By Rev. David Millar

And the Angel of Jehovah appeared to him in a flame of fire from the middle of a thorn bush. And he looked, and behold, the thorn bush was burning with fire, and the thorn bush was not burned up!

And Moses said, I will turn aside now and see this great sight, why the thorn bush is not burned up.

And Jehovah saw that he turned aside to see, and Elohim called to him from the midst of the thorn bush, and said, Moses! Moses! And he said, Behold me.

And He said, Do not come near here. Pull off your sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground. (Exodus 3:2-5)

We spoke last time about the appearance of the angel of the Lord in the bush that burned but was not consumed. The important point here was the principle that as we build our spiritual knowledge so it becomes a bush that grows within our minds that is able to give us insight into things related to the spiritual life. The desire from which this insight, which is spiritual light, arises is like a fire. And all this is captured in the symbolic language of Scripture in a bush that burns but is not consumed. Another way of seeing this is in a person’s relationship to the Word. If we have a passion for seeing how the Lord’s Word can be applied in the service of others and their spiritual welfare then this is like a fire that burns in our heart.

When we come to the Word and begin to study it in order to get an understanding of how we can serve others more appropriately from a spiritual perspective, then we have the basis for knowledge to grow in our minds, and as this knowledge grows from its seed it becomes something that can capture and express this deep passion or fire for the spiritual life. The ideas we have gathered from the Word and the Heavenly Doctrines form a body of knowledge which directs us in how to live. It is the ability of ideas to serve as messengers for love is what is meant by angels in the Word. So its the very truths we find in the Word and in the spiritual teachings for the Church that are the real angels that deliver the Lord’s message of love to us and to others. So the angel of the Lord is nothing less than the Word itself.

Spiritual knowledge if genuine always points to love. So this is why in verse 4 we read that “When Jehovah saw that he (speaking of Moses) turned aside to see, Elohim called to him out of the midst of the bush, and said Moses, Moses. And he said Behold me.”

To be in a dialogue is to be in a state of communication with someone; so here when read of God speaking to Moses we are reading a description of the Divine’s connection with something in us, in this case that something is described as Moses, and we have seen that the Divine can only connect with and be received by what is of Himself within us – in this case Moses represents our understanding of the Lord’s Word. It is by means of the Word rightly understood that the Lord is able to speak with us. When we are reading the Word and find ourselves drawn to something in it that offers us some new insight this is Moses “turning aside” to discern or see what it means.

It’s important that we see that it’s our understanding of doctrine that enables us to see the Lord in His Word. Doctrine is simply the ideas that make up the spiritual teachings for the Church. As far as this Church is concerned these ideas are found in the works of Emanuel Swedenborg. Books like Heaven and Hell, Divine Love and Wisdom, Divine Providence, True Christian Religion the Arcana Cealestia are all able to provide us with true spiritual ideas which, when in our minds, enables us to be able to receive communication from the Lord when we read that meditate on His Word.

These ideas teach us about the nature of God and the spiritual life. When we bring these ideas to the Word so they enable it to come alive for us and so we are able to receive insight directly from the Word as to how to live the spiritual life. Without genuine spiritual ideas the Word remains closed, a book with little meaning for us, but if we are prepared to work with these spiritual ideas as a guide for our life, then we open up the possibility of coming to see and experience their truths for ourselves. That’s the thing with spiritual concepts – you can read them, you can be told that they are true, but you can only know if they are actually true by applying them and testing them in your own life. No one else can do it for you. It’s a responsibility the Lord has given us and…if we want to know the reality of the spiritual life we have to do the work required – there are no short cuts.

It is those spiritual ideas tested in life that become the vessels in the human mind for receiving further insight from the Lord. As they become a part of a person’s mental structure so they take on a human form. When you really think about it they have to, otherwise how can they become part of us? – They enable a person to see what is good and true and what is evil and false and they empower them to act on this insight in ways that promote goodness and weaken our attachments to evils. Such actions foster qualities of mercy, compassion, love and goodness within our life and this is what is meant here by these ideas taking a human form. And because divine ideas are what the human mind is designed to reflect as the image and likeness of God, so in the symbolic language of scripture we see that people are used to represent these ideas and give them a concrete form so that we can grasp the general spiritual principles represented. One such person is the central character found in the Exodus stories, that of Moses. Moses and all the other characters we find in the Bible represent a particular set or quality of ideas that are able to find their embodiment within the human mind.

If we are to understand this story and why Moses was required to remove his shoes we first must see Moses not as a man but as a representative symbol. He’s a representative symbol of those spiritual ideas in our mind that we have worked with and tested and know for ourselves to be true. It is these ideas and these ideas alone that are sensitive to spiritual inflow from the divine. Not only that, but they give us the ability to be responsive to what is required of us if we are to come into a fuller expression of the spiritual life. This responsiveness of a person is described in the language of spiritual symbol as Moses turning aside to discern what he was seeing.

To turn aside is to change our orientation, or our position in relation to something. From a spiritual perspective it describes a change in our focus – and in the case of Moses it has to do with trying to get some understanding of what he was seeing. I have already said Moses represents spiritual ideas we have made a real part of our life. When we use these ideas as the basis for understanding spiritual phenomena, represented by the burning bush, which of course is not really a bush but another spiritual symbol that corresponds to the literal stories of the Word, God speaks into our life.

The ideas represented by Moses are the ideas we have about what it really means to love the Lord and our neighbour. When we make the effort to have these two great commandments at the center of our lives and bring them to bear on our reading of the Bible then we will find that they have the truly remarkable effect of transforming our understanding of the literal stories of the Bible into something very real and meaningful for understanding ourselves, God and others.

On the surface the stories are simple tales, but within they offer profound insights into the nature of life, in this world and the one to come. The essence of spiritual life is love. This governs all things and when love senses we are responsive to it in our own actions so it moves to increase our capacity to love more fully and in more appropriate ways. This movement of love in a person’s life is described in the story today as “Jehovah seeing Moses turn aside to see…” When our thoughts turn aside to better understand the Word, represented by the burning bush, in a way that supports us loving what is good and true in others, there is a recognition of this by the divine love itself, represented in the use of the name Jehovah, who is constantly looking for any opportunity to bring more of the transforming power of His love into our lives.

But if we are to receive anything of this love in a conscious way it has to be communicated to us in a form in which we can receive it and this form must be suited to vessels designed for that purpose. So we can ask ourselves, what holds and communicates love? If we want to be more loving and understanding, more compassionate and sincere in our relationships with others – if we want to act from a genuine concern for the spiritual well-being of others more often and less often from the ground of self-centeredness then we first of all need some idea of what this involves. We get this idea from spiritual teachings we have worked into our life – teachings represented by the Moses symbol – the specific ideas represented by Moses have to do with how to live a genuine spiritual life, it is this Moses in us that receives communication from God. Notice that while it is Jehovah who sees Moses turn aside, it is Elohim that speaks. Jehovah and Elohim are two Hebrew names for God used in the Bible. It is said that Elohim speaks because Elohim is the name of God that emphasizes the truth aspect of the divine while Jehovah is the name of God that emphasizes the love aspect.

Our engagement with truth or ideas from the Word is the focus here. Moses represents ideas or our developing understanding of truth as it relates to loving others from a spiritual perspective. We need to view these ideas as dynamic and inseparable from our actual thinking processes, rather than something static like in a book or our memory. These ideas are living ideas that make up the very activity of our minds, not static facts in memory.

Having followed the development of our spiritual understanding through the book of Exodus we now come to a point consisting of a major shift in consciousness illustrated through the character of Moses. The understanding of spiritual things that has carried us this far is about to undergo a new degree of divine activity within itself and it comes as a command for Moses to remove his sandals because he is on holy ground.

In the world of spiritual ideas within the human mind “holy ground” is the ground from which we are able to be supported in our contact with the divine. It’s what our relationship with the divine is founded on or stands on. It is what stands under, or our understanding, if you will. This contact is grounded in nothing other than the Word. Yet we easily forget that the Word is in fact the Lord’s presence with us. That it is the Word in its literal sense that is holy ground is clear from the fact that the stories found there contain all things to do with what is spiritual and celestial and that these things are found not in understanding the Word literally but in understanding it spiritually. Yet the literal stories are how these deeper more spiritual ideas are communicated to us and so form the ground from which we can come to see and appreciate its deeper aspects.

But we must learn to see beyond the historical and earthly aspects and see these as merely containers pointing to spiritual processes and principles captured within the symbolical aspects of the various things and different people mentioned in the story.

Moses is told not to draw near but to remove his sandals. This is about drawing nearer to the divine in our life and, needless to say it has nothing to do with our literal footwear. What it has to do with is the quality of the ideas we have concerning God – remember Moses is a representative symbol of our ideas about spiritual life and if we are to draw nearer to the divine the next phase in the development of our spiritual understanding requires us to remove something from our ideas represented here by the symbol of sandals.

These have to be removed if we are to enter into a clearer idea of divine love and wisdom and our relationship to it. That Moses is commanded to remove his shoes before he can approach or draw nearer to the divine suggests that what the shoes represent is something that obstructs us from drawing closer to the divine ideal for our lives. Now if the Word is the Lord’s presence with us and we draw near to him to the degree that we understand it in terms of how to love more effectively, then the shoes must be something that rather than assisting us to understand or draw nearer to what it is to be truly human actually prevents this from happening.

And this is what in fact they are. If Moses represents our ideas about spiritual life then his shoes must have some relationship to the world of ideas that Moses represents. Every part of the body spiritually corresponds to an aspect of the mind, so the hands correspond to the minds ability to grasp or handle things. Similarly the feet are the lowest part of the body and because of this correspond to the lowest aspects of our thought. Shoes because they cover the feet are lower still and these being the product of human manufacture represent ideas we have cobbled together about God and spiritual things based on earthly and worldly ideas rather than genuine spiritual ideas.

They are ideas that keep a person locked into a literal understanding of the Word and prevents them from entering into the spiritual sense to which the symbolic language of Scripture points. So, for example, a person reads the story of Moses and their thought remains focused on the historical aspects of the story. Moses is seen as a historical figure in the history of Israel’s deliverance and little more than this. To remove our shoes is to see that he represents something within each of us and that these stories, if grasped as to their symbolic meaning, are able to lead us into a deeper understanding of spiritual life. So if we are to draw near we must make an effort to remove our shoes – to remove our sense based ideas about the divine and spiritual life and so enter into understanding the Word in terms of its spiritual meaning.

To do this we must first learn what the spiritual ideas contained in the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg are, be prepared to test them in our life that we might come to see if they are indeed true and confirm their truth by means of the Word. If we would do this we would remove the shoes from our feet and know in the depths of our being that the ground we stand on is indeed holy.

Amen.

Arcana Coelestia (Elliott) 6844.

Take off your shoes from upon your feet’ means that the powers of the senses, which form the external levels of the natural, should be removed. This is clear from the meaning of ‘shoes’ as the powers of the senses forming the external levels of the natural, dealt with in 1748; and from the meaning of ‘feet’ as the natural, dealt with in 2162, 3147, 3761, 3986, 4280, 4938-4952. ‘Taking off’ plainly means removing since one is talking about the powers of the senses. Particular expressions have to be used in application to the actual matter to which they refer; thus ‘being taken off’ is applied to shoes, and ‘being removed’ to the powers of the senses. The implications of all this need to be stated. Anyone can see that here ‘shoes’ represent something that does not accord with Him who is holy and Divine, so that ‘taking off one’s shoes’ was representative of the removal of things like that. Without this representation what would it matter to the Divine whether a person drew near in shoes or in bare feet, provided that inwardly he is the kind of person who can draw near the Divine in faith and love? Therefore the powers of the senses are meant by ‘shoes’, and those powers, which form the external levels of the natural, are by nature such that they cannot remain when one thinks with reverence about the Divine. Consequently because it was a time when representatives had to be observed, Moses was not allowed to draw near with his shoes on.

[2] The reason why the powers of the senses that form the external levels of the natural are by nature such that they cannot receive the Divine is that they are steeped in ideas of worldly, bodily, and also earthly things because they are the first to receive them. Therefore sensory impressions contained in the memory as a result of the activity of the senses draw their nature from the light and heat of the world, and hardly at all from the light and heat of heaven. As a consequence they are the last things that can be regenerated, that is, receive something of the light of heaven. This explains why, when a person is ruled by his senses and sensory impressions control his thinking, he inevitably thinks of the Divine as he does of earthly things. If also he is ruled by evil those impressions make him think in ways altogether contrary to the Divine. When therefore a person thinks about the kinds of things that have to do with faith and love to God he is raised, if he is governed by good, from the powers of the senses which form the external levels of the natural to more internal levels, consequently from earthly and worldly things nearer to celestial and spiritual ones.

[3] This is something people do not know about, the reason being that they do not know that internal levels distinct and separate from external ones are present within them, or that thought exists on increasingly internal levels as well as on more external ones. And unaware of these things a person cannot reflect on them.

By Rev. David Millar

And Moses was feeding the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian. And he led the flock behind the wilderness and came to the mountain of God, to Horeb.

And the Angel of Jehovah appeared to him in a flame of fire from the middle of a thorn bush. And he looked, and behold, the thorn bush was burning with fire, and the thorn bush was not burned up!

And Moses said, I will turn aside now and see this great sight, why the thorn bush is not burned up. (Exodus 3:1-3)

One of the main ideas we are led into seeing by our efforts to live the spiritual life is that in and of our selves we are incapable of thinking anything true or of doing anything good. The reality is that in terms of possessing anything genuinely spiritual we are barren, a desert or a Horeb, this name literally means “desert” from a Hebrew root meaning to “parch” (through drought).

As we grow in our knowledge of spiritual things the expectation is that life would become easier, more ordered, and in general more satisfying. And in one sense this is in fact what happens, at least initially. When we first come into the spiritual life there is often a sense of relief, a sense of finally having found what we had been looking for, for so long. We have finally found something truly meaningful, and have a sense of being on track, of having a real sense of purpose. It’s a time of incredible growth – at least in terms of our knowledge and even in terms of our activity. We willingly throw ourselves into activities in support of the more external organisational aspects of religious expression all the while becoming more and more grounded in the ideas and social contacts our new found faith brings with it. Then slowly things begin to change. Something happens and things are no longer as satisfying as they once were. We find it becoming dry, of somehow having lost the vitality and life we found so satisfying in the beginning. We draw back and struggle to find the meaning and purpose we were so sure about before. What’s going on? We have entered the experience of the desert.

In the technical language of doctrine, this kind of experience is called “desolation and vastation.” It’s a vital part of growth and the mistake people can make when in this state of life is that the cause for how they are feeling lies outside of them in the outer world. “I was fine before, now this thing I’m into no longer satisfies me; there is something wrong with it” and so the search begins again for something more satisfying. Yet somehow the excitement – dissatisfaction cycle continues. You see, truth is designed to create conditions that bring us face to face with our lack in spiritual things so that we humble ourselves and cast ourselves upon the Lord who is the source of everything we could ever possibly desire. The purpose of such states is to actually deepen our attachments to what is spiritual through a removal of our attachments to what hinders the spiritual life developing within us. The process, while it may feel like we are cast aside, is actually designed to make us more receptive to receiving life from the Lord. This is why in the description of this process we are told in the symbolic language of Scripture that Moses is said to have led the flock in the backside of the desert to the mountain of God, to Horeb.

The use of the term “mountain of God” in connection with the name Horeb is interesting in that as far as the Hebrew language use in the original text is concerned, the meaning is obscure. It can be read that the phrase “mountain of God” is interchangeable with the name “Horeb” i.e. the mountain is called Horeb, or an alternative reading is that the mountain is to be found towards Horeb. Again as we saw last week with the names Reuel and Jethro we could join the debate with scholars as to the most correct reading and be none the wiser or we can look to a spiritual understanding and see that the answer here is that both readings hold true and that it doesn’t have to be one or the other. How so?

Well the spiritual experience of the mountain of God and of Horeb or desert is inseparable. The literal reading of the text may be obscure as to its meaning but the spiritual experience of those who know what’s described here is not and for them there is no confusion. The mountain of God is something inseparable from Horeb. For Horeb, being a desert experience is our realisation that we are sorely inadequate in our ability to love in appropriate ways. It’s a realisation that in ourselves we just don’t know how to love the neighbor as we should. Horeb is our realisation of this core principle or truth, without which we can’t receive into ourselves the spiritual aspect of love represented by the mountain of God. This realisation is different from acknowledging something is true from the head, it’s a realisation that hits us in the gut – something that hits us forcefully with a full emotional impact. It’s the knowing connected with real conviction, it’s the kind of realisation that impacts us with such force it creates a fundamental change in our thinking and emotional structures. When this happens we are open to seeing something remarkable – a bush that burns but isn’t consumed.

Exo 3:2 And the Angel of Jehovah appeared to him in a flame of fire from the middle of a thorn bush. And he looked, and behold, the thorn bush was burning with fire, and the thorn bush was not burned up!

Have you personally ever seen such a sight?…strange question you might think. Do angels appear in bushes in this way today? Well the surprising answer is yes they do, and that the experience described here is in fact open to us all. But it’s a spiritual experience not a natural one. The irony here is that we often don’t see spiritual experiences as somehow as real as natural experiences or experiences we have via our external senses. If someone came in here right now and told us with apparent conviction that there was an angel speaking from a burning bush outside the back door how would we react? We would probably look at them a little askance, but it could well arouse our curiosity and if it did we would, I think, be tempted to go out and check it out for ourselves. And if we saw it – well how real is that. But if some described the spiritual experience that this natural one corresponds to we are more likely to regard it with curiosity to be polite to the person recounting the experience but not really give it a lot more thought. Which experience is more real; the difference in our responses would suggest the one of the physical bush burning. Why is that? Well there are a number of reasons, but perhaps the main one is that genuine spiritual experience is deeply personal.

It can be described in a general way, using images and symbols as we find here in the language of Scripture but the actual personal experience of it is as varied as there are individuals who go through the process. How can we really connect with or empathise with a person’s experience of the reality of spirit – its difficult, because another’s experience is just that, their experience. But there is another difficulty which has to do with our own ability to recognise the presence of an angel speaking into our lives. As we shall see, until we have some understanding of the general aspects of spiritual experience and how angels interact with us we will struggle to even recognise it as something in our experience. The fact is angels speak to us every day from the midst of bushes that burn but are not consumed, and it is our natural mindedness that obscures our ability to see it. In the New Testament it admonishes the members of the infant church of the importance of the practice of hospitality and how that those who do this have entertained angels unawares. This parallels an internal principle and highlights the importance of developing a sensitivity to the promptings we receive from the Lord. To practice hospitality from a spiritual perspective is to welcome insights that come from heaven into ourselves that we might grow in our capacity to love others.

Moses, remember, is our developing understanding of truth – he represents a degree or level of psychological activity in the mind that is directly connected with living a spiritual life. The state of life this understanding has reached at this point in the story is a realisation that in and of ourselves there is nothing good or true and this realisation is what opens us up to being able to receive the Lord in a new way. Moses has come to the mountain of God. Or if you like, our work with the truth we have received has brought us to the mountain of God. Truth, if it is genuine, leads and guides us to good or if you like truth always teaches us “the how” in regard to living a good life or a life of charity. Mountains in the Word correspond to elevated states of life or love. So Moses coming to the mountain of God represents our coming into the love or goodness (rep. by the mountain) of God – the name for God here is Elohim and we have seen that this name is specifically used when truth is the focus. So when we live according to the truth we have received we come first into a desert state of life – which prepares us for receiving the heavenly life more deeply into our sense of self.

Our knowledge of that heavenly life grows within us like a tree – I’m sure we are all aware of the parable of the mustard seed which the Lord likens to the kingdom of heaven – it begins as the smallest of seeds and grows into the greatest of shrubs, becoming a tree in whose branches birds can settle (Matt, 13:31-32). The bush here has the same representation as that mustard tree, it is a symbol for the knowledge of the kingdom of heaven growing in our mind. From the growth of this knowledge in conjunction with its application to life we are able to receive into our consciousness a new revelation concerning the nature of God. Up to this point the name of God used has been Elohim now we are introduced to the “Angel of the Lord” or the “Angel of Jehovah.” The focus has shifted from a life that is focused on truth to one being introduced into goodness or love. The shift in names here is for similar reasons for the shift from Reuel to Jethro in regard to the priest of Midian we looked at last week. It reflects a shift in our spiritual state.

This shift involves seeing the Lord in a new way. Moses our growing understanding of truth is our new spiritual mind – he is the Word in our mind, the principles of which are now becoming more and more the basis from which we live our lives. Having passed through the desert and being in the life of caring for those tender affections and ideas from the Word represented by the flocks he cares for a person grows into the real things that matter concerning the spiritual life. The ideas they have gathered and have had planted in their minds has now become a living bush and from the midst of this knowledge of heaven and its life comes a new way of understanding – an understanding from the ground of love. This understanding from the ground of the Lord’s love in our life is the angel of the Lord that appears.

This angel describes something truly miraculous, a change in the human heart – it is not a seeing with the physical eyes of some entity, its not even seeing some entity with our spiritual eyes that mirrors a physical experience – this angel, when experienced spiritually is the appearance in our minds of light specifically to do with how we are to love, it is a seeing from the truth we have had worked into our lives. This truth is the angel because it is this truth that communicates to us ideas of love, seen in the actual Hebrew word used here. For “angel” in the Hebrew is “malak” and “malak” means a lot more than what is commonly understood by the English term “angel” and we can see this in the Word where it is also translated using the English words, prophet, priest, teacher and king, and these are all offices connected with the teaching of truth. Here in our story it is an “angel of the Lord” or “angel of Jehovah.” Jehovah you will remember is the name of God specifically used when love is the focus. So the phrase “angel of the Lord” spiritually means “truth that teaches us about the Lord’s love.” This “angel” can only appear to those who are working with the truth they have received in an effort to have removed from their lives what prevents the inflow of heaven.

Every moment in which we receive a feeling of genuine compassion for another’s spiritual well-being, so the angel of the Lord has appeared in a flame of the fire of love. Every moment in which we receive a prick of conscience that seeks to correct some aspect of selfish behaviour, so the angel of the Lord has made its appearance. But our ability to receive such promptings, to have an encounter with the angel of the Lord is dependent on what we have done with the spiritual knowledge we have received; if we have worked with it in relation to our life it becomes a bush able to nurture and support the fire of the Lord’s own love in our life. This bush is not consumed because it is from and of the divine, it is the Lord’s Word in the natural mind which enables us to continually receive an infinite variety of new thoughts and affections from their infinite source in the Lord Himself.

From Arcana Coelestia paragraph 6832

‘In a flame of fire from the middle of a bramble bush’ means God’s love present in true factual knowledge. This is clear from the meaning of ‘a flame of fire’ as God’s love, dealt with below; and from the meaning of ‘a bramble bush’ as true factual knowledge. The reason why ‘a bramble bush’ means true factual knowledge is that all shrubs of every kind mean factual knowledge, whereas actual plantations of trees, being larger, mean cognitions and perceptions. Because it produces flower and berries ‘a bramble bush’ means true factual knowledge. True factual knowledge that the Church possesses consists in nothing else than the Word as it exists in the sense of the letter and also every one of the Church’s representative forms and meaningful signs that existed among the descendants of Jacob. These in the external form they take are called true factual knowledge; but in their internal form they are spiritual truths. But truths in their internal or spiritual form could not be made visible to those descended from Jacob, for the reason that they were interested solely in things of an external nature and had no wish whatever to know about anything internal. Therefore the Lord appeared in a bramble bush (when the Lord appears to people He does so in a way suited to the kind of people they are, for a person cannot receive the Divine in any way other than that which is a way suited to the kind of person he is);…..

Amen.

By Rev. Peter M. Buss

“He has shown you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to humble yourself to walk with your God?” (Micah 6:8)

Such beautiful words. Such a comfort to the soul that is grieving, and feels the burden of sin. The context is important. The Lord has a controversy with His people. They have turned from Him. They have not obeyed Him. Has he ever let them down, He asks? Have they ever had cause to turn from Him? Look at what He has done for them. Then the people, or perhaps the king, who at that time was Hezekiah, give answer. What does the Lord want of me? What does He expect, especially considering my past wickedness? External worship, extravagant gifts, or the sacrifice of a child whose birth formed one of the most precious moments of my life?

In the internal sense a more complete and deeply beautiful conflict of ideas is set forth whose resolution simplifies life in this confusing culture in which we live. These words are not chosen at random. Each word indicates an attitude toward life.

“Wherewith shall I come before the Lord and bow myself before the high God? Shall I come before Him with burnt offerings?” This is a natural response in all of us: to turn to the Lord in prayer, in confession, hoping that in this lies forgiveness. This passage, together with several others, is often quoted in the Word as an illustration of the fact that external worship, confession and prayer do not purify us. Such teachings are not simply said for bygone nations who used to believe in the magical power of external rituals. They are said for us as well. Rituals and worship are not by themselves pleasing to the Lord. Nor does He want them by themselves. We too can fall into the trap of confessing our evils, getting a feeling of comfort perhaps out of saying what bad people we are, without seriously intending to change; of being members of the external church, and feeling a certain comfort which turns us from the business of repentance.

“Shall I come before Him with calves of a year old?”–calves which would be offered on that altar. Calves represent natural feelings, the pleasures of this earth. A calf is a harmless animal, but a useful one. Sometimes we think we can please the Lord if we give up a certain external pleasure. There is the martyr in many people. It breeds the feeling that if we are suffering in some way, or if we have given up some external joy, taking away from ourselves an enjoyment that is perfectly reasonable, then we are bound to be pleasing to the Lord. We are showing how much He means to us.

We can see something of this attitude in an example of a little child who has been given $5 by an aunt who then leaves town. She tells him to buy some candy for himself and his brother. He is tempted to spend it all on himself, but he controls the pleasures of taste and he shares it with his brother. That is a good thing to do, but there is a tendency to feel that somehow by that he has earned salvation. Perhaps there are people who have given up more lucrative jobs to continue to live near a church society or to send their children to New Church schools. They feel that the loss of the pleasure which that sacrifice has meant buys them favor with the Lord. It is not that they say it is so, but they sometimes reflect on it with a great deal of satisfaction.

“Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams or with ten thousands of rivers of oil?” The first two ways of approaching the Lord are clearly good, but it is equally clear that they are not by themselves enough. These next two are more subtle. Rams represent the goods of spiritual life, and rivers of oil represent the truths that come from good–the truths that speak of good. We are tempted to feel that we can live a good life without overcoming our evils if only our life abounds in good things done (thousands of rams) and in true things spoken (ten thousand rivers of oil).

Only a king could give thousands of rams. Not even a king could give rivers of oil. We are tempted to look inside ourselves and see untold treasures. The Lord has given us some rather wonderful gifts and we feel that if we use these good things to do what is good, and if we teach and speak of wonderful ideals, then we are pleasing the Lord. Isn’t that what life is all about?

It sounds as if the answer should be yes. But it is not necessarily so. A person can spend his life doing good things. He can speak clearly and with great vigor of the ideals of the church. Yet without the acts of repentance he may not love these things at all. He may be using those good deeds and good words to further his own ends. Do we win salvation by many good deeds, thousands of rams, by many true things spoken, ten thousand rivers of oil? No, we don’t.

Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? Hezekiah turns to that forbidden act of child sacrifice in the last question to the Lord. This reflects a cry from the heart and an inappropriate approach to our God. It is very different from all the other offerings which have been suggested. The speaker now knows that he has done evil. What can possibly atone for it?

The firstborn represents charity. It represents the first, innocent joy in charity which the Lord allows all of us to experience at times. Every one of us who can be saved has at some time felt an unselfish joy and uplifting when he or she has been able to serve someone else without thought of reward. We have felt that this is the spirit of heaven. It is an innocent love. We didn’t create it. The Lord caused it to be born–our firstborn child.

Sometimes when we realize that we have done what is wrong we have the fear that that kind of love is lost to us forever. Maybe we will finally be accepted by the Lord, but the pure joy of heaven cannot be ours. We are too evil. There are many people walking this earth who would love to turn to the Lord, and perhaps in their hearts they are turning to Him. But the hells have taken hold of their minds and they feel more deeply than they can express that they are forever inferior. They have sinned too much. The pure love of heaven can’t be theirs. God doesn’t have the power to give it to them. In feeling this way they are unknowingly saying that their firstborn, something the Lord made in them, has died and will never live again.

So let us rephrase the questions of the prophet Micah in the language of the Writings. Wherewith shall I come before the Lord and bow myself before the high God? Does He want me to worship Him with my lips a great deal? Is that all He wants–burnt offerings? Does He want me to give up some of my external pleasures, perhaps even live a life of self-denial–calves of a year old? Does He want me to plunge into acts of good and speak earnestly of lofty ideals so that I will be a shining example to others of a saintly being –thousands of rams, ten thousands of rivers of oil? Or have I sinned so deeply that I must come to Him as a second class citizen who has lost his right to the true wonder of heaven?

“He has showed you, O man, what is good.” Yes, it is true. The Lord does have to show us what is good. Left to ourselves we develop many strange ideas of what is pleasing to our Lord, but what does the Lord require of you but to do justly and to love mercy, and to humble yourself by walking with your God?

That seems to take care of it.

Yet there is an internal sense to these words too–an internal sense which has endless meaning. Those three phrases were not chosen at random, nor named in that order without thought. There is a flow to them and there is a promise in them. Justice is the law of the natural heaven. It is the law that controls natural man. Mercy belongs to the spiritual heaven because it is an essential feature of charity, of how we deal with our fellow people. Humility comes from walking in the presence of the Lord from a love of God which ultimately is known only to the angels of the highest heaven.

The simple truth is that we have control only over the natural, only over the lowest of those three realms. The only one that we can do as from ourselves is to do justly. In that we can have a part.

It is interesting that doing justly involves all those other five things that went before–all the questions in the book of Micah. It is a part of justice to pray to the Lord sincerely within reason. It is a part of justice to give up some natural pleasures if they would lead us to love evil. Therefore the Writings speak of sacrifices of calves being pleasing to the Lord because of what they represent. It is a part of justice to do many good works and to speak with sincerity of the wonderful ideals of our church. It is even just to see where our evils have hurt the spirit of charity, the firstborn with us, and yet to see that in the Lord’s mercy that firstborn can be restored to us and not be sacrificed, even as Isaac was not sacrificed though Abraham thought he would have to be.

You and I can do justly. We can act in the spirit of the laws of justice which the Lord has revealed. And the first law of justice is to reject what is wrong in us because it hampers all further acts of good.

Of ourselves we can do justly. But how can we make ourselves love mercy? We may speak of mercy. We may force ourselves from conscience to show mercy. But what power in the human mind can create the love of mercy?

Can we walk humbly? We may be able to curb pride and conceit. We ought intellectually to acknowledge that all is from the Lord, and without Him we could have no life. But can we walk humbly? What power in us gives birth to that spirit?

We cannot do these things. There is no power in man to create a celestial or spiritual love. Yet the fact is that it is part of justice to show mercy and to show humility even when we do not feel or love them. It is part of justice to seek for and long for a merciful and loving spirit in dealing with others, and a humble heart in the presence of God.

No person in his early age can be merciful or humble in spirit. Perhaps that is true through most of our lives. But from early age we can long for mercy. We can long to lose conceit. We can read the teachings about these things in the Word and try to apply them. When we are angry with someone else we can try to show mercy, shun unforgiveness. When someone has done something wrong, we can pardon. We can develop a way to overcome self-righteousness and the wish to condemn, try to foster in ourselves a willingness to overlook the faults of others–or better yet, to help them with them if it lies within our power.

When we have done what is right, we can actively seek to be humble. We can find ways not to take the credit. Even as we smile and accept the thanks, we can consciously turn to the Lord and give Him the glory. We may know that the spirit of conceit has not yet been fully cast out, but we are trying to walk humbly, and the Lord will hear and make our efforts succeed.

As a church and as individuals we can love mercy by seeking it. We can walk humbly by consciously avoiding conceit and the desire for recognition, and by trying to be grateful in the presence of our Lord.

What does the Lord require of you but to do justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with your God? The word “require” means two things here. The Lord requires these things in the normal sense, that is, He says it ought to be so. But in a deeper sense, when the Lord gives an order, it comes to pass. He makes it come to pass.

There is only one thing in all of life that we can give to Him that is not His. That is our freedom. There is only one thing which the Lord cannot have unless we give it. And that is the decision to do justly. That is ours to give. And when we do, He can give us the other two, more gentle qualities. That is what He meant when He said–and these words are on the beginning of the New Revelation given to the New Church–“Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His justice, and all these things will be added to you.”

Amen.

By Rev. Douglas Taylor

“With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26).

This statement and other similar ones have sometimes been taken to mean that the Lord can do anything at all that people can imagine, and that He does everything without means; as for example, that He created the universe out of nothing. But this is tantamount to a miraculous faith.

The Lord can indeed do everything that He wishes to do (see Psalm 135:6). Whatever the Lord from His Divine love intends to do, He can do, because He also has at His command infinite wisdom by which to accomplish the end in view. In this sense it is true that “with God all things are possible.”

But it is certainly not true that He has absolute power to do anything at all evil as well as good, like a capricious earthly tyrant. For the Lord is good and His mercy is forever. He is goodness itself. So we are explicitly taught that His almighty power operates “within the sphere of the extension of good” (TCR 56). It is therefore impossible for the Lord to depart from that good sphere and do anything evil. To do that would be to go outside of Himself. It is impossible for Him to do anything contrary to His own Divine order, simply because He does not wish to do it. It is contrary to His very essence.

Since the Lord is order itself, and does not wish to depart from that order, we find in the Heavenly Doctrine a number of references to things that are impossible for the Lord to do, things contrary to order. On the other hand, the teaching is that “everything is possible that is in conformity with order” (AC 8700), because the Lord, the Mighty One, is in it. What He wishes can be done. “With God all things are possible” (text).

But what does the Lord wish above all else?

He wishes that there might be a heaven made up of human beings drawn from the human race. He wishes that every one of His creatures should receive as much abiding happiness or blessedness as he or she is willing to receive. The everlasting happiness of the human race collectively and individually is what the Lord wishes and strives for above all else as His goal of goals.

So it can be said that everything that leads to that supreme end (which is another way of saying “everything that is in conformity with order”) is possible because the Lord wishes it and has the wisdom to accomplish it.

This, then, is a universal principle; but let us see first what it applies to in our text. Every text has a context. What is the context of the Lord’s statement that “with men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible”?

This nineteenth chapter of Matthew’s gospel begins with a discourse on the subject of marriage. In the internal, spiritual meaning the marriage meant is the heavenly marriage, the marriage of love and wisdom in a human mind, the marriage of the will and the understanding the essential marriage.

Then follows the incident of the little children being blessed by the Lord, who says that of such innocent ones is the kingdom of heaven. They represent innocence a free and spontaneous willingness to do what the Lord wishes. That is what innocence is, the very essence of every state of heavenly happiness.

The willingness of the angelic inhabitants of heaven to follow the Lord wherever He leads, their desire to carry out His wishes at all times out of regard for Him, is beautiful to contemplate. But we are not born with that celestial and spiritual willingness to be led by the Lord that the higher angels have attained. We have to be re-born into it.

We begin our reformation with something very different. We begin with a sense of duty with regard to the Lord’s commandments, with the conviction that these commandments are Divine and for that reason must be obeyed. We have to begin by compelling ourselves against the inclinations of our human nature. We follow the Lord, yes; we strive to do His will as it is done in heaven. But we do this without any great delight, but rather with a heavy heart, with a sense of obedience to command. It is a matter of using deliberate will-power as if of ourselves, choosing many times between the Lord’s will and our own. And it is a matter of enduring to the end.

So we learn to do no murder (in any of its forms), to shun contemplating and committing adultery, and to flee away from stealing and fraud and from lying and deceit. We force ourselves to turn our backs on such evils of life because they are sins against the Lord, even though our baser self continually lusts after them and calls them delightful. We also learn laboriously to honor our father and mother, and even to some extent to love our neighbor as ourselves. These things we learn to do by self-compulsion, because we have heard the Lord say: “If you want to enter into [eternal] life, keep the commandments” (verse 17).

Then the Lord in His Divine providence, with His ever watchful eye upon our everlasting happiness, lets us experience a rather rude spiritual shock. We had thought that we were already in the Lord’s kingdom. We smugly say, when contemplating the Ten Commandments, “All these things I have kept from my youth. What do I still lack?” (verse 20)

In response the Lord makes us realize that keeping the commandments means more than avoiding certain evil actions and doing good acts. Our motive for doing the Lord’s will is of paramount importance; in fact, it is our motivating love that imparts the quality to the act. To the extent that self and self-centeredness enter in, the act is not good. It may well have a good effect on others, but in itself it is not a good act, because it does not go forth from a good motive. As the Lord said on another occasion: “Do men gather grapes from thorn bushes, or figs from thistles? Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but a rotten tree bears rotten fruit” (Matt. 7:16).

In order for our good actions and words to be genuinely good, even if done in obedience to the commandments, we have to receive the motivating love from the Lord. And in order to do that, we have to give up what is our own.

“Sell what you have and give to the poor” (verse 21). We have to give up all ideas of our own righteousness, all sense of merit of having earned heaven, and of having any rights in the matter any thought that we have the will-power to follow the Lord of and from ourselves, that we are the source of our own goodness and truth. We have to give up all such fantasies, and in poverty of spirit humbly admit the reality: that we have nothing that is good or true from ourselves, but that any such blessings that we may have we have received from the Lord, and from Him alone. “Without Me,” He said, “you can do nothing” (John 15:5, emphasis added). The more thoroughly we are convinced that “no one is good but One, that is, God” (verse 17), the more will our poverty of spirit be enriched, and the more heavenly delights will we be able to receive. Then we will understand what it is to come to the Lord and follow Him.

But this may seem to us a hard saying, one that we cannot bear to hear. For this state (when we experience a spiritual shock) is very much “a young man” an immature, early stage in the reformation and regeneration of our mind; and while we are in it, we may well be tempted to go away “sorrowful,” thinking longingly of the “many possessions” (the proprial delights) that we now realize we must give up. These are not so much our selfish pleasures and covetousness. They include those things; but the “many possessions” are specifically the feelings of ownership that we enjoy with regard to the Lord’s kingdom. We have to admit that we are not the proprietors of the blessings of heaven. Such good things do not in the least come from what is our own. They are the Lord’s, and only the Lord’s.

If we will but acknowledge that the kingdom is the Lord’s and not ours, that the power is the Lord’s and not ours, and that consequently, the glory belongs in fact to the Lord and not to us, then we can really be as little children in the presence of our Heavenly Father, and enter worthily and delightedly into His kingdom, for of such states of innocence is the kingdom of heaven.

But if we are loath to sell what we have and give to the nourishment of that poverty of spirit that is the first of the blessings of heaven, then we will surely depart from the Lord and be full of sorrow. For it will mean that we are trusting in ourselves alone; it will mean that we are worshipping ourselves, because whatever we look upon as the source of goodness and truth and power is for us our God, whatever it is.

If we are puffed up with the pride of our own understanding and intelligence, and the pride of possession; if we glory in what we know in comparison with others; if we gloat over ourselves, enlarging what is our own with the sanctimonious thought that we are not as bad as some others whom we could name and probably do name if that seems safe in the eyes of the world if, in short, we feel, consciously or subconsciously, that we own the kingdom, then we are the rich man who finds it so hard to enter the kingdom of heaven. It is just as difficult for mere knowledge without the humble acknowledgment of the Lord to usher us into genuine spiritual truth as it is for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, a camel corresponding to things known, and a needle to spiritual truth, or truth springing from the goodness of charity.

The amazement of the disciples on hearing what seemed to them a condemnation of natural riches is our amazement and bewilderment on realizing what we must give up in order to receive the innocence and bliss of heaven. It suddenly seems impossible. “What shall we eat [spiritually]? What shall we drink [spiritually]? What shall we wear [spiritually]?” Surely this is asking too much! It will kill us to have to give up our pride of intelligence and possession, our sense of merit. It will take away all our delights, our very life! How can we be asked to sell what we have in this sense and give to the poor? Besides, if this is the way, how can anyone do it, because it is surely against all human nature to do so? Who among us is not to some extent like the rich young man?

But the Lord’s answer to our state of bewilderment is simply this: “With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible” (text).

We cannot save ourselves from our own self-love! “How can Satan cast out Satan?” (Mark 3:23). It is utterly impossible.

It is quite impossible for us to become angelic except from the Lord, the only source of power. This is not the same as saying we need God’s help, because that usually means that we can do most of it but we will need some help from the Lord. How often we hear civil leaders proclaim, “With God’s help we shall prevail,” as if all that was needed was a little help from God in the difficult places! And how often God is forgotten after the victory!

No! The truth the reality is that from ourselves we cannot even believe that God exists. We would have no knowledge of Him unless He had revealed it by means of His Word. No one is born with an instinctive knowledge of theology. True, there is “a universal influx from God into the souls of men of the truth that there is a God, and that He is one” (TCR 8). But this influx has to be caught, so to speak, in those receiving vessels that we call knowledges (things known) about Him. These things known can come only from the pages of Divine revelation.

The influx from God (just mentioned) is what sheds light the light of truth upon the things known, which also have been Divinely provided. This light is what enables us to believe in the existence of God, not anything of our own. “With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible” for, as we are also taught, “it is the Divine that bears witness concerning the Divine” (AE 635:2).

If we cannot believe in the Lord from ourselves, still less can we love Him from ourselves alone. To love the Lord is to put Him first all the time, in every situation and in any company, and act as He would have us act not for our own sake, but for His sake. That is to love the Lord. But this is impossible for human beings themselves. We need to receive the love that goes forth from Him the eternally outgoing love and return it to Him. From ourselves we love only ourselves, putting ourselves first every time.

From ourselves we cannot even love the neighbor. To love the neighbor from charity or goodwill is to wish well to the neighbor, whether an individual, a community, our country, the church, or the Lord’s kingdom. To wish well to those who are the neighbor is to put their good first, or, at the very least, on the same level as our own. It is to wish lasting happiness to them; to serve them with a view to their welfare, not our own; to serve them rather than have them serve us; to be aware of the needs of others, to be considerate and thoughtful of others and remember them; to be neighbor-centered instead of self-centered; to be outgoing, to love and serve even those who are not connected to us by relationship or friendship; to be more concerned with giving rather than getting; to love to give without hoping for and expecting any tangible reward here or hereafter any other reward, that is, than the delight of use, which is inherent in the doing.

That is charity toward the neighbor. But “with men this is impossible.” Let us acknowledge that. It cannot be done. We cannot from ourselves do those things that are involved in loving the neighbor because, if left to ourselves, we are outside the proper order of life for human beings.

But let us never forget the remaining part of the text: “With God all things are possible.” The Lord can bear witness to Himself and His presence. The Lord can lift up our gaze above the seductive fallacies of our five senses and make Himself visible to the eyes of our understanding; the Lord can give us the will to obey Him unselfishly; the Lord can give us the will and determination to shun selfishness as a ruling love because it is a sin against Him (an obstacle to His presence); the Lord can fight for us in our temptations and He can win the battle for us; the Lord can give us that outgoing love that gives to others, the genuine charity that hungers not for rewards and thanks; the Lord can give us that poverty of spirit that ascribes the victory to Him alone.

Here then is the purpose of life. It is nothing else than to be conjoined with the Lord, with whom all things of order are possible, and with whom is the power to save from hell, here and hereafter. If we are conjoined with the Lord, our keeping the commandments will save us. To be conjoined with the Lord is to shun our evils because they are sins against Him and separate us from Him; it is to be in contact with Him, to receive from Him.

That is why the remainder of this chapter speaks about giving up the foes of our own household in order to receive from the Lord. “A man can receive nothing unless it has been given to him from heaven” (John 3:27). “Without Me” (or “Severed from Me”), says the Lord, “you can do nothing” (John 15:5).

When we really see that this is indeed so, then we can respond, from the heart, “Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory for ever.”

Amen.

By Rev. Eric H. Carswell

In the heavenly sense thieves means those who strip the Lord of His Divine power, and those who claim for themselves His merit and righteousness. Although these people worship God, yet it is not in Him they trust, but in themselves; and they do not either believe in God, but in themselves. (True Christian Religion 319)

The Writing of the New Church encourage us to see several levels of meaning within each of the Ten Commandments. On the highest level, each one of these commandments speaks of way in which our relationship with the Lord can be damaged by transgressing against Him and His role within our lives.

The commandment not to steal in its highest sense warns us against taking responsibility for and capability of the Lord’s power in salvation. A person steals from the Lord when he thinks that his accumulated acts of kindness, his accumulated prayers, reading, attendance at church entitle him to an excellent place in heaven or at the very least guaranteed entrance. A person steals from the Lord when she thinks “I’ve done so much good and so little wrong, I deserve to be happy and to have the good things of life right now. I’ve earned it.” A person even steals from the Lord when he believes that his efforts to do the right things as a parent should absolutely mold his children into the right sort of human beings.

A very important part of the relationship each of us has with the Lord relates to our understanding of what He does for us and what we must do to cooperate with Him. We can believe that we have the responsibility and capability of doing things that are properly the Lords and we can also be irresponsible and sense ourselves as being incapable of doing things that we absolutely must do with our own effort. Either fault has destructive consequences. One person can incline toward taking on too much responsibility in most areas of his life. Another can incline toward being apathetic and irresponsible in most or all areas of his life. And many of us would probably recognize that we are overly responsible in some areas or at some times and relatively inactive and irresponsible in other areas or at other times.

The history of Christianity shows examples of doctrine supporting both too much responsibility and too little. The medieval Christian church placed tremendous emphasis on the benefits of church sacraments such as baptism, Mass, and the last rites. Staying in the good graces of the church hierarchy was essential for getting to heaven. They strongly encouraged a literal interpretation of Lord’s words,

And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it. And I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. (Matthew 16:18-19)

The church officials were believed to have the power to open or shut heaven for a person. There was also the belief that if a person said enough prayers, lit enough candles, gave enough money to the church, went on a long and difficult pilgrimage, or visited some holy relic that there would be special benefits given to them. From this perspective, Christianity had a very heavy emphasis on doing religious things.

Apparently, starting early on in Christianity, people did not like the responsibility of avoiding sin and the consequences of committed sin. They wanted assurance that they would get to heaven. Apparently there was a strong desire for some way to make up for transgressions. Simultaneous to this there was a desire for power on the part of the church hierarchy. Giving people an explanation of salvation that benefited their power was a convenient doctrinal innovation. The net result was that the both the hierarchy and the individual Christian lay member stole from the Lord. They took on themselves and their decisions and actions the means of salvation.

The Protestant Reformation was a strong reaction against many of the excesses that had arisen in Christianity. But instead of re-establishing the proper balance between our role and the Lord’s, the doctrine of salvation by faith alone asserted that any kind of human effort toward being a better person had nothing to do with salvation. In its extreme form, it asserts that God chose from the beginning of time who would go to heaven and hell and that was that. Much more common is the idea that the only thing a person can do is acknowledge that Christ shed His blood for his personal salvation and then salvation is automatically guaranteed. This faith by itself and nothing else gives a person entrance into heaven. This doctrine has encouraged tremendous apathy in spiritual matters. It has discouraged people from giving any thought to specific expressions of evil in their lives. It has suggested that attending church and saying prayers, though worthwhile expressions of faith, actually don’t do anything significant.

The Lord has presented once again the balance of our role and His role in the doctrines of the New Church. It is our job to act as if from ourselves in consciously examining our patterns of motive, thought, and action. We are to ask the Lord to give us the insight to recognize the evil we most need to see, acknowledge, and fight. We are to acknowledge this evil specifically to ourselves and before the Lord. We are to ask for His help in fighting it and we are to consciously work at not giving expression to that evil in our thought or action. These are the steps of reformation. As we do our part the Lord works within our effort giving us the power to do what we do. We are to acknowledge this or we are stealing from Him. As we do our part the Lord also works the miracle of regeneration. He gradually brings about a change in what we care about. He gives us a new heart that allows us to, in freedom, turn from evil not merely as a matter of conscious self-compulsion, but because we now feel a revulsion at the evil lying before us.

We know that just because the Writings state something clearly it will not give a perfect protection from an evil. The Ten Commandments have been stated as clearly and as simply as they have for thousands of years and people who know them still transgress even their most obvious meaning. Because our outlook on ourselves and religion is significantly influenced by the ideas and practices of people surrounding we are inclined to some of their dangerous falsities and evils. While it doesn’t seem that many of us are likely to think that we can earn heaven by acts of piety, like the medieval Christian Church, there are strong dangers of faith alone beliefs influencing our thought and practice. There is a significant tendency to believe that the progress of reformation and regeneration is so hidden that it has little to do with daily life and decisions. There is a tendency to make prayer and a relationship with the Lord more a matter of formal observance than anything of significance. While there are some patterns that we share as a community that are good and healthy there are also ones that seem to make little or nothing of social evils. Men who consider themselves “New Church” indulge in movies and magazines that invite the presence of evil spirits who delight in sexual lust and the exploitation of women and/or are so appeal to a delight in violence and destruction that their positive value is hard to justify. People who could know better, take little or no thought about the quality of the gossip they seek and repeat. And the list could go on.

The technical theological term used to describe the idea that one can earn salvation or heaven is that of “merit.” The Writings state that “To attribute merit to deeds done to gain salvation is ruinous; for evils lie hidden in this of which the doer is quite unaware.” (True Christian Religion 439) The rejection of salvation by faith alone in our church does leave us open for taking on responsibilities that are properly the Lord’s. When we do this we commit spiritual robbery. We steal from the Lord and we can fall prey to the evils that lie hidden in the idea of merit. We too can have patterns of thought and action that are an effective expression of “denial of God’s influence and working on people, trust in one’s own powers in matters concerning salvation, faith in oneself and not in God, … salvation by one’s own strength, [and] the canceling of Divine grace and mercy. (True Christian Religion 439)

The Lord has reminded us many times that happiness does not come from the external environment. When we feel that enough natural effort on our part should guarantee us happiness at work, at home, even during vacation times, we are acting from the idea that we can earn happiness. We are unconsciously stealing from the Lord. He has strongly asserted the role of individual human freedom is an essential part of creation, and when we sense that we can, if we try hard enough ensure that someone else will be happy or will do the right things in his or her life, we are unconsciously stealing from the Lord.

The Lord wants us to know that what we do is very important, but without His help and His gifts, by themselves our efforts would not accomplish the goals we seek. May we learn better each day to recognize our own responsibilities and the Lord’s role and work. May we grown in commitment to do what we should and may we grow in gratitude for the Lord’s work. May we cooperate with Him in following Him on each of our pathways to heaven.

Amen.