Fryeburg New Church Assembly

Fryeburg, Maine
August 11, 2000

All this week we are talking about covenants. As our lecturers have explained already, a covenant is sort of the religious version of a contract. As you know, in order for a contract to take effect, the parties to the contract must sign on the dotted line. That's what I'm going to talk about this morning. Tomorrow morning, after the ink has already dried on the paper and your fate is sealed, George Dole's lecture on "Reading the Fine Print" will give you a better idea of what you just got yourself into!

Isn't that the way it happens in real life? It's only after we do something like get married or have a baby or take a new job or buy a used car that we find out about the "fine print" on what we just did. The Lord seems to purposely arrange it that way. If we knew beforehand what we were getting ourselves into, we'd probably never sign on the dotted line in the first place! Usually, we learn about as much as we need to know in order to make it through the next few steps. Life is definitely a learn as you go process.

We "sign on the dotted line" when we make a commitment to whatever it is that we're "signing up" for. In a business contract, we commit ourselves or our company to provide the goods or services specified in the contract, or to pay for those goods and services. In a wedding service, we commit ourselves to love, honor, and be faithful to the person we are marrying.

What do we commit ourselves to when we "sign on the dotted line" of the living, growing covenant we've been talking about this week? In the words of the Psalmist, we "commit our way to the Lord" (Psalm 37:5). That's a very broad commitment! Yet the Lord is never satisfied with halfway measures. The Lord wants our entire lives.

Let's read a little more of this Psalm. It gives an outline of the covenant, and may provide what we need to know for now about our part of the covenant, and God's part.

Let's take a look at this covenant. First, we are told to "trust in the Lord and do good."

Trust in the Lord. That's not always easy. We tend to want to trust in ourselves. As the old saying goes, "if you want it done right, do it yourself." We tend to think that no one else could be as competent as we are to take on the task in front of us. We aren't always so sure that even the Lord is going to do a good job of it. What about this marriage thing? We know all about our partner's problems, and is God really going to keep them on track if we don't make it our business to do it? Can we really let go of the situation, put it in God's hands, and trust that God will bring the best possible result?

Another thing we tend to trust in more than God is money. If we can just make enough money, we'll be able to take care of ourselves, and we won't need any outside help--including God's help. From a material standpoint, being self-supporting is not a bad idea. I recommend it over expecting everyone else to support us without shouldering our share of the burden. But we can take this individualism thing too far. And we do take it too far when our level of competence at supporting ourselves materially "goes to our head" spiritually so that we think we don't have to trust in the Lord to get us through the difficult times in life--and give us direction in the better times, too.

Speaking of direction, the full line of the Psalm is "trust in the Lord and do good." You may think that "doing good" is too broad a direction. Of course, we'll need to refine this in our own lives. But doing good rather than doing evil is where we all need to start. Most things in life are not black and white. But when we look at the biggest picture, we will find that even though we do live on the borderline where black and white mix into gray, there is black, and there is white. And from the gray area in which we live, we can move either toward the darkness or toward the light.

When life is boiled down to the basics, that choice of black or white, falsity or truth, good or evil is the most fundamental and the most significant choice we have in front of us here on earth. Which particular form of good or evil we get involved in is less significant than whether we point ourselves toward the evil or toward the good. After all, whatever direction we point ourselves in here on earth, that's the direction we'll be going in to eternity. And eternity is an awfully long time!

"Trust in the Lord and do good; dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture." Though it is not labeled as such, the second line is the part of Lord's side of the covenant. If we trust it the Lord and do good, then the Lord will ensure that we dwell in the spiritual land of the Lord's kingdom, and enjoy the safe pasture of having all the activities of our daily lives fed with the nourishing pasturage of a living, growing understanding of the ways of the Lord. When we trust in the Lord and do good, we find that the Lord does feed us each day with exactly the kind of spiritual food required to satisfy our present need.

Next, we are told, "delight yourself in the Lord." When we delight ourselves in the Lord, we take a step beyond trust. We trust when we're not sure ourselves, but we're willing to place our lives in God's hands, with the expectation that something good will come. When we delight ourselves in the Lord, we are already experiencing that goodness! Spiritual life is not meant to be a dreary affair of doing good just because we know we ought to. Rather, when we not only trust in the Lord and do good, but take delight in the goodness of loving and serving others, we find true joy and happiness.

That is what Psalm 37 promises: "Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart." What are the desires of our heart? If we trust in ourselves and in money, the desires of our heart have something to do with getting better positions for ourselves, more status, a better-paying job, and more of the comforts and luxuries of life on this earth. And our teachings tell us that we are allowed to go after these things from our own prudence, and even to acquire them for ourselves.

But this would not be trusting in the Lord; and there is no promise that we will gain the desires of our heart this way. We may fail, and end out struggling along like the bulk of humanity. Or we might gain it all, and then lose it even faster than we gained it. Or we may gain it, and maintain it, and find that we are still not satisfied. If the desires of our heart have to do with material things and our own fortunes, then our satisfaction in life will rise and fall as our outward fortunes rise and fall. And oftentimes we will be at the mercy of economic and social forces over which we have no control.

When we make a covenant with the Lord, it is different. If, instead of delighting in material things and in our own position and influence, we delight ourselves in the Lord, then the Lord will give us the desires of our heart. Because then the desire of our heart will be to love and serve the Lord through loving and serving our fellow human beings. And there is no shortage of ways to love and serve other people.

When we take our delight in this, then the desires of our heart are fulfilled each day. Every day, we can do something day that will bring some comfort and happiness to those around us. Our enjoyment of life does not have to wait for a big promotion, or a raise so that we can afford the new car we've been eyeing, or even a breakthrough in our closest relationships. As nice as these things may be, when we take our delight in doing good, we will be continually gaining the desires of our heart whatever our outward circumstances may be.

From trusting in the Lord and delighting in the Lord, we move to committing our way to the Lord. As I mentioned earlier, this is where we truly sign on the dotted line of our personal covenant with the Lord. We have begun to trust in the Lord. We have begun to take delight in the ways of the Lord. And the Lord has kept his side of the covenant by feeding our spirit daily and satisfying more and more of the desires of our heart. At this point, we may feel that we've read enough of the fine print that we can go ahead and commit our way to the Lord. We can make the decision that whatever may come our way, we are going to follow the path that the Lord is laying out in front of us.

This is where we need to be to continue on our spiritual journey. Like a marriage, our relationship with the Lord can only go as deep as the commitment we are willing to make to stick with it through thick and thin. And like marriage, there are going to be some thin spots. But before we get there, we are given a beautiful promise: "Commit your way to the Lord, and he will do this: He will make your righteousness shine like the dawn, the justice of your cause like the noonday sun." I love the progression. It is an image of sunrise, and the brightness building until it reaches its peak: the noonday sun. Our righteousness will shine like the dawn, and the justice of our course like the noonday sun.

Isn't this what we want when we have committed our way to the Lord? To have our lives shine more and more with the beauty and brightness of the Lord's presence within us? When we love the Lord above all, and our neighbor as ourselves, we want our lives to be transformed into a living vessel that carries God's love and truth to those around us. When we commit our way to the Lord, the Lord's promise is that we will be able to accomplish this. We will become messengers of God's love and light to the people we encounter each day.

However, this will not come easily. God gives us a lifetime to accomplish this transformation because for most of us, it takes a lifetime. The Psalm is true to the way we experience life. When we sign a business contract, that's when the work of fulfilling it begins. When we take our vows at the altar, that's when a relationship shifts from the fun of falling in love to the oftentimes hard work of being in love. And when we make our commitment to the Lord, that's when the hard work begins of facing and overcoming everything within us that would stand in the way of our fulfilling that commitment.

It can take a lot of work, and a lot of patience. The Psalm continues, "Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him; do not fret when people succeed in their ways, when they carry out their wicked schemes." I suspect that when the Psalmist wrote this, he was thinking about evil in other people who could be identified as "the wicked." And the Psalm works at that level. It does us no good to fret and fume and let our own commitment to goodness be turned aside when we see or hear about someone accomplishing some dishonest or criminal act and getting away with it. Yes, it's wrong; and yes, if we're in a position to do something constructive about it, we should. What we shouldn't do is decide that if others can get away with it, perhaps it's not so bad after all--and then head in that direction ourselves.

That's fairly obvious. What may not always be so obvious is that at a deeper level, everything in the Bible applies to our own individual lives, and the "wicked schemes" that are being carried out are within us. We will get more out of the Bible if we apply everything in it to our own lives, rather than using it to point fingers at those "other people" who do not have the faith or the understanding or the moral fiber that we do.

If we consider that the wicked schemes are really in ourselves--in our own minds and hearts--we can gain deeper wisdom from the Psalm. Our intention to live according to the Lord's way does not always translate into actually living according to the Lord's way. We all make mistakes and do things we shouldn't have. Sometimes, we "fall off the wagon" and take a big detour in our journey toward a better and more spiritual life. Sometimes, we never get on the wagon in the first place. To put it simply, sometimes we really make a mess of things.

In its spiritual meaning, the Psalm is philosophical about this, too. "Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him; do not fret when people succeed in their ways, when they carry out their wicked schemes. Refrain from anger and turn from wrath; do not fret--it leads only to evil. For evil men will be cut off, but those who hope in the Lord will inherit the land."

When we get off the track, and start saying and doing things that we know are wrong--or simply descending into a negative attitude about our life, our work, the people around us--our tendency is to want to beat ourselves up for being so stupid and evil. "I'm just no good, I was crazy to think that I could really change and become anything different than that what I've always been." We fret; we get angry at ourselves; we scold ourselves and tell ourselves how worthless we are and how hopeless our situation is.

Perhaps some good can come of this if through it, we realize that when we go our own way and trust in ourselves, we are worthless and we will never break free of our old ways. But the Psalm suggests a different way of dealing with the situation. Instead of getting all worked up about it, don't fret; be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him; refrain from anger and turn from wrath--because fretting leads only to evil. When we tell ourselves that we'll never get any better, our mind proceeds to make sure that this prophecy of ours comes true. But when we can quiet our own pronouncements and prescriptions, and simply wait for the Lord--for what the Lord will do for us--then we can have a new trust that, in the words of the Psalm, "evil people will be cut off."

To apply this to the life within us, when we trust that the Lord is leading us, and wait patiently for the Lord's will to be done in us, while recommitting ourselves to our covenant with the Lord, then we can trust and know that the evil in us will be cut off. There will be a time when we will no longer feel driven toward the particular vices that we are now prone to. As we pick ourselves up and renew our commitment to the Lord, the Lord will make further inroads into our hearts, and will continue the work of removing even the desire to indulge in our old ways.

It is true that we have no power at all to change what is in our hearts. But the Lord does. In Divine Providence #100, Swedenborg spells out what is our part of the covenant, and what is God's. He writes:

It is a law of divine providence that we should remove evils as sins in our outer self by ourselves, and only then can the Lord remove the evils in our inner self, and at the same time in our outer self.

Our "outer self" means our outward actions and the more outward, action-oriented parts of our minds. It is our job to get these straightened out. Of course, we must recognize that it is the Lord who gives us the power to do that. But beyond that recognition, it is up to us. If we don't make a real effort of our own, the Lord is not going to come in and do the work for us. Our part is to remove evils as sins in our outer self. The Psalm expresses this as not fretting (not having bad attitudes) and doing good--which involves not doing evil.

When we keep our part of the covenant, the Lord will keep his. As we persist in not allowing the evil in our hearts to find expression in our lives, the Lord will cause that evil to wither from our hearts as well. To return to the Psalm, "A little while, and the wicked will be no more; though you will look for them, they will not be found."

Have you ever woken up one morning and realized that you no longer even want to act the way you used to? That your old ways don't appeal to you at all anymore? It's a great feeling! After all that time spent struggling, refraining, correcting, and redirecting ourselves--keeping our part of the covenant--we suddenly realize that the Lord has kept his part! It is no longer a struggle. As the Lord promised us in the beginning, he has set us free from that particular evil in our character.

The Psalm says, "The meek will inherit the land, and enjoy great peace." The meek, not in the sense of having no spine, but in the sense of being willing to lay aside our own will and submit ourselves to the Lord. The meek in the sense of not feeling that we must always stand up for our own pride, but can let insults and injuries roll off our back, while continuing to act with integrity and with love ourselves. This meekness of innocence toward the people around us through the innocence of allowing ourselves to be led by the Lord is what will "inherit the land" of our souls. This is the peace that will take over in our lives if we follow the way of the Lord. The Psalm sums it up this way:

Lecture Index	HomePage	Lecture #9



Music: In the Garden � 1999 Bruce DeBoer

Signing on the Dotted Line

Lectures delivered at

Fryeburg New Church Assembly

Fryeburg, Maine August 11, 2000

Fryeburg, Maine
August 11, 2000