October 11, 2026 - Brian Keepers

Oh God, we give you thanks.

With great gratitude.

Lord, we declare your praise and one respond to the Spirit's presence this morning.

Oh Lord, I pray now that as we engage your word together, that the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts would be pleasing and acceptable in your sight, our rock and our redeemer, and all God's people said.

Amen.

You may be seated.

Hey, can we thank our worship team?

You guys, thank you.

Wow.

What a gift today.

So grateful for you all.

I learned that many of them went to Hope together and that they played on the worship team at Hope.

So, I mean, they've got chemistry, don't they?

But what a what a beautiful morning it's been so far.

The speed of love.

The pace that God walks.

Three miles per hour.

It's the pace that the average human being walks.

And as God walks with us, and as God walks among us, as the one who comes to be with us in Jesus, this is the speed of love.

We've been talking about that this fall.

And we've been engaging with stories from the Old Testament about how God has walked with his people and invited his people to walk with him.

We started in Genesis with Adam and Eve, and then we had the hard story of Cain and Abel.

And then there was Noah and his family.

And then Abraham and Sarah, when God came to them beneath the stars of the sky and said that I am going to make a covenant with you, and that your offspring will number the multitude of the stars in the sky, and that through you all the families of the earth will be blessed.

And then Joseph, betrayed by his brothers, taken off to Egypt, falsely accused, put in prison, going about as low as he could go, but even God met with him and walked with him there.

And then last Sunday, Pastor John preached on the Exodus story.

God walking with his people out of bondage in Egypt.

And when their backs were against the wall, God says, All you need to do is be still, and I will fight for you.

And God makes a way.

And the sea parts, and God leads them through into a new life of freedom.

We're going to pick up the story there or around there today.

This is three months later, after the passing through of the Red Sea, God has continued to walk with his people.

He has led them through the wilderness.

He's provided them quail and manna to satisfy their hunger.

He's provided water from the rock to satisfy their thirst.

They complain a lot.

They want to go back because familiarity, even though it's miserable, it sure is a lot easier than the new, right?

God protects them as they wander, protects them from an enemy army, brings them victory, and then we come to this point where God brings them to the place that He wanted to bring them all along, not to the promised land yet, but to Mount Sinai.

This is what God said to Moses in Exodus chapter 3 when God called out from the flames of the bush.

Exodus 3 · chapter mention

He says, This is how they will know that I am the one who is sending you, is that you will bring them to this mountain, and they will worship me.

And the whole world will know that I am the Lord God.

I want to invite some friends to come join me.

This is Bert, Laura, and Sebi.

And as we engage with this theme of the speed of love, here's how I want to maybe set the table for what we're about to hear.

The speed of love is not just about pace, it is about slowing down, being more present and attentive to God and to each other.

But the speed of love to walk with God is also about the path.

And it's about the posture that we walk on that path, and it's about learning to walk together as God is with us.

So hear the word of the Lord from Exodus chapter 19.

Exodus 19 · chapter mention

We're going to begin at verse 3, and then we're going to go down to verse 7, and then we're going to jump over to chapter 20, and we're going to hear verses 1 through 17.

So hear the word of the Lord from the book that we love.

Then Moses went up to God, and the Lord called to him from the mountain, saying, Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob, and tell the Israelites, You have seen how what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagle's wings and brought you to myself.

Now therefore, if you obey my voice, and if you keep my covenant, you shall be for me a treasured possession out of all peoples.

Indeed, the whole earth is mine, but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation.

These are the words that you are to tell the Israelites.

So Moses came and he called the elders of the people, and he set before them all of the words that the Lord had commanded him.

Chapter 20.

You shall have no other gods before me.

You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.

You shall not bow down to them or serve them.

For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.

You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not quit anyone who misuses his name.

Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy.

Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God.

You shall not do any work.

You, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, the alien resident in your towns.

For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them, but rested on the seventh day.

Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and consecrated it.

Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.

You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal.

You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor, you shall not covet your neighbor's house, you shall not covet covet your neighbor's wife, male or female slave, ox, donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.

This is the word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

So this is a significant part in the story of Israel, in the larger drama of God's redemption in and for the world.

But let me begin with a question this morning.

And here's where I need some of your engagement.

When you hear the word the Ten Commandments, or think about the Ten Commandments or the law, what comes to mind?

And you can be honest.

Thoughts, feelings, you can just shout them out.

What's that?

Rules.

Good.

What else?

I can't keep them.

What else?

Harsh.

Discipline.

Anything else?

What was that?

Mandates.

Oh, commandments, commandments.

Yeah.

So by the way, I'm not super happy with John that, like, this is the text that he assigned me today, was the Ten Commandments.

I'm like, come on, man.

The Ten Commandments, actually known as the Ten Words, is what they're actually known for in the Hebrews.

We add commandments to them.

The Ten Words, the Decalogue is another name for it.

I wonder if we often misunderstand the purpose of the Ten Commandments in the life of God's people.

And I wonder if we often misunderstand even the character and work of God in the Old Testament in general.

I mean, maybe for you, when you think about the God of the Old Testament, you think about a God of judgment, a God of legalism, maybe even a God of wrath and anger.

And then finally we get to the New Testament, right?

And it's there with Jesus that we finally get grace.

Oh, thank you.

And compassion and mercy and forgiveness.

Or maybe we think of the Ten Commandments then as here's God, harsh was a good word, of kind of harshly imposing these rules on his people, and that they somehow needed to obey these rules, which one of you, Stacy, you said this, like can't, who among us can do that, right?

Can live up to those, but how you know God's gonna impose these rules, and and in order for them to be saved or to be God's people, somehow they've got to comply to these things.

And yet I think if we look closer, what we will find, and I'll be the first to admit, there's some harder stuff in the Bible and the Old Testament in particular.

There can be some really puzzling things that we have to wrestle with.

And yet the God of the Old Testament is the same God that we meet in Jesus in the New Testament.

In fact, Jesus reveals the heart of God decisively and powerfully.

But I would also contend that grace is not a New Testament thing.

That grace is in the character of God.

And that grace pervades the story of God from Genesis to Revelation.

It's grace all the way through.

Let me tell you what I mean.

Think about the order of events in which the Ten Commandments happens with the story.

Notice that it's the rescue from slavery that comes first, right?

In fact, let's go even further back.

Let's go back to the covenant that God makes with Abraham and Sarah.

Pastor Anna preached on that a few weeks ago.

And God comes to Abram, and Abram didn't do anything to achieve this or to deserve this.

It wasn't like there weren't tryouts or some kind of application process.

We're just the best of the best, kind of get selected.

I mean, this is all about God's grace.

God makes the first move, and the second, and the third, and the fourth.

God calls Abraham and Sarah and their offspring to be his own people, not because of anything that they had done, but because of who God is and what God was about to do.

God rescues his people.

In fact, in Exodus 3, we're told that when they cried out to God, God remembered his covenant.

Calls Moses to go in and tell Pharaoh to let God's people go and leads the people out.

That's an act of grace.

Grace always precedes law.

You have the Exodus first and then Sinai.

Grace always precedes law.

This becomes their response to the God who had already saved them.

Are you tracking with me on that?

This is so important.

Sebi, can you come, can you, would you mind you didn't, I didn't ask you to do this.

This I'll I'll increase your salary this morning for this.

Did I tell you I was gonna pay you anything?

Oh, okay.

Sebi, um so Seb, let's, Sebi, I'm gonna have Sebi represents the acceptance of God.

So maybe, maybe something like this with your hand over your heart.

The grace of God, the acceptance of God.

And it makes all the difference when we talk about our works of obedience, where we place our works of obedience in relation to being accepted by God.

And and if if I'm gonna do this as a posture for work.

I mean, does that is that that does that work?

That's like okay.

Um and if if it's if it's our works or if it's the works of the Israelites that leads to this and becomes a precondition of God's acceptance, friends, that's that's works righteousness.

That's impossible.

Our works then become bondage.

But what if the acceptance of God happens first?

And now the works are a response to that.

And it doesn't become this, it becomes this.

Our obedience is always a grateful response to the God who has already saved us.

Amen.

This is the gospel, and we begin to see it, uh, at least the beginning of it.

Thank you so much, by the way.

You are you're you are, I don't know if you know him, but he's an amazing young man, by the way.

Discerning a call to be a pastor.

Pastor John sends him his sermons and Sebi reads them from week to week.

I mean, just remarkable.

Um so grace, grace always precedes law.

God called the Israelites his own people, that they are his special possession, that they are going to be a holy nation and a priestly people.

That's an act of grace, and the law now becomes a way by which they are able to live into this new identity.

And that's maybe the second thing that I'd want to say about the law as it relates to grace.

Not only does grace precede the law, it's a response to the grace of God, but what if the law itself is an expression of grace?

Have you ever thought about it that way?

You probably have.

I mean, do you give rules to your kids and have expectations for your kids and boundaries for your kids?

You do that as an act of love, at least when boundaries are the right kind of boundaries, right?

Sometimes this can be abused and it becomes oppressive.

And maybe some of us have grown up with that kind of situation, but at their best, expectations, rules, boundaries, it's not about the rules or the boundaries themselves, it's about the relationship that happens as one embraces those expectations.

I mean, what kind of parent would say to their child, you know what, I'm just gonna kind of leave you to figure it out for yourself.

Find your own way?

We would say that's that's neglect, that's not care.

So what if the giving of the law is an expression of grace to God's people by saying, I have called you to be my people, called you out to be a holy nation, set apart to be a priestly kingdom.

A priest, that's that's a role of being a mediator, right?

This is part of their larger vocation, to represent God to people and people to God.

They are called to be um a channel of blessing in the lives of all the other nations.

God says, I want you to live distinctively as my people, but now I'm gonna show you how to do it.

I'm not gonna leave you to have to figure it out on your own.

Did you know that the word Torah, which is a Hebrew word, which would um include the Ten Commandments but also the first five books of the Old Testament, that the word Torah literally means way, teaching, instruction?

But one of the most literal translations, and this is my favorite, is that it can mean the hand pointing the way.

Isn't that a wonderful image?

That what if God gives the law not to do this and to press down and crush his people, but what if God, as a kind father, gives the law to do this, to show his people how to live as the beloved people that they already are, and it becomes his way of guiding them on the right path.

We obey, not to get God to love us, but because God already loves us in Christ.

Raises the question, maybe then, what is the relationship of the law for us as Christians?

And that's maybe a larger conversation, except that I would say this about the Ten Commandments, that remember that Jesus Himself said in the Sermon on the Mount that I have not come to abolish the law, but to what?

Fulfill it.

That Jesus Himself is the fulfillment, that the ten words find their fulfillment in the one word who became flesh and lived among us.

Jesus would go on and take so much of the Ten Commandments in the Sermon on the Mount, and He expands and deepens it, and He knows that the goal is not that there would just be kind of this external conformity, but if we are to be the people God intends us to be and flourish in the way that He intends us to flourish, the law needs to be written on our hearts.

Isn't that what Ezekiel talked about?

A heart of stone becomes a heart of flesh, and this can only happen because of who Jesus is.

Jesus who obeys the law perfectly for us.

Paul says that he is our righteousness.

What that means, you see, Jesus, salvation comes not just in Jesus' death and resurrection, that's the climax of it, but it's also in his life.

And in his perfect obedience to the Father, as we're united with him, his righteousness now is given to us.

And it's the power of the Holy Spirit that now makes it possible for us to obey out of an act of gratitude and love and worship so that we can grow into the sons and daughters of God that we truly are in Christ.

So I was out just kind of walking this morning around our neighborhood, and I was just praying, and I put together my sermon for today, and I was praying over it, and I just felt so compelled to kind of hold it before God and say, Lord, is is this what you want me to say?

And I've got more sermon that I prepared.

I know you're you look really excited about that.

And we could get into a lot of the other things around the law, and that would be that would be worthwhile.

But I felt such a sense of conviction this morning as I walked to just share some of my story.

Because there's so much that resonates for me in terms of the story of Israel with the nature, the relationship between obedience and grace.

So would that be okay if I shared with you some of my story this morning?

I mean, I'm new here, by the way.

I I just joined the staff this summer.

It's been such a gift to be here.

You guys have just been so wonderful.

I turned 51 last Sunday.

I know what you're thinking.

Oh, you don't look more than 35.

Thank you for that.

But it got me thinking about the difference that Christ has made in my life.

And I'd like to share that with you this morning.

I grew up in Northwest Iowa.

Two loving parents had a hard time, maybe in their love for each other, but they loved their kids.

I'm the oldest of three boys, and we were sporadic in our church attendance.

Both of my parents believed in God, but I wouldn't say that church was a big part of our life.

I've always had a curiosity about God for as long as I can remember.

And yet, God to me just seemed so elusive, um, just kind of out there somewhere.

And I think probably the best way to describe my belief about God, years ago there was a Christian sociologist uh named Christian Smith who came out with this term um moral uh moralistic therapeutic deism.

Do you heard that?

It's a mouthful.

But as I look back, that describes what I believed about God.

Moralistic uh that the goal is to be a good person, therapeutic, that God just wants you to be happy, and deism that God is a deism is that God is out there somewhere, not really involved in our everyday affairs, and so you just kind of call out to Him when you're in a bind, kind of like a genie in a lamp.

And you make your wish, and he fixes your problems, and he goes back in the lamp and you keep living your life.

And honestly, that that probably best describes my belief in God.

Now, as the oldest of three boys, I'm also a people pleaser and a rule follower.

Am I the only one this morning?

And so I felt like if I was somehow going to know God, it was up to me to try to live a life of obedience and to try to follow all the right rules, to be a good boy, to meet expectations, to not disappoint, and somehow then I could earn God's favor.

And I had it in my mind that someday when I died, there'd be this cosmic scale of good works and bad works, and that God would weigh them if there was just a little bit more of the good works, then I would get to go to heaven.

And if not, I'd go to the other place.

The thing is, is that the more that I tried to live a life of obedience, the further God seemed from me.

And the more that I felt like I wasn't enough.

I got involved with Fellowship of Christian athletes.

FCA in our town was probably more like what young life is here.

It wasn't just for athletes, it was really like all these students could come together.

And I was drawn to it because there were some upperclassmen who there was something different about their lives.

And I was drawn to it.

So I started going to FCA and really loved being a part of that.

And then in January of my freshman year, I can still remember this is 36 years ago for me.

It feels like yesterday.

We're in the basement of a bank in Spencer because during the winter we couldn't meet outside in the cabins.

So we met in this bank basement.

You think it gets cold in Michigan?

Let me tell you how cold it gets in Northwest Iowa.

Like negative 60 wind chill.

It was a very, very cold night.

And we're gathered together and we've been singing some songs of praise, and then Kent Prescott, my ninth grade English teacher, our high school volleyball coach, gets up and he preaches the gospel.

And he shares the story of Jesus.

And something in me came alive.

Two things.

For the first time in my life, I think I I understood grace.

That there was nothing that I could do to make God love me any more or any less, that God loves me as I am and He loves me as I am because of who Jesus is and what Jesus has done.

And I have to tell you that that whole notion of grace changed me.

And the second thing was that this God that I longed to know, who felt so elusive, has a name and a face, and he has come near.

How did Luis say it?

He came into the neighborhood.

And that name and that face is Jesus.

And then it's about a relationship with Jesus.

And Kent invited those of us that evening who felt compelled to do so to step into a relationship with Jesus.

And I said yes to that, and my life has never been the same.

It's not as though I drastically changed and I was into all this horrible stuff, and suddenly, you know, overnight I just went from this terrible darkness to, you know, to this whole new way of living.

I think the best way to describe it is when C.S.

Lewis says that he says, I believe in Christianity like I believe in the sun.

Not just because I can see the sun, but by the sun's rays, I now see everything else.

And that's it for me.

It gave me a whole new way of seeing.

It gave me a whole new way of living in the world, of understanding who I am, who God is, what my place is in the world.

My heart came alive.

Kent was wise enough to let me know that FCA was not the church.

It's a parachurch ministry, great, great ministry.

But he said if I was going to grow as a disciple of Jesus, then I needed to find a local church.

So this is going to be really hard for some of you to believe who've grown up in these Dutch pockets with Dutch Reformed churches.

But there was one Reformed church in the town that I grew up in.

Like no Christian Reformed church.

If you don't know what that means, that's okay.

I had no idea either.

By the providence of God, I ended up at this church on the other side of town, just this ordinary church.

It wasn't sexy.

Normal people who were seeking to follow Jesus and to love God and their neighbors.

I shared Christ with my mom and my brothers who all came to Christ.

My mom and I got to join the church together.

And we sat with Ray Myers and shared our faith story, and he stood up with us on a Sunday morning when we did our profession of faith.

One year later, my parents went through a divorce.

One of the most painful things that I've ever been through.

I think I felt as the oldest child a lot of responsibility for that.

Like somehow maybe it was on me to hold my family together and I failed.

I didn't do that.

I know that that's not true.

But you know how that can feel.

And there's something that is so public about a divorce in a small town anywhere.

As a pastor, I've learned that every family has their brokenness.

Some of us are just really good at pretending.

But when you go through something like a divorce, it's so public.

And I remember being so afraid to go back to church once all this came out because I wondered, like, what would this mean now?

I had so much shame.

I will never forget when I decided one morning to just go by myself and I walked into the foyer of Hope Reform Church in Spencer, Iowa, where Jonathan Gephardt also grew up, but he was just a little boy.

I walked in and I stopped and I was ready to walk out.

I'm like, I just can't do this.

And Ray Meyer, the one who stood up with us when my mom and I did our profession of faith, saw me, and he came towards me.

And he just gave me this huge hug.

And in that moment, all of my grief and shame got uncorked, and I just wept.

And this beautiful man just held me.

I'll never forget what he said to me.

He said, Brian, I can't imagine what you're going through right now.

This is so hard.

But I want you to know two things.

You are loved by God, and you are loved by us.

And we are your family.

And you will not have to walk through this alone.

I know that some of us have experienced the church to be a place of rejection and judgment and pain.

And if that is you, I am so sorry.

Because that is not what Jesus intended.

What I find myself so grateful for as I look back on my journey is that my first real experience of church was not a place of rejection and shame, but it was a place of grace.

Where these people got around us and they walked with my family and me in our pain, and they walked with us through our pain.

And I'm a pastor today because of that.

That's why I love the church.

That's why I love Jesus.

And it's why I wanted to come be part of you.

Because my sense is that this is that kind of church.

One of my favorite artists is Mako Fujimura, and he says, What if Jesus had it in mind that the church was a place that embraced broken allelujah?

We encounter the love of God through the gift of each other.

I don't know where you're at today.

I don't know what you're going through.

I don't know what you're carrying.

I don't know where you're at and you're thinking about God.

I don't know where you're at in terms of what your experience with the church has been, but here's what I would want to say to you.

I want you to know that you have a God who loves you deeply.

And who invites you into a relationship.

Not rules that you have to follow to get him to love you, but a God who invites you into a relationship and wants to know you intimately and personally.

And he is the one who can heal your deepest pain.

He is the one who can set your heart free.

He is the one who can make you new.

Give your life to him.

And then know that God gives you a family, and we want to be that kind of family to you.

To say that you don't have to do this alone.

You don't have to pretend, you don't have to hide your pain here, you don't have to put on a mask because we walk together.

And we've got a faithful Savior who walks with us.

Amen.

Let us pray.

God, you are so good.

And the gospel is incredible.

Like there are just these moments in my life where I look back and think about your goodness.

Lord, even through the heart and the pain, that you, Lord, that you in your goodness and your kindness and mercy called me to yourself.

That you've given me the gift for 25 years to get to live into this vocation as a pastor, to get to serve amazing churches, not perfect, but churches where you have been present, who have sought to love one another well.

And I'm so grateful, God, that you've called me to be a part of this community.

Lord, if there are those of us here today who have not stepped into a relationship with you, may you gently draw us in to know that you embrace us again as we are.

There's nothing we can do to make you love us any more or any less.

And you want to work in our lives to transform us to be more and more who you intend us to be.

And I pray for Pillar, Lord, that we would be that kind of church where broken allelujah are embraced.

That we would be that kind of church that seeks to show the world a better way, a different way when we can love one another with the same love that you have loved us.

God, make us into that kind of people.

It's in the name of Jesus we pray.

And all God's people said, Amen.