Deuteronomy 28 and the Sermon on the Mount: or Sermon Work

So I'm laboring to give birth to another sermon this week. Sermon writing for me is a week long process. I don't know if it is because I'm a perfectionist, or because my attention span is shrinking exponentially as my age increases, or what. I'm hoping maybe that by writing a little bit down here it will help me to shape what I want to say this Sunday.

We are currently preaching through a series titled: Finding Ourselves in God's Story. My intention here was to give a brief overview of the overarching story told in and through Holy Scripture. We began by looking at the Creation and humanity's rebellion in Genesis 1-3. That sermon was called, appropriately enough: The Story Begins. The main idea was that when we find ourselves in God's story, we find ourselves both broken and mended. Then we had a sermon on Genesis 12 called "God Makes a Deal." The main idea there was that when we find ourselves in God's story, we play A major role but we don't play THE major role. This week's sermon is going to finish us up in the Old Testament so that next week we can look at the Incarnation and the following week finish with the last two chapters of the book of Revelation.

Now this week's sermon is using Deuteronomy 28 as a jumping off point to cover basically the rest of the Old Testament (since in a sense the rest of the OT is a footnote on DT 28). I'm calling it "God's people break the deal" and I think the main idea is going to be that when we find ourselves in God's story, we have to follow God's script. I'm thinking I will try to run with the metaphor of Torah (leaning more on the sense of instruction rather than law), as God's script for His redemptive intention for His people. Without coming across as anti-Semitic, I'm going to illustrate the way the rest of the OT tells the story of God's people repeatedly failing to be redemptive instruments because of their persistant refusal to follow God's script.

I'm trying to be careful about always making a connection to the New Testament with every Old Testament sermon I preach. I'm not so sure that it is a cardinal sin to fail to do so, but it is helpful to show people the way the two parts of their Bible are connected. So this week my first thought was to tie the story of Israel's repeated failures in to the call to repentance, first through the prophetic injunction to shoov from their wicked ways and turn back to God, and then through John the Baptist and Jesus' call to repent. But the more I think about it, the less I like it. I mean, I'm a big fan of repentance and I'm trying to cultivate a lifestyle of repentance, but homiletically, I'm just not feeling the groove.

So now what I think I'm going to do is make the New Testament connection to the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7. I think what I'm going to do is compare and contrast Moses presenting the two ways to Isreal (obedience leading to blessing or disobedience leading to curses) with Jesus's injunction to enter through the narrow gate which leads to life rather than the broad gate which leads to destruction. In terms of comparrison (and I know there are a plethora of interpretations on this Sermon as well as a wide range of opinions as to how it relates to the Christian life), Moses presented Israel with an Instruction for how to live as God's chosen people whom God intended to use as His redemptive instrument and Jesus basically is calling God's chosen people (who now are no longer determined by ethnicity), back to the heart of God's intention in giving His Instruction through Moses.

But I need to wrestle with the contrast here too because the Incarnation of Christ changed everything forever. So I'm thinking of the way Paul, when talking about God's Instruction, said this Instruction was given to lead people to Christ, almost like the way a babysitter watches over a child (Galatians 3:24). But then Christ Himself points us right back to God's Instruction when He says that He didn't come to abolish the Law but to fulfill it (Mt 5:17) and that our righteousness needs to surpass that of the Scribes and Pharisees (Mt 5:20). I don't think what Christ is talking about here is some kind of Protestant concept of imputed righteousness because in the rest of this Sermon He is calling us to a higher standard of righteousness than mere outward conformity to a set of rules.

I guess the thing that is becoming clear to me as I type all this out is that God's intention to redeem His creation does not change from the Old to the New Testaments. In the Old Testament, God called Abraham and his descendants to be His instrument of this redemption. While ultimately that redemption was going to come through Abraham's Seed (singular), that is to say, Christ, God also gave Instruction to Israel as to how they must live if they were to be His redemptive agents. In the New Testament, Christ comes and fulfills the Old Testament by living a life of complete obedience as the Second Adam and the personification of Israel, and then He extends the Kingdom invitation to all peoples, thus establishing the Church. Now it is the Church, as God's chosen people and filled with His Holy Spirit, that is God's redemptive instrument in the world. But just like Israel was presented with two ways to live in Deuteronomy 28, so too are those who accept the call to follow Christ. Either we live a lifestyle of repentance which manifests itself in good works and by which God brings redemption to the world around us, or we live a hypocritical life of double standards and outward conformity to arbitrary rules which will lead us to our own destruction.

Well that helps. There is so much more I would like to cram in to this though! I want to emphasize the importance of our being created in God's image and called to conform to the image of Christ in every sermon! I also want to explicitly include the Trinity in every sermon! If only we had 3 hours to do church on Sunday......

A lovely jaunt in the park

Alison and I decided to load up in the car Saturday and go see what we could see. Turned out, we wound up seeing Giant City State Park in lovely Southern Illinois so we decided to go for a walk. I was glad she urged me to do this, as my plans for the day had revolved around lying around on the floor and letting the dogs lick my face and then maybe reading a chapter or two out of a book. So we loaded up our pooches in the back of the car and hit the road!

That's Charlie on the right, he's our little beagle/blue heeler mix. Dusty is on the left, he's a German Shephard/Collie mix, but don't ask me what kind of Collie. Our little boys love going for rides in the car. Charlie spends most of his time with his head out the window but Dusty isn't as brave so he only pokes his head out once in a while.

Most of the time Dusty just lays down in the back seat
















Anyhow, we made our way down south of Carbondale towards Giant City State Park. We got turned around trying to find the place and found this instead


But then we found the road to the park. I could tell just by seeing the road that we were going to be in for a treat!



So we finally found Giant City State Park but we weren't sure where to go from there. As good fortune, or Providence (depending on your worldview) would have it, there was a visitor's center to help direct us. This sign was posted on the door of the visitor's center. I wonder what, or more properly who, led the people in charge to post this sign. We've all seen the "No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service" signs, but how many people each year really go out to enjoy nature without pants? I didn't notice anyone running around sans pants so I guess the sign did its job.


Once we got in to the park itself, we decided to go hiking on a mile long trail that was rated "moderate" on the challenge scale. The effort we made hiking up hill paid out huge dividends in the beautiful rock formations we got to enjoy.







All in all, Alison and I decided we enjoy hiking in Southern Illinois very much. It's nice to have a state fair down the road to remind me of just how far I've got to go and then to have such a beautiful refuge down the road the other direction to remind me of what I have to look forward to :)








Plus, hiking in the park with our dogs was a great way to wear them out!

Everyone has fun at the fair!

Well I've never lived just down the road from an Illinois state fair before. It used to be that we would have to drive 45 minutes to get to the Illinois state fair in Springfield. We'd go every once in a while, mainly just to bask in the glory of the butter cow. I mean really, how many people live in such a great and glorious state to inspire a cow made of butter? But even the grandeur of the butter cow wasn't enough to keep us coming back to the fair year after year once I got into high school and decided I was much too cool for any of that business anymore.

It's been about 10 years since I've been to an Illinois State fair. But just a couple weeks ago I moved to a little town in southern Illinois which just happens to be about 15 miles from Du Quoin, the home of the Southern Illinois state fair. I hadn't really intended to attend the fair, even though it was just down the street, but between my sweet wife asking to go and the allure of trying a deep fried snickers bar, reluctantly we went to the fair last night.

State fairs, as a rule, are not edifying places. At least not in a positive way (unless you count the guy with the tent asking if you were "100%" sure you would go to heaven [i thought of starting a conversation with him about the epistemological presuppositions necessary for 100% certainty and modernity's failure to adequately support said presuppositions, but that would have been mean of me]). However, state fairs are GREAT places for people watching! It started for us as soon as we pulled up to the gate. I don't know where these people live through the year. Sometimes I think they must just materialize ex nihilo any time there is a fair or stock car race. Anyway, I spent the next 2 1/2 hours observing the oddities of state fair anthropology. Then we ate some fried snickers and oreos and went home.

State fairs are not edifying places. At least not in a positive way. But at least for me, state fairs are edifying places in the way that they bring me to repentance. I like to think I do an ok job of not judging people but that delusion is shattered when I plunge myself into the mass of unwashed, toothless, mouth-breathing hillbillies that is the Southern Illinois state fair.

I heard a story the other day on a podcast about an atheist who went to a monastery and demanded that the abbot show him God. The abbot then went and found the shabbiest monk in the monastery (I think the guy had spent some time working at a state fair before joining the monastery), and brought him to the atheist. The abbot said, "here you go, this is God." The atheist wasn't buying this at all. In fact, he grew angry with the abbot because he thought the abbot was toying with him. But the abbot responded to the atheist, "If you cannot see God in this shabby monk, you will not see Him anywhere."

Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner.