Because I... Therefore God...

Good afternoon, everyone. Happy Sabbath. It's a wonderful looking day outside, and good to be here with all of you. I'd like to say hello to everyone who's joining us via Zoom, or maybe dialing into it. It's amazing. I'm sure we've all seen the story. It's been about a year now since everything started. It's funny. We were reflecting on it at work this week. Some of the things that just seemed critical to getting our day-to-day work done, or for many of us tuning into church services that we probably didn't even know about 12 to 15 months ago, like Zoom or Microsoft Teams and things like that, we can certainly be thankful for all of the technology that we have, that we can rely on, to do a lot of things like this.

My family and I were watching a movie back a few weeks ago, too, that made me think of this movie, Hidden Figures. I don't know how many of you have seen that. Great movie on a whole lot of different levels. One of the things that helped me realize was just how recent the technology is. We don't really think about it. We've got our phones. We don't even think back a few years ago when the idea of an iPhone or an Android was just an incredibly revolutionary thing. Even computing itself is relatively new. I can remember when I was in grad school having a professor who talked about having known Grace Hopper personally, one of the early people in computing, and sitting at meetings with her.

That time goes back less than 100 years ago when you think about it, just the ability to compute the way that we take for granted today. I was thinking back related to that when I was a kid. How many did computer programming as kids or in high school?

A few people. I can still remember going to a summer school class when I was maybe in probably seventh or eighth grade. We learned on a timeshare computer. You'd pick up the telephone, you'd hear that funny beep, and you'd drop it into the cradle. There were these two rubber cups that would sort of suction onto the telephone so you got a clear signal. We used a timeshare computer that we dialed into in order to write these computer programs.

The other things that we used at that time were punch cards. Has anyone seen punch cards? When you programmed in BASIC, you would actually put a line number next to each command in your program. Part of the reason you did that was because if you were walking down a hallway and you dropped all of your punch cards, you could at least put them back in order by numerical order and put them in there. Now, when we were programming, there were certain commands that were used a lot in programming, and so we had pre-punched cards that would have some of those commands on them. That way you didn't have to fill in all of the different things on the card.

The one that always stuck out in my mind is the if-then statement. How many of you have used if-then statements, whether in programming or writing macros in Excel? It's a pretty powerful statement, right? We work a lot with if-then statements. You can remember writing simple programs like figuring out if a number is a prime number, figuring out if it's an odd or an even number, if it's divisible by seven.

You would use these if-then statements, and you could filter your way down by asking questions, taking inputs, and depending on what the input is, you could say, for example, if the number is even, then skip to line whatever. Or if you're trying to figure out if it's a prime number, if the number is odd, skip down in the program because you don't have to worry as much about it being, for example, divisible by two.

So that statement then worked its way onto flowcharts. You have these decision trees that might happen when you hit one of those statements, and depending on what the answer was, you would move one direction or the other in the program. And to me, this is a great template and frame for our lives as well in terms of how we think, because whether we do it consciously or not, we often think in terms of if-then statement. It didn't take long, probably, for most of us in our lives to realize that.

And usually the if-then statement went something like, if I work hard enough, or if I apply myself, or if people are pleased with me, then I can succeed, or I can be good at something. I remember going to elementary school in Little Richfield, Minnesota, and we had a local bank that was called Richfield Bank and Trust. I think it still sits there on the corner of Lindale and 66th Street, for those who might know Little Richfield, Minnesota.

And the folks from the bank would come once a week to school, and they'd bring these little paper books. Do you guys remember bank passbooks? I know I'm sounding like a real old guy now. And they would bring these bank passbooks, and we'd come in as kids with our 50 cents, or our dollar, or our nickel, and we could deposit it.

It would be recorded in the passbook. And if we deposited enough money over a period of time in that passbook, or perhaps it was the number of deposits that we would make over a certain period of time, we could win a prize. And they were trying to teach people to save. And so you'd go, you'd make all these entries, you'd deposit your nickels, dimes, and quarters, and if you deposited enough, then you would receive a prize.

In sports, we probably learned the same thing. If I work hard, if I don't mouth off to the coach, if I show up to all the practices, if I perform well, then I can make the team. I can be a starter. I can perform, maybe play the position that I want to play.

We learn it in academics. If I study hard enough, if I master the subject, then I can earn good grades. And certainly in terms of our behavior as kids, we learn pretty quickly, both in good ways, and perhaps in dysfunctional ways, depending on the situations we were in. If we behave in a certain way, then certain consequences or certain results are going to come from it.

And we drew those conclusions quickly. I can remember back over the last probably 10 or 12 years, I've worked for two people who were the youngest of multiple, like large families, like the youngest of 8 or 10 kids. And those people always had certain personality traits, especially the guys that I worked with who were the youngest of a huge number of kids. And they were usually really gregarious, sort of clowns, life of the party types, because they learned as youngest kids, by the time they came along, if they didn't have certain actions and kind of make themselves stick out, they were just sort of lost in the shuffle of their family.

And there are certain personality types. We talk a lot about middle children as well, don't we? If certain things happen, then there is a certain result that comes out of it. It's an appropriate time right now as we think about our lives. We heard in the sermon that the things we think about. What I'd like to encourage us to think about a little bit today is how do we think? What are those scripts that run in our brains as we're drawing conclusions? If certain things happen, then a certain outcome happens. I'd like to modify a little bit from what we talked about with if-then, and I'd like to focus on a script that Jesus Christ actually talked quite a bit about, even though he never used the words.

And we'll look at that in a moment. And that script is, because I, therefore God. Because I, therefore God. Can you think of any examples where that comes up in the Bible, in the Gospels, and how Jesus Christ spoke about it?

We'll spend a little time on that as we move into this message. So for those who like titles, that's my title. Because I, therefore God. Now, as I mentioned, much of the teaching of Jesus Christ is actually aimed at dislodging this way of thinking. Something we might not have thought about a lot. And we'll examine a few passages here in the Gospels, and let's see how Jesus Christ addressed this way of thinking. Because I, therefore God. Let's start with a parable called the Parable of the Rich Young Ruler. If you'll turn with me to Mark 10. Mark 10. We'll read verses 17 through 22 of Mark 10.

Mark 10, starting in verse 17.

And so Jesus said to him, why do you call me good? No one's good but one, and that's God. You know the commandments. Don't commit adultery. Do not murder. Do not steal. Do not bear false witness. Do not defraud. Honor your father and your mother. And he answered and said to Jesus, teacher, all these things I've kept from my youth. And then Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said to him, one thing you lack. Go your way, sell whatever you have, and give to the poor, and you'll have treasure in heaven.

And then come, take up the cross, and follow me. But he was sad at this word, and he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions. So there's something that hides behind this whole thing. It is very much this view of because I, therefore God. Now this young man, when he came before Jesus Christ, things started off well. If we look back in verse 17, he knelt before him. He clearly recognized that Jesus Christ was not like every other person or even every other teacher that was out there. He actually knelt before him, which means that he was recognizing that there was something greater in him. Also, if you'll look at commentaries, I'll point out that even rabbis of that time were not talked to as being called good teacher. So additionally, in the way that he addressed him, in addition to kneeling down, he noticed that there was something greater about Jesus Christ.

But look where he immediately went after that.

He was running this script in his head. He was running this, what is it? Because I do, X, Y, Z, teacher, tell me what that is, then I can inherit eternal life. He was looking for the formula. And Jesus then went through and talked through the commandments.

We know that we hear about the commandments being divided into two sections, loving God and loving man. So I'm talking about this as being the second tablet. And Jesus Christ went through that second tablet, or that second idea of the commandments that had to do with loving man. And he laid them out for this young man. And the young man said, I've been doing those things. Sounds like I've got it made. Eternal life, come my way. And Jesus loved him. It was interesting to see there. He saw something in this guy. He didn't just say, you know, you don't get it, just get out of here. He had concern for him. He had interest in him. He loved him. And that's why he came back to him and said, sell whatever you have and give it to the poor. Now, why did he say that to him? Is that a formula? If we sell everything that we have and give it to the poor, will we inherit eternal life? I think we know that the answer to that is no. We know that with God's Holy Spirit, we know his calling and those things. We can't earn eternal life. So why is it that Jesus Christ said this to him? I think he was trying to make a point to him. That all the things that he valued, even if he gave all of the things that he valued, which I think Jesus clearly knew he was not going to be willing to do, it was not going to earn him that outcome. And so in this situation, this is the first example, Jesus Christ was striking directly at this idea, because I, therefore God. And he was telling the young man, you can't come to me and say, what is it that I have to do? And because I did those things, therefore God is going to owe me eternal life. Let's look at another parable that points this out. This is the parable of the Pharisee and the publican. Luke 18. We'll read this in Luke 18, verses 9 through 14. The Pharisee and the publican. Chances are this will be familiar to many of us.

So in Luke 18, verse 9, Jesus spoke this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and despised others. Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood and prayed this way with himself. He said, God, I thank you that I'm not like other men, extortioners, unjust adulterers, or even like this tax collector standing next to me. I fast twice a week. I give tithes of all I possess. And the tax collector standing afar off would not so much as raise his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, God, be merciful to me, a sinner. I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other, for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted. What was the attitude here that Jesus Christ was striking at? We look what it is that this Pharisee said in his prayer. He was naming off again the things that he did. I fast twice a week. I give tithes of all I possess. I'm not like this filthy guy standing next to me. Because I do these things, God, I know that I have favor with you. That's what the Pharisee was saying. Imagine how the audience thought when they heard this. Because the Pharisees were looked up to. They were religious leaders of that time. The rank and file, the people on the street, the normal Joe walking by would have thought when they saw the Pharisee, when they saw the things that the Pharisees did, that they were practicing righteousness. Because they practiced those righteous acts, those acts according to the Old Testament law, and how it had been modified and worked with in Jewish culture since that time, because they did those things, the rank and file person would have thought they deserved favor with God. Jesus Christ was pointing out the fact that this was not so. The things that he was doing, in this case fasting twice a week, giving tithes of everything he possessed, were not going to earn him favor with God. In fact, Jesus Christ pointed to somebody who was doing sinful acts, but had a heart that recognized the need for forgiveness as someone who would be accepted. Let's turn to another parable that lays this out again. This will be the last one that we'll look at. And there are plenty more, if you look for them and think about it, that you can pull out of the Gospels. Matthew 20 will turn to. This is often referred to as a parable of the vine dressers. Matthew 20, it starts in the beginning of the chapter and goes down through verse 16. Here Jesus says, the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyards. And he had agreed with the laborers for a denarius a day, so a certain amount of pay that he was going to give them, and he sent them out into his vineyard. And he went out about the third hour, and he saw others standing idle in the market, and he grabbed them and says, Get out in the vineyard and I'll give you what's fair. And they went. Then in verse 5, he went out again the sixth hour, went out again the ninth hour, and did likewise. And then again, finally in verse 6, the eleventh hour he went out, still found other people standing idle there, and he asked them to come and work for him as well. And he told them, Whatever is right, you'll receive.

And so when evening had come, in verse 8, the owner of the vineyard said to his steward, Call the laborers and give them their wages, beginning with the last to the first. And when those came who were hired about the eleventh hour, what did they receive? The eleventh hour. So they probably only worked for a handful of hours. They received a denarius. The same thing that had been promised to the first ones who came out and worked the entire day through all of the heat.

When they received it, but then when the first came, sorry, in verse 10, they suppose they would receive more, but they also received each a denarius. And when they received it, they complained against the landowner, saying, These last men have worked only one hour, and you made them equal to us, who have borne the burden and the heat of the day. But he answered one of them and said, Friend, I'm doing you no wrong. Did you not agree with me for one denarius? Take what's yours and go your way. I wish to give this last man the same as I give to you. Is it not lawful for me to do what I wish with my own things? Or is your eye evil because I am good? So the last will be first and the first last, for many are called, but few are chosen. Now, we've probably all read this parable at one point in time. But again, this points out this script that Jesus was pointing to, because I, therefore, God. And the point that he was making here was, the amount of work and labor and effort that we put in, even if it's being called early in our lives and feeling that we've sacrificed all kinds of things, that reward of eternal life is going to be the same as somebody who might be called months, short years before they die and receive that same reward. Now, if we were looking at this through modern-day labor law, we'd say, hey, the guys who signed on at the beginning of the day should make a complaint, because it's not fair labor practice. But God's saying his equation is different than the way we measure things. See, he's not measuring based on the same thing in terms of the number of hours we worked. He made a promise, and he gave the people in this parable what he promised to them.

So, Jesus Christ is going out of his way to show that this script, this equation that people had in their minds, because I do certain things, God will owe me a certain outcome, is not something that they were going to be able to count on, and in fact, that God stood for something very different.

Now, it's good to take a pause point here and be careful in how we approach the way that people were thinking.

Number one, because chances are, I know if I'm honest with myself, I think very much this way myself, and probably many of us do. In addition, the Jews who were living in Palestine at that time had every right, really, to think this way in terms of cause and effect, didn't they? I think most of us can reflect back on the passages at the end of Deuteronomy. There's a covenant there, and we don't always focus on the fact that it's a different covenant, a unique covenant that was made, commentators or theologians typically call it the Palestinian Covenant or the Land Covenant, because before the people of Israel entered the Promised Land, at the end of Deuteronomy, they sat back, and God, through his representatives, talked with them. And what did he lay out? We commonly know it as the blessings and the cursings.

And he laid out a lot of cause and effect. If you do this, then this is going to happen to you. If you're righteous, I'm going to bless your land. If you follow my laws, you're going to have prosperous cities, and you'll be an example to all the people around you. If you break my laws, you will be taken into captivity. And so God did lay out in this physical covenant that he made with the nation of Israel when he gave them the land that how they did things and how they operated on that land was going to have a direct physical consequence on their lives.

And it was a way of teaching them that doing right was going to have a reward.

At the same time, we also know that we're called to something that's different than that because God has not called us to a physical covenant to give us physical blessings. And we'll talk more about that in a moment. But as a small remnant, I think we know the history of Israel. Israel and Judah divided as tribes. The northern tribe of Israel was carried away into captivity earlier than the southern tribe of Judah. The southern tribe of Judah was later carried away, and a small remnant of them came back. And over time, because of all the terrible things that happened to them, they developed even more stringent laws and rules and ways of doing things. Jesus Christ talked about teaching as doctrines the commandments or traditions of men.

These are things that were put into place over the course of years because they didn't want to repeat what they had done in violating this covenant in Deuteronomy. Of sinning against God and therefore being taken into captivity. And so they built up all of these other laws and rules around them to try to avoid that consequence from happening to them again. What they missed in all of this was another element that was referred to in that covenant.

I find it interesting, all of these things that God has done in dealing with Israel, that he put these little breadcrumbs out there in terms of what he was ultimately trying to accomplish. Turn with me, if you will, to Deuteronomy 30 in verse 6, and we'll see it there. Near the end of a covenant that's about land, about a physical nation of people inheriting a physical piece of land, in Deuteronomy 30, the first part of the chapter, he lays out something additional. And I'll focus right now just on verse 6.

Because in the middle of this physical covenant, or near towards the end of it, he says, He says, It's interesting that God says that that's going to happen. He prophesies that going out, because that's ultimately what he wants, not just for the people of Israel, but for all human beings.

But as Jesus Christ was coming onto the scene, what we call early New Testament times, this is not something that they were looking at and seeing Jesus Christ and understanding that this time was coming in the person of Jesus Christ. Rather, they continued to understand the rest of that covenant. If we do certain things, we will not go into captivity. We can keep favor with God and continue to move across.

Let's look at one other section in the Gospels where this comes out. This is in Jesus Christ's dealings with the disciple Peter.

This is in Matthew 16. Matthew 16. We'll start in verse 15.

Here, Jesus is talking with his disciples as he's beginning to get near the end of his ministry, and he's asking his disciples in verse 15 of Matthew 16, Who do you say that I am? Simon Peter stands up and says, You are Christ, the Son of the living God. Jesus Christ, of course, goes on and says, Yes, you've understood correctly and you're blessed because of that, because he saw that Peter grasped and understood what Jesus was. He was something different. He wasn't just a good teacher. He was the very Son of God. And from this time forward in verse 21, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem, suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed and be raised the third day. And what does Peter say in response to this? After he's acknowledged that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, Peter took him aside and he rebuked him in verse 22, saying, Far be it from you, Lord, this shall not happen to you. Essentially, he's saying, because I can't conceive of this, possibly, to be in God's will, therefore, this cannot be allowed to happen. And what did Jesus Christ say in return in verse 23? He turned and said to Peter, Get behind me, Satan, you're an offense to me, for you're not mindful of the things of God, but the things of men. So Peter, having grown up in that society, having understood that things were going to happen a certain way, could not accept the fact that Jesus Christ was going to give up his life. He was looking for a king, somebody who would come and bring physical salvation to the people under Roman rule at that time. And he wasn't going to allow this great hope, somebody that he had acknowledged as being the Son of the living God. He felt that he could stand in the way, or that he would die trying, in order to stop this from happening, because he thought that there was something else that Jesus Christ should do. And Jesus Christ associated that attitude with Satan, because it was so completely counter to the plan that God had worked out. So Peter was so deep in this script of, Because I understand Jesus Christ's purpose to be a certain thing, therefore, it can't possibly be what Jesus said, when he said he had to go to Jerusalem, suffer and be killed. It just didn't fit the script.

So, the world today is full of religious models that operate on this same principle. And our job isn't to go through every religion in the world and point out where it's got problems. Our job, especially this time of year, is to look at ourselves, to look at the way that we think, and the extent to which we take on this script.

To what extent do we believe, because we do certain things, we're going to earn certain things from God, and that we even can.

Let's take a break here as we go kind of into a transition. And let me tell you a little story about an artist that I saw perform. I said, perform. He's a painter, and he was kind of a performance artist. Has anyone heard of speed painting?

One or two people.

So there was this artist. He died, I looked it up, he died back in 2004. I think I saw him, my wife and I, at an event our company had back around 2000, 2001. His name was Denny Dent. You can look him up on the internet. There's some YouTube videos. He's pretty entertaining to watch. So he would get up on stage, they'd crank up the music, and he'd have four or five paint brushes, and he'd hold them, he'd kind of stick them between his fingers, and he'd hold them in his fist.

And then he would just start dipping them in paint, and just start going at the canvas, and you could hardly tell what he's doing.

And he starts going through it, and pretty soon this picture comes up, and what he liked to do was paint musicians.

And so he'd be at the canvas, and music would be going, and he'd be going all over the place and dipping into the paint. Within five minutes' time, he'd have a picture of Michael Jackson or John Lennon, and it was just incredible. And the audience would go wild, and everyone would think it was fantastic. And then he'd say, let's do another one. And he'd start going, and then suddenly he would stop. And he'd say, you know guys, sometimes it just doesn't work. And you'd look at the canvas, and just nothing made sense on the canvas. And then with this huge flourish, he'd grab the canvas, he'd turn it upside down, they'd crank up the music, and he looked at it, and it was a picture of Jimi Hendrix or something. And it was perfect! And he'd painted it upside down. And he would just, he flipped the script. He just took the painting, turned it upside down, and suddenly what looked like a blob and made absolutely no sense was this incredible painting. Like I said, if you're interested, look him up on YouTube and you can see it. This is what Jesus Christ was doing when he came and talked to people. He was flipping the script. You see, he came to a whole bunch of people who were thinking, because I, therefore God, and he changed that script. What did he change it into? Let's turn to John 16. Let's turn to John 16. One of the things he points out here as he's talking to his disciples shortly before the time he's taken and crucified is the fact that their godly conduct is not necessarily going to earn them physical blessings. In fact, it's going to be quite the opposite. John 16, we'll start in verses 1 and 2. These things I've spoken to you that you should not be made to stumble. There's a specific reason. He's setting their expectations. They'll put you out of the synagogues. Yes, the time is coming that whoever kills you will think that he offers God service.

Then in verse 33, he says again, So he's warning the disciples, my extension, talking to all the people that will follow him afterwards, that this script that we're so tuned to follow, that we want to follow as human beings because I do certain things, I can expect certain results from God, is not the way it works. We can expect suffering. We can expect tribulation. We know that as mature Christians. And obviously, as we reflect on our lives, we can see those things happen. And so that we don't stumble, Jesus Christ wanted to make very certain that we understood the script was being changed. Let's go to the previous chapter in John. John 15, we'll read a little bit more about what Jesus said as he's flipping the script. We'll read verses 5 through 8.

Rather than our actions earning God's response, the way Jesus Christ was flipping the script was to point out that his sacrifice instead was going to produce a response in us. It's not that we act and cause God to respond to us in a certain way. God acted in a certain way through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, and we are expected to respond as a result of that.

John 15, verse 5.

What he's showing is the source of everything, where everything comes from, is from Jesus Christ as a start.

And it can be tempting to cherry-pick that line. I know people who do that. I've heard people who do that, who say, You can ask whatever you desire, and it will be done for you. But we also have to look at the clause that comes before that. If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it will be done for you.

I think we understand that if God abides in us, His Spirit is in us, we know what we can ask for that's in accordance with His will.

And those things will be done because they're in accordance with His will. This passage completes the turning on its head, the flipping the script. And it changes from, because I, therefore God, and instead changes into, because God, therefore I.

Because God sacrificed His Son, therefore I have a new life.

And I live it a certain way out of recognition of what it is that God and His Son have done for me. Because His words abide in us, therefore I can be fruitful. Because we have His Spirit, we can do His ways. So the script has been flipped.

And let's examine in the balance of this message what else the Bible has to say about, because God, therefore I.

Let's start in Ephesians 2.

Ephesians 2, and we'll read verses 4 through 10.

Here Paul, in his letter to the Ephesians, is making sure that they have things in the right order. That they're not thinking in terms of what they do, but in terms of what God, through Jesus Christ, has done for them. And how as a result of that, they should act.

Ephesians 2, starting in verse 4.

That in the ages to come, He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness towards us in Christ Jesus.

So look at the formulas being painted there. In verses 4 through 10. We get all the way through verse 10, and what are we talking about? We're talking about because God. All of the focus on this early part of the chapters, all of the things that God has done, His mercy, His grace, the fact that He saved us through faith, and it's a gift of God. And then He focuses in verse 10 on our workmanship and the fact that we're created for good works. It's important to understand that background because of these things. Because of all the things that God has done, therefore the good works come out. It's an expression, as we understand, of God's Holy Spirit within us, and it's an expression of Jesus Christ living within us. It's not that we try to flog ourselves and force ourselves to do good works so that God will be kind to us. That's getting it backwards. It's rather that we have to have this deep understanding and appreciation of all that's been done for us, and the fact that we've been forgiven of our sins, that causes us to act in a different way, in the way that we live our lives. And this is what's at the heart of this Passover season. We reflect on the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. We reflect on the value of that sacrifice because of what it's done for us. It's given us something that we could never do of ourselves. Through all the things that were laid out in the Old Testament with the children of Israel, even if they'd kept all of those laws to the letter, unless God called them and gave them His Spirit, unless He granted them forgiveness, they would not have eternal life. Because He died for us, therefore, we can put the old man to death, and we can live a new life. So, if we're making an honest assessment of ourselves at this time of year, we can really only come to one conclusion. Just as we can't physically de-leaven anything that we have in our physical space, we can try. We've probably, all at one point in time, tried to dunk the toaster in a sink of water or whatever else we've tried to do. But we can't purify ourselves spiritually, and that's actually the lesson of the Holy Days. Rather, though, because Jesus Christ gave His life to us, we're enabled to live a new life.

God gives us forgiveness. He grants us repentance and justification. And so the question we have to ask ourselves as we're looking here at the Passover that's coming and the Days of Unleavened Bread is, have we flipped the script in our lives? You know, I have a bit of an antenna that goes up occasionally when we talk around the Days of Unleavened Bread. We do this reflexively, and we don't mean anything bad by it. But we have this propensity to say that in the Days of Unleavened Bread we're reminded that we need to take sin out of our lives. Now, when we look at things through this script and the way that Jesus Christ flipped the script, where do we have to be careful in that statement? Is the lesson of the Days of Unleavened Bread that we have to take sin out of our lives? Or is the lesson in the end that we cannot take sin out of our lives? But by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, we can be justified, and we can receive forgiveness, and we can receive a new life. That's what we need to think about. Do we understand that? Do we really think about the change in the script that happened because Jesus Christ came? We're so programmed as human beings to think, because I do this, therefore I get this result. And Jesus Christ says, no, this is different. This is justification. This is becoming a member of my family. You've done nothing. I've given you grace. Because He gave His life, we can be a part of His family. Apart from anything that we've done, we have not earned that. We've been given it by Him. Turn with me, if you will, to Ephesians 4. This is what leads to the new life. Different conduct that comes as we're baptized and as we commit our lives to God after we've been called by Him, after we've been forgiven of our sins. We'll read Ephesians 4, verses 20 through 24.

We're supposed to put on an entirely new man. We're given a 100% new start. And that's right at the core of the symbolism of these Holy Days. Let's take a quick side trip. This reminds me of an accountant joke. Accountant jokes are really, really funny. The problem is that usually only accountants understand them. This comes from a letter that was written to the IRS. Supposedly true, I don't know. It says, gentlemen, in clothes you'll find a check for $150. I cheated on my income tax return last year and I've not been able to sleep ever since. If I still have trouble sleeping, I'll send you the rest. So the best jokes are funny because there's an element of truth in them. And if we're all truthful about it, we've got some piece of this mindset in us, don't we? We want to do enough to get by. We want to do enough to feel okay about ourselves, to feel good about ourselves. But let's be honest about it. I know if I look at myself, I don't always want to go to the effort. I don't always want to do everything that I know I really need to. I'd prefer to just do enough to get by. And most of us as human beings, I think, are pretty much wired that way.

The intent of our calling, the intent of what we do as Christians, is not to take what already exists and prune away certain parts of it. It's rather to throw away what we are as human beings and start over again. A new life. That's why we talk about the old man and the new man. I reflect on the fact that every year at this time, our pastor, Mr. Thomas, is very deliberate about reminding us that we're keeping the new covenant Passover. I think he chooses those words carefully, and they're very much true. Because this is something different. It's not because we paint the doorpost, we're saved by God from physical death. It's a very different equation. It's because Jesus Christ died for us. We have the opportunity to live a new and a different life.

1 Corinthians 5 verses 6 through 8 sums this up perfectly using the symbol of leaven. We'll talk for a few minutes about this after we read this verse. 1 Corinthians 5 verses 6 through 8. Hear Paul writing to the Corinthians and correcting them says, Paul's actually using this exact construct here, isn't he?

He's saying, because Christ our Passover was sacrificed for us, therefore, let us keep the feast as a new lump. Now, why does he use that? What do lumps have to do with unleavened bread? I think that's where, again, like I mentioned at other times, we need to think about what society functioned like back then. This was before the days of baking soda sitting in your cupboard, where you could take out a can of yeast and put whatever, a half teaspoon of yeast into something to make it rise. Really, the only thing you could do is to take a lump of sourdough that had been built up over time, been leavened by yeast spores that are in the air, and you would take a pinch off of that sourdough lump and you would drop it into your bread, and it would leaven that entire piece of bread.

And so you can think, as an Israelite, as anyone living in that time, whenever you were taking from that, sourdough starters, from what I've read, there's some around that could be 70, 80, 90 years old, and you can cultivate these things in your refrigerator, if you don't keep the days of unleavened bread. And so you're always taking a pinch away, and then you're feeding the old starter, and it keeps bubbling away.

And I think it's a perfect metaphor, and that's why it's used in the Bible. It's a perfect metaphor for our lives. And what God is saying is, you don't have this sourdough lump fermenting away, sitting in your cupboard, and just keep taking pinches off of it, in order to make it a little bit different, and to leaven things. What you had to do at the days of unleavened bread, you'd take that old sourdough starter, and you had to toss it. And you had to start all over again. And the clear message there is, there's nothing that was part of that old thing that is supposed to be part of the new.

Because Jesus Christ came, we are to live completely new and different and renewed lives. And that's, of course, the challenge, because we're still human beings, and it's difficult to do that. So as we thought through this, hopefully this gives us a little bit more of a framework to think through in this last week, as we come into Passover. And as we conclude, just want to briefly go back over what it is that we've talked about. We have an innate script in our minds, and it's a little different for all of us, but it drives the way that we act.

And it does convince us as human beings that our actions earn certain outcomes. And the fact is, in physical life, that's most of the time true. That's why we cling to these constructs, because they're proven to us to be true over time. But our calling is something different than that. Jesus and his ministry showed repeatedly that this is not how God works. This is not how God works. He doesn't give us a formula of, if you do these things, then I will do these things. And unfortunately, we can be convinced sometimes by teachers who, some of them in good conscience, some of them perhaps not, try to teach us these things that God works according to these formulas.

And unfortunately, it can often lead people off the Christian path, because they can go back and they can say, I prayed so many hours a day or a week, and I studied my Bible this much, and then this outcome happened in my life. How could that happen? I was putting myself before God, and I received an outcome that I didn't want. And I think as mature Christians, we understand that God is not calling us in order to give us prescribed, physical outcomes that we want in our lives.

He's trying to build something different. He's building children that will be a part of his family, and he's building those attributes in us. And that's his driving force. He will do that, even if it means that we have to go through some difficulty and some testing along the way. The sacrifice of Jesus Christ flips the script from this idea of, because I, therefore God, and changes it to, because God, therefore I.

And we begin to realize, as we reflect on what it is that Jesus Christ has done in his sacrifice, how God has called us through that sacrifice, that there are things that we should do in our lives as an outgrowth of having the Spirit within us and having Jesus Christ live within us.

So, as we seek, as we come into the Passover to continue to look at our lives and put to death our old ways of being, I hope that this thought of changing the script, flipping the script from, because I, therefore God, and changing it to, because God, therefore I, will give us more to think about and reflect on as we try to live new lives in Jesus Christ.