The Sermon in a Nutshell: September 13

This week's sermon was titled “God's People Break the Deal.” As we've been finding ourselves in God's story, I've tried to paint a picture of that story using broad brush strokes. In our first two weeks, we covered all of God's story from the beginning of time up through the call of Abraham when God made a deal with him almost 4,000 years ago. This week I tried to cover the rest of the Old Testament story from God's deal with His people through Moses up until the time when their rejection of that deal had become apparent in the 6th century BC. We learned this week that when we find ourselves in God's story, we have a choice. When God made a deal with His people in the Old Testament, He gave them a choice: either they could choose to obey His instruction and find life or they could choose to turn away from God by disobedience and face death (Deuteronomy 28; 30:11-20). Sadly, as we looked at the way the rest of God's story unfolded in the Old Testament, we saw His people consistently and persistently choosing disobedience. All this disobedience came to a head when Babylon invaded Judah, destroyed the city of Jerusalem and the Temple, and carried most of the Israelites away into captivity in the year 586 BC. Although this was a very dark point in God's story, the light of hope still burned because God is a faithful God. His people continued to look to Him to act in His plans to redeem His creation. This redemption came when God came to live amongst us as Jesus Christ, fully human and fully God. You see, Jesus, being fully human, also had a choice when He found Himself in God's story. Whereas Adam and Eve chose to disobey God by eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and whereas God's chosen people, Israel, had chosen to disobey Him by worshiping false gods and oppressing the poor, Jesus chose to obey God by living a life without sin and submitting to death on a Roman cross. It was and is through this death and subsequent resurrection that God brought salvation and redemption to all of His creation through Jesus' obedience. Now today, we too have a choice when we find ourselves in God's story. Jesus tells us in the Sermon on the Mount that we can either enter through the narrow gate, walk the narrow road of obedience and find life, or we can enter through the broad gate, walk the wide road of disobedience and find destruction (Matthew 7:13-14). By God's grace, may we all enter through the narrow gate and walk the narrow road!