"Are You Ready for Some Football?"

We’ve all heard the question “Is nothing Sacred?” Well apparently there is something sacred. I was watching football last Sunday Afternoon and was pleased to discover that the advertiser for a popular “beverage” says Sunday is sacred. But as we would expect, it is sacred not because it is the Lord’s day or a day of worship. Sunday is sacred because it is the day set aside for “football.” That is a rather sad commentary on our society and a very accurate commentary on those who like to drink this particular “beverage”.

Proverbs 28:14 says "Happy is the man who is always reverent.” Happy is the man who remembers that Sunday is for football. Is this what the writer of Proverbs had in mind? I don’t think so.

This verse is interesting because reverent and happy are two words that most people would tell you could never appear in the same sentence. You can be happy or you can be reverent, but you can’t be both at the same time.

Reverence means stained glass windows, pipe organs, uncomfortable wooden pews.
Reverence means elaborate robes, men speaking with solemn,mumbling voices.
Reverence means people with long, pious, sad, unhappy faces.
Reverence means “quakers meeting has begun no more laughing no more fun.”

So, who wants to go to church? Hmmm I’ll get back to you after the football game.

First we need to understand that none of the things I just mentioned about reverence are indicators of the truly reverent person.

Proverbs tells us that reverence does not kill joy, it leads to joy. Reverence is about taking serious the things of God. It is refusing to trivialize or render common that which is holy and to be set apart.

God, Jesus Christ, the Church, The Lord’s table, the Bible, Marriage, Sex, the Family, the Cross, Life itself are all things that are to be treated reverently because they are sacred. God and the things of God. They are to be set aside and treated with respect, dignity and reverence.

The problem in our society we have changed the trivial things into sacred things and rendered the sacred as trivial. For someone to run onto the playing field of a professional baseball game, to hear the announcers describe it, you would think they just desecrated a holy shrine. But people can use the Lord’s name in vain, joke about the family, trash a church and its no big deal.

The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, reverence and happiness. The hard hearted person who thinks it is good sport to desecrate sacred things, Proverbs says they will fall into calamity. God is not mocked.

We are to treat with reverence God and those things that God says are Holy. Reverence is not a place, or something we wear, it is an attitude. This attitude does not slam shut the door of happiness, it opens the door for true Joy and happiness to manifest itself. May God help us to discern the difference between the sacred and the trivial.

Therefore "Rejoice in the Lord always and again I say Rejoice" Phil 4:4