Sermon manuscript:
Do you want to be a Christian or do you want to appear that
you are a Christian? That’s a valid question. A lot of people want to appear to
be a Christian. They want the status. They want the self-satisfaction that they
are one of the good ones. They want the assurance that their life after death
is going to be positive. On the other hand they don’t want the shame that might
come upon from them from family or friends if they ceased to live as a
Christian.
But those who only want to appear to be Christian are not
going to be interested in living according to God’s or Jesus’s commandments.
They want to appear to be a Christian, but they don’t want to live as a Christian.
Another way of saying this is that they want to be
hypocrites. A hypocrite is someone who outwardly presents himself as being a
certain way, but it is merely a façade. So a Christian hypocrite can come to
church, receive the sacrament, fold their hands, and so on, but in everything
else they live as they please. Of course, when I say they live as they please,
realize that they have to stay within reason. You can’t be outside the norm, so
you can’t murder or molest anyone or do something egregious like that. You
can’t go wild, or, more to the point, you can’t get caught being wild. But
otherwise if everybody else is doing it, the hypocrite figures it must be
alright.
God says the opposite of this. You can’t live like everybody
else if you want to be a Christian. God says in our Old Testament reading that
his people, the Israelites, need to be different. They can’t be like the people
of Egypt, the land that they had left. They can’t be like the people of Canaan,
the land to which they were going. How were they to be? They were to be
different than others by keeping the regulations and ordinances of the Lord
their God. The will of God, expressed in his Law, is different from the way
that folks normally live.
Our Old Testament reading then goes on to give some of these
regulations and ordinances. We won’t go deeply into all of them. We will only
look closely at one of them. You can consider the rest of them on your own.
The regulation that I’d like to spend our time on this
morning might sound a little antiquated and agricultural, but it can easily be
made applicable also for us. It says, “When you reap the harvest from your
land, you are not to finish reaping all the way to the edge of the field. Do
not gather up the gleanings of your harvest. Do not strip your vineyard clean,
and do not pick up the fallen grapes from your vineyard, but leave them for the
poor and the alien who live with you. I am the Lord your God.”
Now in our times we do not harvest the same way they did,
and grapes don’t grow too well here in Iowa. But the general principle is
applicable nevertheless. The principle is this: Although you might have the
right and the ability to take as much as you possibly can, you shouldn’t. You
should let others have some too.
You should let others have some too. So let’s talk about what
it means to get a “good deal.” When someone says that they’ve gotten a good
deal that usually means that they’ve paid little but gotten much in return. The
common understanding is that a good deal is only a good deal for the person
saying it. Maybe even the other party has lost
money on the deal. That’s maybe the best deal of all good deals. Too bad for
them, but good for you!
A sign that this kind of activity should be recognized by
everyone as not being quite kosher is that we wouldn’t do this kind of thing
with people that we love. Generally speaking parents do not try to rip off
their children, nor vice versa. Close friends do not try to rip each other off,
otherwise that might be kind of hard on the friendship. Oftentimes people like
doing business with strangers because then they can treat the other party as
shrewdly as they want with minimal negative consequences for themselves.
This greediness is taken to be normal among our people and
no real shame is attached to it. If anything praise and admiration are given to
those who do well for themselves. They are imagined to be superior human
beings. But God speaks differently. If you want to be one of his people, then
you should not live like those around you. You should not take as much as you
possibly can. You should let others have some too. A good deal is one where
somebody else benefits; the other party is enriched—and not just yourself.
“But,” you say, “that means I’m going to have less!” Yes, I
can see why you would say that. But maybe your thinking is a little
short-sighted. In the short-term you might have a little less cash, but who is
the one who is in control of the money that you have? Isn’t it God? Think of
what you are saying about God when you believe that you have to get everything
you possibly can for yourself. Aren’t you saying that you can’t be generous,
because God is so stingy that unless you stuff yourself with everything you can
possibly get your hands on that you will have a horrible life, poor, miserable
and so on? Think of what you are saying about yourself when you are saying you
have to get everything you possibly can for yourself. Aren’t you saying that
you have the power to bless yourself? God is not to be trusted. You and your
shrewdness, or, rather, your greediness, is what is to be trusted.
It is important that you take stock of what God is expecting
of us. It is indeed true that you will have less in the short-term if you are
generous in your dealings with others. Having less always feels worse than
having more. We would feel happy and secure if we had a mountain of money in
the bank. We don’t want daily bread. We want years’ and decades’ worth of bread
stored up. It feels good to count our money. It hurts to have no money to
count.
Consider those poor Israelites when they were wandering
around in the desert. They used up and ate up all they had. They literally were
given daily bread in the form of manna. How they would torture themselves because
they would get hungry and thirsty from time to time. But think about what else
was going on. Meanwhile the Creator of the universe was right there with them
in the pillar of cloud and fire. This was kind of silly, at least from faith’s
perspective. So it is also with our dealings. If you have to choose between
being shrewd and thereby getting more for yourself, but disobeying God, on the
one hand; and being generous, having a little less, but pleasing and honoring
God on the other; you should always go with what is in accord with God’s will.
This will be better for you.
How will it be better for you? This, also, is important to take
stock of, so that your expectations are not inappropriate. When we hear that
things will be better for us we often think in terms of money. And that very
well may be too. If you are generous with others, then who’s to say that God
won’t make people also be generous with you? In my experience I’ve always found
it much more enjoyable to do business with people who aren’t trying to flay me
alive, so your generosity might even be blessed with more business and financial
success.
But money’s not the only way a person can be blessed. It’s
not even the most important. This world is full of people who have huge amounts
of money and property, but they love no one and are loved by no one. Always
putting yourself first has even earthly consequences. So what is a loving
family worth? What is a good conscience worth? What is peace worth?
You are not as rich as Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates or Elon Musk,
and you never will be as rich as them if you want to live like a Christian, but
all three of these men are divorced, hated by their children, and are enslaved
to their riches. Like dragons they can only sleep when they are sure that their
mountain of gold is safe and secure. Why do you want that mountain of wealth
that poisons the one who sits atop it? The answer is our flesh. Our flesh
believes more in what we have accumulated for ourselves than in the daily bread
that God will provide for us tomorrow.
When God made this regulation for the Israelites, that they
should not take for themselves every last thing they possibly could, but that
they should leave some for others, realize that this would have hurt their
flesh too. It was basically like they were leaving cash sitting out there in
field, and who knows who might come along to pick it up? So how could they leave
behind what was rightfully theirs in peace? The only way to explain it is that
they believed that the Lord who had provided them with the crop that they were
given would provide them with a blessing tomorrow too. They were better off
putting their trust in the Creator, than they were in putting their trust in
the accumulation of created things.
Idolatry is the belief in created things, instead of belief
in the Creator. Idolatry has by no means gone away. It is just as common of a
thing today as it was at the time of the Israelites. The Lord God told the
Israelites that they were to live differently from the people of Egypt (who
were idolaters), and that they were to live differently from the people of
Canaan (who were idolaters).
The same thing is true for us. We live among people who
believe in created things instead of the Creator. We are to live differently
from them. It always has been tempting for God’s people to live as hypocrites.
That’s where God’s people honor him with their lips, but their hearts, their
faith, is far from him. They go through the religious motions that are expected
of them, but they live how they see fit. When it comes right down to it, they
believe more in blessing themselves by doing what they think, rather than in
God blessing them for being obedient to his Word.
The reason why Christians choose to be hypocrites is because
they believe that they will be better off that way. They don’t want to keep
God’s commandments. Keeping them sounds painful or boring or ineffective. This,
however, is a lie. The Israelite who left some behind in the field was better
blessed than the Israelite who took everything that he could lay claim to. The
Israelite who left some behind might not have been as rich as the Israelite who
took everything. So what? Should we shovel all your cash into your casket when
it’s time to go? What good will all your cash do you then? Being generous now
puts that cash to work for blessing and enriching others.
So don’t believe the lie that you will be better off as a
hypocrite than you will be by obeying God’s commands. Realize, also, that it
will take some courage to live as a genuine Christian. It is super easy to live
just like everybody else. It requires no effort whatsoever. To live
differently, however, takes some backbone. People will call you a fool. They
will say that you’ll never make it. You’ll be cursed. You’ll be poor. You’ll be
miserable. That is to say, they will be your enemies, mocking you for putting
your trust in the Lord.
So be it. You are better off having mere human beings as
your enemies than having God as your enemy. With God as your friend, you will
be blessed. I 100% guarantee that. The blessing might not look how you expect
it to look. You might look like our Lord Jesus Christ, whose life was not a bed
of roses. But it will be good, just as Jesus’s life was good, because our
Father who is in heaven is good.
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