A sermon shared with the
congregants of First Presbyterian Church, City, TN, July 23, 2017. It is a
sermon relevant to both Jewish and Christian ears.
“Does
God test us?” is a troubling question since the story of Abraham and Isaac in
Genesis. As you read about the relationship between the Hebrews and God in the
Old Testament you get a clear picture that the Hebrews test God’s patience, but
does God test them with the Law? As
important, does God test us, who are called Gentiles?
The
question goes to the heart of the message that Jesus Christ brought to Earth. The
answer to the question I posed last week, “Why did Jesus come to Earth?” (Luke 4:16-21) points to an
answer to “Does God test us? To answer, first we need to talk a little about
judgment and the Law, or the “Ten Commandments” as we often call it. I am going
to use the comments of the Apostle Paul and James to discover the answer to
both questions.
It
is hard not to argue that the Law brings judgment. The Law is based on a
reciprocal covenant with the Hebrews that implies at the least a challenge to,
if not a test of them:
1. You will be my
people and I will be your God (Deut.
29:10-13); (therefore,)
2. You shall be
holy because I am holy. (Lev.
19:2)
I enjoy reading the address of Moses
to the Hebrews as they faced the Promised Land across the Jordan River, because
it captures beautifully the first point that is the essence of the Law (Deut. 29:10-13). Notice Moses addresses all
the peoples, “the leaders of your tribes, the elders, the officials, all the
men of Israel, their children, their women, and the aliens
who are in your camp, both those who cut your wood and those who draw your
water, saying God may be your God, as he promised you and as he swore to your
ancestors, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.
Moses made the second point as he described
the Law to the Hebrews in Lev. 19. He
prefaced the Law with God’s words, “You shall be holy because I am holy.” The foundation of the Law rests on this command. We prefer
mistakenly to ignore this and focus on the Law as the command. We put them on
courthouse lawns and in prominent public places to remind us of them. Even the
Pharisees of the time of Jesus read it that way, and attacked Jesus for reading
the Law differently.
But
Jesus was of the same mind as Moses. He reminded the Pharisees that the Law is not
a command written in stone but something written in one’s heart. (Remember what
comes out of the mouth is good or bad, not what goes in.)
But,
what about the blessings and curses God promised for choosing the Law and life,
or death? Did God test the Hebrews and now, us, with the Law? If we read on into
Deuteronomy 30:1-10, we
find a backdoor to the famous “blessings” and “curses.” (Notice there is no
options, the passage says “When all
these things have happened to you, the blessings and the curses that I
have set before you, if you call them to mind among all the nations where the
LORD your God has driven you (because you failed the Law), and return to the
LORD your God, and you and your children obey him with all your heart
and with all your soul, just as I am commanding you today, then the LORD your
God will restore your fortunes and have compassion on you, gathering you again
from all the peoples among whom the LORD your God has scattered you. Even if
you are exiled to the ends of the world, from there the LORD your God will
gather you, and from there he will bring you back. The LORD your God will bring
you into the land that your ancestors possessed, and you will possess it; he
will make you more prosperous and numerous than your ancestors. (He will bring
them home if they call upon God.) …
This
sounds like a test! But next, testing and judgment fly away. Listen: “Moreover,
the LORD your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your
descendants, so that you will love the LORD your God with all your heart and
with all your soul, in order that you may live...Then you shall again obey the
LORD, observing all his commandments that I am commanding you today… because
you turn to the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul.”…So,
God shall make them holy!
The
bottom line for the Hebrews is that God’s covenant with them is irrevocable. Obedience
burdens or tests the Hebrews until he calls them home and will make them holy. Then
the Law shall be found written on their hearts.
Paul
understood Jesus and Hebrew history. He knew the Law is a grave barrier that no
one can obey faithfully. The Law is
death. Thus, the one who tries to follow the law finds death. But Jesus (and Paul) say, “Don’t take the
test.” Jesus brings mercy by defeating death not just for the Hebrews but for
all.
Remember
before Jesus Gentiles were outside the covenant and therefore not subject to
the Law, as the Hebrews were. (Remember Paul’s Jewish lament over the Law, Romans 7:24, “Who will rescue
me from this body of death?”)
Paul
laments that he knows what is right but always seems to do what is long. He
emphasizes that the grace of Jesus brings the end of judgment and testing of
the Law. So, Paul asked, “Why would anyone desire to subject oneself to the Law
rather than the grace of God?” è
author’s (God) message!
For
Paul the beauty and essence of grace is the unconditional forgiveness of the
penitent person. If one must earn forgiveness then there is no grace. Paul
characterizes in two points the desperation of humanity and the wonderful reconciliation
between God and humanity by grace that defines this new covenant:
1. We are all
sinners and fall short of the glory of God.
2. God loves us
and in an act of grace, accepts the reality of human sin and forgives us for it
in advance, with the only caveat that we believe it. (Calvin, in my mind, would call this our
justification.)
I
have repeated last and this week much of what Paul said in Romans 11:1-32 (please read it
all.). The covenant between Israel and God is irrevocable and God is using the hardheadedness
of Israel to bring grace to the Gentiles first. When the full number of Gentiles
receives grace, (whatever number that is), he will bring in his remnant of the
Hebrews. . Giving grace to Gentiles is the precondition for consummation of the
covenant between God and Israel. The
rebellion of Israel causes the gift of grace to the Gentiles (32: “For God has imprisoned all
in disobedience so that he may be merciful to all.”)
The
very heart of Christianity proclaims the gift of grace by the Love of God for
his creation. Grace is the forgiveness of all sins. We struggle to be better
Christians (Calvin calls it sanctification) but we are not tested to see if we
can overcome what we cannot overcome (sin). To put it Paul’s way, we have
inherited the Hebrew’s irrevocable covenant and predicament with God.
So,
why do we have such a hard time with grace and think we are being tested? I
would guess that everybody in this room has found a time when you did not feel
worthy of grace but of guilt. Even
reciting the confession of sin can remind us of our feelings of unworthiness
before God, rather than the l joy of the unearned gift of grace. That feeling of
guilt or testing comes because we cannot find in our own hearts easily the
self-forgiveness that God has already given to us. God’s grace is really hard
to believe. What an unbelievable relief that God forgives us as if we had never
sinned at all!
Here
is where it gets sticky. That gift of grace can lead us into some bad thinking.
Paul posed that dilemma as the next logical question that may pop into our
minds after we understand the gift of grace, “Does this mean we can sin large
since forgiveness has come our way by grace?” Paul shares his regular, emphatic
answer, “By no means!”
Paul
emphasized grace alone and seldom emphasized the encumbrance grace imposes on
the Christian because as a righteous Jew and Christian, he was disturbed by the
demands of Jewish Christians that Gentile Christians conform to the Law. He saw
that as “works righteousness.” If we have to earn grace by passing the test
of the Law then it is no longer grace. He did not completely ignore it in his
instructions to the congregations. In his letters, he invokes the plea to love
each other, to be reconciled to each other, to partake of the Lord’s Supper
with humility and concern for those who come on empty stomachs, to remember the
personal obligation to the poor.
James
was not concerned about grace as much as Paul was. James was far more concerned
about living the life of the good news. James said (2:26), “Show me a person
without good acts and I’ll show you a person without faith.” Faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.
He
said also (4:13-17), “Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to such and
such a town and spend a year there, doing business and making money.’ Yet you
do not even know what tomorrow will bring. For you are a mist that appears for
a little while and then vanishes…As it is, you boast in your arrogance; all
such boasting is evil. Anyone, then, who knows the right thing to do and fails
to do it, commits sin.”
So,
rest easy, the time of testing is over. Let go of guilt, not to sin boldly, but
to enjoy the grace of God by sharing it with others as freely as God shares it
with us.
Remember
God’s advice about the covenant with the Hebrews, “You shall be holy, because I
am holy.”
Amen
No comments:
Post a Comment