"God Prepares You" (Sermon on 1 Thessalonians 3:9-13) | November 28, 2021

Text: 1 Thessalonians 3:9-13
Date: November 28, 2021
Event: The First Sunday in Advent, Year C

1 Thessalonians 3:9-13 (EHV)

Indeed, how can we thank God enough for you in return for all the joy we have before God on account of you? 10Night and day we are praying earnestly to see you in person and to supply what is lacking in your faith. 

11May God our Father himself and our Lord Jesus direct our way to you. 12And may the Lord increase your love and make it overflow for each other and for all people, just as ours does for you, 13so that he may establish your hearts as blameless in holiness before our God and Father, when our Lord Jesus comes with all his saints. 

God Prepares You

Prep work is often necessary, sometimes well in advance of the main goal you’re shooting for. Under a normal year when we’re not looking to transition to a new hymnal, I like to have a draft of the entire year’s hymn schedule done before we get to this First Sunday in Advent at the start a new church year so that something is down and ready to be used or adapted as we go through the year for every Sunday. You’ve undoubtedly heard all of the news about the current supply chain issues that are preventing everything from books to cars to cell phones to be made, usually not because of the final product, but because of something smaller along the production line; the prep work can’t be done. If you would have visited our home at the beginning of this past week, you could’ve helped us test the rolls for Thanksgiving dinner as Karen made them several days in advance so they were just ready for the meal on Thursday (they were wonderful in case you were wondering!).

When big things are coming, you want to be prepared. You want to practice that presentation, study for that test, and double check the ingredient supplies before the big meal. And the bigger the event, the more important the prep work. The quiz that counts for one percent of your overall grade probably doesn’t merit the same kind of prep as the test that counts for a full third of your grade.

This morning we begin the season of Advent, a season that is all about preparation; we will spend the next four Sundays preparing. But preparing for what? The term “advent” simply means “coming.” We are preparing for Jesus’ arrival in two ways: to celebrate his first arrival as the baby in Bethlehem’s manger at Christmas as well as looking ahead to his second arrival, when he will come to bring us to our eternal home at the last day.

And this preparation, especially for Jesus’ second coming, is what Paul is praying that the Thessalonians are prepared for in our reading for this morning. As we were reminded of a couple of weeks ago when we had another reading from 1 Thessalonians, these Christians in the city of Thessalonica didn’t have much time with Paul because when he was there, his enemies chased him out of town so he had to flee to the south. Paul’s letters to them are both an effort to teach and correct things that he didn’t have time to get to when he was with them in-person, but also to express joy in what they were doing despite not having access to him for a long time. Timothy had returned to Thessalonica to continue to work with them, and his positive report of what was going on seems to be what spurred Paul to write this first letter to that congregation. 

And that’s how our reading begins: Indeed, how can we thank God enough for you in return for all the joy we have before God on account of you? Paul and his co-workers in gospel ministry were overjoyed at what God was doing among the Thessalonians. They were thankful that the gospel took hold among them despite its difficult beginnings, thankful that people had been brought to faith in Jesus as their Savior. And they made sure to express their joy to God directly in their prayers of thanksgiving.

But, Paul notes, there was something not quite right for the members of this congregation. Night and day we are praying earnestly to see you in person and to supply what is lacking in your faith. That may feel like a little bit of a back-handed complement. “We rejoice for the faith God has given you! But, we’re also praying that the gaps in your faith may be filled.” Now, this isn’t that back-handed. Paul isn’t saying that there’s anything wrong with the Thessalonians. He’s simply saying that they are incomplete works-in-progress. There are things they don’t understand or don’t understand in full, and Paul longs to be able to come to them, to meet again in person to be able to talk, teach, and grow together in those places where there were gaps.

We do well to think about our own faith like this. You and I are works in progress in regard to our faith. No matter how much we have studied, how confident we are in our knowledge or trust, we all are lacking some things in regard to our faith. That will be true no matter how much we learn and apply and work with God’s Word, no matter how many years or decades we are Christians and devote to studying what God has said and done. There’s always more to learn and apply.

Acknowledging that is important because it reminds us of what it means to prepare for Jesus’ return. It’s not like preparing for a big meal with family or even a big test in school. We don’t reach a point where we’re “done.” Preparing for Jesus’ return is a constant task, a task that seeks to bring God’s Word to the forefront of our thoughts and hearts day-in and day-out. Anytime that God’s Word is not a part of our lives, that faith is shrinking, while anytime that God’s Word is a part of our lives, that faith is growing and thriving. 

There are many ways we may opt to make God’s Word a prominent part of our lives. Perhaps we make it a goal to be in church more often than we have been in the past. Maybe it’s a goal to make sure our children are in Sunday School so that they can grow in their faith as well. Maybe it’s a goal to participate in a Bible Class where you hadn’t made that a priority before. Maybe it’s a goal to bring devotions to your breakfast or dinner tables for you personally or your family (a new volume of the Meditations devotional booklets begins today and it’s what our family chiefly uses for after-dinner time in God’s Word together; copies are available in your mailbox and more copies are available at the back of church). Or maybe you’re already doing all of those things and your goal is to have that Word have more of an impact on the way you live—the way you speak, act, even think, to let God’s Word and will for our lives have a more noticeable impact on your day to day life than it did before.

We can set all sorts of goals for ourselves in these ways, and they are all commendable. But, unlike pouring over your notes for class or pulling the rolls out of the oven days ahead of a meal, actually making up for what is lacking in our faith is not something that we do for ourselves. That is something that God does. God alone builds up our faith. God prepares us for what is coming. Paul encouraged the Thessalonians: May the Lord increase your love and make it overflow for each other and for all people, just as ours does for you, so that he may establish your hearts as blameless in holiness before our God and Father, when our Lord Jesus comes with all his saints. 

Look at all the things Paul says happen when God does this for you. He increases your love and makes it overflow for each other and for all people. The more you are in God’s Word, the more you are hearing of Jesus’ free forgiveness for all of your sins, the more that love will naturally show itself. It won’t be perfect. You and I will fail to love regularly. We won’t treat people around us as those who God himself loves so dearly. But in Jesus we find forgiveness for that lack of love, and in that loving forgiveness we find the strength and encouragement to love one another better. We refine that love to meet needs, to sacrifice for others, to be more patient, more caring, more empathetic, more concerned for other people’s fears, needs, and concerns. That love will break its banks and flood the lives of others in the way that God’s love has flooded and enveloped you and me.

The flooding love of God has and continues to do what Paul prays for here: establish your hearts as blameless in holiness before our God and Father. When God looks at you and me, he doesn’t see sinners; he sees saints, people set apart for his purposes. He sees people who are forgiven. Jesus died for us to take away every sin and then gives us the faith to trust him as our Savior. This faith is his gift to us, which he gives and strengthens through his Word and sacraments. We want this faith to be in our hearts when Jesus returns or he calls us out of this life.

And thanks be to God that he prepares us for the last day in this way! By his Word he reinforces and strengthens our faith, our trust in Jesus as our Savior from all sin. By that strengthening of our faith we continue to be prepared for what is to come, the day of judgment where we will triumph through our triumphing King.

As we think of all the preparation we need to get done in the coming weeks, be it for the end of a semester or the year-end reports at work, or the coming Christmas festivities, keep this other, far more important preparation in your mind. Dig into the Word. Let God prepare you to hear the good news of the arrival of your Savior and prepare you for his return to bring you home! Amen.

"God Promises Himself to Take Care of You" (Sermon on Genesis 8:18-22) | November 24, 2021

Text: Genesis 8:18-22
Date: November 24, 2021
Event: Thanksgiving Eve

Genesis 8:18–22 (EHV)

Noah went out with his sons, his wife, and his sons’ wives along with him. 19Every animal, every creeping thing, every bird, and whatever swarms on the earth went out of the ship, species by species. 

20Noah built an altar to the Lord and took from every clean animal and every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar. 21The Lord smelled the pleasant aroma. The Lord said in his heart, “I will never again curse the soil anymore because of man, for the thoughts he forms in his heart are evil from his youth. Neither will I ever again strike every living thing, as I have done. 22While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.”

God Promises Himself to Take Care of You

As we gather for Thanksgiving worship and perhaps gather with family and close friends for a meal tomorrow, there’s a refrain that you often hear around tables. “You know, this shouldn’t be the only day we are thankful. We should express gratitude year-round.” Which is true, right? The concept of contentment or appreciation for what you have should not be relegated to one holiday. But, it is also a blessing to be able to have something like a holiday specifically focused on gratitude and thankfulness.

As we’ve been through the season of End Times at the tail end of the church year, we’ve spend a lot of time looking forward. What will Judgment Day be like? Scary or secure? How can we be sure that we are triumphant over sin and hell? We looked to Jesus’ triumph for us. And what does it mean that Jesus in our eternal King? He guards and protects us from our eternal enemies, and will bring us to be with him forever in eternal life.

That’s a lot of looking ahead to things to come, either in what will happen or fully benefiting from what what has happened. But what about in the here and now? What about November 24, 2021? What about the latter part of this week, next month, the new year? What can we expect? What has God promised? And perhaps just as important, what has he not promised? 

Our lesson from Genesis that we read earlier this evening takes us back to some of the earliest events in human history. God created the world in perfection and then sin ruined it. Adam and Eve’s sins brought death and misery to God’s flawless universe. God promised a Savior, a champion who would fix what had been ruined, but the world people had to live in was filled with sin and decay, just as the world we live in is.

But in this world the life spans were long, which seems to mean that the people simply had more time to get into trouble and seek after their own desires. And as such, the more time went on, the more that promise of a Savior was in jeopardy. People stopped caring about what God had promised. People stopped sharing it with their children.

And it’s in this environment that God sent the flood to wipe out everything except the people and animals secure in the ark. Noah and his family were not likely the only believers at the time of the flood, but it’s clear they were in the vast minority. And if things kept going as they were, eventually no one would trust in the coming Savior. So the flood was both was judgment on an unbelieving world and was also saving the promises God made. That 40-day torrent of water was both law and gospel.

And it’s after this, and after more than a year waiting for the water to recede that our lesson takes place. Eventually it was safe enough for those in the ark to come out and bring the animals out as well. God directed them to come out and begin the process of starting over. Noah and his family are essentially taking on the same role that Adam and Eve had taken on many years before. They were starting over in a radically changed environment. 

As they come out of the ark, Noah prioritizes thanksgiving to God for saving him and his family as well as saving God’s promise of grace. Noah doesn’t need to be told to do so. God gave him no command to build an altar and offer sacrifices. He saw what God had done and he just had to offer that in joy and gratitude. 

That’s a good lesson for us. Now, of course, none of us have been among the sole survivors of a global catastrophe. In fact, we might be looking at a lot of problem head-on rather than in the rear-view mirror. It might be difficult to see good things and silver linings in our lives. But as we dig into God’s Word, we are reminded of all that God has done and continues to do for us.

Perhaps we do struggle with gratitude or contentment. Perhaps we are often focused on trouble rather than the good things in our lives. What a joy it is to know that even if those are our struggles, if those are our sins, we have forgiveness from those sins. In our baptisms, God washed those sins away as completely as the flood waters washed away all that threatened his promises. We know that forgiveness is real because those promises were realized: Jesus eventually came and suffered the most horrendous torment ever, enduring hell and dying on the cross to pay for our sins, all of them, even for those times when we’ve taken God’s blessings and especially his forgiveness for granted.

So we build our own altars and offer our own sacrifices. The forward-looking blessings are a tremendous comfort and bring unparalleled peace. We are safe from sin, death, and hell because of what God has done for us in Jesus. We will live a perfect life with our God forever in eternity.

But, as we asked before, what about the here and now? Well, as those who were been in the ark leave, God surveys what has happened. And we get a glimpse into the inner-dialogue within the triune God: The Lord said in his heart, “I will never again curse the soil anymore because of man, for the thoughts he forms in his heart are evil from his youth. Neither will I ever again strike every living thing, as I have done. While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.”

God promises that a global catastrophe like this will never happen again. He will not “strike every living thing” again. While God does acknowledge that our hearts are evil from little on, still those hearts will not result in God destroying the whole world again. And, in fact, things will continue to run like God designed them to run. While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.”

There are a couple of things to think about in all of this. Number one, what comfort! We do not need to fear that we will not have daily bread. God will continue to provide, and he’ll mostly likely provide via the natural means that he’s built into the creation around us. Nothing can supersede God in this. No natural disasters, no change in climate or environment, no mistreatment of creation at the hands of people will ever stop what he’s promised. So while we do well to treat the creation around us with respect, to take care of it, use but not abuse it, we can have the confidence that no matter what happens, the world will be here doing what it’s supposed to be doing as long as God wants it to be here.

However, this doesn’t mean that it will be an existence without trouble. Adam was promised that because of his sin, he would only raise food with great labor and effort. For Noah and his family, this “restart” to the world would also be difficult. God is not going to let things end, but it’s also not going to be easy. Sin is still a part of this world, so while there will be daily bread, it may come at great cost or with a tremendous amount of work on our part. God here promises a life-supporting creation around us, but not necessarily an easy, happy-go-lucky existence. 

But we shouldn’t skip over what prefaced this promise: “The Lord said in his heart.” This is not a promise made to Noah and his family that could be forgotten. This isn’t a promise made to nature at large. This is God promising it to himself. Like the promise he would later make to Abraham where he swore by himself, the writer to the Hebrews notes that God does this because “God ha[s] no one greater to swear by” (Hebrews 6:13). This is an everlasting promise God is making to himself by himself. Nothing we can do can change it nor do we have to do anything to make sure it is kept. This is a unilateral blessing until the Lord brings this world to an end on the last day.

Your sin and my sin may make life difficult, but they will never be able to negate the promises of God. He swore by himself to preserve life on this planet until the end, regardless of what we do or don’t do. Likewise, he swore by himself to rescue us from sin and hell, regardless of what we do or don’t do. When God makes these promises, we can be sure they will be kept because all the responsibility and ability to keep them rest on him and on him alone. You will be taken care now and for eternity; God has promised himself as much. That is reason to give thanks! Amen.

"Listen to Your True King" (Sermon on John 18:33-37) | November 21, 2021

Text: John 18:33-37
Date: November 21, 2021
Event: Christ the King Sunday

John 18:33–37 (EHV)

33Pilate went back into the Praetorium and summoned Jesus. He asked him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” 

34Jesus answered, “Are you saying this on your own, or did others tell you about me?” 

35Pilate answered, “Am I a Jew? Your own people and chief priests handed you over to me. What have you done?” 

36Jesus replied, “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would fight so that I would not be handed over to the Jews. But now my kingdom is not from here.” 

37“You are a king then?” Pilate asked. 

Jesus answered, “I am, as you say, a king. For this reason I was born, and for this reason I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.” 

Listen to Your True King

We rightfully teach young children to not listen to strangers. Don’t take candy from them, don’t lead where they follow, don’t trust what they say. Why? Because a stranger may not (or likely does not) have the child’s best interests in mind. They might hurt or steal the child or give them something that is otherwise dangerous or harmful. You only listen to people you know you can trust.

That’s a principle not just for young children but for all people, right? Does that financial advisor have your best interest in mind or is he just trying to sell you a product that will get him a big commission? Is that used car salesman being honest about the history of that car, or is he trying to sell you something that will be a heap of trouble? Is that person contacting you in your email really your loved one or colleague who desperately needs many gift cards to get out of trouble, or is it a scam? 

Putting our trust in the wrong places, listening to the advice and direction of the wrong person, can lead us to a lot of troubling or harmful situations. But what about trusting or listening to someone who does have your best interests in mind? Well, then you just might get a great deal on a gently used vehicle, have your long-term finances in order, or even get yourself some delicious candy!

As Jesus stood on trial before Pontius Pilate, he probably didn’t look all that trustworthy. Sleep-deprived and beaten, he probably looked like a lunatic who would have been more likely to spout utter nonsense than a coherent thought. Pilate assumed he had authority over Jesus rather than that relationship being the other way around. He did not listen to what Jesus said. 

And Pilate’s reaction to Jesus is the same as the world’s reaction to Jesus. He doesn’t look like an eternal king. He doesn’t look like he was the one created the universe by calling it into being. He doesn’t look like the one who would rescue mankind from the eternal threat of sin and hell. But he is. He is the eternal King, the King who testifies to the truth. It’s a truth that we often don’t want to hear, but a truth we need to hear. 

We often would rather believe false truths we’ve made up rather than facing reality. After all, I can concoct supposed truths that are far more fitting to my desires or fit my own personal life narrative better than anyone else. We can create all sorts of fictions for ourselves to cling to. But when it comes to our eternal King, there seems to be two extremes at either end of the spectrum. On the one end, we might consider God to be our angry King whom we have to appease and make up with because of our sin. In this situation we make ourselves king. On the other end, we might consider ourselves, our wishes, our desires to be the most important in existence. Here, fear and desperation are our king.

Let’s start with that first one, where we make ourselves and our desires to be the highest priority in our lives, when we really make ourselves the kings. I decide what is right and wrong for me. I decide that my desires are more important than God. So I do what I want to do when I want to do it with little regard for God and what he’s said and done. Maybe it’s not broadly and across the board, but maybe it’s in smaller places. Greed takes control for one person, lust takes control for another, anger sometimes takes control for yet another. And we feel justified in this because we have exalted our tendencies and habits and desires over everything else.

If my inflated ego has any room for God, any room for Jesus at all, it’s an attempt to use him rather than serve and honor him. It actually views Jesus as my servant rather than my King. It makes the things of the here and now more important than anything else. If God is a part of this charade, it’s only because I am trying to control God. I want him to do what I want him to do, to give me what I want for right now. Note how quickly we ignore what Jesus declared, “My kingdom is not of this world.”

On the other end of the false-truth spectrum, we let fear drive our relationship with God. It’s natural to think that this omnipotent Creator and Judge is angry with us. He’s told us to be perfect and given us his law to follow. And what have we done? We have failed time and time again. We’ve actively done wrong things that we shouldn’t have done. We have failed to do good things that we should have done. 

And so our gut reaction is that we have to do something good to make up for the bad, and that will change God from being angry with us to being happy with us. We’re hardwired to think that, something we’ve come to call the opinion of the law. And we see that often it is appropriate to behave this way in our relationships with other people (doing something to make up for some failure), so why should it not be appropriate in our relationship with God? 

This might feel very different than exalting our own desires over and above God, but is it really? Stop and think of what hubris and false humility this is! Is God so easily manipulated? When he has made a demand of perfection and we have sinned, is he so easily bought? God is not a child distracted from a scrapped knee with an ice cream cone. No good work on our part can ever change that fact that we did sin, thus nothing we do can change God’s impending judgment over that sin. Nothing you or I can do can change the fact that hell is waiting for us because of our sin. Thinking otherwise is to assume we have a very weak and fickle God.

There’s a good chance that both of these extremes feel a little bit too familiar. We often find ourselves waffling between these two points of view. As the cycle of sin and guilt continues in our lives, we bounce back and forth between these two attitudes. Sometimes, the hubris that we and our desires are the most important things in the world rules our thinking and attitudes. At other times, perhaps during moments of clarity over the false gods we have created in our hearts, we are overwhelmed with guilt for what we have done and desperately try to do something to make our true King happy with us again. Why does this back-and-forth cycle continue? Because we’re not listening to our true King.

So on this Last Sunday of the Church Year, let’s listen, actually listen, to what our King says. Let’s set aside our preconceived notions and our desires, and let Jesus, our eternal King, speak. And let’s hear what he says; let’s apply what he says. Let’s cast off our false truths and delusions that we’ve created and let him speak for himself.

Jesus told Pilate, “I am, as you say, a king. For this reason I was born, and for this reason I came into the world, to testify to the truth.” As Jesus stands before Pilate on trial, just hours before he would be crucified, everything is coming to a head. His entire life, from his birth in Bethlehem through his whole ministry, was leading up to this moment. Here he is testifying to the truth. What truth is that? The truth that God has been saying all along. It’s the truth that speaks of the seriousness of sin and the eternal penalty it bring. It’s the truth that assures us of God’s love, of his promises fulfilled. It’s the truth that God desired to save mankind from sin from the first moment our parents fell in the Garden of Eden. 

Jesus has spoken and taught about it. He testifies to it with words to Pilate on this Friday morning. But his ultimate testimony to God’s truth will come at the cross where he will suffer and die to pay for the sins of the world. And that testimony will continue the following Sunday morning as his resurrection from the dead proves his victory over sin and even death itself. 

Jesus’ testimony to the truth shows just how unhinged our false truths were. Can God be bought with little token good works? Absolutely not! Look at the violence, the blood, the suffering, the literal hell that Jesus endures to actually remove sin. Can my desires take precedent over God? Absolutely not! Look at how deadly serious God is about punishing sin. He wasn’t making empty threats; here we see his wrath in all of its horrid glory. 

But our King goes through it for us. He takes our place under that wrath to pay for our false truths. He testifies to the real truth: our sins are disastrous and bring eternal condemnation, but God’s love wills us to not have to suffer that. So our King does become our servant, but not in the way we wanted to warp him. He becomes our servant by his choice to do what we needed him to do, not what we self-servingly and short-sightedly wanted him to do. He bears our sins in his body. He is the King, not just of the Jews, but of all people because he takes on the punishment of sin for all people.

Jesus finished with Pilate in our lesson, “Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.” You belong to the truth because you belong to Jesus. He is your King here and now today. His kingdom is not just that eternity of heaven that we long for. His kingdom is in your heart; he rules in you by his grace through the faith he has given you. The gift of trust that he provides is his ruling action among us. And that faith, that trust in the truth of his work for us, is what will bring us to that eternity that he has prepared for us.

Here today we listen to our eternal King our true King. It’s not always pleasant to be told that the things we think and desire are not reality, but we need him to bring the real, objective truth to us. And the reality is this: we have sinned and deserve hell, but Jesus lived and died to rescue us. Our King saved us from eternal death by his death in our place and brings us the triumph of his empty tomb. At the last day, our tombs will be empty as well, and then we will be with our eternal, true, triumphing King forever, face-to-face with him for all eternity. That’s the truth. Listen to the One who speaks it. 

May our true King be our guide through every step and stage of our life! Amen.

"Encourage One Another with These Words" (Sermon on 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18) | November 14, 2021

Text: 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18
Date: November 14, 2021
Event: Saints Triumphant Sunday, Year B

1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 (EHV)

We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who have fallen asleep, so that you do not grieve in the same way as the others, who have no hope. 14Indeed, if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, then in the same way we also believe that God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep through Jesus. 

15In fact, we tell you this by the word of the Lord: We who are alive and left until the coming of the Lord will certainly not go on ahead of those who have fallen asleep. 16For the Lord himself will come down from heaven with a loud command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. 17Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them, to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will always be with the Lord. 18Therefore, encourage one another with these words. 

Encourage One Another with These Words

We all need encouragement. Maybe it’s a word of praise from a teacher. Maybe it’s loving compassion from a spouse. Maybe it’s understanding and support from a friend. Maybe it’s a reminder of God’s truths in his Word from a fellow Christian. And that truly has been one of the hardest parts of the last year and a half, right? We have much less chance to gather with those closest to us, especially our fellow Christians. Live stream “gatherings” and worship are useful and have their place, but it almost totally eliminates our ability to encourage and be encouraged by one another.

God knows we need encouragement. He knows that this is part of our trek through this sinful life. Because of this, he directed his apostles to send words of encouragement to Christians throughout the world in letters preserved for us in the New Testament. And the apostles even directed the recipients of those letters to use them to encourage others, whether that be in directly sharing the letters themselves or, as we have in our Second Lesson for this morning, a directive to remind each other about the truths that God gave to them.

We are nearly at the end of the church year, which means that we have our eyes directed not just to the closure of a church year but to the closure of time itself. Two weeks ago, in our celebration of the Reformation, we were reminded of the importance of God’s Word now and to the end. Last week we were reminded of Judgment Day, a day that is coming at an unknown time but a day that will bring perfectly-known results for Jesus’ sake. This morning, we have the theme of Saints Triumphant, a reminder of our and all believers’ standing with God because Jesus conquered all that threatened our eternal well-being. 

In our Second Lesson for this morning, Paul is writing to the Christians living in the city of Thessalonica. This group didn’t get much time with Paul because his enemies ran him out of town when he was there. So his two relatively brief letters are aimed at correcting misconceptions (and in the case of 2 Thessalonians, some over-corrections). But in the crosshairs this morning is the encouragement of what happens after death. We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who have fallen asleep, so that you do not grieve in the same way as the others, who have no hope. 

The Thessalonians were confused. There seemed to be a sentiment that once someone dies, that’s it, they’re gone. And to a certain extent, that makes sense, doesn’t it? Those of us who have had loved ones pass away do not hear from them anymore, do not see them anymore, do not find encouragement from them anymore. At death, they are removed from us and they seem to be completely gone. This was and is the assumption of those without the encouragement of God’s promises. For an unbeliever, a funeral is pure grieving, pure loss, pure hopelessness, because death is only seen as permanent separation. And this is the approach the Thessalonians were drifting into when it came to death as well.

But Paul is writing to assure them that death for Christians is not a permanent loss, and it need not produce only grieving and hopelessness. In fact, we have a great hope when it comes to facing the death of those who fall asleep in Christ! Indeed, if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, then in the same way we also believe that God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep through Jesus. Jesus’ death and resurrection have an intimate connection to the believer’s life. Because Jesus paid for all of our sins and served as the first-fruits of the resurrection, we know that those who have fallen asleep in the Lord will be awakened from their death-slumber at the last day. God will bring those who have fallen asleep to himself.

Because we know that they are safe in the Lord, we do not need to grieve without hope. That does not mean we are not sad in the days, weeks, years, and even decades that follow a loved one’s passing. We are still separated from them and their encouragements, even if only temporarily. But God is trustworthy and has promised that this is how this works. We don’t have contact with our loved ones who have fallen asleep right now; we cannot see them, talk with them, or hug them at the moment. But they are not gone. They are safe with their Creator and Redeemer. They are safe with the God who has rescued from sin, death, and hell. Let us find the encouragement that God wants us to have in these words.

But what about you and me? For us, other than losing those who have fallen asleep, we go on with our lives just like every day prior. Nothing really changes. It’s all the same. Peter in his second letter described the attitude of people in the world, perhaps even some Christians, as we get closer to the last day. He wrote: “First, know this: In the last days scoffers will come with their mocking, following their own lusts. They will say, ‘Where is this promised coming of his? For from the time that our fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they have from the beginning of the creation’ ” (2 Peter 3:3-4). We understand why they think that way because we’re tempted to think that way because all of the evidence we can see points to this being true.

But all the evidence we can see is misguided. In his Word, God tells us the real story. This life will not go on the same as it always has until we die and then nothing. Our triumphant Savior will return. He will return at the last day; he will return for judgment. And as he promised, he will bring us to live with him. Because he triumphed over sin and death, you and I triumph as well.

What will this look like, especially if we are still alive when Jesus returns? Jesus gave Paul a direct explanation to share with the Thessalonians and with us: We who are alive and left until the coming of the Lord will certainly not go on ahead of those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will come down from heaven with a loud command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them, to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will always be with the Lord. 

What are our takeaways? Again, those we have lost in the Lord are not lost at all. In fact, they are simply ahead of us on the journey to eternity with our Savior. And if we never face death? If our triumphant Lord returns before we die? We will hear that voice of God’s chief angel, the triumphant blast of the final trumpet, and see proof that the dead in Christ have, in fact, been safe because we will see their souls and bodies reunite; we will see them raised from the dead.  Then on that very day in that very hour, you and I who are still left will be caught up with Jesus and those who have been raised in the clouds. But what is the end result? We will always be with the Lord.

And there is the encouragement that we all need. No matter whether we are feeling the loss of a loved one, facing death ourselves, or just feeling listless in this life, here is what is coming. No matter what stage of life we’re in, whether we think things are going well or going disastrously, or somewhere in between. What is coming is infinitely better than what we’ve ever seen. Because we will be with the Lord. Our eyes will not deceive us. There will be no mystery, no hidden things, no trusting in things that we cannot observe. We will see God face-to-face continually. And we will be together with our brothers and sisters in Christ, those we’ve known and those we’ve never known.

Imagine that: an eternity to spend with our Savior and our fellow believers. An eternity to talk with Adam and Eve, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, Elijah, Peter, Paul, Augustine, Martin Luther, grandparents, parents, siblings, children, and generations of believers that we might never meet before we are taken from this world of sin and sorrow to be with him. And nothing will ever separate us from any of them, because we will be with the Lord always. It will not end. Death will not cause problems. We will not lose anyone ever again. It will be perfect; it will be flawless; it will be forever.

Therefore, encourage one another with these words. The people in the first century needed to hear these words to be strengthened and encouraged. You and I in the twenty-first century are no different. We, too, need to be reminded of what is coming because we can so easily lose track of it. We need to see, again, Jesus’ victory over sin, and death, and hell. We need the encouragement that those we have lost are actually safe, triumphant even, with our conquering Savior. We need the encouragement that we, ourselves, are also safe during our trek through this world of sin and death and ultimately will be safe with our Savior forever. Because he triumphed over our enemies, you and I are triumphant as well.

Jesus shed his blood, gave us his life, to rescue us from every horrible thing that sin brought about. We are beneficiaries of his work. All who die in faith in Jesus are beneficiaries of his victory. We are safe not by any work or might or strength we have produced, but solely because of our Savior. He did it all and he did it all perfectly. Rejoice in your triumph that your Savior freely gives, and seek out ways to encourage one another with these words. Praise and thanks and honor be to our victorious Savior, now and forever! Amen.

"We Have Complete Confidence in Christ!" (Sermon on Hebrews 9:24-28) | November 7, 2021

Text: Hebrews 9:24-28
Date: November 7, 2021
Event: Last Judgment Sunday, Year B

Hebrews 9:24-28 (EHV)

For Christ did not enter a handmade sanctuary, a representation of the true sanctuary. Instead, he entered into heaven itself, now to appear before God on our behalf. 25And he did not enter to offer himself many times, as the high priest enters the Most Holy Place year after year with blood that is not his own. 26Otherwise he would have needed to suffer many times since the creation of the world. But now he has appeared once and for all, at the climax of the ages, in order to take away sin by the sacrifice of himself. 27And, just as it is appointed for people to die only once and after this comes the judgment, 28so also Christ was offered only once to take away the sins of many, and he will appear a second time—without sin—to bring salvation to those who are eagerly waiting for him.

We Have Complete Confidence in Christ!

Some things in life are just inevitable. Those inevitable may be personal while others are more universal. For insistence, when growing up I always had to be reminded that when we went out for pizza with Grandma, we couldn’t get pepperoni on it because the it would make Grandma feel sick. Likewise, my Dad will go into anaphylactic shock if he eats anything that has come into contact with any shellfish, an adult-onset allergy that is tough for someone like him who grew up on the east coast eating plenty of seafood. 

But those are two examples specific to two specific people. There are more universal truths. A day at a theme park is probably going to produce some very tired parents and kids. Being too hot or too cold likely makes someone cranky. 

There’s an even more universal truth that we want to spend a few minutes on this morning. The writer to the Hebrews in this brief section from his letter notes that “it is appointed for people to die only once and after this comes the judgment.” Not a lot of wiggle room there, is there? This is a universal truth. Everyone will die and after death comes not reincarnation nor the nothingness of becoming “one with the universe.” No, after death comes judgment. And judgment is a scary concept because it carries with it the unknown. If you stand before a judge or a jury, you’re never quite sure how they’re going to rule. Whether you committed the crime or not in that moment is immaterial. What matters is the verdict handed down upon you.

So the inevitably of judgment after death paired with that unknown outcome can make the whole concept of Judgment Day very, very unnerving. But the writer to the Hebrews doesn’t want us to walk away from our focus on Judgment Day here this morning being worried or concerned. No, just the opposite. His desire is for us to see the inevitably as something very positive, a blessing to be longed for rather than something to be feared.

But what would make Judgment Day fearful? Well, let’s go back to the earthly courtroom setting. What would be the reasons someone on trial would be fearful of the results? First and foremost would likely be if they are, in fact, guilty. If you know you did something wrong and figure it’s only a matter of time before someone finds out and then brings punishment down on you, that’s an uncomfortable feeling. The second reason is if perhaps the evidence looks bad, despite the fact that are innocent. Will the judge or jury believe a fictitious accounting of events? Will you be punished for a crime you did not commit?

As we sit and wait for our day in God’s courtroom, we recognize that we have not been framed. No one is making things look worse than they are. We are guilty as guilty can be because we are sinners. God demanded perfection from us and we have been far from that. And he was clear was the punishment for sin is—eternal death in hell. And unlike a human trial, with a human judge or jury, there’s no chance that someone is going to miss something or that you’ll be excused on a mistrial or a technicality. Such errors and lack of knowledge do not happen in God’s courtroom. So concern and trepidation is an appropriate response for human beings as we consider “meeting our Maker.”

So, how then could the writer to the Hebrews want to instill confidence, even joy, at the thought of Judgment Day? Because you and I know what should happen to us but we also know what will happen to us, because those are two radically different things!

In our lesson, the writer begins with a summary of Jesus’ work. For Christ did not enter a handmade sanctuary, a representation of the true sanctuary. Instead, he entered into heaven itself, now to appear before God on our behalf. And he did not enter to offer himself many times, as the high priest enters the Most Holy Place year after year with blood that is not his own. Otherwise he would have needed to suffer many times since the creation of the world. But now he has appeared once and for all, at the climax of the ages, in order to take away sin by the sacrifice of himself. There’s a lot to unpack in those three verses, so let’s begin where the writer begins:

Christ did not enter a handmade sanctuary, a representation of the true sanctuary. Instead, he entered into heaven itself, now to appear before God on our behalf. When God gave his Old Testament people their worship regulations, he had a very specific system set in place. Whether it was in the Tabernacle (the temporary tent worship space they used while in the wilderness and in the early years of the Promised Land) or in the temple built by Solomon and then rebuilt after the Babylonian exile, there was a standard setup for all of them. There was a “Most Holy Place,” a special room in the temple that was to represent God’s presence. Daily sacrifices were brought to the worship space at large, and a special once-a-year sacrifice was brought to the Most Holy Place on that one-day-per-year festival of the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur). The idea was that coming to the temple and bringing these sacrifices was like bringing sacrifices to God himself.

But this was, at best, playacting. These were pictures of a solution to the problem of sin, but they were not the solutions themselves. They pointed ahead to the real sacrifice, the real payment for sin that was coming. Jesus did not come on stage and put on a show; he went and did the real work. He came to make the sacrifice, to actually accomplish what we needed him to do. He went to heaven itself, actually went before God, and offered his sacrifice for us. 

And he did not enter to offer himself many times, as the high priest enters the Most Holy Place year after year with blood that is not his own. Otherwise he would have needed to suffer many times since the creation of the world. But now he has appeared once and for all, at the climax of the ages, in order to take away sin by the sacrifice of himself. There’s another distinction between Jesus’ sacrifice and that of Old Testament worship. It’s not just that the sacrifices offered were pictures pointing ahead to something different, it’s that they were officered over and over again because the people needed those reminders over and over again. They were reminders of a coming solution to sin, not the solution to sin itself.

But it’s the real deal with Jesus. He had the actual payment to get rid of sin and he actually brought it to God himself. His one-time sacrifice actually paid for sin, all sin. His one-time payment was the be-all, end-all of having sin removed. He took away sin by the sacrifice of himself. His death paid for the sins of the world.

That’s the complete landscape that we need to take in when we think about Judgment Day. It’s not just that we are sinners who have disobeyed God and deserve his wrath and punishment. That is all true, but it’s also true that Jesus took our place. He took our place living a perfect life, and then gave that life to us. He took our place by offering his life as a sacrifice to pay for our sins; he took our place in the punishment of hell. He suffered so that you and I could be assured that we won’t. So it’s in that context that the writer continues: And, just as it is appointed for people to die only once and after this comes the judgment, so also Christ was offered only once to take away the sins of many, and he will appear a second time—without sin—to bring salvation to those who are eagerly waiting for him.

Note the contrast between your death and Jesus’ death. Your death leads to judgment, something that is totally out of your control. Jesus, however, was in full control of both his death and its results, to take away the sins of many. And here “many” is not contrasted with “all,” as if there is a limit to the forgiveness Jesus provides. No, “many” is contrasted with “once.” this was a one-time action with cascading effects. Jesus’ one death provides life for all people.

And so here is the confidence you have when it comes to Judgment Day. You lift your head up high, eagerly waiting for that day, not because you are so good or have made God so happy with your life, but because Jesus did everything you needed. Your confidence doesn’t come from you, it comes from him who gave his life to save you. 

There is no doubt about the verdict in God’s courtroom. In Jesus, sin has been annulled; it’s as if it never happened. In Jesus, you are justified, declared “not guilty” for time and eternity. For you, my brothers and sisters, Judgment Day is not a day of angst, worry, and uncertainty. No, for you it is a day of joy, peace, and confidence because that will be the start of your eternal, perfect life with your God in heaven. Thanks be to him who loved us and set us free from our sins by his blood! Amen.

"We Have a Global Gospel" (Sermon on Revelation 14:6-7) | October 31, 2021

Text: Revelation 14:6-7
Date: October 31, 2021
Event: Reformation Sunday, Year B

Revelation 14:6–7 (EHV)

6Then I saw another angel flying in the middle of the sky. He had the everlasting gospel to proclaim to those who live on the earth, to every nation, tribe, language, and people. 7He said with a loud voice: 

Fear God and give him glory, because the hour of his judgment has come. Worship him who made the sky, the earth, the sea, and the springs of water. 

We Have a Global Gospel

I learned a new term a couple of weeks ago, a term that perhaps many of you are already well aquatinted with, depending on your work or your hobbies. That term is “TAM,” an acronym for “Total Addressable Market.” This is a metric that companies will use to make decisions on production or whether a project is worth investigating further. We even use it here. I use a “TAM” of sorts when printing the bulletin by asking the question, “How many people would I guess will be here this weekend?” If I know a lot of people will be out of town on a given Sunday, maybe we don’t print as many as we would when I know few families have guests in town. And certainly the pandemic has manipulated that in a lot of ways over the last 19 months.

For certain products or markets the TAM is large, for others it is small. I imagine Honda’s TAM for its compact Civic sedan is much larger than Ferrari’s for its high end “hypercars.” More Civics will be sold in a year than Ferraris.

So before you get into something, you look at the total possible market and ask, “Is this worth it?” Maybe the questions revolve around cost and profit, maybe they revolve around benefit to others vs. work involved. We were talking on Wednesday night on our Bible Information Class about how we do not maintain a food pantry for the needy on campus because we just don’t have the volume of traffic needed to make such a project worthwhile, but we do support other groups with more traffic to help them in that work.

On this Reformation Sunday, we are partially remembering God’s work through Martin Luther. Our focus is broader than that, but it’s in-part a celebration of what God did through Luther and the other reformers to preserve the truth of the gospel. When Luther lived, the Roman Catholic Church had an iron-clad monopoly on Christianity in western Europe. If you were Christian in that area of the world, you were Roman Catholic, with only very rare exceptions.

And that was a real problem because the teachings and practices of the Roman Catholic Church did not sync up with what the Bible said. There was a heavy emphasis on guilt and demanding good works to pay for sin. Often, that good to get rid of sins involved money. You could donate money to church, or pay for a worship service, or buy an indulgence all to get rid of the sin and, ideally, the guilty feelings you had. 

You can see the issue right on the surface. Any teaching the puts a burden on people, that indicates that Jesus didn’t do enough to save us, is a problem. Jesus is the sole solution to sin. You and I cannot add anything additional to what Jesus did, and thanks be to God we do not need to. 

But Luther did not know this; most people did not know this. In an era where Bibles were not available because of few translations in the language the people spoke and read as well as expensive and slow duplicating processes, the general populace was not able to interact directly with God’s Word and had to trust what their leaders told them. When Luther joined the monastery as a priest and monk, he suddenly had access to the Bible. His sensitive conscience led him back to the Word over and over again. But he did not go simply to study and learn; he went to try to find a way to make sure God was happy with him. What he discovered there in the clear writing the of prophets and apostles was what you and I are already so privileged to know: that Jesus lived, died, and rose to rescue us from sin. He paid for every sin when he took our place and suffered hell on the cross. Luther, you, and I will be in heaven not because we are or were so great, but because of God’s mercy to us in Jesus. It is God’s undeserved love for people, his grace, that means we will be in heaven. This is a gift we receive solely through the faith, the trust, that God gives.

When Luther made this discovery, how his heart soared! The burden was lifted! He had the freedom in full that God wanted him to have! Now he could have just taken this as personal comfort and left it at that. But he knew that was not in keeping with the point of this message. This was not just for him, this was not even just for those living at the same time he was, or even just for those who had a sensitive conscience like he had. The audience of this message was essentially limitless, because this applied to every human being who was living or ever would live. In our lesson from Revelation, this eternal gospel is described as being proclaimed to those who live on the earth, to every nation, tribe, language, and people. This message was for everyone! A TAM with no end!

What is the result of sharing of this good news of sins forgiven in Jesus? Well, the angel flying with that gospel made that clear: Fear God and give him glory, because the hour of his judgment has come. Worship him who made the sky, the earth, the sea, and the springs of water. God is the ruler of all, he is worthy of all praise. “Fear” in this case is not to be afraid of, but to respect. Thus, the direction to worship is not one servitude or humiliation, but one of thanksgiving. The “hour of his judgment” is not meant to be a scary thing, but an exciting, because that will be the beginning of our time with God in heaven! The Lord has freed us from our sins and given us the free gift of eternal life! How could we not serve our God, praising him and thanking him?

And so we do. We are here today for that very thing. And while this eternal gospel is a great comfort for us eternally, temporally it can have some negative consequences. You heard the warning that Jesus gave to his disciples in our Gospel for this morning: Be on your guard! People will hand you over to councils, and you will be beaten in synagogues. You will stand in the presence of rulers and kings for my sake as a witness to them. And the gospel must first be preached to all the nations (Mark 13:9-10). Things weren’t always going to be great for the messengers of the gospel. Being a Bible-believing and Bible-living Christian comes with consequences when we live in this sinful world.

We can see that play out, in part, during Luther’s life. Rather than rejoicing that Luther had made these fresh discoveries that could make the church’s teaching more comforting and more biblical, both church and state rejected what Luther taught. Last June was the 500th anniversary of the Pope Leo X’s proclamation that Luther was a heretic, condemned by the church (“People will hand you over to councils, and you will be beaten in synagogues”). This past April was the 500th anniversary of Luther’s trial at the Diet of Worms, where he stood not before church leaders, but state leaders. In fact, he stood before Charles V, the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, and was forced to answer whether he would recant, or take back, the things that he had written about salvation in Jesus alone (“You will stand in the presence of rulers and kings for my sake as a witness to them”). In that moment, if Luther didn’t recant, he would not only continue to be a condemned as a heretic by the church but he would be declared an outlaw by the state. With that “outlaw” designation came the consequence that he could be killed by anyone, on sight, with no questions asked and no consequences for the killer.

Luther, through much turmoil and sleepless nights, eventually declared that he could not recant what he had written unless he could be shown from the Scriptures that he was wrong. Only God’s Word could force him to change his mind. Of course, Luther’s biblical teaching was accurate so there was no scriptural rebuke coming. But, that was of no concern to the pope or the emperor. Luther’s adherence to the truth meant danger for him physically, but this was too important for Luther and the world for him to compromise.

This is sounding a little bit like what Jesus said would happen, isn’t it? It’s also sounding a little bit like what Shadrak, Meshak, and Abednego went through with King Nebuchadnezzar in our First Lesson, isn’t it? I don’t know about you, but for me that’s a little bit scary and disconcerting. We could sacrifice a lot, even our lives, just for living and proclaiming our faith! How do you handle that?

Well, Jesus didn’t give that warning as an out to not do anything. He was honest with his disciples (and you and me along with them), but he also had a directive. Yes, you’ll suffer for this message. Yes, you’ll be asked to testify before people, perhaps even rulers and authorities, but that will be an opportunity to witness to the truth! And, like it or not, there’s a task placed into your lap: The gospel must first be preached to all the nations. And our lesson from Revelation shows a picture of that happening, that an angel who serves as a picture of the many and varied messengers of the gospel, declares that good news to those who live on the earth, to every nation, tribe, language, and people. 

Shadrak, Meshak, and Abednego bravely confessed their faith before Nebuchadnezzar, even though they did not know if they would lose their life for doing do. Luther bravely confessed the truth in front of the emperor even though, he, too, did not know what the outcome of that would be. The apostles bravely taught the truth Jesus had given them to share. All of the twelve suffered, and most died directly as a result of what they taught and lived. 

You and I walk the same path. We may not face death a possibility for our faith, but will clinging to Jesus ruin friendships and family bonds? Will our commitment to live a life of thanksgiving to God for what we have been given in Jesus result in problems? Yes. But we can’t hide this gospel. We can’t just keep it to ourselves. It is an eternal gospel for the people on earth. So let’s embrace our Lutheran heritage, our Christian heritage, here today and recommit ourselves to living and sharing this truth. It’s what literally everyone needs and we can give it without losing it ourselves. Even if we were to lose our very lives, no one can take our Savior and his work from us. 

This is our gospel; this is the global gospel. God bless the efforts to share it with all! Amen.

"God's Servant has Served You" (Sermon on Isaiah 53:10-12) } October 24, 2021

Text: Isaiah 53:10-12
Date: October 24, 2021
Event: The Twenty-Second Sunday after Pentecost, Year B

Isaiah 53:10-12 (EHV)

Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him
and allow him to suffer.
Because you made his life a guilt offering, he will see offspring.
He will prolong his days,
and the Lord’s gracious plan will succeed in his hand.
11After his soul experiences anguish, he will see the light of life.
He will provide satisfaction.
Through their knowledge of him, my just servant will justify the many,
for he himself carried their guilt.
12Therefore I will give him an allotment among the great,
and with the strong he will share plunder,
because he poured out his life to death,
and he let himself be counted with rebellious sinners.
He himself carried the sin of many,
and he intercedes for the rebels.

God’s Servant has Served You

Service is not often viewed as an American virtue. We are a society that praises innovators and those who opt to ruthlessly pursue their goals. To serve is often seen as making your lesser, not taking full advantage of everything you could do or be. Service is sometimes viewed as beneath someone with high aspirations. Likewise, someone who claims to “serve” may often be seeking their own self-interests, not the interests of others. Perhaps you’ve heard a politician talk about service here and then clearly serve their own desires rather than the people they are elected to serve over here.

We heard in our Gospel for this morning that this is not a uniquely American idea. Jesus’ disciples wrestled with this as the trekked along the dusty roads of Galilee and Judea. Ambition is not wrong, but it can cross a line where it becomes a distraction or it forces you to behave in a way that might be considered unbecoming of a Christian or that hinders your ability to let your light shine, to reflect the love of your Savior.

And it’s that love of our Savior that we want to do a deep-dive on this morning. Jesus ended his teaching moment with his disciples this way, “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” And we can read those words and might even know those words by heart, but what is Jesus actually saying? What is the serving that God’s Servant does for us? 

For our closer look at this service of the Son of Man we turn to the book of the prophet Isaiah. The end of Chapter 52 and all of Chapter 53 are probably some of the most famous words in that book if not the entire Bible. We read them in whole almost every Good Friday. Here we have a snippet of that latter chapter, but prior to our section, there are the famous and comforting words of prophecy and promise like, “It was because of our rebellion that he was pierced. He was crushed for the guilt our sins deserved. The punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5).

In this chapter, God is speaking about the Messiah, his chosen Servant, whom he would send to accomplish his work. And what is that work of God? To make everything we had broken right again. When God created the universe, he did so primarily to have a relationship with mankind. Everything on the earth and even the universe was created in service of that. We see God making his presence known in the Garden of Eden, talking freely with Adam and Eve, all loving and being loved. It was idyllic. It was perfect.

Then, you know sin reared its ugly head. Adam and Eve went along with Satan’s ideas rather than abiding by God’s directions and caused infinite problems. Sin brought death and decay into God’s perfect world. Instead of a place of unending joy, the world became a place of suffering and misery. And, more to the point, instead of a perfect relationship with God, sin left us as hostile to God, his enemies and adversaries. And for God, this would not do.

Because God is just he could not simply look the other way or pretend that sin doesn’t matter. Because of that justice, God had to punish sin. It had to be dealt with, not ignored. “The wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23a), after all. 

But then God’s plan takes a surprising turn. The triune God works together, and the Father turns to the Son to send him on a mission to redeem people from their sins. The Son would take the place of sinful mankind, suffer the punishment that all people deserved, and then his perfection would be credited to those same sinners. Our reading from Isaiah begins, “Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him [that is, the Messiah] and allow him to suffer.” It wasn’t the Lord’s will because he hated his servant, his Son, his appointed Savior. It was the Lord’s will because he loved us. 

So Jesus’ mission of redemption, his mission to buy us back from sin, death, and hell, was God’s will through and through. Jesus was not taken aback by what happened to him. He was not surprised when he suffers hell on the cross. He knew from the beginning what his mission was. He was to trade his perfect life for our sinful life. He was to die to save us. Or, to use Jesus’ own words again this morning, “The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

And there was no doubt about the outcome of this work either. It’s all here in the prophecy that God gave through Isaiah. Notice how there’s this back and forth, this ping-ponging of “because of this bad thing, this good thing results.” This suffering of God’s servant will not end in defeat, but eternal victory. The death on the cross doesn’t end there; it finds completion in the victorious resurrection leaving behind an empty tomb: Because you made his life a guilt offering, he will see offspring. He will prolong his days, and the Lord’s gracious plan will succeed in his hand. After his soul experiences anguish, he will see the light of life. He will provide satisfaction. Through their knowledge of him, my just servant will justify the many, for he himself carried their guilt. Therefore I will give him an allotment among the great, and with the strong he will share plunder, because he poured out his life to death, and he let himself be counted with rebellious sinners.

Pay attention to the verb tenses here. “Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him… Because you made his life a guilt offering… because he poured out his life to death… He himself carried the sin of many.” Anything stand out to you about that? Isaiah is writing by God’s inspiration in the 700s BC, or roughly 700 years before Jesus was even born. And yet God speaks of these events in the past tense. Why? Because God had promised that they would happen. And because he promised that, they were as good as done. There was no question about whether or not God would want to or be able to follow through on what he promised. When God promised it, it was as good as done. And from God’s eternal perspective, his view of everything from outside of time, it was done and complete.

All of this was done and complete for the world, for the many. But this is also done and complete for you. You, personally, are loved by your God. You, personally, are the reason that God sent Jesus to give his life. God’s Servant served you, personally, by rescuing you from sin and all of its temporary and eternal ramifications. You are so loved by your God that he would suffer and die to rescue you. He would offer his life to give you eternal perfection with him.

And so it is. Your sins are gone. “He himself carried the sin of many, and he intercedes for the rebels.” You and me, rebels that we are, have been saved from ourselves. We are forgiven. We have been restored to the position of God’s dearly loved children because God’s Servant has served us. What a privilege that we dare not take for granted!

Knowing this, let’s not fall into the same trap that the disciples did. Let’s not fall into the same trap that you and I have fallen into in the past. We are not the most important person in our lives. We should be actively serving one another not looking for ways to exalt ourselves over others, because Jesus has served us. Actively take Jesus’ service into the week ahead. Where can you serve that you have served before? Where can you serve where you have not before? Where can your service point others to the Savior who has rescued them from sin and hell as well? How can you also be God’s servant as well, sacrificing to show others the ultimate sacrifice of our God’s ultimate Servant? 

May God bless your service done in his name and to his glory! Amen.

"Help as God has Helped You!" (Sermon on Hebrews 3:1-6) | October 17, 2021

Text: Hebrews 3:1-6
Date: October 17, 2021
Event: The Twenty-First Sunday after Pentecost, Year B

Hebrews 13:1–6 (EHV)

Continue to show brotherly love. 2Do not fail to show love to strangers, for by doing this some have welcomed angels without realizing it. 3Remember those in prison, as if you were fellow prisoners, and those who are mistreated, as if you yourselves were also suffering bodily. 

4Marriage is to be held in honor by all, and the marriage bed is to be kept undefiled, for God will judge sexually immoral people and adulterers. 5Keep your life free from the love of money, and be content with what you have. For God has said: 

I will never leave you, 
and I will never forsake you. 

6So then we say with confidence: 

The Lord is my helper, and I will not be afraid. 
What will man do to me? 

Help as God has Helped You!

“Hey, could you help me with something?” What’s your immediate, gut reaction to that question? Perhaps it’s excitement to lend a hand and to feel needed. Perhaps it’s a bit of caution—am I going to be holding one end of a measuring tape or loading a moving truck? Or maybe it’s somewhere in-between, with a willingness to offer assistance, but also wanting more information to figure out how possible that would be.

Why do people ask for help? Rarely is it because they are too lazy to do it themselves. More often, it’s because it would either be impossible or much less efficient to do it with one set of hands compared with two or more, right? Think of how much easier it to measure something that is long and off the floor with two people on the measuring tape rather than just one. Possible but not easy to do for just one person. But then consider moving a heavy piece of furniture. Size and weight may make that task absolutely impossible for one person to do on their own, no matter how strong they are. 

But when someone needs help and you rise to the occasion to do it, what a blessing for all involved! You are helping that person in need and they are rescued from their difficult or even impossible situation! 

And this is the general area where the writer to the Hebrews wants us to be focused today. We can depend on a lot of things for safety and security, especially money as was made clear in our Gospel. But that’s not where we want our focus to be. We want our focus to be on God who is our eternal helper, who then empowers us to be helpers to others in their earthly needs and to point them to the eternal help given by God.

These are near the closing words to this letter written to Jewish Christians near the end of the apostolic era. These Christians were being pulled away from the faith by trouble and persecution for being Christians. And the author’s letter is, in part, an encouragement to not get whisked away from the faith but to bear those crosses in the here and now for the blessings that will come in heaven.

And at the tail end of our reading, he makes clear what those blessings are. What are the promises of God? He quotes from Deuteronomy, “I will never leave you, and I will never forsake you.” And again he quotes from the Psalms, “The Lord is my helper, and I will not be afraid. What will man do to me?” And there’s where our motivational focus for life and eternity is. God has promised to be our helper who will never leave nor forsake us. 

And God’s definition of helper is someone who does for us what would be impossible on our own, or more accurately impossible for us at all. When God is our helper in the primary sense, he’s not helping us lift the couch; he’s moving the couch all on his own for us. He is primarily our helper in dealing with the problem of sin. That was not something we did or even could lend a hand with. Solving sin and hell had to be God’s work alone. 

And so it was. Jesus came as that helper we needed. He took our place in all things, both living a flawless life and dying an innocent death. So, by God’s work in our place and completely without our assistance, he rescued us from sin, death, and hell. We are free from the eternal ramifications for our sin because Jesus undid them and suffered them in our place. There is no doubt or worry or concern that something might be left undone. There is no slack to pick up or contributions we have to make. We will be in heaven for eternity because our sins are gone. Thanks be to God!

So what does God being our helper then mean for us in the here and now? It means that we are freed, encouraged, even emboldened to be helpers to those around us. And the writer to the Hebrews lists off many different ways that God’s work for us will reflect in our lives. At the start of our lesson he rattles off a rapid-fire list: Continue to show brotherly love. Do not fail to show love to strangers, for by doing this some have welcomed angels without realizing it. Remember those in prison, as if you were fellow prisoners, and those who are mistreated, as if you yourselves were also suffering bodily. 

All of these can probably fall under the umbrella of thinking of others as more important than yourself. The author is encouraging us to take a Christ-like view of our fellow people, no matter what your relationship to them is. Perfect stranger? How can you help them? Someone in prison? What might they need? Someone struggling with circumstances that restrict them? What would you want someone to do for you if you were in that exact same boat? 

And these don’t need to be heroic things, and sometimes maybe it seems to be more in the realm of just common sense or common decency. Not being short with that person at the grocery store. A kind word to someone you’re walking past on the sidewalk. Offering to help someone carry something. There are a million different ways that the opportunity to be a helper presents itself in our lives, even if they seem small to us. But nothing is truly small; Jesus even commended people who gave his believers a cup of cool water.

The writer to the Hebrews goes on: Marriage is to be held in honor by all, and the marriage bed is to be kept undefiled, for God will judge sexually immoral people and adulterers. This ties in well with what we considered last week. Marriage is a special bond and God is protecting it and the family. And it’s interesting that this is not just aimed at married people, that they should guard what they have, nor is it just aimed at single people, that they should respect other people’s relationships. No, marriage is to be held in honor by all.  Husbands and wives can and should be helpers for each other. Those who are no married should not only not look to undermine those that are married but also live their lives in a way that respects how God has designed this, especially in terms of the “marriage bed,” that sexual relations of any kind are reserved for only within the committed environment of marriage. 

But then the writer to the Hebrews gets at what Jesus is focused on in our Gospel for this morning: Keep your life free from the love of money, and be content with what you have. Loving money has no place in a Christian’s life. Materialism, worshiping at the altar of “stuff” is not part of a Christian’s life. Because our hope, our confidence, our helper is not found in bank or investment account balance nor in having the latest and greatest clothing, shoes, car, phone, game, whatever. Our confidence doesn’t rest on this earthly stuff. Money is not our helper; God is our helper. Money and things are tools we use to support our families and other people; they are not ends in themselves. 

So that really is our question: what do we trust to truly help? Our help should come from God, and perhaps it’s God working through others. Our confidence is in him who has done everything we need and we trust in him to provide for our needs, especially our eternal need of forgiveness and rescue from hell. Likewise, we take that trust and confidence and in joy and gratitude be helpers to others, supporting them in their needs, being a blessing to their families, and recognizing the appropriate place of material things in our lives. 

It all comes down to God, who has helped us, enabling us to help others. God, open our eyes to see the myriad of ways that you have helped us, especially by rescuing us from sin and hell through no work on our part. Open our eyes to see the opportunities you place before us to help and love others as you have helped and loved us! Amen.

"Praise God for Suffering...?" (Sermon on 1 Peter 4:12-19) | September 26, 2021

Text: 1 Peter 4:12-19
Date: September 26, 2021
Event: The Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost, Year B

1 Peter 4:12-19 (EHV)

Dear friends, do not be surprised by the fiery trial that is happening among you to test you, as if something strange were happening to you. 13Instead rejoice whenever you are sharing in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed. 

14If you are insulted in connection with the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests on you. 15Make sure that none of you suffers as a murderer, a thief, a criminal, or as a meddler. 16But if you suffer for being a Christian, do not be ashamed, but praise God in connection with this name. 17For the time has come for judgment to begin with the household of God. Now if it begins with us, what will be the end for those who disobey the gospel of God? 18And if it is hard for the righteous to be saved, where will the ungodly sinner end up? 19So let those who suffer according to the will of God entrust their souls to their faithful Creator while doing what is good.

Praise God for Suffering…?

We are conditioned to want things to get better, and even expect things to get better. Make progress, fix bugs, proofread a document, rewrite that rough draft, collaborate to share ideas. In fact, most of human history is based on the idea that we’re doing things better than the people who came before us. 

This can produce a sort of bias that we, right now, are smarter and overall better than those who lived a generation or centuries before us. It’s a form of generationalism (although that can also be the reverse that we think we are better than anyone younger than us as well). Are we smarter than the ancient Egyptians or Greeks? Do we have a better grasp of reality than the people of the middle ages? In some ways, probably, but we could probably identify places where those who came before us had better ideas, habits, and mindsets than we generally do today.

The idea that things are progressing and getting better as time goes on is appealing, but we can recognize that it’s highly subjective. Is a modern, clean city with safe travel and many good, productive jobs better than the forrest it replaced? You could probably get a lot of strong opinions on both sides of that issue. But the idea or hope that things are getting better is not exactly borne out by the world around us. 

Take a book outside, set it on the grass, and leave it there. Is it a better book in 2 hours? 2 days? 2 months? 2 years? Unless it’s well protected somehow, that book is going to start to rot. It will eventually get to the point where it is unusable and any information that it held is lost. Or take a broken plate. Let it sit for 2000 years. What will it be after those 2 millennia? Still a broken plate, but perhaps more fragile than it was when it started.

We know the reason for this general downward trend, right? It’s sin. The world was not created with death and decay as part of its blueprint, but when our first parents sinned, it fundamentally changed everything. All of creation now suffers under this burden of wasting away, each moment taking a step farther away from God’s original design. We can take some steps to mitigate this. We can be careful stewards of the world around us, use but not abuse the places we live. But still, things are going to go from bad to worse. Fires, earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, disease, and all sorts of other disastrous things infect our world.

But all of that is outside of us. When we direct our thoughts inward to our own lives, we want to see things getting better. Sure, we recognize the negative changes that getting older might bring with our health or mobility or responsibilities. But generally, we think that things are going to get better next week than they were this week. We work hard at it, to improve our situations as much as is in our control, work hard for our families who depend on us, and just generally try strengthen weak places in our lives. But we might also think that things are going to be better because of some of the promises God has made. For instance, the classic promise that our Catechism students memorize each year from Psalm 50, “Call on me in the day of distress. I will deliver you, and you will honor me” (v. 15). God is going to take the distress in our life and make it good, right? 

Well, that’s a nice thought but I don’t think that’s exactly what God has in mind with that promise. As we consider our Second Lesson this morning and its relationship to Jesus’ words in our Gospel, we begin to get a picture that God doesn’t promise us (and perhaps, doesn’t even want us to have) a life without difficulty. Consider what Peter wrote to his readers in his first letter in the New Testament, “Dear friends, do not be surprised by the fiery trial that is happening among you to test you, as if something strange were happening to you.” Not just trouble, but fiery trial, was besieging the life of these Christians. And Peter said this should not be surprising; this was not strange.

We know some of what that fiery trial was. Peter was living in the time of severe persecution from the Roman Empire. Christianity was illegal and as a result Christians were suffering and dying for their faith. It was horrible, but again, Peter is clear that they should not be surprised. Biblical Christianity is always counter-cultural, no matter what time or place it exists in. 

It may be easy for us to get a martyr complex, though. We do well to recognize that as Christians in our nation, we do not suffer in the same way that Peter and his fellow Christians did at the latter part of the apostolic era. We do not suffer in the same way that many, many Christians today suffer for their faith, even to death. We do well to realize that our physical and emotional discomforts we face for being a Christian are hardly worth comparing to the suffering that many across the world and certainly in history have suffered for Christ.

But, that doesn’t mean we don’t bear crosses. That doesn’t mean that we don’t suffer for our faith. That doesn’t mean suffering, hardship, and heartache for reasons beside our faith are absent. In fact, we do bear crosses, we do have suffering in our life. Jesus promised as much. Peter pointed out the obvious to his readers. But what do we do with that suffering? How do we think of it? How do we endure it? 

When it comes to suffering for being a Christian, if we are insulted “in connection with the name of Christ,” Peter says, “You are blessed.” But why? What good does suffering hold? Why am I blessed if I suffer for Jesus’ name? That seems so contradictory! Peter goes on: because the Spirit of glory and of God rests on you.

Suffering because of Jesus means that you are clearly wearing his family name in your life. If people insult you or hate you because you believe that Jesus lived, died, and rose to save you from your sins, that is to your credit. It means you are living as counter-cultural. It means that your life lived in thanksgiving to God is evident to all and for some, it is not what they want to see or hear.

But Peter goes on to say that not all suffering is sanctified. Make sure that none of you suffers as a murderer, a thief, a criminal, or as a meddler. If I suffer because of my own sin, that is not to anyone’s glory or blessing, not mine and certainly not God’s. We should be clear that it’s not suffering if people outside of the church refuse to live like you think they should live. They do not have the gospel, they do not know Jesus, therefore at that moment it is impossible for them to live lives of thanksgiving to God for what he’s done. If people are upset with me because I’ve been obnoxious to them about how they live or don’t live, that’s not really suffering for Jesus; that’s suffering because I’ve been a fool.

But if I have made every effort to live at peace with others around me and through no fault of my own, people are adversarial against me, then what? Well, it’s not exactly inspiring to hear, but there’s not much to be done about it. Rather than trying to avoid such suffering or assuming that God has somehow made a mistake when it comes to your life because suffering has attached itself to your life like some sort of parasite, take Peter’s advice: So let those who suffer according to the will of God entrust their souls to their faithful Creator while doing what is good. What does it mean for us to “entrust [our] souls to [our] faithful Creator while doing what is good”?

First of all it means not sinning to try to end the problem. That means not sinning in compromise to do and say what God clearly says is wrong. It also means not sinning to end the problem by seeking vengeance. If we entrust this suffering to our Creator, we know that he is able to do what is right. If what is right is some sort of chastisement or retribution for the person causing us to suffer, that for God to determine, not us. Leave it in his hands. He will do what is right with any given situation or person. And because he always has people’s eternal well-being in mind, it is likely that his desire is polar opposite to our gut reaction. While we may want to lash out to try to end the suffering, his goal may be for us to have patient endurance in that suffering, which may become part of the story of that person coming to faith in Jesus as their Savior later in life.

But there’s another way and reason that we entrust our souls to our Creator. In the midst of suffering, things seem dark. It may feel like there’s no solution to our problems, no relief from what is ailing us. It may be true that we can do nothing to end the suffering, end the bad things that happen to us. But we are not, in those moments, without hope. Because no matter how brutal our trials and sufferings are here and now, we know that our eternal life, our souls, are safe with our Creator and Savior. Even when we are suffering because of our own sinful attitudes and actions, there is forgiveness for those in Jesus’ life and death for us. No matter how bad things look or feel here, eternity is secure because Jesus has made it secure, and his work for us is perfect.

Peter wrote to these Christians in part because he did not want them giving up on their faith to seek out temporal, earthly calm. He didn’t want them exchanging eternal security for temporary peace. The same concerns are alive for us. We do not want to give up our faith to escape some momentary suffering. 

What does that suffering in your life not mean? It does not mean that God has forgotten about you. It does not mean that God is unfaithful to his promises. It does not mean that you are outside of God’s family.

What does that suffering in your life mean? It means that Jesus was telling the truth when he said that believing in him would mean taking up your cross and following him. It means that we are part of God’s family, as we are in many ways sharing in the sufferings of Christ that he endured when he paid for our sins. It means that this suffering, while difficult, is also temporary. Even if it’s something we’ll have to endure for the whole of our natural lives, at the end of our lives it will be gone. At that time, because of Jesus’ perfect life and his innocent death on the cross for us that paid for all of our sins, we will be with our God in heaven in perfection forever, just as he originally designed things to be at the beginning. 

Things will continue to get worse in this life, not better. We will endure suffering and hardship and difficulty as we and the world around us ages. But there will be a reversal to all of that at the Last Day. God will call us from this world of sin and bring us to be safe with him for eternity. Suffering in this life reminds us of these facts and points us to the far greater blessings that are coming. Should we really praise God for suffering? Yes. And God give us the strength to praise you for this. Amen.

"God's Mercy Forgives Our Selfish Ambition" (Sermon on Numbers 12:1-15) | September 19, 2021

Text: Numbers 12:1-15
Date: September 19, 2021
Event: The Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Year B

Numbers 12:1-15 (EHV)

Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Cushite woman he had married (for he had married a Cushite woman). 2They said, “Has the Lord really spoken only through Moses? Hasn’t he also spoken through us?” The Lord heard this. 

3(Now the man Moses was very humble, more humble than anyone else on the face of the earth.) 

4Right then the Lord spoke suddenly to Moses, Aaron, and Miriam, “You three come out to the Tent of Meeting!” 

The three of them came out. 5The Lord came down in a pillar of cloud and stood at the entrance to the tent. He called Aaron and Miriam, and they both came forward. 6He said, “Now listen to my words: If there is a prophet among you, I, the Lord, will make myself known to him in a vision. In a dream I will speak with him. 7Not so, however, with my servant Moses. He is faithful in my whole household. 8With him I speak face to face, clearly, and not in riddles. He sees the form of the Lord. Why then were you not afraid to speak against my servant, against Moses?” 9The Lord’s anger burned against them, and he left. 

10The cloud went up from above the tent, and immediately Miriam was leprous, as white as snow. Aaron turned to Miriam and saw that she was leprous. 

11Aaron said to Moses, “My lord, please do not hold this sin against us. We have acted foolishly. We have sinned. 12Please do not let her be like a stillborn infant that comes out of its mother’s womb with its flesh half-eaten away.” 

13Moses cried out to the Lord, “God, please heal her, please!” 

14The Lord said to Moses, “If her father had merely spit in her face, would she not be disgraced for seven days? Have her confined outside of the camp for seven days, and after that she can be brought back in.” 

15Miriam was confined outside of the camp for seven days, and the people did not set out until Miriam was brought back in. 

God’s Mercy Forgives Our Selfish Ambition

About a week and a half ago I received a phone call as I was driving to go pick up the kids from school. I didn’t recognize the number, but decided to take it. The voice informed me that the company calling was Visa/Mastercard (it’s always a great sign when someone claims to work for a company that is actually two separate and competing companies). Anyway, the computer eventually transferred me to a real person. They supposedly wanted to offer me some sort of COVID-related debt relief. So the person on the phone said, “And what accounts do you have?” That seemed like an odd question. They supposedly worked for the credit card; wouldn’t they already know what accounts I had?

We went back and forth a little bit on whose responsibility it was to confirm who had what, and finally I asked, “Ok, tell me what information you need.” He responded, “Your credit card number.” I laughed right out loud. Not the last 4 digits, not a billing zip code something. The whole number. I asked, “How often does this work? How often do you get people falling for this scam?” To which he responded with some rather unkind words until I eventually hung up.

But this served as an interesting thought experiment. Why would someone do this? Well, they want to steal or at least manipulate people into giving them money. And, in this case, they were targeting people who were hurting, who were in dire financial straights, to take advantage of them.

Selfishness is a core tenant of the sinful nature. Even if we don’t appear, publicly, to be very selfish, there’s a part of each of us that wants to serve ourselves more than anyone else. Our joy, peace, and desires are often more important to us than anyone else’s, including God’s. Sin is really just an expression of that selfishness. God says don’t do something, but I want to do it, and I value what I want more than what God wants, so I do that thing.

In our First Lesson this morning, we see an example of this selfishness in Miriam and Aaron. They weren’t exactly scamming anyone, but they were not content with the arrangement God had setup to lead the people of Israel. Miriam and Aaron were Moses’ siblings, but Moses was the one that God called at the burning bush. While at times God would address the people through Aaron, the first high priest, he did the vast majority of his communication with the people through Moses. 

But jealousy and selfish ambition got the better of his siblings. After a bit of a racist tantrum thrown because of Moses’ wife, they come to the conclusion, “Has the Lord really spoken only through Moses? Hasn’t he also spoken through us?” In other words, “We deserve what Moses has because we’re just as important. And we didn’t even marry a foreigner! We should be exalted, not him!” And while they might have been having a gripe session among the two of them and not blasting Moses publicly before the people, we’re told in striking brevity that someone else was party to their conversation. The Lord heard this.

God’s address to Miriam and Aaron is very similar to Jesus’ rebuke to his disciples arguing about who of them was the greatest in our Gospel this morning. “If anyone wants to be first, he will be the last of all and the servant of all.” Miriam and Aaron’s selfish ambition was based on jealousy. It's not fair that Moses gets to have that position. We want it! Or we at least want equal billing!” But that was not what God had done.

How often and subtly does jealously and selfishness creep into our lives? How often do we look at someone else’s life and say, “I wish that were mine,” or perhaps more to the point, “That should be mine”? Maybe it’s smaller things, like the person who has a new car or a commute with less traffic or easier time with that one troublesome subject in school. Maybe it’s the bigger things, wishing you had an entire life-swap with the other person. Either way, it’s malcontent with what God has given and coveting what others have. It might even lead us to do something sinful to try to get what we haven’t been given, like the scammer on the phone.

But it is also important to realize what we do and don’t mean here. God is not saying that it is wrong to want to better yourself. God is not saying that it’s wrong to want to improve your skills, your job, your knowledge base, to otherwise better your life. That wasn’t Miriam and Aaron’s problem. Their problem was that they cut down Moses, seeking to build themselves up. Their problem was that they spoke against what God had done and made crystal-clear that he had done it. 

God has given you abilities and vocations (like parent, child, spouse, single person, friend, employee, neighbor, citizen, etc.). Maybe those abilities and vocations don’t match exactly what you want. Maybe you’re seeking out better ways to use those abilities or new ways to reflect God’s love in your vocations. That is good. But grumbling against God or letting jealousy consume you is not the way to do it.

Instead, rejoice in what God has given. For places where you’re struggling or dissatisfied, pray for guidance. Talk with someone to help find a path that serves God rather than fighting against him. 

But perhaps this has triggered feelings of guilt in our hearts for recent or long-past actions or thoughts. And that’s likely because I doubt that anyone here has never coveted anything. I doubt that anyone here has never let selfishness take hold, at least for a little while. And that can lead us into a downward spiral. That’s not how we’re supposed to live and yet we did it or are doing it anyway. Now what? 

Look at how God deals with Miriam. It’s not clear why she suffers the skin condition and Aaron didn’t, but regardless, she is sent outside the camp. But she is not banished from the community. She is not shunned. She is not sent wandering into the wilderness by herself. No, she was outside the camp for seven days and then and after that she [could] be brought back in. There is chastisement for the selfish ambition, but God does not throw her or Aaron away. He does not forget about them. He specifically sets a time when she could be reinstated. 

We should pay attention to the last verse of our reading, too. The people did not set out until Miriam was brought back in. Now at first glance this perhaps sounds like a community rallying around their sister and making sure she was ok. That is until we realize that it wasn’t the people who made the call when they were to break camp; it was God. He decided when they moved. And he made sure that the whole community stayed put until after Miriam was brought back in.  

Is God going to treat you or me any differently? He does not seek to destroy us for bouts of selfishness; he offered himself to pay for them. Those selfish actions are gone because Jesus selflessly died on the cross to pay for them. Jesus’ self-sacrificing work for you frees you from your selfishness and the sin that comes from it. Jesus frees you from the punishment of hell that would have otherwise found you! The community doesn't move on; you and I are brought back into the fold. That was God’s mercy for Miriam, and it’s God’s mercy for us. We do not face the full punishment for our sins. That was God’s mercy for Aaron, and it’s God’s mercy for us. God’s mercy forgives our selfish ambition and all of our sins. Thanks be to God for that continual mercy! Amen.

"Jesus' Work Is Personal" (Sermon on Mark 7:31-37) | September 12, 2021

Text: Mark 7:31-37
Date: September 12, 2021
Event: The Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Year B

Mark 7:31–37 (EHV)

31Jesus left the region of Tyre again and went through Sidon to the Sea of Galilee, within the region of the Decapolis. 

32They brought a man to him who was deaf and had a speech impediment. They pleaded with Jesus to place his hand on him. 33Jesus took him aside in private, away from the crowd. He put his fingers into the man’s ears. Then he spit and touched the man’s tongue. 34After he looked up to heaven, he sighed and said, “Ephphatha!” (which means “Be opened!”) 35Immediately the man’s ears were opened, his tongue was set free, and he began to speak plainly. 36Jesus gave the people strict orders to tell no one, but the more he did so, the more they kept proclaiming it. 37They were amazed beyond measure and said, “He has done everything well. He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak!” 

Jesus’ Work Is Personal

The musical adaptation of Victor Hugo’s classic novel, Les Miserables, follows the story of Jean Valjean, a man who was jailed for stealing bread to feed his starving sister and her son. As he looks back on his going to jail, Valjean observes, “If there's another way to go / I missed it twenty long years ago / My life was a war that could never be won / They gave me a number and murdered Valjean / When they chained me and left me for dead / Just for stealing a mouthful of bread.”

That notion of giving him a number and thus killing him follows throughout the story. Whenever the police inspector, Javert, interacts with Valjean, he rarely refers to Valjean by name. Instead, Javert prefers to use Valjean’s prison number, “24601.” It was purposefully dehumanizing. Valjean was not a person in Javert’s mind; he’s a criminal. He treats him like someone might treat a beast of burden or some kind of commodity. 

Does it ever feel like that’s your relationship with God? Does he seem so distant, so far away that you feel like you are, at best, a mere number to him rather than a person? In our Gospel for this morning, we see Jesus operate in a slow, deliberate, and personal way that he didn’t have to. He took time with the deaf and mostly-mute man to interact with him, show his love for him, and heal him. Jesus’ work is always personal. He cares for you and me in the same way that he met this man’s needs, with work custom-tailored to who we are and what we need.

Our Gospel takes place after our run of Gospel readings from John chapter 6 where, after the feeding of the 5,000, many of the crowds stopped following Jesus because he wouldn’t do what they wanted him to do. He wouldn’t be their bread king to provide for any and every earthly need they had because he wanted to provide something greater and more important. He wanted to provide eternal life.

So Jesus journeyed around the greater area, still teaching and preaching, but probably to much less fanfare than he had done. He is traveling through the region of the Decapolis, the ten cities. This area was primarily populated with Gentiles, not Jewish people, as they were outside of Galilee proper. But that didn’t stop Jesus from caring about and loving these people so he proclaimed the good news he had to share there as well.

At a certain place, Jesus met a group of people who brought a man suffering from deafness and speech problems. They clearly cared very much for this man and wanted him to find relief from these ailments. If there was any difficulty for the man to reach Jesus or even know about his presence in the area, we can assume these friends took care of everything for him. We might think of the friends who lowered the paralytic man through a hole they made in the roof of the house where Jesus was earlier in his ministry.

From the summary of the conversation that Mark provides and Jesus’ actions, we can assume that while these people were bringing the man to Jesus to do something to help him, they’re weren’t only interested in this physical healing. They trusted Jesus to be able to provide for his physical well-being, yes, but also much more. Note the personal way they deal with Jesus on behalf of the man. They pleaded with Jesus. This was no half-hearted request. Their faith in Jesus and their love for this man combined to seek out this healing for him.

And how does Jesus treat him? How did he need to treat him? He could have dismissed them because he had other things to do. He could’ve just healed the man without a word, or with a word, or with a hand placed on him (as they asked for). We’ve seen Jesus do healing in all of those ways before. But Jesus here does something different, something unique: Jesus took him aside in private, away from the crowd. He put his fingers into the man’s ears. Then he spit and touched the man’s tongue. After he looked up to heaven, he sighed and said, “Ephphatha!” (which means “Be opened!”).

Why does Jesus do this? Why the show? Or actually better, why the lack of a show? Why depart from the crowds and do this healing just he and the man? Why do more than place his hands on him? Because Jesus wanted this healing, this miracle, this moment to be intensely personal. Think of the man’s difficulties. He couldn’t hear, so Jesus engages his other senses to focus the man on him. Jesus pulls him aside so that his vision is focused on Jesus and not distracted by the commotion of the crowd. He places his fingers in his ears, the part that wasn’t working, but certainly still had feeling. He made it clear to the man what he was doing even if the man couldn’t hear what he was saying. And then by spitting he visually get his own mouth in this healing work and by touching the man’s impeded tongue, set it free.

Jesus had a lot he wanted to do for this man and did in the best possible way to intimately communicate with him that Jesus, like the man’s friends, loved him. And look at the result of this healing! We’ve seen Jesus heal people who were paralyzed who left the healing not just barely able to shuffle along but actually run and jump moments after Jesus’ work. In a similar way, a man who was deaf (perhaps from birth) and who had great difficulty speaking (perhaps related to his deafness, which also might have been a life-long hardship) is left being able “to speak plainly.” Jesus took him not just to the point of an infant with newly-working ears and tongue where he would have to learn how to speak and receive audio input. No, he leaves Jesus’ healing as if there was never anything wrong. This is a complete healing that entirely undid the problem. And those around are left stunned: “He has done everything well. He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak!”

Maybe you have some problems in your life that you wish Jesus would work this kind of miracle to solve. Jesus certainly didn’t heal every single person with an ailment during his earthly ministry, but he had reasons for that at times. God hasn’t promised to banish every bad thing from your life, but he has promised to work everything out for your eternal good.

But, Jesus’ greater good that he wants for us looms large here. Jesus doesn’t treat us like this man in every problem, but he does treat us like this man in our most dire problem. Think of what he did. First of all, for anything to happen for this deaf man, Jesus had to care about him, have compassion for him. While it’s not called out specifically in this text, we know that this is always true for Jesus’ attitude.

Jesus also looked with compassion on you in your need of sin. You and I were doomed to hell for our rebellion against God, and Jesus loved us enough to take on our human nature and live and die in our place. His compassion spurred him on to do what needed to be done.

Jesus also gives you and me the personal attention that he gave this man. Perhaps not in the exactly same way (who of us wouldn’t love to have even five minutes alone to speak with Jesus?!), but you can be assured that you, as an individual, was on his mind and heart as he journeyed to the cross and suffered and died. Because while, yes, Jesus paid for the sins of the whole world, that means that he paid for your sins and my sins. We were there with him. And even now, while he doesn’t stick his fingers in our ears and touch our tongue, he still gives himself to us in a very personal, intimate way. We will hear in just a few minutes, “Take and eat, this is my body… Take and drink, this is my blood…” In the Lord’s Supper, Jesus is essentially doing for you what he did for that man. Your need for forgiveness is personally and intimately given to you by Jesus, for there in his body and blood with the bread and wine you receive the forgiveness of sins and the assurance of eternal life.

But Jesus here, too, is going above and beyond. He doesn’t leave us just a blank slate. He doesn’t leave us like a grown man having to learn how to speak. He doesn’t leave us devoid of sin but then at neutral. Jesus not only removes our sin but actually credits his perfect life to us. When God looks at you and he looks at me, all he sees is Jesus’ perfection. Our life of rebellion was taken a way and a life of perfect obedience was given in its place. There’s nothing left for us to do or create. Jesus has done it all for us!

My sisters and brothers, go from this place today in joy knowing that you have a very personal God. He doesn’t treat us like an object or a number. He meets us individually, and treats our individual needs with his mercy and grace. Your God loves you—the singular you. He loves you as an individual, as a unique person. He created you, he redeemed you, and he is overjoyed to call you his child. Rest easy in Jesus’ personal work done for you! Amen.

"Jesus Is Difficult" (Sermon on John 6:60-69) | August 29, 2021

Text: John 6:60-69
Date: August 29, 2021
Event: The Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Year B

John 6:60–69 (EHV)

60When they heard it, many of his disciples said, “This is a hard teaching! Who can listen to it?” 

61But Jesus, knowing in himself that his disciples were grumbling about this, asked them, “Does this cause you to stumble in your faith? 62What if you would see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? 63The Spirit is the one who gives life. The flesh does not help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life. 64But there are some of you who do not believe.” For Jesus knew from the beginning those who would not believe and the one who would betray him. 65He said, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me, unless it is given to him by my Father.” 

66After this, many of his disciples turned back and were not walking with him anymore. 67So Jesus asked the Twelve, “You do not want to leave too, do you?” 

68Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom will we go? You have the words of eternal life. 69We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.” 

Jesus Is Difficult

Is the easy path or the difficult better? That’s really impossible to make a blanket statement on, right? Those of you who know me well might know that one the past times I enjoy is video games. There’s a continual conversation around video games about whether you should be playing them on an “easy” mode or a “very difficult” mode. Easy sometimes is dismissed as avoiding a challenge, while people that use an easy mode want to relax with a game not be frustrated by it. It really depends on who you are and what you’re looking for from that past time—a challenge or a diversion.

Sometimes the difficult way for anything in life seems foolish outside of maybe seeking out a sense of accomplishment. Why walk to visit someone in Reno, NV when you could drive or take other transportation? Why make your own paper out of the dead tree in your yard when you could buy a pack at the store? Something being difficult doesn’t necessarily make it the better or wiser choice.

But sometimes, it is. Sometimes taking the easy road is just avoiding the difficult necessities. If you’ve ever devolved a conversation into small talk when you really needed to discuss something difficult with someone else, you’ve felt this. If you’ve known you needed to go to the doctor to get something checked out and you’ve avoided it because you didn’t want to know the truth of what was going on, you’ve felt this. If you’ve tried to lose weight or just clean up your diet, but the chips or the fast food were just right there, you’ve felt this.

We talked last week about how Jesus is necessary for us. We cannot remove our sin. We cannot set things right with God. We need Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection to accomplish and prove that our sins are forgiven. He has to be the one to fix the mess of our sin and solve the problem of hell. Jesus made it clear to the people that they needed him. They needed the spiritual blessings he alone provides. Jesus had said in our Gospel last week, a few verses before this week’s Gospel: “I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats this bread, he will live forever. The bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh…. Amen, Amen, I tell you: Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life in yourselves.” (John 6:51, 53).

Jesus wasn’t couching this in easy to understand terms, but he was making the people face a difficult problem. They wanted Jesus to be an easy Savior, one who would save them from hunger, a bread king who would keep them full and satisfied in this life. But that was not why Jesus came. He came to do something more, to do something far better. He came to give eternal life. He came to give his life for the sins of the world. He came to rescue all people from hell. 

But that’s difficult to hear, right? It’s difficult for a couple of reasons. First of all, it means that Jesus isn’t as concerned about our immediate-term desires as our eternal-term needs. And for us who so often have blinders on and can only think about the here-and-now, that is not what we want. It would be easier if Jesus was just making every bad thing in our life good, changing every trouble into joy, and making it so we didn’t have a care in the world. But that’s not what Jesus promises, is it? He promises to work good from bad, but he doesn’t promise an absence of bad. In fact, he promises just the opposite. He says life in this sinful world is going to be difficult. But, while we struggle here, we should pick up those difficulties, those crosses, and follow him.

Jesus’ insistence on something bigger and greater than tending to earthly needs is difficult for another reason: it forces us to acknowledge things about ourselves that we don’t want to acknowledge. None of us likes to admit that we have spiritual needs. I don’t want to think about the fact that I’ve sinned against God. I don’t want to think about the fact that the wrong things I’ve done and the good things I’ve left undone have earned me hell for eternity. But the necessity of Jesus’ work for me doesn’t let me avoid that. Following Jesus means facing head-on that I’ve ruined everything with my sin and am hopeless and powerless on my own. 

So, Jesus is difficult. Being around him and associated with him means this is not the easy path. So how do we treat that difficulty then? Are we avoiding it or embracing it? 

In our Gospel this morning, we have two different approaches to this difficulty. When they heard it, many of his disciples [that is, those following Jesus but not part of the twelve] said, “This is a hard teaching! Who can listen to it?” … After this, many of his disciples turned back and were not walking with him anymore. That’s one approach, right? We just leave Jesus behind and say, “I’m taking the easy road. This isn’t worth the trouble.” We can abandon Jesus altogether or leave him at the periphery of our lives without taking him seriously. We can become Christians in name only, in a family or social sense. Or, we could stop pretending and just abandon the Christian faith altogether. Either way, it probably makes things easier now, right? If we don’t have to think about sin and hell, if we don’t have to come to grips with our own failures to live up to God’s standards, if we can just focus on what we want to do and when and how we want to do it, that makes things easier, at least in the short term.

But what does it do for the long-term, the eternal-term? If we just abandon Jesus wholesale or don’t really care what he says about sin, death, and hell and our spiritual needs, we find ourselves trading eternal security for temporary ease, and that’s not a good trade at all. Jesus said clearly to those mulling over deserting him, “The Spirit is the one who gives life. The flesh does not help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life.” In other words, “You might not like it, but you need what I am giving you. It may not be easy, but it’s absolutely necessary for your eternal security. The things of this life pass away and end up being meaningless. What I do for you and give to you lasts forever.” 

So the crowd’s reaction en masse was not really commendable. What’s the other option? We see it in Peter, being a spokesman for the twelve. When Jesus asked them, “You do not want to leave too, do you?” Peter’s response is clear and to the point, “Lord, to whom will we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.”

Peter and the rest of that core of disciples had made the choice to go with the more difficult path, to stick with Jesus no matter what the crowds were doing. Now, we know they were not perfect. As John makes clear in our reading here, among the twelve was Judas who would betray Jesus. We know Peter himself failed spectacularly in a time of trial and difficulty when he denied even knowing Jesus while Jesus was on trial before the Jewish leaders.

What does that tell us? Following Jesus is difficult. It’s a struggle. You and I? We will fail to do it at times. But that failure doesn’t mean it’s not worth it nor that we’ve ruined anything. Because Jesus solves even that failure in what he provides. When we’ve been tempted to and have followed and easier path rather than following Jesus, Jesus forgives that. When we’ve stumbled in our dedication to Jesus and not lived our lives the way that we should to thank him for what he’s done for us, Jesus forgives that. When we’ve let sin or anything else become more important to us than what God does for us in Jesus’ life and death in our place, Jesus forgives that. Difficult as it is to follow Jesus, his forgiveness restores us at every single misstep and failure. Following Jesus is difficult, but it is not something we do alone.

So, my brothers and sisters, knowing how difficult it is to walk this path, be rocks and encouragements for each other. Is there a church member you’ve not seen since the pandemic started either because they have stayed away or you have? Call them! Email them! Be a support to them because you know how difficult this path is and how easy it is to give up on it in the best of times. And our current circumstance perhaps make it even more likely that we will move on from Jesus and seek out something different and easier.

Continue to encourage one another as we walk this path together, because there really is no where else for us to go. Jesus alone has the words of eternal life. May those words that speak of his work in our place be our prime focus and delight now and forever. Amen.

"Jesus Is Necessary" (Sermon on John 5:51-58) | August 22, 2021

Text: John 6:51-58
Date: August 22, 2021
Event: The Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Year B

John 6:51-58 (EHV)

“I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats this bread, he will live forever. The bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” 

52At that, the Jews argued among themselves, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” 

53So Jesus said to them, “Amen, Amen, I tell you: Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life in yourselves. 54The one who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the Last Day. 55For my flesh is real food, and my blood is real drink. 56The one who eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him. 57Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me. 58This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like your fathers ate and died. The one who eats this bread will live forever.”

Jesus Is Necessary

Do you know a person who just doesn’t seem to abide by recommended car maintenance? Maybe they run tires until they’re bald or they rarely if ever change their oil. Or maybe they neglect some personal hygiene that is very noticeable. Or they avoid eating some category of food that we would consider necessary for a healthy life. In a lot of cases, not doing these necessary things is probably not done willfully but ignorantly. “Oh, I didn’t know…” “Oh, no one ever told me…” “Oh, we never did it that way growing up…” 

Sometimes we need help learning and knowing what is necessary. Maybe you take someone under your wing to help them with car maintenance or to clean up their diet; maybe someone has done the same for you. But we all at times need to be told what is important, what is necessary.

And that is what Jesus is doing in our Gospel for this morning. We’ve had a long run of readings from John chapter 6. It began with the feeding of the 5,000. Despite weariness on the part of Jesus and the disciples, Jesus took the time to minister to the needs of this large crowd, teaching them the important things of God’s kingdom. He focused them on the forgiveness of sins and eternal life. 

Then Jesus and his disciples left and went to find quiet elsewhere. But still the crowds followed. And so Jesus began to teach them again. But this time, as we’ve heard, he had a bit of an edge to his teaching. He had rebuked the people in our previous lessons that they weren’t seeking him out for the right reasons. They weren’t coming to him because of his teaching, or even because the miracles he did pointed to his authority as God. No, they were coming to him just to have their tummies filled with the free miracle bread that he provided. 

The crowd had tried to bait him, comparing Jesus to Moses and pointing to the fact that under Moses’ leadership centuries before the Israelites had eaten the miracle bread, manna, from heaven. Jesus pointed out that the manna hadn’t come from Moses; it came from God. God had provided for their ancestors, giving them what they needed to survive. But manna in the belly was only a minor need compared to the real need they all had. God had sent Jesus to provide for that real need, the need of a Savior.

And this is Jesus’ point. He wants to lift the crowd’s eyes from the mundane to the eternal. “Why are you worrying about what will perish?” Jesus is asking. “Be focused on what endures. I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats this bread, he will live forever. The bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

Before we dig into what Jesus says here more deeply, let’s take just a moment to clarify one thing. In the Lord’s Supper we truly receive Jesus’ body and blood along with the bread and wine. Jesus was clear and direct when he gave that to his disciples the night before he was crucified. However, when Jesus speaks about eating his flesh and drinking his blood here, he is not talking about the Lord’s Supper. At the time Jesus spoke these words, we’re still about a year away from Jesus’ death. Jesus gave that supper to his disciples who trusted him; he did not give it to the largely misguided crowds. So while you and I may think of the blessings God gives through the Lord’s Supper in what Jesus says here, that is not directly what Jesus is speaking about, despite the similarity in language between what Jesus says to the crowd here and the sacrament. 

So, Jesus has declared himself the bread of life. He said he would give his flesh for the life of the world. But the crowds are not getting that Jesus isn’t talking about a meal they could have right then and there and never be hungry again. The parable, as it often did, went right over their heads because they weren’t thinking spiritual, eternal thoughts. They could only focus on the temporal, physical things. Thus their question, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” They are talking past each other, or Jesus is not really doing what they want so the crowds are getting a little irritated and obstinate. 

So Jesus gives it one last go. “Amen, Amen, I tell you: Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life in yourselves. The one who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the Last Day.” See, the crowd has a problem. Their problem was not just an ignorance of or obstinance to what Jesus is talking about. The main problem they had was sin. Sin robbed them of life with God. Sin meant eternal death in hell. Without a solution, without the solution, they did not have life inside of them. 

Jesus is trying to use their earthly focus to explain their spiritual needs. Why do you eat food at all? For the most basic reasons, you eat so that you don’t die, right? Eating food solves the problem of hunger that eventually leads to death. Jesus applies that paradigm to himself. Why should you eat the Bread of Life? Because eating this food solves the problem of sin that eventually leads to eternal death. 

When Jesus speaks about eating his flesh and drinking his blood, it’s a dramatic way to talk about believing in him, trusting in him as the solution to sin and the certainty of eternal life. The crowd was chasing after another free lunch. Jesus’ response is something along the lines of, “You are chasing after things that do not last. Do you want to eat and drink something that actually matters? Eat and drink me. You need me and what I will do for you spiritually, not just the miracle food I can distribute on the hillside. Prioritize me to take away your sin rather than bread that can temporarily stave off hunger.” 

The eating parable here shows how involved Jesus should be in our lives. He is something to be loved and cherished, something made an integral part of us. Jesus is to be that favorite meal that we cannot wait to eat, cannot wait to make a part of our lives, not that one speciality spice we bought for that one recipe that we didn’t really like and will just sit in the cabinet unused. 

But, the more we think about it, the more we can see ourselves in the crowd’s treatment of Jesus, can’t we? Maybe we’re in church regularly. Maybe our devotional life seems healthy and our prayer life even more so. But then, what happens when there’s a little bit of friction? When we have troubles is our first thought, “God will work this for good. He will do what is right”? Or is it stress, anxiety, worry, hopelessness, almost totally forgetting that God exists at all let alone is by our side in hardship and heartache? And when things get busy and frantic in our lives, is our previously healthy life in God’s Word cut short or does it even go missing altogether? 

How many people throughout history have gotten busy or worried with earthly matters and because of that just punted their eternal security? How many people have given up the Bread of Life for temporal bread that in the moment seemed really important but turned out to be nothing? Jesus brings the crowd back to the manna in the wilderness. That miracle food, amazing as it was and important as it was to sustain the Israelites, did not last forever. “[I am] the bread that came down from heaven, not like your fathers ate and died.” Likewise, the lunch that Jesus provided the day before had long since run its course. But Jesus is offering something different, something better, something that lasts, something that is enterally necessary.

The result of worry and stress and misguided focus in this life is the same as anything else: physical death. We can’t change that. It won’t be any different unless Jesus returns before we die. But, what happens after death can be changed, but not by us. We need Jesus. Jesus is necessary. For our forgiveness and eternal life, it was necessary for the Father to send his Son, Jesus. For our forgiveness and eternal life, it was necessary that Jesus live the perfect life we could never live in our place, and then apply his perfect life to us so that we are seen as having done all the good things that Jesus did. For our forgiveness and eternal life, it was necessary that someone pay the debt of hell we owed in our sin, and that someone was Jesus when he died on the cross. For us to live eternally, Jesus is necessary. His work for us is our connection to the living Father. His work in our place is our certainty of eternal life. 

So we have our priorities, right? We need to be focused on Jesus to the point that he is our food and drink, even the air we breathe. In the end, nothing else matters in the same way because nothing else will solve our sin and give us a perfect life forever. But Jesus does and has. So keep your focus on him, his work, his Word, his promises, because in him you have the solution to every eternal problem. In him you have the forgiveness from every sin and rescue from hell. In him, you have the Bread of Life. In him you have what is necessary for now and for eternity. The one who eats this bread will live forever. Amen.

"Enjoy the Full Meal!" (Sermon on Hebrews 5:11-6:3) | August 15, 2021

Text: Hebrews 5:11-6:3
Date: August 15, 2021
Event: The Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost, Year B

Hebrews 5:11–6:3 (EHV)

11We have much to say about this, and it is difficult to explain, because you have become too lazy to listen. 12In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the beginning principles of God’s word all over again. You have become people who need milk, not solid food. 13For everyone who lives on milk is not acquainted with the word of righteousness, because he is still an infant. 14But solid food is for mature people, who have their senses trained by practice to distinguish between good and evil. 

6:1Therefore, leaving the beginning discussion of Christ, let us press on toward matters that require greater maturity, not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works, of faith in God, 2of the teaching about baptisms, of the laying on of hands, of the resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment. 3And we will do this, if God permits. 

Enjoy the Full Meal!

Remember when buffets were a thing? Maybe they will be again sometime soon, but I’m assuming not much at the moment during COVID. But, what’s the advantage of a buffet? You can get what you want and you don’t have to take anything else. And that’s great for families where the kids only want chicken fingers and the adults are avoiding certain foods for health reasons. A buffet might make it easier to pick and choose the desired or necessary foods than trying to work with the staff on tweaking a meal already laid out on a menu.

But, you have to be careful at a buffet, right? Maybe the Mac and cheese at a certain place is really tasty, but if you only ate Mac and cheese (especially depending on the quantity), you might not be feeling great after the fact. Even if things are not our favorites, we recognize that we need a variety of foods to keep us going and to keep us healthy. Mac and cheese does not carry the same nutritional value as broccoli.

This morning, the writer to the Hebrews encourages us to see God’s Word as a feast laid out before us. But he wants us to see it less like a buffet and more like a carefully planned meal where we do well to enjoy the full meal, to continue to grow in what God has said and done, even if there are difficult things or items that are distasteful to our palettes in that meal.

We don’t know exactly who wrote the letter to the Hebrews. The author never puts his name anywhere in the letter. There are a lot of theories. We can say probably not the apostle Paul. Luther thought it might be Apollos, a very learned man who came to know Jesus in the book of Acts, and that’s a very real possibility. What we know about the author is that he was someone very educated (as he writes in a very high style) and someone very, very familiar with Jewish worship practices.

We can say with more confidence to whom the letter is written. It was written primarily to Jewish Christians, those who had grown up in the Jewish faith and had been brought to see that everything promised in Judaism is fulfilled in Jesus. But things were suddenly difficult. This letter was written around the same time at Peter’s letters that we’re studying in Sunday morning Bible class. At this time, Nero is emperor in Rome and a tremendous persecution of Christians has broken out across the Roman Empire. People are losing their lives because they are Christians. Christianity is an illegal religion across the empire.

So, for these formally Jewish believers, what would be the easy (and some might say obvious) way out of this trouble? Revert back to the Judaism! It’s certainly not problem- or hardship-free, but at least it would be a legal religion and would be avoid the harshest of these problems. But it would be giving up the eternal to make the temporary more pleasant. 

And so the majority of this letter is the writer proving to his readers the superiority of Jesus to anything they could revert back to. No temporary peace was worth giving up eternity for because nothing else would ever provide the full and free forgiveness that God promised other than Jesus. 

So, in our snippet from Hebrews we’re looking at this morning, he’s urging the people on toward maturity in the faith. Don’t abandon it; go the other way! Embrace it all the more. But it wasn’t just fear or worry that turned the people away from growth. It was laziness. It was apathy. It was not being able to see the importance of anything beyond the basement-basics of the Christian faith. We have much to say about this, and it is difficult to explain, because you have become too lazy to listen. In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the beginning principles of God’s word all over again. You have become people who need milk, not solid food.  

This really describes the crowd’s reaction to Jesus in our recent readings from John chapter 6, doesn’t it? They had gotten their free miracle food and they wanted more. They didn’t really care all that much that Jesus could give them miracle food because he was God. They didn’t care too much that he was God because he came for a purpose. They didn’t seem too concerned with Jesus being the promised Messiah. They were infants in the faith if they were believers at all; they could only focus on what Jesus could give them in the here and now and cared little for Jesus’ true purpose. 

Is it possible that the writer to the Hebrews is writing to us as well? Are we chasing after every opportunity to grow in our faith? Or are we content to let things stagnate? Do we avoid the difficult sections of Scripture and just try to stick to the easy and the familiar? Are we sticking to the milk of God’s Word and thus being infants in the faith, or are we seeking after growth and maturation? 

I think in different ways and for different reasons, many of us shy away from real maturation in the Christian faith. But does it matter? Why chase after maturity? Look again at the “basic” teachings that the writer lists: repentance from dead works, of faith in God, of the teaching about baptisms, of the laying on of hands, of the resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment. Isn’t that list sufficient for salvation? Doesn’t that list of teachings underscore that Jesus is the solution to sins, the source of resurrection, and certainty in eternal judgment. Isn’t that enough? 

Certainly. We know that what is necessary for salvation is faith in Jesus as Savior. But do we want to leave it at that? If you’re learning to swim for survival, are you satisfied with being able to hold your breath under water for 10 seconds, or do you strive for more? If you’re lifting weights to get stronger, do you stop when you can lift the bare minimum or do you go for more? When you’re learning to cook in a healthier way, do you stop at one recipe learned or do you strive for more? 

There are so many cases where we see value in more than the bare minimum. And this takes us back to our sermon from last week. We said our life is one of continual battle and struggle, between the sinful nature which hates God and loves sin and the new self which hates sin and loves God. We want that new self, that faith, to be stronger so that it can better fight that sinful nature. While it will never be perfect on this side of eternity, the goal is to let the new self win more battles over the sinful nature as we seek to live our lives—our best lives—to thank God for his forgiveness and the free gift of eternal life.

And how do we strengthen that faith? We put ourselves in the position for God to strengthen it for us, for the Holy Spirit to work on our hearts. The Holy Spirit uses God’s Word and the sacraments to create and strengthen faith. So if we want to grow toward maturity, we need to be in the Word!

And that means the whole Word, even the tough stuff. Because, again, the Word is not a buffet for us to pick and choose. It is a meal of solid and balanced food (along with that basic milk) that when used together, makes us stronger. Don’t shy away from it, but embrace it as of temporal and especially eternal importance!

We’re going to have opportunities for us and for our families to grow in the faith in the coming weeks. As get into fall, new Bible Classes and Bible study opportunities will come up. Like Sunday School for the children and Bible Class for the older members, or like Catechism for our kids or Catechism as a review for the adults, or like midweek Bible classes where we gather together online or in-person to study and dig and grow.

I want to put a challenge out to all of you here: try to add one thing to your spiritual growth in the coming weeks. Maybe it’ll be picking up a book related to the Christian faith and reading through it. Maybe it’ll be finally making use of those Meditations booklets that are always in your mailbox each quarter. Maybe it’ll be getting to a Bible class that you don’t normally attend. Maybe it’ll simply be asking a Christian friend or your pastor that one nagging question that’s been weighing on you for a long time that you’ve never been able to get a satisfactory, biblical answer for.

Whatever the avenue you take is, let’s make this time between now and the end of this year focused on growth in the Word, growth in faith, and to enjoy the living that God produces by it. God has given us a tremendous meal in his Word that endures to eternity. Let’s enjoy the whole thing, together! Amen.

"Live Your Best Life" (Sermon on Ephesians 4:17-24) | August 8, 2021

Text: Ephesians 4:17–24
Date: August 8, 2021
Event: The Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost, Year B

Ephesians 4:17–24 (EHV)

So I tell you this and testify to it in the Lord: Do not walk any longer as the Gentiles walk, in their futile way of thinking. 18They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, due to the hardness of their hearts. 19Because they have no sense of shame, they have given themselves over to sensuality, with an ever-increasing desire to practice every kind of impurity. 

20But you did not learn Christ in that way, 21if indeed you have heard of him and were taught in him (since the truth is in Jesus). 22As far as your former way of life is concerned, you were taught to take off the old self, which is corrupted by its deceitful desires, 23and to be renewed continually in the spirit of your mind, 24and to put on the new self, which has been created to be like God in righteousness and true holiness. 

Live Your Best Life

What does your best life look like? That’s going to be wildly different for every person. For some, it’s going to be relaxing on a beach with a cold drink and good book. For some it’s enjoying time with family and friends. For some it’s being in the midst of a fast-paced work environment where you’re constantly challenged. For others it’s sitting down for that movie marathon or a new, anticipated video game. Whether we find our most energy from being alone or together, from our work or family or hobbies, we all have ideal activities that we’d do regularly if possible.

That’s from our perspective. Does your best life look different from God’s perspective? Maybe not entirely. There’s nothing inherently wrong with the things we just listed. It’s not like it’s a sin to relax on a beach or to dig into work. But in our lesson today from Ephesians, God gives us a little bit of guidance. Our best life is a life lived to his glory, motivated by the love he has shown to us in Jesus.

Earlier in Ephesians chapter 4, Paul had encouraged his readers to embrace their differences and work together in the unity that the Holy Spirit provides. He reminded us in our Second Lesson last week that Jesus is the one who gave us his called workers to teach and encourage us in the Word. And Paul says that Jesus does this “for the purpose of training the saints for the work of serving, in order to build up the body of Christ” (Ephesians 4:12). 

But what exactly does that look like? Paul goes on in our lesson to describe this life lived as members of the body of Christ. But to do so he has to start with some history that would be painful for the Ephesians and that might be painful for us well as what he says is as true today as it was in Paul’s day. He says, “Do not walk any longer as the Gentiles walk, in their futile way of thinking. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, due to the hardness of their hearts. Because they have no sense of shame, they have given themselves over to sensuality, with an ever-increasing desire to practice every kind of impurity.” 

The term “Gentile” refers to anyone who is not Jewish. People who were Gentiles in Paul’s day likely did not grow up knowing God’s inspired Word or his clearly stated moral law. As such, life among the Gentiles was usually embracing some kind of sin, especially indulging the hedonistic or pleasure-centered sins. If it felt good and made you happy, go ahead and do it. This was not universally true of all Gentiles, but was very common in the Greek and Roman world. And this was likely the way that many of Paul’s readers would have lived prior to being brought to faith in Jesus.

Does that sound familiar? Doesn’t that sound like the world we live in? In our day, we might substitute the word “unbeliever” for the word “Gentile.” How many unbelievers do you know who chase after whatever brings pleasure (or at least promises to bring pleasure), with little regard for the side effects or the negative impact it has on those around them? How often do you see unbelievers have no shame in their sin but rejoice in it, boast about it, and even center their life around it?

It’s not uncommon to know this. This is reality for any Christian living in this world surrounded by those who do not know their Savior. Perhaps the area of the country we live in might make some of this especially easily to see as sin around us is often public and unashamed. But we would be lying if we let this just be an unbeliever thing and not an us thing, right? We are not immune from this way of thinking or this way of life. This morning, let’s focus less on them and more on us, because Paul is talking not to the unbelieving world but to Christians. 

Maybe it’s not an overtly public thing, but sin has more influence on us than we’d like to admit. How often do we let the little Pharisee in our hearts belittle others and raise ourselves up along the way? How often does your sinful anger take hold and you lose your cool with a family member or coworker? How often do we let stress and pressure control how we speak to or around other people? How often do you just stop being mindful of sin and just let it be part of your day-to-day life? 

It doesn’t take a whole lot of soul searching to know that Paul really has us in the crosshairs, right? Certainty his words apply to plenty of other people, but remember that Paul is not talking to other people, he’s talking to Christians. He’s talking to you and to me. Should we embrace sin like someone who doesn’t know the gospel? Should we live our lives as indistinguishable from the people in the world around us who have no connection to Christ? Absolutely not! 

And that’s Paul’s point: But you did not learn Christ in that way, if indeed you have heard of him and were taught in him (since the truth is in Jesus). You do not know Jesus as one who endorses or allows sin, because he doesn’t. You know the truth. You know that God hates sin and punishes it in hell. Sin is never a “pet,” it’s never cute or harmless. Sin is always dangerous because sin always negatively affects your relationship with God. Sin is always an attack on your Creator.

But you have learned about Christ. You know what Jesus did and why he did it. He came to this world because we were those who embraced sin without shame, because we were people who would proudly march straight into hell because we wanted to do what we wanted to do. And Jesus could not have us endure that punishment that we had brought on ourselves. So Jesus intervened and took the judgement our sins deserved on himself. He rescued us from our sins because he loved us and because that’s what he promised to do.

So you are free from sin! You are free from the power of the devil! You are free from eternal death in hell! Your freedom is not some ideological concept but reality given to you by Jesus’ life and death and then proven by his resurrection. There is nothing left to pay or do; heaven is yours!

However, until God brings us to that heavenly home, we have a battle we face every moment of every day. We were born with sinful natures that we inherited from our parents. The sinful nature is the part of us that hates God and loves sin, embracing it without shame. But when God brought us to faith in Jesus, when we learned about the truth of Jesus’ work for us, God gave us something new. We have a new man or new self inside of us now, our faith which expresses itself in gratitude to God. We were created in God’s image in the beginning but lost that image of God, that harmony with God, in our sin. But the new self is the beginning of the restoration of that image of God within us. The new self directly combats the sinful nature. While the sinful nature only wants to sin, the new self only wants to do what is right to thank God for what he’s done for us.

Oh how we long to let the new self reign supreme and to have the sinful nature done away with forever! We long for that because we know that living as the new self wants to live—thanking God with a life filled with good works—is truly living our best life! But living that best life will always be a struggle until God brings us to himself. That’s why Paul gives the encouragement that we continue to strip off the sinful nature and give reign to the new self: As far as your former way of life is concerned, you were taught to take off the old self, which is corrupted by its deceitful desires, and to be renewed continually in the spirit of your mind, and to put on the new self, which has been created to be like God in righteousness and true holiness. The new self is strengthened by contact with God’s Word and the sacraments. In our battle over sin in our lives, there is no better weapon, no better source of strength, than God’s inspired promises and fulfillments.

But this also gives us insight into the people around us. We said earlier that we want to focus on us and not on them, but how do Paul’s reminders help us as we navigate in this corrupted world and share Jesus with those around us? What should we expect of our unbelieving neighbors, friends, family, coworkers, even strangers around us? Should we expect that they live lives that look like what God expects? Hardly! Their ignorance over who God is and what he’s done means that they have little to no motivation to live “good” lives. Now, often those who do not believe will try their best, they will attempt to be good citizens and neighbors, but if they do not believe the truth of God’s rescue in Jesus, that outward “goodness” is only surface-level.

But our goal is not that people just do the right thing; our goal is that people know their Savior. We want people to trust that their sins are forgiven in Jesus, not just that their life look like they believe that. The change we are wanting to effect in the world is not so shallow as to only want to change externals; we want the heart to change. So we understand when people don’t behave like they should, and we are not satisfied if people are simply doing the “right things” for the wrong reasons. They, too, need to “learn Christ… the truth… in Jesus.” Learning of Jesus naturally produces the best life, a life of good works to thank God.

So we live our lives as God’s ambassadors, putting on that new self in thankful joy to God at all times, but especially when we are surrounded by those who do not believe in their Savior. Putting on the new self is not only about our gratitude to God, it’s about sharing the good news of salvation with the world. And so you, my brothers and sisters, strive for all empathy, all patience, all gentleness, all encouragement, as you seek to build up your fellow believers who join you in this difficult journey through this life. But all of that empathy, patience, gentleness, and encouragement should also be at the forefront of your dealing with those who do not yet know their Savior. You have the message they need, the gift provided to them free of all charge without any strings by their heavenly Father. Pursue the ways you might point to him and share him by your words, actions, and attitudes.

In the end, do not give your sinful nature run of your life. Do not let it control you. You do not belong to sin; you belong to your Savior who bought you with his own blood. Rejoice at that! Embrace that! Live your best life now because you know the infinitely better life is coming! Amen.

"Your Needs Are Jesus' Priority" (Sermon on John 6:1-15) | August 1, 2021

Text: John 6:1-15
Date: August 1, 2021
Event: The Tenth Sunday after Pentecost, Year B

John 6:1–15 (EHV)

After this, Jesus crossed over to the other side of the Sea of Galilee (or Tiberias). 2A large crowd followed him because they saw the miraculous signs he was performing on those who were sick. 3Jesus went up on the hillside and sat down there with his disciples. 4The Jewish Passover Festival was near. 

5When Jesus looked up and saw a huge crowd coming toward him, he asked Philip, “Where can we buy bread for these people to eat?” 6But Jesus was saying this to test him, for he himself knew what he was going to do. 

7Philip answered him, “Two hundred denarii worth of bread would not be enough for each of them to have just a little.” 

8One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, said to him, 9“There’s a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish, but what is that for so many people?” 

10Jesus said, “Have the people sit down.” There was plenty of grass in that place, so they sat down. There were about five thousand men. 

11Then Jesus took the loaves and, after giving thanks, he distributed pieces to those who were seated. He also did the same with the fish—as much as they wanted. 

12When the people were full, he told his disciples, “Gather the pieces that are left over so that nothing is wasted.” 13So they gathered them and filled twelve baskets with pieces from the five barley loaves left over by those who had eaten. 

14When the people saw the miraculous sign Jesus did, they said, “This really is the Prophet who is coming into the world.” 

15When Jesus realized that they intended to come and take him by force to make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain by himself. 

Your Needs Are Jesus’ Priority

How are you doing keeping up on different priorities in life? That is a balancing act that is difficult to do in the best of times, let alone the upheaval that many of families are currently facing. Right now family concerns take center stage, then work, then extended family, then church, then neighbors, then a minute to relax, except no because something else popped up. It’s exhausting and it can feel like we’re barely keeping things together, especially when there are many problems that don’t seem to have actual solutions.

This is why we’re here for each other, though, right? As brothers and sisters in Christ, we can help each other shoulder burdens, we can help meet immediate or long term needs, and we can bring the needs of others to God’s throne in prayer.

And we know what our priorities should be, right? We have a lot of day-to-day things to tend to, but we know (and have heard from this pulpit repeatedly) that Jesus should be our priority, that his Word should be our focus, and we should be continually looking ahead to eternal life. That’s where our priorities should be. 

But what about God? Where are his priorities? What is he focused on? What does he care about? What concerns him? This morning in our Gospel from John chapter 6, we get a bit of a window into God’s priorities. As Jesus works with the crowd we’ll see that, broadly speaking, our needs are Jesus’ priority. 

This familiar account of the feeding of the 5,000 takes place just after our Gospel for last week. Though we’ve jumped from Mark’s Gospel to John’s, the timeline lines up. Jesus had sent his disciples out two-by-two to preach and heal in the surrounding towns and villages. After they were done, they returned with great joy to report to Jesus everything that had happened while they were working. 

But even as they were trying to organize their thoughts and process what had happened, the needs and demands of the crowd were great. So, last week we saw Jesus pull the disciples away from the crowds for some needed time to refocus and recalibrate; they needed time away from work for themselves. So they did that. But, when they got to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, the crowds were waiting for them. We heard in Mark’s gospel last week that Jesus’ heart went out to the crowd because they were directionless and full of needs, like sheep without a shepherd. 

And so that’s where our account in John’s Gospel picks up. In their temporary vacation from work, the work came to them. A large crowd followed him because they saw the miraculous signs he was performing on those who were sick. They came to find Jesus’ healing miracles for the sick and the crippled; Jesus was going to take the opportunity to give them what they really needed though as he would spend most of the day teaching them God’s truths, likely especially focused on repentance and forgiveness that he alone could provide. 

So here is one of Jesus’ priorities, his highest priority: our eternal well-being. Jesus came to accomplish our soul’s salvation, to live and die for us that we would have the forgiveness of sins. He came that people might know the fulfillment of all God had promised in him. He came to save them from their sins; he came to solve their eternal problem. This is greatest need the people have, so Jesus, weary as he was, taught this crowd. He showed them their needs and their solution in him. It was the same message that the disciples had just been out sharing. 

This eternal need is Jesus’ focus for us today, as well. No matter what happens to us in this life, it’s not worth comparing to eternity. Problems here are temporary; perfection in heaven is forever. So Jesus’ priority is our eternal need, our spiritual need. He meets that needs in his life, death, and resurrection. Our sins are gone because of his work for us so we have nothing to fear.

However, Jesus is not exclusively concerned with our spiritual and eternal needs. In our Gospel Jesus identifies a problem or need that would require addressing even before the crowd fully gathers: When Jesus looked up and saw a huge crowd coming toward him, he asked Philip, “Where can we buy bread for these people to eat?” Philip’s reaction is pretty exasperated, “Two hundred denarii worth of bread would not be enough for each of them to have just a little.” A denarius would have been about a day’s wage. So by Philip’s estimation 200 days’ wages doesn’t even begin to touch the need here to adequately feed this large crowd of people.

John’s narrative skips over what seems to be the bulk of the day of Jesus teaching the crowd. It seems like Jesus had this brief conversation with Philip and likely some of the other disciples nearby at the start of the day so that as they worked with the crowd, the question of, “How are we going to feed these people?” would have been circulating in their minds as they worked. John mentions that Jesus asked this question to test them, knowing full well what he was going to do. But, would the disciples see the need to depend on him? 

How often do we find ourselves in a situation similar to the disciples or even the crowd? Not to be faced with the impossible task of feeding thousands without any resources, but beating our head against a problem while not seeking out God’s help for the solution. How often do we take matters into our own hands, assume that by the strength of our mind or will or arms we have to produce the solution, and don’t give a second thought to Jesus’ direction to depend on him, to call on him in time of trouble? 

Does Jesus care about your needs? Absolutely. Not only does he care, but bringing about a positive result from them is his priority. Does Jesus care about your family member struggling with illness and disease? Yes. Does Jesus care about your concerns about keeping your job or finding something to better fit your situation? Without a doubt. Does Jesus make our physical well-being one of his priorities? Absolutely. 

If we look at the prayer Jesus taught us to pray, we see a clear priority to these matters in that prayer, “Give us today our daily bread.” Right there as part of an overall brief prayer, he tells us to bring the requests for the immediate and the physical. Jesus worked the miracle to provide this meal for the thousands of people on the hillside that late afternoon. He cares about you, too, soul and body.

But let’s not then drive in the other ditch and forget that Jesus knows that spiritual is more important than the physical. The crowd that day wanted to make Jesus king—and not in an eternal, heavenly, forgiveness king sort of way, but in a “this guy should be installed to always heal our diseases and give us free food” sort of way. But that’s not why he came. He cared about their physical needs, yes, but he came for a higher purpose that being a bread-king would not allow to bring to fruition. He came to give his life for the sins of the world, not to be the source of free food for this temporal life. In the coming weeks, we’ll continue to go through John chapter 6 and see this divide come to a head between Jesus and the crowds, and even allow the twelve to arrange their priorities to be in line with Jesus’ priorities. 

But for now let us content ourselves with this: the one who died to pay for your sins, the one who gave his perfect obedience to you as a robe of righteousness, he is the one who cares about the complete you. Every need, every worry, every concern that you have, be it concerning short term things or long term things, physical things or spiritual things, all of these are on his mind and his heart. Come to him in prayer; unload your concerns and needs for yourself and for others on him; be strengthened by his promises that he hears and will answer for the eternal good of all.

And look for the opportunities that God places in your life to be that blessing to others. Surely the disciples wrestling with how to feed the crowds, distributing he miracle food, and gathering leftovers was all service to their fellow people that day. Whether it’s some time to sit and listen to someone who needs a shoulder to cry on, being able to provide food or other necessities for someone who is in financial or emotional need, doing something dramatic to help someone in great peril, or doing something as simple as wearing a mask in a pandemic to help keep others safe, we often are the ones that God uses to provide. He cares about our needs and often uses others around us to meet those needs. Embrace those opportunities to clearly be Jesus’ disciples. It is no clearer to the world that you belong to Jesus then when you are working to help provide and care for others. 

No matter what struggles you face right now, for yourself or a loved one, physical, spiritual, or emotional, know that your God is not far from you, your Savior loves you and is concerned for you. The one who defeated sin, death, and hell itself for you will not abandon you in these smaller issues. The one who could feed thousands with a small lunch is able to do whatever you need him to do to work eternal blessing from any challenge you currently face. Your needs are Jesus’ priority. Trust in him, rest in him, and rejoice in him forever. Amen.

"Turn Trust into Telling" (Sermon on Mark 6:7-13) | July 18, 2021

Text: Mark 6:7-13
Date: July 18, 2021
Event: The Eighth Sunday after Pentecost, Year B

Mark 6:7-13 (EHV)

Jesus called the Twelve and began to send them out two by two. He gave them authority over the unclean spirits. 8He instructed them to take nothing for their journey except a staff—no bread, no bag, no money in their money belts. 9They were to put on sandals but not to wear two coats. 10He said to them, “Wherever you enter a house, stay there until you leave that area. 11Any place that will not receive you or listen to you, as you leave there, shake off the dust that is under your feet as a testimony against them.” 

12They went out and preached that people should repent. 13They also drove out many demons. They anointed many sick people with oil and healed them. 

Turn Trust into Telling

How much you trust something is going to dictate your actions, right? Earlier this week, Karen noticed that one of the kitchen table chairs was loose and needed to be tightened. As I sat down to write the sermon about 36 hours later and started thinking through this very introduction, it dawned on me that I hadn’t done anything about that. So, I went and fixed it. But before I did, if you knew that chair had a wobbly leg, how would you treat it? You probably wouldn’t just throw yourself down on it like a rag doll. You almost certainly wouldn’t have used it to boost yourself to hang a picture high on the wall. You’d use if very cautiously, if you would use it at all. Why? Because it wasn’t trustworthy. It was partially broken and needed repair or maintenance. Until that happened, it was likely that it would fail and you, to one degree or another, would get hurt. 

The same is true for people, right? If you’ve been burned by someone’s irresponsibility, or selfishness, or lies, you might have a lot of trouble depending on that person. And it really doesn’t matter how many words they use to defend themselves or assure things are different, right? If in your heart you’re thinking this person can’t be trusted, that will affect your actions and interactions with them. 

So, your trust in something or someone will change your behavior. Maybe you’ll put your wellbeing squarely on that person or thing, or you’ll avoid them completely, or likely somewhere in the middle. 

So, what about Jesus? How does your trust in him look? And how does that trust direct your actions around and concerning him? Let’s look at Jesus’ narrowly-focused mission for his disciples during his ministry and compare it to our lives this morning.

Our Gospel for this morning comes hot on the heels of Jesus’ frustrating time in Nazareth that we looked at last week. Mark’s Gospel is very brief; he doesn’t use a lot ink to indicate transitions in his account, so it’s not super clear how long after the event in Nazareth our Gospel took place, but it seems likely it was not a very long time. 

The time has come for the disciples to take a test drive in what their roles would be after Jesus’ ascension. Jesus is sending them out two-by-two to preach the gospel in the towns and villages around them. After all, six teams could cover more ground than one man. Jesus even gives them the ability to work signs and wonders that will underscore the validity of the message they are sharing: He gave them authority over the unclean spirits.

But this trip isn’t about relishing divinely-gifted power over the forces of the spiritual realm. For the disciples, this is going to be a training exercise. Jesus is calling on them to demonstrate an immense amount of trust in a couple of very notable ways. 

First, they are to express their trust in physical terms. He instructed them to take nothing for their journey except a staff—no bread, no bag, no money in their money belts. They were to put on sandals but not to wear two coats. He said to them, “Wherever you enter a house, stay there until you leave that area.” Why does Jesus give them this instruction? They were not going to be providing for themselves. They are learning and exercising trust in God to provide. And how is God going to provide for the people he has called to share the good news? “Wherever you enter a house, stay there until you leave that area.” God will provide through the generosity and hospitality of his people, which is really no different than it is today when God’s people take care of their called workers, or when our needs are tended to by family, Christian friends, or even people we’ve never met. God often meets our needs through the hands of other people.

But there’s another place Jesus is calling them to trust him, and that’s in the realm of the message they are going to proclaim. This message would not be well received by everyone. They would meet opposition. They would find it necessary to shake off the dirt of a town as a testimony against them and their rejection of the message. Matthew provides more detail of Jesus’ commissioning directions in his Gospel: “Be on guard against people. They will hand you over to councils, and they will whip you in their synagogues. You will be brought into the presence of governors and kings for my sake, as a testimony to them and to the Gentiles” (Matthew 10:17-18). This proclamation of the gospel is not always going to go well and at times it will cause clear problems in the lives of those sharing it. Not everyone will believe, and some will even react very aggressively against it.

And we saw an example of that with Jesus himself last week, right? When he preached in the synagogue in his hometown of Nazareth, he shared tremendous good news with them and was met with unbelief that amazed even Jesus! If Jesus did not have a perfect track record in sharing God’s truths, should the disciples expect that they would?

But still there is a promise to trust! Matthew’s Gospel continues to provide extra detail: Whenever they hand you over, do not be worried about how you will respond or what you will say, because what you say will be given to you in that hour. In fact you will not be the ones speaking, but the Spirit of your Father will be speaking through you (Matthew 10:19-20).

The message of God’s Word will be met with rejection, apathy, and animosity. People won’t want to hear or think about sin, death, and hell. They won’t want to hear that there’s nothing they can do to save themselves. And, perhaps counterintuitively, they won’t want to hear that Jesus provides full forgiveness freely, without any work on their part. But the message is not shared because everyone wants to hear it; the message is shared because everyone needs to hear it. And God will make sure it goes out. He promised to give the disciples the words to speak even in the most extreme circumstances. And that promise remains for you and me.

Do you trust these promises? Do you trust that Jesus lived and died to set you free from sin? Does that affect your actions? I think the honest answer to these questions is often, “Yes, but…” Of course, Jesus is my Savior! I know he rescued me from sin, death, and hell! But do I always live confidently in those truths? Does my life always show unwavering trust and focus on the promises and eternal blessings from God? For me I can assure you that, no, it certainly does not. And if I had to guess, I would say your life does not always trust and display that trust either. 

Sin causes all sorts of problems. It doubts what God has said he’ll do. It rearranges priorities to make what I want more important than what others need and what God expects of me. It’s like if I were one of the disciples, I would have responded to Jesus call by saying “Yeah, um, I’m going to bring a pretty big suitcase full of supplies and things I like because I don’t trust you to provide. Oh, and I’m going to be spending a lot of time doing what I want to do rather than what you’ve called me to do.”

God forgive us for this lack of trust! And he does. That’s what Jesus came to solve, after all. But still, the Christian life can feel frustratingly cyclical, can’t it? Sin to guilt to repentance to forgiveness and then before we know it sin is back again and the cycle starts anew. But a cycle doesn’t change God nor does it change his promises. Despite our faithlessness, God’s promises are still true. The promise that Jesus has set us free from sin is still true. The promise that we have eternal life waiting for us is still true. The promise that our Savior loves us is still true!

As you find yourself refreshed and renewed in your trust of those truths here this morning, find yourself in the disciples’ shoes as well. Jesus has called you to tell what you trust. You might not have the power over evil spirits, but you should expect the same care, the same providence, and the same reception that the disciples and even Jesus himself received. Some will listen and rejoice with you; some will reject and even cause problems for you. But in the end, your trust is anchored to the God who does not change and who rules all things for the good of his people, the good of his church. 

So, turn your trust into telling. And where you sense your trust faltering, seek God’s power in the Word and sacraments, where he bolsters and strengthens that trust. Rejoice in the work God has given you to do, even if it’s not always exciting or outwardly successful. God’s kingdom comes through our sharing of this message as individuals and as a congregation. May God continue to bless that work to the glory of his name! Amen.

"Are We Dismissive of Jesus?" (Sermon on Mark 6:1-6) | July 11, 2021

Text: Mark 6:1-6
Date: July 11, 2021
Event: The Seventh Sunday after Pentecost, Year B

Mark 6:1-6 (EHV)

Jesus left there and went to his hometown. His disciples followed him. 2When the Sabbath came, he began to teach in the synagogue. Many who heard him were amazed. They asked, “Where did this man learn these things? What is this wisdom that has been given to this man? How is it that miracles such as these are performed by his hands? 3Isn’t this the carpenter, the son of Mary and the brother of James, Joses, Judas, and Simon? And aren’t his sisters here with us?” And they took offense at him. 

4Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor except in his hometown and among his own relatives and in his own house.” 5He could not do any miracles there except to lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them. 6He was amazed at their unbelief. Then he went around the villages teaching. 

Are We Dismissive of Jesus?

“Familiarity breeds contempt.” Have you heard that phrase before? Have you felt that? Maybe you really felt it during the more intense periods of lockdown throughout the pandemic that perhaps left you very frustrated with the people or the inanimate objects in your immediate surroundings. Did the four walls of the house seem to be closing in? Did the habits of the members of your household start to grate on your nerves to a degree that they really hadn’t before? 

The more familiar we are with someone or something, the more the chances arise that we get irrationally frustrated with it or them. Think how, generally, your patience for your family might be shorter and abrupter than your patience for coworkers, or members at church, or even total strangers. That seems really backwards, doesn’t it? Shouldn’t we be more patient and loving toward the people to whom we are so tightly connected? But, the sinful nature will take something good and warp it into something negative. 

It seems like that’s maybe what’s happening in our Gospel. Jesus has been doing preaching and teaching around Galilee, but has perhaps been conspicuously absent from the town where he grew up, Nazareth. But at this time, he goes “home” and is there during the Sabbath. It would have been common for any adult male in the congregation gathered in a synagogue to stand up and read. If we are to assume that this account and what is recorded in Luke’s Gospel (Luke 4:14ff) are the same event, Jesus stood up and read from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah. He read a section speaking about the coming Messiah, and claimed that at that moment what God promised through Isaiah was fulfilled in him. 

This, combined with everything that they had heard about him performing miracles, led to astonishment at what Jesus was saying and doing. Many who heard him were amazed. (Keep in mind that they were amazed, as that will factor in later.) But it wasn’t just amazement. They were asking some probing questions, “Where did this man learn these things? What is this wisdom that has been given to this man? How is it that miracles such as these are performed by his hands? Isn’t this the carpenter, the son of Mary and the brother of James, Joses, Judas, and Simon? And aren’t his sisters here with us?” Not terrible questions at first blush, right? They had seen this Jesus grow up among them. They knew him to be Mary and Joseph’s firstborn son. Jesus might have stood out as an exceptionally well-behaved child, but that was likely the extent of it. 

But with his wisdom and authority in these matters, our translation says, “they took offense at him.” I think it’s even a bit stronger than that. Literally, it means they “they were caused to sin by him.” So this is a little bit more than amazement and wonder at their hometown boy. We might sum up their questions with something a bit more negative-sounding with negative implications and overtones. When they thought about Jesus they were thinking something along the lines of, “Who does this guy think he is?” The knew him too well to respect him as the Messiah, or even as a prophet sent by God. Their familiarity with him bred contempt.

And Jesus points that out. “A prophet is not without honor except in his hometown and among his own relatives and in his own house.” Jesus was prevented from doing much of anything, miracle wise, because of their lack of faith. The miracles always served the purpose of pointing to the validity of the things that he was teaching. When they had flat-out rejected his teaching, there was no reason to do any miracles except in a few isolated situations. And while they were amazed at what he said, Jesus was amazed at their unbelief.

Good thing that’s not what Jesus says or thinks about us, right? Or, are we getting a little bit hasty assuming he doesn’t?

Are we dismissive of Jesus like the people of Nazareth? Has our own familiarity with Jesus bred contempt for him, his will, and his Word in our lives? Is Jesus amazed at our unbelief? How we can know? How can we measure that faith? 

Faith, of course, is not a tangible thing. Faith is the trust in Jesus as Savior that God gives and strengthens through his Word and the sacraments. But in his letter, James (likely the same James listed in our Gospel as one of Jesus’ brothers) gives us a metric to follow. There he writes: Be people who do what the word says, not people who only hear it. Such people are deceiving themselves (James 1:22).

So, we can’t see faith, but we can see how it’s working and thriving. Just like we can’t see someone’s body temperature, but a thermometer can give us that reading. So, how often do we come to church or connect in online, hear what God says, and then let it go no farther. How often do we let Jesus’ teaching have no effect on us or assume that he doesn’t really care what we do or don’t do? Has our familiarity with Jesus’ patience caused us to be dismissive of his will and warnings? 

How often have we left this place and then been harsh with our spouse or children? How often have we left this place and been completely apathetic to the needs of other people when they interfere with our desires and goals? How often have we left here feeling like we’ve put in our “hour for God,” and then proceeded to live the other 167 hours of the week according to the whims and desires of our heart that is so often led astray by selfish sin? 

More often than we’d like to admit, right? We sometimes like the idea of being a Christian, but not the implications that it brings. Implications of needing to put others first, implications of needing to correct our sinful tendencies (even those things that our sinful natures have deceived us into thinking are “fun” or “wholesome”). We’ve become so familiar with law and gospel that we hardly hear God speak anymore, and we get irritated when he would have the audacity to correct us, as if we didn’t know it all already.

But, that’s what Paul said in our Second Lesson, didn’t he? What is the purpose of the God-breathed, perfect, inspired Scripture? It is useful for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting, and for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be complete, well equipped for every good work (2 Timothy 3:16-17). If the Word is not rebuking us, if it is not correcting us, if we’re not letting it apply itself in our lives we’re treating our Savior with the same disdain and disgust that the people of Nazareth did. Who does this Jesus guy think he is?

Well, who do we know he is? He is our God who took on flesh in a way so unassuming that the people around him didn’t recognize him as something different. And he didn’t do it just to teach a new morality or to give an example to follow. He did it specifically because there were people in his world and in our world so dismissive of him that it was leading to hell. He came to offer his life as a sacrifice to pay for our dismissiveness and horrendously upset priorities. He died to set us free. He has given us a new life, a life we live not to feed our desires but to serve him in thankfulness.

So, my brothers and sisters, let this good news encourage you and let it be fresh in your mind and heart.  Your sins are forgiven! You have eternal life! As a result, don’t let your heart be a place where the Prophet, your Savior Jesus, is without honor. Instead, hear the Word! Apply the Word! Make your heart an environment where the Word makes lasting changes. Find joy in being corrected, trained, even rebuked by Jesus because his is the way that leads to eternal life. Sin, left unchecked in our lives, will lead to unbelief and hell, but by God’s grace our lives are lived in thankful service to our God. They are lives that continue to prioritize his will above our own and seek change where we have erred, whether it be a new problem this week or something that has haunted us for decades. This life draws its strength from the gift of God in Jesus, which has completely forgiven our sins without any action on our part.

Are we dismissive of Jesus? At times, yes. But by God’s grace and Jesus’ forgiveness, we are washed clean of that dismissiveness and contempt for God and every other sin as well. Instead, we rejoice to have him speak to us, both words of comfort and words of correction. Lord Jesus, mold me into the person you want me to be so that I may thank you for your free forgiveness with my whole life! Amen.

"The Gospel Is Worth Risking It All!" (Sermon on 2 Timothy 1:8-14) | July 4, 2021

Text: 2 Timothy 1:8–14
Date: July 4, 2021
Event: The Sixth Sunday after Pentecost, Year B

2 Timothy 1:8–14  (EHV)

8So do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord or of me his prisoner. Instead, join with me in suffering for the gospel while relying on the power of God. 9He saved us and called us with a holy calling, not because of our works, but because of his own purpose and grace. This grace was given to us in Christ Jesus before time began, 10and it has now been revealed through the appearance of our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. 11For this gospel I was appointed a herald, apostle, and teacher of the Gentiles, 12and that is why I am suffering these things. But I am not ashamed, because I know the one in whom I have believed, and I am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him until that day. 

13Hold fast to the pattern of sound words that you heard from me, with faith and love in Christ Jesus. 14Through the Holy Spirit, who lives in us, guard the good deposit that was entrusted to you.

The Gospel Is Worth Risking It All!

I’m not much of a gambler. The couple of times I’ve been to Las Vegas combined, I’ve put probably a grand total of $10 in slot machines and (surprise, surprise) lost it all. I walked away from those experiences thinking, “Well, that was dumb.” But it feels the same with other types of gambling like poker or sports betting or whatever else someone might put a lot of money on. Never mind the greed aspect of it all, in the end, I’m somewhat risk-averse. Risking a large amount of money on the performance of things outside of my control has never made sense or seemed worth it. 

And that same feeling can even weigh in on things like determining where and how to invest for retirement. I usually look for stability over the possibility of huge gains. I don’t want to risk it all. So we try not to put all of our eggs in one basket. Diversify! That might mean missing out on positive things if the markets go well, but it also means you’re a bit sheltered if things go belly-up.

But the apostle Paul in our Second Lesson for this morning is giving us some different advice. Not in how to behave in a casino or how to invest your money. He says there is one thing worth risking it all for, worth potentially losing it all—even our own lives! And that is the gospel message. It is so valuable, so worthwhile, that we do well to bet everything we have, earthly speaking, for the blessings God brings through that message. So this morning, let’s look at how we can avoid hedging our bets and instead go all-in on the promises God has made!

Paul’s second letter to Timothy is likely the last letter Paul wrote that is recorded in the Bible before he died. He’s not under house arrest; he’s in prison. He’s not going to go on any missionary journeys anymore; he’s likely going to lose his life in the coming weeks or months. And he knows it. And he knows why it’s happening. During the reign of Roman emperor Nero, the emperor started persecuting Christians throughout the empire. Many Christians were put to death for their faith. Tradition has it that both Peter and Paul met their ends during this persecution because they were messengers of the gospel.

But notice how you don’t hear any regret in Paul’s words here. And if you read through all of 2 Timothy (which you should this afternoon—it’ll take like 15 minutes even if you’re a slow reader like I am), you won’t find any regret in any of his words in that whole letter. Some sadness that he can’t spread the gospel like he wants to? Sure. A bit of trepidation as to what exactly lies ahead? Absolutely. But regret? Not even a hint of it.

But why? This is not Paul coming down with an unavoidable disease or an accident that took his life. Paul knows the exact reason he’s going to die: the gospel message about Jesus. If he had just not done that work or maybe been a bit more discrete about it, he might have preserved his life. Surely when his untimely death is coming for a reason that was in his control, there would be some sadness over having it go this way.

And yet, that’s not what we hear from Paul. In fact, just the opposite. His purpose in writing to young Pastor Timothy is, in part, to encourage Timothy not to give up the work that he’s doing. Do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord or of me his prisoner. Instead, join with me in suffering for the gospel while relying on the power of God. That’s not exactly a pep-talk, is it? There’s no mention of “everything’s going to be fine” or “God will take care of you and protect you.” No, “join with me in suffering.” That doesn’t sound great. That sounds downright bad and unpleasant. 

Why would Paul say such a thing? Because the gospel is worth risking it all. Consider his brief and beautiful summary of that message: He saved us and called us with a holy calling, not because of our works, but because of his own purpose and grace. This grace was given to us in Christ Jesus before time began, and it has now been revealed through the appearance of our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. 

What a beautiful picture! God called us from what we were by nature—sinners devoted to rebelling against him—and brought us to a new life, a life that serves him. This was not done “because of our works” but “because of his purpose and grace.” Grace is that love of God that he gives us even though we don’t deserve it, love that even gives us the opposite of what we deserve.

And this message of a new calling of forgiveness in Jesus? Paul says that he’s suffering because he was a messenger of this good news. But I am not ashamed, because I know the one in whom I have believed, and I am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him until that day. The gospel is worth risking it all because the gospel ensures that we are not risking it all. If we suffer for Jesus, so what? We have Jesus. Even if we die for Jesus, so what? We have Jesus. Faith in Jesus as Savior produces what seems like an irrational response to death. Faith in Jesus as Savior clings to the one who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. 

Paul has no regret because he’s looking well beyond the threats and power of the emperor; he’s looking to the promises and power of God. He said that God can guard what Paul entrusted to him. What did Paul entrust? His very life. Not limited to this temporal, physical life, but his eternal life. God can and will keep that safe because that is his grace, which is what the gospel is all about. Jesus dies to pay for sin; thus, we are safe with God forever. 

Paul’s encouragement to Timothy is the same as the encouragement he would have for you and me. Hold fast to the pattern of sound words that you heard from me, with faith and love in Christ Jesus. Through the Holy Spirit, who lives in us, guard the good deposit that was entrusted to you. These two thoughts are very connected. The deposit that we have entrusted to God is our life, even our eternal life. What is the deposit he gave to us? The faith to trust Jesus as Savior. We are to guard that, take care of that because our very eternal lives depend on it. And how do we do that? Hold fast to the pattern of sound words that you heard from me, with faith and love in Christ Jesus. Stay connected to the Scriptures, to the teaching that God inspired. Guard that good deposit by surrounding yourself with the gospel message and the whole of God’s Word, by which the Holy Spirit creates and strengthens faith. 

So what does this mean for us? Partially, it means changing what we might naturally think about death. Death is not indicative of God’s abandonment. That’s what the disciples in our Gospel thought last week, right? “Don’t you care that we are about to drown?” (Mark 4:34) they accusingly asked Jesus as the storm raged on the Sea of Galilee. It would be easy to think that God had turned his back on Paul, and that’s why he was going to die, but that could not be farther from the truth! 

When a loved one faces death, when we face death, it is not that God has left us. It is that he is calling us to our eternal reward. The Christian faith changes our response to death because it fundamentally changes what death is all about. It is no longer the beginning of punishment for our sins in hell; it is the full realization of all that God has done for us in Jesus, the end of sin, and the beginning of our true, eternal life with God! Immortality with Jesus, won by Jesus!

So Jesus undoes the scariness of death and replaces it with life and comfort. Jesus was not lying when he called death just a sleep for those in Jairus’ house. Likewise, Paul faced death without fear because he knew that he was safe with Christ. He also knew that he was facing death because he brought that message of comfort and confidence to others—and for that, there can be no shame or regret! 

Jesus undoes death’s fear for us as well. As a result, we can face our own deaths or the deaths of a loved one in the Lord with confidence, knowing that nothing is left to chance. God’s promises mean that death is but the entry into eternal life. Or, as Jesus said, pointing ahead to his own resurrection from the dead, “Because I live, you also will live” (John 14:18).

So do not shrink from death out of fear. Do not be ashamed of the gospel you cling to or the Savior who gave it. This message of eternal life in Jesus’ death and resurrection is worth risking it all, even our very lives, because eternity for us and for those around us depends on that gospel message. Like Paul, may we too be heralds of this good news: Christ has died! Christ is risen! Christ will come again! Thanks be to God! Amen.

"Do You Still Lack Faith?" (Sermon on Mark 4:35-41) | June 27, 2021

Text: Mark 4:35-41
Date: June 27, 2021
Event: The Fifth Sunday after Pentecost, Year B

Mark 4:35–41 (EHV)

35On that day, when evening came, Jesus said to them, “Let’s go over to the other side.” 36After leaving the crowd behind, the disciples took him along in the boat, just as he was. Other small boats also followed him. 37A great windstorm arose, and the waves were splashing into the boat, so that the boat was quickly filling up. 38Jesus himself was in the stern, sleeping on a cushion. They woke him and said, “Teacher, don’t you care that we are about to drown?” 

39Then he got up, rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” The wind stopped, and there was a great calm. 40He said to them, “Why are you so afraid? Do you still lack faith?” 

41They were filled with awe and said to one another, “Who then is this? Even the wind and the sea obey him!” 

Do You Still Lack Faith?

“Do you trust me?” Aladdin asked that to Princess Jasmine at least twice in the animated Disney movie I grew up with. Notably, he asked her this just before she climbed onto the impossible flying carpet. Of course, at that time, he was deceiving her and pretending to be something that he wasn’t, so as the audience perhaps, we’re saying, “You shouldn’t!” But she did, and off they went to see a whole new world, set to a catchy musical number.

We face all sorts of difficulties in this life that God has promised to take care of us through and even work good from. Yet, how often do we face those troubles doubting God’s ability or willingness to help and solve them and do what he said he would do? Probably more often than we like to think. But still, at the beginning of troubles, God reaches his hand to us and asks, “Do you trust me?” Or, to take us more into our lesson, at the end of trouble when we doubted and fretted and worried, he speaks as he spoke to his disciples, “Do you still lack faith?” By God’s grace, we will leave here today more trusting of God’s promises and abilities to help and protect us than we were when we arrived.

Our Gospel takes place just after our Gospel for last week. Jesus had been teaching the crowds with parables like the hidden growing seed and the tiny mustard seed. There were so many people gathered that Jesus had to get onto a boat and push off from shore to be heard better. We have just a sliver of his teaching recorded for us in the Gospels. I know what I feel like some Sundays when Bible Class leads into Worship and leads into Catechism or a meeting. But that’s nothing compared to what Jesus had done that day; to say that Jesus would have been exhausted is an understatement.

So, after he was done teaching, Jesus suggests that they all take some time to recharge. Jesus said to them, “Let’s go over to the other side.” And so they all got into the boat and left. They took Jesus into the boat “just as he was,” which probably means beat and exhausted, and went out across the Sea of Galilee.

You know what it’s like to be so tired you can’t see straight, and when you finally, mercifully, get to lay down, you’re just out. Well, that’s Jesus here. He finds a quiet place in the stern of the boat and is just out, a good reminder that our Savior while being true God, is also a true human being. 

The seasoned fishermen are doing the sailing, and Jesus is resting. Until that is, his sleep is broken by terrified faces and shouts crying out to him. The wind is howling, water is actually filling the boat. It would have been wildly disorienting to wake up to that scene. A storm had arisen while Jesus slept. It was a storm so great that these men who spent most of their professional lives on this body of water feared they might die. Their panicked question to Jesus is half-accusing and half-asking, “Teacher, don’t you care that we are about to drown?”

Jesus gets up and, bafflingly, speaks to the wind and the water. He rebukes them for being so stormy and scary. And what is the result of Jesus’ stern talking to these forces of nature? “The wind stopped, and there was a great calm.” I love that phrase, “a great calm,” the polar opposite of what Mark wrote two verses before, “a great windstorm.” The storm had been so large that the calm in its wake seems almost heavy as well. Jesus had totally undone what had caused the fear in the disciples’ hearts.

But Jesus, perhaps still groggy or exhausted, with sleep in his eyes, speaks to his disciples, “Why are you so afraid? Do you still lack faith?” That feels kind of harsh at first blush, doesn’t it? “Jesus, these men just feared for their lives! Is now the time the criticize them?” Well, yes, actually, to make the long-lasting point Jesus is trying to make.

Let’s unpack what happened here. While Jesus was asleep, this storm arose. The disciples probably figured they could handle it; they had likely been in hundreds of storms before. But then it got worse and worse; the situation got more and more dire. They found that everything they tried failed. They had no solutions, no ability to do much of anything. The problem proved greater than they had first anticipated. And so, perhaps because they were out of other options, they come to Jesus, “Don’t you care that we are about to drown?”

Before we really harp on the disciples too much, let’s commend them for just a moment. Because they did show some faith here, didn’t they? Jesus was not an experienced sailor. They were not looking to him to show them how to handle a boat in the storm. They looked for his help to save them from the storm (although it doesn’t seem like yelling at the wind was what they were expecting). So, they needed help, and they knew Jesus could help, so they come to him. That is commendable. 

What is not commendable, and what seems to be the lack of faith that Jesus is addressing, is that they didn’t trust that Jesus would do anything or didn’t trust that he actually cared about their problem. It's right there in the question they asked, right? Did Jesus care? Of course he did! As their friend and teacher, Jesus cherished them. As their Creator and Savior, he loved them beyond any human love.

Likewise, as we mentioned, they seem to come to Jesus as a last resort. I guess we don’t know how long the storm was raging before someone went to wake up Jesus, but the Holy Spirit doesn’t go out of his way to make clear that waking Jesus was their first reaction. Now, surely when the storm first arose, and they thought they could probably handle it, they wanted Jesus to rest the best he could and didn't want to disturb him. But when it was clear that this was going from bad to worse, why did they not come to Jesus first?

The more we’re circling the disciples’ motives and actions, the more uncomfortable this gets, right? If we walk away from today’s lesson thinking, “Oh, those disciples. So silly and forgetful!” we have missed the point entirely.

We are the disciples, aren’t we? We face troubles in life—storms of the physical, mental, emotional, spiritual—and what do we do? We grit our teeth and try to bravely solve it ourselves, without even giving a thought to God’s promises and power. Then, when things get out of control, and we realize we can’t solve this problem on our own, we almost turn on God, right? “God! Don’t you care that this thing is happening? Will you fix it? Can you fix it?”

Oh, and there it is. How often do we doubt that God can do anything about our problems? How often do we doubt that the all-powerful Creator of the universe can do something to help us? Or maybe it’s not really doubt about ability—we know that he is omnipotent after all—perhaps it’s more about desire or willingness to help. Sure, God could help; he can do anything. But will God do anything at all about the current problem? That’s when doubt sets in. And that’s when Jesus asks, “Do you still lack faith?”

Can I tattle on myself for a moment by way of an example? Last week, one of our members wisely suggested that we have a prayer for rain in worship, which we did. And yet, as we had that prayer, do you know what subtle thoughts flashed through my head? I knew what the weather had been. I knew the calendar, where we are in the seasons. And I knew what the weather forecast was for the coming week. I didn’t quite think these thoughts exactly, but I came close to thinking, “Why are we praying for this? It’s not going to happen.”

“My dear under-shepherd,” the Good Shepherd says to me, “do you still lack faith?” I guess so. As if the all-powerful Creator of the universe couldn’t overcome a traditional rainy-season / dry-season timing. As if he who produced supernatural droughts and ended them in spectacular blessing throughout the history of his Word couldn’t here, in our day, bring rain in our need. As if this one issue, for some reason, was outside of his capabilities or willingness to do something, even to do something surprising.

Now, did it rain this past week? No. But that doesn’t mean that God is unable or unwilling to help. It’s simply that he knows better than what we do what is best for right now. He knows what he’s doing and will provide what we need when we need it. He tells us to pray in the day or months of trouble. So, we see a need for rain, and we pray for rain. Sometimes his response to those prayers make sense to us; other times, they are entirely bewildering. 

I don’t share this because I want you to think your pastor is a spiritual buffoon. I share this because I think it’s a microcosm of all of our lived experiences. We’re in continual storms, and we doubt God’s willingness to help. How many times have we faced a problem that we just never prayed about it? Or prayed about it once and then never returned to our Savior again? Do we still lack faith? Yes. God asks, “Do you trust me?” and often our answer is, “Well, kind of, but not really…”

My brothers and sisters, look at what our God has done for you. In your sin, you were truly hopeless, in a storm you would never weather. You would die in that sin-storm, and that death would be eternal in hell. Jesus roused himself, obeying his Father’s will, to come and be our Substitute and our Savior. By his life, death, and resurrection, he rebuked sin, told death to stop, and silenced Satan. We are freed from our sin because Jesus calmed that eternal storm.

So, if he was willing and able to do that, what do you think about those other problems that are not small but undoubtedly smaller by comparison? Does Jesus care about you? Of course he does! Will he do what you want him to do? Maybe. Will he do what you need him to do? Absolutely. 

So don’t come to your Savior as your last resort; make him the first line of defense when the wind starts howling and the water starts splashing. Don’t come wondering if he cares or if he can do anything. Come in the certain confidence that no matter what the problem or how deep the hurt, your Savior can and will bring calm to that storm and work good from it. It may take a long time to understand that good, but that is what he promised, and that is what he will do.

Lord Jesus, we do so often lack faith. Send your Spirit to calm our troubled hearts and keep us ever focused on you as our Savior and Storm-calmer. Be with us in good times and in difficult times to comfort, heal, and encourage. Help us to be your hands and mouths to bring your comfort to those around us. Amen.