“Order of Operations” by Pastor Nate

Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally.  Do you remember this pneumonic device from elementary school?  It’s designed to help you remember the Order of operations.  Parenthesis, Exponents, Multiplication, Division, Addition, Subtraction.  When you do certain complicated math problems you have to be sure to follow this specific order otherwise, you’ll get the wrong answer.

But ya know what? I don’t think order of operations is just for math class, in fact I think there’s an order of operations for our life of faith.  Let me know explain…

There are all these places in the Bible where specific moral expectations are mentioned.  For example in the book of James it says, “let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger; rid yourselves of all sordidness and rank growth of wickedness; welcome the implanted word; be doers of the word, and not merely hearers.”  And then in the Gospel of Mark Jesus says, “avoid fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly.”

And here’s what can happen: we see these lists in the Bible and we think that these behaviors are our end of the bargain.  We get this idea that have got to keep all of these rules and avoid all these pitfalls in order to be right with God.   We have to go to church every week and never use curse words and always give our unwanted toys to Good Will and if we do all of this well enough THEN we will receive salvation, THEN God will save us when we die and bring us to heaven.

But I think this type of thinking is getting the Order of Operations all wrong.  On the surface, it makes sense.  In our world, everything has a cost, a cause and an effect.  And so it just logically makes sense that if we want God to do something for you well, then, you’re gonna need to do something for God first.

But I want you to know that God is actually better than that.  God does operate by the expectations and standards of this world. The Order of Operations is different.

What God does for us, always comes first.  We don’t have to work our way up to God, we don’t have to get it all right in order to be alright.  God extends grace and mercy and forgiveness to us first.

And now, we’ve got to be careful because I’m not saying that we get to just ignore what the book of James and the book of Mark have to say about how we act, I’m not saying that.  We just have to be careful about the order of operations.

God loves us and forgives us and saves us first.  Then, in response to the gracious actions of God, we are freed to live as God hopes for us to live.  All those behaviors that we read about in James and Mark and elsewhere in the Bible; that is what we will look like when the salvation of God really gets a hold of our life.