The Hope of Justice

 

Text: Jeremiah 33:14-16

Focus: Advent

Function: To set the stage for the hope that Christmas brings

¹⁴The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah. ¹⁵In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David; and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. ¹⁶In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety. And this is the name by which it will be called: “The Lord is our righteousness.”

Happy Holidays, or Happy Christmas season! Advent is upon us and it is a time for us to allow ourselves to renew our hope in the promises of our God.

It is time to celebrate our redemption as we rejoice in God’s salvation for the entire world, His own incarnation as Jesus Christ the Nazarene. He came and saved us and every year at the Winter Solstice, just as everything is dying out from the fall season and the bleak winter is soon upon us, we take a whole month to remember that when Jesus Christ was born into the world, hope for salvation was born with Him.

In the midst of that season where everything is dying, we light our houses with celebration of the Hope that God has not forgotten humanity and has chosen to come and walk and live among us.

In our text this morning, we read where the prophet Jeremiah foretells the coming of Jesus to save humanity.

And Jeremiah gives Jesus a particular identity in this passage, he speaks of Jesus being the righteous branch delivering both justice and righteousness.

I have been studying Jeremiah in my morning devotions and I cam across that verse last week and it really struck me. You see, I whenever I read the word “righteous” in the New Testament, I think of its root word, Dike’, and I re translate it to mean justice. It is funny, but all the other language translations do that, because that is what the word means. But for some reason, English translations use the word righteous. I believe that it is a throw back to a form of imperialism set down by the translators of the King James. Now I love the King James and call it a reliable text, but that is what I went to Bible College and Seminary for. To learn the ancient Greek language and get a handle on what the scripture says.

I wrote a paper which I published online 10 years ago about the difference between justice and righteousness.

Remember, Jesus was killed because He spoke out for justice against systems that would keep oppressing anyone who was not deemed fit by the religious authorities.

Jesus spoke out against injustice leveled at others and it upset the leaders so much that they killed Him.

Sometimes His protests even turned violent like when He overthrew the tables in the temple. Even His prophet, John the Baptist, used violent language when he called the religious hypocrites a “generation of vipers.”

When I wrote my paper someone questioned me about the use in Hebrew, where our text comes from this morning. I am not a Hebrew Scholar, but research into biblical languages and roots again is what I studied in college, so I know where to look. I found a source written ten years after mine, from a scholar, Bob Mu eller, who uses the same language. Justice and righteousness are two sides of a single coin, they can’t be separated.

This passage spoke out to me because the author points out that in the Hebrew, different from the Greek of our New Testament, justice and righteousness are also linked. Justice, in the passage speaks of legal justice, like that which is obtained in a court of law. It means that the laws are applied fairly and one group, the wealthy, for example, are not preferred over another group.

Righteousness, on the other hand has to do with the personal state of an individual. This is where understanding the NT helps us. Joseph, was a just, or Righteous man, depending on the translation we are using, and decided not to shame Mary, but to treat her with fairness so he went ahead and married Mary.

Joseph was the kind of person who does the right thing as a matter of practice. He is just in his decisions.

Righteous, or just people, will give us just, or righteous decisions and actions. Always.

It is important to signify that this is what it means. Sadly, we, through our theology, have taken the word righteous to mean that we are saved into the family of God through our conversion experience. Merely. It is a misrepresentation of Jesus’ mission to state that Jesus came merely to make us righteous in the eyes of God. Jesus does much more than that. He changes us. Jesus came to make us “just” people by the power of His Holy Spirit inside of us.

Since we are converted into the family of God, we too, will exemplify the kind of love and forgiveness toward others that Jesus showed toward those who were on the outside.

Jesus didn’t separate Himself by race, religion or class. Remember they condemned Jesus because He was a friend of sinners. The text even mentioned that He celebrated, or partied with them.

I love the thought of Friend of Sinners. That gives me hope. Romans 2:4 tells us that it is God’s kindness that draws us toward repentance and our salvation.

When Jesus was born, the proof of God’s kindness toward humanity was also born.

God’s kindness is one of the reasons why we feel compelled to worship God throughout the Holiday Season.

God saw the suffering of humanity and came among us to save us. God is kind to us.

We exemplify kindness in our own witness as well.

Sometimes I drop off desperate and or suffering women at the clinic. And there is this guy standing out there with a bullhorn shouting into the faces of the women seeking medical care how they are going to burn in hell for walking in the door.

When I hear that guy, my blood starts to boil because of the way that he is misrepresenting the good news that God came into the world to redeem humanity from its brokenness and sorrow.

He appears to have misplaced his zeal for God with his love for God’s people. I believe that abortion breaks God’s heart, but the Bible says that the miscarriage goes straight from the mothers’ womb into the loving arms of God and never knows the pain of living under the sun. God’s love covers the innocent and redeems them. That is the hope that we have in Christ Jesus. Our love for our theology, our church, our religion or our faith can never get in the way of our love for others. If it does, then somehow we have missed the mission of Christ in our lives.

Jesus came so that people can have hope for the future and the gospel should bring them to that hope instead of desperate situations like the killing of their baby.

God weeps at the brokenness of society. And we could weep as well. But remember, God saw the suffering of humanity and joined it in Jesus Christ so that God could redeem us all.

Through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, we too have the power of the same Spirit that energized Jesus to bring hope to a broken world.

Let our hope resonate as we celebrate the coming of Jesus.

The Power of Thanksgiving

 

Text: Philippians 4:4-7

Focus: Thanksgiving

Function: to help us worship on Thanksgiving day

⁴Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. ⁵Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. ⁶Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. ⁷And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

I don’t know about you, but Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays. Maybe because it marks the beginning of the Holiday Season and Advent starts the next Sunday and we take a month to remember to be good to each other.

Or maybe it is because our hearts are filled with nostalgia at Thanksgiving celebrations in the past and the wonder and joy of communing with family and friends.

I love it because it is a true celebration of what God has done for us.

For some, it is the feast and the chance to eat such a wonderful meal.

I love the idea of a feast. A feast is a celebration in the face of whatever we are experiencing, whether times are good or times are bad, it is a celebration to the fact that we are trusting God to provide for us.

You all love Psalms 23. He says, “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies…” and “...my cup runs over.” I love the comforting thought that brings. Even in the middle of my battles in life, you give me time for a feast.

And this passage in Philippians is a call to Thanksgiving. It starts out with a direct command to us, an action verb that we can choose to follow or we can choose to ignore. The verb, the action that we are called to, and he says it twice, is this: Rejoice!

Be happy in the Lord. It is okay to be happy.

Psychologists have been saying what this scripture has implied for two millennia, happiness is a choice.

We can choose to be happy. We read about a choice to be miserable when we read about Jacob mourning the loss of Joseph. He makes the promise to go down to the grave in sorrow over the loss of his son. He chooses sorrow over happiness thinking that somehow that will honor the memory of his son.

I wonder if his son would want him to be miserable or happy as a way to love him and show his love for him?

A person who truly cares for another cares for their happiness and joy.

And God cares for us. God wants us to live an abundant life. That does not mean that we will never suffer. What it means is that God is with us in the midst of suffering and we can choose to be happy or not.

He goes on to explain it in verse 5. Let you gentleness be known to all, the Lord is at hand.

I like the wording in the King James and NASB, it says, Let your forbearance be known to all, the Lord is at hand.

Let us unpack that a little bit as it relates to either good times or bad. He is telling us to rest in the provision of God because God is in control. Have faith and walk by faith. Trust God to work out God’s loving will in our lives.

God is able, that is the hope that we have when we live by faith.

I believe this verse is the reason why Christians have made a prohibition against cursing. Well, the Bible says let no unwholesome word leave our lips, and that our speech must be filled with grace toward those who hear it, but beyond that. this verse means that we do not need to curse because we trust that God is in control of our lives. The thought being that the person who is cursing is obviously not living by faith with the trust the God is in control.

Of course, that is taking it too far and trying to justify ourselves by our works. We certainly cannot lie to God about what we are feeling and how we are feeling. God knows our heart.

So, let your peace, your forbearance, your gentleness be obvious as a result of living by faith in the one who promises to keep you as the apple of His eye.

Then the Apostle gets real personal in the face of adversity. He says, don’t worry about anything. Don’t worry. Don’t fret. Trust God. Rest in God.

That does not mean don’t give a care. That does not mean forget about what the problem is. If there is a problem, then bring it to God in prayer. He says, prayer and supplication. Supplication means that we take the prayer to the extreme, as if we are begging God for an answer.

I have always wondered about that. Why beg? Doesn’t God hear us the first time? Didn’t Jesus tell us not to use vain repetition in prayer?

Again, it is a question of faith. I find that in the process of begging, asking over and over again for something, that something else happens inside of me. The desired outcome I am looking for seems to change as I pray, ponder the situation in light of God’s loving mercy, and ask God for help. My desire gets more aligned with the will of God.

He is talking about a sort of conversation, or give and take, with God in our thought lives and prayer as we present ourselves to God for a solution to what is nagging at us.

I remember being a very dedicated youth. And they told us that real Christians had a list of people that they prayed for every day, and several times a day. I remember I was instructed to make a list, which I did, of people that I cared for and stuff and I always included my heroes, the missionaries who were spreading the gospel in foreign lands.

However, the list got tedious and I reckoned that God knew who they were anyway, so I could have just said, bless everyone on my list, but instead, I decided to limit their names to the first letter. So, I would pray, God bless, “tmno….” Whatever that list was. I got to the point where I could say my prayers in less than three seconds. What a blessing that seemed to me to listen to this, to not have to waste my time with my prayers. Of course, I justified it by praying that list several times an hour. I was indeed a religious boy. And I was practicing my religion well.

God isn’t so concerned about religious action as God is concerned with living by faith. It was wonderful that I was thinking of God and praying literally several times an hour, that was good, but I didn’t develop what he was talking about here with supplication. Wrestling with God in prayer to seek an outcome. Sometimes prayer can be a hard and arduous task as we strive to see the face of God in the midst of difficulty.

Prayer, supplication and thanksgiving. I titled the sermon the power of thanksgiving. Not the power of the holiday. But the power of a grateful heart as we approach God in prayer and supplication.

I consider it to be part of the humbling process that God speaks of when God commands us to walk humbly before God.

With thanksgiving we acknowledge that we live by faith and that we are indeed trusting God to be in control. I love the story of Paul and Silas in Acts 16 in the prison, beaten and sore, they began to praise God and the prison doors were opened, it seems, by the power of their thanksgiving in worship.

In the midst of their trial they acknowledged the sovereignty and will of God for them. Their faith was so amazing that although the doors were opened, the prisoners stayed and many that night were converted to Christ, including the jailer himself.

That is the power of our gratitude. It brings us back to the place of remembering that God is in control and God wants to care for us.

So, enjoy the feast this Thanksgiving as it demonstrates our hope in God.

Hanging On

 

Text: Hebrews 10:19-25

Focus: Perseverance

Function: Provoking each others to do good deeds.

¹⁹Therefore, my friends, since we have confidence to enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus, ²⁰by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain (that is, through his flesh), ²¹and since we have a great priest over the house of God, ²²let us approach with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. ²³Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful. ²⁴And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, ²⁵not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching.

The translators of the New Revised Standard Version titled this passage in the scripture as perseverance. I titled the sermon “Hanging On.” I saw a sign on a Lutheran Church yesterday that titled it: Aspire to Inspire.

I met a man with a mighty possession of knowledge of the scriptures in my car the other day while driving for Uber.

At first he was concerned that Jesus was coming back real soon because of the political climate. We talked back and forth about the scriptures and what they have to say about the end times.

We only found a little bit of common ground in our discussion so I asked him to share his favorite verse of the Bible. He quoted two verses that have to do with studying scripture to have the knowledge to persevere.

It seemed to be his primary concern, how did he keep himself motivated for the Kingdom of God until Jesus returns? He was focused on his part of salvation and efforts to please Jesus. It was obvious that he loved Jesus.

And Christians not serving the kingdom is a common problem that we have. I have heard it a lot in the churches that I have pastored. The older, more experienced women, who have had bible training all their lives relegate the responsibility of teaching the younger ones because they did their share already.

I agree that we need to be building up new leadership in the church, but God has called us to service in the kingdom until we die. And when we die, we are released from that service. We know this. Serve God, it gives us a purpose here on life. And you know, we serve by loving others, forgiving others, helping others and speaking out for others.

So the author of Hebrews takes on the perspective of perseverance from a little different angle than just willing ourselves to be more faithful, have less doubts and to keep on working.

We are called to work but we are also called to rest in the power of the Holy Spirit to do that work.

I love the way Jesus promoted Christian service with the disciples. Early on in the ministry, Jesus sent the disciples out in pairs of two to proclaim the kingdom of God was here and now.

The disciples experienced the power of the Holy Spirit to the point that even demons were subject to them in the name of Jesus.

Jesus rejoiced because now that people are powered by the Holy Spirit, God can be present working His love and grace throughout the world in the people who constitute His family, the church, the Kingdom of God here on earth.

The text speaks of the power of prayer and the confidence with which we can pray and realize that God is listening to our prayers and responding.

He draws another symbolic parallel to the Jewish tradition. He speaks of the temple, and the veil that separated the holy place from the common area. Jesus, he says, is a symbolic type of veil.

The Temple was laid out with a room that contained the bread of presence, the incense burner and the ark of the covenant. Only the Priest, who was pure and holy, could enter the holy place. The Spirit of God rested on that place when the temple was dedicated. And an amazing thing happened when Jesus died. The two rooms has been separated by a thick curtain, or veil. When Jesus died, the veil was torn in two, from the top to the bottom.

It is said that it happened so that the Holy Spirit, which could now dwell in the hearts of men, women and children, could leave the Holy Place of the temple and now dwell in the hearts of humanity.

Jesus broke the barrier between man and God.

The author wants us to have confidence in this statement. We are accepted into the family of God through the blood Jesus shed and we are alive and empowered through the presence of the Holy Spirit that dwells inside of us.

Through that process, our consciences are also made clean, that is how we know that God has saved us. We symbolize it by our baptism, and since it says “having the bodies washed…” we practice full immersion in our baptism. However, I believe the reference to our bodies washed clean, in conjunction with the cleansing of our evil conscience, is that we been washed by the power of the Holy Spirit as we are received into the family of God.

He gives us two instructions in the passage to do: Verse 23: Hold fast to the confession. Verse 24 Provoke each other to good works.

So, let us break those down. Hold fast to our confession without wavering means what it says. The confession he is speaking of, I believe, is the confession of our faith. I would say that my confession is that Jesus Christ is my Savior.

Hold on to it. When I remember my confession, I actually say that Jesus is my Lord and Savior then my confession means that I will rest in Him to save me after all, He is my Savior. I will rest in His salvation. I wanted to say that to the man who was mighty in scripture. What about the rest that we have? He was compelled to being faithful and it almost seemed like he was afraid that he was not going to make it.

But the author of Hebrews reminds us of the power of the gospel to save us and we keep on expressing our faith in the good news with our continued confession.

Jesus saved me. I cannot save myself. Jesus did it for me. Jesus is indeed my Savior. That is how the confession works for me, I remind myself of it and the change that came when I made that confession so that I don’t lose heart.

I am reminded that if Jesus saved me, He will also keep me in His fold. He loves me, doubts, failings, insecurities and all. So, hang on the power of our confession, it releases the power of salvation for us.

The second instruction he gives us is to provoke one another to good works. I like the word provoke. It goes beyond encourage. It confronts us at times, it gets emotional and it stirs up our passion. It powers the enabling. Remember, I believe that the mission of the church on behalf of its members is to enable and encourage them to be faithful.

The author of Hebrews reminds us that at times, we need to be provoked. That means that if I am going to be a good preacher, I need to, at times, make you uncomfortable with areas that Jesus is still working on in your lives.

I thank God that at times of weakness, God doesn’t just smooth them over, but makes me/us face my/our weaknesses so that He can heal the root cause that keeps me/us from being faithful.

There are often root causes to our prejudices and fears. Some of them are evolutionary as we tend to want to be with our own kind, and some are societal, and we are given the power of the Holy Spirit to over come them.

I grew in my faith when I have been provoked beyond my comfort zone as well. I’ll tell you a story about how God worked on my own prejudices and racism. When I was in Bible college, my Greek professor went through a rather humbling and open confession of sin and repentance.

He started every class with a Pollock Joke. We don’t hear them much any more, but they were very popular when I was growing up.

The professor, informed by the History professor, who was Church of the Brethren, discovered that Pollock jokes were started by the German propaganda regime in order to dehumanize the Polish people so that the Aryan’s of the German Reich would not feel bad about conquering the Polish people and subjugating them to their oppression.

The Pollock joke was used to commit great war atrocities.

My professor, convinced by my History professor, repented and changed his ways. He was provoked to good works.

When that experience happened in Bible College, it also happened to me, I was convicted of all the times I engaged in racially motivated jokes thinking they were funny. But I learned that they are merely tools of oppression to keep a people down. I too, repented and after I confessed my sin, I discovered how many ways the racial jokes colored my opinion of non white people. All of that happened after the love of God filled my heart with the Holy Spirit. He is saving, healing and correcting us to the very core and he isn’t finished with that process until we die.

So, let us remain open to the Spirit’s provocation in our own lives as well.

Jesus Wept

 

Text: John 11:32-35

Focus: All Saints Day

Function: to remind us of the hope we have in Christ.

³²When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” ³³When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. ³⁴He said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” ³⁵Jesus began to weep.

Last Sunday, we had a lot of fun with the kids, grand kids and great grand kids as we celebrated Halloween. Halloween commemorates the day before All Saints day, the day we memorialize the love and loss we feel for those who have died and gone ahead of us into their reward.

So, I want to talk a bit about death and the hope that we have as believers.

I think that the Protestant tradition misses a lot from what our Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox brothers and sisters share in their common belief in the power of sainthood and the practice of praying to saints.

All, I believe, are saints. If we have come to the place where we have trusted in Jesus Christ as our Savior, then we are welcome into the family/kingdom of God and the Bible calls us saints.

In the Protestant tradition, we believe in what we call the Priesthood of all believers and we all have access to God through Jesus Christ and we do not need a priest, or in this case, a saint to intercede for us.

Too bad.

Jesus speaks of Abraham beseeching God on behalf of his children from the grave.

Those in heaven appear to understand some of what is going on down here on earth.

I find myself, when I am really confused about a situation, and I don’t understand what God is doing but I sense there is a real danger or problem and I am called to pray. But I don’t know how to pray because I don’t understand the divine plan, I find myself saying in my prayers, “Dad, if you can hear me and understand my situation, can you please talk to Jesus about it and work this out? I don’t know what do do or how to pray!”

And, I don’t believe, according to scripture that we are cut off from those who have died and gone before us. In talking about the lack of fear that we can have coming to God in prayer, the author of Hebrews also exposes a mystery about our relationship with those who have died and gone before us. Look at Hebrews 12:²²But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, ²³and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, ²⁴and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.

So, it appears that those believers who have died are rejoicing in the presence of God, the new heavenly Jerusalem -the city of God’s peace-, and we have come into their presence when we joined the family of God ourselves.

Now let us get to our primary text for today. Jesus wept. My favorite verse in the Bible.

Let me read it to you from The Message, a translation by Eugene Peterson that focuses on the story of the bible.

The Message:

³²Mary came to where Jesus was waiting and fell at his feet, saying, “Master, if only you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

^33-34When Jesus saw her sobbing and the Jews with her sobbing, a deep anger welled up within him. He said, “Where did you put him?”

^34-35“Master, come and see,” they said. Now Jesus wept.

I like the way the Message picks up on the Greek word Orge. What was Jesus upset about? Was it their lack of faith or was it Jesus feeling empathy for the human condition? He loved Lazarus, Mary and Martha and it appears that watching them cry was too much for Him.

We read in the New Revised the Jesus was “deeply upset and greatly moved.” The image from translating it from Greek directly is the word used when a horse goes off and starts neighing loudly. Literally, He made a loud noise.

I sort of with the Peterson had translated the word orge into passion instead of anger. But both words get the idea across. Jesus was very passionate about what was happening and what was about to happen.

Now we know that He knows all things, and He knows that in the next few moments, the source of their grief is going to be turned to immeasurable joy.

But, I suppose it is important to go back to the beginning of today’s narrative and look at the blaming that Mary has toward Jesus. “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” We know that this is a lesson about the power of resurrection so that we can believe in Jesus’ own resurrection. But Mary didn’t know. And remember, that is why I ask my dad to intercede, because he has a more eternal perspective on things that I do since he has gone to heaven already.

Mary blamed Jesus. It is natural for us to blame God when things go wrong. I don’t think that is the reason why the translator choose to use anger instead of passion in this translation.

But this is a hard lesson. Remember earlier of you will, that Jesus was told Lazarus was sick and the sisters begged Jesus to come before he died. Jesus delayed on purpose. He has a purpose in what He is doing here on planet earth.

This purpose, I believe was to prove the resurrection and thereby, to give us hope as well.

He could have been upset by their lack of faith in what He can do for us. Abraham believed that God would raise the dead to keep God’s promise and was willing to sacrifice Isaac on the altar. God’s power is supernatural as we saw in the life and ministry of Jesus Christ recorded for us in the gospel accounts.

But that last verse gives us a clue as to what He was really feeling: “Jesus wept.” The NRSV says, Jesus began to weep.

Hebrews 4:14-15 speaks of Jesus being the great High Priest who can sympathize with our weaknesses. ¹⁴Since, then, we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast to our confession. ¹⁵For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin.

Jesus was tested in every way as we are, yet he passed all the tests. He can help us with our own weaknesses.

Jesus knows and has experienced human loss. For example: once Jesus is past puberty, we have no record of Joseph in the gospel accounts, so apparently, he died young and Mary was left a widow. Jesus experienced that loss as well, at a premature time.

And here again at the graveside of Lazarus, his friend. His friend. He wasn’t one of the 12, he is only listed as a friend, another aspect of Jesus understanding the human condition and human connection and human love.

And I find it comforting that Jesus wept. I know He weeps with us. He loves us.

Jesus wept in the face of the resurrection. He isn’t here for us just in the future when we die, but He is here for us now with the comforting power of His Holy Spirit in our lives.

Mary and Martha went through pain to see the power of the resurrection, let us take hope from Jesus’ resurrection and realize our own resurrection will come as we grieve in the face of loss.

 

Text: Deuteronomy 6:1-9

Focus: Loving God

Function: To help people conflate loving God with loving others.

6:¹Now this is the commandment—the statutes and the ordinances—that the Lord your God charged me to teach you to observe in the land that you are about to cross into and occupy, ²so that you and your children and your children’s children may fear the Lord your God all the days of your life, and keep all his decrees and his commandments that I am commanding you, so that your days may be long. ³Hear therefore, O Israel, and observe them diligently, so that it may go well with you, and so that you may multiply greatly in a land flowing with milk and honey, as the Lord, the God of your ancestors, has promised you.

⁴Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. ⁵You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. ⁶Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. ⁷Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. ⁸Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, ⁹and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

For some reason, I have always loved reading this passage of scripture. I guess because it is a call to love God and it gives us an idea of the extent of how we demonstrate our love for God.

It contains a couple of important verses. The Jewish people call it “The Shema.” Shema is the Hebrew word for “hear.” And it is listed as the great “Hear Ye” of the Jewish faith. One site calls it the “central pillar of the Jewish belief.”

And it is interesting that the Shema, the great “Hear This,” is not the great commandment that we are focusing on this morning, but the pillar of how the Judaeo/Christian heritage approaches its belief system.

The statement that they were to hear, according to the Jewish people is this: “Hear O Israel, the Lord is God, the Lord is One.”

Now, our translation uses the term the Lord is God alone, meaning that there is no other God.

And that is the central core of the meaning of the phrase, The Lord is One. The Jewish people lived in the midst of pagan cultures that worshiped many different gods. The Romans, the Greeks, the Chinese and the Indian cultures all worship or worshiped a pantheon of gods.

And the Jewish Shema was a direct repudiation of the idea that there were several gods. God alone is One God and is not divided.

I once got into an argument with an orthodox Jew about the trinity and he cited this verse and said some thing like it was a foundational understanding of God that God is One God.

I explained to him that Genesis 1 says this of God, “Let Us make God in our own image… ...male and female (in the image of God.)

Taking from John 1, I tried to explain to him that Jesus was the manifestation of God that God gave us that we can understand and then I tried to defend the doctrine of the trinity. It takes faith to believe it (and I do).

However, I now I realize this: It never helps to argue with someone, the bible makes it clear that the kindness of God is what draws people back to God.

But you get the idea that it is a foundational principle of the Jewish and Christian faith that God alone is God.

And, the Jewish people did not misunderstand the difference between the Shema, the central pillar of their belief, and the Great Commandment, which immediately follows it.

For some reason, I feel, the great commandment gets washed over. I hope not.

The great commandment, which this passage is about, and which Moses, the author of the book, takes 4 whole verses to introduce, is this: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might.

So, he uses the Shema, the central pillar of the Jewish faith to introduce the great commandment which is to Love God.

And then he tells them how to visibly remind themselves to do this. Diligently teach the commands of God, which will help us to love God, to your children. Teach your Children the words of God and be diligent about it.

He says to show so much devotion that we tie them to our foreheads and doorposts. If you see a picture of an Orthodox Jewish Priest, you may see a square patch of cloth fixed with a band to his forehead. In it is written the words, The Lord is God, The Lord is One.

Also, you have probably seen pictures of seen for yourselves the doorpost of an orthodox Jewish family. There is a little brass device, generally shaped like a scroll, and it inside it is again, the words of the Shema.

It is a visible way, a literal way to accomplish the commandment in this verse. The visible icon reminds them to Love God.

But the command is still the important part. Love God will all your heart, soul and strength.

Mark’s gospel records the account of the teacher of the Law asking Jesus which was the first commandment of all, or the greatest commandment. Jesus quotes the Shema, then says Love God and then Jesus adds another verse from the OT, Love your neighbor as yourself.

The Jewish expert in the law answered Jesus with the affirmative, that Jesus had interpreted the law correctly. Then Jesus said to Him. You are not far from the Kingdom of God yourself!

I love it when Jesus’ patience with His enemies leads them to their own salvation. We don’t know if the man converted and believed in Jesus or not, but he does understand the purpose and mission of Jesus and he agrees with it.

So, you caught this, I am sure. Jesus added to the great commandment. It was, you shall love God and Jesus says, you shall love God and you shall love others.

And, once Jesus combines the two, He wraps them up together into one command. He says, the command is to Love God and Love your neighbor.

And the teacher of the law who was first questioning Jesus and is now being called to love God by Jesus, agrees that loving your neighbor is part of the “first commandment of all.”

Jesus was clear that this is the greatest commandment and I am glad the Jesus added the love your neighbor part to the commandment that is to be listed as first of all.

Jesus actually goes farther, right before He dies, while He is giving last minute instructions to the apostles, in the upper room, He says, A new commandment (a new “first of all commandment”) is to love one another. You will be known to be Christians by the way you love others.

This is our moniker. And in this, Jesus changes the Great Commandment. Well, not changes it so much as addresses a way for us to be engaged with Loving God. You remember Matthew 25 where Jesus tells us that we are either sheep (members of God’s kingdom/family) or goats (not members) based on the way that we love others.

You hear me gripe about refugees, well in the passage, Jesus gives eternal blessings, or denies them, based on the way we treat the stranger. I have to make these warnings.

But I love the command to love others. It makes the Christian faith, and doing the Christian faith, easier for me. Love God by Loving others. That is how we reconcile the concept of which is the greatest between loving God and loving others.

Cleansed!

 

Text: Hebrews 9:11-14

Focus: Cleansing

Function: To celebrate how our consciences are made clean by the Holy Spirit

¹¹But when Christ came as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation), ¹²He entered once for all into the Holy Place, not with the blood of goats and calves, but with his own blood, thus obtaining eternal redemption. ¹³For if the blood of goats and bulls, with the sprinkling of the ashes of a heifer, sanctifies those who have been defiled so that their flesh is purified, ¹⁴how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to worship the living God!

It is too bad that Carol isn’t here today because she designed this service and sent it to me early and her designing of the service gave me inspiration for how to prepare this message.

Today, we are focusing on the cross and the blood sacrifice of Jesus Christ .

The author of Hebrews throughout the book paints Jesus Christ as the Great High Priest who offered Himself as the perfect sacrifice for our sins.

I mentioned earlier, at the beginning of our study in Hebrews that Hebrews is full of Jewish mystery and theology. It can be difficult for us Westerners to understand or to picture the significance of different passages.

For example, the Jews had a sacrificial system to atone for their sins, to honor God and to thank God for certain blessings in their lives. But mainly, the animal sacrifice was the price that was paid when we sinned.

Every year, on the day of atonement they had two goats. They laid their hands on the heads of the goats and they took one and they killed it by slicing its throat in their presence. Then, in the presence of the leaders, the Priests took the goat and butchered it. They laid the fat, the entrails and the meat on the altar where it was burned up.

It was a bloody sight. I imagine that the temple area stunk with the residue of blood and the burning of flesh. They would sprinkle some of the blood on the base of the altar. Imagine how the buildup would have been kind of a grotesque sight and stench.

The worst part was that they didn’t get to eat any of the meat. It was a sacrifice given to God to pay for their sins.

And it didn’t just happen on the day of atonement. The same practice was there for someone who sinned, unintentionally, and became aware of it. The same process happened. The slaughter of the lamb or the goat of the birds, if they were too poor to afford a lamb or goat and if they were rich, they sacrificed a whole bull was the price paid for sin.

Sin cost a life is the message that is shown in the sacrificial system. It was highly symbolic of the price of sinning in the land. They placed their hands on the head of the animal to be sacrificed in a symbolic way to show, I believe, that their sins were transmitted onto the animal and the animal had to die.

There was one ceremony of sacrifice where the blood of the animal is poured into a bowl, then they take a sprig of hyssop branch, dip it in the bowl of blood and then fling the blood onto the crowd. The blood was to remind them of their guilt. That might be a good time to sit in the back for the worship service!

And I hope that I haven’t grossed you out with the description of the scene, but it helps us to be aware of what they were facing in the OT worship system.

Now, there were sacrifices that were eaten, they offered thank offerings for things like babies being born and etc. Those offering went through the same bloody ritual. But they only burnt up the unusable parts of the animal and the rest of the meat they boiled so that all the blood was taken out of it.

The shedding of blood and its visceral image was supposed to be a warning for them not to sin.

Jesus Christ, we believe, paid the final price for all the sins of the entire world and because of His sacrifice for us, the Church does not need to sacrifice an animal to pay for the sins of the people. Jesus, we believe, abolished the need for sacrifice because He became the perfect and final sacrifice for our sins.

Animal sacrifice was a common practice in pagan religions as well. So, when the first Christian missionaries began to share the good news about Jesus death, sacrifice and resurrection, people could relate to the idea that God (or the gods) could be appeased by a blood sacrifice.

And the whole idea was to assuage the feeling of guilt and shame that was inherent in the cultures. The blood of the sacrifices reminded them of that.

So, after building a foundation of the fact that we do not stand before the Creator of the universe without guilt and guilt leads us to shame and shame destroys our hope, we have a remedy for out sin. Jesus Christ, the just and righteous judge who gave Himself on our behalf.

Let us worship Him and draw near.

He says something about Jesus’ sacrifice in the passage that is significant. He speaks of how the Holy Spirit lead Jesus and that is what made Jesus the perfect sacrifice.

It was the Spirit of God that empowered Him and the author of Hebrews tells us to trust in God to cleanse our conscience.

God does it through the same Holy Spirit that lead Jesus to the cross to be our sacrifice.

And that Holy Spirit is powerful enough to actually cleanse our conscience.

I have seen it time and time again. I have had the privilege on several occasions to pray with someone the sinners prayer whereby they make a formal request of Jesus to save them from their sin. And they all report back to me the same experience I had when I asked Jesus to forgive me. They are cleansed and somehow, by the power of the Spirit, they know that they are forgiven.

I consider myself a liberal. But liberal theologians ask the question, and I ask it also, why? If God is all powerful, why didn’t God just erase sin by decree? He could, we know.

But the scriptures show us throughout, from OT to NT that blood is shed for sins and Jesus did it for us. I don’t know why except to believe that God did it to show us both how to live and how to die.

Jesus was killed standing up to those who would displace the poor and the weak. Especially against those who used a false religion to do it. We do not have to follow the system as well, is the example that Jesus gave us. We do not have to live a life of greed, we can love and live because we know that we are cleansed and on the the way to heaven when we die where our reward will be according to the sacrifice and love we showed Jesus while on this earth.

That prayer that I have used? It is simple, It goes like this: “Dear Jesus, I believe in you and I ask you to forgive my sins and to save me.”

Simple. Powerful. Transforming. That is what our salvation, or healing from God, is like. A clean conscience is something to celebrate!