Our Beliefs : Sermons : Sermon Archive - 2005 : May 29, 2005

Theme: Remember the Word of the Lord

Church year occasion: Pentecost 2

Someone gets into a car accident. What do you say? "Could have been a lot worse -- you could have been killed. You should count your blessings." Someone's child falls from a ladder and breaks an arm. What do you say? "Could have been a lot worse -- he could have broken his neck or back. You should count your blessings." When someone tells you to count your blessings, you can almost assume that something bad has just happened, otherwise they probably wouldn't have said, "Count your blessings."

Wouldn't it be a breath of fresh air to have someone say, "Count your blessings" when something positive happens? We have that breath of fresh air right in front of us this morning, as Moses encourages you to Remember the Word of the Lord. He wants you to make God's Word bigger than anything else in your life and to put God's Word into practice.

Our text puts us in the time of Moses, during the last years of his life. Forty years earlier God had just rescued the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. God led them to Mount Sinai where he made a covenant with them -- he would be their God and they would be his people. As God's people and as his chosen nation, the Israelites were to remember what God had done for them and then live lives for him. If they could live up to their end of the bargain, everything would turn out fine. But what happened? By the time Moses came down from Mount Sinai, the Israelites were already breaking that covenant and worshipping a golden calf. That calf had become bigger than God and his Word. Eventually the Israelites would be on the verge of entering the promised land of Canaan. They sent men into the land to spy it out and see what lay ahead of them. They came back with a glowing report -- the land was flowing with milk and honey. But 10 of the 12 spies said, "The people are too big. They are like giants to us. We'd be like grasshoppers to them. We'll get squished." They didn't trust God to fight their battles. They saw their enemies as bigger than God and his Word. As a result, God would cause them to wander in the desert for forty years and the older generations would never see the promised land of Canaan.

Fast forward to our text; it is now forty years later. The older generations were dead, and before long Moses, too, would die. He wanted to make sure the new generation knew the covenant made between God and Israel. Moses sums up his message with the words before us. "Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds," he begins. The previous generation had not done that. They had treated God's Word with contempt. The word, "fix," also means "to plant." Just like a plant is planted in soil and remains there to get nourishment to grow, so God wanted the Israelites and wants us to plant his Word in our hearts. We might think of Jesus' parable of the sower, where some seed fell on hard ground, some fell on rocky soil, some fell among weeds and some fell on good soil. The hard, rocky and weedy soil killed the plant because it didn't take root. But the seed planted on the good soil grew and produced a bumper crop. God wants us to be that good soil -- in other words, he wants us to know his word, remember what he tells us in that Word and make it bigger than anything else in this life. When we do, he says, we'll be blessed.

I'm sure many of you have plants in your homes or gardens that you've just planted. Is taking care of a plant easy? It usually is. All you do is give it the proper water, the proper soil and plant food, the proper light, and the plants should turn out fine. Those things aren't hard -- anyone can do them. The hard part is doing it everyday. If you go on vacation, you better get someone to take care of your plants, or you might not like what you see when you get back. I remember going on a month-long vacation with my family when I was nine years old. When we left, we had a garden. When we came home, we had a jungle full of weeds, some of which were taller than me. It's the same with God's Word. When God tells us to use his Word to grow in our faith and in our connection to God through Jesus, that's not really hard. All we do is read it or listen to it when someone is speaking it, like at church or Bible class. That isn't difficult to do. The difficult part comes when God wants us to do it on a daily basis. God wants his Word "fixed" in our hearts and minds.

When God planted his word in our hearts, he didn't want us to forget it. If we do, the weeds of this life will choke it out. When things go wrong the weeds of worry can get us to trust in other things besides God. The weeds of busyness can keep us from looking to God's word on a regular basis. If we're too busy with other things, we will treat God's Word as secondary. Then the weeds are bigger than the Word of God, and the Word will eventually be choked out.

How can we prevent that from happening? How can we keep God's Words bigger than anything else in our lives? Moses tells us. One way is to "tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates." The Pharisees of Jesus' day took this very seriously and very literally. Even today orthodox Jewish men tie little boxes called phylacteries to their left wrist and onto their foreheads. They also place little boxes on their doorframes called mezuzahs. They contain four Scripture passages, one of which is from our text. Unfortunately, it became something they did for show. But what is God's point? God's words should always be in front of us, uppermost in our minds, guiding our every decision.

Moses tells us another way to make God's word bigger than anything in this life. He says, "Teach [God's Words] to your children." Then he tells us how we do that: "talking about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up." In other words, we teach our children the most important thing in life -- Jesus is their Savior from sin. We talk about it in our homes or when we're on vacation. We do it morning, noon and night. They see from us that Jesus and his words are bigger than anything else in our lives. When we make God's Word bigger than anything else in our lives, God promises that we can count our blessings. But unfortunately knowing what God wants and doing it are two different things. So not only does God want us to make his Word bigger than anything else in our lives, but he also wants us to put it into practice.

We might laugh at someone tying boxes to their foreheads and wrists or putting them on their houses. How silly to think that merely attaching Bible passages to their wrist and forehead would do them any good, especially when they rejected Jesus as their Savior. But we do somewhat the same thing. We wear jewelry in the shape of a cross; we hang crosses on our walls at home and in our churches. But has this become show in our lives as it was in the lives of the Pharisees? Do we give the impression that God's Word is big in our lives, but then fail to put it into practice in our lives? Teaching our children comes into play here, too. Children are good imitators. They learn from us, and many times they grow up to be us. When they see crosses on the walls at home and yet see the devotional book not opened for months on the kitchen table, or the Bible gathering dust somewhere in the house, what are they being taught? When the parents go to church and even Bible class regularly, but the moment they're out of church they use language not suitable for a Christian, what are they teaching their children? Not only are they taught sinful habits, but the cross on the wall in their houses or the cross around their neck becomes meaningless.

So Moses makes it painfully simple for us: "See, I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse -- the blessing if you obey the commands of the LORD your God that I am giving you today; the curse if you disobey the commands of the LORD your God and turn from the way that I command you today by following other gods, which you have not known." For every time we've not followed God's Word, we deserve the curse that God has set against sin -- eternal damnation.

But then remember what those crosses in your house and around your neck mean. Jesus died for those sins. The curse that God promised against us was indeed carried out -- but not against us. God cursed his own Son with eternal death when he hung on the cross, so that we could live forever with him in heaven. Jesus was cursed in our place. As Paul said to the Galatians, "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: 'Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.' " (Galatians 3:13) Now, redeemed through the blood of Jesus Christ from sin's curse, we are free to live as God always intended us to live -- as children of God who put make God's word bigger than anything else in our lives and also put it into practice. Through Jesus we receive all the blessings God wants us to have.

Instead of children learning from us how to live contrary to God's Word, we teach them what living according to God's word means. Because Christ died for our sins, when we leave church, our words and actions, as well as our thoughts, reflect that we are Christians. Instead of using language not fitting for a Christian, we will use our mouths to call upon God's name in every trouble, pray, praise and give thanks, as Luther said. We'll especially teach our children about their Savior from sin, and give them a certain hope of eternal life, the hope that we ourselves have. In other words, we'll teach our children the Word of the Lord. As God's Word fills us and it becomes the biggest thing in our lives, the crosses we wear and those that we hang on our walls take on a whole new meaning. They are there to remind us of God's eternal love for us in Jesus.

What will happen when we live according to God's word? We can expect his blessings. When parents take the time to teach their children what is most important in life, both by mouth and by example, they will be blessed with children who have a love of their Savior and want to serve him and their parents better. As God says in Proverbs, "Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it." On this Memorial Day weekend, what a comfort that is! Parents who raised their children to remember the Word of the Lord will have much more of a calmness of heart in seeing their son or daughter serve in Iraq or Afghanistan. Their children will be able to tell them that no matter what happens, they trust in the Lord to do his will. And even if they die fighting for the freedoms we hold dear, they'll meet their Maker and their Savior in heaven. That is the greatest blessing a parent can receive from the Lord when they make his Word the biggest thing in their life and put it into practice by telling their children -- that their child will be with them and Jesus forever in heaven. It doesn't get any better than that.

Someone has said that there is a basic difference between an explorer and a tourist. The tourist travels quickly, stopping only to observe the highly noticeable places or tourist traps on his trip. The explorer, on the other hand, takes his time to search out all that he can find, and he will be blessed for it. Too many of us read the Bible as a tourist and then complain about how difficult our lives are. Instead, explore your Bible. Delve into God's Word and find the treasure of comfort we have in sins forgiven through Christ, as well as everything else God has revealed to us as well. When you explore God's Word and remember what he wants you to know, making it the biggest thing in your life, and putting into practice what you discover, get ready to count your blessings. Amen.