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Who is the Boss?

February 6, 2005                                                             Rev. Dr. Christopher Carlson

“I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

When we say the Pledge of Allegiance what are we doing? I guess that’s pretty easy…we’re saying a pledge. But what is a pledge? Well it’s a solemn promise to offer one’s life or word as a guarantee. A pledge is very much a vow; it means we offer our lives as guarantees. We’re saying that this is our country above all other countries. Our loyalty will be to this one first. We’re saying that we’re going to pray for it…its peace and prosperity. We’re also going to work for justice and righteousness. We’re going to work for its good and the good in it. And we will serve its needs even to the point of great sacrifice.

As an aside, I’m perfectly aware of the controversy that’s going on about the Pledge of Allegiance and how there are a few who are trying to take “under God” out of it. Well I want to say that I just really don’t agree with that. I also think that even as Christians we ought to be able to say this Pledge. It’s my belief that as Christians, as I’ve said before, that we ought to be the most patriotic of people in whatever nation we live in. And that does not mean that our country should ever come close to being first in our lives. We know that that is God. But our love for God and our work for His peace and justice means we ought to be patriots. You know, frankly it scares me to take “under God” out. Even if I were an atheist, I would kind of like that because it’s a principle that people know that the government is a servant and that there is a higher authority. The danger comes when someone decides that they are the authority. And “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” And we’ve seen it in history so many times. I understand why the guy is doing it, but I’m not sure it’s that smart.

But again what is it? It’s something that points us to an allegiance beyond ourselves. It affirms that a higher loyalty is above our nation; one nation under God. And it’s precisely this kind of loyalty, this kind of allegiance that leads into the sermon I want to talk about this morning.

I’ve been having a series of sermons on the names of God as they appear in the Scriptures and one of the most important next to Yahweh, which we talked about a couple of weeks ago, is perhaps the one called Adonai which means Lord, Master, Creator. The way to understand this word is to look at the history of Israel. The history of Israel is very clear; right at the very beginning there was a kind of war going on between different conceptions of God, different gods of the other peoples. The pagans who had other gods, their gods were called lords, masters, creators. And over against them was Yahweh. Bale was called master. And as that history progressed and as that war progressed we see in the Scriptures that the Israelites didn’t do very well when it came to this war. Time and time again they were following other gods, other masters, and Yahweh would bring them back.

The ultimate punishment, if you will, or event that came about because of their inability to serve Yahweh was the Exile. The Syrians came first, took a big group, and then the Babylonians came later and took the rest of them, deported them all and they wound up coming back. But when they came back they had developed the idea that maybe it’s not so good to pronounce the word Yahweh; it’s a holy name and so they began to substitute for Yahweh. They began to use the word Adonai which so closely meant what they thought Yahweh meant. And later on this idea of Lord, Master came into being with Christians; in the Greek, the word for Adonai is Kurios. It too means Lord and Master and they began to see very clearly how the Messiah Jesus was the personification of Adonai. And so the first confession of the church is “Jesus is Lord” or Adonai. Not just Teacher or Rabbi, but in the exalted sense.

 The scripture I’ve chosen for you – or 3 – one is from Isaiah 40 and it doesn’t contain the word Adonai, but when it says LORD there it means Yahweh. In the English translation, you may be interested if you didn’t know it already, that you’ll see LORD and that’s Yahweh; if it is Lord it means Adonai. Well in this particular case you see – you should read Isaiah 40, I can’t read all of it to you today because of time – you see this war going on. You see Isaiah talking about idols, you see him talking about princes. Later on it would begin to be that the idols had to be fought but so did kings who thought they were gods as well. Of course in our day we have gods too, in some ways, idols; except they’re called the Vikings, the Bears, the Patriots. [I had to get that shot in today, I’m sorry. I like football as much as anyone. I’m going to have to miss it too, isn’t that terrible? Oh well.]

Let me read you the scripture from Isaiah:

Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and proclaim to her that her hard service has been completed, that her sin has been paid for, that she has received from the LORD’s hand double for all her sins. A voice of one calling: “In the desert prepare the way for the LORD; make straight in the wilderness a highway for our God. Every valley shall be raised up, every mountain and hill made low; the rough ground shall become level, the rugged places a plain. And the glory of the LORD will be revealed, and all mankind together will see it. For the mouth of the LORD has spoken.”

And two other scriptures from the New Testament. One from Romans. Notice what Paul says about what it means to be a Christian. He says in Romans 10:

That if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you shall be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved.

This is the word of the Lord.

How is it that we become Christians? Or as the Bible so often puts it, how do we become saved? Well clearly faith is part of that equation. We’re all familiar with the scripture verse that is so famous, in John:

That God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son that whosoever should believe in Him should not perish but have eternal life.

Wonderful. But clearly faith is not all there is. I want you to stay with me on that for a minute; it sounds strange, I know, or maybe I should clarify it and say that it’s a certain kind of faith that’s being asked for. What is it that’s being asked for? What kind of faith is being asked for in this case? I think that’s where this word Adonai comes in and helps us.

Again, the history of Israel was not pretty. You had all these other gods and they were master and lord and people who believed in them weren’t just believing in them or that they existed. They had to serve them. And Israel was being told that Yahweh was the Lord but they were so tempted to serve other gods all the time. If you’ve read the Bible at all, or you’ve at least heard of Elijah and you remember the famous scene of Elijah on Mt. Carmel, the mountain in northwestern Israel. It was almost like Elijah calling a picnic and it was going to be like a WWF event or maybe “Rocky” or something. He calls this meeting and says we’re going to decide who is God and who is not. All of Israel shows up, a lot of people. All the priests of Bale show up. It’s a great scene. You can almost see Elijah calling out “In this corner we have Bale and his prophets and in this corner we have me, the prophet of Yahweh. And we’re going to have a contest to see who is God. So all you prophets of Bale get yourself a bull, get some wood, cut it up, and put it on the wood. And I’ll do the same. And whoever answers by fire is God.” Well, the Bale prophets do that, there are about 50-100 of them, a whole lot of people. They’re kind of like the rock stars of the group.  They’re dancing around, cutting themselves, doing this that or the other, calling upon Bale. And all the time Elijah is going “Well where is he? Is he asleep? Is he traveling? Has he gone to someplace warm – it’s the winter time. Or maybe he’s gone to his cabin, it’s the summer.” [It’s supposed to be a joke, I’m sorry. It wasn’t that funny.] Well of course, Bale doesn’t answer. Elijah calls upon Yahweh and whoosh, everything is burnt up. And the people go “Wow, Yahweh is God.” But unfortunately it didn’t last. Time and time again they fall.

And as the history develops it did happen that the Israelites were taken into exile and they began using this word Adonai for Lord. And then as history developed even more, the Greeks began to kind of move into the country and they began to read the Old Testament scriptures and this idea of God being God. Then you had kings who would arise and claimed deity. You know Nebuchadnezzar was one of the first and then you had Alexander and then you had the Caesars and it became even more important for those who were believers to say Yahweh is God. Not only idols but these kings as well. So for Christians, when Jesus came and He left and went into Heaven, it developed that the first thing to say, the first confession of the Church was that Jesus is Lord. That Jesus is Kurios. That Jesus is Adonai. And part of that confession was not only to believe in Jesus, but to serve Him. Almost like pledging allegiance, if you will, to use a modern way of thinking about it. To give one’s loyalty, to make a vow of serving Him.

What am I getting at? It’s been my experience that so many people like the idea of Jesus being Savior. You know it’s like we’re trying to get fire insurance or something. We like the idea that God will save us from our sins, that we’ll be forgiven, all those kinds of things. But we’re not going to be too comfortable with the idea of having God tell us what to do. That He is our Lord and Master and He is the Owner and we are the owned. We don’t like that, especially, I think, as Americans, we don’t like the idea. So many Christians I have met really have this issue to deal with – who is this Master of their lives? Who is the Lord in their lives? You see, it’s not enough to simply believe in Jesus. Kind of like an intellectual thing, 2 + 2 is 4, a lot of people believe that God exists. There are a lot of people who actually believe in Jesus, believe that He performed miracles, He was born of a virgin – a lot of people believe that but they haven’t really given Him their lives. It’s kind of like a person in another country, we go to them and say “Say the Pledge of Allegiance” and they’re going “Well, why should I do that? I’m a citizen of another country.”

What I’m getting at is that we need to have both. We can’t be Christians and not do both. And there are so many out there that haven’t done both. And I want to just challenge you a little bit this morning, especially as we come to the Supper. You can ask yourself some questions – “How do I know that I’ve confessed Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior?” I think these 3 scriptures – these 2 and one other – can help us. The one from Isaiah. I love that picture and when we read about how Isaiah talks about preparing the way of the Lord, it’s almost like we’re talking about God coming back forever. He’s going to smooth all the mountains down, He’s going to build up the valleys and the rough places are plain and He’s going to come back and make everything okay. I believe that’s probably true but I think there’s also another level to it; He’s actually talking about human hearts.

You know when Jesus came, the people that really angered Him the most were folks who didn’t really think they needed to be forgiven. They thought “Well we need a little forgiveness, but we have the rest of it pretty well taken care of.” We kind of jump on those people, we call them Pharisees. But anyone who had that pride about them really ticked Jesus off. And that’s what’s being talked about here. He says “When I come back, I’m going to raise up those who are humble and I’m going to smooth out those who are not.”

There’s that thing inside of us that says “I’m in control of my own life. I’m the boss here.” We’ve done a really good job of separating God out of our lives. You know there is this idea of taking God’s name out of the public square. It’s not just simply removing Jesus’ name or a few Christmas trees; there’s really concerted effort to get God out of the whole public idea. But you know we can look at these people and go “How dare you” but we do this in our own lives. You know we’ve got this secular and sacred thing going on here. And the sacred stuff, well that’s where God is, in church. That’s where we pray, that’s where we hear sermons, that’s where we come to do communion, that’s where we do all the religious things in life. But when we walk out the door that’s where I am in control of my own life. That’s where we live and that’s where we work and that’s where we have sex and that’s where we watch TV and that’s where we go to games, where we spend our money. That’s the secular part of life. I wish I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard the idea that “You preachers don’t know anything about real life.” I resent that. [I have to work on my own anger, that’s my issue.] I say, “The next time you pray over a dead child, talk about real life.” But anyway, that’s another issue. It’s this idea that real life’s out there, God is in here. When we walk out that door we’re still spiritual creatures. That doesn’t change. And God’s authority doesn’t end at that door. Or on Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday or Thursday or Friday. I really kind of disagree with this separation we’ve got going on here. We could talk about separation of church and state, that’s really kind of a societal issue. But for us, it doesn’t exist. God is everywhere we go. And I’m not trying to say that God is a task-master who is up there shaking His finger at you or anything like that. What I love is the grace that is being said in Isaiah. You know “Comfort, comfort my people.” When it says they would receive double for all their sins, He’s not talking about judgments, He’s talking about blessings. He’s talking about they would receive double blessings despite their sins. There is grace, but God comes as Lord as well as Savior.

So we ask ourselves, “Have we received a conviction?” You know if you’ve never been real convicted about your own sinfulness – and I’m not talking about bad guilt, I’m talking about good guilt – there’s something wrong. I remember hearing Robert Schuler talk one time and I want to say I have a lot of respect for Robert Schuler. I’ve been out to some of his stuff quite a bit. He was talking about how –he tends to brag, he really does – and he was talking about talking with Doris Day one day or getting a letter from her and she said “You know, you really shouldn’t mention that word ‘sin’ anymore, it just really turns people off.” And he followed her advice. I can understand being positive, you know on a scale 1 to 10, some of us are ones, some of us are tens, but we’re all there. Part of that pride thing, that sin thing, we’ve got to come to God and say…[tape changed sides] just like the Israelites. I tend to follow other gods and maybe I’m the biggest one.

The second thing is have you ever really confessed Jesus Christ is Lord? And I don’t mean just by saying it in church. I’m talking about going “I have messed up. I give you my life.” You know we all come to that place differently. Some of us have to get hit over the head, for some of us it’s gradual, but it’s the same place.

And last but not least, the scripture I didn’t read this morning, in Philippians it talks about how “every knee should bow, every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord.” Have you bowed a knee? Have you bowed the knee? We’re not used to having a king, we’re Americans. But we have a King. Have you bowed the knee? I would simply say, as you prepare yourselves for communion today, there are probably some of you in this room today who have never bowed the knee, never confessed Christ, what a good time to do that. In your prayer, just say to the Lord “I’m coming to You now, my life is Yours.” And for the rest of us who have, you know it really doesn’t stop there because we say “You’re the Lord” and then we kind of run away. I don’t know if you’re like me, I’m always trying to reclaim authority from God. And I have to give it back. So we’re continually giving it back. What a good time to do that after the sermon in the Supper, when we come to a place where God invites us to dinner. An amazing thing, the God of the universe says “Come and eat with me.” And He comes as our Savior, but He also comes as our Lord.

Let us pray.