We also have a spiritual junk drawer. It's the place where we keep all of the little spiritual and religious ideas that we have collected over the years that make up our religious worldview. It's made up of a whole bunch of different things. There's an old saying your grandmother used to spout off out about all the time that sounded like it come from the scriptures but really didn't. You know, God helps those who help themselves or something like that. It sits next to some inspirational quote that you took a screenshot of on Instagram that sounded kind of religious. And that's sitting next to some idea that you're holding on to from an undergrad philosophy class that really challenged you. And that's tangled all up with some story from Sunday school way back in the day that you misremember. And all of these things together and so much more, they come together to fill your spiritual junk drawer and they make up your spiritual world, your understanding.of the divine. But the thing about the stuff that's in a spiritual junk drawer is that most of it is junk. It's stuff that clouds the real message of Christ and turns your faith from a joyful thing and a freeing thing into a burdensome thing and very often a confusing or conflicting thing.
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It's the idea that there is a God out there who is watching and waiting to judge us and who is going to measure all the good and all the bad that is done by us. It's the idea that life and in particular spirituality, religion consists of making sure that you put more good on the scale.than bad on the scale because if you get to the end and your bad outweighs your good oh no you you're not going to heaven you're not going to be in good with the big guy you're not going to get to nirvana or whatever it is that you're holding out for for many people spirituality comes down to a game of balancing the scale I got to make sure there's more good than bad.
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We are people who are always playing with the scale believing that in the end it comes down to making sure that there's more good than bad and this is seeped its way into everyday life in more ways than you realize you you have you have a wild weekend with friends where you where you have a little too much fun so what do you do the next weekend you say you know what I'm gonna be I'm gonna be good this weekend guys I'm gonna stay in you know I can't I can't be the kind of guy that does that every weekend don't want to be that guy I got wild last weekend gonna take it easy this weekend I youyou know i gotta i gotta balance the scale right.
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It is deeply embedded into who we are as human beings and how we operate we walk around with this belief that if there's a god out there looking down on us he's going to hold us accountable and he's going to judge me based on my good versus my bad it's hard to escape the scale now of course the the christian faith takes issue with the scale being in your spiritual junk drawer in the christian faith in in the real true traditional understanding of the christian faith there is no placefor a scale. No place for it at all.
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If you think that you can do anything to balance the scale, you think too little of God and too little of your own sin. Just look at these two scriptures. The first is from Genesis chapter 6, and the second is from Psalm 130. Genesis 6, this is God looking down on humanity just prior to the flood with Noah and the ark, you know, that whole thing. This is God when he looks down on humanity. This is what he sees. This is his take on humanity. You'll note that no one ever puts this verse on a Christmas card. The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth. Has much changed since the days of Noah? Noah, it has not. And that every intention of the thoughts of his heart, look at that, every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. Yikes. Psalm 130. If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, if you kept track of the stuff I did wrong, O Lord, who could stand?
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The message of Jesus is this. We are more than a little messed up. God is more than just God. God.a little holier than us. God's holiness is supreme, and man's depravity is deep. And there is nothing that we can do to try and meet his standard of holiness through our own efforts, and there's nothing that we could do to try and counterbalance the evil outside of us, the evil done by us, and even, the scriptures say, the awful and the evil that is within us.
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You can say there's a scale, but you can't move it. You can't.
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If you believe in a scale in any capacity, when you get to the very end, when you have loaded your whole life onto the conveyor belt at the checkout counter, you'll have loaded everything you've got onto that, the good, the bad, all of it. And what will happen is you will walk up there with your good intentions and with your other long list of good works, and what you'll discover is if you try to pay with that, what you'll discover is that that little tiny terrible beep goes off, and you will discover that you have been declined. And you'll be left with that horrible sinking feeling of, I've got a ton of stuff on that belt, and I, like, I can't pay for it.
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God is too high for us to reach him with our own efforts. Man is too low, too bad, too broken, too messed up for us to dig ourselves out of the hole, for us to balance the thing, counterbalance the good, the bad with the good. We just can't do it, so what's left?
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If there is a God above us, if there is an intelligent universe watching us, then in the end, what will the universe, God, Jesus, the one who stands over us, what will he do? Will he bring justice, or will he bring mercy? Because man is incapable of solving the problem on his own. Man can't fix the problem of his profound imperfection. So in the end, if there is to be a reckoning, what will God do? Will God show up in justice and say, look, the scale is tipped towards the bad, and you've got to pay? Or will God wipe away the scale and show up and offer mercy?
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Well, the Christian faith believes it has an answer to that age -old question of will mankind receive justice or mercy? For thousands of years, people have waited and the Christian faith believes that an answer has been delivered and that the answer is this, that God does not give us justice, nor does he merely give us mercy. But instead, God gives us his Son, Jesus Christ, and in Him, justice and mercy meet.
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In Him, God actually delivers both. And in doing so, He crushes the scale and He cuts the tension that it creates. Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ comes into this world and He lives perfectly. He is God's own Son, God in flesh, and He meets the world.and exceeds even the holy standard. And in doing so, he takes the scale for humanity and presses it all the way down to the good, all the way down. But then, but then he is crucified and he is punished for all the evils of humanity. He's punished because we took the scale and we pushed it all the way down to the bad. And so in Jesus Christ, both perfection and punishment take place.
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In Christ, is there justice? Yes, he's punished for mankind's sin. In Christ, is there mercy? Yes. Yes, there is. Both perfection and punishment have taken place. Justice and mercy are both delivered in Jesus Christ. And so now, now, Psalm 103 and the promise that it makes can be fulfilled. Psalm 103 says this in verse 10, he does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities. He dealt with Christ according to our sins. And he dealt with Christ according to our iniquities. So now, justice is done in Jesus. Mercy is offered in Jesus. The scale is crushed and pushed away. And now the only thing that remains is a God above us who says, look, come to me. Only love remains. And that, my friends, is grace.
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When the scale gets removed from God above us, we have been closed. And that, my friends, is grace. When the scale getsyour spiritual framework when there's no need to measure because Christ has measured up and the scale gets removed and it gets replaced with grace justice and mercy done in him not in him now as this as this truth takes root in us as it grows within us it has the power and the potential to transform three important relationships for us three relationships that when they go sideways because of the scale tend to make people want to get rid of their spirituality altogether when these three relationships get turned sideways because you think that life is about measuring and measuring up people enter into an unhealthy level of deconstruction about their faith or they just take all of religion and spirituality and throw it away because they're tired of these three relationships being so so dysfunctional and frustrated but when you let the scale be thrown away and replaced with the true message of grace it affects these three relationships in a positive beautiful life -giving way the first is that it changes your relationship with God and it frees you to see your relationship of God as one in which you simply get to worship him if you believe in some kind of cosmic scale where you're weighing everything out God becomes a slave driver that you have to that you have to fear and outrun or someone that you have to simply try and ignore this this God in the sky who's going to judge you someday and you either you either try to please him or you try to outrun him God bless you God bless you God bless you God bless you God bless you God bless you God bless you God bless you God bless youBut now with Jesus,your relationship with God is not one that's laden with a desire to flee from him or try to please him. It's one where you simply get to enjoy him and say thank you to him and worship him.
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As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him. Now in the Old Testament, when we hear that word fear, it doesn't mean fear of punishment. What it really means is worshipful, grateful awe. It's the idea that this holy God who could judge you and reject you, who could push you away forever, doesn't. It's this sense of awe that God is so big and yet he loves and shows grace to someone so small. And it makes your jaw drop and fills your soul with gratitude.
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You don't have to be angry at him you don't have to try to please him you don't have to try and ignore him or outrun him you just get to look up and say i don't know why you love me so much but man you clearly do thank you and god gets big and you get small in all the right ways and you're overwhelmed with gratitude that gets to be your relationship with god and that is so much better than loathing him because you feel like you gotta please him.
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It also changes your relationship with others it frees you to actually like truly love other people when you believe that there's some kind of cosmic scale and you gotta balance out your your your bad with your good it it turns relationships with others into a commodity you see if there's a god that i've got to please then then i'm not loving you purely to love you i'm loving you so that he'll love me ultimately in the end i'm not being nice to you because i want to be nice to you maybe i do want to be nice to you but ultimately i'm being nice to you because i i really ultimately need him to be nice to me you you you you you you you.
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If God is good to me apart from performance, then that frees me up to be good to you, apart from performance. If God loves me because he loves me because Christ has measured up for me, then I'm free to love you because I love you, not because I need anything from you or for myself. I'm free to love you just to love you. I'm free to serve you just to serve you. I'm free to give to you just to give to you with no other toxic spiritual agenda because my relationship with God is already secure through Christ.
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If you believe in some kind of like karmic balance, if you believe that you've got to measure up and balance the scales, it puts you spiritually on a pendulum where you swing back and forth between spiritual pride and spiritual despair. And when people live in a swinging back and forth between pride and despair, eventually they say, I don't, this is making me sick. I want off of this ride. And that's one of the reasons people leave the faith.
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But if the scale has been tossed out and replaced with grace, then what you get to have in here is peace because you know that on your bad days, you are loved. On your good days, you are loved. On your good days, you are loved no more. On your bad days, you are loved no less. And that, my friends, leads to peace.
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It makes God someone you just get to worship. It makes friends people that you just get to love. It makes your own heart a place of peace. If the scale is gone and replaced with grace.
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All of us wants to be thought well of. In the very end, we want to be seen as good people, people who've measured up. But if you insist on living a life where part of your worldview, your spiritual makeup, your religious makeup is this idea that you have to measure up or that your good works in any capacity get you anywhere, one question I have for you is this. How good is good enough? How will you ever know? How will you ever have peace? How?
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At the center of all religions is the idea of karma. That's the scale. You know, what you put out comes back to you. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Or in physics, in physical laws, every action is met by an equal or an opposite one. It's clear to me that karma, balancing things out, is at the heart of the universe. I'm absolutely sure of it. And yet, along comes this idea called grace grace to upend all of that as you reap, so you will sow stuff. Grace defies reason and logic. Love interrupts the consequences of your actions, which in my case is very good news indeed, because I've done a lot of stupid stuff. I'd be in big trouble if karma was going to finally be my judge. I'd be in deep stuff. It doesn't excuse my mistakes, but I'm holding out for grace. I love that. I'm holding out that Jesus took my sins onto the cross, because I know who I am. And I hope I don't have to depend on my own religiosity.
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In Jesus Christ, justice and mercy meet. And the scale is thrown away. And only love remains. Amen.
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