CMLC 2024-02-18 Sermon

I wanted to say that I was really glad to be able to see that we had the scouts here today.

Way, way, way back in the day, there were some dinosaurs on the earth or something.

I was a Cub Scout, and I had gone through, you know, from, was it Tiger Cubs, I think,

all the way up into Webelos and all, and got the Arrow of Light and everything else in between.

And I tried to make sure that I got every single one of the pins that they would like,

you would try to learn a new skill or something different, like, you know, you've got your tent making

and you've got, like, some computer skills were in there somewhere at that point in time,

and then also community service and underwater basket weaving, I think might have been somewhere in there.

Yeah, yeah, I'm afraid of water now.

But one of the things with it, though, was that I never got to go from Cub Scouts up to Boy Scouts.

And, no, I had it somehow offended the entirety of Boy Scouts of America or anything like that.

But the difficulty was that the scout troop that was nearby that I was supposed to go into from Cub Scouts into Boy Scouts,

my mom took me to visit and she just had this feeling in seeing some of the leaders that were there,

was that she wasn't sure that she trusted the leaders for that particular troop at the time.

Don't worry, not this troop, another place.

But one of the things that stood out to me is that I was spending so much time trying to make sure that I was the perfect Cub Scout.

But my mom was actually looking to make sure that I would grow up into being a good person.

And this idea of separating the rules and the expectations from what you're actually meant to grow into,

this distinction between rules and word is a big piece of what I want us to focus on for today.

See, a lot of times we can focus so much on trying to make sure that we have not only lived up to what might make us look good in the eyes of the law,

but we haven't paused to ask whether we have actually changed as a person based on what God actually wants for us.

Whenever I was younger, I was in high school and my mom had this idea that, you know what,

she wanted to get us to do more chores around the house.

So she thought, you know what, I'll actually make sure that your allowance is based on doing chores.

Now, my sister, it wasn't really a big deal one way or the other for her.

If she was going to do chores, she was going to do them no matter what.

My sister, very hardheaded young lady.

And for her, she was like, if I'm going to do the chores, great.

If I'm not, whatever.

And in my mind, though, I'm like jackpot.

Oh, man, it was like, oh, I just noticed, I think you've got some dirty clothes.

Do you need those washed for you today?

Oh, well, let me make sure.

Well, I think it took four loads to wash these instead of three loads.

Let me make a note of that.

I think that might be a few extra cents on that part.

And the thing for me that was always hard, dishes, hated dishes.

We did not have a dish machine.

I never say the term dishwasher because dishwasher was just what you referred to whoever had to do the dishes that day.

But dish machine, we never had one.

And my obsessive compulsive disorder that I especially had when I was younger, still have little tendencies now.

Basically, it took me forever because I was always like, did I wash everything perfectly?

Did I get it just right?

And the thing with it is that I would try to figure out how to make sure that I maximized what I got credit for in the chores

without pausing to say, yeah, but wasn't the whole point just to make sure that I'm helping my family and being responsible.

And instead, I was just making sure, yeah, but did I get enough money to buy the video game I wanted?

In a lot of ways, we see this mentality with Abraham and Isaac.

You see, Abraham had been promised this child, Isaac, and he knew that this is the child through which God was supposed to bless him.

Now, Abraham had made a lot of poor choices in the chapters leading up to this.

Whenever he was afraid that different kings nearby would be jealous of his wife and just try to take her from him,

he would say, well, just tell everybody that you're my sister, okay?

And then that way, they won't feel that they have to kill me to be with you.

And then turned out he brought curses upon kings lands because of it.

Or yes, I'm supposed to have a child, but I'm already getting older.

Apparently, back then, you could be in your 90s and still be having kids.

So I don't know if that's true for our 97-year-olds as well, but maybe the world's a little different these days.

But with it, though, is we end up seeing that he goes out of his way and has a child with somebody else that they could just claim was a child by Sarah.

And that wasn't it either.

And so now God has blessed him with the Son through Sarah.

And now God is saying, you have to sacrifice him.

The thing is, is that after spending so long trying to make sure, yes, but I think I could kind of get around things.

If I do this or do that, maybe I could somehow redeem him, maybe I could pay for him.

Instead, Abraham's like, I don't know, but I have to follow.

There are a lot of different theories as to what Abraham must have been thinking at the time.

Was Abraham thinking, hmm, maybe there will be another son?

Was Abraham thinking, hmm, maybe God could bring him back from the dead?

All of its speculation, it's not actually in the Bible what he's thinking.

All we know is that he took him and went.

And the thing is, is that right before he's about to sacrifice Isaac, God says, no.

You've shown what it is that you are following after me.

As a kid, I had one of those children's Bibles, and it always showed Isaac as this little bitty kid that Abraham was about to sacrifice.

But in the context, when you read it, Isaac was the one who had to carry the wood up to the sacrifice place.

So chances are, he was actually a lot older.

So when his geriatrically aged father was binding him, it was probably voluntary.

The thing with this is that instead of trying to spend all this time looking for the loopholes to get around it,

is that instead, at a time whenever people back then, they thought of God as expecting that you might sacrifice people, Abraham went and followed.

But God himself showed that he had something bigger all along.

The thing is, is that oftentimes we're looking to Scripture to try to figure out what rules that we're supposed to follow.

But whenever we look to Scripture just to figure out what rules to follow, then we completely miss the purpose.

Because this is not just the whole bunch of rules that we're supposed to try to figure out.

Did I check things off and make sure I got everything done?

God's word is meant to communicate who God is.

Even when we look at the Son of God, is that this isn't just Jesus trying to figure out, okay, what more rules do I need to add on?

No, no, no, this is, let me understand the embodiment of God himself.

And you see, that ends up kind of pointing us a bit more to what we see in our Gospel today.

You see, in the Gospel lesson, it starts off talking about washing of hands.

Now, I'll be honest, I always hated this passage whenever I was younger, because the whole time I'm like, yeah, wash your hands.

You're about to eat. That's disgusting.

You don't even know what in the world, like you have been all over the place and don't even get me started.

The last time I looked at this passage, it was like 2021 and we were like dealing with toilet paper and COVID.

Don't even start about that.

And the thing is, is that I'm listening to this, trying to understand what was such a big deal.

But realizing that in the context, is that the Pharisees and the scribes are talking to the disciples,

not just like, oh hey, you should probably make sure that you have clean hands because you're about to eat and that's usually a good idea.

This is even, you were in the marketplace around all of those unclean people.

You need to make sure you washed your hands ceremoniously because you don't want to take a chance that those impure people are somehow still on your hands.

And what is Jesus focused?

Jesus focus is saying, look at yourselves.

What is happening inside of you?

Look at who you have been and now you're wanting to try to focus on what someone else is doing that has more to do with your tradition than it does,

it has to do with anything to do with God himself.

Just to give a quick context, Corbin.

It's not a comic book superhero villain.

What it is is that Corbin was actually this phrase meant given to God.

It was like a way of saying this here belongs to God so nobody can do anything else with it.

In a sense, it's almost like saying that people are going through a divorce and before they split all their assets,

all of a sudden you find out that they gifted the ranch to their great aunt.

You're like, I'm sorry, we can't split it.

It belongs to my aunt now. Sorry, too bad.

It would be kind of a similar mentality with whatever they had.

If they didn't want to use their possessions to care for their parents, it could be dedicated to God.

Granted, you could still redeem it.

You could still pay to get that property back.

You could still pay to get whatever that was back and still keep it for yourself.

But it was dedicated so therefore you couldn't use whatever it was for your parents,

even if they were older and even if they needed that.

This was a practice that ended up showing who they were as people.

And I think the question comes down to us as well.

As Christians, do we oftentimes do the same?

Are we spending so much time trying to make sure that we've checked off whatever laws make us feel good about ourselves

and we don't stop to actually ask what's actually happening inside of us?

How many times is it that someone would say, how do we know whether this was a person who had faith in Christ?

They might say, well, we know that they were baptized on such and such a day.

Why couldn't a person just say because they said they believed?

Why is it that we might get so focused on whether we got through a certain ceremony instead of just saying, where was their faith?

Or sometimes we might look at this season of Lent that we started on Ash Wednesday.

And we might focus a lot on what did you give up for Lent?

Oh, I gave up alcohol for Lent. Man. That's a tricky one.

I gave up chocolate chip cookies for Lent.

That was a hard one for me back in college. Let me tell you what.

Or, you know what, let me give up this. Let me give up that. I was told by about four different people that, yes, I'm single, but I need to give up online dating.

It's actually been a whole lot better than I could have hoped for. So I don't have a whole bunch of judgmental people up there telling me who I am.

But instead of saying, what did I give up for Lent? Have we paused to say, did we focus more on God and on prayer and on asking what God is trying to teach us every time we realize what we've given up?

Or even beyond that, how many times do we talk about being willing to serve the world around us?

But somehow we always draw a line that there's always those people, whatever those people may be in that context, that somehow fall outside of the line of, well, yes, I want to help other people, but they're in a different category.

How often is it that we're spending our time looking to figure out which law we're following that we feel good about, but we're not willing to ask what's happening on the inside?

Because God's Word isn't about trying to say, did I figure out which law that I need to follow today. God's Word is about knowing God.

It's not about following laws, it's about following God. Who is God?

And today, are you actually getting to know Him? See, that's the thing about the fulfillment of the law, is that fulfillment of the law is a reflection of God's presence, not a way to achieve it.

Fulfilling God's law is that God's presence, His Spirit is in you, changing you, leading you to do what God is calling you to do.

Not, I've managed to fulfill the things that I read today, so therefore God must be with me.

How often can we sit on a high horse and figure out how well we've told everybody else what they're expected to do?

And yet have we paused long enough to ask what is God doing in me?

Have I actually seen love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control?

I missed one. There's one out there on the internet.

How does a person miss love?

We oftentimes spend so much time looking at the words, but we're not asking what the word is doing inside of us.

And that's the thing about this time in the season of Lent. Have you been letting God reach your heart?

So as we are hearing God's word, I hope that this sermon and the ones beyond are not about,

did I figure out something now that I'm supposed to do because I got lectured into it?

But what I hope and pray is rather that God's word has reached you to show you who God is,

and that in knowing God and loving God, He changes you so that you want to follow Him because of who you are in Christ Jesus.

May God change us today and always so that we follow Him rather than figuring out whether we have followed whatever laws we have put into our own lives

just to make ourselves feel good. Thanks be to God.