DAILY DEVOTIONAL – October 28, 2019
“Schooners of Salvation”
Prayer: Jesus, You left Heaven itself to come into this sinful and darkened world to be the Light of Salvation. Through Your blood on the cross, You have secured our eternal life in the presence of God. Lord, in Your mercy, strengthen our faith in Your sure salvation that we may dare to go out into the world for which You died and proclaim Your Word and Truth just as You have commanded us to do. Amen.
Scripture: Leviticus 20:22-26
22 “You shall therefore keep all my statutes and all my rules and do them, that the land where I am bringing you to live may not vomit you out. 23 And you shall not walk in the customs of the nation that I am driving out before you, for they did all these things, and therefore I detested them. 24 But I have said to you, ‘You shall inherit their land, and I will give it to you to possess, a land flowing with milk and honey.’ I am the Lord your God, who has separated you from the peoples. 25 You shall therefore separate the clean beast from the unclean, and the unclean bird from the clean. You shall not make yourselves detestable by beast or by bird or by anything with which the ground crawls, which I have set apart for you to hold unclean. 26 You shall be holy to me, for I the Lord am holy and have separated you from the peoples, that you should be mine.
Devotion – “Schooners of Salvation”
In the American Old West, the pioneers who ventured out into the unknown frontier encountered endless dangers along the way. I think we are all familiar with the Conestoga wagons that these adventurers used as a primitive moving truck. Each night as these frontier families caravanned across America, they would maneuver and position their train of Conestoga wagons into a kind of self-defense formation. They called it “circling the wagons.” It involved driving a wagon train in a circle so that the pioneers could camp inside the wall of the wagons which helped to keep out unwanted wildlife as well as help them take up defensive position in the event of an attack from frontier robbers or natives in the land.
It is no secret to anyone that the Church in America finds itself in a challenging time. Nearly every major church body and denomination is seeing declining attendance. There is no shortage of books and articles written on trying to explain why this is. I certainly don’t claim to have all of the answers, however, I am quite confident in suggesting that at the root of the challenges facing the church today (and our Lutheran church body is no exception) lies a “circle the wagons” mentality. There is a tendency for some in the church to “circle the wagons” and see the mission and purpose of the church primarily as protecting ourselves from the world outside; safeguarding the way we do things because we have always done them that way and maintain an aversion to anyone that may be different or even challenge the traditions and ways of “doing church” we are most familiar and comfortable with.
Before I go any further, let me be clear; as the church of Christ and as any church that confesses Christ as Lord and Savior we absolutely have as a first priority safeguarding the unadulterated Truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ as found only in the pages of the Bible which is Holy Scripture. There can be no doubt that if we fail to protect and keep pristine the only true message of salvation found in Christ Jesus, then there is no hope and there is no church. As Christ Himself said in John 5:39, “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me.” If we do not have the Word of God, we do not have Christ…and Christ is our only hope and purpose…He is the only Way and Truth and Life.
At the same time however, Christ gave us a very specific mission as His church in Matthew 28, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” The world is a dark and sinful place that Scripture tells us is desperately wicked and dangerous. Yet, this is exactly why Christ commands us and commissions us with His authority and His Word to go OUT into the world so that His Light and Life would enlighten those who are lost in sin and bring the mercy of God that we have been blessed to come to know by faith in Christ to those who need it most. If the church’s response to a scary world, to a world that looks different and that hates us is to “circle the wagons”, we do so at our own peril. Christ is not standing still or taking cover. Christ calls us to venture into the unknown and fear not because that is where He is going and where He will be found, and we dare to live and exist as the church in the world because as Christ promised, He is with us to the very end of the age.
In our text for today from Leviticus 20, God very clearly calls His people to be separated from the world. He commands them not to engage in the customs that are a disgrace to God or to partake of the foods God has declared to be unclean and especially not to intermarry with those not of faith in the promises of God. It is so important that we keep in mind here that while God is clearly commanding his people not to compromise the truth that they know by putting themselves in bad situations or by participating in things contrary to the Truth and commands of God they have been privileged to possess, at the same time God is sending them into the outside world! As God said in verse 22 of our text, “You shall therefore keep all my statutes and all my rules and do them, that the land where I am bringing you.”
God gave His promises to Israel and remained faithful to Israel even in their sinfulness for the sake of His promise to bring the good news of His grace and forgiveness to the whole world.
Likewise, God has revealed to us and has in fact given us His grace and forgiveness in the Blood of Christ by the power of His Word so that we would then share and proclaim that Gospel of Jesus to everyone – so that we would venture into the wild frontier that is this sinful world with the only True message of hope and salvation. At the same time, God calls us to also remain faithful and holy and separated to him. We should not engage in anything that compromises our faithfulness or the Truth of the Word of God and of Christ we hold so dear, however, I fear that we have perhaps become more concerned about safeguarding and circling the wagons around manmade tradition and the styles and preferences of church that make us comfortable.
We have been given great confidence and assurance of the truth of Christ’s salvation in His Word, and we also learn in that Word of the great freedoms that we have in Christ; the freedom to, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 9, “become all things to all people, that by all means we might save some.”
Jesus put it this way in John 17 as He prays to His Heavenly Father and prays for His disciples. Jesus said, “14 I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. 15 I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. 16 They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. 17 Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. 18 As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. 19 And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth.”
As you read countless times in the Scriptures, the high religious council of the Jewish nation in the time of Jesus were the Pharisees. These men took the Words of God that we find in our text from Leviticus 20 to an extreme that the Lord never intended. They exaggerated and added onto God’s Laws and Words many of their own man-made laws and imposed them on others, which became a burden on the conscience of the people and puffed others up with self-righteous religiosity. This group of religious authorities gave themselves a name. They called themselves the “perushim”, which we translate from Hebrew as Pharisees. Perushim literally means “the separated ones”. The Pharisees used the Law and Word of God to circle the wagons around their own pride and self-righteous religion rather than use God’s Law to guide them in how to exist in the world and proclaim the Truth of God’s Word to the world without compromising their faith or the faithfulness of the lives they lived toward God.
The problem that the Pharisees had with Jesus and the reason they hated Him so much was because Jesus took a different approach. He allowed Himself to be welcomed into the homes and share meals with tax collectors and prostitutes and sinners. Christ defied all man-made cultural and societal boundaries in order to bring God’s love and salvation to everyone, and Jesus taught His disciples to reach out to do the same. The Risen Christ personally revealed Himself to Paul on the Road to Damascus and made Him an apostle exclusively to the Gentile or “unbelieving” world. You and I know the love and salvation of God in Christ only because the disciples refused to circle the wagons and ventured out into a world they once thought should be kept outside. With Jesus, there would be no circling of the wagons.
Here is an interesting fact as we close our devotional time together. The frontiersmen of the American West often referred to their Conestoga wagons as “Prairie Schooners.” A schooner is a sailboat. Those tarps stretched over their wagons looked a bit like sails, and like a boat that sets out to open sea, the pioneers weren’t searching for safety but for adventure and the promised land of opportunity.
You and I as the church have been given Heaven itself. Our future is secure and we know where we will make our eternal settlement in the presence of God and Christ. Until we receive our sure inheritance, either by death or by the witness of the Lord’s return, we must dare to be the frontiersmen of Truth and faith in Christ. We are not here to keep ourselves or others safe from the world; we are here and Christ is indeed with us because it is through even us that Christ wants to save the world. We’re here on a great adventure my friends; to walk with the Risen Christ out into the world and witness His miraculous ministry of love and grace. Un-circle the wagons and press on, and remember that God has forgiven yesterday, is with you today and has already taken care of tomorrow. Amen.
