9/8/13 Sermon by Rev. David Haberer, Pastor: SERMON NOTES: CHOOSE THIS DAY WHO YOU WILL SERVE, Deuteronomy 30:15-20 The journey to the Promised Land was coming to an end. It had been forty years since the Israelites left Egypt. They had learned a lot. They saw the hand of God defeat the Egyptians with the ten plagues. When Pharaoh had a change of heart after sending the people off and chased after them, the Israelites witnessed God drown the Egyptian army in the sea after they had crossed on dry ground. That was only the beginning. When they had no food, God sent Manna. When they had no water, God made a fountain out of the rocks. When they had no meat, the Quail came. At every point, they saw the hand of God move on their behalf. Not to mention that they were led by a pillar of fire by night and a pillar of cloud by day. The people of God experienced his presence in the wilderness daily for forty years, and now they had finally arrived at the edge of the Promised Land. Some lessons were hard learned. It took forty years to get to this place because a generation had to die in the wilderness as punishment for their unbelief. They had been to the edge of the Promised Land once before. Spies were sent in to survey the land. They came back with a glowing report of how fruitful the land was, but they doubted God’s ability to deliver the land over to them because there were giants in the land. Moses wasn’t going to enter the land because he let his anger get the best of him when the people complained about the lack of water. Not everything was easy, and not every lesson was learned. But here they were again at the edge of the Promised Land and this time they were going in. Deuteronomy is a retelling of the law. Moses was running through wilderness experience and the law once again for the people to encourage their faith and challenge them one last time to obey the Lord, before he went up into the mountain to die. For Moses the lesson he was giving to the people was close to home; obey God and live, disobey and die. The challenge that Moses laid out before the people of Israel that day he lays out for us today. “See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil.” Obey and live disobey and die. It’s that simple and yet it is not. We are legalists at heart. We want to lay down a few rules, one’s that we are able keep, obey them and all is good. People are always giving away their set of rules. You hear it all the time. “I’m a good person, I don’t…” Then they start the list. I don’t curse, don’t drink, don’t hurt anyone. You know the list; you probably have your own. We make up a list, and then we assume that that is what Moses is talking about. The problem is that Christianity is not about rules but about faith, faith that dies to self to follow Jesus. Moses’ challenge this morning is to choose life and not death. Jesus tells us we find life by dying, the paradox of Christianity. In order to follow Jesus we need to face the obstacles that are before us. We need to learn to think differently about life. The battle we face is in our mind. Obeying Jesus is about rightly discerning the things of this world and acting in a manner that brings glory to God. We must learn to think God’s thoughts after him. In the book, Desiring the Kingdom, James Smith makes the argument that we are liturgical beings. We were created to worship, and all that we do is worship. The question is not do people worship but rather whom do they worship. I have spent a lot of time this summer thinking about this. The problem is that people worship the wrong god, and unfortunately people in the church unwittingly join in that worship. We are each the product of our culture. That is why in Romans 12:1ff Paul writes, “I appeal to you therefore, brother, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of our mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable.” Don’t be conformed but be transformed. Understand the will of God, what is good and acceptable. I want to look briefly at four misconceptions that the world pushes on us as truth. Simply stated they are 1) the individual is the final authority. There is no higher authority than me. 2) I am more important than the group. My life takes precedence over everything and everyone else. 3) God exists to make me happy. And 4) my happiness is found in the things of this world. These four beliefs make up the creed of this world. This is what many people of this world believe. It is the basis of their worship. The individual is the final authority. You hear it all the time. People speak of their truth and your truth. There is no claim to absolute truth. They believe that all truth is relative. This idea places the individual in the seat of God. I get to decide what is true and right. I get to decide what is of value and what is not. I get to decide what is real and lasting. When it comes to questions of morality, it is the individual’s opinion that matters. No one can tell me what to do, not even God. This becomes a problem for the church. Moses gives us to right to choose whom we will serve. We are called follow Jesus. He makes all the calls we only choose to follow or not. The world tells us to lead. We are told to decide for ourselves. Liberty is defined as the freedom to govern ourselves, to make up our own rules. This idea is far from what the Bible calls us to. We are called to follow and obey Jesus. There is an authority over the individual, and his name is Jesus. Chose this day whom you will follow. We are called to follow Jesus. We submit all our plans to him. He is the one who orders our steps, and it is Jesus who dictates our values and how we view the world. Along that same line, people believe that the individual is more important than the group. In our self-indulgent society, the individual is the center of all things. Again, God is replaced by the individual. On top of that, the group does not matter. Everything is done for my own good and well-being. You can see this in the way we live. People want to live near the center of action, but they don’t want to see their neighbors. We want what we want when we want it and then we want to be left alone. The reality is that we are social beings. Why is it that NYC is growing in population? Why is most of the world moving to cities? You can argue that that is where the opportunities are, but the reality is that the city is where the people are, and people make the opportunities we desire. It was not good for man to be alone, remember? We need one another if we are going to experience life the way God intended. We also need to remember that Christianity is a corporate experience. We are saved into the body of Christ. We are given gifts to build up the body of Christ. Our needs are met in the body of Christ. The collective is of vital importance to our Christian faith. The challenge to the church is to build community in this city. People come here because of the inherent need to be where people are. It is a foretaste of the coming city of God. But sin keeps us apart. And so we come for the people, and we fear the people at the same time. The church has the opportunity and the responsibility to build the community that everyone desires and to invite the lonely in. People say the collective doesn’t matter, but in fact their actions tell a different story. The third idea is that God exists for my happiness. This belief runs rampant through the church. In our “me” centered society, happiness is a major if not the most important goal in life. All is done to achieve personal happiness. We buy things to make us happy. We choose our jobs, where we live, and the things that we purchase based on the idea that they will make us happy. God’s job is to meet our happiness goal. God is placed on the sidelines until we need him. When a crisis arises in our life, God is to step in and correct it so that we are happy again. When we want something, God is to supply it so that we are happy. When we are sick, he is to heal us so that we don’t suffer, ever. God exists to make me happy. Back in another life when the popular evangelism technique was to knock on doors and talk to people about Jesus, the punch line was, “God has a wonderful plan for your life.” The idea was that if you decided to follow Jesus, your life would unfold in a wonderful plan that was understood to mean that God would give you everything you needed for a wonderful life. The problem is that God’s plan for us is an eternity with him in heaven, which is a wonderful plan by the way, but for the near future his plan is to conform us to the image of Jesus, which could mean suffering in the here and now. God’s call is to service and ministry. Where he would have us to live might not be in the place of our choosing. Those we are called to live amongst might not treat us well; they didn’t treat Jesus well. We could be hated and despised by this world. Many Christians today suffer real persecution for their faith. They experience the joy of the Lord, but happy is not a description of their life. Jesus died to set us free from sin and death. He died to restore our relationship with the Father. There is no promise of happiness in this life. God’s plan for this world is so much bigger than our little lives. Finally, many believe that our fulfillment is found in this present material world. Why is it that we spend so much time working to make as much money as possible? Why do we spend so much time shopping for things? How is it that there is a whole industry built around storing our stuff? Think about it for a moment. We live in bigger houses than most people on the planet. Even our small apartments by world standards are large. Yet we have to rent extra space to store our stuff. We pray, “Give us this day our daily bread,” and yet we store way more than we will ever use. We are told that if we see someone in need of food and clothing and we say be warm and fed and do nothing to alleviate the problem, our religion is worthless and yet our closets are full and our cupboards are overflowing. Why is that? We store our stuff and fill our homes because we think that in the possession of those things we will find our satisfaction. Jesus says take no thought of these things but seek the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all of these things will be given to you as you need them. The farmer, who had the bumper crop and tore down his barns to build bigger ones because he thought now his future was secure was called a fool by God, and he died that very night. Our fulfillment is not found in the things of this world. Our future is found in Christ Jesus. So the question that Moses puts before us this morning is a relevant one. We are asked to choose who will we serve. The god of this world is not the God of the Bible. We must not allow ourselves to be conformed to this world but to be transformed by the Spirit of God through the word of God that we might live for the glory.
Posted on: Tue, 10 Sep 2013 19:05:01 +0000