Choosing a Side of the Aisle

Where I grew up, there were a number of places in town called “Readmore.” For some folks it was known as the place to get pizza. But if you were Dottie Ryman’s son, it was a place for comic books, magazines, novels, and the occasional model car or airplane. I loved to go to Readmore with her because it always meant coming away with something to read. You could find anything there; it was just aisle after aisle of magazines and books of every sort.

The first Bible I ever purchased, I got at the Readmore in the Park Shopping Center. I was a senior in high school, and I found the Bibles on a rack across the aisle from body-builder, hot rod, and ironically, the so-called girly magazines. So, in that sense, the Word of God seemed to be everywhere in our culture back in the early 1970s. Browsing the aisles of Readmore, however, the Holy Bible seemed to be only a very small part of a larger exhibit of general communications.

The world, and communications, has changed dramatically since the 1970s. Unless you have taken special precautions to build a cabin off-grid, wherever you are in a given day, mass communications is literally bombarding you. So much data competes for our attention, and God’s Word is just one bit of that information. Social media, television, radio, the Internet, ebooks like Kindle and Nook, and to a lesser extent now, magazines and newspapers and actual books, all want us to read them—or if you’re living during a pandemic, your pastor is probably putting up video devotions every day, adding to the proliferation of communications vying for your attention. It was easier back then at the Readmore, I suppose. I just had about ten aisles in which to narrow my focus.

Thankfully, his Spirit had moved me to get a Bible. I had been reading my Mom’s King James Bible, and a collection of Bible stories that were also the King Jimmy since I was eleven. I wanted my own Bible, and I wasn’t ready for choices of versions to be made. Thankfully, the Readmore didn’t have as many choices of Bible versions as we have before us today. They had other choices though. But when God calls, one must turn his back to one display and direct his attention to the Word of the Lord. It becomes the one thing worth reading—and hearing.

Let us pray… Amen

Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen

After Joshua’s conquest of the land, a religious center for the twelve tribes was set up in Shiloh, a town about 20 miles north of Jerusalem. The priest there was named Eli, and one would expect greatness from someone whose name derives from the Hebrew word for God: el. For example, the names Elijah and Eli both do this. Elijah’s name is very cool because it takes the word for God and the name of God and blends them. Thus, the name “Elijah” means “God is Yahweh.” This, by the way, was very unsettling to King Ahab who, because of political expedience and a wife named Jezebel who almost always got what she wanted, worshiped both Yahweh and Baal. Every time he addressed Elijah, he was admitting Baal wasn’t God but Yahweh was.

Eli’s name means simply, “my God.” So, as we do with Elijah, we might expect of Eli greatness and distinguished service to the Lord. Yet Eli would suffer disgrace because he would not look to the Lord. He consistently refused to look to do God’s will, allowing his focus to remain largely on the ritual services of the priesthood instead of to the God whom the services rendered honor. Ironically, Eli focused on the job more than the God from whose title his name derived.

Eli served as priest in Shiloh but also set up his sons as priests, two men who always were looking at the wrong side of the aisle, so to speak, and who did terrible things in the name of religion. Instead of dealing with the problems in his home and place of worship, he turned a blind eye. The Scripture may be speaking tongue-in-cheek when it says Eli’s “eyesight had begun to grow dim.”[1]

We will be forgiven when we confess and repent, but there are consequences for our actions and our inactions nonetheless. Weekly, we admit sins of both action and inaction when we confess, “We have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed by what we have done and by what we have left undone.” When we stare at the wrong side of the aisle, trouble is bound to occur. For example, like Eli, we can take the easy path of listening to our own counsel, or to the counsel of culture. Or we can turn our backs on self and society so that we are squarely facing the Word of God.

Now, you may think you’re doing a good job of this, and you may be. But there’s a test you can take to find out just how well you’re doing. There are ten questions in all but you could probably just ask one: the final one, number one on God’s list. For fun—and I’m sure you’d all admit, especially Lindsey, Sara, Andrew, and Peyton, our current Confirmands, that the Ten Commandments are loads of fun—let’s take the whole test, all ten questions. But let’s do them in reverse order, sort of like one of Letterman’s Late Nite Top Ten lists.

Number 10. Do you crave someone who is connected to someone else? Now this could be someone’s spouse, of course, but it could be one of their employees, or you might wish you had kids like theirs, or it just as well might be that you wish your church had a pastor like the one at that church across the county.

Perish the thought.

Number 9. Do you have a hankering for your neighbor’s property: his house, or car, or swimming pool, or boat, or inheritance, or anything that belongs to your neighbor?

Number 8. Do you gossip? Well, here I had the idea this was going to be a fun test. How about lying or slandering your neighbor? Do you defend them and their name instead? When someone says something bad about someone, like say, a president, a pastor, or frankly, any other neighbors, do you take it at face value, thinking the worst of them, or do you put a more charitable construction on your neighbor’s actions or words?

Number 7. Do you steal? Well, they’re not using that anymore and they’re not going to use it. But I will put it to good use, is not reason to take something. It’s still stealing. The person facing the right side of the aisle, who hears the Word and obeys it, does not steal or defraud his neighbor, but helps him improve and protect his property.

Number 6. Are your eyes looking at the right side of the aisle on the Internet, in the work place, in your neighborhood? I remember walking up the sidewalk next to Weaver Chapel at Wittenberg University. This was also back in the 70s. Am I the only person present who thinks mentioning the 70s makes me seem younger than I am? Anyway, I was walking with a fellow pastor to a Bible study we were leading on campus, when I suddenly realized I was walking by myself. When I turned around, my colleague was 20 or 30 steps behind me, looking in the direction from which we’d come, staring at a female student who had walked past us. When he realized he’d been caught staring at her for the better part of a minute, his response was, “Praise God for his beautiful creation.”

We can spin it however we like but looking on another with lustful thoughts is still sin. We are meant for each other as husband and wife. Be careful that you do not sin in action or in thought. This was just one of the sins of Eli’s boys, and it has become a thing we no longer call sin in our own society. It is everywhere, including the church, and it is runaway, condoned by we Elis who choose to look the other way—away from God’s Word and will toward a more comfortable, modern and let us be clear, sinful view.

Number 5. Do you kill? You may think you don’t because you haven’t murdered anyone. Jesus likens being angry with someone to killing[2], so I ask the question again: Do you kill?

Number 4. Do you honor your parents? Do you speak well of them, care for them in their old age, and obey them? Does your conduct honor them? You may think you’re off the hook because your parents have died, but do you honor their memory?

Number 3. Do you keep the Lord’s Day holy in your life by hearing his Word, taking pains to do so? This doesn’t just mean that you have devotions by yourself, but that you come together with God’s people to hear his Word read, sung, prayed, and preached. Do you gladly hear it and learn it so that you honor his day?

Number 2. Do you take the Lord’s name in vain? Remember that Eli was taking God’s name in vain by serving him deceitfully. Do you use God’s name superstitiously or swear by it? Do you use it for personal gain. Someone told me just this week about a sales person who insisted she should do business with him because he is Christian. That is as plain a taking of Christ’s name in vain as I’ve heard in a while.

And Number 1: Do you fear, love and trust in God above all things? In other words, are you facing the right side of the aisle? Do you turn to God, choosing his side of the aisle, or do you side with politicians and parties, spouse, children as in Eli’s case, financial gain, or even side with employment itself over God? Perhaps you choose over God the most dangerous thing of all, human reason: rationalizing and justifying sinful behavior. Is God God in your life, or do you bow to the comfortable, easy way? Do you love the Lord your God with all your heart and mind and soul and strength, or do you reserve some of your heart for what makes you feel good, some of your mind and soul for things you know aren’t godly at all, some of your strength for yourself?

It is an easy question: Is God God in your life? Yes, yes, you can certainly be forgiven for your transgressions. But consider carefully the fact that there are still repercussions, consequences for your actions and inactions. Your closest neighbors may be at risk—your spouse and your children. All things may be lawful for you, or societally permissible, and they are at least forgivable. The apostle insists, however, that not all things are helpful or beneficial to you and yours.

It really boils down to what direction you’re facing. Have you chosen the right side of the aisle? Again, it’s easy to answer. Are you following Jesus or not? He said…he demands, “Follow me.”[3] Do that, and guaranteed, you’ll be facing the right side of the aisle.

[1] The Revised Standard Version (Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 1971), 1 Sa 3:2.

[2] Matthew 5:21-22

[3] John 1:43