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.