We look to Jesus: the founder and perfecter of our faith. He endured being crucified, despising the shame, for the joy that was set before him. And that joy is being seated at the right hand of God, knowing that he was pleasing unto God, and accomplishing the mission of our redemption. From the right hand of God, Jesus gives you himself as the thing, the person to fix your eyes on and as the way to take away our discouragement as we keep running. As we run, we are not running around randomly, haphazardly, in circles, without a destination; we are running to him. He is our joy and prize in this race.

Running this race takes discipline. We have blind spots. We try to put our head down and power through. But like Peter who sees the wind and waves and despairs, we need to turn our eyes on Jesus. And he will do whatever is needed to make us able to finish the race, to keep our eyes fixed on him until we reach the promises he has spoken to us in his word.

The kindest, most selfless thing you’ve ever done doesn’t earn you a drop in the empty swimming pool of righteousness, not when it’s done apart from relational trust in God and his promises. Because when we do righteousness apart from relational trust in God and his promises, we help a child in need or keep ourselves from swearing while we hold our hand out to God saying, “Go away, I don’t need you. This is my moment. I am the source of my own righteousness.” And we collect these moments in a scrapbook that we carry with us, a righteousness portfolio that we carry with us into our hospital bed at the end of our lives to show God when we meet him. And he opens it up and he sees a wonderful collection of moments we held our hand up to him telling him to stay away. Our reward on that day is not going to be a good one. It’s not going to be something we want. Our lifelong desire to keep God away through our own righteousness will result in God keeping us away from his presence for all eternity. As C. S. Lewis puts it, we either say to God, “Thy will be done,” or he says to us “Thy will be done.”

This is a clothing metaphor. We’ve already put off the old self when we trusted in Christ. Our old identity is nailed to the Cross with Christ. But we still have spiritual work to do, work that is impossible without the work of the Holy Spirit. There’s a difference here between “earning” and “effort,” as one theologian put it. Paul is not telling us to earn anything, but Scripture is requiring effort here. So our old identity in the world is done, but we need to start acting like it. And so we are to put to death those disordered pieces of our old identity that are still making a claim on us.

So the message from our passages today has more layers than simply, “Be bold” or “Be careful with your words.” There’s a situational thing going on here. We see this in Proverbs as well. In Proverbs 26:4: “Do not answer a fool according to his folly.” Then Proverbs 26:5: (the very next verse) “Answer a fool according to his folly.” You can’t do both of these at the same time. You need faith, relationship with God, and wisdom to tell which one is right in a given situation. But we can’t be afraid of being bold as a category. Boldness is certainly a valid thing in the Christian life. That same Revelation 21:8 that condemns liars to hell apart from salvation in Jesus, also condemns cowards. As we mature in Christ, as we walk with the Holy Spirit, we gain wisdom, and get a sense for where to be bold, lovingly.

The good news is that Jesus died and reconciled us to God. He reconciled sinners who were going to Hell with a righteous God by his sacrificial death. That is the news. That is the thing that changes lives. The love of God for us, not our own goodness is the heart of the gospel. The dance of faith and works always begins with faith. God showed his love for us by his sacrificial death that reconciles us with God. And a benefit of that news is that it awakens faith and that faith gives us a new perspective, new priorities, and changes us, bringing us a new life.

Where we rely on Scripture to justify our lack of generosity and empathy, Jesus shows us the generosity and mercy in the Law. In the Law: “Love your neighbor as yourself,” where we want to put the emphasis on “neighbor” and debate its meaning so we can limit our own responsibility, Jesus maximizes the word “love” so that it overshadows all the limits we try to set on it. Emphasizing neighbor and finding out everything we can about the nuance there is met with the challenge to emphasize love and find out everything we can about how to love.

It’s never been easier to wander off into myths. And when we do, we sadly lose our appetite for the truth. And we eventually lose all spiritual sight. So seek the truth. Seek the Lord while he is able to be found. Don’t give your heart free reign, but aim it towards Him. Align your heart with his Word. Point it to the Cross of Jesus. Your Good Shepherd has made his love for you easy to find. Don’t wander from it for whatever delights you think might await you in the myths of this world. But look up and find him and draw near to him. Ask him for help. Ask him to restore your sight. Let the Cross of Jesus be your North Star, the fixed point you use to find your bearings and navigate life. And the promises of the good, eternal life found in Ezekiel will be yours at the end of the age, and Lord willing even now. 

One way to identify any idol, but this is especially helpful when looking at church-related idols, is to ask the question, “Is this person, place, thing, or practice something that helps me draw close to Jesus, or is Jesus becoming the thing that justifies my association with the person, place, thing, or practice?” Do we value Anglicanism because it helps us draw close to Jesus, or are we infatuated with various aspects of Anglican faith and practice and make those our main focus, with Jesus thrown in to make it noble and right, to baptize it? And we can ask the same thing about anything at any church. Idolatry is everywhere, including church.

When you sing a song to Jesus, it matters if you think you are singing a song to someone who is fully God, or to a created undergod. Right? It matters if you think the Holy Spirit is a person or just a force like in Star Wars. And the doctrine of the Trinity helps us get our understanding right, and stay away from wandering into thinking Jesus was a created undergod. It helps us keep our imaginations on track. It helps us get the WHO of God right. Our worship of God is worthship: the act of ascribing worth to God. If worship is more about God than about us exercising our worship reflexes, than it is important to get it right. Right worship of God starts with having the right object of worship.

God’s building project will go through the line of Abraham, not broken human ambition. And in Acts, we see  a new fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham. It takes elements of the story of the Tower of Babel, but reworks them into a happier and better ending. Instead of seeing the languages of humans that were confused and separated at Babel so they would stop building the wrong thing that glorified themselves, in Acts we see the Holy Spirit enable communication between humans who speak different languages so they could start building the right thing, the church, which glorifies not themselves, but God. 

Jesus himself opens up the Scriptures, the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms and connects the dots from the Old Testament to what happened at the events of his death and resurrection. When he does this, he gives the basis for what they need to do. I bring this up because it’s worth noting that the risen Jesus still cares about what’s in the Bible. And we should too. He could easily say, “Cast those old scrolls into the fire and listen to me. I’m the Law and the Prophets and the Psalms now.” But he doesn’t. The written words of Scripture, in their particular phrasing, in the original languages, rightly matter to Jesus. The history of Israel and God’s relationship to Israel matters to Jesus.

I do want to say that I’ve been enjoying watching yard work videos. Far more than I can say I’ve been enjoying yard work. In these videos, a guy gets his weed whacker and his lawn mower and finds some abandoned property and fixes it up. And it’s sped up! Like 3 or 4 times the normal speed. It’s amazingly satisfying. It is offering a different view of humanity’s relationship to nature. One where the whole job gets done in 90 seconds instead of 3 hours. It’s kind of a reversal of the cursing of the ground that happened at the Fall. And I think it’s a good picture of the hope we find in the prophet Joel, who sets the stage with war and famine.

From the hopeful moment in the garden after the fall, where we’re told the serpent’s head will be struck, crushed; to the picture of life after the end of all things in the book of Revelation, new creation is a bold and hopeful thing to set your imagination on. It’s the ridiculous idea that failures everywhere daydream about. What if God were to hit the reset button? What if, to paraphrase J.R.R. Tolkien, everything sad is going to come untrue?