The Missing Melody

Corrective Action

It was August of 2003, I had just finished unpacking my things. I said my goodbyes to my parents, and as they left I was on my own. I was leaving the safety net of home and parental supervision and entered into a new phase of life. This was college, and so while I was leaving the agreed upon social and behavioral contract that I had with my parents, I entered into a new type of covenant. I signed forms agreeing to the “Community Standards of Shippensburg University.” There was a handbook, I didn’t read it. I just signed on the dotted line, handed in my paper at the orientation session and went on about my life.

Now, not to get too bogged down in the details, lets just say I should have read the handbook. Not that it would have made much difference. I wasn’t always as apt to following rules back then as I am today. Also, another fun fact is that never in my life have I had any type of luck with getting away with breaking rules… Therefore it was inevitable that I would find myself in a rather close relationship with the Dean of Student Affairs rather quickly. I had a rather sordid love affair with Red Solo Cups in those days, and after finding myself face to face with Dean Bob for the 3rd time in a calendar year, he gave me a semester off to go home and reevaluate a very specific area of my life.

And so I did, and then I returned to school and met with Dean Bob. He was pleased with my decision to return, and asked me what I was going to do differently and what I was willing to do in order to prove to him that things would be different. I asked, well what would you like me to do. It was then that he took out a “corrective action plan” and reviewed the stipulations. I would live by the community standards, perform community service on campus, join a group of students who were being mentored by a campus counselor, and not get into any more trouble. This, I have realized after many years was not simply just the musing of a nagging administrator. This was a gift that a very caring and loving man had tried to bestow on me. I signed on the line and went about my days.

In the book of Deuteronomy we find a similar situation. Moses has led the people of Israel out of Egypt and to the edge of the Promised Land. He is old, and nearing his death and so he stands before the assembly of the people and gives them a final address. He reminds them of the goodness of their God who rescued them from slavery in Egypt. He recounts the foundational story of their covenant with God. The giving of the Law and the 10 Commandments at Mt. Sinai. How before Moses even got down the mountain with the Law, the Israelites had begun worshipping a golden calf instead of God. How Moses plead with God to give the people a second chance after he smashed the tablets and went back up on the mountain.

The Israelites are reminded of the fact that they had entered into a covenant relationship with their God. They had signed on the line, agreed to the terms, and promised to be obedient. And they had faltered. And that is where we find ourselves in the text coming up. This is the corrective action agreement that Moses makes with the people of Israel.

What is Required?

The New Revised Standard Version The Essence of the Law

12 So now, O Israel, what does the LORD your God require of you?

It’s a pretty solid question. In light of what God has done for you, and your inability to live out the agreement that you made God is interested in making things a little bit more clear. How are you then to live?

The New Revised Standard Version The Essence of the Law

Only to fear the LORD your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, 13 and to keep the commandments of the LORD your God and his decrees that I am commanding you today, for your own well-being.

This is what Moses comes at them with. Fear, meaning to honor or have reverence for, God. Walk, meaning to behave or exert yourself in the ways that God behaves. Love him. Serve God only and keep the commandments which I’m about to give you… Easy peasy.

Not so much actually. Because the next several chapters of Deuteronomy are really tough laws. The future of Israel taking the promised land and dealing with their Caananite neighbors is tough. This course correction that Moses is offering is actually really tough. It’s a call for absolute obedience. However, it is depicting the very source of the obedience that is asking for. God is asking for a loyalty that springs from Allegiance to God and God alone. This is not simply obedience for the sake of avoiding consequences. Such obedience will never last. So God says your obedience must look like these 5 actions.

A healthy reverence, right behavior, Love, service, and following the Law. The ordering of these actions is deliberate. Hebrew literature often places the focal piece of information in the middle, like a sandwich. See the command to “love” God is essential to this puzzle. Obedience without love is simply submission. It is not loyal.

I’m a music person so this is how I think about it. One of my favorite theologians, Christopher Wright says that these five characteristics make up a 5 note chord. So I thought about that, and the metaphor pushes even farther than that. You see in a typical beginner’s chord construction the 3rd note carries the tone that makes a perfect melody. So if I played a chord and left out the 3rd note, it would sound empty. Such is obedience without love. It’s missing something.

However, if we just love, just play the middle note it’s fine, but empty. So love without obedience is just flat. When we play the whole thing together though, that is when we have a full, beautiful, harmonious sound. And so it is with loyalty, the Allegiance that God is requiring of Israel, and that is still required of us today. This is a whole person ordeal. It’s not going to be easy, but let’s follow along with Moses and see if we get any help in understanding this more.

Circumcise Your Heart

The New Revised Standard Version The Essence of the Law

14 Although heaven and the heaven of heavens belong to the LORD your God, the earth with all that is in it, 15 yet the LORD set his heart in love on your ancestors alone and chose you, their descendants after them, out of all the peoples, as it is today. 16 Circumcise, then, the foreskin of your heart, and do not be stubborn any longer.

If there ever was a question of “why?” on the tip of an Israelite’s tongue when it came to the command to Love God, certainly Moses is making a decent case. Listen everything belongs to him from the largest to the smallest. Any he set his heart in love, he is actively devoted to Israel and their descendants. That’s why you should Love him.

But loving God won’t be easy. It isn’t natural, and so we have this strange command to circumcise the heart. Now, circumcision was the sign of covenant membership in Israel, and so there is an element of that here. But Moses is talking to all of Israel, men and women. This is not just some symbolic thing. The practical implications of circumcision have to do with 2 physical realities that happen. Cleanliness and sensitivity. Moses is telling the people that in order for them to be able to fully love God their hearts will need to be worked on, changed, so that they are softened. And what’s important to understand is that this is not a once and done deal.

In English we can’t really express what Moses is saying, but in the Hebrew of this text, the verb to circumcise is constructed in a way that it expresses a continual action. So while male circumcision is a one time deal, the circumcision of the heart is something that Israel, and we, must continually engage in. I think we see this. We have moments in our lives where we are very much softened to God and sensitive to what he is doing. And then we have times where we are stubborn. where our hearts are almost closed off, and without even knowing it our hearts become less inclined to love God. Rather than fearing and honoring God we begin to honor ourselves. Instead of walking in God’s ways we begin to walk in our own ways or the ways of the world. Instead of serving God we serve ourselves and our own interests, Instead of gladly keeping God’s commands we begin to bargain, argue the semantics. We look to see how much we can get away with. We’ve all been teenagers before, we know how to do this right?

It’s times like these that we need a reminder, a shock to they system that shakes us out of ourselves. We need to be reminded of God’s deep love for us. Perhaps this comes in times of great sorrow, or great happiness. God speaks through the hardness of our hearts, cleans house and makes us realize that something is missing. Sometimes we need a reminder of who God is. And so this is what Moses says next.

The New Revised Standard Version The Essence of the Law

17 For the LORD your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who is not partial and takes no bribe, 18 who executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and who loves the strangers, providing them food and clothing. 19 You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.

Israel is about to go in and take possession of the Promised Land. But other people already live there. There are other rulers, the people worship other gods. The world runs on a different kind of system. A system where partiality and bribery are the way to prosper. The political systems and religions that the Israelites have just left in Egypt and are heading towards in Caanan give favor to the powerful and oppress the powerless. It’s not crazy to think that perhaps, just maybe, the pursuit of wealth and power might become… an obsession of the people. That the Israelites might engage in less than righteous ways of life to gain favor with the rulers or gods of the Canaanites, or even within their own system. Certainly we *would never* see that happening in our modern culture right.... Right. It’s essentially how we operate.

Moses is reminding the Israelites who God is. He saying even if those Canaanites gods exist, Your God is in charge of them. Even if there are kings and rulers, Your God has authority of them. And Your God, though he is mighty does not operate the way these other gods and kings operate. He’s not for sale. How do we know? Well, look at how God acts. He gives justice to orphans and widows. He loves the foreigners and immigrants by providing for them… no strings attached. Written into the law that God handed down to Moses were laws meant to protect and provide for the people who had no status, no wealth, and no way to otherwise provide for themselves. There were stipulations for feeding, housing, and caring for the least of society.

The God of Israel, OUR God is a powerful and mighty God, but a God who uses that power to show love to the powerless. Moses next reminds Israel of their duty, of our duty, to image that love. You shall love the stranger, for you were once strangers. You can almost taste the connotations of that in our society today.

But maybe still our hearts need softening. Maybe it still isn’t hitting home. We aren’t an orphans, a widow, or a stranger. So Moses dives in again.

The New Revised Standard Version The Essence of the Law

20 You shall fear the LORD your God; him alone you shall worship; to him you shall hold fast, and by his name you shall swear. 21 He is your praise; he is your God, who has done for you these great and awesome things that your own eyes have seen. 22 Your ancestors went down to Egypt seventy persons; and now the LORD your God has made you as numerous as the stars in heaven.

He’s like think, just think back to what you have experienced. Individually and collectively. You’ve seen God in a pillar of fire and a cloud of smoke. You’ve seen God part the sea. You’ve been delivered from Egypt by God’s hand. And as a nation, look how God has blessed you just based on your numbers! You were one family that went into Egypt. Now you are many.

To me it seems a little weird that this is how we operate. How easily we forget. How quickly our hearts can grow cold. How our love for God can fade without us even realizing it. And then all of a sudden, our obedience to God either falters entirely or it becomes mechanical. It becomes legalistic. Even if we are doing the right things, we slowly begin to do them for the wrong reasons. We realize that we’ve been playing a chord thats missing a note. Our full potential in Christ is being lost, because the melody isn’t being played. All that people can hear is background noise. They might see that we follow the rules, but not out of love. And people, let me tell you that people know. People know when our hearts aren’t in it. And God knows. And all the while he’s like screaming at us “just look at me! Just look at who I am and what I have done!”

The New Kingdom

Well the story of course does not end with Moses in front of the people telling them how to live in a way that showing loving loyalty, loving allegiance to God. It turns out over the course of generations they fail. And the result is exile. If you’ll recall I didn’t tell you the end of my story either.

A year or so went by and I managed to escape meeting with Dean Bob. But I was just checking boxes. My heart never changed. My loyalty was not to Shippensburg University. Certainly not to Dean Bob. It was to myself, and to Red Solo Cups. And my deception caught up to me. And I was kindly exiled to my Mom’s basement.

Israel faced a similar fate. They couldn’t keep their allegiance to God. They couldn’t follow the commands and walk in his ways. They couldn’t figure out how to care for the strangers among them, and they end up strangers in Babylon. And then strangers back in their own land that is occupied by Persia, Greece, and Rome. People try to solve the problem. New sects of Judaism arise that place heavy importance on obedience. But they are missing that key central element. And so the religion becomes just another hollowed out version of what it could have been.

Until Jesus of Nazareth comes along. Preaching something new. Or rather, restating the same basic command as Moses. Mark’s Gospel tells us this:

The New Revised Standard Version The Beginning of the Galilean Ministry

14 Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, 15 and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.

Jesus is saying really two main things: The good news, other translations say Gospel, the greek is Euangellion. This is a proclamation that there is a new king. When Caesar would annex another nation or people into the kingdom of Rome, a messenger would come bearing the “euangellion” of their new king Caesar. And, of course one of our favorite Christian words, repent. Repentance is not just saying sorry, it is a total shift of the heart. It is turning away from whatever practice, mindset, or whatever that our heart is loyal to. It is a shift in allegiance… from the kingdoms of the world in this case, to the new kingdom that is breaking in and to the king of that kingdom… Jesus.

Jesus’s proclamation echoes Moses. While Moses and the people, God’s first revelation of his kingdom, drew near to the promised land Moses proclaimed to them to circumcise their hearts. Essentially, repent. Know that God is God of gods and Lord of lords. God is the king. declare your allegiance to him and it will go well for you.

And this is the message that Jesus taught and lived out throughout his life. That to follow Jesus required a radical reordering of priorities. It required a shift in allegiance. He told his disciples to pick up their cross and follow him. He told the rich young ruler to sell everything he had and give it to the poor and then follow him. He told a man loyal to his mother and father to leave them behind and follow him. You see for Jesus, no amount of money, no amount of family loyalty, political prowess, national affiliation, career, duty, or honor should stand in the way of faithfully following him, walking in his ways, and serving God and neighbor. And Jesus modeled that perfectly up until the day that he performed the most radical act of Cosmic love ever shown, the day that he took up his throne on the Cross.

This kind of life requires nothing short of our hearts. Nothing short of loyal love for God. If our actions don’t stem from the heart, they are empty. Jesus spent his entire ministry trying to teach this reality to all who would listen. Following the law wasn’t good enough, its about whats going on inside here.

The Apostle Paul, when speaking to the Church of Corinth about Spiritual Gifts, essentially settling a dispute among them about who was more important based on their giftedness offered this timeless piece of advice, he brings them back to Moses, and Jesus’s chief concern.

The New Revised Standard Version The Gift of Love

13 If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

4 Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. 7 It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

8 Love never ends.

And so friends, I think that you know where you are with all of this. Maybe things are going pretty great actually. This time has helped you to see others the way God sees them, see yourself the way that God sees you, all because you have had time to see God for who God really is. This message is a reminder to hold fast to that. Cling to the practices that you have, the ways that you are living out your allegiance to King Jesus.

But for a lot of us, if we’re honest we aren’t ok. We are just scraping by, one technological failure, one screaming toddler, one missed deadline, one political ad, or social media argument away from a complete meltdown. Our hearts have grown stubborn. The light of love has been dimmed by fear. Our allegiance has slowly shifted to our opinions, our political leanings, our bank accounts, and all of the other things that scream at us day in and day out. Our obedience, if we are still obedient at all, has become as hollow as the echo chamber of a world that we live in.

Today I invite you to call it what it is. We’ve got a case of a broken heart, a fractured allegiance to Jesus. But it doesn’t have to stay that way. We have an opportunity today, and everyday to invite love in, to ask God to change our hearts. Say

God help me see you. Help me love you. Help me live out your love for those around me. Build my life and my actions on a faithful loving loyalty to You and your mission in the world.

Don’t let fear and brokenness drive your actions any more. Stop playing half of the chord, and begin living out of love, declaring your allegiance to King Jesus.