Remembering and Re-membering

We're going to turn to God's word. We're in Deuteronomy chapter 12 today, and we're reading verses one through 14. We're going to read that out loud. If you want to find that in your bulletin or up on the screen behind me, or on page one sixty three in the black Bibles in the pews. But it's our practice to read God's word aloud together. So would you join your voices with mine as we read God's word. You ready? Three two one.

These are the statutes and ordinances which you shall be careful to do in the land which the Lord, the God of your fathers, has given you to possess all the days that you live upon the earth. You shall surely destroy all the places where the nations whom you shall dispossess serve their gods. Upon the high mountains and upon the hills and are under every green tree, you shall tear down their altars and dash in pieces their pillars and burn their Asherim with fire, you shall hew down the graven images of their gods and destroy their name out of that place. You shall not do so to the Lord your God, but you shall seek the place which the Lord your God will choose out of you tribes to put his name and make his habitation there. Thither shall you go and thither shall you bring your burnt offerings and your sacrifices, your tithes and the offerings that you present, your votive offerings, your freewill offerings, and the first wings of your herd and of your flock. And there you shall eat before the Lord your God, and you shall rejoice, you and your households, in all that you undertake in which the Lord your God has blessed you. You shall not do according to all that we are doing here this day, every man doing whatever is right in his own eyes. For you have not as yet come to the rest and to the inheritance which the Lord your God gives you. But when you go over the Jordan and live in the land which the Lord your God gives you to inherit, and when he gives you rest from all your enemies round about so that you live in safety, then to the place which the Lord your God will choose to make his name dwell there, thither shall you bring all that I command you, your burnt offerings and your sacrifices, your tithes and offerings that you present, and all your votive offerings which you vow to the Lord. And you shall rejoice before the Lord your God, you and your sons and your daughters and your men's servants and your maidservants and the Levite that is within your towns since he has no portion or inheritance with you. Take heed that you do not offer your burnt offerings at every place that you see, but at the place where the Lord will choose in one of your tribes. There you shall offer your burnt offerings and there you shall do all that I'm commanding you. — Deuteronomy 12:1-14

That's the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

We are still in the RSV for the rest of this year. That'll change in the new year. So thithers will no longer be with us after that.

Three Animals to Beware of in Worship

Several years ago, the TV network Fox had a series of specials that they ran called When Animals Attack. It was hosted by Robert Urich, and then some episodes by Louis Gossett Junior. And it was all horrifying films of people being attacked by sharks and grizzly bears and bats and snakes. And then also the foolish people who'd made wild animals into pets like bobcats, like bringing a bobcat into your house, treating it like a kitten, or bringing a wolf into your house and treating it like it's a dog. And the whole kind of subtext of the series is like, do not pet the wildlife. That's sort of what the whole thing was.

And that's sort of the theme of this sermon this morning that I'm bringing to you.

The passage that we just read is a rather simple passage. And at other times and places in history, this would be an easy sermon for me to preach. Not controversial. Here's what the passage basically says: You're going to worship God alone. You're going to worship God in the place that He tells you. You're going to worship God in the place God alone in the place He tells you with other people, and you're going to do so in a way that only He commands. That's the sermon. Non controversial in other times and places.

But right now, super controversial. There's a lot of really difficult things in this passage. And I'm going to treat this passage as a sort of a version of like When Animals Attack.

So I've got my sermon outline based around three animals. I realize it's hard to listen, so I'm giving to you sticky this morning. Three animals to beware of in worship: the elephant, and then the angler fish, and then the porcupine.

So the elephant of pluralism, the anglerfish of syncretism, and the porcupine of individualism. If you can't remember those, they're in your bulletin on the side right there, you can follow on.

So here's the point. Don't pet the wildlife today. Okay?

The Elephant of Pluralism

First, the elephant of pluralism. Were you paying attention when you read the passage this morning? If you did, you should be uncomfortable. You should feel a little bit weird. Because did you hear what it said? There's only one God. Go destroy all the altars. Tear down all the places where anybody worships anything different. That is a very controversial thing to say. And that's controversial because we live in a pluralistic society where there's a marketplace of ideas. And there are lots of things to choose from, including who or what you worship. And that's a good thing that we live in that kind of culture.

But 18 times in this passage, it's sort of hammered into us. Who is God? He is the Lord your God. In fact, if you read this, if you go through and read the whole thing out loud, or you listen to it read 18 times, you'd hear, "Lord your God. The Lord your God." Okay. I get it. But it's sort of hammered in. There is only one, and there's no other one. Only one God.

There's a difference between living in a pluralistic culture that has a wide variety of ideas you can choose from and something called pluralism. Pluralism says, not only are there a wide variety, but they're all equally valid. They're all the same. Choose whatever you want, but they're all kind of the same. And that's what I want to pick on this morning. It's not pluralistic living in a culture with lots of ideas, but living in a culture that emphasizes pluralism—they're all the same.

Recently, there was a dean at Stanford University, and he told the student Christian students on campus, do not share your faith. But his reason for doing that was really fascinating. Do not share your faith because all religions are equally valid. They're all essentially the same. That's a fascinating move right there. Because what he's saying is, hey, be good. Be nice to people. Whatever you choose to believe that's private for you. Buddha, Allah, it's all the same. All private matter. It doesn't matter. They're all the same. That's pluralism.

Now that's a prevailing thought outside the church. A lot of people think that. But what about inside the church? Surely we know what we believe. Right? Inside the church? Maybe not.

This past year, this past summer, Ligonier Ministries did a huge survey of people in churches across the country. This is what they found. 91% of people would agree with this statement:

God counts a person righteous not because of what your works are, what you do, but because of your faith in Christ.

Way to go church. Awesome. 91%. Good job.

Interestingly, that same survey also had this statement:

God accepts the worship of all religions including Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.

Almost 50% of the people agreed with that. 91%? Almost 50%. What's going on there?

I mean, do you feel this? It's saying that our God is the only God. Doesn't that sort of feel a little arrogant? Is that hard for you to say? Our God is the only true God. I mean, many of you know people who are atheists and agnostics, and truth be told, a lot of them are nicer than we are. So it is hard for a lot of people to say this.

Not only that, you might even say, what about people who sincerely believe something? If they sincerely believe it, how can I say that they're wrong? That ours is right and there's only one true religion. See pluralism is the idea that all religions are equally true. But is that a true statement? Is that a true statement?

A writer who's not a Christian, a man named Stephen Prothero, wrote a book several years ago called God is not one. And he does this. He's not a believer, but he looks at all the major world religions and says, you know what's fascinating is not only are they not answering all the questions, the main issues of life questions the same way, they're not even asking all the same questions. This is what he noticed.

He said, you know, if you look at Hinduism, Hinduism is about many gods, not one. Or if you look at many of the eastern religions, Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, they're not even really concerned with God. They're concerned with what you do, your practice. Islam isn't concerned so much with salvation as it is with submission to God. These are not only—you can't flatten them out. To do so is actually to ignore everything that these various religions say. It's incredibly arrogant to act like these are all the same. This is from an unbeliever.

Now I'm calling this the elephant of pluralism from this parable, and I'm going to put the picture of this up on the screen. The blind men and the elephant. And I've told you this story before.

It's a common thing that's told in philosophy and religion 101 classes in schools across the country. There are all these blind men and they come upon an elephant. They're interviewed and asked, what is an elephant like? And one of them says, well, an elephant is big. It's got the trunk. One says, no. An elephant is like a big flappy fan because that person has the ear. One of them says, no. The elephant is like a wall when you lean up against the side of it. One of them says, no. An elephant's like a tree trunk. It's wrapped around the leg. One says, no. An elephant's pointy. It's got the tusk. And what's the point of the story? They're all right. They're all wrong.

You know what's fascinating about that? There was a British missionary to India, Leslie Newbigin. And he got this told to him over and over again as he was a missionary. They said, what you're doing there is cultural imperialism. They're all right. And what he realized—he got so tired of hearing this—he realized one day, you know what's fascinating about that parable? It's told from the perspective of a person who claims they can see all while everybody else is blind. It's actually an incredibly arrogant parable, because it's saying, you all are blind out there, but I see all. You all can't see what you're looking at. It's really just the same thing. You just describe it different ways. And he's like, that is maybe one of the most arrogant, universal, exclusive, unprovable faith statements—that all religions are just the same.

The Problem with Pluralism

See, the conflict between pluralism and exclusive religious claims isn't just a problem for Christians. The atheist who says, all of you are wrong, is making a universal unprovable faith statement: I know that you're all wrong. So if everybody is making a universal unprovable faith statement, what's so wrong with Christians saying, we have one, and it's that God is real and there's only one of him? Why is it so taboo for Christians of all people to say, our God is right, and actually we believe all the other ones are wrong?

Listen to Christianity. This is what Moses is saying in this passage. This is what he's saying in these first verses when he tells them to tear down the other altars, that our God is one. This is the message of Deuteronomy over and over again. It's got nothing to do with what I prefer. It's got nothing to do with what works for me right now. This has to do with what God says, who God says he is, and has revealed himself, and how we go to him.

Now if you're like, I don't really like the Old Testament. You're one of those only Jesus people. Let's put these up on the wall here.

I am the way and the truth and the life. Nobody comes to the Father except through me. — John 14:6

Later on in the book of Acts, Peter preaches the gospel to churches:

Salvation is in no one else. There's no other name under heaven given to men by which we may be saved. — Acts 4:12

In other words, one God. Only one. Beware the elephant of pluralism. It's a parable. It's made up. Well, that may be good. You may be like, I'm down with the elephant. Amen. One way to God. I believe in that. Well, let's try another one. Let's try this one.

The Anglerfish of Syncretism

The anglerfish of syncretism. I want to represent syncretism as an anglerfish. You may not know what that is, but many of you have seen Finding Nemo. The anglerfish lives in the depths of the ocean, has a little antenna sticking up out of its head with a light that shines. And it baits, and then it bites. See the teeth on that? It baits. It lures its prey, and then it bites.

That's what I'm using to describe the danger of worshiping God and—God and Yahweh and—Jesus and. The technical name for worshiping two gods is syncretism. Idolatry is where you worship a false god instead of the true god. Syncretism is actually mostly what the Israelite people got in trouble for—worshiping Yahweh and worshiping two gods at the same time. This is what the word is forbidding here.

Destroy completely all the places on the high mountains, on the hills, under every spreading tree where the nations you're dispossessing worship their gods. Break down their altars, smash their idols, their sacred stones. Burn their Asherah poles in the fire. Cut down the idols of their gods and wipe out their names from those places. You must not worship the Lord your God in that way. — Deuteronomy 12:2-4

It was always a temptation for God's people to worship Yahweh and. That's why God is so clear here—like, get rid of everything else.

I went to Israel this summer and we saw lots of archaeological sites, lots of brown dirt and brown rocks. It was fascinating. We went through all these places all over Israel, and we went to this one place called Arad.

And I'm gonna put a picture of this up here. Arad is a little town south of Jerusalem. What's fascinating about this place is that they have a temple there to Yahweh. Now, if you know your bible, are they supposed to have a temple to Yahweh anywhere else but Jerusalem? No. Okay, good. Some of you are awake this morning. They're not supposed to have another temple. Only one temple. This is what this passage says.

Go to the place which I name. That's where you're going to worship me.

Well, this little town has a temple to Yahweh that archaeologists have found. What's fascinating is that it has a holy of holies. I'm gonna use my laser pointer—good for cats and congregations. This is the holy of holies. What they found there is not one, but two altars. There's this one to Yahweh, and this one to Yahweh's girlfriend, Asherah—Asherah that you just read about, the fertility goddess of the Canaanites. This tells you the entire story in one picture of why God's people got sent into exile. Over and over, they were like, Yahweh and his wife and his girlfriend. This danger of syncretism has always been a problem for the church. It's always been a problem for God's people.

Why do you think they didn't obey this? It's because they wanted to hedge their bets. They're like, Asherah is the god of fertility. We want crops. We need babies. We want our land to produce and our animals to produce and our families to grow. So they hedge their bets—a little Yahweh, a little something else. Does that sound familiar to you?

The Problem of Syncretism Today

In our country, for years, one of the big secret ways we have exercised syncretism has been called the prosperity gospel. That God's big plan is to make you wealthy. If you worship him and you give in a particular way to a particular church, God is out to bless you financially. That is as old as a rod and goes way back.

Syncretism is also a danger always with politics. In the fourth century, there was an emperor named Constantine who was on the throne. His mother, Helen, comes to him and she said, "I just have been converted. I just found out about this peasant named Jesus who was a Jew who died for the sins of the world," and Constantine becomes a Christian and then makes it the official religion of the Roman Empire and imposes this upon people. Forced conversions. Lots and lots of mess came from Constantine making Christianity the religion of the Roman Empire, and it became syncretism. God and politics. God and my country. And it became very confusing.

Every time the church has gotten bogged down in Jesus and politics, it always ruins our witness. Go back and read the history of what happened after Rome. It made a huge mess. The same is true of Christian nationalism today. Now, I'm gonna go there. Of course, you can be a Christian who loves your country. I hope you are. I hope that you do celebrate July 4 and you are patriotic towards your country. But our own denomination this past year said, "Christian nationalism is an extremely dangerous term. Don't use it because it's confusing"—Jesus and politics wedded together in a way which is really confusing and turns people away from Jesus and confuses our witness.

There's a reason why every Sunday we take the flags out of the sanctuary. That's not to be mean, but there is only one who's gonna be worshiped in this room. That's what we're about as a church. I hear there's a revival going on in the country. I hope there is. But I hope it's a revival about Jesus only and not a revival of syncretism.

Folks, beware the anglerfish. The anglerfish is really subtle. The light baits and it bites. It's extremely dangerous. Whatever we couple with Jesus always overshadows Jesus. He's got to be central.

The Porcupine of Individualism

The final animal in our menagerie is the porcupine. This is the one that actually you can find in Israel. I was surprised when we were in Israel going all the archaeological sites. We found quills everywhere. I've never seen a porcupine. They're nocturnal, and they're solitary. There are no herds of porcupines anywhere. But I was fascinated to find quills all over Israel.

Individualism is what I'm representing by the porcupine. It's obvious if you've been a long-term member of this church or any church that being part of the church is really uncomfortable. Aren't you tired of the porcupines in church? Can I get a witness? We'd rather be alone. It's so much easier. And I'm saying this as your pastor.

There is a spiritual discipline for me personally to stay at the same church for a long time, to be with the same group of people. Here you're looking at me like, "Are you kind of annoying? Is anybody changing here or growing?" And I'm talking about me. I mean, it is a hard thing to be a part of a church long term.

Another way individualism hurts the church is that right now everybody wants a tribe. They don't want a congregation. A tribe is where everybody thinks the same about everything. We all line up in all the ways that make us feel really good about everything. And everybody wants that. I get questions all the time like, "Why are we not more this or that or whatever?" And people left our church on both ends of the spectrum over and over again because they want a tribe. It's the hard thing to remain part of a church with people who think differently than you do, who have quills. Let's be honest. We all got quills.

Look. Again, this is the message of Deuteronomy. Listen again. Worship is for together. It's God's people together. Every person. This is what's fascinating—it's diverse and it's together. So this is what was unique about Israel. The call in this passage is that everybody goes to the temple, not the rich people or the landowners. Every person, your kids, your maidservant, your manservant, anybody who's staying with you, everybody has to go to the temple. It's unbelievably a level playing field. Everybody goes, and everybody goes together.

Look at these passages up here. This one I was just referring to:

You, your sons and daughters, your male and female servants, the Levites from your towns who have no allotment of inheritance. Everybody together.

And then look at this next one:

Be careful not to sacrifice your burnt offerings anywhere you choose. Offer them only at the place where God will choose in one of your tribes, and there observe everything I've commanded you.

This is what God's saying. This matters so much. God's people, all different, worshiping together in one place. You can't just do this however you want to. Beware of the porcupine of individualism, which sees everybody else as a problem but fails to look in the mirror and say, "I got a lot of spikes. I got a lot of rough edges. Maybe it's hard to be in church with me over the long haul."

Can I remind you that worship is always for together? Now I hope you're worshiping God alone. I hope that you go out and you have times of solitude and silence, that you take a walk in the woods, that you're praising God with your mouth as loud as you can walking through the woods. But the sacraments that we take tell a story that worship always has to have a together component. I mean, you can give your kid a bath, but it's not the same thing as baptism. You can have a snack of wine and bread this afternoon, but it's not the Lord's Supper unless it's with the people of God. We're always called to do this. This is the most important thing that we do every week. We come together, all of us, and we come before the Lord together, and we say, "God, you are most important and you alone."

I watched a movie this summer about an American pastor who takes a parish in Scotland. He's learning a lot about what it means to be part of a parish community in a place that's been around for a long long time. So he takes on this parish and he begins to discover the hard thing of being in the same church over a long period of time. He begins to interview people. He interviews this one monk about his experience, Father Giles. And Giles talks about staying in a monastery with the same group of monks all the time. He says this: "It is good for my soul to be around these same people all the time. The long stable relationships of being in the same place with the same people pushes me. It reminds me I'm a porcupine too and I need God to love other people. It forces us to deal with the difficult parts of who we are."

Worship Jesus Alone Together

So here's the conclusion for today. Here's what we need every week: to worship Jesus alone together. Jesus alone together. All the other things we do as a church are secondary to this.

And I want to tell you, in summary, this is how this pushes against those three animals I'm talking about. Worship does these three things to us. We remember whose we are, we remember who we are, and we are remembered to one another.

We remember first whose we are. We remember who Jesus is. This is against the elephant of pluralism. Remember that he is the only one, the only way.

So let me give another animal example. Let's say your cat becomes sick this week, and your cat's really really sick. So you take the cat to the vet, and the vet says, "Well, I'm afraid this is cancer. You need surgery. Your cat's gonna need surgery. This is gonna be expensive. But if you want to save your pet's life, you got to do this today."

Now you could say that's your preference. That's your opinion. But you don't. You pay the money for the cancer treatment. Why do you do that? One, because you love your pet. And two, because the vet has the experience and qualifications. You're like, I trust what the vet says.

Stick with the analogy. Jesus is a great vet. And when we tell people, I love you, Jesus is the only way, we're actually caring for them. We say Jesus is the only one who has experience and the know-how to save this world and to save your soul. That's not being imperialistic or mean. That's offering care—taking people to the only one who can heal hearts.

Jesus is the only one. If you're here this morning and you're not a Christian, you haven't made Jesus your Savior, this is what I want to say: A non-decision about Christian faith is a decision. There is no spiritual Switzerland you can hang out in forever. That place doesn't exist. And if you're worried that you want to be open-minded and don't want to settle down or anything, that is a decision. Come to the vet this morning. Give your life to him.

Remembering in Worship

When we come to worship, we remember who we are. This is against the danger of syncretism. When we remember who Jesus is and we put him back in the middle of our lives, that's what we do every Sunday in worship. We come and remember, "Oh yes, he's the only one. He's the one I center my life around."

What we're doing is reorienting and rearranging the parts of our lives. It's like the solar system. If the planets get out of whack, chaos and collisions happen. This is what happens in our hearts every week. Other worries and fears and doubts and struggles become more important. When we come into worship, it's like the planets are being put back in the right order. Jesus in the middle, everything else rotating around him. There's a place for your politics. There's a place to worry about your money. But it's always around Jesus, not with him, not on the same playing field.

We Are Remembered

Finally, we remember we are remembered. This is against the danger of individualism. You're not a solo Christian. When we come into this place, we remember that we're all like little puzzle pieces. We all have different shapes. We all have different pictures on us. But when you put us together, you see the big picture of God reflected out into the world.

This is what the church does. Every time we come and we are arranged together like pieces of a puzzle, that picture together reflects to the watching world who Jesus is. Nobody wants to do a puzzle where all the pieces are exactly the same—they look all the same, the same colors. That's really boring. Your kids are gonna throw that puzzle away. It doesn't fit together. It only works when we're fit together with people who are different from us.

How do we do this? We come worship the lamb. The lamb is the only animal that we can gather around who doesn't bite. Lambs don't attack. And this lamb comes and lays down his life for his people. This lamb comes and says, "I'm not here to take from you, but I'm here to give you all of myself and to give you a spiritual family and a home."

Come and worship. This is the most important thing we do every week, brothers and sisters. We need the lamb. Come remember who he is, whose you are, and who you are.

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Let's go to the Lord in prayer together. Father, we thank you for your word. There's nothing like your word. Father, would you take us apart and put us back together again. Lord, we thank you that every week in a world that feels chaotic and like it's on a collision course and tells us all kinds of crazy messages about what it means to be a person, that we come here and we remember who you are and remember who we are. Reorder us, Father. Help us to love one another, Lord. We pray these things in Christ's name. Amen.

Let's respond to God's word in song together.