Loyalty to Christ

This is an edited version of a sermon preached at a Guild meeting on 13th March 2007.

Loyalty is sometimes harder to define than it is to recognise. It can be hard to put into words, but we know when someone has been loyal to us and we feel it when someone has betrayed us and been disloyal. If I was going to take a picture of “loyalty” and show it to you tonight, I would take a picture of my dog. A good dog’s relationship with its human masters is about as good a picture of loyalty as you can get. Loyalty of course is the state of being loyal, and in Chambers Dictionary, loyal is defined like this: “faithful, true, firm in allegiance, personally devoted to a sovereign.” And to this I would add another factor: that loyalty involves some degree of obedience whether out of duty or out of love. In each of these things my dog is loyal. She is devoted to me. Every time I walk in the door she greets me with affection as if she hasn’t seen me in months. She is firm in allegiance – she is on my side against any dog or any person outside the family pack who stands against us or is a danger to us. She is obedient – if I tell her to come she comes, if I tell her to sit, she sits – and not because she’s afraid of me, but because she enjoys obeying my commands.

The blue and gold border on the badge of the Guild is about another kind of loyalty: Our loyalty to Christ as our Lord and Saviour, and to God our Father as our Creator and Provider. When I was thinking about a Bible passage that would have something to say to us about loyalty, I decided on this passage near the end of the Book of Joshua, in Joshua chapter 24. It would be good if you had the passage open in your bibles as we look at some of the things this passage teaches us about our loyalty to God.

In the chapter just before this, Joshua delivers his farewell address to the nation as he nears the end of his life. And now in chapter 24 he gathers the people together at a place called Shechem, to establish anew under a covenant whether they are indeed going to be loyal to the LORD, the God of Israel, or not.

In this passage in Joshua chapter 24 we see a number of aspects of loyalty very clearly outlined for us and there are four I want to look at this evening, which I’ve labelled appreciation, allegiance, service and obedience. And each of these four things together, make up the character and attitude of a loyal Christian today, just as much as they made up the attitude of a faithful Israelite in Joshua’s day.

The first thing for us to notice is that loyalty involves appreciation of what our God and King has done for us in the past and will do for us in the future. In order to be loyal to God, we need to recognise who God is, what he has already done for us in our lives and especially in our salvation, and then grasp his promises for what he has in store for us in the future as his covenant people. We see this in verses 1-13 of our passage. Here Joshua gives a brief summary of one of the most exciting periods of history for God’s people in the Old Testament, to remind the people what the God who demands their loyalty now, has done for them and their forefathers in the past.

I don’t know about you, but I’m a big fan of those American television shows like “24” and “Prison Break” that run for half a year on the TV (though I usually cheat and watch them on DVD much quicker than one episode per week!). At the start of those shows there’s always a brief segment with “the story so far” to remind viewers what’s already happened before the next episode starts.

The first thirteen verses of Joshua 24 are a bit like one of those brief segments reminding us of the story so far. It takes us from before the time when Israel as a nation even existed, up to the then present day, with the nation having its own homeland in Canaan.

Joshua goes away back to the very first glimmerings of Israel as a people – to the father of the nation, Abraham, and even further back to his father, Terah. He looks back into antiquity to a point where the ancestors of the Israelites did not even worship the Lord, but other false gods.

But Joshua explains how God raised up Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to establish the nation of Israel, through their sons and other descendants. You’ll remember at the very end of the book of Genesis Jacob and his Sons settled in Egypt where Joseph was established as one of the national leaders. The Israelites prospered in Egypt until a new Pharaoh came to power who did not know Joseph. He feared that Egypt was going to be taken over by Israelites and so he put the Israelites into the hard bondage of slavery. Later, as verse five says, God sent Moses and Aaron to deliver the people from slavery.

And so the story continues, with the people’s time in the wilderness of the desert, until Moses died and Joshua became the leader of the people. They crossed over the Jordan and entered into the promised land of Canaan. They have fought battles at Jericho and Ai and established a new nation under God in the land of Israel after defeating the Canaanites who used to live there.

Hopefully you can grasp the point Joshua is making here. Before he goes on to question the people about their loyalty and faithfulness to God, he deliberately highlights what God has done for them; how faithful and loyal God has been to Israel. The reason for this is very simple. If we stop to consider what God has done for us, we are much more likely to want to be his loyal and faithful people, because he has done so much for us.

Appreciating God for what he is and what he has done is a very important step in establishing a relationship of trust and loyalty with him. Joshua pointed out to the people that they owed their freedom, their land and even their very existence solely to God’s goodness and mercy.

What about us, God’s people in the 21st century? Do we take the time to consider what God has done for us and our nation? Do we appreciate him for who he is and where we would be without him?

Joshua took the Israelites through a quick tour of their history to make his point. Couldn’t we do the same? Where would we be if God had not worked in the lives of Celtic missionaries like Columba, Cuthbert and Ninian who came to a harsh and violent land further north than civilisation stretched in those days, to bring the gospel to the “barbarians” who lived there? Where would we be had God later not sent Protestant Reformers who rediscovered the message of the gospel, the message of salvation by grace alone through faith, buried under layers of false Catholic teachings and medieval superstitions? But God raised up the likes of Patrick Hamilton, George Wishart, John Knox and Andrew Melville to reform the Church in Scotland and bring it back to the truths of God’s Word, to be the brightest light of the Reformation, known as “the land of the book” – the land where the purity of doctrine and worship according to the Bible was unsurpassed in the world.

And the list could go on and on. From the big national picture to our own local parish and church. Where would we be without the likes of Sidney Warnes who came to this building with only a handful of members left and renewed the building and the congregation leaving it strong and thriving for future ministers to take up the torch and keep a light in Bridgeton. Where would we be without the ordinary men and women who went before us in the race and worked to keep this church alive when others wanted it dead.

Above even these great things God has done for us in the ordinary course of history stands those amazing things God has done for us in the pages of Scripture. He created the world for us and sustains it by his mighty hand for us. He planned our salvation for us and in his eternal decree, settled before the world was made, he purposed that we should be brought to salvation. He sent his Son, Jesus Christ, into this world to save us, to die for us on the cross and rise again from the dead so that we might have eternal life. And he sent his Holy Spirit into each of our lives so that at the right time, in the right way, one day we heard the gospel and actually came to faith in Christ for ourselves.

God has done all these things for us. If we come to the point where we acknowledge this and appreciate the magnitude of what God has done for us, how can we not then feel not just a duty to be loyal and faithful to him in return, but a delight and passion to recognise him and stay loyal to him out of love? We owe him at least that, and many times that.

So loyalty first and foremost consists of appreciating what God has done for us. Secondly, loyalty involves allegiance. It means lining up in public, with determination and courage, on God’s side. You see Joshua it in verse 15: “Decide today whom you will serve...As for my family and me, we will serve the LORD.” Then in verse 23: “Pledge your loyalty to the LORD, the God of Israel.”

There is a diving line that runs through life – and it’s between those who are on the Lord’s side, and those who are against him. As Jesus says in Luke 11:23: “Anyone who is not for me is really against me; anyone who does not help me gather is really scattering.”

At another place, in Matthew’s Gospel (25:31-33), Christ says: “When the Son of Man comes as King and all the angels with him, he will sit on his royal throne, and the people of all the nations will be gathered before him. Then he will divide them into two groups, just as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the righteous people at his right and the others at his left.”

In Ephesians 6, Paul paints a picture of the universe as a battle between the forces of God and the forces of Satan. “For we are not fighting human beings but against the wicked spiritual forces in the heavenly world, the rulers, authorities, and cosmic powers of this dark age. So put on God’s armour now!”

Loyalty involves allegiance. It involves taking sides and being willing to show which side you are on. You cannot sit on the fence where Jesus is concerned. You can’t be for him a little bit. You can’t be a Christian up to a point. As one saying puts it, if he isn’t Lord of all, he isn’t Lord at all. Meaning, if you won’t have him as your King ruling every part of your life, then you have a problem, and need to examine your attitudes and your faith.

And why wouldn’t you want him to be Lord of your whole life? The only reason is sin. There’s no good reason why he shouldn’t be Lord of all your life. His yoke is easy and his burden is light. You see the choice isn’t really between being ruled by Christ or remaining free. The choice is between being ruled by Christ and being free, or being a slave of sin, in bondage to evil and ruled by Satan.

Paul wrote in Romans 10:9: “If you confess that Jesus is Lord and believe that God raised him from death, you will be saved.”

Jesus said in Luke 12:8-9, “I assure you that those who declare publicly that they belong to me, the Son of Man will do the same for them before the angels of God. But those who reject me publicly, the Son of Man will also reject them before the angels of God.”

The question each of us faces is this: are we really prepared to stand up for Jesus when it comes to the crunch? Not in church where to stand up for Jesus is the norm, but out there in the world, where standing up for Jesus will lose us friends, cost us dearly, leave us misunderstood, hated, persecuted, sometimes imprisoned, or maybe even martyred?

What a question! How can any of us answer it truly until we are in that kind of situation? But leaving aside the big life and death situations, how many of us aren’t even prepared to stand up for Jesus in the little things of life. How many of keep silent when God or Jesus are dismissed as a joke? How many of us pretend it’s okay what someone is saying in mixed company when we know deep down it isn’t okay? How many of us would be embarrassed if acquaintances or friends knew we were Christians who actually believe what the Bible teaches. How many of us are willing to stand up and say that’s wrong, or you shouldn’t be living that way?

But God demands more than that from us. He wants us to show our true colours all the time, and line up on the battlefield under God’s standard, as loyal soldiers, committed to his cause and willing to be attacked in defence of God’s truth and God’s way.

That’s what true allegiance is. That’s the mindset of these Israelites in Joshua 24. They are for God all the way here.

The third aspect of loyalty that the passage brings out clearly for us is that loyalty involves service. If we are to be loyal to God, we must be willing to serve God. The theme of serving God runs throughout our passage in Joshua 24 like a refrain. In verse 14 Joshua says, “Now then, honour the LORD and serve him sincerely and faithfully.”

In verse 21 the people are adamant, “We will serve the LORD,” they cry.

Service is not a popular concept in our day. Everyone’s supposed to look after number one. Life is a rat race to get to the top of the tree, to be rich and famous so that you can have people to serve you, not so you can be someone else’s servant. But God calls his people to serve him. Part of our being loyal to God is being willing to serve God. If you look back to the very beginning of Exodus when God appeared to Moses in the burning bush, the main reason God decided to free his people from bondage in Egypt was so that they could come and serve God by worshipping him on the sacred mountain of Sinai.

Later, in the desert, Moses says to the Israelites: “"Now, people of Israel, listen to what the LORD your God demands of you: Worship the LORD and do all that he commands. Love him, serve him with all your heart, and obey all his laws. I am giving them to you today for your benefit.”

The heart of serving God is worship. In the Old Testament the tribe of Israelites who had responsibility for serving God as priests were the Levites (Moses and Aaron were Levites). But in the New Testament, every believer is a priest to God. In the sense of offering up sacrifices of atonement there is of course only one priest we recognise – Christ who sacrificed himself on the cross. But in the sense of giving God worship, and living a life of service to him, all God’s people are priests.

As Paul wrote in Romans 12:1: “So then, my brothers and sisters, because of God’s great mercy to us I appeal to you: Offer yourselves as a living sacrifice to God, dedicated to his service and pleasing to him. This is the true worship you should offer.”

Everything we do should be done to give God glory – and everything we do does give God glory if it is done with the right attitude and for the right reasons. Baking a cake, or mowing the lawn glorifies God if done with the right heart – it’s not just “religious” things. As we saw last time when we looked at holiness – in God’s eyes there are no sacred and secular areas of life. Everything we do is to be holy. In the same way, everything we do should be to serve God, and that includes all the acts of love, kindness or goodness we show to other people. For as we serve other people we are serving God too, for we know that the greatest commandment is both to love God with all our heart and to love our neighbour as ourselves. We can’t truly do the first unless we also do the second, and likewise we can’t truly do the second without doing the first. Both love to God and our neighbour go hand-in-hand.

Paul sums this up in 1 Corinthians 10:31 by saying, “Whatever you do...do it all for God’s glory.”

Jesus said that we are to worship the Lord and “serve only him.” So, not only are we to serve God, we are to serve only God. We are to be single-minded in our devotion to God and in our worship of him. Nothing else is to be worshipped. Not Mary, not the saints, not statues or relics, not money or fame, not our careers, or our health, our bodies or anyone else’s body. Only God deserves our worship, and our exclusive service in this world. And part of being loyal to God is to keep ourselves free from idols. That’s very clear in our passage, where several times, Joshua brings the people back to a sharp reality. If you are God’s people – if you really want to serve him, then get rid of the idols.

As one old hymn puts it: “The dearest idol I have known, whate’er that idol be; help me to tear it from thy throne and worship only thee.”

If we are truly to be devoted to God’s service and worship, what sort of things do we need to think about in our lives? Well one obvious thing is that we should be committed to coming to church every Sunday to worship God. Hebrews 10:25 says: “Let us not give up the habit of meeting together, as some are doing. Instead, let us encourage one another all the more, since you see that the Day of the Lord is coming nearer.” Coming to church can be a habit – but let’s make sure it is a good habit, not done just out of habit, but because we really want to gather to worship God, praising him from the heart, and eagerly expecting to learn about him as his word is read and preached.

But there are aspects of service maybe we need to think about. Maybe we need to think about how little time we spend in prayer or in reading the Scriptures? Or maybe we need to think about how much time we spend doing certain things so that we end up not having enough time to go to church and meet our responsibilities to the church. Perhaps we need to think again about how we use our money and see if we are giving to God’s work sacrificially and generously. At this time, during a Stewardship campaign, we have the perfect opportunity to look again at ourselves, to see if we are serving God as we should with our time, our skills and abilities, and yes our money, but most of all – are we loving and serving God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength?

So far we’ve seen that loyalty to God involves appreciating who God is and what he has done, having a true allegiance to him and showing it, and being single-minded in serving him as our God. The last aspect of loyalty we’re going to look at tonight is in some respects the most straightforward, and yet it can be the hardest of all. If we are loyal to Christ the king, we should live in obedience to Christ the king. Being loyal to God, means obeying God. Loyalty involves obedience.

Once again we see this in our passage. The Israelites realised that it was impossible to be loyal to God or to serve God unless they obeyed God. In verse 24 they say: “We will serve the Lord our God. We will obey his commands.”

If serving someone is an unpopular concept, the idea of obeying someone else in authority over us is even more unpopular! Everyone wants to be his or her own boss. The idea that God isn’t just a big teddy bear who will give us a cuddle when we’re feeling sad, or who will slip us a bar of chocolate when we’ve done something good, is shocking to some people today, sadly even some people in the church. Sadly some people take something that’s true, like God is love, and twist it with their definition of what love is, to the point where this god of love (and now I’m using a small “g” for god by the way), where this god of theirs wouldn’t possible punish anyone, or even have the cheek to tell someone how they should live. The idea that there’s a problem in living in a way which God says is wrong is shocking to these people.

But our God is not an idol invented in the mind of sinful men. He is the sovereign Lord of heaven and earth, the Creator of the universe. The earth and everyone in it belong to him and he has the sovereign right to command his creatures to obey him. His commandments are not voluntary guides that we can choose to obey or disregard as we see fit. No, they are eternal laws that every human being is bound to obey or face punishment for disobedience.

But as God’s own people, loyal to him as our king, these laws are not to be obeyed by us out of cold duty or fear, but out of love and thankfulness for all he has done for us. And we are not left on our own to sink or swim. God has given us his Holy Spirit to empower us and help us to live in obedience to his will.

Joshua challenged the people of Israel gathered at Shechem. “Pledge your loyalty to the LORD, the God of Israel,” he said to them. What about us today? Knowing that being loyal to Christ Jesus involves recognition of what he has done for us and will do for us; making our allegiance with him, being on his side even when that’s unpopular, even when that’s misunderstood, even when that’s hard; serving him in our acts of worship and in our acts of charity and mercy for other people; and obeying his will even when we cannot see why we should or why he wants us to do certain things or stop doing certain things. Knowing all that, are we prepared to stand up and pledge our loyalty to the Lord? Are we prepared to take a stand and say, with Joshua, “As for my family and me, we will serve the LORD”? Are we loyal to the King of Kings, or are we part-time Christians, half for him, half against him, or are we traitors to his cause, spies in the camp, whose hearts are not faithful and true to him, but serve another master? That’s a very important question for us. In our own strength, we cannot stay loyal to him; but by his grace, we can. By grace we are more than conquerors through him who loves us. May we all live by grace, live by faith, in the shadow of the cross, in the light of God’s purity and holiness, bound by loyalty to the King of Kings.