CMLC 2025-03-02 Sermon (Traditional)

Now, I wanted to check to see if you can recognize this phrase.

I'm giving her all she's got, Captain!

Anybody catch that phrase? All right, yes? All right, you know.

Okay, a few of you caught it, a few of you did not.

Okay, maybe it's...

I don't know how long she can last.

If I push it any harder, the whole thing will blow!

I'm an engineer, not a miracle worker!

I kind of changed the laws of physics.

I know that is the worst Scottish accent ever.

It is okay. I don't live there and I don't need to pretend. It is okay.

So, this was James Dewin, the Canadian actor who portrayed the Scottish engineer Scotty

on the original Star Trek series where space explorers would boldly go where no man has gone before.

And that's right, the Scottish character named Montgomery Scott, Nick Dame Scotty,

who drank Scotch, played by a Canadian.

I don't know, it was the 60s, it was a simpler time.

But they almost cut the character, believe it or not,

but fortunately they realized they should keep an engineer on a spaceship.

Star Trek was this show, it was a TV show a long time ago.

Okay, great, awesome.

But, the turn out though, Scotty, his last episode was not on the original Star Trek series

and it was not even one of the movies that was there.

His last episode was called Relics on the next series, the Star Trek the next generation.

So it turns out, after serving on 11 different starships,

52 years and he's the age of 72 and he retires as a captain,

it turns out he was on a ship that was doomed,

so he got himself into a teleporter that normally would go from one place to another

instantly and kept himself in that teleporter for 75 years

so that he would not be killed on that starship.

So they find him later down the line and of course 75 years later,

a gentleman who had already been 72 and he was out of date as an engineer.

He could not get used to the future, but having come out of the past,

he ends up with his understanding of physics and engineering principles

that many people in the future had gotten lazy with,

was able to help the new crew to save the enterprise when the new guys could not.

And at the end, the 147 year old Captain Scotty takes off to explore space.

But why was it so important to bring back this former character into the new TV series in the first place?

Why was that such a big deal? Because producers and directors know

that sometimes the past is needed to point us to the future.

And that's one of the things that we end up seeing here is the idea of what it is

to let the past end up pointing us into the future,

which is what we end up seeing with Moses and Elijah,

because Moses and Elijah seemed to be teleported into the future today.

You see, what we end up seeing is two individuals who had been major characters in the past,

who when their time on earth was finished, mysteriously leave.

You end up seeing Moses, who at 120 is going up this mountain.

Could you imagine what it's like that you see somebody that you know you're about to go off to your new home,

and yet this 120 year old man is walking off up a mountain by himself,

and that you're not allowed to bring him with you.

What does that end up meaning? People wonder sometimes,

how do they know what ended up happening to him if no one was there?

Well, it seems pretty obvious what is going to happen if someone at 120 goes off on a mountain

by themselves and is never to be seen again.

But you see, with this, we may even be wondering why?

Why was it that Moses had to end up doing this?

Moses was looking for the promised land. He was looking for the promise,

and he was not allowed to go. Do you remember why that was?

It's because at a time when he was supposed to get water for the people by speaking God's word to it,

instead he comes up and smacks it with a staff,

trying to use his strength, his boldness to try to make that rock give exactly what he wanted.

So because of that, his anger, he was not allowed to go and to see the promise,

but instead was brought to God.

He had still been God's vessel, but there was a consequence to his actions.

Or even looking at Elijah, and you may be wondering, what about Elijah?

Elijah was not somebody that we would consider as having main issues,

but if you look back, you realize that Elijah was not allowed to stay

and continue with the ministry he was doing.

If you'll notice what is happening after confronting King Ahab and Queen Jezebel, he runs.

He is afraid. He feels that there is nobody there to support him.

It turned out there were 7,000 people in Israel who could have supported him, but he ran away.

And more than once, God says, what are you doing here as he sees him out in the wilderness?

And finally, God says, you will anoint these other people to do the work that I have,

and then you will be brought to me.

And turns out Elijah doesn't even get to anointing the two kings he was supposed to anoint.

He does anoint his successor, but he himself ends up being taken away in a chariot of fire

for the next people to take over, which is interesting because as we have mentioned in the past,

Moses passed the ministry on to Joshua, whose name, Yahshua, means that Yahweh is salvation.

And that Elijah gives it to Elisha, El Yasha, God is salvation.

And so with this, what we end up seeing is that the two of them kept pointing to a future that they were not able to be a part of.

They had done so much and yet at these moments, they couldn't quite see what was meant to happen.

You see, the thing is, is that they also needed to be redeemed.

See, it turns out that God did not just leave the law with Moses and the prophets with Elijah to themselves.

Instead, God has to redeem the law and the prophets.

You see, Moses had brought the law to tell people this is how you are meant to live.

But even as he is trying to use it, he uses it the wrong way.

Instead of using it to lead and to guide, he uses it to strike, to make things known as loudly as possible.

But even so, Elijah being a prophet was not able to see the truth, that he was never truly alone.

And that God still had much more for him to do.

See, there was still much more ministry to be done, but it had to be given to a successor.

You see, with all of this is that oftentimes we can see that at moments, a person may be going in a direction,

but there may be times where they almost seem to sabotage themselves.

But you see, even though they had done this, God had not abandoned them.

And that's the thing with this, is that both of them being taken from this earth, where do we see them again?

We see them with Jesus himself.

As much as we know that Moses expected Joshua to be the fulfillment to the promised land,

and Elijah expected Elisha to be the one to point the future of God's people,

is instead the true fulfillment ended up coming with Jesus.

In the Hebrew being Yeshua, a similar form as Joshua.

Yeshua being Hebrew, Jesus coming from Jesus, the Greek form.

You see, with this is that the words, the names themselves, ended up pointing toward what was going to need to happen.

See, we see oftentimes this question about how it is that we may be finding disappointment,

but it doesn't necessarily mean failure.

Disappointment does not always indicate failure.

See, we ended up seeing that Scotty, he had realized that he could not escape.

And so he found a way to pause, to be teleported not from one place to another, but from one time to another.

And so as he arrives, he discovers all these ways, all these places, all these examples where he does not know how to live up to what the future has.

Haven't you ever felt that sense of seeing God's expectations and knowing you can't seem to live up to them?

And you feel the disappointment of knowing that what you felt you were meant to do, somehow you haven't been able to live up to it.

But the thing with this is that even so, the character ends up becoming and being the very person who is needed because of who he was.

Not because he knew everything, not because he did everything right, but rather who he was as an engineer.

But we ended up seeing the same thing in the legacy of Moses and Elijah.

Hebrews doesn't focus in the passage on Moses' mistakes.

It focuses on who Moses was, the person sent by God to proclaim his word to the people.

It doesn't focus on the mistakes, but rather is ending up realizing that God is the one taking who we are, his people, and using us in ways that we did not expect.

Are we oftentimes feeling like we are in a holding pattern?

We don't see who we are. We see what we have struggled to do. We see disappointment.

But we don't realize that the disappointment doesn't change who we truly are being God's people.

Do we sometimes feel that we are in a holding pattern because of a mistake or a struggle or disappointment?

And we cannot see a future because we can't see past it.

But the thing is, is that as much as Moses and Elijah may have been taken from where they were, they still had a future because of who Jesus is.

And that's the thing about where we find all of ourselves is that God is bigger because of the grace that he has.

See, we may be pausing and wondering what was it that we felt that God was calling us to.

Maybe it was something that we thought of when we were a child and we had the energy and the joy of a child and somewhere over the course of time we just kind of gave up on it.

Or maybe it was something we pursued that we had these ideological and hopeful views of what we might be able to do in the world, but life just kind of got in the way.

Or maybe even later on that we wondered that we've given everything to children or to friends or whoever it may be.

And we wonder if there's anything left and yet maybe God is calling us to revisit what we thought we needed to give up.

The things that we may have put away because we thought we had failed the promise, but the promise is never based on our perfection.

The promise is based on God's love.

And that's where we end up discovering that the fulfillment of God's future is in Christ.

And because it is in Christ, now through him it is in us.

We don't move forward thinking that the reason we're a part of God's plan is because it started with us. It always starts with God.

It always starts with who Jesus is and what he has done and because of forgiveness, because of grace.

It then is lived through us, not by perfect people, but by broken ones who show Jesus more clearly because we're willing to admit how flawed we are.

You see, we may have lost our original perspective, but the God who sees all, not just every place, but also every time, still knows what he intends.

Because grace is more than just a single moment in time.

It is more than just one single point where we felt that we had failed, but rather grace is a future that we still have because of God's plans and God's timing.

So that's what we end up seeing.

Even as Scotty goes off in a space shuttle to go live the rest of the life that he has, being a mystery in a sense.

We discover the fulfillment of Moses and Elijah, not staying in death, but it turns out that they have a life everlasting because of the one that they come to see, transfigured and glorious upon that mountain.

And that's where we ourselves find life.

Not in the death or the frustration that we think may define us, but rather by the life given to us by God.

So may we be willing, maybe, maybe as scared as we are, maybe be willing to look to see what God may still have in front of us.

And consider that he may still want to fulfill that through us.

May God's will, may God's glory be lived out by grace through the broken, but forgiven people that we are. Amen.