“Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. So the Lord God called out to the man and said to him, ‘Where are you?’ And he said, ‘I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid.'” (CSB – Read the chapter)
It’s always interesting to see which things capture the cultural imagination and which don’t. Sometimes something will happen that seems like it should be shocking only for it not to move the cultural needle at all. Other times, something that feels like it shouldn’t gain any attention because the culture has moved on from it suddenly grabs everyone’s attention for a few days and absolutely will not let go. This second sort of thing happened a few days ago. The chatter about it has finally died down a bit, but for a few days there it was intense. And comical. Let’s chat for a few minutes today about Coldplay concerts and unfaithful spouses.
It’s graduation season and this past Sunday we honored our graduates and scholarship recipients. With that in mind, the sermon this week was aimed right in their direction. We live in a culture that prioritizes happiness above just about everything else. We live in a culture that also tells us all the time that the best way to find that happiness is to follow our heart. But is that really how we get there? King Solomon didn’t think so. Let’s take a look at one of his more famous proverbs and talk about how to experience real happiness.
How to Be Happy
A couple of weeks ago, our youth participated in a kickball tournament. Actually, let’s correct that: they won a kickball tournament. The event was a fundraiser for a great local ministry called Faith Alive Ministries. They are driven by the idea that when Jesus’ brother, James, said that true religion is to take care of orphans and widows, that he meant it. Jordan and Taylor do an awesome job seeking out opportunities to do just that in practical ways both locally and globally.
In any event, a few weeks before the tournament, they emailed out a set of rules by which the games were going to be governed. The morning of the tournament, they had a meeting with all of the coaches to go over the rules one last time and emphasize that they would be followed carefully. The reason was pretty obvious: they wanted the whole thing to run smoothly instead of devolving into little more than an endless series of arguments about rules. That’s how kickball worked on the playground when I was in elementary school. We’d spent 20 minutes debating the rules, and about five minutes playing most days because while there were a few broadly agreed upon basics, everything else was choose-your-own-adventure…and we all tended to choose the adventure that worked best for us rather than working to make sure we had all chosen the same adventure. As long as we were committed to living as we pleased, chaos tended to be the result. The Faith Alive folks understood this and planned accordingly. On the playground…not so much. In life more generally, the same basic principle is in operation. Today, I want to reflect for just a few minutes with you on what this means for us, and how we can avoid the chaos.
“So Moses summoned Bezalel, Oholiab, and every skilled person in whose heart the Lord had placed wisdom, all those hearts moved them, to come to the work and do it. They took from Moses’s presence all the contributions that the Israelites had brought for the task of making the sanctuary. Meanwhile, the people continued to bring freewill offerings morning after morning. Then all the artisans who were doing all the work for the sanctuary came one by one from the work they were doing and said to Moses, ‘The people are bringing more than is needed for the construction of the work the Lord commanded to be done.’ After Moses gave an order, they sent a proclamation throughout the camp: ‘Let no man or woman make anything else as an offering for the sanctuary.’ So the people stopped. The materials were sufficient for them to do all the work. There was more than enough.” (CSB – Read the chapter)
One of the things you have to learn as a parent is that you can’t do everything for your kids. Some parents learn that lesson better than others. You can typically tell which parents are which by looking at their kids. If you do everything for your kids, they won’t learn to do anything for themselves. They won’t learn to take ownership of things and make their own responsible, informed decisions. They won’t gain the satisfaction of contributing meaningfully to a project, of working hard and seeing the fruits of their labors. When God commanded the building of the tabernacle, He could have just plunked it down in the middle of camp fully completed. But He didn’t. He brought the people in on the project. And, to their credit, they responded. Let’s talk about what we see here and how God still works today.
“Then Moses turned and went down the mountain with the two tablets of the testimony in his hands. They were inscribed on both sides – inscribed front and back. The tablets were the work of God, and the writing was God’s writing, engraved on the tablets.” (CSB – Read the chapter)
All the words of the Scriptures matter. If we are going to understand them properly, that’s a pretty fundamental point for interpretation. The apostle Paul made as much clear when he said that every word of the Scriptures was breathed out by God. Our lack of understanding of some of them doesn’t mean they don’t matter. It means we don’t understand them. Interludes like this one often seem out of place as they interrupt the flow of the larger story in which they sit. Let’s talk about why this bit got included here.
“Aaron replied to them, ‘Take off the gold rings that are on the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters and bring them to me.’ So all the people took off the gold rings that were on their ears and brought them to Aaon. He took the gold from them, fashioned it with an engraving tool, and made it into an image of a calf. Then they said, ‘Israel, these are your gods, who brought you up from the land of Egypt!’ When Aaron saw this, he built an altar in front of it and made an announcement: ‘There will be a festival to the Lord tomorrow.’ Early the next morning they arose, offered burnt offerings, and presented fellowship offerings. The people sat down to eat and drink, and got up to party.” (CSB – Read the chapter)
Have you ever been given a set of instructions you didn’t properly understand? The result is often that you do the wrong thing without realizing it. Maybe you do something that falls more in line with a previous understanding than the one you didn’t quite get this time. Either at, your doing the wrong thing is the result. While Moses was up on the mountain, after the people had agreed to play by God’s rules, the first thing they did was the wrong thing. Worse yet, they were led into it. Let’s talk about what’s going on here, and making sure we understand God properly.
The Nexus 