Ep 140 | Cover to Cover 19 | Pastor Chris Ryan | May 10, 2026

Hello, this is Pastor Ryan Clark.

You are listening to a message from St.

John's Lutheran Church in Buffalo, Minnesota.

Oh Lord, open my lips, and my mouth shall declare your praises in the name of Jesus.

Amen.

Ah, genetics.

We certainly did mark each one of our three children with that distinct Ryan stamp.

There they all are right around eight months old.

You can certainly tell that they are siblings.

As Ryans, there were gonna be some things that were inevitably in their genetics.

They were gonna be born with chubby cheeks that take a while to grow into and out of.

As Ryans, they were gonna be born with that unphotogenic gene.

The camera just won't do them justice.

But despite the fact that they won't like looking into a camera, as Ryans, they are gonna love looking into a mirror.

Every Ryan that I have ever met can't resist that mirror.

And why wouldn't they? With those fine genetic traits they got passed on to them from their dad, and of course, their mom.

Speaking of moms, it is Mother's Day, so happy Mother's Day to all of you out there celebrating this fine holiday.

And considering it's Mother's Day, I wanna take a second to pick on and, well, frankly, show some love to the mother that I know and love best.

Of course, I'm talking about my wife, Catherine.

There she is.

She loves it when I put those nice zoomed in photos of her face up there for the whole congregation to see.

By the way, she truly does live up to that mug.

Catherine is an incredible mom.

We were talking about genetics, right? Well, speaking of genetics, there are some traits that I certainly hope my kids inherit from Catherine and not from me.

I hope my kids inherit Catherine's height, for obvious reasons.

I hope they inherit her brains, also for obvious reasons.

I hope they get her beautiful smile.

I hope they get her loving, caring, compassionate heart.

Of course, no one's perfect.

So on the flip side, I hope there are some things that they don't inherit from Catherine.

"No, Pastor Ryan, don't do it."

It's too late.

We're already there.

I hope my kids don't inherit Catherine's ACHOO syndrome.

ACHOO, of course, stands for Autosomal Dominant Compelling Helio-Ophthalmic Outburst.

It's where you sneeze a bunch when you look into the sun.

20% of people have this genetic trait.

I hope they don't get her mosquito magnetism.

You know that 85% of your attractiveness to mosquitoes, according to recent studies, is based on your sweat composition, which is a highly genetic thing.

I also hope they don't get her TAS2R31 gene.

It's a gene that, well, sadly it makes certain artificial sweeteners taste bitter rather than sweet.

How are my kids supposed to enjoy a fine Diet Coke with that in their genetic panel? Of course, at the end of the day, once again, I hope my kids primarily take after Catherine, once again, for obvious reasons.

Because of course, we want the next generation to have the best of us, don't we? It's true today, and it was most certainly true back in our two-year Bible read-through in the Book of Deuteronomy, and that is where we are at right now.

We have arrived at the last of those Books of Moses.

And in the Book of Deuteronomy, Moses makes it very, very clear he's hoping for the best for the next generation, the next generation of Israelites, that is.

That previous generation, the one that had left Egypt 40 years prior, things haven't gone so well for them, have they? Because of their sin, because of their lack of trust, because they didn't have faith, because of their idolatry, only three of them remain from that generation: Moses, Caleb, and Joshua.

The rest have perished on their way to the promised land.

And Moses wants things to be different for the next generation.

He wants them to break that chain of sin.

And to help them break that chain of sin and to grow in faith, Moses preaches them a sermon.

It's Deuteronomy 1-11.

That's actually what your entire readings were this week, basically one continuous sermon that Moses gives.

And in this sermon, Moses is gonna deliver God's wisdom, he's gonna deliver God's law, and of course, God's grace.

And as you listen to this sermon about that sermon, I hope you understand that the wisdom, the law, and the grace in that sermon apply very directly to your lives as well.

Let's dig into that sermon right now.

It begins as any good sermon should, with a hook.

A hook is the introduction the Pastor gives where he tries to get that congregation to pay attention to what he's talking about.

Maybe the Pastor gets up there and talks about his experience waiting tables at Scooter's Cafe and Pizzeria.

Maybe he talks about the trampoline that his in-laws got his family for Christmas.

Whatever it is, he's trying to transition the congregation through their distraction towards that biblical text and show them the relevance that biblical text has to their lives.

Moses, he begins his sermon with a hook.

It's a tried-and-true method.

He tells the congregation a story.

You can almost picture it, right? Moses is sitting there on the edge of the promised land.

He's got the congregation of the Israelites right in front of him, and maybe he says, "Grace, mercy, and peace be unto you from God our Father,Amen."

And then he motions to that promised land and he says, "My fellow Israelites, this isn't the first time I've seen this sight.

Believe it or not, I stood on this very spot 39 years ago, and I spoke to your moms and to your dads.

And I said to them, 'See, the Lord your God has given you the land.'"

Go up and take possession of it as the Lord, the God of your ancestors told you.

Don't be afraid.

Don't be discouraged.

And I remember your moms and dads said back to me, "That sounds good to us, but first we're gonna do one little thing.

Let us send men ahead to spy out the land for us and bring back a report about the route we are to take and the towns we will come to."

Well, the idea, it seemed good to me, so I selected 12 men, one of each tribe, to go spy on that Promised Land.

Oh, how I wish I had chosen more faithful men.

Oh, how I wish I had been more discerning because the men that I chose, for the most part, rather than come back with a faithful report, they came back with a fearful report.

They spied out the promised land and they said, "The people in there, they can't be beaten.

They look like giants to us and we look like grasshoppers to them.

They are gonna crush us like bugs."

And because of that faith- or fearful report, well, your moms and dads were unwilling to go up into that Promised Land.

They rebelled against the command of the Lord your God.

They grumbled in their tents and said, "The Lord hates us, so he brought us up out of Egypt to deliver us into the hands of the Amorites to destroy us.

Our brothers have made our hearts melt in fear.

They say the people are stronger and taller than we are.

The cities are large with walls up to the sky."

"I couldn't believe what I was hearing," Moses Minor said.

"I begged with them.

I pleaded with them.

I said, 'Don't be terrified.

Don't be afraid of them.

The Lord your God, who is going before you, will fight for you just as he did for you in Egypt.'

Don't you remember? It just happened.

Don't you remember the plagues? Don't you remember the parting of the Red Sea? Don't you remember how God crushed that Egyptian empire?" But they wouldn't listen to me.

No.

Instead, your moms and dads turned tail and they ran, and I watched in abject horror as the Amorites who lived in those hills came out against them.

They chased them like a swarm of bees and beat them down.

And your parents, who should have been that generation who entered the Promised Land, couldn't because they didn't trust God.

And Moses says, "I hope you learn your lesson from them."

And isn't that what the Pastor does so often, by the way? At the end of the introduction to a sermon, the Pastor will tell you exactly word for word what he hopes you get out of the upcoming sermon.

I did it today.

I'm sure you heard it, right? I said, "I hope you understand that the wisdom and the law and the grace that Moses gives in the sermon today applies very directly to your lives."

And Moses tips his hand.

He hopes that next generation of Israelites, that they're chain breakers, that they trust God where the previous generation did not.

And to help them trust God, he gives them this sermon, and as part of this sermon, he shows them and tells them exactly what it looks like to fully trust God.

In fact, just like pastors today have very important points, Moses had his very important point.

It's Deuteronomy 6:4-5.

Deuteronomy 6:4–5

It's actually our highlighted verse of the day, one that's well worth highlighting, one that's well worth memorizing.

Jewish people today, they still call these verses the Shema.

It comes from that Hebrew word for hear or listen.

And Moses says, "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."

It's very, very important to do that, and Jesus would agree, in fact.

He said it's the most important commandment there is, to love God with all your heart, soul and strength.

Understand that when Moses says hear, when he says listen, he's not just talking about letting sounds fall on your eardrums.

He's talking about actually doing the things that God wants you to do.

And when he talks about love, he's not talking about a feeling like we so often use that word love today.

He's talking about the action of giving all of yourself to God in every area of your life.

And he's basically saying that if you love God, you're gonna do the things that he wants you to do.

If you trust God, you're gonna do the things that he wants you to do.

By the way, Jesus agrees with this, too.

He says, "If you love me, you're gonna keep my commands.

You're gonna make my commands be at the center of your lives."

In fact, that's what Moses goes on to say in this sermon.

He says, "These commandments that I give you today, they are to be on your hearts.

And don't just leave them on your hearts.

Do better than your parents did.

Pass them on to the next generation.

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.

Everywhere you go, look for opportunities to teach the next generation about the commandments that I am giving you today."

And Moses does give them those Ten Commandments once again in the Book of Deuteronomy.

In fact, the word Deuteronomy, it comes from the Greek word deuteronomion, which means second law.

In Deuteronomy, Moses gives the law to the Israelites a second time, and he says, "Do better than your parents did."

And then he gets to that part in the sermon that you are oh so familiar with.

He says, "You know those people that we've been talking about? You're just like them."

We do this all the time up here, don't we? We say, "You know those Israelites, you know those Pharisees, you know those disciples."

You're just like them.

You break God's law in the same way, and Moses says, "You're a whole lot like your moms and your dads."

The Lord's anger burned against Israel, and he made them wander in the wilderness 40 years until the whole generation of those who had done evil in his sight was gone.

And here you are, right on the edge of the Promised Land, a brood of sinners standing in the place of your fathers right where they stood, and you're making the Lord even more angry with Israel.

Not only are they committing the same sins as their moms and dads, things have gone seemingly from bad to worse.

They're no different than the previous generation, are they? They're committing the same sins.

The previous generation was idolatrous.

So are they.

The previous generation didn't trust.

They don't trust either.

They're no different than the previous generation.

They haven't been chain breakers at all.

And like any good preacher, Moses would have let them sit in that moment for just a minute and consider their sinfulness.

And then he would have gotten to that next part of the sermon, the part of the sermon that you know and love.

You're very familiar with this.

He would have said, "Just like God's grace to that previous generation applied to them, it applies to you as well."

They didn't deserve to leave Egypt, and you don't deserve to go to the Promised Land, but you're gonna get there anyways, not because you deserve it.

Understand, then, that it is not because of your righteousness that the Lord your God is giving you this good land to possess, for you are a stiff-necked people.

You don't listen to God.

You don't submit to his authority.

You put yourself first in every way imaginable.

And yet despite that, God is going to keep his promise to you out of his grace and his love for you.

And that next generation of Israelites, they did get to go to the Promised Land, that land flowing with milk and honey, a place they didn't get to, a place they didn't deserve to go to at all.

And as they reflect on entering the Promised Land, Moses says, "There is a proper response to God's great love that he has given to you."

And the Pastors are always gonna do this as part of a sermon as well.

He says, "Now respond to God's great love for you by loving him back."

And as his sermon closes out in Deuteronomy 11, Moses repeats that Shema once again.

He tells the Israelites once again to love God with all their heart, soul, and strength.

Except this time he says, "Don't do it to get God's love."

He says, "Do it because you already have it."

This is the proper response to God's love for you, by loving him back, and you show that you love him by doing the things that he wants you to do.

And maybe he said, "And my prayer for you this week is that, that you love God with all your heart, soul, and strength.

Amen.

Quite the sermon if I do say so myself.

I actually looked it up in the audio Bible this week, and it took Moses 54 minutes to preach that sermon.

Now St.

John's family, we cannot let Moses win, so we've got a few more things to go through today.

As we close out this message, I want you to understand a few things.

Understand that that Shema, that is not just a thing of the Old Testament.

That's not just a thing of the past that other people did, that previous generations did.

That Shema, it applies to you.

You are too to love God with all your heart, soul, and strength.

So I want you to take a second and reflect.

Look in the mirror for just a minute and ask yourself how you doing on this commandment? Is God always your top priority? Consider, are you putting God first in every area of your life? How about your finances, right? If someone looked at the way you spent your money over the past month, what conclusion would they come to about what is most important to you? Or how about that precious time that God has entrusted to you? If someone looked at the way that you spent your time over the last week, what conclusion would they come to about what is most important to you? Or the talents God has entrusted to you, or the people that God has entrusted to you, and the relationships that you have, and how you talk to those people and pray for those people.

What conclusion would people come to as they looked at all those things about what is most important to you? Ooh, that's not one mirror that's fun to look into at all, is it? Because as you look in that mirror, you're gonna see someone who's a whole lot like the Israelites in our text today, aren't you? You're gonna see someone who's stiff necked, someone who is proud, stubborn, and unwilling to change or submit to authority.

You're not gonna see a chain breaker at all, are you? You're gonna see someone who sins just like the previous generations, someone who doesn't follow that Shema just like the previous generations, someone who is just like those Israelites out in the wilderness.

Just sit there with that for a second.

Doesn't feel good, does it? Of course, just like the law and the text applies to you, know that God's grace in the text applies to you as well.

You see, our sin had left us separated from God, hadn't it? We weren't chain breakers, but God sent a chain breaker just for you, just for me.

Celebrating Mother's Day today, right? Well, there is almost certainly a photo, if you will, of the most celebrated mother of all time, the Virgin Mary.

Jesus Christ, born of the Virgin Mary, conceived by the Holy Spirit so he could overcome and break the chain of sin that we could not earn.

Born of woman, born under the law to redeem those under the law, and that's exactly what Jesus did.

And the way He did it was by living out that Shema perfectly.

Every single moment of Jesus' life, God was always His top priority.

Consider how incredible that is.

Every minute, every second, it was all about, "God, what would you have me do for you?" Jesus lived out that Shema perfectly, and then He took his perfect self to the cross.

And on the cross, Jesus gives and God gives that next generation the best of Himself.

When Jesus dies on that cross for all generations, He gives them His righteousness and He takes our sins onto Himself.

And because we get Jesus' righteousness, we get something that we don't deserve at all.

Isn't that right? We get to go to the Promised Land.

Because of what Jesus did, we get to go to that Promised Land of Heaven, a place where there is no more hurt, no more pain, no more anxiety, no more worry, where Jesus personally wipes away every tear from our eyes.

We didn't deserve that at all, not with these stiff necks that each and every one of us has.

And my friends, there is a proper response to what Jesus has done for you.

And believe it or not, it's my very important point of the day.

The proper response to what Jesus has done for you here, oh St.

John's family, 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.

And in case you forgot, this is very important.

In fact, Jesus said it's the most important commandment there is.

So once again, as we close out this message, look in that mirror and ask yourself, "Where am I not putting God first?" But don't wallow in that sin.

You don't have to.

Because Jesus broke the cycle of sin, you get to go through this cycle each and every day.

You get to look in that mirror, realize where you fall short, and you get to go to God.

Repent of those sins, be turned away from them, and turn towards the one who can actually do something about them.

Receive His forgiveness.

Ask for His help.

He empowers you to then respond to His great love by loving Him back and doing the things that He wants you to do.

And of course, St.

John's family, my prayer for you this week is that you do just that.

May you receive Jesus' love each and every day and respond to His great love by living out that Shema.

May you love God with all your heart, soul, and strength.

May you do this because of Jesus, in Jesus' name.

Amen.

You've been listening to a sermon from St.

John's Lutheran Church in Buffalo, Minnesota.

If you would like more information about St.

John's and any of our ministries to our community and beyond, you can go to our website, www.

stjohnsbuffalo.

org.

Thank you and God bless you.