Pastor Colin Landry preached this sermon on Sunday morning, 5 December 2010.

Download audio file (EBC-sermon-2010-12-05.mp3)

* This morning marks the beginning of a new phase of children’s ministry: please pray and be prepared to improvise!

Message: Missionary Presentation

Passage to Prepare Us for Worship: Isaiah 6

The young adult Bible Study meets every Friday night at 7:00pm at the Allens’ home in the Cleveland Circle area. The current study topic is the book of Jude. For details and directions, call 617.244.5733.

The Lord opens the eyes of the blind. 
Psalm 146.8

Go and tell John what you hear and see: the 
blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the 
lepers are healed, the deaf hear, the dead are 
raised and the poor receive the good news. 
Matthew 11.3-5

Proverbs 11:1
A false balance is an abomination to the LORD,
But a just weight is his delight.

The travelers meander through the hills as the sun sets.  SUDDENLY out of the shadows come the thugs.  Bang!  Kabow!  Crash!  The travelers are unconscious, lying in a heap, all their goods stripped away from them.

A false balance was a little added weight affixed to the scale to coax an extra gram or two out of your bag of Granny Smiths.  A 3$ bag suddenly becomes $3.75!  But here’s an easy piece of advice: if you add so much that the apples weigh in double their actual weight, it’s not going to work.  You’ll have to calculate just how much people are willing to ignore.

Here we see the need for revelation: the Word of God coming outside of us, not as an extension of our thoughts.  Because today we hear that this extra weight is not just an annoyance to the Most High (we think: doesn’t He have other things to be concerned with?) or even a grievance, but rather calls up His anger and loathing.  Who could have imagined that reaction?

But was it possible that all this – our shrewd plans to steal from people; our calculating just how much we could extract from persons without having the tables turned on ourselves; pinpointing the threshold between conniving and culpability; acting only with an eye toward gain – could not be met with disgust from the Judge of the world?

But just as startling, and perhaps more so, is the revelation that God, the Fashioner of the Pleiades, delights in the small goodness, the ordinary righteousness, the $3 bag going for….$3!

Bible Reading: Romans 3: 9-20

Paul cites several Old Testament passages to demonstrate that all people are “under sin.”  So the law, which was being held up by the Jews as the emblem of their being the people of God, is instead highlighting their guilt before God.

All people, in their natural state, are under sin.  The one thing we shouldn’t think is what is often believed: ‘Well, I’m generally following the Ten Commandments.’  (Someone just said this to me the other day).  But let that Law search you out, and see if you can come out of that probing and still appeal to your goodness.

The Law was never given to show people how good they are!