Deuteronomy 6:1-9, Mark 12:28-31 Great Sermons from the Bible Moses One of the privileges and challenges that every pastor has is the opportunity to preach a sermon. I don t know how many sermons I have preached, but I have to guess that in 40 years, its got to be close to 2,000. That doesn t count the number of times I ve actually preached, especially when you count the number of services, like 4 each weekend here at Moorestown. Truly it is a wonderful opportunity to share the good news of Jesus Christ, although I know some of those sermons that I have preached have been better than others and there are those days when you wonder if anybody got anything out of it. And on those days, when somebody tells you that was a great sermon, it s good to have a wife who can give you a more realistic view of your message and tell you not only the good points, but also where your words missed the mark. I heard the story of a pastor and his wife who had been married for many years who were planning on taking a trip together. They were all set to go when the minister had a crisis come up in the church and he was unable to go on the trip. Well, the pastor s wife was unable to change her time off from work, so he urged her to go on the trip without him. After some initial hesitation, she decided to go ahead and take the trip on her own. This was a trip that was going to require quite a bit of travel and the minister s wife felt she had to tell her husband a secret she had been keeping from him. She said: I ve never told you this, but hidden in the house is a box that God forbid something should happen to me, I want you to open it. Then she proceeded to tell him where a key was hidden if he found it necessary to open the box. Well, his wife went on her trip and you guessed it, the pastor s curiosity got the best of him and he decided he had to open and see what was in that box. And to his surprise he found in the box $10,000 cash and 3 eggs. After a few days the minister s wife returned safely from her trip and the minister felt he had to tell her that he had opened the box. He said to her: I think it s great that you were able to save $10,000, but one thing I don t understand. Why are three eggs in the box? The minister s wife replied: I hope you won t get mad, but whenever you preached a bad sermon, I put an egg in the box. The pastor said: Why should I be mad, I mean that s not too bad Page 1 of 7
if after all these years of preaching I ve only had 3 bad sermons. Well, not exactly, dear. The truth is the box wouldn t hold all the eggs, so I began selling them for a couple dollars a dozen. But hey, look at all the cash I ve accumulated. Well, I never suggested that Joanna, but you have to admit it was a pretty creative savings plan. As a pastor, bringing a message is one our greatest joys and also one of our greatest challenges. To know what to say and how much to say. Sue Adams loaned me a book called Holy Humor which contains this little poem called a pastor s prayer: Lord, fill my mouth with worthwhile stuff and nudge me, when I ve said enough. Well, this morning we begin a series which we are calling great sermons from the Bible. Some are actually not sermons, but are messages spoken by well known biblical characters. Of course, the greatest sermon would be Jesus Sermon on the Mount, but since we focused part of that sermon in the Beatitudes this past fall, I decided to focus on some other messages given in the Bible. So today we begin with the words of Moses. This leader of the people of Israel. The people have come through the trials and tribulations of their 40 years of wandering in the wilderness. They have both heard and disobeyed the commandments Moses brought from Mt. Sinai. Yes, it had taken them 40 years of wandering, struggling, complaining to reach what could have taken several weeks. I thought about that when it comes to our own journey of faith, and how often do we on our spiritual journey go over the same ground again and again. But God is faithful and God is patient with us, and teaches us as we take this path of faith even with all of its mistakes and wrong turns. And now Moses brings these words and as they hear and prepare to enter the land that God had promised. Much of the book of Deuteronomy could be looked at as Moses sermon preparing the people before his death to know the Lord s instructions and to follow those instructions in their daily life. The words we look at today are from Deuteronomy 6 are words important for Moses day but I believe still have great meaning and relevance for us today. Page 2 of 7
Some scholars see this passage as a continuation of the message of the 10 commandments with a reiteration and reinforcing of the very first commandment: You shall have no other gods before me. And what an important message that was as the people of Israel were surrounded by cultures that worshipped many gods and bowed down before many idols. The crux of this message is found in verses 4 and 5, these words known in the Jewish faith as part of the Shema. Words that are still memorized and recited in Hebrew by faithful Jews. It is like words for us that we know by heart and repeat as part of our worship, like the Lord s prayer. The word shema in Hebrew means hear and these were the words God s people were instructed to hear. It is the classic Hebrew confession of faith, describing who God is and what our duty is towards God. Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These same words that Jesus quoted which asked about the greatest commandment. Did you notice the two main points of this message. One was the emphasis that we worship one God and the second was the degree to which we are to worship God. We have been studying the book Creed and last week we affirmed our faith with these words. I believe in God, the Father Almighty, the Maker of heaven and earth. Stating our belief in this God who made us, this God who is Lord of heaven and earth. It is an affirmation of our belief in God s existence and an affirmation that God and God alone is the object of our worship. The LORD our God, the LORD is one! This is the essential truth about God. God is a person and not some vague impersonal force. Not the idols and gods of this world. I believe that is what Moses is calling his listeners to understand. Focus your heart and attention on the one God and not the idols of this world. We may have a hard time admitting it, or confessing it, but we know we can substitute the things of this world for the worship of God. Other things become the focus of our attention and occupy our time and energies to the neglect of our devotion to God. We may not bow down before hand-carved idols, but we have the idols of our own making our material things, our pre-occupation with ourselves, the misdirecting of our priorities, those things that become more Page 3 of 7
important to us than our worship of our God and we hear these words: our God is one God and our worship is due him. And we discover from these words that this is no half-hearted devotion to the Lord. No, this is the command: love the Lord, our God with all our heart, with all our soul, and with all our might. Not just a part of who we are we are challenged to demonstrate our love for God, by giving our full worship and devotion. God wants our love and as the writer John beautifully states it: we love, because God first loved us. Our love and devotion is a response to the unconditional love of God. Jon Lipka, Anglican priest, put it like this: What God most wants from us is our love. We often think God demands a hundred other things from us - our money, our time, our effort, our will, our submission, and so forth - but what God really wants is our love. When we really love the LORD with all of our heart, soul, and mind, then everything else is freely given to the LORD. If we give the LORD all the rest - money, time, effort, will, and so forth - without giving Him our love, it is all wasted - and perhaps, all is lost. This is such an important message, that Moses instructs them to keep that word in their hearts and to pass them on to their children. I love how he states it; You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down and when you rise up. These words are so important that they were to bind them as a sign on their hands and fix them as an emblem on their foreheads and write them on the doorposts of their houses and on their gates. Words that the people eventually took literally with the phylacteries on their bodies and the mezuzah at their doors. I wonder if we have lost some of the significance of these words when it comes to passing on the word of the Lord to our children. I ve seen the quote: Christianity is always one generation away from extinction. I don t fully agree with that statement because I have read the final chapter of the Bible and believe in God s ultimate triumph, but it certainly makes an impression on the importance of passing on the faith. This past week we received the news of the passing of the great evangelist and preacher, the Rev. Billy Graham. Who knows how many countless lives were changed by his message and influenced by his preaching and Page 4 of 7
teaching. I was reading one of his responses to parents in one of his writing in his answer column: the question the parents asked was this: How old does a child have to be before he or she can learn about God? Neither my husband nor I come from a church background, but we have two small children now, and we'd like to give them a different religious experience than we had? Here was Billy Graham s answer: You and your husband probably realize that you missed something by not learning about God when you were younger, and I m thankful you want something different for your children. We live in a world that is growing more and more confused and chaotic, and your children will need strong moral and spiritual foundations. Young children may not understand everything about God but they can understand something, even at a young age. For example, even when children are very young, they know their parents love them and they can begin to understand that God loves them also. They are beginning to learn right from wrong and can begin to understand that we sin against God also. And even as they begin to talk with their parents, they can begin to understand that they also can talk with God. We know it s true, our children pick up on the values and lessons of faith that we hold on to. And our communication to our kids is communicated not only by our words, but often most powerfully by our actions. And we know we do live in a world that is confused and chaotic and how our children are speaking up for a safer world. The demonstrations by school students and parents this past week were a loud call that things need to change in our culture of violence. That our children could live in a place where they can feel loved and find peace. How critical that we take seriously the importance of finding ways to teach lessons of faith to our children. That they could see God s love and understanding and compassion in us. Our kids are influenced by so many things outside of our personal influence that we have to be diligent in sharing our faith by our words and our actions. Moses sermon is about obedience and commitment. He challenges us to love God with all our heart, soul, and strength and encourages us to share our faith with others, and especially to pass on that faith to our children and to future Page 5 of 7
generations. I pray that is what we are about here at FUMC. That we commit ourselves to that whole-hearted devotion and that we will look for opportunites to pass on the faith, to our children, and to those outside the church. A lot comes down to our own commitment. So I will close with some words I shared at the Lenten Bible study this past Wednesday. Words by Billy Graham on the subject of belief and commitment. Many people do say they believe in Jesus, but what do they actually mean? Perhaps they believe Jesus existed; they also may believe His teachings are worth following; they may even believe He was the divine Son of God, sent from heaven to save us from our sins (as the Bible teaches). And yet for far too many people, one thing is still missing, and that is commitment. To put it another way, they have believed in their minds, but they ve never acted on it. They ve never personally committed themselves to Christ and invited Him to come into their lives to change them and make them part of His family. Let me illustrate it this way. Suppose you went hiking one day and you came to a footbridge crossing a deep valley. You examined it and it looked sturdy; you also saw other hikers safely crossing it. In your mind, therefore, you had faith in that bridge; you believed it would hold you. But simply believing the bridge would hold you wouldn t get you to the other side! In addition, you d have to put your trust in it and actually commit yourself to it. Only then would you really believe in that bridge. The same is true with Jesus Christ. We may believe He is the Son of God; we may even believe He can forgive us and save us. But we only truly believe in Jesus when we personally commit our lives to Him. Have you taken that step of commitment? I pray these words and the challenge of the words of Moses will inspire us to a deeper devotion and a commitment that will lead us to demonstrate our faith by the way we live and the way we share God s love with others. Page 6 of 7
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