When we had
our Bible readings this morning, I asked you to trust me that there was a
reason we were reading that stuff from Leviticus. Well, here’s the reason.
If you were listening when we read that part, what you heard was a bunch
of rules. You heard rules about how to
sacrifice to God properly. You heard
rules about how we’re supposed to gather the harvest. You heard rules about when we can or cannot eat certain fruit. You heard rules about how meat has to be
prepared. You heard rules about how to
cut our hair. Our reading from
Leviticus was simply a bunch of rules.
Most people
don’t like rules. We don’t like to be
told what to do and what not to do.
Most of the time, if someone tries to do that, we push back from
it. We may not even realize what we’re
doing or why, but we do.
It starts
from the time we’re kids. What’s one of
the first words a little kid learns?
“No!” Do you want to do
this? “No!” Why don’t you try a little of that? “No!” You need to do your
chores. “No!”
We just
don’t like being told what we can and cannot do. It goes back to the story of Adam and Eve. Here they were, in paradise. They had everything they could ever want or
need. God only gave them one rule. God said, see that tree over there? You cannot eat the fruit from that one
tree. You can eat all the other fruit
from all the other trees. You can have
as much fruit as you want. You can eat
so much fruit that you make yourself sick.
Just don’t eat the fruit from that one tree. That’s the only rule.
So what did
Adam and Eve do? They ate the fruit
from that one tree. Yeah, the serpent
was involved and all that, but still, I wonder sometimes. If God had never told Adam and Eve they
could not have the fruit from that one tree, would they even have wanted
it? Would it even have occurred to them
to go take the fruit from that one tree?
But as soon as God gave them a rule, then all of a sudden they had to
push back against it. There’s just
something in us that does not like being told what we can or cannot do.
Now, maybe
some of you are wondering what this has to do with our sermon series, Stone
Tablets in a Wireless World. Well, it
has everything to do with it, because as we look at how society has changed,
this is one of the biggest ways. We
used to live in a society with lots of rules.
Now, we don’t any more. Instead,
we live in a society that has all kinds of choices and options.
Think about TV. When I was a kid, we got three
channels. On a good day, when the
weather was just right, we might get four.
They were in black and white, and they only broadcast at certain
times. Now, we get a hundred fifty
channels broadcasting twenty-four hours a day in high definition. If we’re not going to be home when our
show’s on, or if it’s just not convenient to watch it then, we use the
DVR. Or we find it on the
internet. Or we go to Netflix. Or we watch it on our phone. Nobody can tell us what we have to watch, or
when, or where. We make those decisions
for ourselves.
We want to make all our decisions
for ourselves. Recently, my dad got a
walker. Dad’s eighty-nine, and we’ve
been telling him he needed a walker for some time now, but he kept
resisting. Finally, when we all shut up
about it, he decided to get one. No one
was going to tell him when he had to get a walker. He wanted to make that decision for himself. We all want to make our decisions for
ourselves.
We don’t
live in a society of rules. We live in
a society of choices. We live in a
society where we get to decide what we’re going to do and when we’re going to
do it, and by golly, nobody’s going to tell us differently.
A lot of
times, though, when people look at the church, what do they see? Or at least, what do they think they
see? They see a bunch of rules, and a
bunch of rule-makers. A lot of people
look at the church as being like that reading we heard from Leviticus. They look at it as a bunch of people who are
trying to tell them how to live. They
look at it as bunch of people who are trying to tell them what they have to do
and when they have to do it. They don’t
like it. And so, they don’t come.
Now, to be
honest, there are times when we in the church come across that way. We may not mean to, but sometimes we
do. We may do it with the best of
intentions, we may do it in situations where we’re only trying to help, but we
still do it sometimes. That can be a
turn-off to people, because again, most of us don’t want someone else telling
us what we have to do or what we cannot do.
We want to make decisions ourselves.
Even though
our society is very different than the one when the Bible was written, though,
we see a similar situation in our reading from Luke. Remember, in Jesus’ time, the big rule-makers were the
Pharisees. They criticized Jesus
because he did not follow their rules.
Jesus
criticized them right back. What did he
say? Two things, and they’re really
related to each other. First, he said,
look, you guys are so focused on the rules that you’ve forgotten about
love. Love is the most important rule
of all. Love is the rule we need to
focus on first and foremost. If we
don’t follow the rule of love, it does not matter what other rules we
follow. We’re not doing it right if we
don’t live out of love.
The second
thing Jesus said is, look at what you’re doing with all these rules. You’re making people’s lives a burden. You’re loading them down so much with all
these rules that they can hardly stand up any more. Not only that, you’re not doing anything to help them follow all
these rules you’re loading them down with.
That’s not love. In fact, that’s
the opposite of love. All these rules
you’re giving people are making them miserable.
Now, at
this point some of you may be thinking, “Wait a minute. Jesus said a lot of other stuff, too. Jesus also said that he came not to change
the law, but to fulfill it. Besides,
there are a lot of places in the Bible that have rules. Are you telling us we should just ignore all
of that? I thought the Bible was
supposed to be the inspired word of God.
How can you tell us we can just ignore all those rules?”
Well,
that’s not what I’m telling you. What I
am telling you, though, is that I don’t think God put those rules in the Bible
to give us heavy burdens to carry. I
don’t think God put those rules there to make us all miserable.
In fact, I think it’s the
opposite. I think God put those rules
there to help us. God did not make all
these rules just so God would have an excuse to send us to hell if we did not
follow them. What God did was say,
look, if you live my way, your life is going to go a lot better. You’ll be a lot happier if you’ll just live
the way I’m telling you to live.
It’s not a matter of salvation. Jesus told us that the only rules we have to
follow for salvation are that we love God and that we love others. Jesus told us that if we believe in God and
accept Jesus as our savior, we will be saved.
Those are the only rules we have to follow for our salvation. When we go beyond that, we’re giving
ourselves and other people a load we cannot carry. We’re making our own lives and other people’s lives miserable.
It’s not that God will send us to
hell if we don’t follow God’s rules.
The thing is that, if we don’t live the way God wants us to live, we run
the risk of creating our own hell while we’re on earth. We run the risk of living meaningless, empty
lives. We run the risk of living lives
separated from God and from others.
That’s not what God wants for us.
God gave us rules because if we live the way God wants us to live, we’ll
have a lot better chance of living lives that are happy and meaningful. We’ll have a lot better chance of living the
full, complete, joyous lives that God wants us to live. God gave us rules for living because God
loves us.
Rules don’t
attract people. Love does. If we load people up with a bunch of rules,
they’ll resist and push back against us.
If we load people up with love, they’ll be attracted to us. They’ll want to know where that love comes
from, how they can get it in their lives, and how they can give it to other
people, too. Because, you see, that’s
the greatest thing about love. It’s
great to get love, but it’s even better to be able to give it to someone else.
If we show
love to all the people God gives us to love, we’ll be following the greatest
rule of all. Not only that, we’ll be
doing the best thing we can do to share the message of those old stone tablets
to a wireless world.
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