love of a God who would love us through our sin and rebellion.

Why?  That’s just who he is. God is love. So again, I ask this of you.

Think about both the sequence and confluence of events that get the unborn Savior of the world from Nazareth to the City of David

In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) And everyone went to their own town to register.

So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them.

And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified.  But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”

Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying,

 “Glory to God in the highest heaven,

    and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.”

When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.”

So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger. When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child, and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them.  But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told.

The time, space, and logistics of this incredible plan to bring us to perfection and in perfect relationship with God has come together.

Where are we in that plan.

People get ready. Jesus is coming. Soon we’ll be going home.

Today, we prepare a room for him. It’s a place in our hearts.

Jesus has already prepared a place for us. That’s a done deal.

It’s is our turn

Most of the time I remind you what to do once the Spirit of God resides within you—bring glory to God.

Today, I remind you to make sure you are ready for him to come again.

Remember that I said I taught ethics and standards of conduct?  After evaluating the information you know of and you make what you believe to be an ethical decision, wisdom dictates that you apply an after-the-fact filter/mirror/review process.

Is this really ethical? Is this moral?  If the answer is still yes, then look at the best of the ethical options.

If it is no, then you are not done.

Advent acknowledges that we are saved by God in the blood of Jesus and that his Spirit lives within us.

Advent says, run the final checklist.   Make sure everything is ready.

Tom calls this a confirmation brief. I gave and received many of these before major live fire exercises. It’s just what you do.

You might be thinking, “Stick to the Bible, Tom.”

Okay, how about this. Jesus and those in his inner circle went up on a mountain and Jesus was transfigured so they saw a glimpse of him in his glory. Do you remember who else was there?

Moses and Elijah. We believe they represented the law and the prophets. This was the confirmation brief for our salvation and the redemption of the world.

Had everything that was required by law and prophecy been accomplished.  Jesus was not going have to burn a time out right before the Romans hoisted him up on that cross.

Everything had to be ready. Jesus held a confirmation brief.

So too, we need to look inside ourselves, at each other—iron sharpens iron, and just be still so that we know we are ready for the return of the King.

Take this very short mini season of Advent as a provocation, inspiration, or the motivation to get ready for his return.

Don’t get wrapped up in the name. We have been doing Advent for two millennia.  We have been getting ready.

Get ready. Jesus is coming.

When? Soon.

Get ready!

When Jesus comes to claim us, I want not only to be ready for myself and my family, I am going to stand before him without sin because he washed it away, but I will say, Mission Accomplished.

I might not look like the prettiest redeemed man he created, but I will say MISSION ACCOMPLISHED, not because I can rightly divide the word of God or throw in both Greek and Hebrew words in a sermon here and there; but because I did what I was commissioned to do from the day I professed Jesus is Lord.

Get ready not just for the rescue coming our way but to be able to say we took hold of our commission, put his words into practice, and took love and salvation to the world.

If you are not ready, get ready. Jesus is coming, and he is coming soon.

Get ready. That’s Advent.

Amen.

 

Box of Chocolates

 

We have been through books of the Bible, One Month to Live, several years though the lectionary, the Confession of Faith, some segue-type connectors between our major excursions, and now today, Tom’s just going to preach some of his favorites.

I’m proud of you for doing the book-by-book approach to the Bible. We did it for 5 years. Do you realize that?

I remember that after 10 years of me suggesting this, we said we would do it and we did it. That was Christmas come early for me—figuratively and literally. We started in March and so did Covid.

But we—you—had read your chapter in advance before Covid, so when we went to online only mode, what you would hear on Sunday message from what you had been reading all week.

I think that closed some of the distance between those here and those remote. I am a little angry with myself on this, but I am being slow to being angry with myself because that was what was studied by you and preached by me in March.

What was I upset about?  After this whole Covid thing was over, I asked you if you listened or worship during the Facebook broadcast. I had a follow-up question. Who stood for the invocation? A fair number said they did.

So, what am I upset about?  I didn’t follow up, but I would still like to know if you wanted to stop by my office before the end of the year or shoot me an email.

I would like to know whether your weekly readings, followed by online Sunday worship, led to the continuation of the subject, themes, or a single verse during your lunchtime. In my initial proposals to sync study and sermon, I wanted to use this metric after a few months, but in the craziness of Covid, it just got bumped to the bottom of the list.

I thought that my metric was appropriate. It could produce good fruit. When I can leverage something for the good of a greater community, that’s in my DNA. It’s part of my fullness in living to the full.

I looked in my pocket the other day before I put my trousers in the dirty clothes hamper and found I still had A Round Tuit in there, so now I’ve gotten around to it. I would lie to know not just for me, but if here is something to this spill over effect, I want to pursue I more.

So back to the syncing of study and sermon among the older classes and me and the timing of implementation.

Over the years my private conversations with God, I wondered, “Why is your word not good enough for them? What’s the hold up?”

And then it hit me. God didn’t have to say anything. It was like I was watching this reel of Jeremiah going to the potter’s house.

I wasn’t at the potter’s house, but I could see this thing as well as Jeremah saw his. Let me show Tom why we are starting to read the Bible at this time and in this book.

It was perfect timing for us. I see it! I see it! We were Covid-ready for worship. I don’t just mean I had ordered one of those 60 or 84 rolls of toilet paper just before the infamous TP run of 2020. We were Covid-ready for worship.  I might have started the TP run with that purchase.

Of course, my own understanding had to be satisfied. There ought to be a proverb to help me. Then why couldn’t we start this 10 years ago?  We would be on a roll by now and not miss a step!

How long did you stick to that plan?

We did it for 5 years and then it was a bit much for some and some had just stopped reading every day, and so we stopped. “How  did you know it would be 5 years?”

I’m glad this wasn't an out-loud dialogue, but nothing is hidden from God, not even this beginning of a thought.

Have you ever been to an adult class or training session where the instructor said, “What are your questions. There are no stupid questions.”

Yes, there are.

And I’m thinking, we don’t do this whole act of penance thing here, but in addition to my reading of James, I reread Job with a viable empathy.

One last thing on this books of the Bible business.  I probably read the same scripture more than anyone here, usually involving multiple translations.  Danny’s probably close, but his PAS instructors have him reading a bunch of other books too.

While I understand that it might seem hard, hopefully nobody thought it boring, but I get it. It is the same scripture every day for a week. I know the drill.

I get it. This discipline business of a disciple starts our as a challenge before it has a chance of becoming a habit.

This has been my week for the past 17 years and I am filled. I am not anorexic, but I am constantly hungry for more.  Reading the scheduled scripture led me to so many other scriptures that sometimes I had to remember the scripture I was preaching.

I tell you this because I don’t want you to be afraid to try it again. Maybe a year or two is your current limit. The first time you walked upright, you probably didn’t get very far, but you did not quit. You gave it another try because you were somehow wired to continue. There was something of value in this new mode of moving forward.

Same with this approach. Keep it in your quiver.

 

Enough on that.

Do you remember Lonnie Webb? He had come from the Assemblies of God, through the Committee on Preparation for ministry to recognize his ordination, and needed to preach somewhere in the denomination, so we brought him here.

I was the chair of the committee, so my thinking was, ask your session before you start calling around. Lonny was about in the middle of Covenant, Eastlake, and us. I’m sure Leslie or Linda and their sessions would have found a time, but we received him here.

As we sat side by side during the service, Lonnie stared at his bulletin for a while and then said, “Man, you guys read a lot of scripture!”

 I said, “Yes we do.”  That put a smile on my face.

Now, I am going to give you some of my favorite scriptures. You heard them read earlier. I might sneak in another one or two dozen before intermission.

Joshua 1:9. Consider the interrogative that begins this verse, at least in most translations.  In the words of “Have I not commanded you?” is the revelation that this is not something new.

God and Joshua had previous conversations on this topic. There are no surprises here.

This is an affirmation that with the blessing and burden of command comes a heavy weight or responsibly. God told Joshua I’m with you in battle. See what I send to your enemies before you even get there.  I’m with you in this governing this too. I’ve always been with you.

I’ve got this. I should jump back over to the 23^rd Psalm. God’s got this. Do you think that Joshua knew he 23^rd Psalm?  That would be some stuff there.

Is it possible he got an advanced copy?

 But we will move on from those Elena read earlier.

Micah 6:8. What does the Lord require of me. What are the standards. I’m trying to figure out his whole God thing, but where do I start?

Seek justice. We should be fair people, watch out for those abused by others, be on the lookout for those abusing power, and we just want things done God’s way. That sounds like a solid plan for society.

Love mercy. The verb in the first part was seek. Seek is a verb generally associated with good things. It takes some effort, but love takes something more. To seek justice is a good thing, but to love mercy is to make mercy greater than justice.

Hosea gave us these words from God:

For I desire mercy, not sacrifice,
    and acknowledgment of God rather than burnt offerings.

Jesus gave us these words in Matthew 9:9-13

As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector’s booth. “Follow me,” he told him, and Matthew got up and followed him.

  While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”

 On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.” For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

Both are good. One is better. Do both. Give mercy the priority of your time, resources, and effort.

Some might be thinking, I love saying this most Sundays in our warmups, but now that you put it this way, I have been making some self-affirmations in what I say, specifically, that I value mercy above justice.

That’s what I have been saying. Am I giving mercy the status in my life that it deserves?

When I do those two things, I am ready to walk humbly with the Lord. What’s that mean?

Me and the Lord (I intentionally butchered the grammar for effect) got out groove on. It just feels right.  We are just walking and talking. It’s good.

Then the Lord says:

Go give that person a ride.

Go share.

Let this go.

Embrace my love and become my love.

This is good stuff and it is not mere conversation, though if God stopped with just the conversation, it would have been enough.

It’s sort of like building a team. There’s a process involved, sometimes not visible to those in the team. It’s simple: Forming, storming, norming, and performing.

Forming: We are coming into the fold.

Storming: We are fighting for our place on the team.

Norming: We see where we fit in. What’s our role or roles in the body of Christ?

Performing: That’s producing fruit season. That’s now we are in business sort of fruit. That’s where we get our groove on and just want to do what pleases the Lord.

I seek justice, but I love mercy. Now I know my place in the body. I am ready to humbly, not timidly, walk with the Lord.

 John 3:16-17. You know this and you know you should know that you are one of the very few congregations across multiple denominations that proclaims John 3:16 with the regularity that we do. I would venture to say that very, very few say 16 and 17 together.

It’s that 17 that I will give you just a nudge on. Jesus did not come to condemn but to save. Not to condemn but to save. Not to condemn but to save.  

Say it with me. Not to condemn but to save.

Why? That’s in 16. You know it. It’s love. It’s that everlasting love thing. We deserved condemnation and were given salvation.

When you are struggling with a verse or pericope, look at it through the lens of to save not condemn.

When you need that creative jumpstart on your eyes fixed on Jesus week, look at what you are reading through the lens of God’s great love for us.

There is no condemnation in Christ Jesus.

And while you are on this train of thought, remember that we were still God’s enemies when he did all of this.

 

On to John 5:24. Eternal life has begun for those who truly professed Jesus as Lord.   It’s not, I hope I live forever. It’s forever is underway.

I’m going nautical on you again. What do you do when you get underway?

Shift Colors!

Once you believe, you are part of the Body of Christ and we have set sail for wherever out Master sends us.

Ephesians 2:8-9, and 2 Corinthians 12:7-9 seem to couple. God alone saved us and that salvation is all that we need.  Our needs are satisfied.

Our greed might not be.

Our whimsical wish list is still wanting.

The things that are cutting us off in our race of faith don’t like that much.

This was fun but it was not for my amusement or yours. It is a model that you might want to try. Take 7, always a good number for a church project, 7 scriptures that you might call favorites. You might know them all by heart and then just start saying them or writing them down. See what happens.

The first time that I started making notes, one scripture led to another. The next time, others beckoned for my attention.

Did you notice that in the 6 scriptures I addressed, there were reference to dozens of others.

No. But you did notice that I only but 6 and I want you to do 7.

I have 7. I only had Elena read 6.

Number 7 comes from the 17^th verse of the 27^th chapter of Proverbs. As Iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.

So do this for yourself, then in a group of believers even though they may have different scriptures.  Why?

It’s a good direction towards grasping the full biblical witness. That’s a very desirable destination. That’s worth the trip.

I can visualize a frenzy feeding on God’s word. But maybe that’s just me.

I hope not. I think if it caught on, that would be some really cool beans. That would be the church we read about in Acts.

That would be the church that people would see as a light in the darkness.

That’s the church that will get people out of their apathy and ambivalence.

That’s the church!

Amen.