Engaging Scripture

Why Moses was not allowed to enter the Promised Land (and the important principle we can learn from it)

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Have you ever been penalized for something that you did, and though you deserved it, you felt that punishment was too severe? Have you pleaded your case asking for grace, for mercy, for another punishment? That’s a tough spot to be in. You know you were wrong, and yet you feel the discipline is harsh, but because you were in the wrong, you don’t feel you have a foundation to ask for grace.

As we continue in Deuteronomy 3:21-29, that is the situation we find Moses in. Moses messed up, and God told him that his punishment was that Moses could not enter the Promised Land. Moses has led this fickle people through all kinds of adventures, he has been in such a close relationship with the Lord, and as a result this decision by God feels harsh.

I wonder, Why won’t God give Moses a second chance?

It seems to me that Moses is being vulnerable here in Deuteronomy 3, talking with the people about this situation. How many of us are willing to talk with our kids or employees about the times we messed up? Or is Moses actually being grumpy, considering the fact that he accuses the people, as if it was their fault that he can’t go in to the promised land? I can hear his thoughts: if you people wouldn’t have been so fussy about not having water, I never would have gotten into this mess. I’d still be going to the Promised Land!

We’re going to hear Moses’ refer to this ban in Deuteronomy numerous times. It was a tough one for him to get over. I don’t blame him. After all these years, to not be allowed to enter the Promised Land? That’s rough. So what is God thinking?

Maybe God wants to preserve the purity of the nation at the beginning of a new work. Kind of like the teacher at the beginning of a new school year is tough, but once they have gained respect and classroom control, they ease up. Maybe God just needed to make an example of Moses.

Maybe God is holding a leader to a higher standard. He tells us in the James 3:1 that leaders and teachers are held more accountable because of their influential role. Maybe.

I actually think there is something else going on here. That something else requires us to try to understand the precise nature of Moses’ sin.

What did Moses do wrong?

What was Moses’ sin that caused God to bar Moses from entering the Promised Land? To answer that, we need to turn to Numbers 20 and the story about water from the rock.

My Old Testament professor Dr. Dorsey once told us that people speculate as to the nature of Moses’ sin in this story. Could God really be upset that Moses struck the rock with his staff instead of talking to it? Dr. Dorsey felt that the answer is more likely found in what Moses says to the people in verse 10, “must we bring you water out of this rock?” Perhaps Moses might have been seduced into a power trip, speaking as if he had power to do a miracle. What is clear is that he did not acknowledge God, the only one who actually had the power.

Look at how God responds: “But the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, ‘Because you did not trust in me enough to honor me as holy in the sight of the Israelites, you will not bring this community into the land I give them’.”

We always need to be careful to give God the praise, honor and credit in all we do. No doubt God has blessed us with gifts, talents and abilities. James 1:17 reminds us that God is the source of all good gifts. 1 Corinthians 10:31 says that whatever we do, even basic tasks like eating and drinking, we should do to the glory of God. And back to James in chapter 4 where he warns us about the dangers of pride, and how we need to pursue humility before God.

How to defeat pride

It is easy to let pride creep in. Success breeds it. We get feedback that we’ve done a great job, and we can forget the source of our gifts and abilities. Have you allowed pride to creep in? Are you giving credit where credit is due? Are you pursuing humility? It is possible to become more humble. Recently, I talked about spiritual disciplines, and I believe we can practice humility. Learn more here.

How do you need to give God the praise and glory due him?

Is your church too small?

Why are there so many Christian churches and denominations? Can’t you all just get along?

Maybe the fact that there are so many churches and denominations is proof that Christianity is false. Jesus prayed in John 17:20-21 that not only his twelve disciples, but also those who would become his followers through the ministry of the twelve, would be one, unified. Does the presence of all the various denominations mean Jesus’ prayer request has failed? He prayed that we would be one, and yet there are thousands upon thousands of Christian denominations and independent churches. How are we to think about this?

To answer that, we continue looking at an event that happened in Deuteronomy 3:12-20. With the defeat of King Og, Israel has conquered the land on the eastern side of the Jordan. You can read about that in verses 12-17. This is the first fulfillment of the promise God gave to Abraham to give his family the land. 500 years have gone by, and this is a huge moment, as a couple of the tribes are given their land on the east side of the Jordan

Look now at verses 18-20. This section shows how God is commanding the tribes of Israel to help each other. We’re now at a part in the narrative where God is giving direction about what is to happen next as the people enter the Promised Land. Up until this point in Deuteronomy, Moses has been retelling the nation’s history to the new generation. They are encamped on the east side of the Jordan. So far 2 ½ tribes have been given their inheritance land on that side of the River.

Now Moses is about to convey what they should do next. It would be very easy for those 2 ½ tribes to settle down, build houses, start farming, and finally relax. God says NO. The fighting men from those 2 ½ tribes must continue across the Jordan and help out their brother tribes. Once their brother tribes have been established, then the 2 ½ can go back to their families and make their start.

It is an “all for one and one for all” mentality. God is a God of unity, and he wants his people to be unified. We Christians have many tribes too, and we tend to fight against each other rather than support one another. This is why I am convinced that Faith Church, while remaining faithful to our EC “tribe”, must also be incredible supportive of the other churches in our community. This is why we have sought to be involved to a high level in our local Ministerium. It is why I’m so glad we’re renting to The Door and seeking to work together. We need each other. We should not be territorial. We’re all part of the same family.

I encourage you to read John Armstrong’s excellent book, Your Church Is Too Small. I was greatly encouraged and challenged by it. I had been youth/associate pastor at Faith Church for six years, and senior pastor for about 2 years before I read Armstrong’s book. During those years, Faith Church had very little interaction with any other community churches, except for our sister churches within our denomination. Personally I felt competition with other local churches. A family from Faith Church might move on to a different local church, and it would leave me frustrated and angry, with a bitter feeling toward that other church. Then a good friend put Armstrong’s book in my hands, and it was life-changing. One day, perhaps a month or so after reading the book, there was a knock on our church office door. It was a local pastor whom I had never met. He was representing the local ministerium, as they had reorganized and were seeking to include every church in our school district. I marveled at the timing, and felt God was at work. I jumped at the chance to practice the principles of unity Armstrong teaches in his book.

When he refers to “church” in his title, he is not talking about our individual local churches. Instead he suggests that we Christians widen our view of church. It is okay to have tribes, different denominations, within the larger church. We are not called to uniformity, as if all of us need to become one uniform denomination with totally uniform beliefs and practices. Instead we are called to unity. We can practice the selfless and support that we see God requiring of the tribes of Israel. We can work together, share, help one another.

I have said for years now that, in our school district, Conestoga Valley, though there are many churches, it cannot be said that we do not work together. I am so thankful for our ministerium, and how our wide variety of churches support one another. Together the churches of CV launched a social services organization called Conestoga Valley Christian Community Services, that has taken off and is making a wonderful impact in our community, especially through feeding the hungry and clothing those in need. Our ministerium runs two Homes of Hope, helping people transition out of homelessness. Every year we give the CV School District social worker thousands of dollars in benevolence funding for families in need. We provide an annual scholarship to a graduating senior going to college to study ministry. Our CV Ministerium pastors pray together, study the Bible together, and we bring our congregations together for worship a couple times each year. I could go on and on.

So how about you and your church family? Is your church too small? How can you practice the selfless unity God expects?

If God told you to kill children, would you do it? (Two Thoughts on those Holy War passages in the Old Testament)

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If God told you to kill children would you do it?

Quite a question, isn’t it? The answer should be an obvious “No”, right?

We’re studying the biblical book of Deuteronomy on Sunday mornings at Faith Church, and we’ve come to some troubling passages where God commands the armies of Israel to kill children. In chapters 2 and 3, Moses is reviewing with the people of Israel the story of how they made it to where they are encamped on the east side of the Jordan River. Their journey took them through lands inhabited by Canaanites, and both times they proclaimed holy war on the Canaanites, utterly wiping them out.

Look at Deuteronomy 3:3, “We left no survivors.” Skip ahead to verse 6: “We completely destroyed them…men, women and children.”

What in the world is going on? They actually killed children! It was holy war.

Holy war will come up again in Deuteronomy chapters 7 and 20, so I decided this week that we’re going to talk about Holy war this one time and be done with it. Why? Well, quite frankly, it is difficult material. I wonder how you are feeling as you read these passages?

Sometimes in the past, when we have come to a difficult section of the Bible, people in my church family have said, “Joel, just tell us how to understand it.” Or they’ve said, “Joel, how do you personally interpret this passage?”

I think behind these comments is desire for relief from tension. We feel very uncomfortable with tension, right? Tension is when you are the middle and you are being pulled in two directions, and generally-speaking we hate it.

Do you feel that pull, the tension, when you read passages about God commanding the people to kill all the men, women and children of a nation? I think you should feel tension. I do.

Where is the tension coming from?

I think it is coming from the fact that we want to believe in a loving, good, merciful God on one hand, and on the other, we want to believe the Bible is true. And when our true Bible teaches us about a violent, destructive, genocidal God, we’re stuck.

We want peace, not tension. We want our impressions and beliefs about God to make us feel good, comforted and safe.

So what do we do to relieve the tension? I do not believe there is a satisfying answer to relieve the tension about the amount of violence in the Old Testament.

Here are some ways that people have tried to resolve the tension of the violence in the OT. I got these from pastor and author Brian Zahnd. Check out a great interview with him here.

Question the morality of God? Maybe he is actually monstrous. But we know that isn’t true. God is good, right?
Question the immutability of God? Maybe he is changing. But we’re hesitant about this too, because God doesn’t change, right?
Question our reading of Scripture? Maybe we shouldn’t take it so literally. But how do we know which parts of the Bible should be literal or not?

None of these options resolve the tension for me. What does resolve the tension for me? Nothing. Instead, I have two thoughts on holy war in the Bible.

Thought #1 – Be humble about difficult passages.

I think it is vital that I view my interpretation of difficult biblical passages as unfinished interpretations. A work in progress. My seminary Old Testament prof Dave Dorsey taught us this, and I think it is incredibly wise. He said that whenever he comes to a part of the Bible that does not line up with what he knows to be true of God, he does not allow himself to come to a final conclusion on the interpretation of that passage. He waits. He studies. Often, he said, there is more going on that he has not yet encountered or does not understand. It could be cultural or language or translation issues. I encourage you to follow Dr. Dorsey’s advice.

Thought #2 – Maybe the holy war passages are a justice issue.

Here’s where I’m at with all the times God commands Israel to commit holy war against people. It seems to me that the people of Canaan, including the Amorites (like King Sihon in Deuteronomy 2), were incredibly evil, and also very powerful. Think Nazi Germany with the atom bomb. For any of you that have watched the Amazon series The Man in the High Castle, this is exactly what happens. That TV show presents an alternate history, imagining that the Nazis win World War 2 because they create and use the atom bomb before we do. They bomb Washington DC and win the war, together with Japan controlling the USA.

It is possible that Israel was up against similar powerful, wicked nations. Archaeologists have done work on the Canaanites, finding them to practice child sacrifice and female temple prostitution, both practices treating vulnerable people terribly. It was evil that needed to be stopped. Also, take a much weaker nation with a slave mentality like Israel*, and the chances are incredibly high that Israel could have been quickly enslaved again by the Canaanites.

God knows this. And so when you have Nazis versus your Jewish people, what happens? Nazis exterminate Jews. Nazis are powerful and evil. But God has a plan, a hope for the redemption and recreation of the world, and it is a plan that is to come through the line of the Jews. Thus God empowers the Jews to eradicate the Nazis, judging evil in the land, and creating this new just society which is to be a blessing to the whole world.

Am I satisfied with this interpretation? Nope. Not in the least. Do I like it? Not really. I pray, “God, could there not have been any other way?” It seems like there should have been. So I follow Dr. Dorsey’s advice, and I keep studying. I’m leaning toward the interpretation that it was a justice issue, to eradicate evil and pave the way for a new just society, in much the same way as World War 2.

Today, in our world, if I had a vision or dream or heard the voice of God asking me to kill children, I would assume that I had not heard or interpreted God correctly, and I would not kill children. I’d be looking for any other way. And you know what I find?

I find Jesus on the cross. I find God dying for us. I find him weeping for us, weeping at sin, and then I find him giving his own life, so that they world could be radically changed. And I focus on that. That is powerful. That is what we need, that is what we know to be true. God the forgiver, God the merciful, God of second chances, God who loves you so much he would die for you. God who wants to remove violence from this world. I find a God of justice who wants wickedness and evil to stop, who has hopes and dreams, and empowers his people to recreate the world as it should be.

*Consider that Israel had been enslaved in Egypt for 400+ years, and only 40 prior to the events we read about in Deuteronomy 2 and 3. Compare that to slavery in our own nation’s history. Our American slavery was a shorter length, about 250 years, and 150 years we are still very much feeling the pain of slavery’s wickedness.

4 leadership principles from Moses in Deuteronomy 1

Not too many of us will ever lead a group or organization with a million or more people like Moses did. But just about all of us will have the chance to lead at least a few people. Parents and grandparents lead their families. At work you might have some employees you’re responsible for. Or you might be a volunteer leader at a local school or in your church. As we continue looking at Deuteronomy 1, Moses gives us four important leadership principles that apply to just about anyone.

First, sit down with those you lead and tell the story of how you got to the point you’re at. This is especially important for people who are new to your group. But even if the people you are leading have been around for a while, it is important to remind them of the history of your organization. The entire book of Deuteronomy is Moses’ last words of reminder and remembrance to the people of Israel. A new generation of Israelites was about to enter the land God had promised their forefather Abraham about 500 years earlier. These newbies needed to know how they got there and why. Moses wasn’t going to be leading them, making sure they followed God’s leading and law. He knew how fickle the people of Israel were. There were plenty of times he needed to advocate for them before God because they had screwed up so bad. So he wanted to make sure they knew the story of God and kept the law of God intact, long after he was gone.

Leader, you carry the history of your group with you like no other. Are you telling people that story?

Second, raise up and rely on other leaders. In Deuteronomy 1:9-18, Moses, as he is telling the people their history, gets to the part where he divided the people up into groups, placing judges over them. Moses was only to deal with the hard cases. This is a very smart move. There’s no way Moses could have enough time to solve the problems of a nation that probably numbered a couple million people at this point. Years earlier his father-in-law, Jethro, had advised him to break the people into groups, or Moses was going to burn himself out. Again we see the leadership genius of Moses. Delegating, raising up leaders. And a subpoint here. Listen to those older and wiser than you. I can hear my father-in-law already, “Yeah, see! You need to listen to me!” But it’s true. While Moses was leading a nation, Jethro was leading Moses, and Moses was humble and teachable to rely on Jethro’s advice.

Leader, who are you raising up to help you? Who are you relying on for wisdom? Don’t go it alone.

Third, seek perspective before making a big move. Moses continues talking to the people in verses 19-25. Remember that in verses 1-8, the Lord had instructed them to take the Land. Moses is still sitting down having his fireside chat, reminding them of what happened to get to that point. In the story they started the initial process of taking the land, but they get to the border and stop. Rather than just barge in, they make a wise move, which is to get some intelligence data. What are they up against? Strong people groups? Weak people groups? What is it going to take to win over the Promised Land? They propose a spy mission, choosing 12 men to be the secret agents. The 12 spy the land, and come back with a report that it is a good land. Things sound great.

Leader, are you faced with making a big move? Maybe you’re seeking a career change, maybe a company change, maybe hiring or firing employees. Parents, are you dealing with some tough issues with your kids? Get some intel. We can get so frustrated waiting in the middle of a difficult situation, and we just want out. The emotional toll can be heavy, urging us to react. Follow Moses’ lead, take a pause, gather data. What are you up against? What are your options?

Fourth, tell the whole truth to your people; the truth about them and about you. Continue reading Deuteronomy 1:26 to the end. Up to this point, things have been going so good. But now Moses has to tell the cold, hard truth to the new generation. Some of the 12 spies got freaked by what they saw in Canaan. So Moses says that their parents were disobedient, fearful, mistrusting, and rebellious. Why would Moses rehash all this? How would you feel about having your family’s past mistakes brought out in front of you? It is highly likely that Moses wanted to share a warning to the next generation. “Look, here is how we got to the point where we are at. I want you to learn from this. You are starting something new. Don’t repeat the mistakes from the past. So be reminded of that God is with you.” See in verses 29-30 how he wants to encourage them that God is with them? Then in verses 42-46, he refers to the part of the story where God specifically reached out to the nation, giving them guidance. “Don’t go fight yet, or you will be defeated.” But they didn’t listen and tried to fight anyway. And they were beat. Moses wants the next generation to do better than their parents. He wants them to obey the Lord. That means Moses needs to talk about himself too. Not only do the people rebel, and lose their trust in God, but we also read that Moses is not able to enter land. We’ll spend more time on why Moses is barred from the Land when we come to chapter 3. The point here is that Moses is honest about himself, willing to share his mistakes.

Leader, are you honest with your people? Do you tell them the hard truth? Are you vulnerable with them about your failings? This is a hard one for me, as I tend to be a people-pleaser. I can get really nervous that I will hurt feelings, or people will get upset at me, and thus avoid telling the truth.

Moses is considered to be one of the greatest leaders in history. Perhaps these four principles can help you grow as a leader.

Would your family wait 500 years for God to fulfill his promise? (Surveying the history of Israel up to the time of Deuteronomy)

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500 years! What if God made you a promise; a promise to you, your family and descendants? How long do you think your family could stay faithful to God if it started to seem like his promise wasn’t coming through? 10 years? 50? How long could they make it after you passed away? What would you do to help prepare them to be faithful, even after you pass away?

That scenario is essentially the historical context of Deuteronomy. This is a story of a family that is waiting a long, long time for God to bring his promise to fruition. Let’s take a look:

In chapter 1, verse 8, we read God saying this:

“See, I have given you this land. Go in and take possession of the land that the LORD swore he would give to your fathers—to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob—and to their descendants after them.”

Abraham, Isaac and Jacob? Who are these guys? The Lord calls them the fathers of the nation of Israel. Let’s race through the history of Israel and see if we can place these guys.

First, there was Abraham. If you want to read his story in detail, start at Genesis 12. Here’s the gist of it: God promised Abraham that if he would leave his home in Haran and relocate to the land of Canaan, Abraham would be father to a great nation through whom God would bless the whole world, and his family/nation would be given that land.

So Abraham, his wife Sarah, and their household leave their home and travel to Canaan. But here’s the kicker: they have no kids. How are they going to be the parents of a great nation? Time drags on, and they get really old, but still they have no kids. It seems like this “great nation in a new land” promise is becoming a big sham. So Abraham, with Sarah’s permission, has a baby with Sarah’s servant girl Hagar, a son named Ishmael. Sarah becomes jealous and kicks Hagar and Ishmael out. God intervenes and arranges for Hagar and Ishmael to return to Abraham’s family. Ishmael himself would go on to become a great nation, the father of Arabia, but that is not the family/nation with whom God would keep his covenant promise to Abraham. 13 more years go by, and still Abraham and Sarah do not have an heir. They’re in their 90s now! God steps in, Sarah miraculously becomes pregnant in her old age, and they have a son, Isaac.

Isaac grows and marries Rebekah. You can read Isaac’s story starting in Genesis 21. They have twin sons, Esau the older and Jacob the younger. Jacob is sneaky and steals the birthright inheritance traditionally given to the firstborn, Esau. Esau, as you can imagine, is really upset, and Jacob has to flee the family. He travels to relatives where he meets his wife, Rachel.

At this point in Jacob’s story we’re now in Genesis 27. Jacob eventually starts to see the fulfillment of part of the promise God made to Abraham, to make his family into a great nation. How so? Well, Jacob has four wives who bear a total of 12 sons. Baby boom! God then gives Jacob a new name, Israel, and we’re at the point where the new family nation should be sounding familiar. Israel had 12 sons. The nation of Israel has 12 tribes. See where that is going?

Jacob/Israel eventually moves his 12 sons and their families to Egypt to avoid famine. 400+ years go by. During this time, Israel as a family nation grows exponentially, to the point where the Egyptian king, called the Pharaoh, feels threatened by them, so he enslaves them. He uses them to build great works of architecture. In the process he treats them horribly. You can read all about it starting in Exodus 1.

The people of Israel are slaves, oppressed, forced into grueling labor, dealing with genocide (because the Pharaoh was afraid they were getting too numerous). They cry out, and God sends a deliverer. This deliverer is a wild card, one of their own, Moses, who through a miracle grew up as a prince of Egypt. If you continue reading in Exodus, you’ll see that it takes a while, including some amazing meetings with God, for Moses to agree to this new national savior role. Eventually, though, he steps up.

Moses visits the Egyptian king Pharaoh, who he likely grew up with. Like the movies, some scholars believe Moses and Pharaoh would have considered themselves brothers or cousins. Now many years had passed, and imagine the awkward family reunion when Moses says to Pharaoh, “Let my people go.” If you are following along in Exodus, this story is found in Exodus 7. The Pharaoh is not keen on letting his massive labor force go, and he says, “Not a chance.” So God steps in again and sends plagues on the land, wrecking Egypt, and finally after the last plague results in the death of his firstborn son, the king bitterly sneers to Moses, “Get your people out of here.” The entire nation of Israel, likely over a million strong at this point, leaves and heads out through the Red Sea and into the desert. But the reality is that they are following a God they probably barely knew, a leader they weren’t sure they could trust, to an unknown destination.

That destination? The Promised Land. Canaan. They were headed back to the land God had promised their forefather Abraham about 500 years before. Will God keep his promise? Starting in Exodus 12:31 and continuing through Leviticus and Numbers, you can read how they follow God’s direction via a pillar of cloud by day and pillar of fire by night, Moses leading them all the way. They have many adventures, many missteps. There is no way it should have taken 40 years. God allowed their journey to the Promised Land to take that long because of the nation of Israel’s disobedience.

That is the historical context for Deuteronomy. The nation of Israel has arrived on the border of Canaan, the Promised Land. The generation that left Egypt has given way to the next generation. The new generation of Israelites will be the ones who actually enter the Promised Land. Not even Moses will be joining them. Instead Moses sits down to remind this next generation of God’s promises and all the family nation has been through. More on that tomorrow as we dig into the book of Deuteronomy.

Why does the book of Deuteronomy have such a weird name?

Related image Yesterday, I introduced the book of Deuteronomy as a bold, risky, truth-telling book. But what in the world is this name Deuteronomy all about?

To answer that question, we first need to find where Deuteronomy is located in the Bible. Deuteronomy is, in fact, the fifth book of the Bible. Starting with Genesis, we continue through Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and arrive at Deuteronomy. As a group, those first five books get their own special name, The Pentateuch, which means “The five books or five scrolls.” Let’s take a look at the names of those fives books.

Genesis is word meaning beginnings, which makes sense because Genesis talks about the beginning of the creation and of the people of Israel.

Exodus is a word that means the going out from, and that makes sense because it tells the story of how Israel went out from slavery in Egypt.

Leviticus has the Hebrew word Levi in it. Levi was the priestly tribe, and much of Leviticus deals with religious regulations.

Numbers…well, open up the book of Numbers and leaf through it, and you’ll see pretty quickly where it gets its name.

But what in the world does the word Deuteronomy mean? Take a look at Deuteronomy chapter 17. Scroll down to verse 14, and what do you find? Moses is still having his fireside chat with the people. In this particular section, he is reminding them of God’s wishes for what should happen in the future when the nation arrives in the Promised Land, and they want to have a king over them. They’ve had numerous encounters with kings in the past, and those kings have been abusive, power-hungry, ego maniacs. Israel has not seen a real, live example of what a godly king should be. God wants something so much for better for Israel, and for the whole world. He told Israel’s forefather Abraham that Abraham was going to be the father of a great nation, and through him the whole world would be blessed. One way Israel could be a blessing was to give the world an example of godly leadership.

Therefore in verse 18, and we read this:

“When he takes the throne of his kingdom, [the king] is to write for himself on a scroll a copy of this law, taken from that of the Levitical priests.”

The king is to write out his own copy of the law! My hand would be killing me if I had to write all that. Even typing that would take a long time. But God saw this as a wonderful discipline for the king, desiring the king to keep his copy of the law…

“with him, and he is to read it all the days of his life so that he may learn to revere the Lord his God and follow carefully all the words of this law and these decrees and not consider himself better than his fellow Israelites and turn from the law to the right or to the left. Then he and his descendants will reign a long time over his kingdom in Israel.”

Now that is a description of leadership that the whole world needs. Sounds pretty relevant even today, doesn’t it? As we study Deuteronomy, we’ll eventually make our way to chapter 17, and then we’ll talk a lot more about godly leadership. The reason I bring this up is to focus on that phrase, “copy of the law”.

The book of Deuteronomy was written in ancient Hebrew, the language of the Jews. There are two Hebrew words in verse 18 that form the phrase, “a copy of the law”. Mishneh, meaning “second” or “copy” or “repetition” and Torah which means “law.” The King was to write out his own Mishneh of the Torah, his own copy of the law. That sounds a lot like what Moses is doing in the whole book of Deuteronomy, giving the people a review or repetition of the law, a Mishneh of the Torah. Because of this, Jews simply call this book, The Mishneh. Considering how many Hebrew words we commonly use in the Bible, it would make sense for us to also call this book The Mishneh.

But we don’t call it that. We English speakers call it Deuteronomy. Here’s why.

When the Greeks conquered the Ancient Near East many centuries after the days of Moses, the Greek language became widespread. Heard of Alexander the Great? He wanted to inject anything and everything Greek into the lands he conquered, and was he ever successful at this task. Greek architecture, culture, philosophy and language are still found, 2000+ years later, all over Europe and the Middle East. Books were translated into Greek so people could read them, including the Old Testament. The most famous OT Greek translation, called The Septuagint, gave Greek titles to the various books, and that is where we get the word “Deuteronomy.” As you might have guessed, “Deuteronomy” also means “a copy of the law” or “second law”. In that Greek translation, in Deuteronomy 17:18, the section that talks about the king making a copy of the law, we read that the king is to make a “deuteronomia”, a second law, a copy. Isn’t it interesting that the Greek title is what stuck for us English speakers!

Our goal in this sermon series will be to look at this Second Law and how we learn about our great God, who he is, what his heart is like, and how he can impact our lives.

Moses’ fireside chat: Introducing Deuteronomy, a bold, risky book of truth-telling

Related image I want you to imagine a scene with me. In this scene older adults sit down with their family. Splayed out around them are their kids, grandkids, and maybe even great-grandkids. The older adult then starts telling the family history. They include the familiar stories, and they tell ones never heard.

What I am describing is a fairly common scenario. Maybe you have that one grandparent that loves to tell stories. In our family it is my father-in-law. He is a story teller, and he loves to talk about the pranks he pulled in college and when he and my mother-in-law were missionaries in Africa for 6 months and he shot big game.

The scenario of an older adult telling family stories tends to focus on “when I grew up in the Depression” or “When I fought in the war”. But how often do the stories tell the personal details of family failure? Would a grandparent talk with their grandkids about how the grandparent really messed up, or how the grandkids’ parents really messed up?

Would they tell the good, the bad and the ugly?

We are very used to the public airing of dirty laundry of celebrities or politicians. But not so much of our own. We really appreciate our privacy. It can be hard for us to hear the bad things. At funerals we rarely talk about the person who passed in a negative light. You get the idea that they were perfect and amazing. But the family knows the true story. The person who passed, like us all, had their faults.

Too often we just hide our faults, and we don’t talk about our mistakes.

What if older adults did broke with tradition? What if we made a practice of reviewing the good, the bad and the ugly with our families? What if we review the way of the Lord with our families?

At Faith Church this past Sunday, we started a sermon series through an Old Testament book that is just like that.

In the book of Deuteronomy, for the most part, Moses is sitting down with the nation of Israel to review what they have gone through. The good, the bad, the ugly. As we study Deuteronomy, we get to hear wisdom from Moses, as he reviews the work of God, and the Law of God, with the people of Israel. We’ll hear a very courageous and shocking group of stories from Moses. When the people totally screwed up, he reminds them of it. He doesn’t excuse himself either. And he doesn’t excuse God. There are some stories where Moses tells about his own failures, and there are some things he says about God that will leave us scratching our heads. These are not the tidy stories we’re accustomed to hearing.

So what about you? Who can you tell stories to? Has God given you kids or grandkids? Maybe employees? Maybe someone that you are seeking to invest in? How can you sit down with them and have a fireside chat like Moses? Tell the the good, for sure, but will you also tell them the bad, the ugly? As Moses does with the Israelites, we can do with those God has placed in our lives. The Israelites needed to hear the truth. The whole truth. The needed the real picture of what got their people to this point. Our families and friends need the same from us. Who can you can tell the truth to?

Jesus doesn’t want believers, he wants…

Jesus doesn’t want believers? What? Yes, he does. Doesn’t he?

Yes, he does. He even said “Believe in me.” Read the Gospel of John and you’ll hear Jesus say that many times.

So a couple of years ago the leader of my denomination, Bishop Bruce Hill, made the statement in the title of this post. When I first heard it, I thought it sounded so wrong. A Bishop is supposed to uphold truth! How could he say that??? See if it sounds wrong to you too: Jesus doesn’t want believers, he wants disciples.

Is our Bishop wrong?

Nope, not at all. Here’s why.

Belief is important. Jesus did want people to believe in him. Jesus wanted them to learn some things. There is content to the message of the Good News. It is a story that has specific details.

What did he want people to believe? One of Jesus’ first followers, Paul, summarized the content of the Good News in 1 Corinthians 15:1-4:

Now, brothers, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand.By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain. For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve.

Believing the details of that story is important. But here is why Bishop Hill is absolutely correct when he said, “Jesus doesn’t want believers, he wants disciples”: believing is not the end product.

Remember what James the brother of Jesus said in his letter? In James 2:19 he wrote, “You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that.” Clearly, believing is not enough, if demons do it. There has to be something else that separates the demons from those who are true followers of Jesus. James goes on to tell us exactly what that something else is when he says, “a person is justified by what he does and not by faith alone.” It is not enough to just believe.

Remember the people in Matthew 7:21-23 who thought they were absolutely going to get into the Kingdom of Heaven? They were believers. Jesus shocks them when he says, “Away from me, I never knew you.”

There is something more than believing! We have do something, James said, to move from believing into truly being known by Jesus. This is what our Bishop is getting at when he says “Jesus doesn’t want believers, he wants disciples.”

Jesus himself taught us how to be assured that we would not hear those awful words, “Away from me, I never knew you.” He says later in Matthew that we can know that we are his disciples if we deny ourselves, carry our cross and follow him. That is clearly moving beyond belief. Belief is not enough. We must believe and become his disciple. Our lives must show by how we live that we not only believe, but we also are living out that belief.

In my sermons, and in thus in this blog, I talk quite a lot about being disciples. A very important way that Jesus wants us to live out our belief in him is not only to be his disciples, but also to make more disciples.

In what were some of his last words, found in Matthew 28:18-20, Jesus told that his disciples priority #1 for them, their mission, was to make more disciples.

We need to ask, therefore, what is a disciple? If this is our mission from our Lord, we should know what a disciple is and how to help others become disciples who can make more disciples. A disciple is a believer who practices spiritual disciplines and lives out the life of Christ, a huge component of which is to make more disciples.

Paul would refer to this when he said to his disciple Timothy, “Teach men who can teach others.” He said that in 2 Timothy 2:2. Disciples of Jesus will make more disciples. That is our mission.

It was revolutionary to me when I first heard that disciples should make more disciples. We are not to make believers. I always thought we Christians were supposed to get people to believe in Jesus, to pray a prayer of belief, and then hope they would follow through and become disciples of Jesus. But, really, that disciple part was a bonus, it wasn’t really important. Jesus, however, didn’t teach us that, and he himself actually made disciples. Take a look at what Jesus says in Matthew 28:19-20. Jesus envisioned a progression, a multiplication, that would continue. His disciples would make more disciples who can make more disciples…a cycle that is never-ending.

That cycle has been at work for 2000 years! Read the book of Acts, and you see how those original 12 disciples made more disciples who made more disciples, and the work of making disciples for Jesus spread beyond Jerusalem to the Middle East and Europe and Africa and Asia and the Americas…and here we are.

A lady from Faith Church, Alice, told the story about a group at a different church that she went to when she was a young mom. The group had an older lady of whom Alice said, “I wanted to be like her”. That’s the heart of a disciple. Saying “I want to be like them.” Paul once said, “Imitate me as I imitate Christ.” Discipleship is a cycle that continues from person to person. Now years later there are people in Faith Church who are saying “I want to be like Alice Royer”!

This is how Jesus made his disciples. But don’t just take my word for it. Get out your Bible or open it on an app, or online. Would you take a few moments and walk through the book of Matthew with me, looking for descriptions of how Jesus made disciples?

Let’s start at Mt. 4:19-22 where Jesus first meets a couple of the guys who would become his disciples. This is where it all starts. He looks at them and says, “Follow me,” and Matthew tells us, “at once they left.” It’s kind of shocking that people would just up and leave their jobs to follow a preacher who is walking around town. But scholars tell us that those guys who followed Jesus started out as Cultural Disciples. It was common practice in their society for people to leave all and follow a teacher. This was step one of the process that Jesus used to make disciples. He invited them to follow him.

Jump ahead to Mt. 8:18-22 and notice the progression to verse 23. Jesus is expanding on what following him actually means. There is a cost to it. And what happens? Jesus’ disciples physically got into a boat with him, still following him.

Also in Mt. 9:9 through 19, another man joins Jesus’ crew of disciples. Matthew! The guy writing the story. He was a tax collector, considered a sinner. The religious elite look at Jesus having dinner with Matthew and ask Jesus’ other disciples, “Why is Jesus eating with a sinner?” Jesus heard it, responding, making it very clear that his mission included even those who were normally considered outcasts. That is instructive for us. Jesus wants all people to be his disciples.

Jump down to Matthew 9:19, and what do we see is happening in this group of disciples? Jesus gets up to respond to a situation, and his disciples get up too. They are following him.

After Step 1, the invitation, we come to Step 2 of discipleship. Thus far they have been answering the call to follow him. Basically, they just accepted the invitation to follow him, and they watched him. Now it goes a bit further.

Disciples are also learners. Step 2 is that they sat under Jesus’ teaching. This has already started in Matthew chapters 5-7, where Jesus gives a lengthy teaching called The Sermon on the Mount. At the beginning of that sermon, in verses 5:1-2, we see that his disciples are there, probably in the front row.

Jump ahead to where we left off in Matthew, and we come to chapter 10. What do we see? A lot of red words, if your Bible prints the words of Jesus in red. Look at 10:1-5. Jesus gives them authority, Matthew names the 12 disciples, and then we read in verse 5 that Jesus instructed them. Earlier in chapters 5-7 he was teaching them in the midst of a large crowd. Now in chapter 10 he is focused solely on his disciples. No one else is present.

Next turn to Mt. 12:46-13:10 and we see more teaching by Jesus. Continue on to 13:36 and the rest of the chapter 13, and what do we see? More focused teaching for his disciples. Jesus is investing personally in these guys.

That is the second step: focused, individual investment, teaching where they learn his ways. But Jesus doesn’t stop there. He moves onto a third step, Shared Experiences – They saw his example.

This was already starting a bit back in Mt. 8:23-27 when he calmed the storm and in Mt. 9:35-38 when they watched him in ministry, doing miracles, teaching and interacting with people. Here at the end of chapter nine, though, he implants an idea in their head. See it there in verse 38? “Ask the Lord to send out more workers.” Jesus is laying a foundation for these guys. Basically, “you have seen my example, ask God to raise up more people to do what I am doing.” Who might Jesus have in mind to be the answer to this prayer?

Jesus after investing time and teaching into these guys, after showing them an example of what life in the Kingdom is all about, he moves to Step 4 when he gives them the opportunity to be his co-laborers.

Remember that prayer at the end of chapter 9, “pray that God will send laborers?” Look what happens in chapter 10. He gave them power and authority, and he sends them out! Jesus gives them the tools to serve, and then gives them the opportunity to serve. A mission trip. They are now the answer to that prayer, as they go on the mission trip. In the process they are learning to make more disciples.

We have to jump out of Matthew’s account to broaden the story a bit. In Luke 10 there is a further example of this, a second mission trip. The first mission trip was just for the 12 disciples. This second mission trip is for 72, Luke tells us. Jesus is getting more people involved.

And look what happens in Luke 10:17. They had an awesome trip! In verse 21, Jesus is ecstatic! These men who have been following him for months are becoming disciples who can make more disciples.

These men have gone through a progression of following him, watching him, and then moving on to learning from him, having shared experiences with him, and now they are actually doing what he did. Where there used to be one guy doing the work of the ministry, there are now 72! This is a picture of discipleship.

You know what is amazing to consider at this point? These guys were disciples, but they were not fully convinced believers! Think about it. After all this that we have seen about how Jesus shaped these men into his disciples, what happened when Jesus was arrested in the Garden? One of those men completely betrayed Jesus, leading the soldiers to arrest him. All the rest of the men ran away, and the one who made the biggest claims about being Jesus’ best follower, Peter, denied him three times. The next day as he hung on the cross, just one of the 12 disciples, John, came by to see him. Two women were there, one of which was his mom, Mary.

Would you call those disciples believers? They are not a pretty picture of believers. Instead they look a lot more like betrayers, deniers, and cowards.

Except for one important detail. Jesus had deeply invested in these men. They might not have been committed believers, but he had formed them as disciples. And those three years of following him, learning from him, having shared experiences with him, and finally of doing what he did, those three years were not wasted.

Because when he rises from the dead, and when he reveals himself to them, the belief finally catches up with their discipleship.

Now we can return to Mt. 28:19-20. The disciples who are now believers have a whole new view of what it means to follow Jesus. They have a new mission, to make more disciples. They can go back through the past three years and review how Jesus made them into disciples, and they can use the same method to make more disciples.

So can we.

For so many years, many Christians have been taught a two-stage view of helping people follow Christ: First we share the content, getting people to believe in God. Second, we reach out to them and help them to be his disciples.

But many people are looking at that two-part method and thinking that it might not be appropriate. Review all we studied in Matthew already in this post: what did Jesus do? Did he make his disciples pray a prayer first? No. He just said “Follow me”. He didn’t try to get the disciples to believe anything. He didn’t make them sign off that they believed certain things about them. He just said “follow me”. Three years later, and much investment later, they still had questions about who he was. But as we have seen, their belief caught up with their discipleship.

And now what about us? How do we make disciples? Disciples do what their discipler does.

So don’t require people to believe first. Lead them into doing something, living the lifestyle of Jesus. The belief will catch up! No doubt, some people will believe first and then learn to be disciples. There is no one right method. But if we have any amount of respect for Jesus and how he made disciples, we would do well to follow his example.

What, then, do we actually have people do? How do we lead them into the lifestyle of Jesus? What are elements of the lifestyle of Christ that we can invite people to participate in? Some sort of serving? We have to spend time with them. How am I to disciple people if I never spend time with them? We need to open up space in our lives to them.

I also urge you to disciple your family first. You parents and grandparents, make it your passion to disciple your kids. Use that four stage process that Jesus used.

Then disciple others. Maybe someone in your church. Maybe a neighbor. Maybe a coworker.

Then do what Jesus did. Live as a disciple. Teach others what you were taught. Practice the spiritual disciplines, teach others to do the same.

Obviously, we can’t disciple people precisely like Jesus did. He was an itinerant preacher. His job was to walk around Israel and preach and do miracles. And people followed him.

We don’t have a life like that. Jesus did not intend that we would become itinerant preachers who walk around our towns and cities with 12 people following us. We have families, houses, jobs, bills. As did the people in the very first churches which we read about in the book of Acts. Read the book of Acts and what we find is that we can make disciples in any setting.

Also, remember that you are not alone as you make disciples.

Let’s talk about that guy Peter, the disciple who denied that he even know Jesus. In Luke’s Gospel, Luke 22:31, we read that earlier in that evening before Jesus was arrested, he said to Peter, “Satan has asked to sift you disciples as wheat, but I have prayed for you, Peter, that your faith will not fail. When you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.”

If I’m Peter I’m thinking “Jesus, I love you, but you say some really strange stuff sometimes.” Peter wasn’t thinking anything at all about his faith failing. He thought he was strong. But I suspect these words stuck with Peter, based on what we read later. Peter would go on to deny Jesus, and yet his faith didn’t fail. By denying Jesus he messed up terribly, and he knew it. After the rooster crowed just as Jesus said it would after Peter denied him, Peter went away weeping bitter tears. It seemed like an abject failure of Jesus’ discipleship of Peter. Peter was Jesus’ top guy. Jesus spent loads of time with Peter. He even once told Peter that he was the rock on whom he was going to build his church. And what happened? When it really counted, when Jesus needed his followers most, Peter said he didn’t know Jesus at all. But there is a loophole.

Remember what Jesus said to Peter? “I have prayed for you, that your faith will not fail.” What I want to focus on is the prayer part. Jesus prayed for his disciples, and in particular Peter. He knew they were about to go through an incredibly difficult time. He knew they would run away from him, and Peter would deny him. But he had prayed for them.

Jesus knew that he wasn’t alone in the disciple-making process. He prayed to God on behalf of his disciples. So should we. You are not alone as you seek to make disciples of your kids, when you pray for them.

You are not alone as you seek to make disciples of your friends, as you pray for them.

Yes, there is much to do with a disciple, much to teach them, but you are not alone when you pray for them.

So who can you disciple? Who can you invite to follow you?

And who can you ask to disciple you?

Discipleship really is about training others and being trained yourself. I love the imagery of training because if you’ve ever had a trainer, whether at the gym, or at work, you can picture it. They are showing you how to do something new. You might not believe in them or in yourself. But you start practicing. They step by step guide you into a new life. And the belief catches up.

Who is training you? Who are you training?

When Jesus was people-watching and taught his disciples how to be generous

Image result for giving I love people-watching. When I was in college, I took a class in which one of our assignments was to go to a place where lots of people walk by and we had to people-watch. While we were watching them, we were to pray that God would give us a heart for people. I never did this before, at least on purpose like that, and I found that it is fun! The mall is a great place. You see people do interesting things! I encourage you to try it.

There was a time in Mark’s account of Jesus’ life where we read about Jesus and his disciples at the temple, and they are watching people when something very interesting goes down right in from them.

Here’s the story from Mark 12:41-44:

Jesus sat down opposite the place where the offerings were put and watched the crowd putting their money into the temple treasury. Many rich people threw in large amounts. But a poor widow came and put in two very small copper coins, worth only a fraction of a penny.
Calling his disciples to him, Jesus said, “I tell you the truth, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything—all she had to live on.”

The rich people they watched threw in large amounts. Then along comes a widow who gives what? The NIV calls it “two very small copper coins”. In the language this was written in, Greek, the coins are called lepta. But what is a lepta?

Scholars tell us that are many options for what these coins might be. Best guess is called a Prutah, one version depicted below. These were very common in Judea.

What were they worth? The NIV says “a fraction of a penny”. Other translations say “a cent.” The Greek says they are equal to a kodrantes, which is a coin with a tiny value. So the NIV gets it right. The widow has given hardly anything at all. Pennies.

I know Ben Franklin said “a penny saved is a penny earned” but he said that in the 1700s. Transport Mr. Franklin to 2017 and he might be in line to argue that we should just get rid of the penny.

CBS News reported last year that pennies cost 1.5 cents to make. Relative to their face value, the report states, pennies are in fact the most expensive coin the US Mint makes. And they are worth the least. Time to get rid of the penny!

This lady gives pennies in the offering. It is easy to think, Well, that’s a horrible offering. She’s giving money that is basically worthless. What can God do with a couple pennies? It is likewise easy to think the rich people gave a gift that is far more important, meaningful and valuable. The rich people gave a gift that will actually make a difference!

That is, until Jesus points out something about the difference between the rich people and the widow. The widow put everything she had in the treasury. And Jesus’ conclusion is that the widow was the one who put in the most!

When I read this I wondered if it was just a one-time thing? Maybe this widow never gave much at all during her lifetime. And on that day she picked up two pennies and thought “Huh, these are worthless, I’ll just drop them in the temple treasury.” Maybe she was actually trying to look good and gain praise for herself.

But I don’t think so. The reason I don’t think so is because it was Jesus who was people watching. Jesus’ comments show that he had an inside view of this woman’s situation. He knew she was giving all she had. He knew her heart, that her gift was a gift of complete surrender to the Lord.

When I think about that, I think it is much more likely that she was a woman who wasn’t making a one-time gift, or a random gift. She is showing us what happens when a person knows how to practice the discipline of giving.

So how do we grow a habit, a discipline, of giving financially?

First of all, you can grow a habit of giving when you have the eternal view of giving. In his Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 6:19-21, Jesus talked about storing up treasure in heaven.

See your giving as having eternal value. When you give an offering, you are not just giving money that is going into the church’s bank account here on earth. You are making a spiritual impact in God’s Kingdom.

Next, we need to see ourselves as stewards of God’s money. Jesus’ close friend, Peter, would later write about this. See 1 Peter 4:10. It is a hard statement, but we need to see our money is not ours. It seems like it is ours because we work for it, we invest it, we bank it, we spend it. It is really easy to forget that it is God who enables us to earn it, to have the money. We simply need to see him as the source of it all. It is his money, his bank account, his debit card, his credit card. We need to spend his money in a way that honors him.

Third, God loves a cheerful giver. Paul talks about this in 2 Corinthians 9:7 when he says “Each man should give what he has decided in his heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.” Cheerful here is the word in Greek “hilaros” which is where we get our word “hilarious”. God loves a hilarious giver. By using the word “Hilaros” Paul is not saying that giving should be funny or comical and you’re laughing your head off. Instead it is the idea of great joy in giving.

We need to see it as a joy to give. We can be excited about it, knowing that giving is being obedient to God, and that God says he will bless us. That does not mean that if you give a regular joyful offering to the church, God is going to turn you into a millionaire. But instead it means that you will be trusting in him, and you’ll have the blessing of knowing that you are being obedient to God. And perhaps the blessing won’t be realized until heaven.

There was a person in Faith Church who years ago came to worship with $10 in their wallet. This person was a struggling single mom, desperate just to keep a roof over her kids’ heads. She could have used that $10 to feed her kids lunch after church. There is nothing wrong with feeding your kids. But right in the middle of worship, that person felt convicted that God wanted her to give her $10 to the church. It wasn’t a guilt-ridden decision. Instead she gave joyfully, knowing she could trust God.

After worship was over another person in the church came up to her, having no idea what had just happened, and gave her $10 saying, “I feel the Lord wanted me to give you this.”

Next, know that you can give joyfully and sacrificially because God knows what you need and he is faithful to his promises to take care of you.

I also heard of a person who gave away a month’s salary and told not a soul about it. One day that month a lady stopped by with groceries for this person and their family.

Or have you heard of George Mueller and the orphanages? Mueller was a deeply godly man in England who ran a number of orphanages. As you can imagine, it takes a lot of money to care for children and staff in an orphanage. And Mueller had more than one! But his practice was not to have a fundraising department. Instead he would pray, and he would accept speaking invitations at churches to talk about the ministry. He would not ask for money. People would give anyway! One day early on, the Muellers and the group of orphans sat down at the dinner table to eat. There was no food left. They set out the plates and silverware, and rather than eat, they prayed. Just as they were praying, a bread man came knocking on the door. He had day old bread that he could no longer sell, and he wanted to see if the Muellers could use it.

Then there is the story of a family from Faith Church that cared for foster children. One day they received a call asking if they could care for a child immediately. They had no bed for the child. They prayed, and a bed showed up.

God is faithful. As Isaiah 41:10 says, “Fear not, for I am with you.”

Again the teaching of Scripture is not that God will make you rich, or make life easy, if you give generously. But he has promised to take care of your needs.

I recently learned of a lady who said the curious phrase, “I would be afraid not to give.” We shouldn’t give out of fear, as if God is going to strike us with lightning if we don’t put 10% of our income in the offering basket at church each week. That is not what this lady meant. When she said “I would be afraid not to give,” her heart was in the right place. She feared depending on herself, when God calls us to depend on him.

Do you need to practice the spiritual discipline of giving? I encourage you to start. But maybe get a trainer. Who do you know that is a very generous person? Who do you know that gives regularly, generously, sacrificially, and cheerfully? Talk to them, and ask them to train you how to give.

Learning how to say “Yes” and “No” to serving in the church

Image result for yes and no How should we view serving in the church? (For that matter, how should we view serving at work, serving at home, serving our neighbors?).

Each of us should ask: am I serving like God wants me to? Are you saying “Yes” enough? Are you saying “No” enough? How should we respond to all the opportunities there are for serving?

In my weekly Saturday morning email to Faith Church I mentioned the 80/20 principle that says 80% of the ministry of the church is done by 20% of the people. That’s a pretty cynical view, and it comes from people who are in churches where that ratio might be true. I am here to say that Faith Church is NOT following the 80/20 rule. I guess that makes us rule-breakers! I went down through the list of all 130 or so people in our church family, and I think we are much closer to something like a 90/90 rule. 90% of the people are doing 90% of the work. That’s is so awesome. I love how you serve, Faith Church!

But does that mean that mean we are in the clear and don’t need to think about serving? Let’s take some time to look at what Jesus had to say about the discipline of serving.

Take a look at John 13:1-17. In this famous and astounding story, Jesus demonstrates for us how to view our connection to the church. Just hours before his arrest, trial, beating and crucifixion, Jesus has a final meal with his followers. John was there, recording the event for us, depicting Jesus going one by one to each of his disciples, washing their feet. At Faith Church we re-enact this many years on Maundy Thursday. It is very, very humbling to hold someone’s crusty feet in your hands and wash them. We don’t believe that Jesus wanted us to practice ritual footwashing. That’s not why he washed his disciples’ feet. While it is not wrong to reenact the ritual if done with the right motivation, Jesus had something else in mind.

That night, Jesus had every right to ask his disciples to serve him. He is the Messiah, the King, and God in the flesh, for goodness sake. He was their leader, their teacher, Rabbi. They were his disciples. They should have been washing his feet.

Instead he showed them, and he showed us, that those of us who are his disciples will have a totally different view of the world. In a world of consumers, we are called to be servants. In a world where the norm is to be entertained or to be pleased, we are called to be selfless. We should see our connection to a church family, therefore, as selfless servants.

Right away, if you’re like me, you start thinking, “Man, being a servant sounds horrible.” Giving of yourself? Selflessness? They all sound boring, hard, and stupid. Who would do that?

It is a good question. Jesus’ call to discipleship is not a call to be consumers. It is a call to be servants, and that is not easy. So we have to ask, Is Jesus right?

Many societal observers say that we live in a consumer society. This week I posted an article on the Faith Church Facebook page about how generally-speaking people view their connection to church in terms of what how a church family can benefit them. People do this because they have been discipled, taught by society to be consumers, taught that life is about what they can get out of it.

We are so used to living in a society that is in large part designed to please us, with loads of choices about clothing, food, and entertainment. We look at vacation and the movies and TV shows, and many other various forms of comfort, as the epitome of life. We look at ease and luxury as what we are to attain to.

Consumers, therefore, feel that the way to evaluate church worship services and their participation in a church family is this: how do those church activities make them feel, or benefit them? If a church worship service doesn’t excite them, they are prone to start feeling down about the church, and move on to go to another church to see if it can do a better job at worship. If a church family isn’t reaching out to them, they feel the church must be cold and uncaring. For a consumer, church is not about serving, it is about receiving.

So how about you? Do you have a consumer mentality about church?

Jesus comes along and says “What you are to attain to, what you are to make your life’s work, is to be a servant.” And what we find, surprisingly, is that selflessness and serving can be done with joy, leading to a life of deeper satisfaction than we ever thought possible.

In Donald Whitney’s book, Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life, he asks the question “Can you serve your boss and others at work? Can you be happy when they are promoted and you are overlooked?Can you pray for the ministry of others to prosper, even if it would cast a shadow on yours?”

I think about Whitney’s quote in relationship to The Door Christian Fellowship.

On February 12, 2017, we started renting space to The Door. They rent five rooms 24/7, and we share many other spaces in the building, including the sanctuary on Sunday mornings. Faith Church worships at 9am, then we have a combined meet and greet with both churches from 10:15-45am. Faith Church then heads to classes, and The Door starts their worship at 11am. Our youth groups have started working together. Our Leadership Teams have had two prayer times together, including one meal. We even did a congregational meal together last fall before The Door started renting. We are so thankful for the partnership with have with The Door.

Before The Door moved in and started worshiping here in February, many of us put in a lot of work to make room for them. There was a lot of serving and giving and selflessness going on, and I continue to be extremely proud of how Faith Church has been flexible and opened its arms to another congregation. We had to give up space, move classrooms, and even start our worship service one half hour earlier.

In the months leading up to that first Sunday with The Door, I had lots of conversations with people outside of Faith Church about this arrangement. The feedback I got (and still get) is that what we were/are attempting is fairly monumental, even unheard of. People were quite curious about it. I talked about it a lot with family and friends, and one person, whose opinion I really respect, questioned the idea of one church renting to another church, when those churches are very similar. Rent to a church with a different ethnicity? No problem. Faith Church had rented to Hispanic and Ethiopian congregations in the past, but those churches worshiped on Saturdays, and in different languages, so not too much mixing happened.

The Door, however, is nearly identical to Faith Church and worships on Sunday. Renting to a church so similar to your own? My trusted friend questioned it.

At the heart of the concern was: What if renting to The Door helps them so much that they grow faster than Faith Church does? What if people from Faith Church decide they like The Door better? What if renting to The Door has serious negative consequences for Faith Church?

I appreciated their concern very much. Actually it kinda scared me. I really respect this person’s opinion. What if renting to The Door was a colossal mistake? Here’s the thing though: our Leadership Team had prayed and discussed and prayed some more and discussed some more, and we firmly believed that this was the right thing to do in the Lord’s eyes, for the mission of his Kingdom.

In a way, we wanted our entire church family to serve another entire church family. And though our time of renting to The Door is still very much in the early stages, only six months, I am growing more and more convinced that it was the right decision. We truly see it as a mutually beneficial partnership!

Just like all the other disciplines we have been studying, then, serving is a decision, a choice we must make.

It is true that serving is listed as one of the spiritual gifts. Some say that once you find your spiritual gift, using that gift is a joy, flowing naturally through you with ease. But that is not always true. Serving can sometimes be hard. Serving means giving of yourself and that is not always easy. Sometimes we just need to serve where needed, because it is needed. And we might not like to serve in that particular way.

Whitney says that we should serve because God calls us all to serve. Serve motivated by love for God and his church. And remember that Jesus showed us and taught us that service is done by a servant. Normally we think of servants as lower than us. But identifying ourselves as servants is a must. Servanthood is a critical element of what it means to be a disciple.

Disciples need to cultivate a lifestyle of serving. It is a choice we make, to take on the identity of a servant, and to practice being a servant. How can you practice serving as a discipline? How can you have a servant’s heart in every situation? It might mean that you serve, even when your heart is not in it. It might just be serving because it is a job that needs to be done and no one else is signing up to do it.

But does that mean you need to say “Yes” to every opportunity that comes your way? I will admit that it is tough to know when to say “No” and not feel bad about it. It is hard to know when to say “Yes” and sacrificially serve. I was recently asked to consider being the president of our local Ministerium. I really, really believe in our Ministerium. I think it is amazing how churches of all shapes and sizes, from a variety of denominations, can work together here in Conestoga Valley. I was the secretary of the Ministerium for a few years, have taken a year off, and thought I would consider being president. I wanted to say “Yes”. I would love to play a more hands-on role in keeping the Ministerium moving forward. As I talked it over with Michelle, with the PRC, and prayed about it, I sensed I needed to say “No.” I can’t say for sure that I made the right decision. Often when we say “No” there is a lingering sense of guilt. We don’t want to disappoint people. We also think we might have been able to help.

Being a faithful servant doesn’t mean that you have to say “Yes” to every opportunity that comes your way. We do need to learn when it is wise and right to say “No”, and when people say “No” to an opportunity to serve, we should allow them to say “No”. We should receive their “No” graciously, without pushing and pushing them to reconsider.

As you can see though, it is a tricky balance. We should also be people who are willing to say “Yes,” people who are willing to sacrificially serve just like Jesus did.

I find it difficult to know when to say “Yes” and when to say “No.” You have to know yourself and your family, and seek wisdom. Spend time in prayer, asking God for wisdom.

There are certainly times when it is wise to say “No.” When your kids are young, for example. When you are newlywed. When you are going through serious stress or difficulty.

There are also good times to say “Yes.” If you are not serving very much or not at all, perhaps. If you are noticing that you have a lot of free time to watch TV, be online, or pursue lots of hobbies and vacations. Maybe you are not serving enough. Jesus’ example and teaching indicates that we would do well to err on the side of saying “Yes”. But remember that Jesus also knew when to say “No.” Many times in the Gospels we read how he left the crowds, got away to a quiet spot for refreshment with his Father. Jesus didn’t eradicate every disease in the land. He could have. Instead he drew a line. So err on the side of saying “Yes,” but avoid overcommitment and burnout. Evaluate your heart. Why are you saying “Yes”? If you are saying “Yes” for the wrong reason, maybe to get attention, to look good, for example, you should say “No.”

Finally, get a trainer. Who do you know that is an excellent servant? As them to help you practice the discipline of serving. Ask them to help guide you when to say “Yes” and when to say “No.”