October 28, 2010

"And now, O Israel, what does the LORD your God ask of you but to fear the LORD your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to observe the LORD's commands and decrees that I am giving you today for your own good? To the LORD your God belong the heavens, even the highest heavens, the earth and everything in it. Yet the LORD set his affection on your forefathers and loved them, and he chose you, their descendants, above all the nations, as it is today." (Deuteronomy 10: 12-15)

Have you ever enjoyed a dish at a potluck so much that you just had to learn how to make it? Maybe the particular dish happened to be quite complex - too hard to try and figure out on your own, so you just had to have the recipe. Who do you go to for the recipe? To the one who created the dish of course. We have in our Old Testament Lesson God, who is the One who created and preserves, and to whom belongs "the heavens, even the highest heavens, the earth and everything in it," asking His chosen followers to follow His recipe for life here on this earth.

And His recipe is a good one - one that "[He gives us] today for [our] own good!" The hymn writer nailed it: "What God ordains is always good; His will is just and holy, as he directs my life for me, I follow meek and lowly. My God indeed in ev'ry need knows well how he will shield me, to him I will yield me." (CW 429:1)

How can we not yield ourselves to Him by following this good recipe? How can we not fear, love and serve God with all our soul? How can we not walk in His ways and observe all of His commands and decrees? The recipe is good, but if we're honest, we will confess that we often have a hard time getting the recipe to turn out because we have a contaminated tool to work with - our sinful nature. "I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing." (Romans 7:18-19) Our sinful nature contaminates the whole dish. What will we do? On the day of judgment, God will ask us to present the results of our recipe "For we will all stand before God's judgment seat. It is written: 'As surely as I live,' says the Lord, 'every knee will bow before me; every tongue will confess to God.' So then, each of us will give an account of himself to God." (Romans 14:10-12) For us sinners this is a recipe for disaster - all we will have is a ruined dish to present to the Judge. "What God does in his law demand and none to him can render brings wrath and woe on ev'ry hand for man, the vile offender. Our flesh has not those pure desires the spirit of the law requires, and lost is our condition." (CW 390:2)

Yet, we who are saved - we who the LORD has "set His affection on" - we who the LORD has loved and chosen - we have someone who followed the good recipe for us - and He followed it to a T. Through faith we will have the perfect dish to present to the Judge on that day of judgment, not because we followed the recipe ourselves, but only because Jesus followed the recipe for us and gave us the perfect dish to present.

Praise be to God - by grace and through faith we're good to go! So now what? Should we just ignore what the LORD our God asks of us? "What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means!" (Romans 6:15) "What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means!" (Romans 6:1-2) As we celebrate the anniversary of the Reformation this upcoming Sunday and the "sola fides" are flying, let's keep in mind what James says about "fide" without action, "What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him? ...faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead." (James 2: 14 & 17) Sola fide doesn't mean that we can show up for church on Sunday morning, check in with God and be reminded of His grace, and then checkout for the rest of the week because we convince ourselves that "we don't have to do anything." When we do nothing, our faith is dead. When we fear, love and serve God with all our soul and when we walk in His ways and observe all of His commands - then our faith is alive as we follow His recipe for our lives. Our motivation to follow the recipe is not to try and make the perfect dish, hoping that God will think it's good enough (cooks and bakers - imagine the kind of pressure associated with following a recipe if your eternal destiny was dependent on how your recipe turned out!) No, we follow the recipe because He has asked us to, and because when we consider everything He has done for us - the fact that God sent His Son Jesus to follow the recipe perfectly and to pay the penalty for all the times that we botched the recipe - we will be glad and we will want to do what He asks us to do. This is how we show love to God - by following his good recipe. "This is love for God: to obey his commands. And his commands are not burdensome" (1 John 5:3)