day no. 17,471: put your mind where your mouth is (exhortation outline)

Christ Church Leavenworth

Call to Confession

August 23, 2026

Put Your Mind Where Your Mouth Is

THE TEXT

Our text this morning is Matthew 6:7, these are the words of God.

“When you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words.”

INTRODUCTION

Every week like clock work we wake up, get dressed, come to church, and confess our sins. And just like how a clock works, it is easy to take for granted. When we do something over and over, it can either rub something off like sanding a piece of wood or it can rub something in like staining a piece of wood. The more you sand, the more wood you rub off, but the more you stain, the more stain you rub in. All that to say, repetition is not vain by default. Repeating creeds and reading prayers do not have to be empty headed, but, as our text points out, they can be. Liturgies can lead to mindless routines, but they also can lead to meaningful routines.

In our text, Jesus warns against getting caught in a rut. Ruts are produced by repetition. The same wheels go over the same path over a long period of time and the ruts appear. When someone is “caught in a rut” they are stuck doing the same things over and over whether they like it or not. Another traveler further down the same stretch of road is going along in the same rut, but his experience is different. He is enjoying the ease of the path and the comfort of knowing it is well-worn by those who have gone before him. He is in the same rut, but he wouldn’t describe it that way; instead, he would say that he is “in a groove.” A man “in a groove” is getting things done, but one “stuck in a rut” feels like nothing is getting done. So, how are you navigating the liturgy today? Are you in a rut or are you in a groove? Are you going through the motions or are you growing through the motions?

We are a liturgical people here at Christ Church Leavenworth. We have thought through what we do and how to do it. We have hand picked every element of the service including their order and the purpose they serve. One of the benefits of having done that is not having to think it through each and every week. You do the hard work of carefully laying the foundation one time so that you are free to live on the floors above it. But we do not want a “set it and forget it” kind of service either. Many of you, if you’ve been coming for a while, could put your soul on auto pilot and coast through the morning. You could sing the songs without ever thinking about the words you are saying and you could repeat the Lord’s Prayer without giving any thought to the requests coming out of your mouth. You could read the confession of sin without meaning a word of it. All of those things could happen, they could sand your soul down. But it doesn’t have to. Repetition can wear the finish off the wood, but it can also rub the richness of the stain into it. 

So, do not offer up empty phrases this morning. Pay attention to what you have grown accustomed to saying. As we recite the corporate confession, do not zone out. Keep your mind focused on what your mouth is saying. As we sing the Lord’s Prayer, do not merely hum along in your head as your lips do all the work. Think about what you are praying. The same can be said for the Doxology or the Gloria Patri or The Apostles’ Creed. Do not say the words, “We believe” without giving thought to what you are saying you believe. Do not just say you believe it, believe it as you say it. In other words, put your mind where your mouth is.

When you’re learning a new song, you have to pay attention to every up and down and every start and stop. You have to read every word as you sing it. But once you know what to do with your voice and what you’re supposed to be saying, it is possible to begin singing that song without thinking much about it. That said, at that point, it also becomes possible to think about what you are singing without having to think about how you’re supposed to be singing it. You can lean into the words without having to read them and you can belt it out without wondering what note you’re supposed to be belting. Learning the song makes it possible to think less about it, but it also makes it possible to think more about it.

It’s the same thing with dancing. When you’re first learning a dance, you are not dancing at all, you are just counting and trying not to kill yourself… or your partner. You are preoccupied with where your feet are supposed to be and how many counts are left before you’re supposed to be doing something else with your feet. Your mind and body are fully engaged in all of it. That is how you learn to dance. But once you’ve done that enough, you stop counting and you start dancing. At that point, you could decide to zone out and think about other things without missing a step, but you could also enjoy the dance and think about what you are doing without having to be stressed out about making the wrong step.

So, here is your exhortation: do not delegate all of the heavy lifting to the liturgy. It is there to help you and to spot you as you lift your soul up before the Lord. But as good as a good spotter is when working out, he cannot lift the weight for you. He is there to help you attempt great things and to push yourself, not to lift the weights for you. You are about to say words you have said before. You are about to sing songs you’ve sung before. You are about to eat and drink things you have ate and drank before. Do not allow these meaningful things to be turned into empty gestures. Instead, take advantage of the fact that these are familiar to you and lean into them even more. There is a kind of comfort that frees you to be more you, like a long evening with old friends, and there is a kind of comfort that keeps you from being you, like not staying in bed when it’s time to get up. Let the liturgy be like an old friend and let its familiarity lead you to greater depths. Do not use it as an excuse to stay in the shallows.

CALL TO CONFESSION

Well, since it is easier to zone out than it is to zoom in and because we are often prone to take things for granted instead of taking them again with gratitude, we are reminded of our need to regularly confess our sins, whether they be this sin or others. So, if you are able, please kneel with me and confess your sins, first privately and then corporately using the prayer found in your bulletin.

CORPORATE CONFESSION

Gracious Father, if You were to mark iniquities, who could stand? But with You is forgiveness, that You may be feared. Called by You to the throne of grace, and confident in our great High Priest, we bow before You and confess that we have sinned against You and been unfaithful to Your holy covenant. Our hearts are deceitful above all things and desperately sick, so that we often do what we hate, and neglect what we love. Out of our mouths we both praise You and curse our fellow men. You promised mercy to our fathers through the seed of the woman. Turn our hearts again, Father, to consider Jesus, who crushed the serpent’s head, and saved His people from their sins. Forgive, cleanse, and restore us for His sake. Amen.

DECLARATION OF PARDON

Arise and hear the Good News! The assurance of pardon today comes from Philippians 3, “I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For His sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith.” 

You do not have to take a bath to come to the dinner table, but do need to wash your hands. If you have suffered the loss of all things save Jesus, you have been bathed, but your hands have gotten dirty throughout the week. We do not come together to get saved again, we come together to worship the one who saved us, who is saving us, and will in the end save us. We are not saved because we said, “Sorry,” again this week, we are saved because Jesus said, “It is finished!” once for all. And so, we have gathered here to enter into His presence to praise Him, but first we have stopped to wipe our souls at the door. Now that we have done that, let us enter into His courts with boldness, not because we have earned it, but because Jess has paid it all and in Him our sins are forgiven …THANKS BE TO GOD!

Now let us ascend to the presence of God in all worship and praise.

day no. 17,470: highway snobbery

1 Peter 4:9

Show hospitality to one another without grumbling.

Matthew 25:35

For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me.

Luke 6:38

Give, and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For with the measure you use it will be measured back to you.

Matthew 6:3-4

But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you. 

Luke 3:11

And he answered them, ‘Whoever has two tunics is to share with him who has none, and whoever has food is to do likewise.

"The verses you cite are of course authoritative, and we should come to them with an eagerness to obey. But what you are doing is taking verses that command private generosity and hospitality, and making them apply to public policy, particularly policy on immigration rates. This has the effect, not of you giving your goods away in obedience to Christ, but rather of you making other people give their country away. They are not the same thing." — Douglas Wilson, Letters, High and Inside

It is one things to freely give what you have away and quite another to force your brother to give away what it his. But it goes even further when it insists that the recipients of said forced attrition should be ones who are actively invading one's homeland. It is as though one would argue that those with much ought to give to those who have less and so when anyone breaks into your home, you should not call the cops, rather you should call for some friends to come over to help your intruders carry as much as they would like away.

Thou shall not steal presupposes property rights. It is the thing that makes charity possible in the first place. To force people to give away what is rightfully theirs is to put an end to the possibility of charity and to put into law a regular expectation of plundering your neighbor without recourse to the marauder and no restitution for the robbed.

day no. 17,469: religious liberty does not grow on secular trees

"Let us say that we have a country—America, say—that has a long tradition of respecting religious liberty. We will not inquire (at this time) into the factors that created this tradition . . . because we are going to get there in a minute. All we need to know now is the fact that they have it. Now suppose in the name of that religious liberty, that country opens its borders to millions of people who represent a tradition that does not respect religious liberty at all. Not a bit." — Douglas Wilson, Religious Liberty Is a Religious Value

Religious liberty is a Christian value. Christianity is the salt of the earth. But what good is salt that has lost its saltiness? How much sugar can you add to the salt cellar before it is no longer a salt cellar? A little bit of sugar can assimilate unnoticed, but at a certain saturation, it is all you notice.

"So if you want ordered liberty under law, with the maximum amount of liberty for dissenters, the best place to get it from would be the Christians. Simply compare the liberties of a Christian in a Muslim state and those of a Muslim in a Christian state. I trust Christians to respect the rights of secularists far more than I trust the secularist to respect the rights of Christians." — Douglas Wilson, Religious Liberty Is a Religious Value

Christianity is accused of being totalitarian, but Christendom has made room for those who accuse it of that. On the other hand, the cancel culture of the dissenters would eliminate Christianity altogether if it could and is not ashamed to say so. Unbelievers and their unbelief is safer in a Christian society than Christendom and faith are in an unbelieving society. Tolerance is a Christian virtue. It can spring from cowardice and it can tolerate too much for too long, but the fact of it is only possible in a society that honors Christ. Unbelief has about as much tolerance for Christ as feminists do for the patriarchy.

"If there is no such thing as neutrality—and there isn’t—then there can be no moral or ethical system that springs up out of that neutrality. Soil that isn’t there cannot be used to grow anything. The secularists take credit for religious liberty the same way squatters take credit for the house that they just seized." — Douglas Wilson, Religious Liberty Is a Religious Value

Secular humanism and the coexist cult have not produced peace. Christendom made a way for atheists to live among Christians, but Atheism has not room for Christians. Atheism converts by the tip of the sword, usually borrow from the State since they weren't using it on murders, rapists, kidnappers, or pedos. Whatever coexistence every existed, it was there because of the Christian faith. As we have increasingly abandoned the law of God, we have become increasingly less tolerant of differences. In some regards, this is honest inasmuch as it formally recognizes the enmity between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman, but it does not end with the sons of snakes trying to convert the Christians through arguments, it ends with them attempting to exterminate believers (and their beliefs) by force.

day no. 17,468: experiments in education

"In this age of child-psychology nobody pays any attention to the actual psychology of the child. All that seems to matter is the psychology of the psychologist and the particular theory or train of thought that he is maintaining against another psychologist. Most of the art and literature now magnificently manufactured for children is not even honestly meant to please children. At best they are meant to please the child-lover. At the worst they are experiments in scientific educational method." — G.K. Chesterton,  Child Psychology and Nonsense

It is one thing to consider how kids think and it is quite another to consider how you think kids ought to think. The first is merely observing the lay of the land, the second is landscaping. I point this out, not to imply that landscaping itself is a problem, but to point out that those who do it should have the integrity to be honest about it. 

God has called parents to shape their children's affections and conceptions. This is landscaping. It is pruning and trimming back and shaping a mind in a particular direction and for a particular purpose. That is all good and glorious and just as God intended. 

What the modern psychologist does is project his or her own idea of what he or she thinks children ought to be like into the child. It is not an objective study of the subject, but an invasive injection of a foreign object. They claim to be hands off and yet they meddle. Their dishonesty is, however, only half the problem. The other half is what they project onto the child. They anachronistically accuse the child of ideas only adults have. They read back into childhood that which the observer is experiencing in adulthood.

"Obviously, it ought to be the oldest things that are taught to the youngest people; the assured and experienced truths that are put first to the baby. But in a school today the baby has to submit to a system that is younger than himself. The flopping infant of four actually has more experience, and has weathered the world longer, than the dogma to which he is made to submit. Many a school boasts of having the last ideas in education, when it has not even the first idea." — G.K. Chesterton, What's Wrong With The World

In many cases the child is more experienced than the model he is expected to submit to. The ideas on the child's head are older than the theory he is being asked to consider. Modern educators see themselves as experts and our children as their test subjects. Instead of teaching subjects like math, science, etc... to our children, they experiment on our children like they are subjects.

day no. 17,467: rest in peace and wake up to wage peace

"I dare say that when I get out of this bed I shall do some deed of an almost terrible virtue.” — G.K. Chesterton,  On Lying In Bed

We work from rest, not for it. The Sabbath is fuel and the other six days are flammable. 

Let us rest well and work with vigilance and violence, fighting the good fight of faith in whatever we do. 

We must rest in peace before we can wake up to wage peace.

day no. 17,466: early risers and earlier raiders

"Misers get up early in the morning; and burglars, I am informed, get up the night before." — G.K. Chesterton,  On Lying In Bed

Misers riser early, but raider rise earlier.

Skinflints get up early to count their coins to make sure they are all still accounted for from the night before, but thieves get up even earlier counting on the ones with coins needing to sleep at some point. 

Some men would rather stay up late in order to steal another man's money and some men get up early to earn an honest day's wages. Some men get up early to have more time with their treasure and some sleep in satisfied with what they have.

Money can move a bedtime up or back, honestly or dishonestly, greedily or contentedly. 

day no. 17,465: nineteen years of wedded bliss

Today marks 19 years of Team Van Voorst.

I love my wife. I like being married. I love my children. I like our home. I like my life. 

Christ is King and He is kind.

Here's to many more.