If you got asked, "Are you like Moses?" You would probably say, "No." Statically, not that many of y'all are Biblical prophets with massive beards, walk with a cool staff, and have murder on your rap sheet. So, in those ways, at least not that many people are like Moses, but that misses the point of the story. We are like Moses in the critical dimensions - our innate humanity, our connection to God, and our receipt of a piece divine power. In those ways, we can all be EXACTLY like Moses.

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Turns out, with God's help, we can be good. We can take the high ground. We don't have to stoop to their level. We are not destined to repay violence with violence. Instead, we can see even our enemies as humans. Paul instructs us to do this in Romans echoing Jesus's words and actions in the Gospels. These instructions aren't meant to be abstract aspirations. They're a concrete guide to action. With God, we be legitimately better.

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It sounds like the Roman church had issues that we can resonate. A group of older timers and a group of newcomers faced rising tensions over who belongs. As a way to introduce himself to this congregation, Paul writes a letter, Romans, to hopefully help resolve this. He breaks down, in detail, how all belong, and then gets to the point. Since everyone belongs, we are all one body, and we all have something, a spiritual gift, to contribute. It was true for them then and is true for us now.

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We like to turn out noses up at the Pharisees. Who could possibility think that if you won't eat the right things, you doing belong? We say this to ourselves smugly as we move through a world full of brand advertising and images of the respectable good life. To all of us, Jesus issues a reminder that it's the things that we do, how we treat others and ourselves that matter. It's not what we consume but what comes from our hearts.

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His brothers really do a number on Joseph. He lands the role of family narc, and this snitch got something far more than stitches. They sell him into slavery, and as that caravan carries him far from home, we can imagine that Joseph had to wonder what was going to become of his life. He goes on to save God's people and Egypt from a horrific famine, but he doesn't know any of that. His story is a reminder that just because it looks bad, it doesn't mean that God isn't there and that God can do amazing things.

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Picture this. You see someone do something good. You feel good. You feel inspired. You do something good. Turns out, doing good can literally go viral - like a meme. It can be memetic. It's also at the core of the Feeding of Five Thousand. Jesus does miraculously multiply food, but the original food came from somewhere. It came from someone offering it up, and then, Jesus takes it and does something even bigger. It should challenge us to start but offering up what we can and see where God takes it.

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Each parable about the Kingdom of God adds a different piece of the picture. The Kingdom of God is like a mustard seed or yeast. It may not look like much but is incredibly powerful. It's something of incomprehensible and irrational value. It's something that not everyone will embrace. When we look at each of those pieces, we should get a portrait of what God is doing. It may not look like much. I may not always be the most popular thing, but it is God always at work in our world.

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Back in the dark ages of 2024, we did a sermon series called The Throne of God telling the story of King Saul, King David, and King Solomon like it was Game of Thrones and put out into the universe that someone should make that show. MGM Studios (Amazon) and Wonder Project (the guy who directed I Can Only Imagine, Jesus Revolution, and Young Washington) did essentially that or almost, kind of did that. It's a show that puts on screen the way the throne gets contested, the political machinery, and the faithlessness of Saul, but its Achilles Heal is its PG-13 rating.

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Not everyone who is in the Bible or gets ancestor status is a role model. Sometimes, we need to learn that God has been working with kind of lousy people all along and so won't be derailed by the kind of lousy people of today. Jacob is one of those people. He's kind of lousy. The Bible is pretty upfront about that. He steals, lies, and plays tricks. Jacob stands in for broken/chaotic side of human nature, and God finds away around.

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It's hard to be vulnerable in public. So much of our world runs on pretending to be cooler, more put together, more dramatic, or more interesting that you really are. Trillions of dollars of our economy runs on presenting a highly curated window into our lives. In introducing himself to the Romans, a church that did not know him, Paul chooses the opposite tactic. He presents an honest and unvarnished image of his sinfulness and his need for grace.

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