The Gates of the Righteous

In our world today, there are two concepts at war with each other.

In our world today, there are two understandings of the Universe at war with each other.

Yet these two concepts, these two understandings of the Universe are not what you might think.

We identify two labels. There is Good and there is Evil. For centuries, we have looked around the world that we see and we have identified one group of people, one philosophy, one understanding of the Universe, one nation as Good.

And we have looked around the world that we see and we have identified one group of people, another philosophy, an understanding of the Universe, a nation as Evil.

And it is simple, it is easy, it is not that difficult, it is something we do almost without thinking. Throughout history, men and women and boys and girls have almost always noticed something, which if we think about it is really amazing. Almost all of us are on the side of Good. Almost none of us believes we are on the Evil side.

• Look at the recent teacher strike. 
• Look at last year’s elections. 
• Look at a recent basketball or football game. 

Look at the conflicts you are having where you work, in your community, in your family. You are on the side of Good – the other person, your enemy, is on the side of Evil. 

Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29; John 12:12-16 

It unconsciously happens, doesn’t it? Unless we carefully think about it, in our hearts, deep down, we believe that we are on the side of Good and our opponent is on the side of Evil. Amazing that it happens almost all the time, isn't it?

Republican or Democrat. Liberal or Conservative. WVU or Marshal. RCB or Bridgeport or South Harrison High School.

Notice that it doesn’t take much to get us to focus upon the Other as the Bad Guys!

Even our kids, when they play, they split up teams. Good Guys and Bad Guys. We declare our team to be the Good Guys and the other Team must therefore be the Bad Guys.

But as adults looking on, we realize that these children playing are not all Good and these other children playing are not all Bad. But, it’s funny…we have a hard time stepping above our own games to realize that our side isn’t the completely Good Guys and the other side isn’t the completely Bad Guys.

It was the same in ancient Israel.

In ancient Israel at the time of Christ, there we several groups of people – parties, if you will.

The most familiar to us were the Pharisees. Jesus is always criticizing the Pharisees, for they were the men who believed so strongly in following the Laws of Moses. In particular, they were concerned about the behavior laws.

They dressed the right way, the way the Law of Moses said to dress. They wrote Bible verses on scraps of paper and put them on their walls, and in little charms on their body. They made sure they had tassels on their garments, they made sure they never did any work after Sunday on Friday until sundown on Saturday. They never ate pork or shrimp or lobster. They never stole or murdered or committed adultery. They were quick to stone those who blasphemed or committed other sins that the Law said deserved stoning. They did this because they were adamant about following the commands of God.

And they became very stringent in eliminating any gray areas in the law, for they spent much time debating the Law of Moses to get things right. Some asked, "What if someone needed water on the Sabbath? Drawing water is work, so must they just survive without water?" The Pharisees replied, "NO! Drawing water is woman’s work, so it is okay for a man to draw water on the Sabbath because it is not his work."

Is it okay to use the Law to take another man’s property? Yes, as long as you follow the Law. If a judge agrees, you might get your neighbor’s property – and it isn’t stealing, just because the judge is your brother-in-law.

The Law says to remove all yeast from the home during the Passover. It says we are not to have any yeast at all. But can’t yeast get stuck in the tiny cracks in an old pot? Yes, it can, so we’ll need to sell our old pots and buy new ones for the Passover. OK, but I loved that old pot that my grandfather made. Well, then, sell the pot to a non-Jewish neighbor you trust before Passover and then buy it back afterwards. This is the way the Pharisees looked at the Law – is there a way around it that we can agree upon so we can go ahead and do what we want anyway?

The Pharisees believed that you became righteous by your daily actions and behavior. How well can you play the Law game? Remember – there are 613 different commandments in the Old Testament. Can you remember them all and avoid breaking any one of them?

Jesus made it repeatedly clear He didn’t like the way the Pharisees were living. Just read any of the Gospels to find out the details.

So Jesus must have wanted a different party. Another group must have been the Good Guys. How about the second major party, the Sadducees?

The Sadducees were the clan that operated the Temple. They were concerned that you carefully follow the sacrificial laws, for that meant the Temple was important. "Come to the Temple with your lamb for sacrifice. And when you arrive, we’ll need to inspect the lamb – oh dear, it has a tiny little spot here." “That’s mud from the road!” "I’m sorry, it’s still a spot, so you’ll need a better lamb." “I just walked here from Galilee, a hundred miles!” "So sorry – my cousin over there may be able to sell you a better lamb."

And people went to buy the lamb from the cousin. “Here’s a lamb my cousin will pass. “That lamb’s skin looks like a checkerboard!” Perhaps, but my cousin will pass it. “OK, how much?” Five denari" - five days wages. ”That’s outrageous! “Perhaps, but it’s better than missing the sacrifice and God being angry at you! “OK, here’s some silver. “I’m sorry, but you have Greek money. I can only accept Temple coins. “Where do I get Temple coins?” "See my nephew at the table over there who changes money."

And people went to the money-changing table. “I’ll need five Temple denari.” "You have Greek money? That’’ll be ten Greek denari."  And the people paid it, because the other option was no sacrifice.

Is it any wonder that Jesus threw over the tables at the Temple and chased the merchants out with a whip? It was the Sadducees who ran the Temple. Yet the Apostle John mentions that he knew Sadducees who let him observe Jesus’ trial by the High Priest, who was a Sadducee.

So perhaps Jesus liked the Zealots instead. Maybe they were the Good Guys.

The Zealots were patriotic. The Zealots believed that the Bad Guys were the Romans. And so, the Zealots believed in a slow campaign against the Romans. They killed individual Roman soldiers in back alleys. They ambushed small groups of Romans in the countryside. They overlapped with another group, the sicari, which means “those who use the dagger”, a group of people who killed Jews suspected of being collaborators with the Romans, for many Jews recognized the power of Rome and simply preferred peace.

Eventually, the Zealots led a revolt against the Romans in the year 66, but were defeated by the Romans in 70. It is said in the Babylonian Talmud, a major rabbinic work, that the Zealots actually destroyed decades worth of food and firewood that had been stockpiled over the years to force the other Jews into fighting the Romans during the siege.

In 70, when the Romans finally entered Jerusalem, the Temple was burned and destroyed along with most of the city. Tens of thousands of Jews died. And the Zealots were largely responsible for the revolt.

Yet Jesus had a disciple known as Simon the Zealot.

Another group at the time were the Essenes. The Essenes are never named as such in the New Testament, but Jewish historians mention them repeatedly. It is thought that the Essenes were a pious group who were almost like monks, withdrawing from the world at their center known as Qumran near the northern end of the Dead Sea. It is their collection of scrolls that we call the Dead Sea Scrolls. Some scholars think that John the Baptist spent time with the Essenes, or perhaps even Jesus spent some time with them.

The Essenes stayed away from Jerusalem mostly. The picture we have of them was that they studied scripture apart from everyone else. It is easy to paint them as these wonderful people – for a while, some scholars even thought of them as the earliest Christians – but it is worth noting that they just disappeared when their monastery was destroyed during the Roman war. They had little impact on the world – and they certainly were not the Christian community that the Book of Acts describes. So they might have been Good Guys, but they appear to have made little difference in the world.

Finally, we have the Romans. The Romans are always present and easy to see in our movies about the period, because they always wear red armor with crested helmets. The Romans are the occupying soldiers, they are the men who drag people away to jail or execution, they are the men with the swords. But the Romans of the day were from many towns and cities all over the Mediterranean world. Many were from Italy, but some were from France, some from Spain, some from Greece or Egypt, some even from the northern border with the Germans. And, as the Bible shows us, some came to Jesus or later the Apostle Peter for help. Most of the Romans were simply concerned with order in the society – no riots, no bandits, no trouble!

So who were the Good Guys? Who were the Bad Guys?

We so want to decide about people. We want to assign the label to them – Good or Bad.

Why?

It is so important for us, because we always want to be the Good Guys. We want to be on the right side of God. We know that throughout history, people will look back and tell stories about us, deciding whether, for example, Andrew Jackson was a good guy who took an aristocratic United States and made it into a true democratic republic – or a Bad Guy who hated Native Americans and Blacks and was terrible to them. Was George Washington a Good Guy? Or was George an evil slaveholder? More currently, was Winston Churchill the Good Guy who led Britain to defeat the German Bad Guys – or was Churchill a depressed drunkard Bad Guy who withheld knowledge of the concentration camps from the world press until the end of the war?

And the discussions about people – and particularly leaders of people – goes on to this day, even about people in office today. 

 So what’s wrong with trying to become sin-free? 

How much disagreement or moral issues move a person from “Good Guy” to “Bad Guy”? How much can you tolerate from your friend before you unfriend him or her? What makes a person a “Good Guy” or a “Bad Guy”?

And the Bible has a term for the “Good Guys”. It is "the Righteous". Throughout the Bible, throughout all the authors who are influenced by the Holy Spirit, one word keeps recurring as the ultimate in praise. It is the word, “righteous”.

In our Psalm 118 today, we find these two verses:

Open for me the gates of the righteous;
I will enter and give thanks to the Lord.
This is the gate of the Lord
through which the righteous may enter.
Abram/Abraham was declared righteous by God. What makes a person righteous? How can we become righteous?

Perhaps it is by not committing any sin. If so, then wouldn’t Jesus have commended the Pharisees for their pursuit of the sin-free life?

No, Jesus repeatedly verbally tore up the Pharisees. So what’s wrong with trying to become sin-free?

The first problem is that a certain pride develops in those who are able to overcome sin on their own. Think of the woman who has quit smoking. She did it – why can’t everyone else? Everyone knows that smoking is bad – I guess the woman who has stopped smoking is just better than the man who keeps smoking – at least in her mind.

And this pride from overcoming sin leads us to focus upon what we have done right, the sins we have avoided or stopped – bit we ignore those dozens of other bad things we do. For example, our AA group rightly celebrates their victories over alcohol or opioid addiction – but many members will point out that many have exchanged their drinking for smoking- and others will point out that they just feel irritable and angry when they are sober.

We win against a single sin and we declare victory. That’s about like an army who defeats a single enemy tank and declares victory. There are so many tanks to go! There’s always another sin to work on!

The second major problem with trying to become totally sin-free is that we fall into the trap of trying to get around the law. If we decide not to work on the Sabbath – we have to decide what is the Sabbath – Saturday or Sunday? What is work? Is eating out permitted? Is shopping permitted? Is going to the movies permitted? – notice that each of these last three questions imply that we really want to allow ourselves to go out shopping and eating out and going to the movies. And do we really have to give up BBQ and shrimp?

Surely this maze of law interpretations leads us in circles – and we turn inward, away from God!

The third with focusing on a Pharisaic focus on sin is if we finally win the battle, if we succeed in truly becoming sin-less – we don’t need God, do we? We’ll carry our cross by ourselves. And so, as we become more and more confident that we are can handle our sins ourselves – we ignore God more and more.

So the Sadducees – did they have the way to become righteous? – what’s wrong with focusing upon group worship, upon the Temple? The problem is the Temple becomes worshiped, not the God that the Temple is devoted to. How many of us would be upset or disturbed if we moved our worship service to a different building – or even to the pavilion shelter out back? Oh, it would be fine for a change – but how many of us would vote to tear down this building and build a new one? Why does it bother us? Because we are beginning to worship the building, the room, even the property.

And we worship our style of worship, too, don’t we? I know that many of you like a change every now and again in our music. But I also know that if we went 100% K-LOVE or 100% classical in our music, about half of you would leave. Why? Because we don’t like change. Yet most people who have never attended church before are confused and, frankly, bored by the hymns we use. Have we chosen to worship our worship style in preference to leading people to Christ?

And the Zealots – how can patriotism be bad? Aren’t patriots righteous? Let me ask you a question: can you see the cross for the flag that is in front of it?

I’ll tell you a story. One November, Saundra and I managed to talk a group of a dozen International students from Marietta College into attending church with us. A young lady from Japan, a young man from Vietnam, a man from Brazil, and nine young men and women from China came with us that morning. As I sat down, I looked at the bulletin and realized I’d made a major mistake. It was a Veteran’s Day service that celebrated men and women who had served in the Armed Forces. And the format was to honor these veterans by anouncing “John Smith, who fought against the Japanese in World War II” “Bill Jones who fought against the Communists in Vietnam.” Etc. Instead of a celebration of the peace that comes with Christ, we had walked into a celebration of the American Armed Forces! That day, our worship was offensive to the very people I was trying to lead to Christ, for we had combined our worship of Christ with our worship of the American soldier.

Folks, I’m glad I live in America. I’ve traveled to nine other countries and found that, while they are interesting to visit, this is the best place to live because our system, flawed as it is, is still better than all the other systems. But we must remember that Christianity is not the American religion – Christianity is a worldwide religion which happens to include many Americans. Nowhere in the Bible is America even mentioned. We are to worship Christ – not our patriotic symbols, not even our country.

Why? For when we become too focused upon our country, we tend to look at people from other countries as the enemy. In contrast, Christ was welcoming to Romans, Greeks, and Samaritans – the outsiders of the day.

And furthermore – and this is a subtle point to tie this even tighter to the Zealot example, those men and women who equated the nation of Israel with the worship of God – we are not asked to promote Christianity, but we are asked to guide people into a relationship with Christ. We are not asked to have a patriotic defense even of Christianity – we are to promote the loving relationship with Christ instead to all people. It is not the system, but the Person that we worship.

So what about the Essennes? Can we become righteous by going off alone in peace and quiet and worshiping God? What’s wrong with piety, focusing upon our own relationship to God?

There has always been a strain of religious person who goes off to the monastery, the retreat, the Walden pond, and tries to get closer to God away from everyone else. The world can be a place which overloads us, and it is often good to take a hike in the woods, to sit in a deer stand for a day, to find a cabin and stay there for a week or so.

But the mission of God is for all people to use their gifts to spread the Gospel to all people in the world. After a few weeks or months in the monastery, we must all go into the world. Christ Himself commanded this in Mathew 28. Like a Father who has many children, although our Father wants a good one-on-one relationship with us, Father also wants a healthy family with healthy relationships between each member, guided by Father’s relationship with each of us. We are all to work together to bring us – all of us – into a harmonious relationship with Father and each of us.

And then, perhaps the Romans, those soldiers who just wanted order in their society. Are they righteous? Can we become righteous by simply trying for order in our society? After all, order and peace and security are all good things, aren’t they? Yes, but the exact opposite of perfect order is unlimited freedom for the individual, the opposite of perfect peace is change, the opposite of security is the excitement  of changing things for the better.

For fifteen centuries, the most stable government in the world was the Chinese empire. Arguably, it provided the most order and peace and security for their people of any government. The Confucian system was so focused upon stability that it stamped out any form of disruption, any form of freedom, any form of technological change. In 1200 AD, the Chinese culture was the most technologically advanced culture in the world. By 1600 AD, it had fallen behind and was being overrun by the tiny countries of England, Portugal, and The Netherlands. They had focused so much on order and peace and security that new inventions were ignored or even suppressed. For some people become insecure when a new company is founded, established orderly markets are disrupted when someone invents a new invention, peace is broken when the people rebel against a corrupt ruler, and order is sacrificed if you allow people to truly  decide who should be their leaders. Progress is the opposite of stability.

Consider the iPhone – it has completely disrupted the music industry – only 17% of music industry sales last year were in physical media such as CD’s or vinyl records. Over 60% of sales were to streaming services such as Spotify, Youtube, or Pandora. If you made CD’s – you’ve got to be upset with Apple. There is always a tradeoff between stability and progress.

The Romans were the greatest opponents of Christ – executing Him in the name of stability – and then two hundred years later, a Roman emperor made Christianity the preferred religion of the Roman Empire. The great force for stability became the great force for change. Were the Romans Good Guys or Bad Guys?

In all things, there are tradeoffs – good things and bad things.

And so the mature Christian realizes that there is a place for the Law – to lead us to understand our own shortcomings. There is a place for intense worship – but it is to worship God, not to satisfy our own comforts. There is a place for patriotism – as long as we do not make it an object of worship. There is a place for going to the quiet places to study God – if we also realize that after some time in study and contemplation we are to go back into the world with the Gospel message. And there are both places for stability and change. Knowing which is needed is wisdom.

And in this we may begin to see that all of these Good things have some Evil if taken too far, if distorted, if focused upon too much.

And even those individuals who most would agree are evil believe in their own minds that they are doing good.

So what do we learn from this? 

That day, Jesus was the Good Guy. Thousands cheered for him. But just a few days later, on Good Friday, Jesus was the Bad Guy. Thousands chanted for His execution. 

The Psalm says:

Open for me the gates of the righteous;
I will enter and give thanks to the Lord.
This is the gate of the Lord
through which the righteous may enter.

We must become righteous. But how do we become righteous?

“Abram believe in the promises of God and was credited as righteous.”

If you wish to be righteous, it can only be had through a deep and full family relationship with God, learning to believe in God' promises completely.. Look at what the Psalmist says, just after the verses on the righteous:

I will give You thanks, for You answered me;
You have become my salvation.

We enter the gates of the righteous when we lean upon God for our salvation, not on the Law, not on our worship, not on our patriotism, not on our piety. Never forget that God is a Person – not a set of laws, or a form or place of worship, or a system, or even a one-on-one study.

The next verse is:

The stone the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone;

This verse is widely recognized as referring to Jesus the Christ. The builders, the rulers of Israel, made a decision – they had the Romans execute Christ. And Christ became the cornerstone of the worship of God. The rulers of Israel – Jews and Romans – wanted stability and order. But God wanted change. And so change happened.

This is the day we celebrate the great triumphal entry into Jerusalem of Jesus, His disciples, and His other followers. The people walking with Jesus quoted this very Psalm that day:

The Lord has done this,
and it is marvelous in our eyes. 

The Lord has done it this very day;
let us rejoice today and be glad.

Lord, Hosanna!
Lord, grant us success!

Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.
From the house of the Lord we bless you.
The Lord is God,
and He has made his light shine on us.
With boughs in hand, join in the festal procession
up to the horns of the altar.

You are my God, and I will praise You;
You are my God, and I will exalt You.

Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good;
His love endures forever.

That day, Jesus was the Good Guy. Thousands cheered for him.

But just a few days later, on Good Friday, Jesus was the Bad Guy. Thousands chanted for His execution.

We humans are a fickle lot. One day we love someone and cheer for them as our Messiah, our Savior, come to deliver us from the Bad Guys.

The next day, that very same person is the personification of evil, the ultimate Bad Guy.

At the beginning of this sermon, I said that there are two concepts at war with each other. And then, I pointed out we separate into the two camps – the Good Guys and the Bad Guys, Good and Evil.

But the two concepts at war are not Good and Evil. At war are the concepts of self-sufficiency – and dependence upon God.

For Evil naturally follows when we try to save ourselves, for we don’t have the power to save ourselves. And when we do try to save ourselves, we naturally reach out and grasp for the power of others – their money, their property, their fighting strength, their allies – and we make up a team to defend ourselves or take things from the others. Even as we die, we take resources from others to keep us alive just a little bit longer, for we realize that we can’t come back from death ourselves.

But when we depend upon God... God lends us God’s strength and wisdom, we feel the peace at knowing that God is there to help us through everything – loss of a job, loss of health, loss of a loved one, even our own loss of life.

Our own tendency to work to save ourselves works against our need to depend upon God – and working to save ourselves is what leads us to become Pharisees toward the Law, Sadducees toward worship, Zealots in patriotism, Essenes in piety, and Roman soldiers in our desire for order. If only we could be good enough to be righteous ourselves! But then we would not need God.

• God, the One who created us. 
• God, the One who loves us. 
• God, the One who is there for us. 

God knew we can’t be righteous ourselves – because being righteous requires us to believe in God’s promises, power, and goodness. Completely. And that requires God’s help. And so God sent His Son Jesus, part of God Himself, to Jerusalem that beautiful day so long ago to be received by the cheering crowds…knowing that Jesus would be sacrificed to bring us back into a family relationship with God through Jesus’ death… and Resurrection.

Join us this week. Thursday at 6 pm, Friday at 6 pm, Saturday at 7 pm, and, of course, Easter morning at 6 am and 9:45 am.

But for now, join me in prayer if you have fallen into one of the five traps of self-sufficienct – working toward perfect behavior, toward perfect worship, toward perfect Christian patriotism, toward perfect piety, worshiping stability. Instead, become dependent upon God, believe in the promises of God and Christ, doing as the Father asks through the whispering of the Holy Spirit, and fall into the arms of the Christ, letting God and Christ and Holy Spirit handle your life.

Covenants and Priests

The NCAA March Madness is going on as I write this. More than a hundred basketball games will determine the college basketball champions. 

Imagine sitting on the bench during a game. The first string is playing, a couple more players go in and out, substituting as needed. But you are the ninth or tenth player on the team. You can't wait to get into the game...but will the coach have the confidence to call upon you? Will you have what it takes if the best players foul out and the coach calls upon you?

Jeremiah was definitely one of God's first string, a Prophet of God, giving everything he had for God. 

Early in the reign of Zedikiah, king of Judah, the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah the prophet. In obedience to that word, Jeremiah put on his neck a yoke and began to tell people that this yoke was the yoke of the King of Babylon, who would put a yoke on the neck of the people of Jerusalem.

Very soon after this, in 586 or 587 BC, the army of Babylon conquered Jerusalem and took away many of the people, particularly the sons and daughters of the noble families, including Daniel, and took them to serve in Babylon. Jeremiah, speaking on behalf of God, told them that they would serve 70 years.

Jeremiah 31:31-34; Psalm 119:9-16; Hebrews 5:5-10; John 12:20-33

And then, in Jeremiah, Chapter 31, God sends, once again through Jeremiah, a message of hope.

“The days are coming,” declares the Lord,
“when I will make a new covenant
with the people of Israel
and with the people of Judah.
It will not be like the covenant
I made with their ancestors
when I took them by the hand
to lead them out of Egypt,
because they broke my covenant,
though I was a husband to them,”
declares the Lord.

God is not happy with the Israelites who broke God's covenant repeatedly.

“This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel
after that time,” declares the Lord.
“I will put my law in their minds
and write it on their hearts.
I will be their God,
and they will be my people.
No longer will they teach their neighbor,
or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’
because they will all know me,
from the least of them to the greatest,”
declares the Lord.
“For I will forgive their wickedness
and will remember their sins no more.”

And we read in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah of the return from Babylon of the people of Israel under the leadership of Ezra and Nehemiah.

It was soon after that, that Ezra and Nehemiah led the people of Israel to unite one day and swear once again to the covenant with God, to obey God and follow God’s commands. The people of Israel decided to hold to the old covenant with God.

But it was not until the time of Jesus that another new covenant was made.

Up until the time of Jesus, the covenant between God and the Jewish nation extended only to the Jewish nation. God would protect them and they would abide by the commandments that God had given them through Moses.

But with Jesus, things changed.

In fact, the change was recognized on the very day of our Gospel reading by Jesus Himself.

According to John, Jesus and His disciples were at Jerusalem just after the great triumphal entry on Palm Sunday.

Now there were some Greeks among those who went up to worship at the festival. They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, with a request. “Sir,” they said, “we would like to see Jesus.” Philip went to tell Andrew; Andrew and Philip in turn told Jesus.

The word used, hellenes, clearly means Greeks - those who claimed descent from Helen. Hellenes were those people who spoke Greek as their primary language, who followed Greek culture, and who generally worshiped the many gods and goddesses of the Greeks. It is also possible that these were Jews who lived in the Greek world, which at that time stretched from Babylon across Turkey through Greece up into Albania and much of today’s Serbia. As well, there were Greek cities in Palestine and even in Egypt. Cleopatra was Greek, as were many of the people who lived in Alexandria, Egypt.

The Greeks came to Philip. Philip was named after Alexander the Great’s father, Philip of Macedon, the kingdom just north of Greece that had conquered Greece during Philip’s reign. Alexander, of course, had conquered lands that stretched from Macedonia to Egypt and far to the east through Iraq and Iran and Afghanistan to modern day Pakistan.

Philip was from Bethsaida in Galilee, a town which was on the road around the north of the lake. With travelers passing through town, Philip likely spoke some Greek. He went to Andrew, Peter’s brother. Andrew must have had some Greek ancestry also, for the name Andrew means “manly” in the Greek language. And then, these two Greek-leaning Hebrew men went to speak to Jesus.

They probably expected a reaction like, “Sure, I’ll talk with them.” Or perhaps, “Tell them to come and visit after dark, when the crowds have gone away.” But Jesus apparently becomes agitated, for he immediately begins talking about his death and glorification.

Jesus replied, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.

Why did a simple request to see Jesus by these men trigger such a response? What was so unusual about it that Jesus began to talk about his death and glorification?

To understand, we need to go way, way back in time.

The time is about 450 years before Moses and the Passover escape from Egypt by the Israelites. Israel – the other name of the man Jacob – has not been born yet. His father Isaac has not been born. Instead, the Genesis 14 story is focused upon Abraham – who is still called Abram.

Abram receives word that his nephew Lot has been taken for ransom by a group of cattle rustlers, along with all of Lot’s livestock. Abram organizes a rescue party and posse that goes to retrieve Lot and his livestock, as well as a bunch of other loot that was taken by the bandits from the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, where Lot was living. Abram and his men win the battle and bring back the captives, as well as much loot.

In Genesis 14:18, the king of Salem – the city whose name means “peace”, the city that would eventually become known as Jerusalem – the king comes out of his city bringing bread and wine. The king’s name is Melchizedek, and he is described as the Priest of God Most High. He blesses Abram, saying:

“Blessed be Abram by God Most High,
Creator of heaven and earth.
And praise be to God Most High,
who delivered your enemies into your hand.”

Then Abram gave him a tenth of everything.

There are some interesting themes in this meeting, beside being the first recorded tithe.

There is the king of peace that brings us bread and wine. Who else do you know that freely gives us bread and wine?

The writer of Hebrews is certain. He writes:

In the same way, Christ did not take on himself the glory of becoming a high priest. But God said to him,

“You are my Son;
today I have become your Father.”

And he says in another place,

“You are a priest forever,
in the order of Melchizedek.”

And then, the writer goes even further and claims about Jesus:

Son though he was, he learned obedience from what he suffered and, once made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him and was designated by God to be high priest in the order of Melchizedek.

In the Old Testament, there are two orders of priests written about:

There is the Levitical priesthood, the priests who are descended from Jacob’s son Levi, in the same tribe as Aaron, the priests who served in the Temple of God, performing the sacrifices, slaying the bulls, the cattle, the sheep, the doves, receiving the grain offerings, making the music, and even controlling the doors of the Temple. The Levitical priesthood continued to perform these sacrifices and duties - with a few breaks - from the time of Moses to 70 AD, when the Temple was destroyed in Jerusalem. As long as there was a Tabernacle or Temple, the Levitical priesthood served.

Even today, when the time comes to read scripture in an orthodox Jewish synagogue, a kohen, a direct male descendant of Aaron is given first priority, then a Levite is selected to read what is left. Thus, the Levitical/Aaronite priesthood is still present, awaiting the rebuilding of the Temple to begin the sacrifices once again.

But there is a second order of priests. It is the order of Melchizedek, the king of Salem, the king of Peace, the priest of God most High who brings bread and wine to Abram and blesses Abram.

What makes this order of Melchizedek different from the Levites, is that the Levites were only sent to serve in the Temple of God, a single place on earth, and in the local ceremonies of a single people, the descendants of Israel, the man also know as Jacob, the son of Isaac and the grandson of Abraham.

But Melchizedek serves God on behalf of all people of the world.

Some of the ancient rabbis identified Melchizedek as Shem, Noah’s son who was still alive at the time, but most Christian commentators identify Melchizedek as the Christ on earth, the high priest to God of all people.

That day in Jerusalem when the Greeks came to Philip and Andrew, and they brought those men to meet Jesus, Jesus recognized that the world outside of the Jews had recognized his ministry. Imagine that we are standing there with Jesus and the disciples that final week in Jerusalem…

• Now, the Greeks would spread word of Jesus outside of Judea. 
• Now, the Greeks would tell the stories of Jesus to the world from Iran to Egypt through Roman Turkey into Greece. 
• Now, the Gospel story of Jesus’ sacrifice would travel throughout the world and not remain in Jerusalem. 

And so Jesus talks about a seed of wheat having to die to bring forth a great multiplying harvest.

Jesus continues:

Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.

Do you love your life? If so, you will lose it someday. Do you hate this life in this world? Lose it and leave it behind, change to a new life in Christ, and you will gain an eternal life.

Jesus says: Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honor the one who serves me. 

God ... is ready to send you into the game!
Will you follow Jesus or just watch Jesus this Easter season. As you watch Jesus teach us and then sacrifice for us, will you follow Him to the foot of the cross or will you return to Galilee to take up your old life? Will you step forward as Lucian did to carry the cross, or will you disappear as Thomas did? The Father will honor the man or woman who follows Jesus and serves Him.

“Now my soul is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour. 

Here, Jesus' words are almost the same as Esther's words when she stepped forward to save the Jews from destruction. But Jesus will save all people - not just one nation. And Jesus continues: Father, glorify your name!” 

Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and will glorify it again.” The crowd that was there and heard it said it had thundered; others said an angel had spoken to him.

Jesus said, “This voice was for your benefit, not mine. Now is the time for judgment on this world; now the prince of this world will be driven out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.”

And then John comments: He said this to show the kind of death he was going to die.

When Jesus died upon the Cross, He not only sacrificed Himself for our sins, but He also died as that wheat seed dies, to undergo a transformation that leads to a vast multiplication of God’s love for all people through the Holy Spirit. For we must remember that in the original languages, Spirit and Breath and Wind are the same word. There is no difference between these three words in the original Greek.

For when Jesus returned, He brought the Holy Spirit, the Holy Breath of God back and breathed it upon the disciples. And on Pentecost, the Holy Spirit, the Holy Wind of God blew upon all the assembled people and then began to multiply. By the end of that day, over 3000 people had been baptized, receiving the Holy Spirit, and had been given new life by the Holy Breath of God.

And then, there was born the third priesthood, the priesthood of all people, the priesthood of the Holy Spirit, like wheat seed spreading over the earth.

When you have chosen to believe and be baptized, you receive the Holy Spirit – and you have the same Holy Spirit in you that spoke to Jeremiah, the same Spirit that spoke to Philip the Evangelist, the same Spirit that burned at Pentecost.

The Apostle Peter wrote in I Peter 2:9 - But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.”

Look around you. Say to your neighbor: “Neighbor, you are a priest of God”.

The great problem with the church today is that we are afraid to listen and believe in the Holy Spirit which is even now speaking to us. We look at ourselves, our powers and our limitations far too much, and we don’t listen to the Holy Spirit enough. We don’t believe in the Holy Spirit – most of us are blessed that we believe in God and maybe Jesus. But God knows what God can do with a Christ-following believer who listens and believes in the Holy Spirit. And if you will admit it, each of you who has been baptized has received the Holy Spirit, that direct connection to God and the power of God that can change things in this world and send Satan running.

Take upon you this honor….and power….and glory with the humbleness that those who truly understand how high and mighty God is – and with the awe of understanding that God has entrusted His children to become that strange group of people called Christian, those people with the Holy Wind of God at their backs. God has called your number and is ready to send you into the game!

If you would take upon you this priesthood, there are a handful of things you’ll need to do. It involves speaking to God and listening.

First of all, say to God, “Why me, O Lord?”

And then LISTEN for God's response!

Second, recognize that this is the doing of the King of the Universe and not our doing. Think of what that means about God’s confidence in you. God knows you can do it! Take a moment and consider...

But how do you know what God is asking of you?

The answer is that it tears you up inside, it makes you want to cry, it is a voice that tells you that you can make a difference and a vision that shows you what you are to do to make a difference. You may feel that people dying without God is terrible, you may feel that children growing up without encouragement is horrible, you may feel that older people living by themselves and lonely is the worst thing, you may feel that poverty should never happen, you may feel that our world needs more people to share your artistic passions, you may feel that it is a terrible shame, all those people in Japan or Europe or Asia or Africa who will die without knowing the Love of Jesus. 

If the voice inside you makes you want to cry because this particular problem is so terrible – it is probably the Holy Spirit speaking to you and God is standing there ready to help you accomplish great things for God’s mission, great things that will go a long way toward fixing that particular problem of the world, the problem that your weep over. Think of what that means about God’s confidence in you – and what God is ready to do through you...

Third, come forward to pray and ask the King of the Universe to speak to you – and then listen for God’s response.

There is one final task God asks of you today. Go into the world and do what God has asked of you – knowing that God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit will always be with you. CHANGE…THE…WORLD!!!

https://www.facebook.com/merrill.bagwell/videos/10152292303277927/?t=27

Look Up and Believe

Billy Graham was said to be the greatest preacher in America, if not the world, during the years he traveled around the world and preached in stadiums, in churches, in great buildings such as Madison Square Garden, the Los Angeles Coliseum, and other places that seated tens and hundreds of thousands of people. And after an hour of warm-up, after a half-hour of preaching, Billy would always come to the close of his preaching with an invitation to accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. And thousands of people would come forward.

Many people were saved. And this was a positive force which kept America from falling into the terrible decline that European Christianity experienced in the 1950’s and 60’s. Churches grew strong, seminaries exploded in size, and more and more people made a difficult decision which led them to Heaven.

But there was a problem. The constraints of time and the focus of the Graham organization meant that people who came to Christ because of Billy’s preaching felt that they had arrived – and they had – but despite the organization’s best efforts, most people who made their decision for Christ settled comfortably into their new-found pews. And they stayed there – filling the pews of many churches – but staying in those pews. They had made their difficult decision – they were now safe from hellfire – but they often stuck with their old lives to a large extent.

Through Billy’s preaching, they had seen God and Heaven. But when they sat in the pews, they turned their faces away from God and focused upon the highway to God, the Laws that God gave to Moses.

It had happened before to God’s people. 

Numbers 21:4-9; Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22; Ephesians 2:1-10; John 3:14-21 

At the time of Moses, God put a difficult decision to the Israelites, those people who were slaves in Egypt under Pharoah. They could take a lamb, keep it in the house four days, long enough for it to become a pet for their children. Then, they were asked to killed and roast the lamb, putting its blood on the outside of their doors, and then they were asked to leave home the next morning for an unknown land, full of unknown dangers, simply because a man named Moses appeared to have been sent by God.

Many made the decision. Their lives in Egypt were so terrible that they found the lamb, killed and ate the lamb, spread the blood, and then hit the road in the morning.

Others didn’t make the decision. That evening, they had a normal dinner like every evening. Perhaps they didn’t think Moses and Aaron were telling the truth, that God had commanded the special activities. Perhaps they basically believed what Moses and Aaron said, but they didn’t put two and two together and realize that if God really had told people to do this, it was important! Perhaps they decided to wait and see what happened, figuring that they could always make the decision the next morning. After all, they didn’t want to be seen as gullible, as fanatic believers who went far beyond being rational in following a religion.

And that terrible next morning, those who did not make the decision were in mourning because the Angel of Death had visited all the homes of Egypt without the blood of the lamb on the doorway, killing the firstborn of every family. Their lives had turned into Hell on earth because they had ignored God or discounted God or simply chosen to see what happened. And so they waved goodbye to their fanatic neighbors as those neighbors left town. Years later, did they look up from their slavery and say to one another – “I wonder what ever happened to those people who followed Moses and his God? Whatever happened to them?”

I wish I could say that was the last time a group of people chose to ignore God.

We still act the same way, don’t we? We basically believe that God spoke through Jesus, through the Bible, through prophets and pastors. Yet it seems as if only those people in the worst conditions, those bound by the slavery of addiction, by terrible loss, by horrible circumstances are interested in trading the certainty of their conditions for the uncertainty of the unknown road with Christ. And so we ignore God and remain behind, only to wonder what might have been…

When those Israelites were in the desert, traveling in the wilderness outside the Promised Land, they moved around from time to time. Always, God was with them. God had shown smoke and fire and earthquakes to them. God had led Moses to tap a rock with his staff and they had seen water pour out of the rock. God had given them manna from heaven every morning to eat. They had seen Aaron’s walking staff bud and blossom and grow almonds. They had heard the voice of God from the mountain. But although the Israelites recognized that God was with them, they had not made the leap from recognizing the existence of God to fully understanding that this was not a series of stories or magic tricks that Moses was bringing to the people.

• Perhaps they had been in slavery for so long that they naturally didn’t like being told what to do by anyone, man or God. 
• Perhaps they had been so comfortable in their slave huts in Egypt so long that they resented having to walk miles each day, even if an all-knowing God told them it was for their good. 
• Perhaps they were so locked into their ways that they just didn’t like to change – not for a man or for God. 
• Or perhaps, as slaves do, they simply wanted to understand the rules of this new Master, for they had learned in their slavery that following the rules was what was important. They didn’t understand that this God, this new Master, wanted people to follow Him as a Person – not just to follow His rules. 

And so one day,

“The people grew impatient on the way; they spoke against God and against Moses, and said, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? There is no bread! There is no water! And we detest this miserable food!”

The manna - food God had given them from heaven - had become boring! You can just imagine the Israelites trudging along, staring at their feet, the path just a couple of yards in front of them, always looking down as they followed the donkeys and the carts and the oxen ahead of them, dodging the presents the donkeys and the oxen had left in the road. The men and women and children were tired and thirsty and they behaved like five-year-olds. And so God tried again to get their attention.

Then the Lord sent venomous snakes among them; they bit the people and many Israelites died. The people came to Moses and said, “We sinned when we spoke against the Lord and against you. Pray that the Lord will take the snakes away from us.” So Moses prayed for the people.

The Lord said to Moses, “Make a snake and put it up on a pole; anyone who is bitten can look at it and live.” So Moses made a bronze snake and put it up on a pole. Then when anyone was bitten by a snake and looked at the bronze snake, they lived.

What was this? It was a bronze snake on a pole! It was an idol, an image, a statue of the very creature that had started the chain of events that got Adam and Eve tossed out of the Garden of Eden. God wanted people to look at a snake and God would cure them.

What was this all about?

First of all, they were in a desert. No trees. Think about were you would find snakes in a desert. Lying on the ground, crawling on the ground, slithering among the rocks near your toes! You keep your eyes down.

And consider those Israelites. They had been looking down at the dust, at the dung, at the sharp rocks and snakes on the road. They had walked hundreds of miles. They kept looking down.

But God wanted to show God’s power over anything and everything. And so, God told Moses to make a bronze snake and put it up on a pole, and then anyone who looked up at the snake lived. God understood that the people didn’t understand who God was, and so God made a them rule which would once again lead people to think about who God was. Once again, God would enter their lives.

Imagine that you’ve been bitten by one of those poisonous snakes. Your foot is swollen, the red streaks are moving up your leg. You can only hobble and you feel the pain. You remember that the snake was the lying enemy in the Garden and you don’t want to die yet.

And so your family helps you to get to the snake. And because you want to live, you raise your eyes from the dust and the dung and the stones up to the snake, the bronze snake on the pole and then you remember that God told Moses to make this snake, to put it up high, and you stare up at the snake and remember all the other things God has done for you since that night back in Egypt when the lamb was sacrificed and you spread the blood on the door and your family survived. You remember being trapped by the sea and the water clearing out and the mad dash across the bottom of the sea, you remember the manna, you remember the water, and now you remember the God that you are dealing with, the God that has saved you countless times and now you believe God is more powerful than a little snakebite, and and with that belief the swelling starts to go down almost immediately.

You have remembered and honored the God that made you and rescued you from slavery and certain death so many times.

And I wish I could say that all of God’s children remembered God and followed God after that episode, but it would be a lie.

In Israel at the time of Jesus, the principal Jewish authority in Jerusalem was the Sanhedrin, a collection of seventy elders and rabbis, including the High Priest. These men were there principally because they were recognized as the most holy men in the country. The great rabbi Gamaliel was there, a great teaching rabbi who is still remembered to this day and who is quoted in the greatest works on the Jewish law. It is as if the heads of all the major churches in town were gathered together to make law for the city. As much as you might disagree with another synagogue over the interpretation of God’s Law, you had to accept that, on balance, this legislature was focused upon interpreting Holy Scripture in a godly way.

But even though these men read and debated scripture regularly, they were stuck in a stage many people were stuck in – they were focused upon understanding the rules of God rather than focused upon understanding God’s character.

One of these men was Nicodemus, a rabbi, a teacher, a wealthy man.

After dark one evening, he came to visit Jesus, the radical traveling teacher who had come to town. Nicodemus came late because he didn’t want to be publicly seen with the controversial pastor until he understood what Jesus was teaching.

Nicodemus said, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him.”

Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.”

And Nicodemus was completely confused. “How can someone be born again?”, he asked.

And Jesus talked to him for a few minutes, explaining that the Holy Spirit needs to come into a person so they can understand God and heavenly things. Nicodemus was still confused, so Jesus stepped back and showed a bit of frustration.

“You are Israel’s teacher,” said Jesus, “and do you not understand these things? Very truly I tell you, we speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen, but still you people do not accept our testimony. I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things?

Sometimes, you see, we can be in the church for decades, we can read and study and even teach scripture, but without the Holy Spirit, we can still miss the point and be stuck outside, never quite understanding, never moving into the inner circle of disciples who learn from Jesus daily…always being an outsider like Nicodemus.

The difference is whether we are trying to understand Christianity – the system that Jesus taught – or understand and follow Jesus – the God-man who walked on earth and still lives. Are we trying to understand Christianity – or Jesus?

Jesus then said, referring to himself, that “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.”

Just as that bronze snake had to be made and lifted up in the desert and believed in so people could be healed from the snakebite, Jesus must be lifted up and looked at and believed in so that people would have eternal life.

The purpose of Jesus’ life, sacrifice, and resurrection was so we would stop looking at the Law of Moses, the rules given by God, and look instead at God directly as a Person, a complex personality who loves us – not just another slave master, but our Father, who gave His son’s life so we could escape from our slavery to the drudgery of life, our sins, our addictions, our old dreary life.

And when we look up and believe – the clouds go away, the sun shines, there is hope again!

I once worked with a woman who had had a difficult decade. Her husband had left her, her children wouldn’t talk with her, her health was poor, and she had recently had a car accident, which gave her a concussion and put her on crutches. One day, my wife Saundra came to visit me at work during lunch. Now, many of you know Saundra’s personality – most of the time, she is happy, upbeat, filled with sunshine and God’s love.

I suggested that Saundra might want to spend a few minutes talking with this woman, which Saundra did for about fifteen minutes. I think it was the first time they had met.

That afternoon, the woman came to me and said, “What is it like to be around such joy all the time?” I replied that it was great, for it is great- and pointed out that this is what knowing Christ is like. Saundra usually acts as part of the body of Christ should. And the woman began going to church and the clouds lifted in her life. For the church she chose to attend focused upon God’s love and not on God’s rules.

Sometimes, we just need to be reminded of who the God is that loves us – instead of focusing upon the rules that God has given us to lead us toward Him. It is time to remember that all of the 613 commandments in the Bible are simply the highway. The goal is to understand and fall in love with God, the destination of that highway.

And to do that, we need to move beyond the simple decision to accept Jesus into our heart, we need to move even beyond baptism, that mildly uncomfortable ritual where we bow down before Christ and receive the Holy Spirit with the water, and we need to step on the highway of holiness.

After time, we need to stop studying about Jesus and we need to follow Jesus.

Do you remember when you were in school, the endless days in the classroom? I spent a year of kindergarten, twelve years of elementary and high school, four years of college, and then another five years getting my two and a half master’s degrees. And almost all of that time was spent in the classroom or lab.

I spent a year and a half getting my Master’s in Business Administration in the classroom. But it was the next year, working for Texas Instruments, that taught me business. I spent a year getting half a master’s degree and a certification to teach. But it was the next five years working at Parkersburg Catholic that taught me to teach. I spent three years getting my Master of Divinity degree. But it was the three years pastoring churches in Pleasants County that taught me to be a pastor.

You will learn the basics of Christianity listening to sermons. You will learn more advanced Christian ideas going to weekly bible studies and classes. But you will step on the road which follows Christ when you begin to serve others in a ministry.

If you want to learn to pray, you will need to lead prayers in your family and in small groups – or pray with and for people who come to the food pantry. Pray right there and then with people – don’t say, “I’ll pray for you!”, because you will forget – and you will make a difference with people when you pray with them, then and there.

If you want to see answers to pray, put your prayer requests in a journal and look back over those prayers in 6 months – you will see the hand of God in action.

If you want to understand the love of Christ, drive downtown and tell Chris Mullens at the Clarksburg Mission that you’d like to work three hours a week in the mission. If you want to see joy, tell Tina that you’d like to become a helper in a children’s Sunday school. If you’d like to learn to handle suffering as Jesus did – make it your ministry to visit people in the hospital or nursing homes and read scripture with them. If you’d like to hear testimonies of God in action, come to the Saturday evening AA meeting and just listen.

Or, we could listen right now to some testimonies. Ask some friends today what God has done for them.

And if you truly want to follow Jesus, begin your path by coming to the Lay Servant training in Buckhannon on April 14. See me to register. Or if you are already a Lay Servant, call Mary Ellen up and tell her you’re available to begin serving a small church, leading other people onto the highway of holiness, for nothing pushes you down that highway faster and farther than leading other people, preparing a sermon every week, visiting people and holding conversations about God, leading Bible studies.

If you consider Jesus and His disciples, they did not stop with baptism. He did not hold a classroom study. He taught them with words and example for three years, and then he left them so they could become apostles, telling and showing the world what it meant to be Christ in this world.

There are three key decisions that people must make to truly follow Christ.

• Billy Graham asked everyone who heard him to make a decision to accept Christ into their lives. 
• Most of those people later made a decision to become baptized and receive the Holy Spirit. 
• But there is a third decision that each of us must make to receive the full benefits of the Gospel. Have you ever wondered why some people just seem to glow with Christ? They have made the third decision and acted upon it. We must decide that since Jesus was God walking around on this earth, His request to “follow me” means something more than “learn about me”. Jesus told people to follow Him over 80 times – but told them to believe in Him only twice. Following Christ means moving into some form of ministry to others. 

Will you change your life and follow Jesus, doing what He did, giving your life for other people through serving others, through teaching others, through truly attempting to become a holy person? Will you lift up the Son of Man as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so people will be healed?

Three decisions: Accept Christ, be baptized by water and the Holy Spirit, and decide follow Christ into some form of ministry, helping others.

And if you do, like the people in the desert, you will be rewarded by understanding the love of God.

Ten Promises

Many years ago – about 3500 years ago – the Israelites escaped from Egypt, led by Moses, his brother Aaron, his sister Miriam, and a pillar of smoke by day and a pillar of fire by night. After three months, they camped in the Sinai desert at the foot of the mountain of Sinai.

And God spoke to Moses. God told Moses to tell the people to stay off of the mountain. Three days later, God spoke to Moses again, a message for this new group of people, people who had been slave just three short months ago, people who had never governed themselves. God began the process of teaching this group of people to govern themselves, to keep order, to become a civilized nation rather than just a bunch of escaped slaves who were only bound by claiming a common ancestor over 400 years before.

God eventually provided Moses with a list of 613 commands – 365 things not to do – the negative commandments - and 248 things to do – the positive commandments.

But God began with these ten commandments, the Big Ten.

Exodus 20:1-17; Psalm 19; 1 Corinthians 1:18-25; John 2:13-22

So let’s go through these one by one from Exodus 20.

First – You shall have no other gods before me.
We are not to worship anything else. What does it mean to worship another god? It means that we put someone or something else in front of God. Are we addicted to something, something that we will do in preference to worshiping God? Of course not, we say, we would never worship someone or something in preference to God.

Really?

Did you stay up and watch that ball game too late and overslept, missing church the next morning? Did you miss church because there was a volleyball game, a soccer game, a baseball game scheduled for early Sunday afternoon. Everyone knows that our daughter plays volleyball, our son plays basketball, our dog is a champion and had to be at the dog show last weekend.

Did you decide that your drinks, your painkillers, your boyfriend or girlfriend was more important? Did you decide that peace in your family was more important or was God more important? Did you decide that your hurt feelings over what someone said were a reason to avoid listening about the God of the Universe? Had you moved away to college and just didn’t feel comfortable going to another church, a church where God was waiting for you, but your nervousness about attending another church was more important than worshiping God? It isn’t about the church you attend – it is about worshiping God.

“But pastor, I can worship at home. I don’t need to go to church.” That is true. You CAN worship at home. But DID you? Did you read your Bible, did you pray, did you study about God? Some people can worship from home, but did you?

Next, “You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.

The Amish do not put faces on their dolls because they take this image-making very seriously. Yet there are other places where God specifically asks that bulls be cast in bronze for the Temple, that pomegranates be painted. This seems contradictory. And so we look a little deeper for the key principles.

We are not to make pictures to be worshiped. We are not to make images to be worshiped. We are not to make things to be worshiped - some older translations say "idol" instead of "image". And this is why many older, Eastern churches have flat painting of saints - but not statues. This worship is something we have to be very careful of, for paintings and statues and wall hangings and things have a tendency to become holy just because they are in a church.

I knew a church where some ladies made a Chrismon tree – a tree with various Christian symbols as ornaments. Because it was the early 1960’s, the ladies used the latest material to make the ornaments – white Styrofoam. At the time, it was very artistic and advanced. But that tree became holy. It was put up year after year. The Styrofoam gradually deteriorated, the ornaments became dusty, the tree began to look ragged and tacky. Yet year-after-year it was put up and every year it took up storage space in the church. But the women who first made it insisted it must remain, because it had become holy, you see. It was a reminder of when the women had done a great thing, a holy thing, something for the church! For forty years it was put up and finally the last woman who was involved died.

The sanctuary committee was relieved that the tree could finally be sent to the dump. But then the daughter of one of the women said, “We ARE going to put up the Chrismon tree this year, the tree that my mother and her friends made, aren’t we?” And so the tree remains. Talk about "punishing children for the sins of the parents to the third and fourth generation!"

Look around you. What décor do we have that is worshiped? What has become holy over the years? Should we really have this print of this man up here – for we all know that it would be a wonderful miracle if Jesus looked like this man whose face was painted sometime back in the 1930's or 1940’s? Would a cross be more appropriate as a reminder of Christ? Or should we have anything here above the altar?

I knew of a church that worshiped first an organ and then a piano. They both became objects of worship and awe in that church. Only special people could touch these holy relics. Choirs can also become holy, as well as pulpits and Communion tables and bishop's chairs.

But we would never do this, would we? We do not have angel trinkets at home, paintings at home, statues that we care about a bit too much, do we? And then, we do not worship this building too much, do we, that we couldn’t change the carpet, remove the pews, put in movable, comfortable chairs that could be rearranged for different meetings, even rebuild the entire sanctuary to make it more flexible and useful for meetings. Why do we even need to hold all of our meetings and bible studies in this building?

Yes, it is easy for things to become holy, to become the idols in our midst.

Next: “You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name."

In our English Bibles, you may have noticed that sometimes the word Lord is spelled capital L, small o-r-d, and other times all four letters are capitalized. LORD. When all four are capitalized, the original manuscripts have YHWH, Yahweh, the personal name of God. “I am that I am”, as God said to Moses at the burning bush.

The observant Orthodox Jews are very careful with the name of God. They will actually write g-d instead of spelling out God because they feel they might drop the document onto the ground and that would be disrespectful of the holy name. Our ancestors of four hundred years ago who adopted the LORD spelling convention also were respectful to this idea, probably because some of the experts who translated the Old Testament from Hebrew to English had Jewish friends or were Jewish. This is likely overkill – several new, but very conservative translations today use the word "Yahweh" instead of LORD. It makes the reading more intimate, and brings God closer to us, particularly in a time when other gods are talked about in America. This is good and not misuse of God's name.

But the principle concept here is to not use the name of God as a cussword, or swear lightly by God’s name. And this applies equally to the name Jesus – and in modern emails and texting. Have you considered what "OMG" actually means?

On the other side of this, there are certain words which are generally banned from usage on the radio which are mostly related to bodily functions – you know which words I mean. Usage of these words does not violate this third commandments – but simply brands the user as low-class, uneducated, and having a lack of self-control. These four-letter-words are certainly not the name of God.

And context is critical. My early training as a child had taught me that some words were never said. They were "bad words".  I remember, as a teen, I had a difficult time reciting the Apostle’s Creed during the few times I went to church, because it used the word “Hell”, as in “He descended into Hell”.  But there is a proper place for most words. That’s why the commandment says, “You shall not misuse the name of the LORD your God…” 

The fourth commandment:

“Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy." 

First of all, let’s recognize that the Biblical Sabbath is not Sunday. TheBiblical Sabbath runs from sunset on Friday evening to sundown on Saturday evening. So we are not talking about Sunday activities – we are talking about Friday evening and Saturdays. It is during this time that we are not to work – and our families and our servants are not to work.

This was taken to the extreme by the ancient Pharisees, who even prohibited good, volunteer work. But Jesus pointed out that you can do good on any day because He healed people on the Sabbath. His disciples were allowed by Him to walk through a field and eat the ripe wheat seeds – which the Pharisees would have prohibited because it was supposedly “work” – harvesting grain. As Jesus pointed out – "the Sabbath was made for man." Man was not made for the Sabbath. We were not to be harmed by the Sabbath, but blessed by it.

But do we violate this regularly? Do you have servants work for you on the Sabbath? Did you eat out Saturday or Friday evening? Did the people at the restaurant serve you? Did you cook a meal at home? Did someone fix dinner? Did you have a pizza delivered?

Many observant Orthodox Jews even today require food that will be eaten during the Sabbath be prepared before sunset on Friday. That’s one reason why we have timers built-into our stoves – and why stoves can keep food warm for hours. Some Orthodox even live in special buildings with elevators that use battery power during the Sabbath, so no one will need to work making the electricity for those elevators on the Sabbath.  

This interpretation of Sabbath-keeping grew so detailed over the centuries that it was said that since drawing water from a well is woman’s work, men could draw water on the Sabbath, but women couldn’t.

But this is where Christians following Jesus differ from the Orthodox. Jesus put a different interpretation on this which we should mostly follow: The Sabbath is a day to grow closer to God. Take a day off once a week. Relax, ready scripture, play with your children. Do a hobby. If you must work occasionally, that’s not a deadly sin, but arrange your life so you have a day off almost every week. Don't plan your life around seven days of work. It’s better for each of us and better for the community as a whole. Look at the big picture rather than the little details. This is God's grace in action.

For example, because of my job, I can’t take off Sundays – and, using the bible Sabbath interpretation, I often have to visit the hospital or an event on Friday evenings or Saturdays. So I try to take off Mondays, or if emergencies hit me also on a Monday, most of Thursdays. 

 What do we do if we break these commandments?

“Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you."

This is the teenage commandment. Notice the second part of the commandment: “Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land…” The advice your parents give you is critical. You may not see the bus coming that will destroy you - but your parents do and tell you about it. That's why they keep you from running into the road, when all you see is your ball rolling along that nice, flat pavement. And this principle also applies to all those curfews and restrictions that loving parents give 16- and 17-year olds. They can see the bus - you can't!

“You shall not murder."

Notice that modern versions of this commandment use the word “murder” rather than “kill”. That’s because murder is closer to the original meaning of the Hebrew than the more general word “kill”, which has broadened it's meaning over the four hundred years since the King James Bible. And that’s why it is not a contradiction that God has a death penalty for some crimes, and orders warfare in places in the Bible.

“You shall not commit adultery." 

Think about how much better our world would be if everyone followed this commandment. The #Metoo movement wouldn’t need to exist.

“You shall not steal."

This includes cable television, pirating music and software, and even pencils from work.

“You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor." 

Simply put, don’t lie about your friends, neighbors, or family. Don’t spread gossip that you aren’t a hundred percent certain is true, especially on Facebook. Don’t fake emails, don’t fake texts, don’t fake videos.

“You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.”

Now this one is getting personal. To covet means "to want to have". How many of us would love the house of a neighbor? How many would love to have our neighbor’s nice new shiny pickup? (I suspect that few of us covet oxen or donkey’s anymore.

Notice that this commandment doesn’t even require action for us to be guilty. It is the desire that is wrong – not the taking - that's covered under other commandments. And this Tenth Commandment prevents us moving into the actions of theft or adultery, if we recognize the beginning of coveting. The very desire is wrong, and so we need to immediately tell ourselves, “Don’t do that”. And then ask forgiveness from God.

And there is the question: What do we do if we break these commandments? 

We go to God and ask forgiveness. We try to change things so we don’t break the commandments again.

And we find this is impossible by ourselves. We repeat our sins over and over again. And so we need help.

And two thousand years ago, God sent Jesus, part of God Himself, to earth to teach us that even thinking about killing someone else was murder, that even looking at another with lust was adultery, and so Jesus made it even more difficult for us to tell ourselves that we never broke these commandments.

And then, He died for us as a sacrifice on the cross to pay our penalties for these sins - and then He came back to life.

Jesus said that if we believe that He is truly the Son of God and we follow Him, asking forgiveness, we will be forgiven and receive eternal life with God.

And when we do this, something really amazing happens.

The Ten Commandments, these ten orders about what NOT to do – they become Ten Promises, because if you are truly following Jesus,

• “You shall have no other gods before [God]. 
• “You shall not make for yourself an image… 
• “You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God… 
• “[You shall] Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. 
• “[You shall] Honor your father and your mother… 
• “You shall not murder. 
• “You shall not commit adultery. 
• “You shall not steal. 
• “You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor. 
• “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. 

Following the Ten Commandments which become the Ten Promises becomes easy, because your heart has been changed by the love of God and Christ for you, as shown in the Crucifixion and the Resurrection – and by the arrival of the Holy Spirit during your baptism.

If you want to truly follow Jesus, consider whether or not you’ve been baptized. If you were baptized while you are young, and you’ve now turned at least twelve years old – or if you are an adult and want to really understand this church and join – we are having a confirmation and new members class at 2 pm starting next Sunday. If you have unbaptized children or you want to be baptized, see me – I’m hoping to do a round of baptisms and confirmations and memberships in May. And this includes OLD people!