No God But God 092610

(props lighter, paper, bowl of water).
Series: The Ten Commandments
Ten Commandments M1: Sermon Notes (10 09 26)
Speaker: Ken Shigematsu
Title: No God But God
Text: Deut. 5:1-10
BIG IDEA: God expresses his love for us through the Ten Commandments, and we express our love for him for him by keeping them.
Other than the 23rd Psalm which begins with the words “The LORD is my shepherd…” the Ten Commandments are probably the most famous passage of Scripture in the entire Hebrew Scriptures, or the Old Testament. Most followers of Jesus Christ would say that the Ten Commandments are important, but how many could we actually recite? (use one minute)
Take out your sermon outline just for a moment and see how many of the Ten Commandments you can actually write down. Did you get 10, or 7, or even 4? I hope you don’t feel too shamed if you couldn’t name many--because most people in the West can’t name the Ten Commandments.
A recent survey of 1200 people, aged 15-35, found that most of those polled could not name more than two of the Ten Commandments, and they weren’t very happy about some of the others when they were told about them! (3rd service Jane Ty (one of our interns) shared with me that when she was in class at Ambrose University (it’s important to know that this is the university of our denomination, the Christian and Missionary Alliance, it’s a school where you have to profess to being a committed Christian to be admitted, a school where many of the students aspire to become pastors or missionaries) so Jane our intern is in a class at Ambrose University when one of the Old Testament professors asked the students, “How many of you here can name all 10 of the Commandments?” at least half could not.)
So if you can’t name all of the Ten Commandments, I hope you don’t feel bad, but I do hope and pray that you would feel motivated during this series to learn them and make them a part of you. Someone has said that human beings have made some 33 million laws, but they still have not been able to improve on the Ten Commandments.
Even though the Ten Commandments are famous, their purpose is frequently misunderstood.
Many religious people believe that the Ten Commandments are the way to gain the acceptance and approval of God. Many people believe that if they keep most of them most of the time, when they die, God will look at their valiant effort to keep the Ten Commandments and will open the door of heaven and invite them in. People who are of a more secular bent are often uncomfortable and turned off by the idea that God, or anyone else, would “impose” a set of rules on them. They view the Ten Commandments, or any other code that would seek to guide human behavior as being like hail, spoiling an otherwise pleasant day in the park.
One of the best ways to keep us from imposing some kind of myth onto the Scripture, and to help us avoid misinterpreting what God intends, is to look at a passage in its original context.
So let’s look at the origins of the Ten Commandments.
Please turn to Deuteronomy 5:1-10:
1 Moses summoned all Israel and said:
Hear, Israel, the decrees and laws I declare in your hearing today. Learn them and be sure to follow them. 2 The LORD our God made a covenant with us at Horeb. 3 It was not with our ancestors [a] that the LORD made this covenant, but with us, with all of us who are alive here today. 4 The LORD spoke to you face to face out of the fire on the mountain. 5 (At that time I stood between the LORD and you to declare to you the word of the LORD, because you were afraid of the fire and did not go up the mountain.) And he said:
6 "I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.
7 "You shall have no other gods before [b] me.
8 "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. 9 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, 10 but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.
Pray:
(Map) In this message, we will look at the context of the Ten Commandments. We will look at where and why they were given to us and we’ll look at how we can honor God and our design by keeping the first commands to put God first.
I want us to look specifically at verse 6 to get a sense of the context.
6 "I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.
As you read the Old Testament (and hundreds of you have joined our movement to being in the Scriptures at least 15 minutes a day four times a week so you’ll pick up on this if are you new to Scripture as you read the Word) you will see how God delivers his people out of Egypt, out of a land where they have been slaves for some 400 years. He miraculously parts the Red Sea, and under the leadership of his servant Moses leads them out.
In the book of Exodus we see how God saves his people, the Hebrews, from the land of Egypt where they have been slaves. After saving them, he gives them the Ten Commandments. He does not give his people the Ten Commandments in order as way for them earn their deliverance from Egypt. No, he first saves his people from the land of Egypt; and then he gives them the Ten Commandments.
And God does not give us his Ten Commandments so that we can win the approval of God and earn the forgiveness of our sins. No, the Ten Commandments have been given to us to show how we can flourish in a relationship with God who has already accepted us…who has already forgiven us our sins. 2x.
And if you have never turned to God and received the forgiveness of your sins; if you have never, as far as you know, been welcomed into God’s arms, you can turn to him. God became a human being in Jesus Christ, died on a Roman cross, offering himself as a sacrifice to bear your sin and mine, so that we could be restored to a relationship with our Creator. If we turn from our sins, which the Bible calls repentance, and ask God to forgive our sins, and bring us into a relationship with himself, he’ll do that. When you have done that, you become a person positioned to flourish in a relationship with God by living the Ten Commandments.
(transition)
Take a moment to look at verses 2-4 of Deut. 5.
In verse 2 we read: “The LORD our God made a covenant with us at Horeb.” Horeb is simply another name for Mount Sinai.
In verse3 and 4 we read: “It was not with our ancestors [a] that the LORD made this covenant, but with us, with all of us who are alive here today. The LORD spoke to you face to face out of the fire on the mountain.”
The verse describes how the Ten Commandments were given in the context, according to verse 4, where the LORD spoke in a face to face conversation out of the fire of Mount Sinai. God here reveals his personal name Yahweh and keeps emphasizing I am the Lord your God, I am the Lord your God, I am the Lord your God. So it was a personal and intimate time. And that through this conversation the LORD establishes his covenant relationship with us.
What is a covenant relationship? It is a relationship that is based on a solemn promise. Marriage is a covenant relationship. It is a relationship based on a promise to be faithful and to love our partner, for richer, for poorer, for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, till death do us part.
A friendship can also be based on a covenant--as was true of David and Jonathan’s friendship, the friendship between Naomi and Ruth, her mother-in-law. A covenant creates a kind of safety and security in a relationship so that it can flourish. And God enters into a covenant relationship with us so that our relationship with him can flourish—so that it can be deep and intimate.
In Deut. 5:29 we read:
29 Oh, that their hearts would be inclined to fear me and keep all my commands always, so that it might go well with them and their children forever!
The word “might go well with” means “absolute, complete, flourishing.” How so?
The Ten Commandments are simply ten words in Hebrew. But as the best biblical scholars have affirmed, they are more than just ten words engraved on a stone tablet, they are the verbal expression of the holiness and love of God, and they show us how to relate to God and each other. The first four commandments--You shall have no other gods before me; no idols; don’t use the name of God in vain; observe the Sabbath—show us how to honour God, who is holy and how we love him. The following six speak of honouring our parents, no murder, no adultery, not stealing, not lying, not coveting, show us how we honour and love our neighbour.
The ten words are more than ten engravings on a stone tablet—they express the very character of God. They give us the most fundamental information in the universe—how we relate to our Creator and our fellow human beings. They reflect the very character of the Living God, and because we are made in God’s image, they also reflect our character. The truths are engraved not only on stone, but on the very fabric of our lives. This is part of the reason why while the religions of the world are in so many fundamental different forms (some affirming there is one God… other religions asserting there are countless gods… some no gods at all; some affirming a life after death, others denying this), if you look at the teachings on what it means to live as a human being in the world, they all in some way, mirror the Ten Commandments. Because the Ten Commandments are a reflection of God, and because we are made in God’s image, they are a reflection of us. So even if we have never read them, there is a part of us that knows them because they have been engraved onto the conscience of every human being (as God affirms in Romans 1).
Remember the context of the Ten Commandments. They were given to God’s people after he had saved them from the land of Egypt where they had been slaves, in a context where he was establishing a loving, marriage-like covenant with his people.
When you summon all that is best in you and commit yourself for the rest of your life to a man or a woman in marriage, you bring a baby into your home that you want, you are not going to be relating to that person in a way that will wreck the relationship or wreck their lives. No, you will set up some guidelines that will enable your relationship to deepen and flourish. So it is with God, God whose love far surpasses our own, set up a series of guidelines in his word for us that will enable us to grow and flourish in a relationship with him and with one another. (Paolo’s photo)
If we honor the Ten Commandments, we honour God and our design.
You can sail into the wind, but you can’t sail directly into the wind. You can sail about 45 degrees into the wind, but you can’t sail directly into the wind. If you try to sail directly onto the wind, you’ll find you can’t do it, your sails cannot harness the energy of the wind. If you say to yourself you are just going to toss the rules of sailing and forget the rule of the wind. You are not going to be sailing. There are certain laws in sailing…the laws the laws of the wind that you must honour in order to flourish on the water.
And so it is in life. Our Maker has established certain laws in the universe that reflect the nature of things. Dorothy Sayers says, There is a difference between saying: "If you hold your finger in the fire you will get burned" and saying, "if you whistle at your work I shall beat you, because the noise gets on my nerves". The law against whistling at work is arbitrary and may or may not be enforced, but the law of the fire is reflects the very nature of the way things are. If all of members of parliament and all the members of congress from all the governments of the world were to assemble here in Vancouver and were to pass a law saying “fire no longer burns”—the first member of parliament who put his hand in fire would soon recognize that law of the fire is very far from the law against the law against whistling at work. He would discover that you never really break the law of the fire you just break yourself over it.
And so it is with the Ten Commandments, because they reflect our nature. We don’t really break them; we just break ourselves over them. Conversely, if we honour God, we also honour ourselves because they reflect our design. The Ten Commandments were not given to ruin our lives, but they are an expression of God’s love for us, of his desire for us to flourish.
Can you imagine how different world would be if we kept then Ten Commandments. Our world would be an entirely different place. But despite all our resources, we have never yet managed to do it.” How Vancouver would be different if we kept these words. How Tenth would be different if we kept these. How a family would different if kept these.
The ten words, the Ten Commandments, are a way that God expresses his love for us and for the world, but they are also the way that we express our love for God. In the Psalms and the Gospels, as we saw in the Practicing the Presence series, keeping God’s word is a way we express our love for God. Jesus in John 14:15 says “if you love me you will keep my commandments.”
The first command is, verse 7: “You shall have no other Gods before me.” Verses 8-10 are similar:
"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. 9 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God…
The Lutherans, Roman Catholics, and the Jews combine these two commandments “You shall have no other Gods before me” and the commandment “You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything.”
Clearly, the first two commandments are related so we are going to take them both today.
The essence of the Ten Commandments can be distilled in this first commandment: “You shall have no other gods before me.” Joy Davidman, the wife of C. S. Lewis in her book, Smoke on the Mountain, which is a wonderful commentary on the Ten Commandments, argues that every prohibition in the Ten Commandments has a correlating positive exhortation. She writes that “thou shalt have no other Gods before me” must include “thou shalt have me” for thou shalt put God first. No other gods; no other idols before me.
The Ten Commandments reflect our design…the way that we have made. The commandment to put God first is not so much a duty, as it is way for us to honour our design. We were created to worship and serve God. But if we don’t worship and serve the Living God, the built-in desire to serve God will be redirected to worship and serve something else.
The Bible says in Romans 1:25: “They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.”
We were created to worship the Living God, but instead of worshiping and serving the Creator we have chosen to worship and serve created things. This breaking of the first commandment is the essence of sin. The philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard, in Sickness Unto Death, defines sin as making something more central in our life than God himself, to take something good in our life, and make it an ultimate thing, a place that should only be reserved for God.
The essence of sin is looking to something or someone other than God as our primary source of identity and meaning.
At its core, sin is about turning to a counterfeit god, an idol. As we alluded to last Sunday, a counterfeit god might be a romantic relationship or having a particular kind of family. An idol might be the approval of someone important in your life. It might be career or making money. It might be your beauty or your athletic ability or your brains, or some great cause. It might even be the Christian ministry. Sin or idolatry is about turning to something of particular interest and our hearts saying, “If I have that, then I know I will have value or significance.”
How would we know if we had an idol in our heart?
Archbishop William Temple once said, “Your religion is what you do with your solitude.” Or put another way, the true God of your heart is what your thoughts effortlessly go to when there is nothing else which is demanding your attention. What occupies your mind when you have nothing else to think about? What do you daydream about? Do you dream about a romantic relationship with a particular person. You dream about a perfect career scenario… a car…a certain kind of home.
Now, of course, we all have these kinds of daydreams, but they do not necessarily indicate they are idols in our heart. But if we become preoccupied with these things, if we feel that if we didn’t get this thing we wouldn’t be happy or would we despair--then maybe this thing in our heart has become too important to us…something we are turning to for our identity and meaning. If we are preoccupied with something—could it be that we have a counterfeit god? If we don’t get what we were hoping for—then disappointment is a natural response, but if we feel that we would experience despair if we didn’t get that—could it be that that good thing in our life has become too important to us, an ultimate thing, an idol?
We all have idols. John Calvin said, “The human heart is a factory for making idols. “ A mentor of mine, who has taught me more about the nature of idolatry that any living human being, Presbyterian Pastor Tim Keller, in his book, Counterfeit Gods, says, “Another way to discern what is true love is to look at how you spend your money.” Jesus said, “Where treasure is there your heart will be also.” Whatever your money flows most effortlessly toward may indicate your heart’s greatest love. When we honestly look at our lives, is there something we are spending a disproportionate amount of money on?
We live in a part of the world here on the west coast of North America where appearance is very important. There is nothing wrong with eating healthy and exercising, seeking to be good stewards of the body that God entrusted to us, but here in North America we can spend a disproportionate amount of money on our bodies, not so much in response to the leading of God in our life, but in response to the subtle persuasion of the advertising industry, which suggests that we are a loser if we don’t have a particular kind of body.
I recall talking with a Christian woman who seemed quite conflicted about whether it was right to spend thousands of dollars on she deemed unnecessary cosmetic surgery. By unnecessary she meant kind of cosmetic surgery that would be help reverse some of effects of giving birth to a child and aging—she didn’t mean correcting kind of gross disfigurement because of an accident… she was taking about cosmetic surgery motivated not by necessity, but by vanity. If we end up spending up a disproportionate amount of money on how we look, whether it is with cosmetic surgery or else related to our bodies disproportionate or leisure or entertainment or our children, our spending may reveal an idol. Part of the reason that I teach from the Scriptures, “If you want to be true follower of Christ, give at least the first tenth of your income (your tithe) to God, because it is a significant symbol that we are seeking to love God first and most.” Yes, of course, we tithe because God commands it the Old Testament and Jesus affirms it in the New Testament, but more importantly for us—our tithe is an expression that you want God first.
(review)
And then the third test as to whether you have an idol is to look at our emotions. Mardi and I have taught on this before. But, ask yourself is there something that, if you lost it, would make you despair…make say what’s the point of life now? Is there something or someone in your life that if you had it and lost it or were not able to get it in the first place your heart says I not just experience disappointment, but despair—some loss that might you say “I can’t be happy now” or “My life seems utterly empty.” If so, could it be that something has become too important for you…an idol?
The reason that God says “You shall have no other Gods before me” is to not make for yourself an idol in any form because we were made to put God first, and because no idol can satisfy the deepest longing of our heart… Remember the Ten Commandments are a way to express our love for God. They are also a way that God expresses his love for us. God realizes, that no matter what idols we turn to, no matter how glittering and promising they may seem, they will eventually fail us.
As I shared at the Connections dinner, I used to live in Boston and I sort of loosely followed Tom Brady’s career. Tom Brady is the quarterback for the New England Patriots. When Tom won his third Super Bowl, while he was still in his twenties, he was being interviewed on 60 Minutes. The interviewer Steve Kroft was asked him, “How does it feel to be still in your twenties and to have won 3 Super Bowls. That puts you in a very special, elite category.” Brady candidly told Kroft that he felt like something was still lacking in his life:
Why do I have three Super Bowl rings and still think there's something greater out there for me? I mean, maybe a lot of people would say, 'Hey man, this is what [it's all about].' I reached my goal, my dream, my life. Me? I think, 'It's got to be more than this.' I mean this isn't—this can't be—all it's cracked up to be.
Kroft pressed Brady as to what the right answer was, and Brady added:
What's the answer? I wish I knew… I love playing football, and I love being quarterback for this team. But at the same time, I think there are a lot of other parts about me that I'm trying to find.

No career achievement, no romantic relationship can fully satisfy us.
C. S. Lewis says, “Nothing in this world can completely satisfy us because we were made for something beyond this world; we were made for God.”
So how do we honour the first commandment which, by the way, as we will see in the series will, in turn, will enable us to honour all the commandments? The Scriptures teach that we break the power of a counterfeit god by exposing ourselves again and again to the greater beauty of Jesus Christ.
When I was speaking at Wheaton College, a Christian liberal arts college just outside of Chicago, after my presentation to the faculty in the department for spiritual formation one of the professors, Dr. David Setran, remarked that whenever his wife was pregnant, for some reason she would have this craving for steak. They would always buy their steak at a low-end discount store named Jewel (like our Buy Low Foods). But in the town of Wheaton there was also this upscale butcher shop, a place they couldn’t really afford to shop at. But they always wondered what the steak at this shop would taste like. They daydreamed about it. One day when his wife was pregnant they splurged and bought some steak from this higher-end butcher. They cooked it and ate it. Then in unison, they said to each other: “We can never eat Jewel steak again.” Part of the way that we are set free from lesser gods is by feeding ourselves on the real thing—on God himself.
The idols of this world will ultimately let us down. They are like cheap frozen TV dinners with a great photo on the cover of steak, mashed potatoes, and peas that don’t appear mushy. When you eat it, you not satisfied.
We experience freedom from the idols of our heart when we feast on the Living God.
We will be freest from idols when we are most satisfied in God.
The reason we are emphasizing Practicing the Presence: Meeting Jesus in Scripture and Prayer this coming year is not so that we just get more knowledge about the Bible, but so that we will be led in Scripture and in prayer: face to face with the Living God, so that we will come to know him more deeply. So, our relationship with God moves from a grainy black white image to a colour. It is in coming to know God more intimately and indwelling his son Jesus and having his words deeply indwell us that we can actually live out the Ten Commandments.
So it is our prayer that through practicing the presence emphasis, that first of all we will come to know God and go deeper in our friendship with Jesus Christ; we will know the cleanings and filling of the Holy Spirit; through our deepening friendship with God we will be nourished and will flourish. Through these ten words we will experience God’s love for us and express our love for God by keeping them.
Let’s pray together.
Has something come between you and God?
Perhaps some good thing that has too important?
Something that with our which you feel you would be happy or fulfilled or have significance or value. If so, pray these words from Ezekiel:
24 " 'For I will take you out of the nations; I will gather you from all the countries and bring you back into your own land. 25 I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. 26 I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. 27 And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.

True Freedom 190910

(some key words: lost and free and abide)
Series: Practicing the Presence: Meeting Jesus through Scripture and Prayer
Psalms M5: True Freedom (10 09 19)
Speaker: Ken Shigematsu
Text: Psalm 119:32, 45; John 8:31-33
BIG IDEA: Abiding in God’s Word leads us to true freedom.
There are few experiences that feel quite as free for me as sailing in the ocean—I love the sensation of the sun streaming down on my face and the wind carrying me along.
But, I won’t be free for very long, if I don’t know where I am. This is why a sailor in order to be truly free in the open waters needs a compass, or a GPS device to help her locate where she is.
Now I have heard of sailors who have ventured out on long ocean voyages over several weeks, attempting to cover hundreds of nautical miles—who have gone without compass, a GPS device, or a map. On the surface it sounds romantic, adventuresome, and free, but when you are lost at sea and you have run out of fresh water, food, and fuel, you don’t feel particularly free.
You feel lost.
So it is with our lives.
If we try to live life without a compass or a GPS system or map, it may sound romantic, adventuresome, and free, but we’ll simply end up lost.
Being able to go offshore on a sailboat and sail on the open waters more than fifty miles offshore requires a more advanced set of sailing skills.
But compared to navigating the waters of life, it’s relatively simple.
As romantic, adventuresome, and free as it sounds, trying to live life without any kind of compass or map doesn’t actually work in practice. We end up lost. Each of us needs a guide beyond the compass in our head to navigate the waters of life.
And this is what God’s Word does for us.
In Psalm 119:105 we read “Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path.”
We are in a series entitled Practicing the Presence: Meeting Jesus through Scripture and Prayer. We have been looking at various psalms that point us to the Word. Today, as we close the series, we are going to look once more at Psalm 119 and specifically how the word of God sets us free.
In verse 32 we read: “I have run in the path of your commands, for you have set my heart free.”
In verse 45: “I will walk about in freedom, for I have sought out your precepts.”
The psalmist is saying that the Word of God leads us to a place of true freedom. I am aware that this perspective flies in the face of the conventional thinking of our day. Most people feel that if you live by the teaching of the Bible, you will find yourself always wearing a seat belt in the airplane of life--unable to freely move about the cabin of your world. But the commands of God--the Word--the psalmist tells us set our hearts free.
How so?
A few weeks ago when we looked at Psalm 1, we discussed how many people think the fact that the Bible is old is a disadvantage. But it is not a disadvantage. One of the reasons the Bible is so valuable is that it does not reflect the conventional wisdom of our day because it is not from today. People in any era tend to be over-confident in what they know and what they think they know.
As I said last month in the opening message of the series from Psalm 1, in the Victorian age some people felt they would bring scientific discovery to an end because they had discovered everything there was to know about science. How ironic and naïve! They were just on the verge of a scientific revolution.
Prior to the 1950s, the psychology establishment and pediatricians were advising parents that they should not show loving affection to their children. Dr John Watson, the head of the American Psychological Association, declared: “When you are tempted to pet your child, remember that mother love is a dangerous instrument…there are serious rocks ahead for the over-kissed child.” Dr. Watson defined over-kissing a child as kissing a child more than once a year. Doctors and scientists, and even the government, were saying, “Never kiss your baby. Don’t rock your baby, or play with your children.” We now look back, we scratch our head and say, “How could they have believed that?”
We tend to be over-confident in what we think we know in our own generation. We think that our cultural moment represents the pinnacle of civilization—that no society has ever been as enlightened as we are. But, the fact is that there are things we believe now, that we are so confident about, one day our grandchildren or our great grandchildren will look back on and say, “How could we have believed that!”
One of the great gifts of the Scriptures is that is no ordinary book. It is inspired, literally breathed by God. It contains eternal wisdom and teaches us about the nature of life, God, and ourselves. It contains wisdom that has been tested and confirmed across the centuries. It sets us free from the blindness of our own age.
How can this happen for us? True freedom comes to us from the Word when we abide in it…when we hold on to Jesus’ teaching… meditate on it…pray over it…indwell it, and let it indwell us.
In John 8:31-32, Jesus said:
31 "…If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. 32 Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free."

Many of us have heard the words quoted: “…you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” We often however don’t consider the words that go just before these words. It is always essential to read the Bible in its context in order to understand it correctly. The words before “…you will know the truth and the truth will set you free,” are “…if you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples.” Then you will know the truth and the truth will set you free. The words hold on to can be translated “abide” or “remain”—it is the same word that John uses in John 15 when he talks about “our need to abide will remain as branches in the vine of Jesus Christ.”

The idea here is that we need to indwell Christ’s words. Then we will know the truth deeply. And that truth deeply will set us free.

The Hungarian scientist and philosopher in the early 20th century, Michael Polanyi, wrote an influential book called The Tacit Dimension. Polanyi lived and worked in a time when scientists emphasized pure rational objective knowing, but Dr. Polanyi wrote about how we cannot deeply know something scientifically unless we “indwell the thing we are studying and allow it to indwell us.” Polanyi observed that when we really know someone deeply, we get inside their skin through an act of empathy in a sense we indwell them. Parents in this sense can deeply know their children. They get inside their skin. They empathize if the child falls and scrapes a knee, or is bullied at school.

In a sense, an accomplished athlete or a musician--who deeply knows their sport or music—indwells their sport or music; or a doctor or plumber who deeply knows their field, indwells in their field.

I have a friend named Craig who is a gifted and experienced obstetrician/gynecologist. When he’s with a patient, even though he has a huge cache of knowledge and skills, most of it is not at the forefront of this mind when he sees a patient. He says, “I usually don’t use a check list unless it’s a really difficult problem. What I do is listen to my patient and try to sense what might be out of balance with her body. I then instinctively draw on my knowledge and experience.” He’s indwelled his medical practice long enough that he experiences real freedom.

Like Craig, we may not always have all the facts of the Bible in the forefront of our minds, but if we indwell the Word as Craig has indwelled medicine and has experienced freedom as a doctor, like Craig we experience freedom.

When Jesus told a group of Jewish people: “…If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. 32 Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free," they answered him: “We are Abraham’s descendants and have never been slaves to anyone. How can you say that we shall be set free?” (John 8:31-33)

And though we live in a very different world than Jesus’ day, we too may assume that we are already free. We may assume we have nothing from which we need to be set free. But, by our very design, we were made to honour and follow something or someone. So if we don’t honour and follow the living God, we honour and follow something else. And we will not be free.

The Greek philosopher Euripides said, “No one is wholly free. You are a slave to wealth or to the law or to the people you are seeking to please. But, you are not free.”
Simone Weil, the famous French philosopher and social activist, said,
“One has only the choice between God and idolatry. If one denies God . . . one is worshiping some things of this world in the belief that one sees them only as such, but in fact, though unknown to oneself imagining the attributes of Divinity in them.”

If God is not the centre of your life, then something else is, because we were made to follow something. If God isn’t God, we will find ourselves honouring and following something else. It might be approval of some person or money. It might be sex or success. But, we will not be free. We will be enslaved to something. But if we hold on to Jesus’ teachings, if we indwell them and let them indwell us, then we will truly be Jesus’ followers. We will know the truth and the truth will set us free from the gods of our age.

Indwelling the Word and letting the Word indwell us will set us free.

I have asked Jennifer Seo, a member of this community, to share how this has been true for her. (For Kits, I have asked Jacqueline Brower, a member of this Kits community, how this has been true for her.)

JENNIFER: MT. PLEASANT

A few years ago, I was going through a difficult time in my life. My boyfriend and I had decided to end a relationship. He had a good career and seemed kind. Part of me was hoping that I could have a future with him. But I also had unrest and doubt about the relationship and we broke up. This was a time of sadness. But, it was also a time I had to ask myself what I wanted with my life.
I felt like there was more to life than working as a dental hygienist. And although my relationship didn’t work out, I sensed deep down that even finding the right person was not all there was to life. I sensed that even though marriage was an important part of our lives, it wasn’t everything. It was a time in my life when I didn’t have a clear sense of direction.
As I thought about my future, I felt lost, worried and afraid.
During this time, I often asked God,
“Where do I go from here?”
“Who am I and what is my life about?”
“Where are you and why are you not speaking to me?”
At the same time, I did set aside some time for God every morning.
I meditated on the Word and prayed.
Some days I didn’t feel like praying or reading the Word.
But I made an effort to spend time with God and I began to see that He has answered the questions I had through His Word. And slowly and gradually the Word of God started to free me from my fear and worry.
When I wanted to know where I should go from here, the Word of God taught me to look to God for guidance. Jeremiah 29:11 says, “For I know the plans I have for you.”…”plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”
As I meditated on that verse, I came to believe that God will guide me.
When I wanted to know where God was, God reminded me through the Word that He is with me. And that He is in control of my life and future.
He spoke to me through Psalm 127: 1: “ Unless the Lord builds the house, its builders labor in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchmen stand guard in vain.”
And when I wanted to know who I am and what my life is about, God spoke to me through many verses about this question, but I want to share this one with you.
It’s John 15:5. 5 "I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.”
I came to realize where my fear and worry came from. I didn’t know where I was going in my life’s journey; I was like a person lost in darkness. I felt afraid and worried because I didn’t know what lay ahead of me.
But to me, the Word of God has been like light in the darkness. And God has indeed guided me thus far.
There are still uncertainties about my future. But I know who is in control of my future; God is, not me.
When I didn’t walk with God wholeheartedly, the future was something I was afraid of.
But knowing that God holds my future and trusting that He will guide me every step of the way, I have freedom and peace.
Though life is still full of challenges, I look forward to spending time with God daily and meditating on the Word of God, who is in control of my future.
JACKIE BROWER: KITS

The rain had finally let up and I was sitting in a coffee shop on a February day reading the Voice of Jesus by Gordon Smith. I was at a point of transition: wondering if I should go back to school for a Master’s degree, or join staff with InterVarsity at UBC. InterVarsity is a Christian ministry that helps introduce university students to way of Jesus Christ. In order to work with UBC students. I was intimidated by raising my own salary and committing three years of my young life to student ministry. In his book, Gordon talked about ways to soften ourselves to the voice of Jesus. I was reading about holy indifference, which is coming to a place where we are willing to have God do whatever He pleases in our life. I closed the book and said to God, “Okay. I’m ready. Whatever you want. It could be anything. Anything at all. Let me know.” I then got up, walked out the door and started praying as I walked down the streets of Kitsilano.

A biologist by training, I noticed some new flowers popping up in soggy grass patches: escapees from the neighbourhood gardens. I reflected the passage in the Bible that talks about the lilies of the field and sensed God saying to me, “Seek first my kingdom and all these things will be given to you.” I felt peace flow through my anxious indecision. I knew God would take care of me if I responded to his call. I was specifically thinking about how He would take care of my finances and basic needs. But, I still did not know what I was supposed to do. God drew me back to the purple flowers and as I examined them I started thinking about how I desired to be like one of the flowers: rooted in Jesus and growing up to be a person of beauty, who could cast seeds and see communities of beauty sprout up in unexpected places. This desire had come from meditating the seed parables throughout the year. God said to me, “Okay. Where can you learn to do that?” I knew I could probably learn how to grow up and cast seeds in many places, but from my experience and present options, I decided working with InterVarsity could be a good choice. Finally, I felt free of my indecision.

God used Matt. 6 to free me from my anxiety around financial security. He also used nature along with the seed parables to free me from my anxious indecision.

As I went on to fundraise, I experienced God’s provision as people gave in unbelievable ways. I was raised in a home that valued financial security and independence. I also am naturally thrifty, and a little tight-fisted with my money. But, with the peace and freedom that God gave me through his words in Matthew 6 (Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness and all these things will be given to you as well) I was able to step out in faith. In one summer, God provided $40 000 so I could start on campus right away. $40 000. Just imagine thinking about trying to raise that in 4 months so that you can do the job you are doing. God is amazing and his people are generous. I feel a new freedom when it comes to money. I don’t have to hold onto my money as tightly and I actually enjoy being generous now, rather than feeling like I am obliged to give.

(Respond to both stories)

Jennifer said that after she and her ex-boyfriend broke up, “I sensed that deep down even finding the right person was not all there was to life.” Though initially she felt lost and worried about the future after the break up with her boyfriend, but because God’s Word so richly indwells her, she felt like her anxiety and worries were blown away, and she sensed that she was assured from Jeremiah 29:11 that whether she was single or married in the future, God had a good plan for her. No longer lost, but freed by abiding in the word. She was freed from the pervasive message of her culture that you have to be with someone in order to be someone. The Word of God freed her from that bondage. And for other people who have always been afraid of being “tied down” in a relationship, the Word of God has freed them to enter into a long-term, committed, faithful relationship. The Word can free us to be single or in a relationship with a partner.


Jacqueline Brower, a member of our Kits community, which is a wonderful, smaller community that meets at Kits High School, recently graduated from UBC, shared about how she had been anxious about her financial future. She described how she had been raised in a home which valued financial security and independence. She said she naturally a little tight-fisted with her money, but she shared how God’s words, specifically the words in Matthew 6: “Seek first my Kingdom and all these things will be added to you as well” freed her to step out in faith and to pursue a vocation that isn’t financially lucrative, but would enable her to use her gifts to serve people. No longer lost in worry about money, but freed through abiding in word.

(Money, of course, and status in a company are such a powerful force in our lives.

Nathan Hatch, the president of Wake Forrest University, says, “A disproportionate number of young adults are trying to cram into the fields of finance, corporate law and specialized medicine because of the high salaries and the aura of success these professions now bring. Students, for the most part, are not asking the larger questions of meaning and purpose. They are not asking what job will help people flourish, but what job will help me flourish financially. As a result there is a high degree of frustration as people are unfulfilled in their work.”

The Word of God has helped free Jacqueline from this slavery that makes you do what you are made to do just because you a slave to money or prestige.)

God’s Word not only frees us from the need to serve the gods of our age, whether they are money, sex, approval, power, success, the Word also frees us to become a certain kind of person. We have a blog at Tenth to give people an opportunity to respond to this sermon series to describe their experience with the world.

On our blog, this week a woman in our community wrote this story about her husband:

Watching the impact of the Word. I am an observer – we are all observers of those close to us and as I have been married now for almost 30 years I have watched, seen and experienced much of my husband. I know his little quirks, I know his strength, his weaknesses, I know where he has grown and where he has got stuck. I can say with all honesty that I do not think that anything has had as much impact on him as his daily quiet times with the Lord. Not in a huge dramatic way where he gets up from his quiet times transformed or glowing but in a slow steady softening of character and grace. He is beginning to look more like the Jesus I meet in the Bible – wise, gentle, kind, compassionate. Now he could never say this – first he doesn’t see it the way I do and it would be most arrogant to write personally of this sort of thing but I as his wife, have observed it and say it not to make him proud but to encourage others to go after the same faithful walk with the Lord. Daily now for well over 20 years my husband has first thing in the morning sat himself before the Lord, reading his Bible, journaling on what he has read and learned, and praying offering our kids, his work, me, our family and friends up to the Lord. He has read through the Bible in a year many times now and the themes of Scripture have made their way into his very being. Over that time the Lord has just worked things through with him molding his character, giving him wisdom and insight that he would not otherwise have, giving guidance and instruction, softening his rough edges and loving him in ways that no human can do. God has encouraged him and he has grown to love and depend on His heavenly Father. We have often said that we hear many people at the end of their life with regrets of what they did or did not do, we have never heard of anyone who regretted that they had spent too much time with God in his Word – it is worth every minute – one day at a time.

It frees us from the idols of our age; free to know God and his Son Jesus and to become like him.

The wife in the blog says the Word has softened her husband’s rough edges. As a result of the cumulative effect of God’s Word, he has become a person more like Jesus Christ. Freed by abiding in the word.

Psalm 119:32 says:

I have run in the path of your commands, for you have set my heart free.”
Jesus in John 8:31-32:

"If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. 32 Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free."


The only tragedy in life is to not become a saint, by saint I mean one who reflects the integrity, courage, and love of Jesus Christ because this path has been opened to us through the portal of God’s Word which enables us to indwell Jesus Christ and to have Christ indwell us.

It is not a tragedy, as Jennifer pointed out, to not be married; (or as Jacqueline shared at Kits to not be in a career that earns you heaps of money). It is not a tragedy to experience a special suffering, or to even fail in some way, because the Word tells us that if we are called by God, he can take all of these things, our suffering and even our sin, and work them together for his good purposes in us.

The only tragedy in life is to not become a saint, because this path has been open to us by the living Word which leads us to go deeper into a life-changing relationship with Jesus.

Throughout this series I have said whatever we do repeatedly has the power to shape us. If we are in the daily habit of spending time with God, even if is not marked with ground-breaking insight or deep emotion; even if there days when it feels perfunctory or sleepy, this practice will shape us. If we are regularly in the Word and let the Word lead us to Jesus, as has been true for Jennifer and Jacqueline, and for this man described by his wife, we can become more like Jesus.

As we close this series Practicing the Presence: Meeting Jesus through Scripture and Prayer, practice suggests this is something we do. So, I would like to invite you to join us in our movement to commit to spending time in Scripture and prayer for at least 15 minutes a day 4 days a week from now until June, which roughly follows the school year… Allow this practice to enable you to abide in the Word, in Jesus, and allow yourself to be set free.

There is a response card in your program that I invite you take in your hand or reach in the pew rack in front of you. If you don’t have a card, please raise your hand and keep it up and an usher will move toward you. If you sense God calling you in this direction and would like to respond, please take a moment now to fill out the response card and put it in the offering basket as it goes by in just a moment.

(read it)

Earlier this week the board of elders and our staff filled out these cards. Your actually filling out this card will encourage us because we are planning to take some of these cards to create a collage as a way to artistically remind ourselves of the commitment that we have made.

Offering: We offer our tithes and our time as a way of saying we offer ourself to you.

Hidden in the Heart 120910

Series: Practicing the Presence: Meeting Jesus through Scripture and Prayer
Psalms M3: Sermon Notes (10 09 12)
Title: Hidden in the Heart
Big Idea: When we hide God’s Word in our heart, we experience purity and peace.
Props: EPIC, soil, water can, cloth, dye, water
Text: Psalm 119: 9-11
I used to work for a corporation in Tokyo, Japan. As I the rode subway to work, I saw that people who were fortunate enough to get a seat were sleeping. Perpetually overworked and notoriously sleep-deprived, Japanese “salary-men” (corporate soldiers) try to catnap wherever they can. Sometimes in order to push through their drowsiness at work they will take energy drinks: little cans in shape of a bullet so packed with caffeine, vitamins, and herbal supplements that boost your energy level. I remember one my colleagues saying, “If I take an energy drink I can work for 48 hours straight… then I need to sleep for 24 hours.” When I asked how come these drinks aren’t imported to North America? They’re illegal there—banned by the Food and Drug Administration.
Well, North America now has a kind energy drink of its own—Red Bull. Red will give you a boost, but then you’ll find your energy plummeting too.
We know from experience that what we eat and drink affects our energy levels.
And so it is in the spiritual realm. What we eat and drink—what we ingest in terms of spiritual food influences--determines how much spiritual energy and vitality we have.
Psalm 119 is by far the longest of all the psalms. The psalm is a poem organized around the consonants of the Hebrew alphabet and contains 176 verses.
When Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German Lutheran pastor who served as a leader of the underground resistance movement against Hitler in World War II, was a student, he had a professor who said that Psalm 119 was the most boring of all the psalms--it was too repetitive. But it became a favourite psalm of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s, as the repeated emphasis on the Word of God drew him to meditate more deeply upon the Word, to pray over it, and receive strength from God through it.
The central theme of Psalm 119 is that the Torah, which means God’s instruction, God’s revelation, or God’s Word, is the primary way in which God speaks to human beings.
In Psalm 119 we see that one of the main ways that we express our love for God is by keeping God’s Word.
In Psalm 119:2 we read:
Blessed are those who keep his statutes and seek him with all their heart---
In Psalm 119:34 the psalmist asks:
Give me understanding, so that I may keep your law and obey it with all my heart.
But in order for the Word of God to be obeyed, these words must become part of us.2x They must be collected in the storehouse of our heart and mind.
In Psalm 119:9-11 we read:
9 How can those who are young keep their way pure?
By living according to your word.
10 I seek you with all my heart;
do not let me stray from your commands.
11 I have hidden your word in my heart
that I might not sin against you.
Hiding God’s Word in our heart means that we are not simply scanning the Scriptures like we would a newspaper for information or reading a textbook where we are simply seeking to gain knowledge in order to pass an exam or for interesting facts like we might read a webpage.
Hiding God’s Word in our heart means that we allow the Word to become part of us. Mary Lum (hold EPIC up) one of our board members in the September issue of EPIC shared how she takes time to soak in Scripture, just like new soil is soaked with water…
It means we let the word of God colour us like dye (use cloth and dye here).
Part of the way that we allow ourselves to soak in Scripture is by taking a brief passage from the Psalms or the Gospels, and meditating on it.
A couple of weeks ago I talked about how now that Joey, my son, sleeps through my rising, I wake up early, I go downstairs and I sit down to a very simple breakfast. I take my iphone and begin to listen to a selection of Scripture. Then I simply go for a walk in Queen Elizabeth Park which is not far from our house, or go to the beach. When I come to a passage that speaks to me, I will listen to it over and over again.
I have actually been going through 1 Kings, and I was impressed by God’s Word to King Jeroboam. He said, “I tore the kingdom away from the house of David and gave it you, but you have not been like my servant David, who kept my commands and followed me with all his heart, doing only what was right in my eyes.”
It is a brief verse, but this week I just kept going back to that one verse in 1Kings 14:8 and hitting the rewind arrow on my phone, listening to these words: “My servant David kept my commands and followed me with all his heart, doing only what is right in my eyes. My servant David kept my commands and followed me with all his heart...” I listened to it over and over …praying that this would be true for me… that I would follow God with all my heart.
One of the ways that we soak in Scripture is by taking a small passage and meditating on it, going over it and over it, holding it for a day, or even a week, or more. But our meditation of the Word is not for just that present moment, but it is something that we engage in so that we can store God’s Word in our heart for the future, as well.
William Thierry, a Benedictine Monk a Benedictine Monk who lived in the twelfth century, in his Golden Epistle addresses this matter. He says, “Some part of your reading should, each day, be stored in the stomach of memory enough to be digested. At times it should be brought up again for frequent rumination…”
Three weeks ago we saw how the blessed person, the person with holy luck, delights in the law of God and meditates on it day and night.
How is this possible? It is possible if we store the Word in our heart by pondering it, praying it, and even by memorizing it. Knowing something by memory doesn’t necessarily mean you are going to internalize it, but if you memorize the Word of God, you have the opportunity to access it and to pray it throughout the day.
From the time of Plato when writing was becoming more common in the world, he made the observation that writing was going to destroy memory. As soon as words started being written, oral traditions diminished.

Never has this been more true than in our day. I saw Eric Schmidt, the president of Google, interviewed by Charlie Rose. Schmidt said that with the internet there is less and less need for kids to memorize things like the names of capital cities as part of their education. True, but if the only means to recall something is to Google it or look it up in a book, we forfeit the gift of being able to internalize something and make it part of us.

Craig Erickson, an actor in our community, memorized Jesus' Sermon on the Mount for a performance. He described how it deeply impacted him--for example as the sermon became “part of him” he found himself less inclined to judge others and more willing to empathize with others. The Sermon would not have had the same impact for him if he had just read it as yet another script for possible acting gig, but memorizing it and reciting it again and again made the Word part of him and this in turn formed him.

When we memorize Scripture, we give ourselves the gift of being able to retrieve it, to meditate on it, to pray over it....

Extraordinary. I went on my first mission trip, as I completed undergraduate studies back in 1989. I was going to then Communist Romania which was under the iron-fisted rule of Nicolae Ceausescu. I remember driving up to the border in a Toyota station wagon, my heart pounding, as I was going to attempt to smuggle contraband Bibles, theological books and medicine across the Iron Curtain. I remember the border guard dressed in military fatigues, armed with a machine gun, announcing that he was going to inspect our trunk which I knew was full of Bibles and theological books. I held my breath and prayed. He miraculously got distracted. He told us to move on.
During that summer filled with harrowing adventures, I memorized Psalm 139. Let me recite part of it which I prayed again and again that summer:
Psalm 139
1 You have searched me, LORD,
and you know me.
2 You know when I sit and when I rise;
you perceive my thoughts from afar.
3 You discern my going out and my lying down;
you are familiar with all my ways.
4 Before a word is on my tongue
you, LORD, know it completely.
5 You hem me in behind and before,
and you lay your hand upon me.
6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,
too lofty for me to attain.
7 Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
8 If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
9 If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
if I settle on the far side of the sea,
10 even there your hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast.
Since that summer, I have regularly prayed the words of this Psalm—especially when I have doubted God’s presence. Memorizing God’s word is a way to hide it in our heart. The word “remember” comes from the root word “re” and “member” and the remembering something re-members us. It puts it back together.
In Psalm 119:9 we read: “How can we keep a young person pure? By living according to your word.” CHECK
And then v.11: “I have hidden my word in your word in my heart so that I might not sin against you.”
Sometimes we hide God’s Word in our heart by memorizing it literally, like I did with Psalm 139. But we can also hide God’s Word in our heart by becoming so familiar with the storyline that it simply becomes part of us.
Near the end of the Book of Genesis we read about the story of Jacob’s son Joseph, who is my son’s namesake. We named our son Joey for the most part after Joseph in the Bible. (The fact that I really liked Joe Montana, the former quarterback of the San Francisco 49ers was a bonus.) I have read the story of Joseph over and over again, and it never ceases to move me. Even though I have not memorized the whole narrative, it is in my heart. It is something I carry around with me.
When I was living in another city, I recall how a woman invited herself over to my house for dinner. She said, “Don’t worry. I’ll bring dinner for both of us.” I knew from a mutual friend she was interested in me and had asked my friend how serious I was with my current girlfriend, who was living in a different city. When she invited herself over to my house, I hemmed and hawed. Being too much of a people pleaser, I agreed that she could come over for dinner, as long as we also invited another mutual friend of ours. When the evening that we had decided on rolled around, this person who had invited herself over showed up alone. I asked, “Where is our other friend?” This person said, “She couldn’t make it.” I felt like I should not have had her come to my home; we should have been met up at a restaurant. At dinner, I must have seemed tense. “Don’t worry,” she said, “I am not going to bite you.” Later that evening, she expressed how she wanted to be with me, but my current girlfriend was standing in her way. She said, “I know I may sound somewhat forward, but I don’t get turned down by guys that I want.” I said, “I guess this is going your first experience because I am turning you down.”
I made a few hints for her to go home, by saying things like, “It’s Kinda getting late. Don’t you have to work tomorrow?” She ignored the hints. And then around midnight, she began yawning, and saying, “It is getting kinda late. Do you mind if I stay the night?”
Yes. No—you can’t.
Looking back at our interactions there were times when I intuited a line was being slowly crossed. When this woman leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek, which normally would not a big deal, but I felt a line was being crossed. I sense this is wrong, but there’s also honestly a part of me that wants to cross the line.
What helped in that situation to resist indulging in some kind of sinful compromise, what gave me a guard rail (to use KPs phrase from last Sunday) were the words of Joseph, when he had an opportunity to sleep with his boss’s wife, and he declined, by saying, “How could I do such a wicked thing and sin against God” (Genesis 39:9). That verse is in my heart. I recite it to myself and I pray it silently, and it gives me strength.
Having God’s Word in our heart can keep us from sin—the temptation to be unfaithful to partner.
But there are other temptations, as well, that may not seem so obvious. Henri Nouwen, in his book, The Life of the Beloved, (HOLD Up) says, "Over the years, I have come to realize that the greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity, or power, but self-rejection. Success, popularity, and power can indeed present a great temptation, but their seductive quality often comes from the way they are part of the much larger temptation to self-rejection… Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the "Beloved."
Sometimes we hide God’s Word in our heart by memorizing the Scripture, by meditating on it, and on rare occasions we may receive the Word directly by the Holy Spirit, as my wife Sakiko did years ago. In these ways we can hide God’s Word in our heart.
When her mother was pregnant with her, Sakiko’s father had expressed clearly he wanted a boy and not a girl and was disappointed that he had a girl. Then growing up, Sakiko’s father was so often absent from home because of his work. She grew up with a sense that she wasn’t wanted by her father.
Then out of the blue on day, on July 12, 1994, Sakiko had a sense that God was naming her Isaac. Sounds strange, I know. She didn’t get any explanation as to why she was being named Isaac. But, as she reflected on this and prayed over it, she felt God was saying to her, “You are a desired promised child.”
For 16 years, she has kept that word from God in her heart and it has helped her realize how much she is loved by God. Later she discovered that the word was not unique. Paul, in Gal 4:28, says those who belong to Christ are the children of promise. We are Isaac.
How do we hide God’s Word in our heart? By letting it become part of us, either by memorizing Scripture, or letting it become so familiar, soaked, to us that it guides us… As Sakiko did, pondering it in our heart.
We have been in a series called Practicing the Presence: Meeting Jesus through Scripture and Prayer.
Part of what the word “practice” implies is that there is discipline involved. There is something we have to actually do, practice; something we actually have to do.
How do we engage in a life of memorizing, meditating, and mulling over Scripture? One way to prepare for this kind of life is by cultivating a certain level of silence and solitude in our lives.
A few weeks ago when I spoke on Psalm 1, I cited William Deresiewicz. A number of people and asked me for the quote after the sermon. I know that many of you were away. So let me re-give part of that quote here:
In William Deresiewicz’s speech to the freshman class at West Point Academy he warned them that they would not be able to think deeply about issues if they were constantly being bombarded by Facebook messages, Twitter tweets, fiddling with their Ipod, watching something on YouTube. Then he said: “Here’s the problem with Facebook and Twitter and even the New York Times. When you expose yourself to those things, especially in the constant way that people do now, you are constantly bombarding yourself with a stream of other people’s thoughts. You are marinating yourself in the conventional wisdom: in other people’s reality; for others, not for yourself. You are creating a cacophony in which it is impossible to hear your own voice [or God’s voice].”
If you want to hear more about this, you can download the message from our website from Psalm 1: Eat This Book.
As I said in that message, it is not a sin to use social media. We use Facebook and Twitter here at Tenth, as you know, to stay in touch. But if we are constantly exposing ourselves to social media, we will find ourselves marinating in other people’s thoughts and in the conventional wisdom of the day. We will find our minds immersed in a muddy, steady stream of trivia and trash, and we will not be able to hear our own voice—what the Quakers call Inner Light or God’s voice.
If you can’t memorize because your mind isn’t sufficiently alert, consider fasting….
Certain people, including pregnant women, young children, and people with diabetes should not fast from food, but if you are able to fast from food, you’ll find it frees up time for you to be in the Word and pray. When we fast, we realize how much of any given day is consumed by cooking, eating, and cleaning up after meals, and we find we have more space for God.
Fasting will help to clear your mind and opens you up in a unique way to God. I typically fast for a 24 hour period once a week (I begin my fast after dinner and then I skip breakfast and lunch the next day and break the fast with dinner). In the summer I may do a 3-day fast. Fasting may sound austere, but you can learn to love fasting. During Lent this year my wife said only half-jokingly, “You can’t fast--you enjoy it too much… If you want to give something up for Lent, give up fasting.” Contrary to what people assume, fasting can be a delight. If your body is not accustomed to fasting, at first you will feel hunger pains and physically weak. As you progress in a fast, you will also feel a sticky coating on your tongue—a sign that you detoxifying and likely some fatigue too. Typically in the second or third day of a fast your hunger will subside. As you become experienced with fasting you will feel an energy lift and clarity that will help you meditate on and memorize Scripture.
So to hide God’s word in our heart, we can take time for relative silence (unplug), we can fast, and look to Jesus who is the embodiment of all the wisdom of the Word. In the Gospel of John we read in the beginning was “the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God and the Word became flesh.”
You would think that if there ever was a person who didn’t really need to be in Scripture because he was so spiritually attuned to God, he was the embodiment of the Word, it would be Jesus; and yet he, more than any other person who has ever lived, was soaked in God’s Word. We read in the Gospels, when Jesus spent 40 days and nights in the wilderness, being tempted by Satan.
And each time he was tempted, how did Jesus answer? He answered by quoting the Word of God, specifically God’s Word in the Book of Deuteronomy, a book he was obviously meditating and chewing over. When the Devil said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread,” Jesus quotes Scripture, Deuteronomy 7:3, “It is written ‘People do not live on bread alone alone, but on every word comes from the mouth of God’.” When Jesus was asked to be spectacular and throw himself from the temple, he quotes Scripture, Deuteronomy 6:16 “It is written : ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test’.” When Satan offers Jesus all the kingdoms of the world by saying “if you will only bow down to me,” Jesus responds with Scripture and quotes Deuteronomy 6:13, “It is written: ‘Worship the LORD your God and serve him only’.” The Word, the Word, the Word.
The Word was alive in Jesus’ heart.
According to Dr. Roger Nicole, the New Testament scholar, when we look at the Gospels, 10% of all Jesus said came directly from Scripture (what we call the Hebrew Scriptures).
Jesus had God’s Word hidden in his heart. It kept him from sinning. He followed it perfectly. And as a result, as a perfect ,sinless human being, he was able to represent us, before God, he was able to offer himself as a perfect sacrifice for our sins on the cross so that we could be forgiven and reconciled to God.
If we meditate on this, on the word made flesh in Jesus, and if we receive the forgiveness that is possible for us because of the work of Christ, the work of the Spirit, then not only is it right for us to respond by following the Word, but we will have the power to respond by living these words, “I too will keep your Word in my heart so that I might not sin against you.”
We can say, “LORD Jesus, as you kept the Word for me, so that you could be a perfect sacrifice for my sins, I will receive your forgiveness, and I, in turn, will keep the Word in my heart. I will follow the way of God and offer myself as a living holy sacrifice and pleasing to you.”
Let’s pray:
Do you want to follow God’s revealed will for you? His Word? You can do his by turning to Christ for the first time or in act of returning to him. In his presence you can say, “Forgive me for not keeping God’s Word, fill with your Spirit. As you kept God’s Word for me, help me to keep God’s word for you. Amen
Next Sunday our 5 week series Practicing the Presence: Meeting Jesus through Scripture and Prayer ends. So, next Sunday I would like to invite you to us join us in our movement to commit to spending time in Scripture and prayer for at least 15 minutes a day, four days a week as way to meet Jesus.