A Clear and Challenging Message
All our readings today carry a clear and challenging message. They can seem hard and judgmental; but they are meant to be loving. When someone is sleepwalking into danger, a soft call is highly inappropriate.
Consider the readings set for Lent 3
- Isaiah 55:1–9 a call to listen, and live
- 1 Corinthians 10:1–13 a call to learn the lessons of our history
- Luke 13:1–9 a warning against the false comfort of comparison
Isaiah
In Isaiah there is a call to Listen to God, to Look at his Promises and to Seek Him (turning away from those things we have been doing and thinking that are turned away from God).
The clear implication is that God is calling out to a people who are not hearing him or considering his promises, and whose lives and thoughts are turned away from him, to ungodliness. If we are what we eat, we are feeding ourselves on things that are doing us no good and do not satisfy our innate hunger. Ultimately these things are inimical to life – as the medics now say, they are ‘incompatible with life’.
So, God calls us to wake up to who we are and what we are doing:
- Turn and Seek – turn from our ungodly ways and thoughts and seek his mercy and grace.
- Listen to him – to pay careful attention to his call and his promises
When Jesus spoke to the crowds in parable, he was looking for those who had ears to hear; who were listening to God in what he was saying. We can be so deaf; so unable to imagine anything better than the unsatisfying scraps we feed ourselves on. It’s time to judge ourselves, before we are judged.
Corinthians
Perhaps, one of the biggest dangers for us, is that we see ourselves as part of God’s people; we feel we are feeding on his ‘spiritual food’; we are (in some sense) baptised into the same history and experience – but we may still fall and fail, just as many of his people have done in the past.
What’s going on here. It looks like church in so many ways, but “with most of them God was not pleased”. Somehow, all of this real supernatural blessing, did not penetrate their hearts enough to show in their lives.
The things that God highlights are interesting (not all of them are obvious to modern Christians):
- Idolatry
- Sexual Immorality
- Testing God
- Grumbling
I don’t suspect that many of us have a shelf of carved idols at home, but that does not mean that we are not idolatrous; covetousness is idolatry, anything that we hold in our lives in place of God is idolatry, any ideas about God of our own that we hold in place of the truth is idolatry. This generation is probably more idolatrous than any.
And, sexual immorality is equally widespread. What God has set within the bounds of lifelong marriage, like a carefully protected river, has overflooded its banks, spoiling lives and communities. We are so lax we can’t even see it!
And, we put God to the test all the time; whenever we push at the boundaries of his law, like teenagers assuming we can get away with it; invincible and invulnerable. But God is not to be taken in vain, mocked, or presumed upon
“You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.”
“Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap.”
“do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?”
(Ex 20:7); (Gal 6:7); (Rom 2:4)
And, as to grumbling, it’s the air we breathe. But grumbling is as much an affront to God as sexual immorality.
But, God says, look at the example of my first-called people; “these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come. Therefore, let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall.” This is a call to look at ourselves seriously in the light of God. It’s time to judge ourselves, before we are judged.
Luke
And, finally in Luke, Jesus challenges us, in our propensity to make ourselves feel better by finding someone else to look down on. It’s too easy for us to compare our lives to others (if very selectively), when we should be comparing ourselves to what God has called us to be.
Again, God’s word cuts through to the reality of our complacent lives:
“For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.”
(Heb 4:12–13)
We assume that everything happens for a reason, so we see the calamities that come to some people as God’s judgement on their lives. But judgement in this life does not work as simply as that.
There will come a day when judgment will be detailed and accurate; when we “are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account”. But, in this life it is not as simple as that:
- Some seem to go from wickedness to wickedness and always seem to prosper – God gives them over to their desires in a way that allows them to plumb their depths unhindered.
- Some, those whom he loves and calls his own, suffer the pains of discipline and transformation; not as punishment, but as love that calls us to be all that he has saved us to be.
- But, mostly, we live in a world that is spoilt by mankind’s sinfulness, in a shared experience of appropriate suffering and undeserved mercy.
The precarious vulnerability of our lives and the sin-bent challenges of this world should make us eager to draw close to God. But too often we comfort ourselves with the tragedies in others lives and tell ourselves that we are ok.
Scripture tells us that all those who seem to prosper so long in their wickedness are, in fact in a slippery place, and their downfall will be sudden and unexpected (Ps 73.18). It’s time to judge ourselves, before we are judged.
It’s time to judge ourselves, before we are judged.
We don’t often think about judgement. For all the above deceptive reasons, we think we are ok. But one day we will all stand “naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account”. We will give account and be judged.
- If we are not In Christ by a true and living faith, we will be condemned; cast out into the darkness away from God.
- If we are in Christ, we will not be condemned, but everything in us that is not of him will be consumed in the fire of his holiness (1 Cor 3.15). I don’t think that will be a pleasant experience.
So, as I say, it’s time to judge ourselves, before we are judged.
A Challenge to Us as Church
And finally, there is s clear challenge to us in our scriptures this morning that should make us humble and thoughtful:
“Therefore, let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall.”
(1 Cor 10.12)
But it not just a case of an individual reflection. There seems to be a theme, this Lent – in the scriptures that are set in the Lectionary; and in what God keeps laying on my heart. This Lent is about much more than a personal spiritual MOT. There seems to me to be a need for a whole-church MOT.
They are not alternatives, so I am not talking about something other than, or less than a personal spiritual reflection – rather I want to recognise that who I am in Christ (who each of us is) is not just a personal reality; in Christ we are members of his body, members one of another (Eph 4.25)
God’s plan is not merely to save individuals, but to build a church – a community of people united and living by faith in Jesus, displaying the glory of Christ to the whole of creation (Eph 3.10). And, our response to his word this morning is not just about our own salvation, but about God’s passion for his church.
God is shaking up and waking up his church in these days. He is calling for us to take his church seriously … and we are his Church; who we are in him (each one of us) determines the church that we are.
A Gospel Challenge – Good News
To speak so much of judgement may not sound like good news (or Gospel), but if our lack of self judgement is keeping us from seeing our need of God, while God stands ready to show mercy and grace – such a wake up call is the only true good news
So, for ourselves and the church we are part of (and for that matter, every other relationship we are bound up in) –
It’s time to judge ourselves, before we are judged.