Spiritual PEMDAS

Well, thank you, Mr. Walker, and good afternoon, everyone. It's good to be bad we were driving over this morning thinking, it feels like it's been a long time since we've been over here and we realized we got snowed out last month. So it has been. It's been a couple months since we've come to visit, but our drive over this morning was beautiful. The roads were exactly like I like them, which is nothing on them at all, and all the snow in the trees was just beautiful. Well, brethren, the world around us is governed by laws. The world around us is governed by laws.

And I'm not talking about the kind of laws that impose fines or some sort of incarceration upon one for breaking them, but rather natural laws, rules, a certain order to the world around us, what we sometimes refer to as physical laws. For centuries, mankind has examined the natural world. They've studied it. They've tested it. They've retested it. They've described the results to the best of their ability. And as they've studied, they've ultimately deciphered pieces of the puzzle of what happened at creation. And because of mankind's God-given ability to think and reason and analyze the order by which God governed this creation, we've discovered the essence of things like how gravity works.

We've discovered the laws that govern motion of objects, reflectivity, refraction, thermodynamics, laws that govern how particles behave, and a whole host of other things. In a somewhat sad reality of mankind, much of what we've learned has been used to attempt to disprove the very creator that set into place the order which allowed us to discover these things in the first place. This past week, part of the big puzzle of creation was decoded and proven. It was actually decoded late last year, but it was corroborated once again by scientific experimentation this past week. And it was the discovery of what is known as the Higgs-Boson particle, which is nicknamed the God particle.

But that news supercharged news outlets this past week, many people claiming we finally have unraveled the mystery of the Big Bang, that we've essentially disproved God's existence, and that with this final piece of the puzzle, we can see how all of this randomness that existed following the Big Bang somehow coalesced into the orderful world that we see around us. The reality is, what they've discovered is yet another example of the incredible order and meticulous design of our universe.

It is this characteristic of God that mankind openly displays. We take perceived chaos in the world around us, the things that we see that appear to be disorderly, and we attempt to make order out of it. We fight back our disorderly vegetation. I don't know if you guys over here have as much of an issue as we have on the west side of the state with blackberries, but they're everywhere. And they appear to be fairly disorderly, and we chop them back, and we put up fences, and we lay down orderly brick and mortar.

We put up fences to hold nature at bay. We build cities with orderly streets and buildings organized around certain shapes, squares, rectangles. We even go silently a little bit insane when you walk into a room and you see that a picture is just a little bit off-kilter. You sometimes have to feel like you just have to walk over there and just kind of go and get that thing adjusted back to where it is. Our eyes abhor walls that are out of plumb.

We don't like lines that aren't straight. Notes that are clearly not part of the same chord. A note that's off pitch, that's flat, that's too sharp. The list goes on. Turn with me, please, to 1 Corinthians 14. 1 Corinthians 14. There it turns out there's a reason for this. 1 Corinthians 14.

Mankind demonstrates this aspect of God's character. 1 Corinthians 14. We'll pick it up in verse 33. 1 Corinthians 14 verse 33 says, For God is not the author of confusion, but of peace, as in all the churches of the saints. 1 Corinthians 14 verse 33. And the New Living Translation actually puts it, just a little bit different paraphrase, for God is not a God of disorder.

Not a God of disorder, but a God of peace. Man, like God, desires order. We desire order to the world around us. As such, in all that we do, we find rules to help ensure that things are the same everywhere. We call this standardization. We make sure that everything that we have, as often as possible, can be identical in different locations.

When we go to a McDonald's, we could go to a McDonald's in China, Russia, South Africa. It's the same Big Mac. It's the same burger, through the process of standardization. In science, we've agreed upon a standardized measurement system that is the same, regardless of your location, so that everyone speaks the same language.

Time is recorded in the same units around the world. We don't have different countries that are measuring in some arbitrary measurement of time. It's seconds, minutes, milliseconds. We've carved the globe into time zones to ensure that time works in the same manner in different places. And lastly, we've agreed upon a set of rules in mathematics to ensure that every equation is solved the same way, yielding the same answer regardless of our location on our planet.

Now, math isn't like other subjects. I care not for math. I will tell you that up front. That was one of my least favorite subjects. That's why I teach science, not math. Kids are always telling me, why are we doing math and science? I said, well, it's an unfortunate fact that the two are sort of related. It's too bad, really, too. But in math, it's not like other subjects. There aren't gray areas. You're either right or you're wrong. You're either right or you're wrong.

It's a discipline that is governed completely by rules. There is only ever one right answer. There is only one process that will lead you to that correct solution every time. And as I found out numerous times in math, one of the reasons that I disliked it so much is you can get the problem wrong, even if you come up with the right answer, but you didn't use the appropriate process to get there.

Or, in my case, never showed my work. Just figured it out and put it down, and I always get in trouble for that. So, for example, I'm going to have you do just a small thing here real quick. I'm kind of in the middle of something. Thanks, guys. Have a seat. Appreciate it. Give that a shot. Most of you should be able to see that. I wrote it big enough. You should have a piece of paper on your table there. Just very quickly have a look, see how I quit moving it around. That way it makes it a little bit easier for you to see it.

Well, come up with the answer. I'll give you just a second to see if you figured it out. Go through it. Turn it to this side a little bit for those that are in the corner. Yes? A division sign. So, 13 plus 4 in parentheses plus 14 divided by 7. All right, how many have got it at this point? Thumbs up if you got it. All right, cool.

I'm going to go ahead and put this down. What were some of the answers that we got? Go ahead, good sir. 19. How many had 19? Okay, a lot of hands. Anybody have anything different? Three. Okay, three. Anybody else have anything different? What did you get? Four? Okay. No, that's okay. That's okay. The point of this is to take a look at kind of what we're looking at. So, the answer actually is 19. The answer is actually 19. And the reason for that is that mathematicians have decided on a specific order of operations in math to solve every equation that has been set out. And that order of operations has been set up through years of experimentation and running through problems to find out kind of how math is done. And it's been generally agreed upon by mathematicians all over the world. Well, the correct way to solve this problem is to employ what is known as the order of operations. Or as math students today affectionately refer to as PEMDAS or the other abbreviation of please excuse my dear Aunt Sally. There's also many, many more acronyms for it, but that's the one that most of the kids use. It means in the States that we do our parentheses first. So anything within a parenthetical setup first. We then do our exponents. We then look at multiplication and division from left to right, and then addition and subtraction from left to right. So the acronym PEMDAS gives us the order of the process. So we solve the parentheses first. 13 plus 4 is 17. Then we add any exponents. There aren't any. We then go through and multiply and divide from left to right. So 14 divided by 7 over here is 2. And then we add and subtract respectively from left to right, giving us 17 plus 2, which is 19. Good question. There just aren't in this case, in this particular case. No, it's a good question, though. So the overall answer, though, ultimately is 19. And I looked it up in several different places. I promise you that's the answer. We can look at it later for that matter. Because these kind of things, actually, and lately on Facebook, I've seen a bunch of these people pop them up and go, all right, what's the answer? And I mean, it turns into a giant shnot. By the time you get down into the comments, people are going, but the reverse Polish notation states! And so there are different ways that have been agreed upon regionally to do these sorts of things. But from a worldwide standpoint, PEMDAS is the way. PEMDAS has been based upon years of experimenting, and it is generally the most commonly accepted method in mathematics. The orderly process to solve, essentially, any equation, regardless of its difficulty on this planet, is this process.

It is step by step, one step leading to the next step in order to ultimately reach a conclusion.

So is it possible that the same God of order, the one who established all of our natural laws, all of our rules by which mankind governs itself scientifically and mathematically?

Is it possible that there is an order of operations for our spiritual lives? That there is a certain set of steps that lead us to a point of reaching some sort of spiritual PEMDAS, if you will?

I believe that he does. I believe that he does. And with the time that I have remaining today, I'd like to explore this concept just a little bit further. For those of you that enjoy titles, I've actually entitled this sermon Spiritual PEMDAS, after PEMDAS in parentheses, F-O-L-S, FOLS. So really spiritual FOLS, but we'll get there in a minute.

If you would go ahead and turn with me, please, to the book of Deuteronomy. We'll turn to the passage that was the inspiration for this particular sermon, Deuteronomy 10. And we're going to pick it up in verse 12. Deuteronomy 10 and verse 12.

Deuteronomy 10 and verse 12, we kind of jump into the middle of a set of requirements from God that are being given to the Israelites through Moses. And as we go through this and we look at this particular passage, you can almost see him holding up his fingers. Okay, point number one. Point number two. Point number three is he goes through this process. So Deuteronomy 10 and verse 12 reads as, and now Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you? But to, one, fear the Lord your God, two, to walk in all his ways, three, to love him, and two, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all of your soul. So we see that in verse 12 in particular, we have four things that are mentioned. One, fear the Lord. Two, obey him. Three, love him. Four, serve him. Now, you go on in verse 13, it says also keep all of his commandments and his statues. I don't want to overlook that, but I think that that actually is kind of covered by number two, walking in all of his ways. So I'm gonna kind of overshadow that a little bit with just what's in verse 12. Now, as you look at these requirements, you can view them in a couple of ways. You could review them, or you could view them rather as four separate things that God expects us to reach at some point. Or you can look at the relationships between the things that are listed. It's the latter approach that I'd like to take today, because I think if you look at these together, one naturally leads into the other.

One is the first step that leads to the second, that leads to the third, that leads to the fourth. Fear leads to obedience, which leads to love, which leads to service. And so that's where I'd like to go today. As we near the Passover, we're beginning to near the end of our examination process. For those of you who took a look at the calendar, Passover is tomorrow night. It came up quick this year. It came up very, very fast this year. But we've been searching through our lives as we've been commanded. I sincerely hope that we were able to find areas in our lives that need work. I really hope, and I know that seems like a strange hope for me, to find areas in your life that need help. But I think if we take a good hard look and come up with nothing, we're deceiving ourselves. I think if we come up with nothing, that there is absolutely nothing in our lives that need to be fixed, that we have just got it already made. We've got some bigger fish to fry. And so I hope you found the things in your life that needs to be looked at. And is it possible in some cases little aspects will just need a little bit of refinement? Other aspects may need a complete and total remodel in order to refashion our lives in the way that God has intended for us. But inevitably, we come out of this Passover examination timeframe, and we find things that we need to do differently. We look at our life, and we find the places that we're not in line with what God has instructed us in. And too often, we approach these issues like a New Year's resolution. We look at it and we go, well, I'm going to stop doing that, or I'm going to do better about this, or I'm going to do this. And what ends up happening is we treat the symptom rather than treating the root cause. In other words, to put a gardening analogy, since it's getting to be gardening season, we pull the dandelion, but the root's still there. And we leave the root in the ground, and pretty soon, despite our best efforts, the dandelion's back. Year after year, we can go through this process without making lasting change. Every year, that dandelion can return.

You know, as I've contemplated that concept and this idea, and as I've examined my own life this Passover season, this passage in Deuteronomy kept coming back to me. And I began to meditate on it, chew on it, and I've really come to conclude that this passage represents an order of operations in our spiritual life, much like Pemdas. I'm calling it by the acronym F-O-L-S. Fear, Obedience, Love, and Service. I believe that the latter aspects of this passage cannot come about fully until the former are addressed. And if we find things in our life that are not in line with God's instructions, if we are disobedient, and year after year we confront these same issues, and no change is ultimately made, I think we need to very starkly examine our life and ask two very important questions. And that is, number one, do I truly fear the ultimate consequences of my actions?

And number two, do I respect and revere God enough to make the necessary changes? Two very important questions, because it all begins with a proper fear of God. It all begins with a proper fear of God.

Today, I'd like to examine the spiritual order of operations, kind of where it begins, how to kind of work with our spiritual Pemdas as we look at this continued process of growth that God desires in us. Once again, we'll be examining four main points in the time that we have left today. The first of those points is fear, the second is obedience, the third is love, and the fourth is service. So it all begins by fearing the Lord our God. The process has to start somewhere, and realistically, fear is the foundation of our relationship with God, the building block, so to speak, upon which all else is laid. If you turn over to the book of Proverbs, we can see this inside of the book of Proverbs. Proverbs 1, one of the very well-known scriptures within the Bible, but I think one that we need to hit today before we get too much further.

Proverbs 1, and we'll pick it up in verse 7. So Proverbs 1 and verse 7.

Proverbs 1 and verse 7 says specifically, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction. So not only are we told here that the fear of God is the beginning of the process of knowledge, the beginning of our knowledge, but the Scripture explicitly tells us that if we despise that wisdom and if we despise that instruction that comes from fearing God, that we're fools.

Fearing God brings wisdom, and we can corroborate that statement with another statement, another passage in Proverbs. If you go to Proverbs 9 verse 10, Proverbs 9 verse 10 specifically states, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.

Fear is a beginning. Now, the word fear within the Bible is used interchangeably in two separate but related manners. The root of the word translated fear in each of these locations is the Hebrew word yare. It's a Hebrew word yare. It's H3372 in the Strongs, if you'd like to look it up. But it is translated specifically to two things. One is fear, to be frightened, or to revere.

And I remember growing up within the church and always thinking this was kind of strange. This seemed like a weird dichotomy in the way that this word was set up, that it can mean fear regarding being afraid. Like in Genesis, we see an example where Adam tells God, I heard you walking in the garden. I was afraid because I was naked. The word afraid there is yare. It's translated from the root yare, that idea of fright and of fear. But then the context of the word fear in other locations, notably in Leviticus 19.30, which says, you will remember my Sabbaths and revere, yare, my sanctuaries. So this kind of dichotomy in the way that this word is used, and it always seems strange to me. Jeff Benner, some of you are very familiar with that name, he's the guy who runs the ancient Hebrew research center, claims that in the original script, Hebrew words don't have dual meanings. He claims that they do not have dual meanings. He claims they have a singular meaning, which is applicable in multiple ways to different situations. So his claim is that the word yare, the concrete meaning for that word, is a flowing within the gut, a visceral gut reaction. And what his claim is that it's a situation where you are so scared that you can feel it viscerally, or you are so in awe of something that you can feel it viscerally. Same feeling, same word in Hebrew, therefore used in two different applications. Now that's according to Jeff Benner. I'm willing to yield to his interpretation, as he is a greater authority on the Hebrew language than I am.

And it's one of the better explanations I've heard to explain how this word yare and so many other Hebrew words can be translated in multiple ways in just different situations. Be that as it may, the Bible clearly tells us that fear is the beginning of our walk with God. It's the beginning of wisdom. It's the beginning of knowledge, the beginning of a process. A proper reverence for God is necessary. But Christ himself even tells us that a healthy fear of God, as we would think of fear, isn't like the Greek word phobos. Actually isn't such a bad thing either. Matthew 10. Let's turn over to Matthew 10. We'll pick up the account in the middle of when Christ was addressing the disciples before sending them out into the world. Matthew 10, verse 28. The Greek word phobos here, which is the root of our English word for fear, which is phobia. A lot of different phobias out there. That same word essentially is the word that is used here in this particular passage. We'll be in Matthew 10, and we'll pick it up in verse 28. So Christ himself is even telling the disciples here that it's not such a bad thing to be afraid of God to an extent.

So Matthew 10, verse 28, says specifically, "...and do not fear phobos, those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul." In the word soul, there is suke, the spirit. "...but rather fear him who is able to destroy both soul," again, suke, spirit, "...and body in hell." So fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. He's telling the disciples as they go out into the world, don't worry about fearing men. Don't worry about men. The worst they can take from you is your body. They can kill you in this physical life.

But the person you really need to be afraid of and the being that you really need to have fear for is God, who can kill you again in the second death, take your eternal life from you. As it says in Hebrews 10.31, it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. So there is some aspect of fright and of fear as well. So it's therefore that much more important for us to really search out that hidden leaven in our lives prior to these upcoming spring holy days and get it out of there. It is that much more crucial for us to be there, to be brutally honest with ourselves and seek out those places in our lives that need to be fixed, really seeing ourselves as God sees us and the failings and the other things that we have. We turn over to Ecclesiastes 12. We can see the results of Solomon's own self-examination. This was not necessarily an examination right before Passover, but just the end of his life looking back over a life lived and the ultimate conclusion of the whole matter. Solomon in Ecclesiastes 12 is taking a look at all of the things that he's ever had, all of the things that came with being king, and he makes an incredible, incredible series of statements in Ecclesiastes 12. We'll go ahead and we're going to read specifically verse 13, but we're going to pick up the context starting in verse 8. So Ecclesiastes 12 verse 8, Solomon begins with, vanity of vanities says the preacher all is vanity. Ecclesiastes 12 verse 8, all is vanity.

Verse 9, and moreover, because the preacher was wise, he still taught the people knowledge. Yes, he pondered and he sought out and he set in order many proverbs. The preacher sought to find acceptable words in what was written was upright, words of truth. The next scripture is incredibly evocative. The words of the wise are like goads. They're like goads, and the words of scholars are like well-driven nails given by one shepherd. These wise words brought us along in the right direction. They goad us to go the direction that we're supposed to go. Verse 12, and further my son be admonished by these of making many books there is no end and much study is wearisome to the flesh. And here it comes in verse 13. This is Solomon's entire conclusion of a life lived wrapped up into a single sentence. Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter.

Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is man's all. An entire lifetime wrapped up in one single sentence. All of Solomon's fineries, his lavish lifestyle, the women, the food, the drink, the riches, when he sat down and he penned Ecclesiastes and he took that life into account, when he really mulled it over, he arrived at the following conclusion. None of it mattered. It was all vanity. The conclusion of the entire process, his whole life, and his advice for future generations. One sentence. Fear God, keep his commandments. For that is the entire duty of man. Our whole physical life on this planet, that is our purpose. Fear God and obey him. Keep his commandments. It goes on in verse 14. For God will bring every work into judgment, including every secret thing, whether good or whether evil. So we see verse 14 immediately follows verse 13.

Fear God, keep his commandments. The next breath is because God's going to bring every work into judgment. Everything that's been said, everything that's been done. It's a connected phrase, as we saw in Matthew, a reason to fear, because God is again capable of taking both physical and spiritual life. Solomon knew it, and intuitively, intuitively rather, we know it too.

Proper fear leads to obedience. Proper fear leads to obedience.

So we get to our second requirement, our second process. We've now done the parentheses of our equation, so to speak, and now we're moving on to our exponents, or our multiplication, and whatever happens to be the next step. But the next step is obedience. Once we've got a proper healthy fear of God, that reverence, and that little bit of fear, we move on to the point where now we look at obedience. As a schoolteacher, I deal with a lot of students, and a good number of them can be quite a handful. I think the number of the percent of kids that are handfuls are going up as the years have gone on. My patience is getting less and less every year. But usually you've got about 5 to 10 percent of your entire student population that typically are real issues. And it's strange to think that in the nine years that I've been at this, I've taught a little over a thousand students by the time it's all said and done. That's about a hundred handfuls over nine years, and actually that number seems a little low, so maybe not. But it translates out to a few difficulties as we go.

Each year when those students come through the door, there are realistically two ways that I can address my classroom. In order to run it orderly, I have to have students respond to my instructions. There's no question about it. If you've got chaos in the classroom, nobody's learning. No one's learning. And that is one of the issues that we see in public education today, is that management has become increasingly more difficult. And so there's some classes—I've seen them—that some things not much is getting done. But you can get there in one of two ways. You can require obedience in one of two ways. The students are either, one, totally afraid of the consequence they'll receive for acting out, either by me, by the office administrators, or at home. And therefore, they are obedient to your instructions because they fear for the consequence that's coming.

Or you can establish enough of a relationship with your students based on mutual respect that they're obedient in order to please you. And realistically, there's two ways that this can go when you start the beginning of the school year. Now, the reality is, the school year typically starts with option number one. Most of the time, the kids spend the first little bit kind of testing where your boundaries are, and then when they find out that you're pretty serious about, no, here's my line, they quickly move into option number two. I find that ultimately, using that second option, I don't write very many referrals or citations. I don't have kids leaving my room very frequently. Often, it's just a quick redirect or that infamous teacher glance, you know, the little evil stink eye you can give them from the other side of the room, but I'm also fluent in sarcasm, so that sometimes helps. A little snarky exchange will get them back going. But it reduces the amount of conflict that I have in my classroom because we operate within a relationship.

However, I have a student teacher this semester for the first time, and it's the first time I've ever had a student teacher, and it's been really interesting to sit back and watch someone else interact with my students that I've already established relationships with. It's almost like starting over, but I can see the other side of the coin now where I wasn't able to do that before.

I've watched her so far this year try to get the same kids on task, repeatedly demanding that they sit down, do this, do that, and it often doesn't work. As far as I can tell, right now, the students are not afraid of her. They're not afraid of the consequences, and they don't respect her enough to do it at this point. Neither of the first things we talked about are being satisfied. Ultimately, they don't fear her. Therefore, they're not being obedient to her. And I can still stop the behaviors with a glance with most of these students, even though the supervising university teachers have asked me to stay out of it and let her just kind of do her thing, which is really, really hard.

But spiritually, we're kind of the same way. Realistically, the two components of the Hebrew word yare we looked at earlier, we can either obey God because we're afraid of the consequences, or we can obey God because we revere Him and hold Him in awe. We have a relationship with Him. We want to please Him. The immediate result is the same, obedience, but the latter result is very, very different. And I'll use an analogy here, because I've experienced this within my own life. Many of you know that I grew up with an extremely alcoholic father. It was a difficult, difficult time growing up. And I've mentioned this before in other sermons, but we had a very strained, pretty dysfunctional relationship for a lot of years. A lot of years. And when I was young, I obeyed Him solely through the fear of consequences. I mean, I just remember, okay, do not step out of line or I'm getting the belt. No, don't step out of line or you're getting the belt. Okay, don't do that because you're going to get the belt. And as time went on, and I grew older and I got a little more disillusioned, and of course I hit my teenage years and I got my rebellious phase, I didn't really approve of the alcoholism, and I used that as a crutch to just disobey everything He told me to do. And that's my issue, clearly. But I resented the rules that He'd set forth. I began to question them, deliberately disobey them, with absolutely no regard whatsoever for my father and the rules He'd set forth. And because I'd grown up a little bit, and I actually was bigger than He was at about 14, I didn't fear Him as much as I did when I was younger and smaller. And that combination led to a very, very strained relationship for quite some time as I was attempting to find my own way, so to speak. But I can honestly say I didn't have much fear or reverence during that time frame. And I'm not sure I ever fully achieved the reverence component before He passed. We patched a lot of things up in our relationship, really significantly improved once I moved out. But it never really developed to the relationship that could have been. Had I gone from obedience based on true fear to obedience based upon reverence and love, the relationship was different in the end. And that's what I mean by the end result being different. When you obey only out of fear, you have an extreme difficulty reaching the stages of love and service. You reach obedience, and there's a good chance that you will be that may be the farthest that you get. And it's likely you may not even last there very long. You'll only obey because you're afraid of the consequences. If you cease to become afraid of the consequences, you'll cease to obey. You'll also resent it as time goes on because you're not bought into the reasons why you need to obey. But if you can do both, if you can transition from a fear of consequences to a reverence as time goes on, or even a reverence with a healthy fear of the consequences, you'll not only obey because you desire to, but you'll also be able to push past that into true love and service because now you're bought into the reasons why the rules are there.

You're bought in. You want to be a part of it. You want to be in this process. Paul in the book of Galatians kind of discusses this concept. Let's go to Galatians 3. I'm going to try to do the context of the book of Galatians in like 30 seconds, so I don't want to take…you could give a seven-part sermon on Galatians, but we'll do it in 30 seconds and leave probably a lot out. But the book of Galatians, Paul is writing to the churches in the Galatia area with a situation that's happening where you had believers that were really recent gentile converts to Christianity who were being led to believe by converted Jews that they kind of had to become Jewish before they could become Christian was kind of the concept. In addition, those same gentiles have come out of this Roman imperial cult system that was trying to pull them back in, too. And so you've got these newly converted believers being pulled in two different directions, their family and their friends saying, no, no, no, come back to all of these Roman gods and the Jews over here going, no, you know, you've got to get circumcised. You've got to do the ritual cleansings. You've got to do all this stuff. And they're being pulled back and forth in the middle. So reading Galatians with that context in mind, kind of seeing that gentile convert being pulled in both directions is extremely helpful. But if we look specifically at Galatians 3, we have Paul talking about the law. And at cursory glance, when you're looking at it, it seems as though he's saying it's not important. And this book has been used time and time again for that very purpose, to try to show that the law was done away with when in reality it says completely the opposite. Galatians 3, we'll pick it up in verse 21.

So Galatians 3 verse 21, that's 4 verse 21, that's not going to get us there. Galatians 3 verse 21 said, is the law then against the promises of God? Certainly not. For if there had been a law given which could have given life, truly righteousness would have been by the law. Paul's point is that the law itself doesn't provide life. You can't just obey yourself to eternal life. If you're obeying especially purely for self-preservation, because what happened was Christ coming, anti-dub our spiritual lives. It's not a checklist. We don't go through our day and go, well, I didn't kill anyone today. I didn't steal. I didn't commit adultery. I didn't lie.

Christ coming asked us the question, yeah, but how did you treat your fellow man? Did you treat them with contempt? Did you hate them? Did you lust after them? Did you take from them in some other way? Well, Christ's sin was took the requirements of the law as the Jews understood them and added the spirit of the law to it as well. So Paul goes on, verse 22. But the scripture has confined all under sin that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.

But before faith came, we were kept under guard or under ward in some translations by the law, kept for the faith which would afterward be revealed. Therefore, the law was our tutor to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But after faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor. Paul's not saying that the law is done away with. What he's saying is that now that Christ has come, his teachings amplify the law. They add to it. The law got the Jews to the point where they could accept Christ. It was a tutor to them to bring them to the point where when Christ came, it could be accepted. But for the Gentiles, what he's building towards is it doesn't make sense for you to go backwards. It doesn't make sense for you to go backwards. You don't have to become Jewish in order to be Christian. You started here. You started here. You aren't in need of the tutor, quote-unquote. If you follow all of Christ's teachings, realistically, you're going to satisfy the requirements of the law and then some. Love God, love man. We have the two great commandments that boil down everything that has been taught to us into two things. Galatians 3 verse 26.

We keep going through the process here. For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For as many as you were baptized into Christ have put on Christ, there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's seed and heirs according to that promise.

This continues on to the idea that the concept of Jew and Greek doesn't make sense. You're all one in Christ now that Christ has come. So the bickering back and forth, the eating at separate tables that's described in Galatians 1, the physical circumcision to mark one as Christian, doesn't ultimately make sense. Do what Christ taught you to do. Live His teachings, and you will satisfy the law. We see that in Galatians 5 talking about those who have the fruit of the Spirit in their life aren't under the penalty of the law. They've satisfied it. They're living it. They're walking the walk. So does it mean that because we, none of us in this room necessarily are Jewish, does that mean that we just get a pass? We don't have to go through fear and obedience. We just get to start at loving Christ and just move forward from there. Well, no. No. What we're seeing here is a difference in the kind of fear and obedience that we mentioned before. The Jews as a whole obeyed for fear of the consequence. They were hyper-obedient. The law was a burden. It was a list of camps. It was a list of camps. They built so many huge fences around the Torah to ensure that there was no way they could possibly break, accidentally even, one of the commandments. To avoid breaking the Sabbath, they had so many steps one could take before it was considered to be too far. They had a certain number of steps. To avoid eating something unclean, they washed their hands ritualistically, strained out small bugs, things that got into their food.

Avoided eating milk and meat together so they didn't accidentally boil a kid in its mother's milk. And they did fear and obedience really, really well. But to what end? On the other hand, the Gentiles didn't have the law to begin with. They didn't have anything to fear or be obedient to until Christ arrives. So again, did they get a free pass? Did they get to start at love? Well, no.

The fear that the Gentiles were to have is the fear that God desires for us to develop.

Reverence. Buy-in. Willingly being a part of this process. That we look at God and we respect and honor God and obey Him. Because, yeah, we might be a little bit afraid of the consequences or maybe even a lot afraid of the consequences. And that's a healthy thing. But more so because we know that God loves us, takes care of us, and wants us to be part of that process. If we truly believe that and want that, obedience will follow. If we truly believe it and follow it, not because we have to, but because we want to. I won't ask for a show of hands, but how many of you feel like you're in that place in your life? You know, I'm thinking of my own life and I feel like I'm not 100% sure that I'm out of the half-two stage yet. To be perfectly and brutally honest, I'm not 100% sure I'm there. So we look at our lives and we try to find out where we are. And we try to find the focal point for our coming year as we really strive to get to the point where where God wants us to be. Recognizing that benefits and the blessings and love that God has showed me and trying to really work to develop that relationship. That's my priority one for this coming year. Priority one for me this coming year. When we reach that point, we've transcended pure obedience for fear of consequences and moved into obedience because of our love for God. So the next step in our process, our spiritual pimdos, is that we have to love God. We've gotten through F, we've gotten through O, and now we're moving on to L. So we have to love God, but what does that mean? What does it mean?

What kind of love do we actually show for God? And we've heard a lot of sermons on the love of God.

Many, many, many sermons on the love of God. And so I'm going to keep this somewhat abbreviated. But we know there are three specific words in Greek to denote love within the Greek language. There's teleos, there's eros, and there's agape. Teleos is that brotherly love. It's kind of a friendship love. It's outgoing care. It's concern for your fellow man. Eros we have is intimate love. That's the kind of sexual love that exists between a husband and a wife. And then finally, there's agape. The first two of these types aren't really the types of love that we have for God, even though there are subtle aspects of that within the relationship. But the love that we have to grow to show for God is that final love, agape. That's the one that he shows to us. So agape love is the kind of selfless love that can only come from the Spirit of God. In fact, we see in 1 John 4. Let's go ahead and turn there. 1 John 4. We'll go to 1 John 4. We're going to pick it up in verse 7, looking at, again, the character of God. 1 John 4 and verse 7.

1 John 4 and verse 7 specifically states, Beloved, let us love agape one another, for love is of God, and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God, for God is love. In this, the love of God was manifested towards us, that God has sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. In this is love. Not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we then ought to also love one another.

So true love, agape, that godly love, comes from the Spirit of God, comes from the indwelling of God in our lives. John says it himself, agape is of God. Anyone who agape is, so to speak, is born of God and knows God. It's impossible to have agape apart from God. Agape is kind of a side effect of that indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Incredible things can be done, acts of service, acts of heroism. You know, we hear these things all the time, and I pose to you that is done out of an extremely developed sense of filios, a brotherly love that is extremely developed.

Agape love is a selfless love. It's a sacrificing love and a love that doesn't think of self, but it schemes others over the self. It's self-surrendering, service-oriented love that was demonstrated by God the Father in Christ and is a very part of God's nature. God is agape.

God is agape. We hear that he loved the world so much. We see it in John 3.16, that one scripture that everybody sees at football games all the time. But we see that he was willing to lay aside his life and to take on our sin and to die for us, to be beaten to nearly beyond recognition, spit on, taunted, abused, for me and for you for the mistakes that we make and the sins that we commit. That's the kind of love God wants us to grow, to show him, that we're willing to sacrifice our lives for him, that we're willing to give up ourself, surrender our lives to him, and live the way that he's instructed us to live. That we're willing to sacrifice our lives for others, to esteem others' needs greater than our own. And the only way we reach this kind of love is to have God's Spirit dwelling within us, to reach a point in our lives where we revere God, that we obey him out of that reverence and that we receive that Holy Spirit, and that through actively working in that Holy Spirit, stoking that fire, so to speak, we reach a point where we can love God and love others in this manner. Only through this love can we reach the final stage of our operations. Once we've worked out the fear component, we figured out the obedience component, and we truly love God, we now can move into true Godly service. True Godly service. And not just service, but bondage.

Not just service, but bondage to God. The word that is translated service in Deuteronomy 10, verse 12, is the root word abod, age 564—I'm sorry, 5647, a little bit of dyslexia there for a minute—which translates to serve or to enslave, and is sometimes translated till the ground. So there's serve and enslave and till the ground. But here's why it's tilling the ground. When God removed Adam from the garden, he was sent into the world, you know, and his punishment was that the ground would be very, very hard for him to work in. Well, the word that was used there is to slave away, essentially, and toil in the ground to work at his mistake. But the word itself implies servitude. It implies servitude. That same root is used to derive the word for servant, bondage, bondservant, slave.

God desires that we lay aside our life and become his bondservant. That we lay aside our life and become his bondservant. If you've ever done a study into the system of Hebrew slavery, it's fascinating. It is absolutely fascinating at how God designed a system within the Hebrew culture for servitude to be a part of it, knowing full well that they spent 430-some years in Egypt as slaves. So you had to be careful as to how this was working. But slavery did occur within the Hebrew system. It wasn't like the Roman system where the slaves had no rights whatsoever. Hebrew slaves had rights. They served for seven-year periods, essentially. And the way that the system was set up was they became a part of the master's household during that time frame.

They were less a slave and more of a servant of the house in that regard. They served for those seven-year periods. The system had years of release put into place. Every seven years, the slave would be freed by his master. And, believe it or not, not sent away empty-handed.

Turn over Deuteronomy 15. Something that is so far outside of our concept of slavery, it's hard to believe. But, I'm sorry, Deuteronomy 15. It's not far from where we started today.

Deuteronomy 15, and we'll pick it up in verse 12. We'll see that the system of slavery within the Hebrew culture was a merciful system. It took into account the fact that the Hebrews served as slaves. They knew what slavery was. It took that into account. But, it also took into account the fact that people will make mistakes. Financially, they'll overextend themselves. They'll have to sell themselves into slavery to work off a debt or something to that effect. And, they built in a way for that to be fixed, where that person wasn't serving for their entire life. Deuteronomy 15, in verse 12, specifically says, if your brother, a Hebrew man or a Hebrew woman, is sold to you and serves you six years, in the seventh year, Dei the Shemitah, you shall let him go free from you.

So, just release them in the seventh year. And when you send them away free from you, and this is what is so foreign to us as a concept of slavery, you shall not let him go away empty-handed.

You shall supply him liberally from your flock, from your threshing floor, and from your wine press, from what the Lord has blessed you with, you shall give to him. Verse 15, you shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God redeemed you. Therefore, I command you this thing today. And so, God commands his people at this time that because you were a bondsman, because I brought you out of Egypt, that very thing these upcoming holy days represent, that you will only allow them to serve you for six years, and in the seventh, you are to set the servant free. But you'll notice you don't just kick him to the curb.

You don't just kick him out empty-handed. You furnish them, and you don't just go, oh, here's that one lame little lamb that I've got, the one that doesn't really walk right, here's that one, and this cow hasn't produced milk in several years, but you can have her too. And no, you're giving them the good things of your flock, the good things of your threshing floor.

In fact, you're paying them back with the blessings that were brought to you by their service to you.

You're sending them home with that, almost like you've been hanging on to it, like you've been a bank for them for a little while, and you're sending them home with that to give them a fresh start, to give them a better situation as they move forward from that point. So we go to verse 16, and if it happens that he says to you, I will not go away from you because he loves you and your house, since he prospers with you. So if we get into a situation, you go to release the servant, like, all right, your seven years are up, thank you very much, you know, it's been great, here's a lamb, here's some stuff, here takes some wine, have a wonderful life, and they go, I'm not going anywhere. Why would I leave? Why would I leave? You've been a wonderful master. I love you and your household. I want to serve you forever. I want to remain a servant in your household forever.

There's a process for this. God set up a process for this. In fact, to me, in my mind, it's very Ruth and Boaz, that concept of, treat me not to leave you. Don't send me away. I want to be here.

I want to be here. So we see the process in verse 17. Then you shall take an owl, ouch, and thrust it through his ear to the door. Punch a hole in the ear, and that person will be your servant forever. Also to your female servant, you shall do likewise. And it shall not seem hard to you when you send him away free from you, for he has been worth a double-hired servant in serving you six years. Then the Lord your God will bless you in all that you do. So we see that there is a system in place where someone could stay on if they so wished. And it's that kind of servitude that God wishes us to agree to. He desires us to reach a point in our relationship where we have feared him properly, where we have obeyed and walked in his ways, where we have loved him, to the point where we look at the two roads that we could travel and we go, I don't want anything to do with this one. Punch my ear, let's do this. Rest of my life, I am yours.

That's the kind of servitude that God wants from us. Godly service, not our will, but his.

Reaching that point in our walk where we have completely surrendered ourselves, that we've decided that a life of servitude to God is more desirable than a life of walking down our own path. And when we reach that point, we attain a level of service that allows us to serve others within the church and enjoy it, that we serve and enjoy it, to achieve that, quote-unquote, pure and undefiled religion that James talks about, visiting the orphans and the widows, serving them, and keeping ourselves unstained from the world.

You know, we can serve without hitting the other points first. We can serve without hitting the other points first, but we'll be serving for the wrong reasons. We'll be serving in a way of, hey, look what I'm doing. I'm setting up chairs. Yeah, you do. I'm setting up chairs. Check it out. I'm doing this. I'm doing this. Or what happens is if we don't hit those other points first, eventually our service becomes a burden, and we look at it as a burden. We don't look at it as a joy. We don't treat it as a joy. We look at it as a burden, and people burn out. But true Christ-centered servitude is the goal. Humbling ourselves, serving others, esteeming others more than we esteem ourselves. And this process creates a life that reflects the light of God's love to the world around us. And it eventually becomes something where you've got a million candle-power spotlight in the middle of a very dark world. And as people see that, they notice it. They see individuals that are truly serving for the right reasons, that are there and humbling themselves and serving others. So as this examination period prior to Passover draws to a close, take a little bit of the time we have left remaining. Not much, but the time we have remaining. Really ask yourself, where are we in this process? Have we passed through the fear stage? Are we pretty well got our issues under control? Are we into the obedience stage? Are we obeying for the right reasons?

Are we at that love stage? Have we moved into godly service? Where are we in this process?

The only way to get there, the only way to get to the final solution and to get to the answer, is to follow the order of operations. If we solve the problem without it, we run the risk of getting one, either the incorrect answer or two, we get to the end with the right answer and find out we did the process totally wrong. And it turns out the process, just like in math, is as equally as important to the answer. I don't know about you guys, but I sure don't want to get to the end of the problem and find out that I've got the right answer and I got the process all wrong. I don't know about you, but we have to be doing this for the right reasons. We have to be doing this in the right order. And God desires that we finish this problem before we take our last breath.

Want to finish that problem before we draw our last breath. And you know as well as I do who no one knows when that is. It could be tomorrow, it could be 50, 60 years down the road.

But our spiritual pemdos should become spiritual f-o-l-s, foals, God's order of operations, fear, obedience, love, and service.