Man in the Mirror

 Read Proverbs 20

Do you remember those dogs with the heads that bobbed up and down or side to side?  You put them in the back of the car, at least back when most cars were sedans and not some crossover or SUV. I am thinking that many of you read your chapter this week with your heads bobbing up and down in agreement.

Don’t get drunk.  It doesn’t say don’t consume any alcohol.  Jesus had wine with dinner.  Jesus made the best wine ever, but don’t get drunk.  Don’t surrender your faculties to alcohol. 

Surrender your faculties to wine or beer and make a fool of yourself.  Give in to the hard stuff, you might do something that lands you in jail.

Don’t tick off the king.  It’s the grown-up version of don’t put you finger in the fire. Decisions have consequences.

Don’t argue every point in every discussion.  You have better—purposeful things to do.  Who has time to argue every point?  The fool.  The one who lives without purpose.  The one who declares in his heart that there is no God.  This is not the first time that Solomon has warned the wise about the actions of fools.

The sluggard, aka the slothful and lazy and indolent and other derogatory terms, doesn't work in season and is surprised there is nothing to harvest.  Lazy is as lazy does.  One definition of insanity is to do the same things over and over and expect different results.

The sluggard doesn’t do any work in season and yet is surprised anew each time he has nothing to harvest.  Here is the proverb in the affirmation.  Work is good.  We are meant to work and produce fruit.  The harvest does come for the one who puts in the work.

What is the meaning of life?  It’s hardwired within us, but we have to purposefully search for it.  Seek God and you will find not only him but the purpose that he has for you.

The Lord detests differing weights.  Don’t put your thumb on the scale when you are measuring out someone’s purchase.

Don’t con someone into thinking what they are selling is worthless and then go brag about the good deal you got on the thing you told the seller was worthless.

In similar vein, food that you cheated to get tastes sweet at first, but in the end, it goes down like gravel.  No matter how much tabasco sauce you put on it, it’s still gravel.

If you want to win the war, you need good counselors.  Telling the king what he wants to hear doesn’t win battles or wars.  The truth—even in raw form—serves the decision maker better than flattery or falsehood.  If you want to be successful, seek only trusted counsel.

Don’t listen to a gossip.  Don’t have anything to do with a gossip.  They will talk about you when you are not around.  Don’t give them your ear to talk about others. 

Most of these are dog in the back of the car bobbing his head in the affirmative. 

A wise king eliminates the wicked from his presence.  They get no measure of influence in his court.

Don’t make vows rashly.  You may regret them.  Make sound decisions not hasty commitments.  Don’t let your emotions rule over your sound mind. Don’t let your human bravado supersede the path that God has set for you.

Do you remember, Vengeance is mine says the Lord?  There is a dose of that here as well.

If you are putting up security for a stranger, it is wise to get some collateral from him or her.  Don’t cosign for a loan for someone you don’t know without some collateral. 

Is this heartless?  No, it is wise.  Tell the person who needs a loan to find someone who knows them well enough to vouch for them and to cosign with them.  If they don’t have someone they know who will vouch for them, why should you?

Feed them, clothe them, and be kind to them but don’t cosign their loan. This is just more dog in the back of the car stuff.

For all of Solomon’s wisdom and guidance and counsel, it is a question that prompts us to deep thought and introspection.  His interrogative causes us to investigate ourselves.

Who can say, “I have kept my heart pure;

    I am clean and without sin”?

Do this not that.  This is better than that.  The consequences of this is that.  There has been a whole bunch of counsel that fits into the God’s way and Everything else model.

Now Solomon is saying take a look at the man in the mirror. Who can say, I have always done it God’s way?  Who can say, I have no sin? Who can say I have never ventured into the everything else?

We know these questions to be rhetorical as every heart has been stained by sin.  All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. 

Not one of us can say that we have kept our hearts pure, but that is not the end of the story.  Like his father, David, Solomon surely knew how to get a clean heart.  It could only come through God himself.

Create in me a pure heart, O God,

    and renew a steadfast spirit within me.

Those were his dad’s words but they still ring true in every generation.  We can’t purify ourselves. There were purification rituals that the people observed through the time of Jesus. We know that it is the blood of Jesus that purifies us from sin.

So much has been revealed to us in our age.  We are without excuse as to seeking God and being known as disciples of Jesus by our love.  We are without excuse.

For the moment, let’s just concentrate on Solomon’s interrogative.

Who can say, “I have kept my heart pure;

    I am clean and without sin”?

Who among us can say that I have kept my heart pure?  Who among us can say that I am without sin?

When we focus on the questions in the middle of a lesson on wisdom, it should remind us that we all view God’s wisdom from the perspective of one who has sinned and who has fallen short.

We know what God is telling us through Solomon.  We have to scratch our heads every once in a while, to figure some of his quips out, but mostly they are dog in the back of the car, nodding in agreement pieces of wise counsel.

We can see how others disregard these pieces of counsel.  The lazy and the fool and the wicked are easy to spot, but we are now challenged to look at the man in the mirror.

When we do that, we disarm our tendencies to weaponize the proverbs.  We have to put away our pointing fingers.  We examine ourselves.

We use the word of God to judge the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. When we do that, we see that we still fall short again and again.  God is faithful and just to forgive, but we still fall short.

How can we as God’s people respond to his forgiveness?  We can give thanks.  We must give thanks.  If we have eyes to see how great God’s love for us is, we will give thanks.  It will seem like an involuntary action.

Our new creature that God has made us to be, will give thanks by our new nature.  We are a thankful people.

Knowing how great God’s love for us is, even when we fall short time and again, what should we do?  Let’s try a short piece of counsel from Paul.

Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.

Give thanks in all circumstances.  We have eyes to see and ears to ear that tell us we have all fallen short of the glory of God, but those same eyes and ears now see that God loves us in spite of ourselves and has called us to confess our sins and live for him.

We get another chance to live for God, again.

Knowing this, I say there is no circumstance that we will ever experience where we can not give thanks to God.  We may go through some stuff, but God’s love for us is so great that in that knowledge alone, we can give thanks in all circumstances.

Let’s learn the proverbs set before us but let us see them from the eyes of a new creature that lives to bring glory to God.  Leave the judging to the word of God that divides soul and spirit, joints and marrow.  It is the more qualified to judge.

Let us return to Solomon’s question.

Who can say, “I have kept my heart pure;

    I am clean and without sin”?

We know the answer.  All have fallen short of the glory of God, but God himself purified us from all unrighteousness in the blood of Christ Jesus. He did what we could never do.  Our response to his great love is to love him and each other with all we have, and…

To give thanks in all circumstances.

Amen.

Justly Justified

Read Romans 3

Should the 10 Commandments be posted in public places or on public buildings?  There’s a controversial subject.  Some think that they have no business in these public places and some think that the fall of humankinds rests on where they are posted.

For commands that God gave to humankind, people have all manner of opinions about where to put them but don’t seem to be asking God about what he said about where we should post these.  We need only but visit the first part of the Shema. 

 Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.  Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts.  Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.  Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads.  Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.

Deuteronomy 6:4-9

The Law has purpose.  It is among the many gifts that God gave his people.  He gave them an identity, a sign in the flesh, a land promised to them from centuries before, a blessing and a charge, and through them the Messiah as well.  God also gave his people the law.  

Paul goes so far as to say that the law was entrusted to his people.  It is more than a gift to his people.  It is a trust.  We should not just dismiss the law.

But God’s own people didn’t follow the law very well.  They were unfaithful in many ways.  Paul notes that through his own people’s unfaithfulness, we know God’s faithfulness even more.  You might think that the unfaithfulness of God’s own people would detract from God’s faithfulness.

Not so.  It sets the faithfulness of God in stark contrast to the sinful nature of man.

Paul notes that some would and surely have argued, “If my shortcomings and transgressions make God’s righteousness and glory stand in such stark contrast and people can see his glory even more; why should I be held accountable for my sin.  It seems like I am doing a public service here.”

“Let’s do some more evil so that God will make some good come out of it.”

Paul tells us that such human arguments are terrible thinking.  Think back to Joseph’s 10 older brothers when Joseph told them what you intended for evil, God intended for good.  What if they would have said, “That’s cool.  Let’s go do more evil.”

Paul said that this sort of thinking is out there and needs to be condemned.  It is stinkin’ thinkin’.

We are all under sin’s condemnation—at least at this point in Paul’s build up to God’s grace.  Neither Jew nor Gentile measure up.

Paul reflects upon thoughts that we believe are rooted in Psalm 36.  No person is righteous—not a single person!  The words that we know best are all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

The world takes these words and says let’s just all have a big pity party.  Let’s just wallow in how hopeless everything is and do whatever we want because it really doesn’t matter anyway.

Paul’s letter takes us somewhere else but first let’s bring this matter of the law into perspective.  This law given by God to his own chosen people, entrusted to them, could never get his people to right standing with him.

So what’s the point?

Everyone has fallen short.  Everyone has missed the mark.  Everyone stands condemned.  So what is the point of the law?

Through the law we become conscious of sin.  We are aware of our transgression.  We know that we have fallen short of God’s glory.

Wow!  We can now join the world’s pity party.

No.  Now it’s time for Paul to lead his readers to God’s grace—for there is right standing with God that comes from God but apart from the law.  Compliance with the law could never bring about right standing with God but the law set the stage for the acceptance of the greatest gift that the world has ever known.

And Paul takes us from the total depravity of humankind as John Calvin would later describe it to atonement, redemption, justification, and grace as he concludes this chapter. 

It was as if at this point in the letter, Tertius, Paul’s scribe, stopped writing and said to Paul, “Enough with the hopeless state of affairs among men.  Do you have any good news?”

In this constructive conversation, Paul would reply:  “You want good news?  You want good news?  See if you can handle the good news!”

We are made right with God by placing our faith in Jesus Christ. And this is true for everyone who believes, no matter who we are.

 For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard. Yet God, in his grace, freely makes us right in his sight. He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty for our sins.  For God presented Jesus as the sacrifice for sin. People are made right with God when they believe that Jesus sacrificed his life, shedding his blood. This sacrifice shows that God was being fair when he held back and did not punish those who sinned in times past,  for he was looking ahead and including them in what he would do in this present time. God did this to demonstrate his righteousness, for he himself is fair and just, and he makes sinners right in his sight when they believe in Jesus.

Romans 3:22-26 NLT

What’s our part in all of this?

To know that we have fallen short of God’s glory and there was nothing that we could do about it, but God—by the blood of his one and only Son—God made us right with him.

God was just.  He dispensed justice.  We were guilty.  Court was held on us—on humankind—after all these centuries and we were found and pronounced guilty. 

The sentence was death.  The sentence was carried out.  The sentence was executed.  Justice was done.

But God’s sentence was carried out upon his own flesh.  Jesus—the only man who ever lived a life without sin—was executed for our sin.  He took our place.  Justice was done.

Because of this, we may freely receive God’s grace.  We are made right with him, and because we receive this gift freely by faith; we have nothing to brag about.

God did it all.

Make sure that we get this part.  We could never make ourselves right with God.  It just was not going to happen.  Try as we may, we could never fully comply with God’s law.  There was and is something missing in us.

What’s missing is not a personality trait.  It is not self discipline.  It is not something that a Law of Moses Boot Camp would ever fix.

What is missing from us is a connection with God.  Compliance with rules and regulations could not connect us.

The rules could show us that we kept missing the mark.  The law was a good consultant and could point out our shortcomings, but only the free gift of God could reconcile us and restore the relationship for which we were made.

Sin is detestable.  Sin must be judged. Sin was judged and justice was done.  On the cross, Jesus said:  “It is finished.”

I like to ask people challenging questions.  I’m not sure if that is my gift or some sort of penance, but in either case; I often ask Christians who are firm in their faith the following question.

Are you a sinner saved by grace?

Many will say that they are.  I challenge them to claim their identity as a child of God.  You are exactly who God made you to be.

Your story, well it surely includes being a sinner saved by grace; but your identity is a child of God.  Through faith alone, we have received a gift that we never deserved but which God’s heart has longed to give us since the foundation of the earth.

We are his kids, his children, his loved ones.

Sin is part of our story.  All have fallen short of God’s glory.

The law is part of our story, not in the way it was in Paul’s time, but we know that this law that was entrusted to God’s Chosen People is fulfilled in our knowing our shortcomings and desiring the free gift of grace.

But our identity has been restored to what it was always meant to be.  We are children of our loving heavenly Father.  Through faith, we have received this gift of redemption and favor and reconciliation and grace.  Atonement for our sins has been made.

We are justified by a just God.  He didn’t skip any steps and bypass his own law.  We paid nothing but we are right with holy God.

The law is important but faith is essential.

The law shows us where we failed to comply but faith brings us to accepting the free gift.

The law was entrusted to a special people until a way to right standing with God was given to all people by faith.

Back to my initial provocation—should we post the 10 commandments in public buildings or not?

If that’s your cause, then go for it.  I would rather see monuments to faith in God by people seeing their own transgressions and turning to God.

I would rather see a nation that seeks God’s kingdom and his righteousness before any secular cause.

I would rather see what the writer of Hebrews called the evidence of things not seen.  I will leave it to you to decide if that is a dichotomy, an oxymoron, or another one of Tom’s paradoxes.

I would rather see faith than monuments or engraved words.

Paul will talk more about faith in the chapters to come.  I ask that we understand where the world knows it falls short and holds a pity party; we see that we too fall short but have all been given a measure of faith to receive God’s free gift of grace to us.

We have received forgiveness that we did not deserve.

We live in the favor that God has longed to pour out upon us.  Now he can and he does for he has justly dealt with sin and has justified us.

It is time for us to live, fully live, in our right standing with God and bring glory to his name.

Amen.

Cardio Circumcision

Read Romans 2

Romans has been described as Paul’s most systematic and comprehensive theological treatise.  It is sometimes referred to as the Gospel according to Paul.  While it was composed in the format of a letter and delivered as a letter, it very much resembles a theology textbook.

Paul had not yet been to Rome.  He wrote this epistle from Corinth and he would arrive in Rome courtesy of the Empire in a few short years.  He did know many who were associated with the congregation in Rome so these people were not complete strangers.

But the letter is written to someone who needed to start close to the beginning.  Paul started at a different beginning than he would have had he been writing to an entirely Jewish audience.  He started with God and creation in their most evident form.  There is no Adam and Eve, no fall in the Garden of Eden, no first murder, no Noah or Abraham; Paul just starts with God and everyone knowing—or at least should have known--that there was and is a God.

Paul does know that the folks in the Roman congregation do know about the Jewish people and their fixation on circumcision and being sons of Abraham.  There were surely Jews among this congregation in the heart of the pagan world.

The second chapter continues this same discourse.  It can seem like an admonishment, but this is where we need to go into our textbook reading mode.  I don’t think that Paul is chewing out this congregation such as he did in his letter to the Galatians.  He is admonishing all of humankind with a keen awareness that people of that age were categorized—at least by God’s people—as Jew and Gentile.

Keep in mind that Paul is working his way up to introducing Christ.  He is writing to a “Christian” congregation but presuming very little about their foundation.

The Jews had the law and some thought that by that fact alone, they were right with God.  Paul noted that they had the law but did not live by it.  They judged others who did not have the law but would not keep the complete law themselves.

That could be ancient history or it could hit too close to home today.  We are saved by grace and have God’s word to guide us.  We have the Spirit to lead us.  We have direct access to God himself with Jesus interceding for us.

And what do we do?

Too often we pick the parts of the Bible that we like and live by them but also judge others by them.  We ignore or skip over or conveniently forget other parts of God’s word that don’t float our boat.  Sometimes we have filters to screen out where the Holy Spirit might be leading us.

Paul’s point was that people in general don’t always do what God tells them to do even when they know exactly what it is.  In that day, the law prescribed how people were to live.

But the Gentile world didn’t have the law, so were they just out of luck?

No.  Some were directed by something of an inward compass and did what the law would have required in some circumstance even though they did not have the law or know what it said.

People with and without God’s law have tried to live good lives.  They—and that includes us—we can never quite get it right.  If you jump ahead just a little, Paul spells it out.

All have sinned.  We have all fallen short.  Nobody is pitching a perfect game here.

So you can’t claim to be blameless because you have the law and you are not condemned because you never heard of the law. 

This should be no surprise to anyone here but Paul introduced the Romans to something that we know from when the prophet Samuel was selecting a king from among Jesse’s sons.  God looks at the inside.  People judge by outward appearance but God sees the heart.

We know that God’s word judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.  God sees a different person that we see.  God sees the heart.  God sees the true person that he made.

Paul hit the Jews pretty hard in this chapter.  They boasted in the lineage and in their circumcision and in having the law.  Paul said that they dishonored God in knowing who they were and what they should have done and they disobeyed God’s law.

It is sort of like when we send our kids to camp.  We don’t just send our kids to camp to have fun and learn about God.  They are charged to remember who they are and live that way.  They represent this church body and they need to be setting the best examples in the entire camp.

God’s people should have been a light in the darkness for the gentile world.  Instead, they often became the laughing stock of that world.

Paul wrote that the real mark of a Jew—of God’s Chosen People—is not a sign in the flesh but a sign in the Spirit.  It is a circumcised heart—the ungodliness of our human nature cut away and our divine nature that we have received from our creator revealed.

In the context of the letter, Paul is still working up to Jesus and grace, but he gives us this reminder about the condition of our hearts.  He reminds us that God sees our true nature.

Jesus reprimanded the Pharisees many times.  One time he used the examples of cups and tombs.  You clean the outside of the cup but leave the inside a mess.  You whitewash the outside of a tomb but inside are just a bunch of dead bones.

Outwardly you may appear righteous but inwardly you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.

Paul is telling the church in Rome, “You can’t fool God.  He knows what is going on in your heart.”

We will get to where Paul is taking us over the next several weeks but let’s pause for a moment and think about what’s going on with us on the outside and on the inside.

Do we log our time in the pews as a duty—something you gotta do so everyone will know I was there?  And I sure hope that I get extra credit for staying awake.  Or do we sing along with Johnny Russell and sing, “There’s no place that I’d rather be than right here?”

Do we show up for the Walk A Block for Jesus thinking, “There are 20 other things that I could be doing with my Saturday morning but I better show up so the preacher will see me?”  Or do we long to do something like this once a month?  Do we love taking God’s love into the community?

Do we smile at our coworkers so they don’t ask us how it’s going and we have to lie?  Or do we truly have the joy of the Lord in our heart?  Is our joy in the Lord or in our circumstances?

I have filled in at some churches where the service ends at noon and at 12:03 the doors are being locked.  Two people are there to thank me for filling their pulpit but people have places to be and things to do and this Sunday morning thing has been checked off.

Almost every week I am witness to a congregation that has places to go and they just happen to be in one of them and are not in a hurry to be somewhere else.  The service might end at a little before noon or a quarter after, but as 1:00 p.m. rolls around, people are still enjoying the fellowship of one another.

There is joy and peace and fellowship and these gatherings conclude gradually and not abruptly.  Sometimes I head out reminding the last group of folks to turn the lights out when they leave.  Depending who it is, sometimes I also add, “Aim and flush” just in case they need a pit stop before they hit the road.

What is going on in our hearts?  Do we really love being God’s people?

You can fake it on the outside but if you really want to live this life to the full, you need joy and peace in your heart.  

You need to believe that God loves you and that he has reconciled you to himself.  You are his and that will not change.

Regardless of what is going on around us, God’s love for us will never end.

Some of us have dissonance of the heart.  There is no such condition, at least officially.  Dissonance occurs in the mind, right?  Unresolved and conflicting beliefs that won’t be reconciled are all cognitive, right?

Do we long for God’s peace and hope and acceptance and unconditional love; yet want to be a friend with the ways of the world at the same time?  What does our heart long for?

What are the thoughts and attitudes of our hearts?

Are we keeping scorecards of our outward actions and appearance and judging the same in others?  Are we still trying to see how we stack up against everyone else?

Paul has some more writing to do before he gets to the part about God’s grace but we are people who know and should live in and grow in God’s grace.

That means that the condition of our hearts should be good.  Our spiritual cardiologist should be giving us a thumbs up.  But if we really examine our hearts what would we find?

If we find anxiety, we need to scope it out.

If we find condemnation, we need a stint or two to let generosity flow out from our hearts.

If we have despair, we might just need a heart transplant.

We need to remember that Jesus said that we must be born again to enter the Kingdom of heaven.  In that rebirth, we need a new heart.  We need a heart governed by love and joy and peace and understanding and compassion.  We need a heart that is more divine than it is human.

We need a heart that says my smile on the outside truly does reflect my heart’s thoughts and attitudes on the inside.  We need fidelity between what’s going on inside of us and what we portray on the outside—and that should be joy and hope and peace and love.

Paul’s letter will get to grace in due time, but we should be fully living in and growing in God’s grace now.

Our selfish human nature has been cut away and God’s divine heart is revealed.  Let God’s heart rule in our lives.  

Let’s truly be born again by living by God’s heart that is within us.

Amen.