🦁 Epiphany 6-5

Readings: Psalm 110:1-4; Exodus 19:7-25; Hebrews 2:1-4. 

Reflection

Good morning. This is Tim Tribble, broadcasting from Sacramento, California. Today's readings come to us from Psalm 110, verses 1 to 4. Exodus Chapter 19, verses 7 to 25 and Hebrews Chapter two. Verses 1 to 4. The Psalm today is called Sit at My Right Hand, and the Lord says to my Lord, Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies, your footstool. 

So in context, when we look at God as the King, the ultimate leader, so in that time frame, and even today, when you have someone of leadership wielding a right hand in the world, by the way, just, you know, those of us that were born left forced. Right. Those views are still left. It's all good. But the right hand of a leader that was the best seat. So you're not quite the leader. That's the best seat. The next best seat is to the right hand of the leader. So God is telling us right here to David, sit at my right hand. I'm going to put your enemies. Make them your footstool. Obviously, a footstool being the very low position under their feet. So this is a promise of God. This is what God can do for us. This is how God takes care of us when we allow him to and follow what He wants us to do and behave the way he wants us to as he will put out his right hand and whatever it is that against us, he will make it, put it under us, under our feet, make it as a footstool to us. 

In the reading from Exegesis today, we go back to this is we're going back to Moses. So this is while they're out in the deserts, they've got now the Egypt, they're now out in the desert, wandering around, as we say. And God and Moses are having conversations. So this is one where God gave Moses some specific instructions. So they were at Mount Sinai. 

Moses been up there talking to God. Well, we got to kind of validate this, and the God says, Here's what I want you to do. Go down or get all the people together and clean up, get the best clothes on, and have them come to the base of Mount Sinai. Not touching the mountain, but at the base of it. And God would reveal what they'd been talking about. So on the morning of the third day, there was thunder and lightning, a thick cloud on the mountain, a loud trumpets blast. And then Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet God. And they took their stand at the foot of the mountain. Moses spoke. God said, Bring Aaron. So Aaron was Moses his right hand. So they said, brings him up. They talk, gives him talks with God, and he says, Go down and warn the people lest they break through the Lord to look and many of them perish. So they go down, He goes through, tells them to not come up, and then they have they know that God exists. They can hear him. They see the power of God. This is God's attempt to try to get them. Hey, look, it's real. I'm here. This is a real thing. This is not just Moses, you know, having a little episode of his own. Cause we know later on it's still didn't work out. People still had didn't follow the Covenant with Abraham. 

And in our reading in Hebrews today, this is called a warning against neglecting salvation and opening verse. Therefore, we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard. Look, lest we drift away from it. And this is the way I take this. This is why we do first formation. This is why Logan and Brother Logan started this. Why I'm helping him continue it. This is a way for us to keep that attention, keep that focus on the scriptures. Our understanding of what it is to be Christ like, what it means to be a Christian, how it is to to live a Christ like life and this is a warning that if we don't stay focused, just you can't you know, in all the years and years and years I've been in churches, I, I've been in a bunch of different churches in several different denominations, all the way from the far right to the far left. I physically built two buildings in two different churches, the sages building the church. We actually built the buildings. 

And I've seen this. There are people they are a lot of people in church. You'll see those. You look around. They're there on Sunday. Those are the regular ones. We have this. There's a Chris Easter, I believe, is how it's worded. We people show up at church at Christmas and Easter. That's the only time you see them there. 

We need to be looking at the word. We need to be praying. We need to be in our minds thinking and processing what God is saying to us on a daily basis. If we don't keep that kind of focus, it's like any other thing that we do. So what are we doing in the military? In training. Training. Training. Training. Training. We go out. You do things over and over and over again. We. You're developing that muscle memory, making it automatic thing to to. When this happens, you do this, and whatever your M.O. else was, your rating, whatever it was you did. We practiced and practiced and practiced and trained and trained and trained and keeping that focus, well, this is no different. The way we practice, the way we train is by reading the Bible and looking at houses. Speaking to me. Today we attend church services. Of course we need that community. We are not meant to be solo Christians out on our own. We need that community. We need that interaction with others and that support network that we have that's provided us through church meetings. But here in Hebrew, this is the warning that they had. If you're not doing this, you're not paying closer attention, then what's going to happen is you're neglecting such a great salvation and that's something that we need to be cognizant of. It's a thing make sure on a daily basis as best you can to read something out of the Bible. 

Think about it for a few minutes. What does this mean? How's this? Speak to me today. 

There are, of course, you know, we have wonderfully educated folks that, you know, study theology and things. But there's also something to be said for how does this speak to me? What does this mean to me? It's a personal thing, but there's everything. There's something in here for everyone. And everyone looks at things. And this is this is how I feel about this. And this is how we go out and do the different things that we do, whether it's working with the homeless, whether it's working with veterans, whether it's working with the various different sections of society that can't stand up for themselves. That's what we do as Christians. We love our neighbors as ourselves. And one of the ways we get the direction to do that and stay focused to do that is by being in the world every day and keeping focused on Christ and focused on God and focusing on what are they speaking to me today? Amen.