Introduction
I want to start this morning by using a quote from a Methodist.
When you work around the church a while it comes quite naturally, the laughter of cynical disbelief. In 1986 the United Methodist General Conference, on the last day of two weeks of meetings, passed a resolution that said we were going to make 9 million new United Methodists by about 1994--this in a denomination that had been losing about 65,000 members every year since the early seventies. Nine million new United Methodists! Well, I laughed. I thought, Isn’t this typical! We don’t want to do the systemic changes in our church that would enable us to reach out and get new people. This is just window dressing, sloganeering, platitudes. We aren’t serious about it; it’s just more guilt to lay on pastors’ backs!
I went home and wrote an article, "My Dog the Methodist." In it I argued that there was no way in heaven we were going to make 9 million new Methodists unless we started baptizing dogs. And I offered as a fit recipient for the sacrament of baptism my mixed-breed terrier sleeping in my garage.
I said, "This dog, as far as I know, has shown no interest in biblical studies. Therefore, it would make a perfect Methodist." I also said, "This dog has the sexual ethics of some members of my former congregations."
I laughed. When the article came out in The Christian Century, not everybody laughed. The magazine lost about four subscriptions, and two Methodist bishops have not spoken to me since. But I was serious. The cynicism behind that move! We don’t intend to really change the way we would have to change to be that kind of church. I laughed.
At the last district assembly, we heard from one of our General Superintendants who wanted to set a goal of doubling in size in the next 10 years. Our district adopted this goal. Our church has adopted this goal. But how are we to do this. In an effort to avoid having to make our dogs into Nazarenes we’ve been looking at the song “These are the days of Elijah” and at some of the imagery that makes up that song to see ways of bringing about this revival. This morning / evening its the turn of the lines “And these are the days of Your servant Moses, Righteousness being restored.” In one sense this is a very important line in the song, because its one of those lines that kind of sums up what the whole song is about. The song is all about this being the time of God’s restoration. The time when God moves as he does in the past, to effect his purposes in the world. In this songs lie some of the Biblical clues to revival. We have already looked at the days of Elijah speaking about our boldness in asserting Biblical truth but holding out the hope of repentance and forgiveness. We have looked at John the Baptist who very much speaks about the true nature of repentance, not merely saying sorry, but who also holds out the great promise of acceptance and forgiveness from God when this done. Now we look at Moses and righteousness being restored. It is not only about God moving to save people but about God moving to restore righteousness amongst his people. We will discover that the two go hand in hand. There is no revival of salvation amongst the lost until there is a revival of righteousness amongst the people of God.
However, this is not only a key section for song it is also a highly problematic one that makes me wonder if Robin Mark, the song writer, really knew what he was doing when he was writing this hymn. There is something to be said for having theologians write hymns, like Charles Wesley. However, there are a few theologians I know who should definitely not write hymns, its hard enough trying to make sense of their writing when its prose never mind if they tried to write poetry. Anyway there are at least two problems with this little part of the song.
The problems
Problem number 1: what was Moses restoring? Well the song says it is righteousness. But how can this be. He was the one God gave the law to. He was the one who introduced the idea of righteousness to the Israelites. It was true that God spoke to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and these stories must have been passed down to the people of Israel, even while they were in slavery in Egypt. How do we know this, well because God is introduced as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Also we have stories of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob these stories must have come from somewhere. However, if you look at the stories of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob you will see that there is not a lot of ethical teaching there. OK, so there’s one or two points here and there, but for the most part, God just told them to follow him, go here or there, to worship him alone and to trust in his promises.
So how did Moses restore righteousness or perhaps it should be put how did God restore righteousness during the time of Moses. Remember the claim is not merely that righteousness was established but that righteousness was restored. Where was the original righteousness that was being restored. How had it become marred and how was it restored. As far as we know there was no great falling away from righteousness among the people that Moses led out of Egypt that could be restored. So we need to look a bit further back. There are basically two candidates for our so called original righteousness.
One is that we do go back to the patriarchs, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. In terms of righteous behaviour though, we don’t really have a lot to go on. We have Abraham’s lies in his attempts to pass Sarah off as his sister, to avoid his death but to have Sarah commit adultery or to subject her to rape at the hands of a King. We have Isaac’s favouritism and possible attempts to ignore or circumvent God’s command as to which of his sons was to receive God’s promise. Jacob hardly did better in the favouritism bit and also carries a reputation for being deceitful and crafty. Not exactly a great record in the righteousness stakes. However, they did all follow and worship God, trusting him when it would seem like there were better options available, if they would just abandon God.
However, when it comes to righteousness, Abraham is declared righteous not because of his deeds but simply because he believed God. Now I’ve explored this idea and the content of Abraham’s faith before, so I’m not going to get into that, except to suggest that maybe this is the basis of the righteousness that is being restoring. To bring the people back to trusting in God and his word. So that’s one idea to bear in mind, when we come to look at what happens in the days of Moses.
But that is not the only possibility. The second possibility is the righteousness associated with the human race before it fell. The righteousness of Eden. Now this is a bit more tricky to work with. Righteous is not actually mentioned in association with Eden but there are some concepts that work within a definition of righteousness. The most striking thing about Eden, the thing that perhaps sums it up as the perfect place more than anything else is the unbroken relationship with God. That’s certainly something that God seems to have wanted to restore at the time of Moses, his relationship with people. We’ll look at how this was to happen later but for now lets just recognise that a key component of righteousness is a relationship with God.
The other references to righteousness in Genesis do seem to link it with some kind of ethical behaviour where it contrasted with wickedness and people are seen as more righteous due to their actions.
So we have three ideas of righteousness from before Moses. It comes through faith, it is about a relationship with God and it has an ethical dimension.
OK, so know we come to problem number 2. Any restoration of righteousness at the time of Moses wasn’t very successful. If we read the record of the Israelites it seems to be a never ending litany of failure. Theyhad just been given the law and agreed to it, when they set up the golden calf because Moses is gone too long talking to God. They always seem to be complaining and objecting to what God says. And so they wander in the wilderness for 40 years till they all die, instead of inheriting the promised land. If our author Robin Mark, wanted a Biblical example of righteousness he seems to have made a bad choice in choosing the days of Moses.
The solution
So those are the problems. Is there is a solution? There are actually two very good reasons for looking at the time of Moses and righteousness together. Now I don’t know about you but when I think of Moses two things spring to mind. The exodus and the law. These two ideas are tied together with righteousness in the passages we read from Exodus and Deuteronomy.
Firstly lets look at the law. Now the law generally gets a bad reputation in the church. Through various interpretations of some of passages that talk about the law in the New Testament, we get the idea that the law is bad and worse still is now irrelevant. Yet Jesus said not the smallest part of the smallest letter would be taken away from the law. OK, we think, maybe there are different laws. We try to separate the law into parts, the moral law, the ceremonial law, the teaching law. The moral law would be things like do not steal, do not murder. The ceremonial law would be about festivals and sacrifices. And the teaching law is stuff that like not wearing garments of mixed cloth that were to teach messages about holiness. We figure that we have to keep the moral law but not the ceremonial or the teaching law. One problem with this is that they are not discrete sets, or for those of you without a maths background, they overlap and its hard to figure out where some things go. There are controversial areas. The most obvious ones recently have to do with sex in particular homosexuality. While we might think it is part of the moral part, other groups within the church want to see it as the ceremonial or teaching stuff that we can discard. But others exist, to do with eating blood, keeping the Sabbath and others. Besides Jesus didn’t say anything about not the smallest part of the smallest letter of the moral law, he said the law.
Or perhaps we see the Old Testament as all about law and judgement but the New Testament is about grace, love and forgiveness. But this is not the case. Let me show you why not and see what we can learn about righteousness and its importance from this. Let’s begin by noticing the key idea from Deuteronomy 6 and Exodus 19 that is often missed. According to Deuteronomy 6 when someone asks what is the meaning of the laws and commandments, what is the answer that is to be given? The first thing is the first thing that God says as an introduction to the law in Exodus 19. He reminds them that God has saved them from Egypt and called them to be his people. Then he gives them the law and tells them this is how they are to maintain that relationship. The law did not save them, God did that, keeping the law was then the appropriate response to that act of salvation. It also provided a means of dealing with sin and error, so that the relationship could continue. It is in this context that Deuteronomy tells us that keeping the law is righteousness. Only in the context where God has first saved us. But again notice that it is not a law of perfect performance but a law of maintaining a relationship that God has established, with provisions for sins to be forgiven and dealt with, that the relationship should be renewed.
But what was the purpose of the law. The purpose of the law, which we find if we read the whole of Exodus, is to restore the thing that God had in the beginning. So that God could once more walk with man and dwell with him. Moses is given strict instructions about rules and how to build the tabernacle and offer sacrifices and things the people are to do and things the people are not to do. Why because God enjoys seeing people jump through hopes and delights in seeing how far he can make people do more and more restrictive and ridiculous things? No, although some people seem to think so. No he did all this, so he could come and dwell in the tent that Moses was instructed to build the tabernacle and travel with his people. To once more come and down and walk with humanity as he did in Eden. That is the key to the law and righteousness. The law was there to allow God to dwell amongst them without destroying them.
So what lessons can we learn from all this. Firstly, God’s goal, in the time of Moses as in the time of Eden is still the same, it has not changed. That he might come and walk with us, to enjoy a relationship with us. For us it is slightly different. We have the Holy Spirit both to guide and enable us. The Holy Spirit is God come to walk with us and enjoy a relationship with us. But righteousness is still a requirement. As with Abraham and indeed with Moses that righteousness must come with faith. As with the law there is provision for sin, Christ has dealt with it but we need to repent. There are still standards. Jesus summed it up in love God and love your neighbour, quoting the old testament both times. But sometimes we need something beyond that. The modern touchstone has become What would Jesus do? But is that enough?
A man called Dallas Willard said “Asking ourselves “What would Jesus do?” when suddenly in the face of an important situation is not adequate discipline or preparation to enable one to live as he lived. It no doubt will do some good and is certainly better than nothing at all, but that act alone is not sufficient to see us boldly and confidently through a crisis, and we could easily find ourselves driven to despair over the powerless tension it will put us through.”
There is two issues here? Firstly we need to know what Jesus was really like through proper Bible Study, rather than a wishy washy image gathered from a few half remembered Bible stories and few bits of sermons that we actually understood and remembered. Secondly, simply knowing what to do is not enough, we need the power to do it. God is willing to provide the power if we are willing to ask and obey. Peter Marshall said “We are too Christian really to enjoy sinning, and too fond of sinning really to enjoy Christianity. Most of us know perfectly well what we ought to do; our trouble is that we do not want to do it.”
Conclusions
So what are we to say in conclusion. I’m sorry, if this has been a little confusing this morning. This sermon could probably have done with a bit more polishing, but I had planned to preach it tonight. But I really think God wanted me to preach the sermon I had for this morning tonight and the one I had for tonight, this one, this morning. So you get it without the polishing. If I had been paying more attention to God earlier maybe I would have written this one first.
Anyway what do we mean, when we sing “These are the days of your servant Moses, Righteousness being restored.” Well, firstly we recognise that there will be no revival in the world until the church is what it is supposed to be righteous. Then we say that God purpose has always been to live and dwell amongst his people. However, if he was to dwell amongst a sinful people he would destroy them. Therefore he has to make his people righteous. This is done through faith and by trusting God. It also requires us to want it and to be willing to work hard with God’s help to follow his will. It requires changes in our thoughts and behaviour that are hard, but God gives us the power if we are willing. Lastly, if we really want to sing the song with meaning we are saying God do this in me. Moses teaches us that righteousness is not a requirement of salvation but it is the only acceptable response to it.
