Good Morning!
In the sermon Sunday I talked a good bit about the need to see the beauty of the ordinary. Part of the reason for that is that this is the way that God usually works. He made the creation to be an active part of His providential plan and through it this is the natural means of His grace. Trusting in His design is a central part of our walk of faith. To rest and trust in the way the Lord has organized His world is to live joyously. There is much that sinful flesh would like us to modify that which we receive from the providential hand of God, but if we know anything about the Bible and the things that happen in it we know that this never works out well for the person or persons involved. It is hard sometimes to admit that the Lord knows best, yet as noted if we are willing to be honest we must recognize reality. There is much danger in not identifying that fact. Those who didn’t look at the serpent-topped stick of Moses died from their snake bites. Not my will, but thy will be done is not just something Jesus said on the eve of His death. It must be the call sign of every faithful believer. A central way we short circuit this approach is by giving in to the pressure to conform to the wisdom of the age and try and get ahead without doing the labor that is necessary, and honoring those ideas which take time. Of the many things we lost when our culture transitioned from an agriculturally mindful context to an industrially focused one is an appreciation for the long-term and the need to do the little things so the flowering, in some cases literally, of success could take place. However, that kind of century way of thinking has been replaced by something more direct, and not for the better. In today’s worship/prayer help we are going to talk a bit about how we need to learn to find peace in the ways of the Lord and stop trying to ape the world’s approach to life.
We live in a day and age where the big, amazing, and more importantly the immediate is the goal of most from day-to-day. It’s part of the reason why gambling, especially on something as easily tabulated as sports has exploded in recent years in America. We want the best without having to work at it. While cards, tables, and games where money is exchanged for rolls of the dice and the like have been with us forever it is explicitly called sin by the Westminster Larger Catechism for myriads of reasons. Though sometimes a boogeyman can be made and betting can be unfairly represented I’ve never been around a community where a casino or gambling hall was built that came out of it stronger and more religiously minded. Companies come in promising Las Vegas or Monaco, and yet what transpires is something more akin to Deadwood. It is important to understand why gambling is a symptom of the disease of immediacy that we spoke about above. Interestingly enough the WLC places the violation of God’s law in relation to these activities under three commandments. The first one is pretty obvious: Thou Shalt Not Steal. Anything that has to do with money surely fits under that statute. We are a warden of the finances God has provided us with and giving it over to chance does not sound like good stewardship. The other one is also not a big surprise, the tenth commandment: Thou Shalt Not Covet, but the third one is less so…no pun intended.
But to ask an obvious question, why focus on that today in relation to the ordinary? To be honest partly because they are building a casino within ten miles of where I sit right now, and that is going effect the community we live in. The cops are already picking up their patrolling of the back roads between Bethany and the interstate where the temporary structure sits currently. So there is a ministry reason. Though there is also a way in which gambling is presented almost constantly through the ill-gotten gains of the lottery, and other less obvious means, all that point back to the same problem, a lack of trust in the means of grace and of the ways of God.
In the third commandment when we think about the warning to not take the Lord’s name in vain our idea of what that means usually heads towards cuss words, especially the ones with God’s name in the combination of syllables and words. However, the third commandment has a lot more to do with how we use the name God has given us and what that represents. When we gamble we bring the Lord into an activity that flies in the face of what He has made us to do.
Let’s finish with a question about spiritual things. The Bible presents to us a test case to show us what it means to be faithful through the generations. Every single time we have a long list of names, which we call a genealogy, we see the testimony of the way God has brought forward His people by grace through faith alone not by performing miracles and doing a Red Sea inversion for each age group, but by their reliance upon the weekly, and yearly, and sometimes once every seven- and seventy-year ceremonial law of the old covenant. Sometimes we have a tendency to focus so much on the abnormal that we forget how little of the irregular exists in the Old Testament. If you sat down and read through Genesis to Malachi you’d find maybe two hands worth of moments where the LORD set aside the normal operations of things to bring about change in the life of Israel, yet the preaching of the prophets almost never invoked the people to wait on a miracle. What did Jeremiah tell the people of his day to do? To return to the old paths. Repent of their sin and re-engage in the patterns of life laid by Moses. It wasn’t rocket science.
If we have a question about which trail to follow, choose the one the faithful have used before, because that is the one that leads to the city of God. Trust in the well-worn road of a passage like Hebrews 11 because it has provided help and assurance from generation-to-generation. It may take more time and energy than looking for the launch pad, but you can rest assured you will reach your destination following Christ and His word, even if it looks easier to do it another way.
Here is a bit more to look at this morning:
https://www.opc.org/qa.html?question_id=177
Blessings in Christ,
Rev. Benjamin Glaser
Pastor, Bethany ARP Church