All Of Me, All Of Us

The following text is the raw, unedited transcript from a sermon given on June 11th, 2023 at Christ Our Hope Anglican Church in Olympia, WA. You can also listen to the audio. Better yet, subscribe to the podcast! :-)

There we go. Um, and it's not one that was new to me. It's was one that's like this is just very consistent and this, this tells me that it's, of course, all of God's truths are timeless, but this is for sure, timeless and very appropriate, pretty much at any time. And that, that pattern really is this, that God does not just want our good deeds or actions. He wants our hearts also. It's not one or the other. It's both, isn't it? He? That's why He wants all of us the entirety of us. And it kind of, it comes out in interesting ways in each of these, these four passages in Hosea. Um, I don't know if you thought about it like this, but the Old Testament covers thousands of years. It's a long time, um, 1800 years that we can record. But you know, if you count creation and all that, it's a couple of thou, it's several 1000 years. And when we read it or when people talk about the Old Testament, it's like man, God is just harsh all the time. Why is he so angry? Why is he killing people all the time. Why is he sending plagues? Well, because it covers such a broad span of time. It's generations who some follow him. Some don't. And then they repeat this pattern of, of following him and then backsliding and then repenting and then being restored and following him and backsliding and it just, it just goes over and over again and God deals with each of these generations in the same way. It's like you don't wanna follow me anymore. You want to just do your own thing. Go ahead. Let's see what happens because you will eventually come back to me. It doesn't look that way in the New Testament because the New Testament really covers one lifetime. It's just one short, relatively span of time. And it, the dominant feature is, of course Jesus and love and God's love and sacrifice for sin and that's wonderful and God doesn't seem harsh at all in the New Testament. Well, that's because it's, that's not the point. It's one little window of time. But here in Hosea, it's one of these cycles where God's people have been, have abandoned him. And uh I just, I i it was just, it struck me as funny but also powerful God saying I will return again to my place until they acknowledge their guilt and seek my face and in their distress earnestly seek me. Sometimes it takes that sometimes we want to blame God. God, what is wrong with you? Where did you go. It's like I'm waiting for you. Dumb, dumb. I'm waiting for you to come after me. It's not my job to come after you. But you know what, I'm gonna do it anyway. I'm gonna send Jesus down to you and come after you. But you still have to reciprocate. There's a, it's a relationship here. There's two things that gotta go together and eventually in chap it says in the next chapter verse one, come let us return to the Lord for he has torn us that he may heal us. He has struck us down and he will bind us up. That's how we should see our father in heaven, isn't it? It's like, OK, this was, this was for my good. It stinks going through it, but this was really for my good to bring me back to him, to bring me back to a right place with the right heart and a right mindset. I don't know if any of you had a parent that disciplined them physically, not abusively, but physically and I can for my point of view, uh the one or two times it did happen, it was justified. Let me share one major failing with you right now. Uh I can't remember how old I was elementary school for sure. And I, I have a younger sister about three or four years younger than I am. And uh she had a friend who lived around the corner and I don't know why I did this. I'd like to think a friend dared me to do it. But even that, I don't know if that's worse or not, but the, the, my sister's friend came, walking down the street to the house and for whatever reason you're gonna hate me. I just punched her in the stomach. No, I like a, a kid, four years younger than me just punched her in the stomach and she, of course bent over and went home crying and I don't, I don't know why I did it. I don't know, but I did and I didn't know that my dad was watching from the front window and he brought me inside and I met the belt. Mhm. And I never punched a girl again. But God has a sense of humor because probably the year or that after that I was walking down the hallway in school and, and, uh, not the same girl, a, a different girl in my own class was walking rather roughly down the hall. She was mad at something and just smacked me. I don't know why I didn't. I, we were friends. It wasn't about me. She was mad about something and I was like, ok, God, that's funny. Thank you for that. But that punishment was for my good. It was to correct me and God does that sometimes. Um, yeah, that's a, it's just a, it's a powerful pattern there in Hosea to see. I'm, I'm gonna, I'm gonna step back and you can come back to me and the people realize let us return to the Lord for he has torn us that he may heal us. It's not a weird abusive thing. It's God does it for our good in, uh, in the song. It's, um, the same sort of pattern. It's not so much rooted in a historical event as it is just the, recognizing the reality. Um, I like in verse seven here, oh my people and I will speak oh Israel, I will testify against you. I am God, your God. It's like, ok, not just some other God, I am your God, not for sacrifices. Do I rebuke you? So the people are still doing what they're supposed to do, offering what they're supposed to offer. Your burnt offerings are continually performing. He's like great job. Thanks for that. However, he says I will not accept a bull from your house or goats from your folds. For every beast of the forest is mine. The cattle on 1000 hills. I know all the birds of the hills and all that moves in the fields is mine. If I were hungry, I would not tell you for the world and its in its fullness are mine. Do I eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of goats? Offer to God a sacrifice of Thanksgiving and perform your vows to the most high now. Yes, God went through all the trouble to set up this rather beautiful sacrificial system that all points to him, that all points to what Jesus would come and do someday. Behold the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. And he says, but that wasn't the point just to do those things. The point was to do them with Thanksgiving in your hearts. Don't just make a vow to look good, fulfill your vows that you make to the most high. Otherwise it's just for show otherwise it doesn't mean anything. And I don't care that you made the sacrifice. I don't care that you followed the rules because it's your heart that goes with it. That's what I want in Romans, which is actually looking back to another Old Testament passage in Genesis. Paul makes a similar connection uh concerning Abraham when he talks about how um you know Abraham, his story is well before the law is even given and he is his right to his faith is accepted, right? That's, it wasn't the point of him just following the rules. It was his rule. It was being asked to do something and his heart was in it. Now, what was he asked to do? He was asked, asked to sacrifice his son, which sounds weird on the surface. Why is God asking Abraham to kill his child? God's not in the child sacrifice the way the other pagan gods are? Why would God ask someone to do something that is against his own rules. I can't answer that for certain other than it sets this pattern also because God knew I'm not gonna let him go through with it. I want to see where his heart is. Abraham, take your son, your only son whom you love. What is that reminiscent of John 3 16 for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, his only son whom he loved. Abraham took his son, his son, I believe voluntarily cooperated with it because Abraham was an old dude and his son was probably pretty well fit and could have said uh no dad, I'm not gonna lay on this and be tied up and have you stab me? Pass. I think the son cooperated with him. And at that moment of the knife about to go down, God says Abraham stop and he provides another animal for the sacrifice, right? So Abraham obeyed but also believed a Paul's point. Part of his point in this passage is to point out that Abraham like, ok, God, you have the problem because you told me that it's through this sun that we're gonna have descendants that are like the stars of the sky and the sand of the sea. So if even if I kill him, you have to do something to fulfill your promise, you have to bring him back or something. I don't know. That's where the face came in. That's where the the requirement, the need for faith came into the scenario. So it wasn't just obey and do it, was do it with faith, do it with your heart, do it in relationship with God. And finally, I find the Matthew passage also very, very interesting in light of this because I, I think we can lose some of the color of the context of it. Um As Jesus passed on verses is Matthew nine verse nine. As Jesus passed on from there, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth and said to him, follow me and he rose and followed him. So at this point, Jesus has some of his other disciples who are, we could probably fairly say blue collar working class guys and they're going by this tax booth that they have all have passed. I'm sure dozens and dozens of times and maybe even paid Matthew some tax that's required for their work. And Jesus looks at Matthew and just says, follow me, I don't know why Matthew followed him, but Matthew just says, Matthew rose and followed him. Ok? Cool. Later. It's basically because he says, cut to dinner time. And as Jesus reclined that table in the house, behold many tax collectors and sinners came and were reclining with Jesus and his disciples. Now, Jesus is basically calling someone who was socially and politically opposite the rest of his guys and not the only one, not the only extremist, Matthew would be one extreme. Uh uh Judas would be another extreme who wanted to have an insurrection against Rome. Whereas Matthew was cooperating with Rome. Jesus had to fight the spectrum of people that just did not fit together. And he's sitting at table with these tax collectors and sinners and I'm sure his disciples were a little uncomfortable about this. And of course, the Pharisees were very uncomfortable about this. And when the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, they didn't say to him, why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners? Because when you eat together, you have that in common. So Jesus is basically connecting himself to these people whom the Pharisees would never connect with, even though you know, you shall love your neighbor as yourself, second greatest commandment. But they were unwilling to do that. But when he Jesus heard it, he said those who are well have no need of a physician but those who are sick, I wonder if you're like math, you'd be like, yeah. Oh wait, that means I'm the sick one maybe. And the rest of them were like, yeah, oh I guess we're sick. Go and learn what this means. I desire mercy and not sacrifice for. I came not to call the righteous but sinners who is Jesus after sinners. And yet it's we as Christians as a church can get to the point where we cut ourselves off from sinners because sinners are bad and yucky and gross. And we shouldn't have anything to do with them, but that's our call. That's our mission field. That's exactly who we are supposed to try to connect with. Um, I, in my work history have worked, uh, either in, in a church setting or in a, a technology setting and have had the chance to talk to a number of non believing people and make relationships with them and sometimes those discussions get very hard, but it's not my job to take offense from them. My job is to show them love no matter what that's without even wearing this stuff. This is out there in my cities. Ok. Um, and that's all of us. The, the people who we think, oh, they are so opposite me. They are so opposite of what I think God is and God's like, yeah, calm down. You don't get to tell people what I, who I'll vote for. Ok. Um, those are the people who need what we have, whether it's very, very conservative on one end or very, very liberal, liberal on the other end. Uh, the, the context here would be something like some people who were just stuck in very cold ritualism as long as they're doing the right thing in the right way. That's all that matters to them versus those who think that anything that is good must be from God. Anything that looks like it's from God must be from God because after all God is everywhere and is in everything that's also wrong. So again, we have both of these extremes that have a little bit of truth in them, but they lose the rest of the truth. And here we are in the middle. God wants us to do. He wants us to obey. I think he's pleased that when we come together and read his word and pray and genuinely, genuinely from the heart, not out of ritual, confess and come to the table and do all the things that we do here, not just dead ritual, but in the middle with the heart and just finding that spot. And that's why we come together as a body because there are some people on one side, there are some people on the other and we need each other to pull each other back to the middle, not fight to pull each other out, but pull each other back into this middle. I can remember um, in my pre anglican days, uh not directly being told, but give, being given the impression that um liturgical type churches are just, it's just dead ritual. They just go and they sit and they stand and sometimes they kneel and they sing these weird songs and they say these things together and then they just go back out. And that is probably true for a lot of churches of, of the litter liturgical variety. But I have been in a number of non denominational churches where it's just show up and saying and hi, big handshake. And as long as you're wearing the right thing and have the right smile. It's just as dead. Even though they think we've got freedom. We have this liberty to worship the way we want to. We're not like those dead other people over there. You're just as dead. Do what God calls us to do. But with the right heart at the same time, especially when it's hard. Does God call us to do hard things? Yep. Big, big. Yup. So in Hosea, God says, I'm gonna wait for you to come back to me and the people come back to him after he let them destroy themselves for a bit. The psalmist points out that God's not hungry, that's not why he wants this barbecue. It's something that costs the people to give, but he wants it with Thanksgiving with the right heart. Um, Paul points out that Abraham does this by faith. Something that sounded horrific when asked to do something scary, when asked to do. But it wasn't just the obedience that provided it, it was the face, it was the connection, it was the emotion. And of course, here with Matthew Jesus bluntly says, uh, you know, I'm not here for you guys who think you are well and won't take any medicine from me anyway. I'm here for the people who are sick, the people who know that they need something who've actually been outcast by you believers. They need to hear the gospel. I desire mercy, not sacrifice for. I came not to call the righteous but sinners. So in our comings and goings in life on the daily, on the weekly uh and the whatever season you're in and I don't know which side of that you're on if you're on the, but I'm doing the right thing all the time mode or if I think I'm loving enough, but I'm not really doing anything find where you need to be, how you need to be closer to the middle. Pray God. How do I, where am I on this spectrum of cold obedience versus no responsibility? But a lot of love. How do I, how do I get closer to both? How do I live? How do I live out? What's inside me? And maybe if it's not even inside you, maybe it's like God re light this fire rekindle this flame, this love that I have for you because without that fire, it's just sort of, yeah, I don't want to end the sermon on meth, but I think that's where it's gonna end.