1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:06,000 I wanted to say that I was really glad to be able to see that we had the scouts here today. 2 00:00:06,000 --> 00:00:11,000 Way, way, way back in the day, there were some dinosaurs on the earth or something. 3 00:00:11,000 --> 00:00:18,000 I was a Cub Scout, and I had gone through, you know, from, was it Tiger Cubs, I think, 4 00:00:18,000 --> 00:00:24,000 all the way up into Webelos and all, and got the Arrow of Light and everything else in between. 5 00:00:24,000 --> 00:00:31,000 And I tried to make sure that I got every single one of the pins that they would like, 6 00:00:31,000 --> 00:00:36,000 you would try to learn a new skill or something different, like, you know, you've got your tent making 7 00:00:36,000 --> 00:00:41,000 and you've got, like, some computer skills were in there somewhere at that point in time, 8 00:00:41,000 --> 00:00:47,000 and then also community service and underwater basket weaving, I think might have been somewhere in there. 9 00:00:47,000 --> 00:00:50,000 Yeah, yeah, I'm afraid of water now. 10 00:00:50,000 --> 00:00:57,000 But one of the things with it, though, was that I never got to go from Cub Scouts up to Boy Scouts. 11 00:00:57,000 --> 00:01:03,000 And, no, I had it somehow offended the entirety of Boy Scouts of America or anything like that. 12 00:01:03,000 --> 00:01:13,000 But the difficulty was that the scout troop that was nearby that I was supposed to go into from Cub Scouts into Boy Scouts, 13 00:01:13,000 --> 00:01:21,000 my mom took me to visit and she just had this feeling in seeing some of the leaders that were there, 14 00:01:21,000 --> 00:01:29,000 was that she wasn't sure that she trusted the leaders for that particular troop at the time. 15 00:01:29,000 --> 00:01:33,000 Don't worry, not this troop, another place. 16 00:01:33,000 --> 00:01:42,000 But one of the things that stood out to me is that I was spending so much time trying to make sure that I was the perfect Cub Scout. 17 00:01:42,000 --> 00:01:49,000 But my mom was actually looking to make sure that I would grow up into being a good person. 18 00:01:49,000 --> 00:01:58,000 And this idea of separating the rules and the expectations from what you're actually meant to grow into, 19 00:01:58,000 --> 00:02:08,000 this distinction between rules and word is a big piece of what I want us to focus on for today. 20 00:02:08,000 --> 00:02:19,000 See, a lot of times we can focus so much on trying to make sure that we have not only lived up to what might make us look good in the eyes of the law, 21 00:02:19,000 --> 00:02:28,000 but we haven't paused to ask whether we have actually changed as a person based on what God actually wants for us. 22 00:02:28,000 --> 00:02:36,000 Whenever I was younger, I was in high school and my mom had this idea that, you know what, 23 00:02:36,000 --> 00:02:38,000 she wanted to get us to do more chores around the house. 24 00:02:38,000 --> 00:02:46,000 So she thought, you know what, I'll actually make sure that your allowance is based on doing chores. 25 00:02:46,000 --> 00:02:51,000 Now, my sister, it wasn't really a big deal one way or the other for her. 26 00:02:51,000 --> 00:02:54,000 If she was going to do chores, she was going to do them no matter what. 27 00:02:54,000 --> 00:02:58,000 My sister, very hardheaded young lady. 28 00:02:58,000 --> 00:03:01,000 And for her, she was like, if I'm going to do the chores, great. 29 00:03:01,000 --> 00:03:02,000 If I'm not, whatever. 30 00:03:02,000 --> 00:03:06,000 And in my mind, though, I'm like jackpot. 31 00:03:06,000 --> 00:03:11,000 Oh, man, it was like, oh, I just noticed, I think you've got some dirty clothes. 32 00:03:11,000 --> 00:03:13,000 Do you need those washed for you today? 33 00:03:13,000 --> 00:03:14,000 Oh, well, let me make sure. 34 00:03:14,000 --> 00:03:19,000 Well, I think it took four loads to wash these instead of three loads. 35 00:03:19,000 --> 00:03:20,000 Let me make a note of that. 36 00:03:20,000 --> 00:03:22,000 I think that might be a few extra cents on that part. 37 00:03:22,000 --> 00:03:26,000 And the thing for me that was always hard, dishes, hated dishes. 38 00:03:26,000 --> 00:03:28,000 We did not have a dish machine. 39 00:03:28,000 --> 00:03:34,000 I never say the term dishwasher because dishwasher was just what you referred to whoever had to do the dishes that day. 40 00:03:34,000 --> 00:03:37,000 But dish machine, we never had one. 41 00:03:37,000 --> 00:03:44,000 And my obsessive compulsive disorder that I especially had when I was younger, still have little tendencies now. 42 00:03:44,000 --> 00:03:50,000 Basically, it took me forever because I was always like, did I wash everything perfectly? 43 00:03:50,000 --> 00:03:52,000 Did I get it just right? 44 00:03:52,000 --> 00:04:02,000 And the thing with it is that I would try to figure out how to make sure that I maximized what I got credit for in the chores 45 00:04:02,000 --> 00:04:10,000 without pausing to say, yeah, but wasn't the whole point just to make sure that I'm helping my family and being responsible. 46 00:04:10,000 --> 00:04:15,000 And instead, I was just making sure, yeah, but did I get enough money to buy the video game I wanted? 47 00:04:15,000 --> 00:04:22,000 In a lot of ways, we see this mentality with Abraham and Isaac. 48 00:04:22,000 --> 00:04:33,000 You see, Abraham had been promised this child, Isaac, and he knew that this is the child through which God was supposed to bless him. 49 00:04:33,000 --> 00:04:40,000 Now, Abraham had made a lot of poor choices in the chapters leading up to this. 50 00:04:40,000 --> 00:04:50,000 Whenever he was afraid that different kings nearby would be jealous of his wife and just try to take her from him, 51 00:04:50,000 --> 00:04:53,000 he would say, well, just tell everybody that you're my sister, okay? 52 00:04:53,000 --> 00:04:58,000 And then that way, they won't feel that they have to kill me to be with you. 53 00:04:58,000 --> 00:05:03,000 And then turned out he brought curses upon kings lands because of it. 54 00:05:03,000 --> 00:05:10,000 Or yes, I'm supposed to have a child, but I'm already getting older. 55 00:05:10,000 --> 00:05:15,000 Apparently, back then, you could be in your 90s and still be having kids. 56 00:05:15,000 --> 00:05:22,000 So I don't know if that's true for our 97-year-olds as well, but maybe the world's a little different these days. 57 00:05:22,000 --> 00:05:32,000 But with it, though, is we end up seeing that he goes out of his way and has a child with somebody else that they could just claim was a child by Sarah. 58 00:05:32,000 --> 00:05:35,000 And that wasn't it either. 59 00:05:35,000 --> 00:05:40,000 And so now God has blessed him with the Son through Sarah. 60 00:05:40,000 --> 00:05:46,000 And now God is saying, you have to sacrifice him. 61 00:05:46,000 --> 00:05:55,000 The thing is, is that after spending so long trying to make sure, yes, but I think I could kind of get around things. 62 00:05:55,000 --> 00:06:02,000 If I do this or do that, maybe I could somehow redeem him, maybe I could pay for him. 63 00:06:02,000 --> 00:06:08,000 Instead, Abraham's like, I don't know, but I have to follow. 64 00:06:08,000 --> 00:06:12,000 There are a lot of different theories as to what Abraham must have been thinking at the time. 65 00:06:12,000 --> 00:06:17,000 Was Abraham thinking, hmm, maybe there will be another son? 66 00:06:17,000 --> 00:06:20,000 Was Abraham thinking, hmm, maybe God could bring him back from the dead? 67 00:06:20,000 --> 00:06:25,000 All of its speculation, it's not actually in the Bible what he's thinking. 68 00:06:25,000 --> 00:06:31,000 All we know is that he took him and went. 69 00:06:31,000 --> 00:06:41,000 And the thing is, is that right before he's about to sacrifice Isaac, God says, no. 70 00:06:41,000 --> 00:06:47,000 You've shown what it is that you are following after me. 71 00:06:47,000 --> 00:06:58,000 As a kid, I had one of those children's Bibles, and it always showed Isaac as this little bitty kid that Abraham was about to sacrifice. 72 00:06:58,000 --> 00:07:04,000 But in the context, when you read it, Isaac was the one who had to carry the wood up to the sacrifice place. 73 00:07:04,000 --> 00:07:08,000 So chances are, he was actually a lot older. 74 00:07:08,000 --> 00:07:19,000 So when his geriatrically aged father was binding him, it was probably voluntary. 75 00:07:19,000 --> 00:07:26,000 The thing with this is that instead of trying to spend all this time looking for the loopholes to get around it, 76 00:07:26,000 --> 00:07:43,000 is that instead, at a time whenever people back then, they thought of God as expecting that you might sacrifice people, Abraham went and followed. 77 00:07:43,000 --> 00:07:50,000 But God himself showed that he had something bigger all along. 78 00:07:50,000 --> 00:07:58,000 The thing is, is that oftentimes we're looking to Scripture to try to figure out what rules that we're supposed to follow. 79 00:07:58,000 --> 00:08:08,000 But whenever we look to Scripture just to figure out what rules to follow, then we completely miss the purpose. 80 00:08:08,000 --> 00:08:12,000 Because this is not just the whole bunch of rules that we're supposed to try to figure out. 81 00:08:12,000 --> 00:08:16,000 Did I check things off and make sure I got everything done? 82 00:08:16,000 --> 00:08:24,000 God's word is meant to communicate who God is. 83 00:08:24,000 --> 00:08:32,000 Even when we look at the Son of God, is that this isn't just Jesus trying to figure out, okay, what more rules do I need to add on? 84 00:08:32,000 --> 00:08:39,000 No, no, no, this is, let me understand the embodiment of God himself. 85 00:08:39,000 --> 00:08:45,000 And you see, that ends up kind of pointing us a bit more to what we see in our Gospel today. 86 00:08:45,000 --> 00:08:52,000 You see, in the Gospel lesson, it starts off talking about washing of hands. 87 00:08:52,000 --> 00:09:00,000 Now, I'll be honest, I always hated this passage whenever I was younger, because the whole time I'm like, yeah, wash your hands. 88 00:09:00,000 --> 00:09:02,000 You're about to eat. That's disgusting. 89 00:09:02,000 --> 00:09:06,000 You don't even know what in the world, like you have been all over the place and don't even get me started. 90 00:09:06,000 --> 00:09:11,000 The last time I looked at this passage, it was like 2021 and we were like dealing with toilet paper and COVID. 91 00:09:11,000 --> 00:09:13,000 Don't even start about that. 92 00:09:13,000 --> 00:09:20,000 And the thing is, is that I'm listening to this, trying to understand what was such a big deal. 93 00:09:20,000 --> 00:09:27,000 But realizing that in the context, is that the Pharisees and the scribes are talking to the disciples, 94 00:09:27,000 --> 00:09:34,000 not just like, oh hey, you should probably make sure that you have clean hands because you're about to eat and that's usually a good idea. 95 00:09:34,000 --> 00:09:41,000 This is even, you were in the marketplace around all of those unclean people. 96 00:09:41,000 --> 00:09:53,000 You need to make sure you washed your hands ceremoniously because you don't want to take a chance that those impure people are somehow still on your hands. 97 00:09:53,000 --> 00:09:56,000 And what is Jesus focused? 98 00:09:56,000 --> 00:10:03,000 Jesus focus is saying, look at yourselves. 99 00:10:03,000 --> 00:10:06,000 What is happening inside of you? 100 00:10:06,000 --> 00:10:15,000 Look at who you have been and now you're wanting to try to focus on what someone else is doing that has more to do with your tradition than it does, 101 00:10:15,000 --> 00:10:18,000 it has to do with anything to do with God himself. 102 00:10:18,000 --> 00:10:24,000 Just to give a quick context, Corbin. 103 00:10:24,000 --> 00:10:27,000 It's not a comic book superhero villain. 104 00:10:27,000 --> 00:10:32,000 What it is is that Corbin was actually this phrase meant given to God. 105 00:10:32,000 --> 00:10:41,000 It was like a way of saying this here belongs to God so nobody can do anything else with it. 106 00:10:41,000 --> 00:10:51,000 In a sense, it's almost like saying that people are going through a divorce and before they split all their assets, 107 00:10:51,000 --> 00:10:56,000 all of a sudden you find out that they gifted the ranch to their great aunt. 108 00:10:56,000 --> 00:10:59,000 You're like, I'm sorry, we can't split it. 109 00:10:59,000 --> 00:11:03,000 It belongs to my aunt now. Sorry, too bad. 110 00:11:03,000 --> 00:11:07,000 It would be kind of a similar mentality with whatever they had. 111 00:11:07,000 --> 00:11:16,000 If they didn't want to use their possessions to care for their parents, it could be dedicated to God. 112 00:11:16,000 --> 00:11:20,000 Granted, you could still redeem it. 113 00:11:20,000 --> 00:11:23,000 You could still pay to get that property back. 114 00:11:23,000 --> 00:11:29,000 You could still pay to get whatever that was back and still keep it for yourself. 115 00:11:29,000 --> 00:11:36,000 But it was dedicated so therefore you couldn't use whatever it was for your parents, 116 00:11:36,000 --> 00:11:41,000 even if they were older and even if they needed that. 117 00:11:41,000 --> 00:11:47,000 This was a practice that ended up showing who they were as people. 118 00:11:47,000 --> 00:11:51,000 And I think the question comes down to us as well. 119 00:11:51,000 --> 00:11:56,000 As Christians, do we oftentimes do the same? 120 00:11:56,000 --> 00:12:02,000 Are we spending so much time trying to make sure that we've checked off whatever laws make us feel good about ourselves 121 00:12:02,000 --> 00:12:08,000 and we don't stop to actually ask what's actually happening inside of us? 122 00:12:08,000 --> 00:12:19,000 How many times is it that someone would say, how do we know whether this was a person who had faith in Christ? 123 00:12:19,000 --> 00:12:26,000 They might say, well, we know that they were baptized on such and such a day. 124 00:12:26,000 --> 00:12:32,000 Why couldn't a person just say because they said they believed? 125 00:12:32,000 --> 00:12:43,000 Why is it that we might get so focused on whether we got through a certain ceremony instead of just saying, where was their faith? 126 00:12:43,000 --> 00:12:51,000 Or sometimes we might look at this season of Lent that we started on Ash Wednesday. 127 00:12:51,000 --> 00:12:55,000 And we might focus a lot on what did you give up for Lent? 128 00:12:55,000 --> 00:13:01,000 Oh, I gave up alcohol for Lent. Man. That's a tricky one. 129 00:13:01,000 --> 00:13:04,000 I gave up chocolate chip cookies for Lent. 130 00:13:04,000 --> 00:13:09,000 That was a hard one for me back in college. Let me tell you what. 131 00:13:09,000 --> 00:13:19,000 Or, you know what, let me give up this. Let me give up that. I was told by about four different people that, yes, I'm single, but I need to give up online dating. 132 00:13:19,000 --> 00:13:28,000 It's actually been a whole lot better than I could have hoped for. So I don't have a whole bunch of judgmental people up there telling me who I am. 133 00:13:28,000 --> 00:13:48,000 But instead of saying, what did I give up for Lent? Have we paused to say, did we focus more on God and on prayer and on asking what God is trying to teach us every time we realize what we've given up? 134 00:13:48,000 --> 00:13:55,000 Or even beyond that, how many times do we talk about being willing to serve the world around us? 135 00:13:55,000 --> 00:14:13,000 But somehow we always draw a line that there's always those people, whatever those people may be in that context, that somehow fall outside of the line of, well, yes, I want to help other people, but they're in a different category. 136 00:14:13,000 --> 00:14:26,000 How often is it that we're spending our time looking to figure out which law we're following that we feel good about, but we're not willing to ask what's happening on the inside? 137 00:14:26,000 --> 00:14:38,000 Because God's Word isn't about trying to say, did I figure out which law that I need to follow today. God's Word is about knowing God. 138 00:14:38,000 --> 00:14:49,000 It's not about following laws, it's about following God. Who is God? 139 00:14:49,000 --> 00:15:06,000 And today, are you actually getting to know Him? See, that's the thing about the fulfillment of the law, is that fulfillment of the law is a reflection of God's presence, not a way to achieve it. 140 00:15:06,000 --> 00:15:20,000 Fulfilling God's law is that God's presence, His Spirit is in you, changing you, leading you to do what God is calling you to do. 141 00:15:20,000 --> 00:15:29,000 Not, I've managed to fulfill the things that I read today, so therefore God must be with me. 142 00:15:29,000 --> 00:15:38,000 How often can we sit on a high horse and figure out how well we've told everybody else what they're expected to do? 143 00:15:38,000 --> 00:15:43,000 And yet have we paused long enough to ask what is God doing in me? 144 00:15:43,000 --> 00:15:58,000 Have I actually seen love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control? 145 00:15:58,000 --> 00:16:05,000 I missed one. There's one out there on the internet. 146 00:16:05,000 --> 00:16:10,000 How does a person miss love? 147 00:16:10,000 --> 00:16:21,000 We oftentimes spend so much time looking at the words, but we're not asking what the word is doing inside of us. 148 00:16:21,000 --> 00:16:32,000 And that's the thing about this time in the season of Lent. Have you been letting God reach your heart? 149 00:16:32,000 --> 00:16:41,000 So as we are hearing God's word, I hope that this sermon and the ones beyond are not about, 150 00:16:41,000 --> 00:16:48,000 did I figure out something now that I'm supposed to do because I got lectured into it? 151 00:16:48,000 --> 00:16:56,000 But what I hope and pray is rather that God's word has reached you to show you who God is, 152 00:16:56,000 --> 00:17:09,000 and that in knowing God and loving God, He changes you so that you want to follow Him because of who you are in Christ Jesus. 153 00:17:09,000 --> 00:17:21,000 May God change us today and always so that we follow Him rather than figuring out whether we have followed whatever laws we have put into our own lives 154 00:17:21,000 --> 00:17:40,000 just to make ourselves feel good. Thanks be to God.