This morning I preached a sermon at Grace on Matthew 12 called Sacred Cows. Jesus and his disciples were walking through a grainfield on the Sabbath, and because they were hungry, his disciples picked some heads of grain and ate them. The Pharisees, who enforced strict Sabbath-keeping laws, were incensed by their irreverence for the Sabbath, which had become the theological symbol of Moses’ law and the litmus test for Jewish faithfulness. The Sabbath had become a sacred cow for the Pharisees, and Jesus and his disciples were, in a sense, kicking the cow. He responded to their outcry with a bold claim: The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath. 

We all have sacred cows, the things that have become primary identity markers, or litmus tests of faithfulness. It could be any number of things, including politics, our family, an ideology, or even the Bible. But when Jesus declared himself Lord of the Sabbath, he made the powerful statement that he is greater than all of our sacred cows. He is the Lord of all of our sacred identity markers and theological litmus tests. When any of these things come into conflict with him – as they did through the hunger of his disciples in that grainfield – we must choose him. We cannot serve two masters; we cannot serve both God and Sabbath.

If you’ve been holding onto something the way the Pharisees held onto the Sabbath, it’s time to let go. You’re crushing it under the weight of your expectations and demands. What the Pharisees should have done, and what we need to do, is to remind ourselves of this truth and live in it daily: Jesus is greater than. Because when you get that right, Jesus can do to the Bible, and to your family, and to your politics what he did to the Sabbath – he can redeem it from a dead list of dos and don’ts and transform it into something that breathes life into your spirit, sustains your soul, and brings healing and freedom to your whole being.

This past Sunday I preached a message I called Skeptics Sunday at Grace Church. Using the doubt of Thomas as my lead-in, I addressed a couple of the issues raised by skeptics of Christianity. Obviously, there wasn’t enough time in one message to address all of their claims, so I had to limit myself to these two: The presence of evil contradicts the existence of God, and Science has disproven religion.

In addressing the first claim, I walked our congregation through the very basics of Alvin Plantinga’s argument from God, Freedom, and Evil. In that book, he demonstrated that it is possible for an omnipotent, omniscient, good being to allow the presence of some evil for the purposes of either preventing a more serious evil or allowing a greater good, thereby revealing an internal contradiction within the old problem of evil.

In addressing the second claim, I stated that it’s not possible for science to disprove God’s existence because science deals with the material and natural, whereas God is spirit and supernatural. God lies beyond the purview of science. But the real issue, as I see it, is that we Christians have, in general, made the science/faith issue about creation and evolution, and we are trying to win an argument. For a people whose king willingly lost his life on a Roman cross, trying to win arguments is a grave mistake. Jesus won a lot of arguments, but nobody he bested ever entered the kingdom. In fact, they all sought to kill him.

Our task is not to win but to woo. Jesus told Thomas, “You have seen and so have believed; blessed are those who have never seen but still believe.” People today will never see the risen Lord the way Thomas did, but they will see us. Jesus has left his wounds in our hands. Let us be sure to bear them faithfully.

Tonight was our Good Friday service at Grace. We had a powerful time together remembering the crucifixion of Jesus and reflecting on what it means for us. I preached a sermon from the book of Hebrews, using the temple passages from chapters 9 and 10 as my texts. It was a powerful time of study for me, as you may have guessed if you had seen this tweet.

My #GoodFriday texts are Hebrews 9:11-14; 24-28; and 10:19-22. These are blowing my mind! I feel like I'm getting saved all over again!

— Andrew Holt (@Andrew_W_Holt) April 16, 2014

Through his death, Jesus has become both our perfect priest and our sufficient sacrifice. He entered the Most Holy Place of heaven on our behalf, and he has made it possible for us to confidently approach God. If you listen to the message, you will hear how radical it is to be able to draw near to God with anything other than abject terror.

This morning I had the honor of preaching a sermon on the story of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife, which can be found in Genesis 39. The sermon is part of the Everyday Virtue series at Grace Church, and I was able to draw on some material I had already written here at the blog. (See the posts Biblical Marriage and Gay Marriage for a fuller treatment of those particular subjects.)

The lesson that we learn from Joseph is that purity requires distance. Sexual temptation is not something that you’re able to resist when it’s up close and personal because you are designed to give into sexual desire. That’s the way that God has made you, for the good of humanity. You are supposed to indulge in up close and personal sexual activity. But it’s also supposed to be channeled toward that one person of the opposite sex with whom you have covenanted before God. You are not built to say “No.” That’s why you have to keep your distance from disordered and misdirected sexual desires. Purity says “No” in order to shout “Yes!”

There is also a lot in the message about the Christian Sexual Ethic, which I have defined this way: The Christian Sexual Ethic is for one man and one woman, upon covenanting with one another in the presence of God, to enjoy sexual union together, in the hope of bearing and raising children, and doing so exclusively with one another, and with pure hearts toward all people, for as long as both of them live. The ethic is built upon a foundation of the theology of creation (Gen. 1-2), the theology of the body (1 Cor. 6), and the theology of marriage (Eph. 5). This ethic stands in stark contrast to the sexual ethic of the West, which is built upon the principle of consent.

There’s a lot more in the message, and I hope you find it helpful and edifying!

We recently started a new sermon series at Grace Church called Everyday Virtue. In it, we are exploring the lives of Bible characters, learning certain virtues from them. My sermon was on John Mark, whose story is found in several books of the New Testament. The virtue we learn from John Mark’s life is perseverance. He failed in a couple of big ways, but God remained faithful to him, and powerfully redeemed his story.