Grace to you and
peace from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ. Amen
There are a lot
of people out there that want to be Moses for us.
And there are a
lot of people out there that would claim to be Elijah.
But only one
Jesus.
Only one Jesus.
Moses gave us the
Law, the teachings of God.
Elijah was the
great prophet.
And in their
spirit there are those who would like to be givers of the Law, or to speak
words of exhortation and warning, as the prophets did.
To be a Christian
is to live under the freedom of the Gospel.
As Paul writes in
Galations 5: “For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not
submit again to a yoke of slavery.”
And then again:
For you were called to freedom, brothers and
sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self- indulgence,
but through love become slaves to one another. 14 For the whole law is summed
up in a single commandment, "You shall love your neighbor as
yourself." 15 If, however, you bite and devour one another, take care that
you are not consumed by one another.
To walk in the
way of Christ is to walk in the way of love, and to do so in perfect freedom.
Too often we have
lost sight of Jesus, who set us free.
And rather than
live in the freedom of the Gospel we have chosen to pitch our tent with Moses,
high on the mountain.
We hear God’s
word, not as the liberating news that it is, but rather as a master’s demands
that keep us in bondage in slavery.
We hear God’s
word as law.
We hear God’s
word as a never ending list of what we have to do.
Love one another
as I have first loved you.
Love your
neighbor as yourself.
Love.
There is only one
question we need ask in any circumstance and that is what would be loving.
But so many
refuse to leave it as that.
So many want to
make love into a law.
So many would enslave
us once again by rejecting the Gospel and the freedom that is at its core.
One of the most
insidious ways we turn love into a law is when we add the word “tough” to it.
Tough love.
You know how that
goes.
I love you, and
because I love you, I’m going to demand certain things of you for your own
benefit.
Tough love.
I will make you
suffer the consequences of your actions.
I will forbid you
from doing many things, all for your good.
I will seek to
protect you from yourself.
I will be your
Moses.
In the name of
tough love people have been condemned.
In the name of
tough love people have been marginalized and persecuted.
It’s a slippery
slope from “tough love” to hatred, hatred clothed in the language of love the
sinner, hate the sin.
But, for example,
you cannot claim to love a black person at the same time you despise everything
about being black.
Love is the
fulfillment of the law.
And love sets us
free from the demands of the Law.
That’s Jesus.
Love your
neighbor.
Love as I have
loved you.
And the disciples
looked up and “saw no one except Jesus
himself alone”.
Elijah also stood
by Jesus on the mountain.
And there are
many who would follow Elijah and the prophets.
A prophet.
In our world
today a lot of people think of prophets as predictors of the future.
Prophecies
abound.
People think, for
example, that if you just unravel the words of the prophets you will be able to
predict, for example, when the world will come to an end. Many have and they lived to see they were
wrong.
In this vein
people have written books and made millions predicting the end of times.
Hal Lindsey and
the “Late Great Planet Earth” for example.
And the more
recent “Left Behind” series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins.
I am humored by
one thought.
Did these people
invest their earnings from the books in the stock market? Or did they truly believe the world was
coming to an end and not concern themselves with long range investing because
they wouldn’t need it anyway?
Prophecy.
What the prophets
actually did was not so much to predict the future, but to critique the present
and tell of the consequences of people’s behavior.
Theirs was often
a word of warning, but also a word of hope.
The prophets,
like Isaiah for example, would tell the people what they could expect as a
consequence of their actions.
But they also
spoke of the hope that is ours because of a loving and gracious God.
The prophets were
closely aligned with Moses.
Their word of
warning and judgement flowed out of the Law.
The truth of
their words lies in the fact that actions have consequences.
We understand
this, though sometimes we don’t heed those warnings.
Packs of cigarettes
all have warning labels on them.
People still buy
them.
People like me,
during my drinking days, get intoxicated.
The root word of “intoxicated”
is toxin, that is ‘poisonous’.
I’m
finding out about that now.
My ten years of
heavy drinking may have left me with significant neuropathy in my legs, nerves
deadened by the toxicity of the alcohol I consumed.
I heard the
warnings about alcohol, but never thought that it would apply to me.
Well, actions
have consequences, and you just can’t drink as much as I drank without
experiencing the consequences.
That’s the type
of message the prophets preached.
What is the
consequence of your actions.
But where
prophecy goes wrong is regarding our relationship to the Father.
In Second Timothy
it is written:
The saying is sure:
If we have died with him, we will also live
with him;
12 if we endure, we will also reign with
him;
if we deny him, he will also deny us;
13 if we are faithless, he remains faithful—
for he cannot deny himself.
And also, in
Romans:
For I am convinced that neither death, nor
life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor
powers, 39 nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be
able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
When we hear the
prophet’s words and fear the rejection of our God, we have lost sight of Jesus.
We have pitched
our tent on the mountain with Elijah.
We have enslaved
ourselves to the consequences of our actions, both now and for eternity.
But Jesus came and touched them, saying, “Get
up and do not be afraid.” And when they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus
himself alone.
Whether it be Moses,
the giver of the Law, or Elijah the prophet of God, their Words are of no avail
except in as much as they lead us to Jesus, and Jesus alone.
It is the love
that is ours in Christ Jesus that will rule, not only the day, but eternity.
And love sets us
free.
It sets us free
from our bondage to sin and death.
And it sets us
free from the consequence of our actions.
Love, and love
alone, can do that.
May this peace
that passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our
Lord. Amen
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