Sermon Cloud

You Will Be My People and I Will Be Your God

            In our Old Testament text this morning, God speaks to the Hebrew nation through the prophet Moses, declaring, “You will be my people and I will be your God.”  We know that when something is repeated in scripture, that it is important and is being given special emphasis.  God repeats “You will be my people and I will be your God,” a total of five times, so it must be very important.  In fact, this little phrase is the foundation and theme of the whole Bible from Genesis to Revelation.  You will be my people and I will be your God.

            The first time we hear of this relationship is when Abraham is called “God’s friend”[1]  The next time is when God frees Israel from the yoke of slavery in Egypt.  The third time is when Israel is commanded to obey God.  The next time is when Israel has disobeyed God’s commands they are  taken into exile. The last time is when God declares that he is going to restore the fortunes of Israel, giving them back their land and their possessions, not for their sake alone, but because by blessing his people, God will vindicate his holy name, and show the nations that he is LORD over all.

            This is the story of all of God’s people, not just the Jews.  We, too, are called God’s friends and go on to freedom from enslavement to sin; in the midst of our own disobedience and its consequences there is the promise of restoration in Christ Jesus.  You will be my people and I will be your God is our story too.

            And the words are always in the same order.  The sequence is never “I will be your God and you will be my people,” as though the relationship between God and his people is based on hierarchy:  “God is God, so that makes him the Boss and we have to be his people, because what choice do we have?”   “You will be my people” always comes first – and God allows himself to be chosen as God only after the people he has chosen live with him and learn from him and understand what it means to obey him and only then name him as God and LORD of their lives.  As God freely chose us we are also free to choose God.

            We are chosen by God – called out for salvation – but being God’s chosen people demands an obedient response.   But  Jesus said it is a dangerous thing – a thing with eternal consequences - to call him, “Lord, Lord,” and then not do what he commands. 

            Before there was a temple in Jerusalem, part of what obedience looked like for God’s people in ancient Israel was that God directed them to make sacrificial offerings as an act of worship to God.  “There would be a stone altar and each person would bring an offering.  Some people would bring “drink offerings” that they would pour out on the altar until the liquid was gone.  Others would bring grain offerings – sheaves of wheat that they placed on the altar and lit on fire.  Some brought birds or other small animals which were killed and then, like the wheat offerings, consumed in flames. 

            The basic point is that worshippers brought things they valued and left them there.  They gave them up, they gave them away.  The liquid was poured out, the animals were slaughtered, the grain was incinerated.  People gave offerings to God as an act of worship and those objects were simply destroyed.”

            Imagine what would happen on a Sunday morning if we took up the collection and the ushers brought plates full of cash and checks and put them on the communion table and said the prayer of dedication, and then took a lighter and set the money in the plates on fire!  You’d be appalled if your offerings were simply destroyed rather than put to good use.

            But the ancient Israelites found it worthwhile, even necessary, to give away their possessions in sacrificial acts of worship.  It didn’t matter to them what happened to their offering after it was placed on the altar:  The point was putting it on the altar in the first place.[2]

            After awhile, the ancient Israelites forgot that.   Somehow they came to believe that the offering was for paying the priests or feeding the poor or maintaining the temple – none of those are bad uses for an offering, but none of those were the real reason for the offering.  And the same thing happens in 21^st century churches too – we think we take an offering on Sunday morning to pay the church’s bills and to support institutional missions.  Good things – but it isn’t the reason for the offering.  We come here to worship God because we are God’s people, and worship invites us to give up something we value as a sacrificed to God.[3]

            God wants to transform us until we are in the image of his Son, Jesus Christ.  The way he does that, is he gives us life, he gives us provision, he gives us Jesus Christ – sacrificed, on an altar, consumed by death – as an offering on our behalf and for our benefit – Jesus laying  down his life as an act of our worship.   Because one of God’s main attributes is that God is a giver.

            And what being transformed by God into the image of Christ looks like is slowly – but surely – we become obedient givers, obedient lovers, obedient servants.  God wants us to give because it’s good for us, because it is transformative when we place everything in our lives on the altar – not just our money, but everything under the Lordship of Christ – because when we give, we become more like God.

            You will have heard of some traditions that teach that we should give to God because we want to be prospered financially and materially.  It is as though prosperity is the reward from God for our gifts, like it was some kind of divine thank-you note, or frequent flyer points.  But let’s think for a minute about what prosperity looks like in the Kingdom of God.  We need to remember that God’s economy is different from our worldly, materialistic economy.   Prosperity in the Kingdom of God is found in relationships.

            It works this way:  If you are a giver, you will be sensitive to the needs of others.  In conversations you won’t talk about me-me-me all the time, you’ll be a good listener.   If you are an employee, this means that you’re paying attention to your job and the needs of your employer.  You listen to instruction.  In your relationship with your employer you’ll probably get promoted, and you might get a raise.

            If you are a giver with your own business, you’ll want to give your customers the best service you can because you care more about their needs than you do your profit margin.  Don’t you think that lots of people are going to want to do business with a company like that?  Don’t you think your business will  prosper because of your relationships with your customers?

            And if you have lived your life sacrificially, as a giver, and have been there to help others when the chips were down, don’t you think that people are going to come out of the woodwork to help you when times get tough for you?  The reward of giving is in relationships – and sometimes money will come your way from an unexpected (and maybe divine) source, but it will not be because of how much money you gave, it will be because you are also in relationship with God.  You will be my people, and I will be your God.

            That’s why, although giving money to the church and to other institutional ministries is important, giving your heart to Jesus is the first and most important; and out of that grows relational, face-to-face, hands-on works of service to people in the community and halfway around the world on the foreign mission field.   

             Presbyterian pastor and author Alistair Begg has said that we make much of a verbal profession of faith, in which we ask people to convey in a space of 60 seconds during baptism, to serve as evidence to them and all of us that we genuinely belong to Christ.  The church does not baptize on assurance of faith, or assurance of salvation – the church baptizes on profession of faith – we confess publicly what we believe privately.   It is after our baptisms that Jesus wants to see if He is in fact our foundation or if our professions are only skin deep.[4]

            In a few minutes we will experience the joy of Christian baptism when we baptize three members of the Wilson family.  We baptize in obedience to the command of Christ, where he said, “…go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and (here it is):  teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you."[5]  Our obedience to the commands of God is the evidence of our love for Christ.

            When Presbyterians baptize, the members of the congregation are always asked to remember their own baptisms by reviewing and renewing their own professions of faith.  It is our opportunity to consider the quality of our own professions of faith and whether or not Christ is indeed the Lord of our lives.

            Is Jesus the foundation and Lord of my life – my life at work, my life at home?  Is Jesus the Lord of my checkbook? 

            Is Jesus the Lord of my eyes and ears and my mouth, or do I still look at the same filth I looked at before I made my profession of faith, do I still laugh at the same nasty jokes, and do I still do more harm with my mouth than good?  

            Is Jesus Lord of my relationships?  Do I pray for my father’s soul in the morning and then snipe at him across the dinner table?  Do I speak about the sanctity of marriage and teach against divorce and forget that it is not some kind of romantic fantasy of love that keeps marriage alive, but rather, it is the reality of the covenant of marriage that compels us to do the things that keep our love alive. 

             Do I feel that I am growing in my charity to others, but is it only because I send money, or clothes or Bibles to people halfway around the world – or maybe I don’t - while I neglect to have personal relationships with the needy and hurting in my own community, or worse, scorn my own neighbors because of things like barking dogs and weedy yards?

             Jesus said, “Why do you call me Lord, Lord and do not do what I say?”[6]  It’s like going through a biblical CAT scan – looking to see the contrast between our lips and our lives, between saying and doing, between our profession and our obedience.[7]

            Don’t get me wrong:  The Bible is clear that  ^“if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”[8]  Jesus is not saying, “I’ll get you started and you keep going, and you’ll be fine as long as you’re motoring along in obedience.”  The ground of our assurance is unmerited grace to us, in Christ.  Salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, plus nothing.

            But Jesus makes it clear that only those who obey him have truly heard the gospel.   In our gospel text Jesus says, “If you love me, you will obey what I command… Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me… If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching…He who does not love me will not obey my teaching.”  It is easy reading and crystal clear.    

            Martin Luther said that, “It is faith alone that saves, but the faith that saves is not alone.” 

            The disciples understood what Jesus meant.  John writes to us that if we say we have fellowship with Jesus, but walk in darkness, we’re just telling lies.[9]   And James teaches that faith, if it’s not accompanied by action, is just dead.[10]

            We cannot be perfect in this life – we will falter and fail and stumble and hurt other people –but God has given us the church – our community of faith – where we can learn and grow and forgive one another in safety.

           This sermon has been a challenge, and a warning and an invitation.  The questions it poses are more important than who you’re going to marry or where you’re going to live or whether or not you have enough money.  We spend a lot of time thinking about those things, and investigating the merits of those things, but friends, those questions pale into insignificance when we consider whether or not Jesus Christ is truly the Lord of our lives – of my life and yours; whether we are bearing good fruit, or bad fruit or no fruit; whether we are abiding in the vine, in the source, that is Christ Jesus.

            The results of a bad marriage are temporary; but the consequence of a life lived without growing and visible evidence of the truth of your profession of faith is eternal.

            There are very few, if any, people who are here out of idle curiosity.  We are not here by accident.  We have been chosen to be the people of God before the foundation of the world.   Peter reminded us that “Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.   Dear friends, I urge you, as aliens and strangers in the world, to abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul. Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.” 

            If we do this we will become obedient givers of our lives and activities and everything we possess.  God’s name will once again be heard as holy and his name will be vindicated.  We will come to know what it means to be called the People of God.  And he will be our God.

[1] James 2:23.

[2] Mark Alan Powell, Giving to God: The Bible’s Good News about Living a Generous Life (Grand Rapids: Eerdman’s Publishing Co., 2006) 9-10.

[3] Ibid 11.

[4] Alistair Begg, A Christian Manifesto, 2006.

[5] Matthew 28:19-20a.

[6] Luke 6:46.

[7] Begg.

[8] Romans 10:9.

[9] I John 1:6.

[10] James 2:14-18.