"Jesus 'Leaves' Us with His Blessings" (Sermon on Luke 24:44-53) | May 12, 2024

Sermon Text: Luke 24:44-53
Date: May 12, 2024
Event: Ascension of Our Lord (Observed), Year B

Luke 24:44-53 (EHV)

He said to them, “These are my words, which I spoke to you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms.”

45Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures. 46He said to them, “This is what is written and so it must be: The Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, 47and repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. 48You are witnesses of these things. 49Look, I am sending you what my Father promised. But stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.”

50He led them out as far as the vicinity of Bethany. He lifted up his hands and blessed them. 51And while he was blessing them, he parted from them and was taken up into heaven. 52So they worshipped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy. 53They were continually in the temple courts, praising and blessing God. Amen.

Jesus “Leaves” Us with His Blessings

What do you think it was like? What do you think it was like to stand there on that hill outside of Jerusalem and Bethany, having barely processed all the events surrounding Jesus’ death and resurrection, and then to see him taken up to heaven, hidden by the clouds? What do you think it was like to have the whole weight of this ministry that Jesus had conducted on earth dumped into your lap as he said he was done and now gone?

I think I know what I would’ve been thinking if I had been there. “He left us!” I would feel alone for the second time in just over a month. Sure, his death had proven to be much more temporary than anyone expected, but this? This had an air of finality behind it. He was gone, taken from their sight, not by death but simply by disappearing.

So, they were alone. The protection they had hoped Jesus would provide was now over. They couldn’t rush and hide behind him like scared children. He had left them. But he had “left” them with amazing blessings—amazing power! Jesus had given them a mission to be a blessing to the world. Jesus has given us the same blessings. By his grace, we understand the message that’s been given to us, and thus, we look for every opportunity to be witnesses of that same message.

As Jesus was standing with his disciples before his ascension, he said something that could be alarming. He said, “These are my words, which I spoke to you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms…. The Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day.” Jesus says he needed to endure all of these things. It was so necessary that they were written down hundreds of years before they took place. Whether we hear Isaiah describe in alarming detail all the horrors of the crucifixion, Job’s triumphant assurance that he knows his Redeemer lives, or go all the way back to that vague yet all-encompassing promise of a Satan-crushing champion in the Garden of Eden, all of it was there, foretold by God in his Word.

What stands out to me is not that these things were promised but that they had to happen. That means that I couldn’t do anything. My sin was so severe that literally, the only way God could fix what I had messed up was by condemning his own Son to hell. That was it! The almighty God had only one choice and solution at his fingertips. Even as we hear Jesus pleading with his Father to let there be another way in the Garden of Gethsemane before his arrest, we know that Jesus had to drink the cup placed before him. There were no other options; everything had to be fulfilled; this was the only way.

We can be tempted to look at what was necessary to save us from hell and say to ourselves, “Look at what my sin did to Jesus! Look at what I caused him to suffer! Look at what I did! How wretched I am!” We tried to address this temptation on Good Friday, but it rears its head again this morning. To some degree, this honest appraisal of the situation is good and healthy. We are so often tempted to take for granted what Jesus did for us that it’s good for us to remember what he did and why he did it. But we're missing the point if we’re overcome with guilt when we hear Jesus recount what he endured.

The disciples were undoubtedly exhausted at this point, having been on this crazy emotional roller coaster of losing Jesus and then receiving him back from the dead, a feat that they could never rationally explain. So what does Jesus do for them to calm them down? He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures. The only way to make sense of this was for them to see all of these events through God’s eyes. Jesus said the Holy Spirit would come to them when he said, “I am sending you what my Father promised. But stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.” Then, the Holy Spirit would enable them to do amazing, miraculous things. But here, the Holy Spirit works a far greater miracle to calm them and increase their understanding. He strengthens their faith. He allows them to appreciate the full extent of what Jesus had done for them—because he loves them, and that’s exactly what he promised.

We don’t need to stand on a hill in Judea to have this experience. We have it right here. As we come together as a congregation, hungry for the food that only God can give, we hear Jesus say the same things to us, promise us great things, and assure us that he’s not left us. But if we want to jump right into the work we have to do together as a congregation, we’ve put the cart before the horse. We all need Jesus to open our minds to understand the Scriptures and have the Holy Spirit increase our faith. And he does that the more we are in his Word—in church, Bible Class, home devotions, and quiet, personal meditation. Jesus opens our eyes to appreciate what he’s done in these ways. He did have to endure all of those things to save us. But he also endured those things because he wanted to save you, because he loves you. And so he did everything we needed. By his death, your sins are gone. You are free!

And what’s our response to that? It’s the same as the disciples’ response. They worshipped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy. They were continually in the temple courts, praising and blessing God. They were overjoyed in what God had given them, but even having Jesus open the Scriptures wasn’t enough. They continually stayed in the temple, worshiping God, studying his Word, and allowing the Holy Spirit to strengthen and build them up.

We need to be doing the same thing. We can’t be content with our knowledge about God. We want God to continually open our minds to better understand his love for us in Jesus. We can never get over the fact that heaven is open. We can never marvel too long at the love shown at the cross and proved at the empty tomb. And if we find ourselves taking these things for granted, we need to stop and look again. Marvel again. Be filled with joy again. Praise again.

And then we’re ready for what lies ahead. Then, we are prepared for the task that Jesus has given to us. He told his disciples, “Repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.” That was going to be their job. They would take their understanding, the things they had seen and heard, and share them with the world.

You weren’t there to see Jesus feed thousands of people with a small lunch. You weren’t there to see and hear Jesus call Lazarus from outside his tomb and raise a man to life who had been dead for four days. You weren’t standing in the courtyard at the temple to see the kangaroo court condemn Jesus to death. You weren’t there to hear the shouts of “Crucify!” You didn’t run with Peter and John to see the tomb empty, the burial cloths folded. And yet, like the prophets who wrote about these things so long before they happened, you have seen them. You have been witnesses to them in his Word. With the eyes of faith, you have seen all of these things. You become witnesses of these things repeatedly as God continues to open your mind to understand everything he’s done for you. These are amazing blessings from your Savior.

Sometimes, we overextend ourselves on this work. We assume that as witnesses, we need to convince and make people acknowledge that what God says is true. But you know what? You were not argued into believing in Jesus. You were not logically persuaded that Jesus is your Savior. The Holy Spirit did that. The Holy Spirit created that faith in your heart through baptism or the truths of his Word.

A witness’s job is not to convince anyone. A witness’s job is to tell the truth about what they have seen and heard. As you think about the people you know with whom you desperately want to share your faith, don’t overthink your role, and don’t assume that you have to do everything. God will use his Word on them, just as he used it on you, to create and sustain that faith. And so we bring the Word. Whether bringing our children to the baptismal font, sharing our faith with a coworker, or inviting a friend to church or Bible Class, our job is to witness. Our job is to get as many people as possible as much time with God’s Word as possible. Then, we let God do the rest, the hard part. Because God needs to open their minds to understand the Scriptures, we can’t do that. There, and there alone, will they see their Savior's love for them. There, and there alone, they will see the blood of Jesus shed to save them. There, and there alone, they will rejoice and praise their God for setting them free from sin, death, and hell. There, and there alone, they will be assured that we will all praise our God together in heaven’s perfect, eternal courts.

Your Savior has not left you alone. He’s given you that amazing understanding of his Word through the Holy Spirit. He’s given you the ability and opportunity to be witnesses of all he’s done for you and the whole world. My brothers and sisters, know that though we cannot see him with our physical eyes, he is ruling everything for our good and blessing everything we do. He’s “left” you, but with amazing blessings for yourself and for those you witness to. With that confidence, go, be his witnesses to all nations, starting in your very homes!

Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia! Amen.

"Love One Another? How?" (Sermon on 1 John 4:7-11, 19-21) | May 5, 2024

Sermon Text: 1 John 4:7–11, 19–21
Date: May 5, 2024
Event: The Sixth Sunday of Easter, Year B

1 John 4:7–11, 19–21 (EHV)

Dear friends, let us love one another, because love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8The one who does not love has not known God, because God is love. 9This is how God’s love for us was revealed: God has sent his only-begotten Son into the world so that we may live through him. 10This is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11Dear friends, if God loved us so much, we also should love one another.

19We love because he first loved us. 20If anyone says, “I love God,” but hates his brother, he is a liar. For how can anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, love God, whom he has not seen? 21This then is the command we have from him: The one who loves God should also love his brother.

Love One Another? How?

Have you ever stared at the assembly instructions for a piece of furniture or some other thing you had to put together yourself and wondered what you were looking at? Perhaps the jump from step 6 to step 7 didn’t make any sense, or the images suddenly were reversed for some reason, or it referenced a piece that didn’t seem to come in the box. In these cases, it’s not enough to have a final goal or step-by-step directions, but those directions need to make sense to finish the project.

We opened the box last week and pulled out the instructions for Jesus’ command to love one another. That exact command followed hot on the heels of Jesus’ vine and branches analogy earlier in John 15 that we read last week, and this morning’s Gospel has Jesus stating it directly. But, like last week, we’re continuing to examine this command through John’s commentary in his first letter in the New Testament.

Last week, we answered the question, “Why?” Why should we love one another? Well, not only did Jesus command it, but it is a way (arguably the primary way) we show our thanks to God for rescuing us from our sins. John reinforces what we said last week in our Second Reading for this morning: This is how God’s love for us was revealed: God has sent his only-begotten Son into the world so that we may live through him. This is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, if God loved us so much, we also should love one another. We love because he first loved us. Why should we love each other? Because God loved us and gave us his only Son to rescue us from sin, death, and hell.

I don’t want to zip by that truth because it’s vitally important. The love God showed us in Jesus is something we did not deserve and could never earn. Jesus came to give his life for us to take away all of our sins and promise us a perfect, eternal life in heaven, even though we were his enemies. Last week, we heard that the truth (1 John 3:18) motivates our love, and John summarized that truth in this way: “This is how we have come to know love: Jesus laid down his life for us” (1 John 3:16).

When writing to the Roman Christians, the apostle Paul described it this way: “At the appointed time, while we were still helpless, Christ died for the ungodly. It is rare indeed that someone will die for a righteous person. Perhaps someone might actually go so far as to die for a person who has been good to him. But God shows his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:6–8). Note how much Paul emphasizes that we didn’t deserve God’s love, but he gave it to us anyway. He rightly calls us helpless without Jesus and stresses that Jesus died for us while we were still sinners, that is, while we were still God’s enemies.

Sin is disobedience toward God. It is having anything in us that makes us flawed and makes us fall short of the perfect people God demands us to be. This is common to our human condition. All of us here are sinners. All of us here are imperfect and have fallen far short of the expectations—the demands—God has for us. And that sin separates us from God and sets us against him. In our sin, we pick a fight with the almighty Creator of the universe. That is not a battle we have any chance of winning.

This is God's love: Though we set ourselves against him, he did not want us to perish. He did not want us to face what our sins truly deserved—an eternity of separation from God in hell. So, God took it upon himself to fix what we had broken. Jesus took our sins on himself to rescue us from the punishment that we deserved. He loved us when we did not deserve it in the least.

That love of God shown to us is why we show love to other people. While we can’t contribute to our forgiveness, nor can we ever pay God back, we can thank him. And we thank him by showing love to others. The way we treat others shows our thanks and  refelcts the love God has for them as well as us. Jesus, before our Gospel for this morning, had told his disciples that this love for others would make it evident to all that they trusted in him for forgiveness: “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35).

So, how does this play out in our lives? How do we love one another? John gives us a bit of an explanation by showing us the negative: If anyone says, “I love God,” but hates his brother, he is a liar. For how can anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, love God, whom he has not seen? “Hate” may feel like a strong word. Often, we associate hate with wishing harm on someone else or hoping things go poorly for them in their life. But we are dealing with extremes here; love is the opposite of hate.

To love someone is to want what is best for them. To love someone is to want to help them in any way you can. To love someone is to be willing even to sacrifice yourself—your plans, desires, time, earthly riches, whatever we might consider valuable—in service to that person.

Yet how quick we are to be angry with someone and even to hate them! Sometimes, we even call it justified anger or righteous anger because we’ve been hurt or harmed in some way! We deserve to feel upset! Our anger makes sense to us, therefore it is justified!

But consider this from God’s point of view. Does God love with that kind of love? If he did, we would be lost to our sin. More than we’ve ever been hurt by anyone else—no matter how grevious the hurt—we have harmed God more. A sin may be harm against a fellow person in this life, but every sin is an attack on God. So if anyone deserved to feel upset, to burn with righteous anger, it would be God against us. And yet, what did God do? This is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sin. God loved us when we did not deserve it.

And there’s the key: true love does not love because it is loved; true love loves even if it is not loved in return. The husband or wife may not treat their spouse poorly simply because they feel mistreated. A child may not treat a parent with contempt just because they don’t appreciate the parent’s decision on an important matter. A person trying to be generous may not lash out at someone because that person tried to exploit their generosity. True love seeks out the good for the other, even if such care isn’t or doesn’t feel reciprocated.

But love also doesn’t mean ignoring when you’ve been wronged; it doesn’t mean pretending like it never happened. Love does not condone sin actively by confirming it or passively through silence. True love confronts hurts and wrongdoing. It addresses the problem when it is present. It is unloving to let sin go unchecked, unaddressed.

This might lead us into a position where loving someone means we have “tough love” for them. Tough love is not being mean to someone in a misguided attempt to make them stronger. Tough love might be the parent saying “no” to the child’s request which will be bad for them or even dangerous. Tough love is confronting sin not because you’re angry about how you’ve been hurt but because you care for the person who wronged you, and you do not want them to be swept away by their sin. Tough love may mean confronting a problem that, by that very confrontation, threatens the relationship.

None of this is easy. Real love is not the butterflies of joy when you see a person whose company you enjoy sharing. Real love is sticking with your fellow sinners, even through the hurts, and seeking the good of everyone involved. Real love is genuine concern for the other person, not a shallow, surface-level-only string of words. Real love works through the hurt and pain and loves even when it is not loved in return. Real love patterns itself after Jesus’ love for us.

This brings us back to the whole reason we endeavor to love all people, even when they might be very difficult to love: We love because he first loved us. Why should you show love and compassion to that coworker who frustrates you, that person on the train who is annoying you, or to the family member who is on your very last nerve? Because Jesus first loved us. He sacrificed his very life to rescue us from our sins.

So, this week, note where you get irritated with another person and find yourself drifting toward grudges, anger, or even hate. Note them; pay attention to them; maybe even write them down if that’s helpful. Then, ask this question: how can I show love to them? How can I show true love to them like Jesus has shown to me? Perhaps that love will express itself in swallowing my pride and forgiving them. Perhaps it will be confronting the harm they’ve done that you might work through it. Perhaps it will be confession on my part for not loving my brother or sister as I should.

In all of it, hold fast to the love of God that rescues you from all sin and makes you his dear child. Hold fast to that love, best summed up in Jesus’ death in our place and his glorious resurrection from the dead. Christ is risen; he is risen indeed! Alleluia! Amen.

"Love One Another? Why?" (Sermon on 1 John 3:18-24) | April 28, 2024

Sermon Text: 1 John 3:18-24
Date: April 28, 2024
Event: The Fifth Sunday of Easter, Year B

1 John 3:18-24 (EHV)

Dear children, let us love not only with word or with our tongue, but also in action and truth.

19This is how we know that we are of the truth and how we will set our hearts at rest in his presence: 20If our hearts condemn us, God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. 21Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God. 22We also receive from him whatever we ask, because we keep his commands and do what is pleasing in his sight. 23This then is his command: that we believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and that we love one another just as he commanded us. 24The one who keeps his commands remains in God and God in him. This is how we know that he remains in us: We know it from the Spirit, whom he has given to us. 

Love One Another? Why?

If you’re trying to motivate someone to complete a task, explaining why the job needs to be done can be really helpful. If a boss, a parent, or even a police officer tells you to do something and you don’t understand why you need to do it, perhaps you’ll be a bit reluctant to do what they ask. What is happening? Why this course of action? Am I safe? Is our business safe?

For the next two Sundays, we’ll focus on Jesus’ command to his disciples to “Love one another,” but John’s commentary in his first letter will guide us. This command to love one another (one of the commands that Jesus gave to his disciples on Maundy Thursday evening) will always have Jesus as the focus; the love that we show to others will be the fruit produced because of our connection to the Vine, our Savior.

But loving other people, especially those who seem not to love us, can be very difficult. Next Sunday, we’ll see more concrete examples of how we can love one another, but this morning, we need to answer the more fundamental question: why? Why should we love one another? And beyond Jesus’ command, why did he command it? What is the point?

Our reading doesn’t answer that right off the bat. Instead, John says there are right and wrong ways to show love (or at least, to appear to show love), which will get into the whys of this command. He begins a heartfelt call to people he loves dearly, “Dear children, let us love not only with word or with our tongue, but also in action and truth.”

Perhaps you’ve been frustrated with people responding to some tragic event by assuring everyone that the people affected are in their “thoughts and prayers,” but then don’t seem to go any farther than that. Perhaps you’ve been irritated with people speaking against prayer in these situations while minimizing or simply not understanding the true power of commending someone to the almighty Creator of the universe. But, the tension in this frustration is an understanding (or lack thereof) of what is being done in prayer.

If I tell someone that I’m praying for them, it could look like I’m loving them only with word or with… tongue. And truly, maybe it is. “I’m praying for you” can be used as an empty nicety to move the conversation on from an unpleasant topic rather than showing genuine concern for that person. We might think of James’ direction in his letter to somewhat apathetic Christians when he wrote, “If a brother or sister needs clothes and lacks daily food and one of you tells them, ‘Go in peace, keep warm, and eat well,’ but does not give them what their body needs, what good is it?” (James 2:15-16).

John is following up on this idea with the command that we should not love in this empty, words-only way; instead, we should love in action and truth. This truth is central to the “why” of loving one another. Two verses before our Second Reading, John had written, “This is how we have come to know love: Jesus laid down his life for us. And we also should lay down our lives for our brothers” (1 John 3:16). This is the truth that John is referring to in v. 18. What should motivate us to love one another? Jesus’ love for us.

In our reading, John expounds on this truth: “This is how we know that we are of the truth and how we will set our hearts at rest in his presence: If our hearts condemn us, God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God.”

John sets up a scenario where “our hearts condemn us,” that is, when we feel guilty, when our conscience is screaming at us for something we’ve done wrong or something good that we’ve left undone. You and I know this well. And while our consciences can get mixed up and be wrong, they’re not always wrong. Your conscience continually points out that you have not done what you should do. You have not been the perfect person that God demands you to be. And for that, there is punishment. Guilt is that fear and dread of what we brought on ourselves. This is your heart and my heart condemning us.

The conscience can be a helpful tool, but there’s a huge, glaring weakness. Your conscience doesn’t know anything about Jesus. It doesn’t know anything about God’s mercy or his forgiveness. It only knows that God’s punishment for sin is unbearable. It may not, on its own, be able to articulate the suffering of an eternity in hell, but it knows enough to continually warn us, “BE AFRAID! YOU’VE MESSED UP! THIS IS GOING TO BE REALLY, REALLY BAD!”

John says that when that happens, if our hearts condemn us, God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. What does God know that your conscience doesn’t? What does God know that can be so easy for us to forget as guilt sweeps over us? He knows what Jesus did. He knows that Jesus suffered in your place and in my place, so we would never endure the rightful punishment for our sins. He knows that our sins have been washed away in the blood of Jesus shed for me and you and that we stand before him as perfect people because Jesus’ perfection has been given to us.

Yet still, our hearts will rage on about our failures and, in doing so, speak directly against God’s decrees. Earlier in his letter, John had mentioned that saying we had no sin was deceiving ourselves and calling God a liar (1 John 1:8-10). But the flip side is also true. Saying that we are not or cannot be forgiven is also deceiving ourselves and calling God a liar because he said he has forgiven us for Jesus’ sake. This was Judas’ downfall. He’s not in hell because he betrayed Jesus or because he committed suicide. Instead, Judas believed that God lied when he said he forgave his sins and rejected the redemption that Jesus promised and would win.

And so, here is a battle between our hearts and God. And what’s the end result of that battle? Well, as John says, God is greater than our hearts. Dear Christian, when your heart condemns you, send it to God. Let your conscience ask Jesus what it should think. Let Jesus direct it to the nail marks in his hands and his feet, the opening when the spear pierced his side, and to the once-occupied but now-empty tomb. Let God silence that raging, fearful heart within you.

A quiet conscience means a good relationship with God. If our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God. This confidence doesn’t come from our innate, natural “goodness” but rather from the perfection Jesus gave us. Along with that, God gives us everything that serves our eternal good.

How do you respond to that? How do you wrap your mind around the reality that God has forgiven you your sins, that God literally died to save you and has given you eternal life in heaven as a gift with no strings attached? Well, at the risk of sounding trite, you respond with thanks. You don’t and can’t respond by repaying God, but you can say “thank you.”

And how do you say thank you? By doing what God commands. And what does God command? That we believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and that we love one another just as he commanded us. I can’t help but assume that John, as he wrote these words, was thinking of something Jesus said during his ministry. When the crowds looking for free bread asked him, “What should we do to carry out the works of God?” Jesus responded, “This is the work of God: that you believe in the one he sent” (John 6:28-29). Do you want to thank God for saving you? Trust that he is telling you the truth; trust that he saved you.

And lest we go too fast, John also mentioned one other way to thank God: that we love one another. It is wild to me that the primary way we express our gratitude to God is in how we love one another. God has set up a system that we love him by loving other people. We will hear next week that all of our love originates with Jesus’ love for us. So when I love someone else, I’m reflecting Jesus’ love. When I love someone else, I’m thanking God for loving me. Why should I love others? Because God has loved me.

My dear brothers and sisters, God remains in you. He gave you the Holy Spirit to create and sustain your faith in Jesus as your Savior. You will be in heaven, despite your many failings, because Jesus has removed them all. Your sins are forgiven; you are perfect in God’s sight. What can we do in response to this? Love one another.

Take heart, dear children; Christ is risen; he is risen indeed! Alleluia! Amen.

"You Know Your Shepherd" (Sermon on 1 John 4:1-6) | April 21, 2024

Sermon Text: 1 John 4:1–6
Date: April 21, 2024
Event: The Fourth Sunday of Easter, Year B

1 John 4:1–6 (EHV)

Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see if they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world. 2This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit who confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, 3and every spirit who does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the Antichrist, which you have heard is coming and is already in the world. 4You are from God, dear children, and you have overcome the false prophets, because the one in you is greater than the one in the world. 5They are from the world. That is why they speak from a worldly perspective and the world listens to them. 6We are from God. The one who knows God listens to us, but whoever is not from God does not listen to us. That is how we can distinguish between the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.

You Know Your Shepherd

God often uses the picture of a shepherd and sheep to picture his relationship with his people. And while there’s a lot of comfort in that, it’s also not particularly complimentary toward us. Sheep, perhaps more than any other animal, really need a caretaker, a shepherd, because without that caretaker, they will be in danger. They will not have enough food or water, and predators will threaten, hurt, and kill them.

If God compares us to sheep, that means we need a shepherd. It means we cannot take care of ourselves. We need help. And that's true. We can't save ourselves from our sins. We need Jesus to do that. We need him to lay down his life and then take it back up again to give us the forgiveness of sins.

However, Jesus, in our Gospel this morning, mentioned that sheep are not entirely helpless. He said, “I know my sheep and my sheep know me” (John 10:14). Sheep may not be the brightest animals in the world, but they know where it's safe. They know it is safe with their shepherd. And because they know they are safe with their shepherd, they stick close to him.

But what about someone pretending to be the shepherd? Will the sheep follow him? Jesus said the hired hand would just run away because he doesn’t care for the sheep. But can the sheep be deceived into following someone who is not the shepherd? “I know my sheep and my sheep know me.”

We are focused this morning on our Second Reading, in which the apostle John, writing near the end of the first century, not long before he would die, encouraged the next generation of Christians. His first encouragement and direction in our reading is, “Do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see if they are from God.” What does it mean to “test spirits”?

John is not focusing his readers on spirits such as angels and demons, but on “spirits” as in anyone who comes with a spiritual message. John says that when another person comes and talks to you about God, you should test him. Does what he says agree with God’s Word? Determine if this person is trustworthy and reliable. Does he speak for and represent your Good Shepherd? Or is this just an intruder, someone seeking to harm?

False teaching is always dangerous, whether it is intentional or not. If someone is maliciously trying to lead someone astray, to exploit and take advantage of them, clearly, that is a massive problem. But just as much of a problem is the person who proclaims false teachings that they truly believe. They may be even more dangerous because their sincerity may gloss over the falsehood, and they may not have tell-tale signs of deception, greed, or other things that may go along with consciously deceptive spiritual teachers.

When dealing with spiritual things, we're not just dealing with something relatively trivial like your favorite sports team or movie. Nor is it even dealing with things that we would, in this life, say are very important, like: how long should you cook this food before it's safe to eat, or what kind of medication can you take that will be safe and offer some relief from the problems you're experiencing? Spiritual teaching has a bigger impact than anything else because spiritual teachings are not dealing with temporary things that will come to an end, but with eternal matters that will never end.

At the time John was writing, there was a growing line of thought among Christians that the words of the Bible were just the beginning. People began to teach and think that the real knowledge was hidden, was secret. And so only the truly enlightened could know the secret things of God. They would often ignore the simple words put on the page of Scripture that God inspired and instead look for alternative and secret meanings within them. If you ever heard someone try to explain something from God’s Word by counting letters or pinpointing something like the exact center of the Bible and trying to make a point from that, or even trying to claim that the historical accounts of God’s Word are just stories to teach spiritual truths that we should learn rather than things that actually happened, these are all versions of this line of thought (known as Gnosticism) that live on today.  

And so this is why John’s metric for who is and who isn’t a teacher from God might seem relatively basic: Every spirit who confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God. That’s it? All we need to know to determine if someone is teaching the truth is if they teach that Jesus came as a human being? Well, it’s at least step one—and that question is perhaps more complex and important than we might think at first.

Some teachers in John’s day or in our day might say something along the lines of, well, Jesus came as a spirit. Or maybe Jesus is more of an idea or philosophy than a real person—some sort of ideal character for people to aspire toward. When thinking about Easter, such teachers might claim that Jesus “spiritually” rose from the dead (whatever that means). They might claim that you need to dig deeper to understand the resurrection. It's not as simple as a man coming back to life after having been crucified and a stone being rolled away to show he was gone. John’s point is that actually, yeah, it is that simple. It is that easy. That's exactly what has happened. John should know; he was there.

Why is that so important to get right? Why is it important to know that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh? Why is it so important that we surround ourselves with spiritual teachers who would teach this truth? This is the core of Jesus’ work. Jesus didn't come to give some hidden knowledge. He didn't come to drop breadcrumbs for the truly perceptive to follow. And he certainly hasn't given you the secret to wealth and happiness in this life. Jesus came for the exact reason that he said he came: to offer his life for the forgiveness of your sins and mine; he came to give himself in the flesh to rescue us from hell. He literally died and literally rose to assure you that you will be in heaven with him. Someone who's trying to sell you a more complicated explanation of God's Word, someone who's trying to add something extra, or warp and distort the clear, simple words of the Bible is not a spirit sent from God.

John is not calling out specific people here. Rather, John condemns messages rather than messengers. John is establishing principles that will not just address specific false teachers in his day, but throughout history. Johbn isn’t just speaking to his first centruy audience with these words. He’s speaking to you and to me. “Test the spirits to see if they are from God!”

Are you up to that task? Are you up to testing the spirits? Do you feel capable of evaluating spiritual ideas when they are presented to you? And not just on social media or the television or a tract given to you when you go to the grocery store, but even here, now, as words come from this pulpit. Are you testing the spirits? Is this a message from God or not? That’s a big, daunting task. Do you even know enough to test the spirits?

I can say without any doubt, “Absolutely you do.” And that's not because I know each one of you so well, and I know exactly all of your strengths and all of your blind spots, and I know exactly how well you understand the concepts of Scripture or how much time you spend in God's Word, or have spent in Bible class, or have sat here listening to God’s Word proclaimed in this sanctuary. You can test the spirits because you know your Good Shepherd even as he knows you. You recognize his voice, his accent, so that when someone starts using words that kind of sound like something Jesus might say and yet seems to be making different points, your ears perk up, and maybe even the hair on the back of your neck stands at attention. Perhaps you recoil just a bit because suddenly it sounds like someone who is not your Shepherd is trying to lead you to a place that may not be safe.

You don't need a degree from a religious school. You don't need a certain number of hours having studied the Bible. You don't need to read the Bible cover to cover so many times to do this work. Several years ago, I can vividly remember explaining to someone some problems in another congregation centered around some false teaching. It was a sad and scary situation, and the person was concerned about what was happening and wanted to understand the details. There was a five-year-old sitting near us where we were having the conversation. He looked up from what he was playing with or working on as I explained this false teaching, and he looked right at me and said, “That's not right.” He, as a five-year-old, could recognize that what was being summarized was not what his Shepherd would say.

And so your ability to test the Spirit has nothing to do with your age. It has nothing to do with your experience. It has everything to do with what God has worked in you. You may be that silly sheep, plodding along the path, tripping through the field, falling into holes, and needing to be rescued by your Shepherd. But you know him. You know his voice. You know his accent. And when someone starts pretending to be your Shepherd and is not, you know. When John said in v. 2 that you’ll be able to recognize the Spirit of God, he used a word in Greek that very specifically means knowing something through experience, not through book learning. This comes from the experience of following your Good Shepherd. The experience of knowing his preservation, knowing his love, knowing his forgiveness, knowing what he's promised.

Anything that tries to take the place of Jesus’ death and resurrection is the very definition of the spirit of the antichrist. Antichrist is someone or something that tries to be a substitute Savior. That may be seen in teachings that proclaim my works as important instead of or in addition to Jesus’. It might be someone focusing our attention on earthly joys rather than looking ahead to eternal life.

We don’t need a replacement, alternate, or substitute Christ. We don’t need any other shepherd other than our Good Shepherd, who laid down his life for us—only to take it back up again. You heard him proclaim it on Good Friday, “It is finished!” And your Shepherd does not exaggerate or lie. That is how we can distinguish between the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.

My dear fellow sheep, you know your Shepherd, and he knows you. Continue to follow your Good Shepherd, who came in the flesh, who died, and has risen, risen indeed. Alleluia! Amen.

"You Are Witnesses" (Sermon on Luke 24:36-49) | April 14, 2024

Sermon Text: Luke 24:36–49
Date: April 14, 2024
Event: The Third Sunday of Easter, Year B

Luke 24:36–49 (EHV)

As they were talking about these things, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.”

37But they were terrified and frightened and thought they were looking at a ghost.

38He said to them, “Why are you troubled? Why do doubts arise in your hearts? 39Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself. Touch me and see, because a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” 40When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. 41While they still did not believe it (because of their joy), and while they were still wondering, he said to them, “Do you have anything here to eat?”

42They gave him a piece of broiled fish and some honeycomb. 43He took it and ate in front of them. 44He said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms.”

45Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures. 46He said to them, “This is what is written and so it must be: The Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, 47and repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. 48You are witnesses of these things. 49Look, I am sending you what my Father promised. But stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.”

You Are Witnesses

I try to avoid sports analogies too often in sermons because if you don’t care about or don’t follow sports, the illustrations won’t be very meaningful. But as I read the Gospel for this morning, one sports analogy was inescapable to me. Way back when, in 2003, Cleveland’s professional basketball team, the Cavaliers, drafted an 18-year-old LeBron James straight out of high school. To say the hype was over the top would be an understatement, with LeBron receiving the title “The King” before he even set foot on an NBA court for a game.

A few years after that, though, he had done much to live up to that hype. In 2007, four years after his NBA debut, Nike ran a new advertising campaign focused on LeBron. It was usually a stark black background with the words “We are all witnesses” printed in white text. The idea was that when you watched LeBron play, you saw some special, unique, memorable moments in the game’s history. And, if while doing so, you wanted to buy some things from Nike as well, they wouldn’t complain.

But the idea of being witnesses, of seeing something that is perhaps once-in-a-lifetime or once-ever type of thing, is special. Many traveled to the path of totality for the eclipse this past Monday to witness that astronomical history, at least on our part of the globe. Perhaps you’ve had a moment or two like that, moments that you were glad or thankful that you had the TV on or were in attendance at an event to be a witness. Maybe it was something of global importance; maybe it was pretty much just for you.

But for anything of any importance, you probably not only see it but also share it. You tell the story of that great moment in sports you saw, or that concert you attended, or share photos of a spectacular sight you were present for. That’s what a full-fledged witness is—not just one who saw something but also shares what they saw.

In our Gospel for this morning, we once again visit the disciples on that first Easter evening. The disciples in the locked house were talking with the men who had been on the road, walking to Emmaus. Jesus had come to them, unrecognized, and walked with them. He had explained to them, from the Old Testament, “what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself” (Luke 24:27). Their hearts burned as the Holy Spirit worked through Jesus’ words to have them begin to understand what happened at the crucifixion and to start to make sense of these early reports of an empty tomb.

As soon as they realized it was Jesus, he disappeared, and they ran back to Jerusalem to tell the brothers there what had happened. They were talking about this as Jesus came and stood among them again. They were terrified, as I suspect any of us would be if we suddenly saw someone we knew had died standing before us, seeming to be alive and well. Here, Jesus is proving his physical resurrection from the dead because it is a cornerstone of the gospel these men would share.

But what was going on here? Luke writes, “They still did not believe it (because of their joy).” Were they rubbing their eyes? Pinching themselves? Were they trying to figure out if this was a dream or some hallucination?

How patient Jesus is! He doesn’t scold them for their lack of faith or rebuke them for their unbelief; he simply gives evidence. He offers them the same opportunities that Thomas would have the next week: see him, touch him. Jesus isn’t a ghost or a mere spirit but a flesh-and-blood living human being. He eats some fish. Ghosts can’t eat, but Jesus can.

So Jesus gave them the tools to understand what was happening. Jesus doesn’t really tell them anything different than what we teach our catechism students. When looking at the purpose of the Bible, we teach that Jesus is the center point of the whole thing; the Old Testament points forward to Jesus in prophecy and promise. The New Testament points back to Jesus, telling us what he did and what it means for us. And that’s exactly what Jesus did for these men. He said, “This is what is written and so it must be: The Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.” The time was now for them all to understand, finally, why this all happened: why he had to suffer all those grievous things on Good Friday and why he needed to stand before them, not a ghost or a spirit or a vision, but a man risen from the dead.

You may not have witnessed Good Friday while standing at the foot of the cross, or helped prepare Jesus’ body for burial, or walked the dusty road to Emmaus, or spent time in that locked upper room. You might not have seen him eat some fish or placed your fingers in the nail marks on his hands. But you, too, are witnesses of Christ’s work. You’ve sat in these pews, and through the eyes of faith, you’ve seen it all. You’ve heard his anguished prayer in the garden, you’ve felt the energy of the crowd screaming for his blood, you’ve seen the nails go into his flesh even as the sun hides its face from the travesty of justice. You’ve heard him cry out a proclamation of completion—it is finished! You saw where he was buried. You went into the tomb and touched those neatly folded burial cloths but did not find his body. By God’s grace, you’ve come to understand and believe what it means: because he lives, you too shall live. You are witnesses of all these things.

Witnesses need to speak up, to share. What good is it to anyone if you keep this whole message under your hat? Evangelism is not primarily done through increasing an advertising budget for the congregation. Evangelism doesn’t just happen at the behest of the Evangelism Committee nor does the pastor just take care of all of that work. No, evangelism, being a witness, happens in your living room. It happens at work. It happens at a friend’s kitchen table.

It happens when you look into the sad eyes of a neighbor drowning in despair. It happens when your coworker voices his anger at God but then there’s a sliver of an opportunity for you to share comfort. It happens when you talk to your son, daughter, or grandchildren about how they’re living their lives—encouraging them in their positive choices and offering warning about where the path of sin leads.

You are witnesses of all these things. You are witnesses of a law that can crush stony hearts of sin and a gospel that can build up the despairing because you know it yourself. You’ve been the hardened sinner, angry or indifferent to God. You know the pain of the law’s hammer. You know the comfort, then, that comes from knowing that Jesus saved you. You, who shouldn’t be worth a thing to God, and yet he died for you. That is what you testify to. That is what it means to be Christian—to tell the full truth about Jesus as you can. That’s what it means to be a witness.

Easier said than done, though, isn’t it? It’s easy to preach or listen to a sermon about being a witness; it is far harder to do the witnessing. Jesus had no delusions about the difficulty of the work he placed in his disciples’ laps. When he sent them out earlier on what we might call their “practice” witnessing work during his ministry, he told them, “Look, I am sending you out as sheep among wolves. So be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves. 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 10:16-18).

The apostles were going to have a challenging time. They would face opposition at every turn, and the people they were trying to reach would fight them tooth and nail. Do you think that was easy for them to face? Don’t you think they had to drag themselves, kicking and screaming, to witness to people when it would undoubtedly be, at best, uncomfortable and, at worst, downright horrible for them?

But Jesus reminds them of a promise he had made to them before. Even as their hearts are perhaps still racing from being startled at seeing him, he tells them, “Look, I am sending you what my Father promised. But stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.” The power he would send, the power promised by the Father, was the Holy Spirit. When Jesus had warned them earlier of all the troubles they would face, he had also said, “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).

That promise applied to the disciples’ early work during Jesus’ ministry and their full work at the start of the Christian church after Jesus’ work was complete. And that promise still applies to you and me today. That’s why you’re here right now: to be built up in your faith and to hear the Holy Spirit’s words for you to share again. At this place in worship, Sunday School, Catechism Class, and Bible Class, we learn the things we are to say. Here, we learn the words that the Holy Spirit was preserved for us. Here, we become witnesses, yet again, of all that Jesus has done. Here, we are motivated to speak solely from the joy of knowing that our sins are forgiven and that we have no fears. Here, we are reminded that this news can and will bring joy to the hearts of people we have contact with every day.

You may witness many amazing things in your lifetime, whether in sports, politics, world history, or phenomena in the sky. The things you witness may be important to many or few, but none will ever be more important or applicable to more people than this: Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia! Amen.

"The Life Appeared, and We Have Seen It!" (Sermon on 1 John 1:1-4) | April 7, 2024

Sermon Text: 1 John 1:1–4
Date: April 7, 2024
Event: The Second of Easter, Year B

1 John 1:1-4 (EHV)

That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have observed and our hands have touched regarding the Word of Life—2the life appeared, and we have seen it. We testify and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. 3We are proclaiming what we have seen and heard also to you, so that you may have fellowship with us. Our fellowship is with the Father and his Son Jesus Christ. 4We write these things to you so that our joy may be complete.

The Life Appeared, and We Have Seen It!

This morning we get a chance to really spend a lot of time with the apostle John. One of Jesus’ twelve disciples and one of the close “inner circle” of the three disciples (along with Peter and James), John was with Jesus from almost the beginning of his ministry. He was in the courtyard during Jesus’ trial before the high priest. He stood at the foot of Jesus’ cross with Jesus’ mother, Mary. John raced to the tomb with Peter that first Easter morning once the reports of Jesus’ body being missing came to them. John would be an instrumental leader of the early church and likely the longest-living of the twelve, perhaps the only of them to die a natural death rather than be executed for the sake of the gospel.

So, if there were someone you would want to go to, someone you would trust, about anything that happened in Jesus’ ministry and the life of the early Christian church, it would be John. This morning, we have his accounting of the first Easter Sunday and the following weekend in our Gospel. Then, our Second Reading is a letter he wrote very late in life, reflecting on this message, his work, and encouraging the next generation of Christians. In some ways, we get to see both ends of the spectrum from John this morning: both the wide-eyed amazement and naivete of seeing the risen Jesus for the first time and then the quiet, calm words of an old man who had dedicated his life to the good news of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection for all people.

While the events recorded in John’s Gospel happen long before the end of John’s life, his New Testament letters and his Gospel are likely written around roughly the same time, so we can see parallels between what John writes in the introduction to his first letter that we have before us this morning and the famous introduction to his Gospel. John begins his first letter and our Second Reading for this morning this way: “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have observed and our hands have touched regarding the Word of Life—the life appeared, and we have seen it…” Compare those words with the opening of his Gospel: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning…. The Word became flesh and dwelled among us. We have seen his glory, the glory he has as the only-begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:1-2, 14). Whether a letter of encouragement or a historical Gospel, John’s focus is the same: Jesus, the eternal Word of God, and what John has to share about him from his personal experience.

While eyewitness testimony is not always rock solid, you’d certainly rather have an eyewitness than someone who just heard something secondhand. For God, it was absolutely imperative that we have the assurance of eyewitness accounts of Jesus’ resurrection, not just hearsay or a mystery of an empty tomb paired with speculation. In our Gospel this morning, we saw how Jesus himself found this so important that he couldn’t let Thomas operate on the reporting of the other disciples and doubt: “Put your finger here…” (John 20:27). All of the apostles of the gospel would be eyewitnesses of Jesus’ actual, physical resurrection from the dead.

We were reminded on Easter how vital the resurrection is. Decades before John wrote any of his New Testament letters, the apostle Paul said that if Jesus hadn’t been raised from the dead, our faith would be empty and worthless, and we would still in our sins. Jesus’ resurrection proves that everything he promised and set out to do was finished. If Jesus had not been raised from the dead, we would still be in our sins, but because he has been raised, we are freed from our sins.

And this, decades later, is what John wants his readers to focus on. It would seem dark and lonely as a Christian in those early years. If this was God’s plan for the world, his plan to save all of mankind, why were Christians suffering for their faith? Why wasn’t there great power on display and mass conversions happening constantly? Why were Christians around the world being forced into hiding for their faith? Why were the most prominent and bold messengers of the gospel put to death? Was any of this worth it?

That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have observed and our hands have touched regarding the Word of Life—the life appeared, and we have seen it. We testify and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. On Maundy Thursday evening, as Jesus sought to comfort, strengthen, and guide his disciples for the hours and years ahead, he offered them this reminder: “I am the Way and the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father, except through me” (John 14:6). John is only one of the four Gospel writers to record these words from Jesus, and I have a hard time believing that these words weren’t echoing in John’s mind as he wrote the words of our Second Reading. After all, Jesus said the Holy Spirit would remind his disciples of everything he had said, a gift of perfect recall from God.

There’s a reason Jesus shared those words that night, and John echoes them in his writings near the end of the first century: no matter how it may feel or seem, Jesus is still the Way, the Truth, and the Life—eternal life.

So much of life is focused on death and trying to keep it at bay. Maybe it’s dealing with your health issues or caring for a loved one, such as a parent or child who needs you. Maybe it’s the pain of losing a loved one who was so dear to you. And yet, no matter how well we take care of ourselves or those entrusted to us, the best we can do is perhaps delay the inevitable. Death is coming for everyone at some point.

That reality can easily lead us to despair or apathy. What’s the point? Either I’m panicked all day, every day, fearful of what might be coming around the next corner or from the next battery of tests that the doctor runs, or I don’t care anymore and live my life however I, on a whim, might see fit. What really matters?

This narrow view of life is easy to get when all we have is what we can see and feel around us. This is why John brings us back to Easter, to the evening that Jesus declared, “Peace!” to a room full of terrified disciples.

What really matters? What’s the point? Well, John would have you and me remember that real life matters—eternal life. Jesus didn’t come to make everything here fine and dandy—he came to rescue us from this sin-corrupted and death-infested life. He came to rescue us when we were utterly helpless. He came to bring peace when we waged war with God in our sins. He came to be what the angels promised the shepherds he would be on that first Christmas night: “Do not be afraid. For behold, I bring you good news of great joy, which will be for all people: Today in the town of David, a Savior was born for you. He is Christ the Lord…. Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward mankind” (Luke 2:10-11, 14).

John’s all-consuming mission was for others to know the peace that he knew that Jesus gave to him and gave to the entire world. John calls knowing this peace a fellowship, a rallying and uniting of Christians and with God himself: We are proclaiming what we have seen and heard also to you, so that you may have fellowship with us. Our fellowship is with the Father and his Son Jesus Christ.

The peace that Jesus won for us on the cross and proved by his empty tomb joins us together as brothers and sisters in faith and binds us to our Savior, Creator God. We have not just a professional or standoffish relationship with God; we are part of his family, sons and daughters of our Father, brothers and sisters of our Savior.

Jesus declared a uniting peace in those early appearances after his resurrection. “Peace!” he said. In other words, “Look, your sin is gone! What divided you from God has been obliterated! You have peace with God and the ability to have peace between each other because I have triumphed over sin, death, and hell for you!” This was the joy that drove Jesus to the cross and beyond. This is the joy we now have by God’s undeserved love for us.

So, your joy can be complete as John’s was. You can walk through the difficulties of this life neither driven by despair nor apathy. You can go knowing that you are God’s dearly loved child, redeemed in the blood of Jesus your Savior. You can go forward knowing what Jesus’ death and resurrection mean for you today: forgiveness of sins and the certain hope of eternal life. You can go forward in the complete joy of knowing what waits for us beyond this life: perfect, eternal fellowship with God forever.

You may have not been in the privleged position of John or Thomas, to be able to see with your eyes and even touch with your hands the Word of Life. But by your God-given faith, you too have seen the Life, our Savior Jesus, crucified and raised.

Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia! Amen.

"What Words Are Worth Preserving?" (Sermon on Job 19:23-27) | March 31, 2024

Sermon Text: Job 19:23-27
Date: March 31, 2024
Event: The Resurrection of Our Lord, Year B

Job 19:23-27 (EHV)

Oh how I wish that my words were written down.
Oh how I wish that they were inscribed in bronze,
24that they would be engraved in rock forever
with an iron tool and letters filled with lead.
25As for me, I know that my Redeemer lives,
and that at the end of time he will stand over the dust.
26Then, even after my skin has been destroyed,
nevertheless, in my own flesh I will see God.
27I myself will see him.
My own eyes will see him, and not as a stranger.
My emotions are in turmoil within me.

What Words Are Worth Preserving?

Preservation is a very difficult and complicated task. Nature breaks down everything from cement buildings to film. One errant keystroke could render years of work or family memories housed on the computer gone. You’re always fighting time when it comes to preservation. It’s difficult to protect what is being preserved, but it’s also difficult to figure out what things should be preserved in the first place.

On the one hand, preservation may feel like it’s about keeping everything possible. On the other hand, subjective as it may be, preservation may be carried out based on what seems important. Of course, the danger in that is that what seems important today may be different than what seems important tomorrow.

I think through our congregation’s work and about how we preserve minutes from important meetings both digitally and physically. But there are no summaries recorded of conversations in the parking lot after worship, nor was anyone taking notes during our joyous time at breakfast this morning. Those things, while not meaningless or trite, probably will not be important down the road and may not need to be preserved.

Even when considering God’s interactions with people, we don’t have everything preserved. John tells us in his Gospel that Jesus did many things that he did not write down. The Bible itself, the verbally inspired and inerrant Word of God, is not complete. It is sufficient but not exhaustive. God’s Word tells us enough of how we are saved from the hell our sins deserve, but it hardly addresses every question one might have. I’ve lost track of the number of times that a question has been asked in Bible Class, and we end up having to leave it at, “Well, I guess we’ll just need to ask God when we get to heaven,” because we don’t know the answer and have no way of knowing.

But some things are worth preserving: the founding documents of a nation or an organization; the photos of a wedding, the birth of a child, or a family reunion; the favorite family recipes to be passed down to the next generation. And that list will be different depending on who you are, what is important to you, and where your interests lie.

In our First Reading for this Easter morning, we have a small snippet of the book of Job, perhaps largely made popular by the hymn “I Know that My Redeemer Lives,” which we’ll sing in a little bit, or even before that in its use in the grand soprano aria in Handel’s Messiah. In it, Job identifies that the words he’s about to speak are worth preserving, “Oh how I wish that my words were written down. Oh how I wish that they were inscribed in bronze, that they would be engraved in rock forever with an iron tool and letters filled with lead.” Job thinks these words are important and that they should be permanent.

It’s unclear exactly when Job lived, but it seems likely that he was a rough contemporary with Abraham. So, probably more than 2,000 years before Jesus lived and more than 4,000 years from today. Job had many material, earthly blessings and then lost everything in very quick succession—his property, most of his family, and even his health. The book is a conversation between Job, his friends, his wife, and eventually God. Job’s friends accuse him of wrongdoing and urge him to confess the horrible thing he did to bring this disaster on himself. Job’s wife is more blunt, suggesting that Job should curse God and die. But Job does none of these things; instead, Job sticks to his faith. He wavers at times, but largely, his attitude remains consistent with what he spoke in the opening two chapters of the book, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will return. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. May the name of the Lord be blessed... If we accept the good that comes from God, shouldn’t we also accept the bad?” (Job 1:21, 2:10).

By the time we get to our reading, Job is deep in the battle of words with his friends. He begins chapter 19 by saying to one of his friends, “How long will you torment my soul? How long will you crush me with words? Ten times now you have insulted me, but you are not ashamed that you are treating me so badly” (Job 19:1-2).

That is how he speaks to his friends, who continue to accuse him of wrongdoing baselessly, but when he remembers God, his tone is much different. His words speak confidently of God’s promises and his hope for the future: As for me, I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the end of time he will stand over the dust. Then, even after my skin has been destroyed, nevertheless, in my own flesh I will see God. I myself will see him. My own eyes will see him, and not as a stranger. My emotions are in turmoil within me.

Job calls God his Redeemer. The basic meaning of the word “redeem” is “to buy back.” In other words, to take something that used to belong to you and to make it yours again. We might think of taking something to a pawn shop and then going to get it back. Or someone who pays a ransom price to rescue someone else from a kidnapper. All of those are redemptions and rescues.

And so if God is our Redeemer, we used to belong to him, but then we didn’t, and he had to buy us back. From what would God need to redeem us? God created mankind to have a close, personal relationship with him. The harmony that our first parents shared with God, called “the image of God” in Scripture, was a beautiful thing. Adam and Eve loved God, wanted what he wanted, and didn’t want what he didn’t want. But not in a mindless way; God didn’t create robots that couldn’t help but follow his programming. No, the image of God meant they agreed with God, and the free will God gave them meant that they could choose to do what God wanted or not. But disobedience, rebellion, and sin would mean an implosion of that special family relationship with God.

Unfortunately, they chose to sin and ruined the perfect harmony. Where they had belonged to God, were dear members of his family, now in sin, they belonged to sin—were slaves to it—and brought death on themselves and all of their descendants. Physical death that we most often associate with that word that we observe at a funeral, yes, but more to the point was the eternal death that sin carried with it. Rebellion against God in sin brings with it eternal separation from God in hell as punishment.

And yet, Job had confidence that his Redeemer would live, which means God would do something about this. Maybe Job wouldn’t get his possessions and family members back; maybe he’d never have a comfortable day or night again. But Job was confident that God would not abandon him for his sins and leave him to suffer in hell. God would redeem him.

And that’s what we celebrate today. Well, in part. We started the celebration on Good Friday, a day named in a way that feels wildly contradictory. That day we call “good” was the day that Jesus died on the cross, an innocent man sentenced to crucifixion. But as we said on Friday night, so we remember this morning, the physical pains he endured, as horrific as they were, were not the worst of what he suffered. We heard Jesus cry out from the cross, “My God, why have you forsaken me?” And you and I know the answer. Why did God the Father forsake God the Son there on the cross? Why was the triune Godhead rent asunder on that dark afternoon? Because Jesus suffered what Adam and Eve, Job, you, and I deserved. There, Jesus himself endured hell, separation from God, so that you and I wouldn’t have to.

And if that had been the end of the story, if the tragic death of Jesus was the end, then it would be just that: a tragedy. We would have no reason to celebrate today; we would have no reason to call this past Friday “good.” But today, we celebrate what Job saw thousands of years before it happened, as we heard in our Gospel this morning: “Do not be alarmed. You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him” (Mark 16:6). Jesus did not stay dead. So complete was his victory on the cross that he undid sin, hell, and even death itself.

“I know that my Redeemer lives.” Historically, this is probably the first promise of the Savior’s resurrection from the dead to be inspired by God. To be clear, Easter is not just some cute legend or mass hallucination by Jesus’ followers. No, Jesus, actually, physically rose from the dead. This was proof of his victory and our rescue. And, as Job points out, by rising from the dead, Jesus shows what is ahead for us.

Job says that despite all the trouble he’s going through, all the hardship, loss, and pain, he is confident that his Redeemer lives. Job knows that despite the inevitability of death, yet at the end of time, in my own flesh, I will see God. I myself will see him. My own eyes will see him. Because of Jesus’ resurrection, we, too, will rise from the dead on the last day. Then, our tombs will look exactly like Jesus’ tomb: empty.

The apostle Paul, in our Second Reading this morning, observed that “if our hope in Christ applies only to this life, we are the most pitiful people of all” (1 Corinthians 15:19). But very little about our faith is focused in the here and now—we look forward to the resurrection and our rescue into eternal life where we, with Job, will stand in our own flesh and see God with our own eyes, face-to-face.

Can you see why Job wanted these words preserved forever and why he found them so important? Job looks past even the cross to see the ultimate victory Jesus would win and the ultimate rescue he would provide. He sees Jesus not as the lowly, humble, crucified man suffering for the sins of the world but as the victorious Champion Redeemer who has crushed sin, death, and hell forever.

So, my brothers and sisters, rejoice today. Not just because we have festive music and a lovely gathering of people here. But rejoice because not only were Job’s words preserved, but they were proved true. And because they were proved true—because your Redeemer lives—you also have the confidence of your rescue from sin, death, and hell.

I pray that you will never experience loss in your life on the scale that Job faced, but no matter what hardships and sadnesses grip you, take solace in this hope: this life is temporary. By Jesus’ life and death in your place and proved by his resurrection, you have the forgiveness of every sin. For Jesus’ sake, you will be in heaven. When we are there, Job’s words will continue to resonate for eternity, surely worthy of being preserved: I know that my Redeemer lives!

Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia! Amen.

"What Joy Was Set Before Jesus?" (Sermon on Hebrews 12:1-3) | March 24, 2024

Sermon Text: Hebrews 12:1-3
Date: March 24, 2024
Event: Palm Sunday, Year B

Hebrews 12:1–3 (EHV)

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us get rid of every burden and the sin that so easily ensnares us, and let us run with patient endurance the race that is laid out for us. 2Let us keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, who is the author of our faith and the one who brings it to its goal. In view of the joy set before him, he endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of God’s throne. 3Carefully consider him who endured such hostility against himself from sinful people, so that you do not grow weary and lose heart.

What Joy Was Set Before Jesus?

This morning we stand on a perilous threshold. Palm Sunday would seem to be a joyous celebration; after all, the crowds are cheering Jesus as he enters Jerusalem. Jesus looks as popular and as influential as he had in his entire ministry. But, with hindsight, we know what is coming. We know that before the end of this week, Jesus will be dead. Palm Sunday’s joy, if there is any, is short-lived.

But that word “joy” stands out in our Second Reading. The writer to the Hebrews speaks about joy being set before Jesus. What was that joy? What is he talking about? Because as we survey the landscape, it doesn’t feel like there’s a whole lot to be joyful for in the moment. As we just sang about Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, “Ride on, ride on in majesty! In lowly pomp ride on to die” (Christian Worship 411, s. 5).

The author of this letter to the Hebrews is writing a few decades after Jesus’ ministry. He’s writing to Jewish believers who converted to Christianity but now are at a crossroads. Judaism was legal, while Christianity was not. Because of the problems facing these believers, many were tempted to abandon the Christian faith and go back to Judaism, which was comfortable and safe. The writer to the Hebrews’ whole point in this letter is to get them to see how much of a backward step that would be. Leaving Jesus and returning to Judaism would be abandoning the source of their forgiveness and, in fact, the whole fulfillment of what the Jewish faith looked forward to.

The chapter just before our Second Reading this morning, Hebrews chapter 11, has been nicknamed the “Heroes of Faith” chapter. In that chapter, the author summarizes events in the lives of many of the faithful believers from the Old Testament, like Adam, Noah, and Abraham, and commends them for their faith and their trust in God’s promises. And this is the “great cloud of witnesses” that he references in the first verse of our Second Reading. He wants his readers (and us along with them) to consider how faithful God’s people were to his promises in the past and seek to emulate that faithfulness.

And part of that faithfulness is kicking off sin that wraps its fingers around our ankles and run the path that God places in front of us. Being a Christian means being dead to sin and not wanting it around. Being a Christian means seeing sin as a threat, like a fishing net to someone trying to run a race.

But he doesn’t tell us just to do it; he tells us how. Let us keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, who is the author of our faith and the one who brings it to its goal. Do you want to navigate this life safely? Do you want to get through this sin-corrupted world and be with God forever in heaven? Keep your eyes locked on Jesus! He’s the solution; he’s the answer. He’s the one who starts your faith, and he’s the one who completes it.

Here’s something dangerous for any preacher to do on a Sunday morning, but I want you to close your eyes. With this blank mental canvas, I want you to think about the word “joy.” Just let it bounce around in your mind for a moment. What do you see? What comes to mind?

Ok, you can open your eyes. So, what was there? Maybe parents holding their newborn child. Maybe someone moving into their first home on their own. Maybe a newly graduated student clutching the diploma he worked so hard to get. Maybe you saw some generic scenes of people being happy; maybe personal joys from the recent or distant past filled your mind.

All of us will have different things that resonate when we hear the word “joy.” But I doubt anyone saw scenes of torture and pain. I don’t think the word “joy” brought forth images of bleeding and agony. Those things are the polar opposite of joy; torment and joy do not go together.

Palm Sunday is a muted triumph, a very bittersweet moment. We see Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a donkey, the least prestigious and regal way someone could make such an entrance. He enters amid shouts of praise and requests for salvation (“Hosanna” is a Hebrew word meaning “Please save us!”). But there will be no lightning coming from the sky to rescue God’s people from the Roman occupation. There will be no victory here. No, as we mentioned earlier and sang in our Hymn of the Day, Jesus is riding to his death. You know what we’ll see on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday evenings: betrayal, lies, and execution by crucifixion.

And we know that Jesus’ mood ahead of this was not exactly excited. We’ll hear him on Thursday night in the Garden of Gethsemane pleading with God the Father to take this cup of suffering away from him. “If there’s another way, let’s do that. Let’s not do this plan if it can be avoided.” When the writer to the Hebrews mentions the joy set before Jesus, he’s certainly not referring to the physical and spiritual torture he will undergo in a few days. No, the joy that the author mentions thinks little of and even casts aside the shame and the brutality of the cross: In view of the joy set before him, he endured the cross, disregarding its shame…

There is a possible way to translate this verse that goes something like this: “In spite of” or “In place of the joy set before him…” If our minds take this path, perhaps we think about the joy that Jesus could have if he wasn’t in this situation, if he never took on our human nature, if he never faced death. What if Jesus had just stayed God in his place of glory? What if he hadn’t done any of this? Wouldn’t that have been joy for him?

Well, no, actually. Nothing about Jesus avoiding the cross would be joyful to him. Yes, it would mean he wouldn’t have to suffer like he did, but the end result of that would have been completely unacceptable to him. Go back to Jesus’ prayer in Gethsemane. Yes, he pleaded that this cup pass by him, but he then added that his Father’s will should be done.

What is the joy set before Jesus during this impossibly difficult week? What could possibly be so precious, dear, and joy-inspiring that it would take the brutality of the cross and the hell he would suffer there and throw it off to the side? What joy was set before Jesus? Well, you. Me.

The joy on the other side of this torment and pain is our rescue from sin, death, and hell. The joy on the other side of the cross is an eternity with the people he created and loves in the perfect courts of heaven. The joy beyond the cross is victory, real victory, real glory. Not the almost-ridiculous looking scene of a man riding on a foal of a donkey, but there’s a reason that final hymn verse ended the way it did: “Ride on, ride on in majesty! In lowly pomp ride on to die. Bow your meek head to mortal pain, then take, O Christ, your pow’r and reign” (Christian Worship 411, s. 5). In view of the joy set before him, he endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of God’s throne. There’s power and regal rule ahead for Jesus.

How? Because, unlike for you and me, death was not defeat for Jesus. His death will be Satan’s defeat; it will be sin’s defeat. It will be our rescue. We’re going to see a whole lot of difficult scenes over the next week. It will be uncomfortable to sit with Jesus during that last, sometimes frustrating, meal with his disciples. It won't be easy to see him betrayed by one of the twelve. It will be difficult to hear the cracking whip and the pounding hammer, the jeers of the passersby, and his prayer to his Father that goes completely ignored, “Why have you forsaken me?”

But we will revist these verses from Hebrews on Good Friday because we must remember Jesus' attitude in all of this. He is not suffering unwillingly or unwittingly. This is not a tragedy; this is a rescue. Jesus thinks little of the cross and its shame because he thinks so much, so highly, of you. The cross, his suffering and death, was the means to the goal of rescuing us from our sin. And we know that he won’t just mock the cross’ shame, but that he will mock death itself one week from today. For Jesus, what lies ahead isn’t negative; it’s joyful because it will reunite all of us with him, who loves us so much.

The writer to the Hebrews closes our brief reading with this encouragement: Carefully consider him who endured such hostility against himself from sinful people, so that you do not grow weary and lose heart. Why should we keep our eyes locked on Jesus? Why should we carefully consider him who endured such hostility? Certainly not as a model. Jesus isn’t teaching us a lesson on patience and “turning the other cheek” as he suffers hell on the cross. No, consider him carefully because you want to see the results of that suffering and death. If Jesus was just a tragic figure who should be pitied, there would not be encouragement at all in his upcoming death. But, because Jesus is our Champion, our Savior, our Messiah, when we consider him and what he has done for us, we do not grow weary and lose heart, but we are lifted up and encouraged by Jesus’ love for us. Since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us get rid of every burden and the sin that so easily ensnares us, and let us run with patient endurance the race that is laid out for us. Let us keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, who is the author of our faith and the one who brings it to its goal. In view of the joy set before him, he endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of God’s throne.

So, my dear sisters and brothers, whatever hardship is weighing you down, whatever sin is bubbling guilt up in your heart or the pit of your stomach, whatever grief threatens to lead you to despair, fix your eyes on Jesus so that you do not grow weary or lose heart. He faced the cross with joy. But what was that joy? Well, you; you are Jesus’ joy. Thanks be to God! Amen.

"Forgiveness Is Relief" (Sermon on Psalm 32:1-7) | March 10, 2024

Sermon Text: Psalm 32:1-7
Date: March 10, 2024
Event: The Fourth Sunday in Lent, Year B

Psalm 32:1–7 (EHV)
How blessed is the person
whose rebellion is forgiven,
whose sin is covered.
2How blessed is the person
whose guilt the Lord does not charge against him,
in whose spirit there is no deceit.  

3When I kept silent,
my bones wasted away as I groaned all day long.
4For day and night your hand was heavy on me.
My moisture was dried up by the droughts of summer.

 5I acknowledged my sin to you,
and I did not cover up my guilt.
I said, “I will confess my rebellion to the Lord,”
and you forgave the guilt of my sin. 

6Because of this, let everyone who receives favor pray to you
at a time when you may be found.
Surely when the mighty waters overflow,
they will not reach him.
7You are my hiding place.
You will protect me from distress.
You will surround me with shouts of deliverance.  

Forgiveness Is Relief

We’ve spent a lot of time over the past several weeks talking about the difficulties in the life of a Christian and how painful those can be (yet always knowing we have the Lord’s help in all of them!). However, we’ve spent precious little time talking about the joy and relief when those things are taken away, so let’s focus on that this morning, especially concerning the forgiveness of sins.

You know the peace that can come from pain or trouble going away, right? The aspirin you took starts to take effect, and your pounding headache begins to subside. Ahhhh… The financial matter gets cleared up, and you don’t owe some large sum of money you cannot pay. Ahhh… You finally get that essay written and turned in for class, and that thing over your head is now done. Ahhh…

In our psalm for this morning, Psalm 32, David references relief that comes from God. But much more significant than relief from a headache, a school assignment, or even a pressing financial issue is the relief of the forgiveness of sins. Not only does this bring relief in the moment, but it also brings relief for eternity.

Now, David will talk about some of the difficult things that God does to get us to repentance and to a state where he can comfort us with the forgiveness of sins. And in those moments, we can start to feel like God is a mean, angry judge who hates us. To help head off that notion at the pass, David begins this psalm by reminding us who God is, how he desires to deal with us, and how good that is: How blessed is the person whose rebellion is forgiven, whose sin is covered. How blessed is the person whose guilt the Lord does not charge against him, in whose spirit there is no deceit.

There is forgiveness with God, and it is the greatest blessing. God does not remain angry forever but forgives our rebellion, covers our sins, removes our guilt, and gives us a spirit of truth and peace. This is who God is; this is his true nature and his goals for us. It’s just that, sometimes, God has to put us through the wringer to get us to this point.

David goes on: When I kept silent, my bones wasted away as I groaned all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy on me. My moisture was dried up by the droughts of summer. This sounds pretty bad, but maybe familiar to you. David is describing the physical effects that guilt can have on us—bones wasting away, groaning all the time, feeling like God’s hand is pressing us down, and our vitality feeling dried up like sand in a desert.

David may very well be referencing his time of silence and the associated trouble when he remained silent about his sin involving Bathsheba. Very briefly, as king of Israel, David didn’t go with his army to war in the springtime, as was the pattern for kings then. Instead, he stayed home and let the army leaders handle the strategizing and the fighting. But while at home, outside in his palace, he sees a woman bathing across the way. Lust ignites in his heart, and he has this married woman, Bathsheba, brought to him, and he sleeps with her. The result of this is that Bathsheba becomes pregnant. There’s no hiding this sin now, unless…

David recalls Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah, from the front lines of battle in the hope that he will spend some time in Jerusalem, spend a few evenings with his wife, and then assume that the child she will bear is his. David did not count on Uriah being so upright that he wouldn’t even entertain the notion of going to the comforts of home while his fellow soldiers were still living out on the battlefield. David even got him drunk but still couldn’t convince him to go home to his wife. So, David does the only thing he can think of to end this problem he created: he sends Uriah back with a sealed message to the commander that Uriah is to be placed where the fighting is fiercest, and then the other soldiers are to back away from him so that he would die at the hand of the enemy.

See how the sin snowballs? David doesn’t fulfill his responsibilities to go to war with his army, so he’s home when he probably shouldn’t be and sees a woman he shouldn’t have seen. He lets that lust control his actions so that he gets this poor woman pregnant, and then he tries to deceive her husband to cover his sin. When that doesn’t work, he resorts to murder.

And all of that is not the worst of it. The worst is that David lived in a state of denial about this sin. He tried to ignore it; he tried to pretend it didn’t happen or it wasn’t that bad. He tried to live life as if everything was fine. After all, he was the king. Can’t the king do what he wants?

How did that line of thinking and action work for David? When I kept silent, my bones wasted away as I groaned all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy on me. You’ve perhaps experienced something similar, the physical blech that comes with guilt. The upset stomach, the aches and pains, the just miserable state of being. It’s truly amazing how spiritual and emotional can physically affect us.

But David says that this is for a purpose. God wasn’t pressing David down to be mean to him but to draw him out of his self-imposed prison of unrepentance. Ignoring sin doesn’t make it go away; in fact, very often, it just makes you feel worse.

Have you been where David had been, holding on to a sin you loved and wanted to keep doing or perhaps hated but tried to ignore rather than deal with it? Maybe that happened to you in the past; maybe that’s a struggle within you right now. There are a variety of reasons that we might not want to own up to the fact that sins we’ve committed are bad, but holding that in never does any good. It leaves us a wreck. Bones wasting away…

Why does God want us to confess our sins? Why does he place his hand on us when unrepentance takes hold? Because he loves us. Over the past few weeks, we’ve seen a few different ways that God will deal with hardship, but allowing trouble like this because he loves us might feel a bit far-fetched in the moment.

But it’s true! God’s goal is to bring us to repentance and acknowledge that the sin is bad and that we don’t want to do it anymore. He wants to get us to that state not to make us stew in our guilt but because he wants to jump in and offer the relief of forgiveness. He allows our life in the moment to be painful and difficult so that the sin we’re holding onto doesn’t lead to hell—which happens when sin is left unchecked.

God sent the prophet Nathan to King David with an unenviable task: speak the law to David to bring him to repentance. Nathan and David were friends. I can’t even imagine the frog that would have been in Nathan’s throat or the butterflies in his stomach as he went to approach David about his sin. Would their friendship survive this discussion? Would Nathan himself survive, or would David have him killed in a storm of fury?

But Nathan goes as God commanded, and using a parable and direct confrontation, he calls David on the carpet. He speaks God’s law to David just as God had told him to. Adulterer! Deceiver! Murderer! And you can almost see David's thin walls break down. He’s barely been keeping it together the past several months, trying to bear up under the weight of this God-inflicted guilt, trying desperately to ignore the sins he had committed, and here comes Nathan taking a sledgehammer to the supports propping him up. David’s response isn’t anger and rage; it isn’t to threaten Nathan or to order him to leave. David’s response is simple: “I have sinned against the Lord.” And Nathan, in that moment, has the greatest privilege and joy to announce to David, “The Lord himself has put away your sin. You will not die” (2 Samuel 12:13).

And just like that, as far as God is concerned, it is done. There’s no making up for the sin; there’s not much to be done, given Uriah has been dead for many months. There is also fallout and personal tragedy for David and Bathsheba due to this sin. But the ultimate consequence, the punishment this sin deserved, the eternal death in hell David should have faced? All of that was gone. I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover up my guilt. I said, “I will confess my rebellion to the Lord,” and you forgave the guilt of my sin.

God has no desire to be against us or at war with us. He loves us and wants us with him. But for us to be with him forever, he has to deal with this sin that separates us from him. And that, in its most basic form, is the mission that Jesus set out to accomplish, the mission he described in our Gospel for this morning: “God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him” (John 3:16-17).

See what your God has done for you, how greatly he loves you, that he would save you from your sins, give you that forgiveness, and even die for you because that is what it costs. He did so willingly, and he provided for you completely.

I think v. 7 of Psalm 32 is fascinating in this regard. David says, “You are my hiding place. You will protect me from distress. You will surround me with shouts of deliverance.” Consider how he had just recently described God’s hand as heavy on him. Knowing his forgiveness, God is no longer pressing down on him but is protecting him. God’s hands envelop and guard David as he forgives David’s sins.

That’s where you and I are, for Jesus’ sake. Not separated from God, not pressed down by him, but protected. Bring your sin to him; confess it in your prayers. If it’s especially troublesome, bring it to your pastor or another trusted Christian friend or family member so they can give you the same assurance Nathan gave David: “The Lord himself has put away your sin.” He put away that sin through his death on the cross. He saved the world he loved when he was nailed to that tree. He saved me. He saved you.

Today and every day for the rest of your life, find relief in God’s free and complete forgiveness for you. How blessed you are, my dear brothers and sisters, because your rebellion is forgiven, your sin is covered, and the Lord does not charge your guilt against you. Thanks be to God! Amen.

"God's Foolishness Is Wiser than Man's Wisdom" (Sermon on 1 Corinthians 1:18-25) | March 3, 2024

Sermon Text: 1 Corinthians 1:18–25
Date: March 3, 2024
Event: The Third Sunday in Lent, Year B

1 Corinthians 1:18–25 (EHV)

For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God. 19In fact, it is written:

I will destroy the wisdom of the wise;

the intelligence of the intelligent I will bring to nothing.

20Where is the wise man? Where is the expert in the Jewish law? Where is the probing thinker of the present age? Has God not shown that the wisdom of this world is foolish? 21Indeed, since the world through its wisdom did not know God, God in his wisdom decided to save those who believe, through the foolishness of the preached message. 22Yes, Jews ask for signs, Greeks desire wisdom, 23but we preach Christ crucified—which is offensive to Jews and foolishness to Greeks, 24but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25We preach Christ crucified, because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

God’s Foolishness Is Wiser than Man’s Wisdom

What is the difference between foolishness and wisdom? How do you decide if something is smart or poorly thought through? Maybe you rely on what you’ve learned in school or other education opportunities. Maybe you put your trust in an expert in whatever field of information is being discussed to make up for what you don’t know. Maybe your years of experience and even your gut instinct lead you to evaluate a piece of information. And maybe you throw all caution to the wind (to be clear, I don’t recommend this), and you just trust what some random person on the internet posted on a text social media post or TikTok video.

In an age of disinformation and people constantly trying to be louder than people who oppose them, it’s ever more crucial to be sure that what we’re hearing and relying on to guide our decisions are coming from a place of wisdom and not of foolishness or naivete.

And this doesn’t just apply to what car we should buy or what a particular political candidate may or may not do in office if elected. This also applies to our faith life. There’s no end to the variety of opinions on the Christian faith out there, so if we hear something related to Jesus on the internet or from a friend or even from this pulpit, we want to be able to evaluate it, and see if what we’re hearing is wise or foolish. And to be able to do that, we need a solid grounding on what God’s wisdom is compared to the world’s wisdom.

Last week we heard Jesus promise us that the role of a Christian would be filled with crosses. And this morning, in our Second Reading, Paul expounds on one of the reasons why that might happen. Narrowly defined, those crosses may be suffering that we undergo for being Christians. And Paul reminds us why the world around us might cause us suffering for our Christian faith: they just don’t get it; the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing. The message of Christianity, sins forgiven in Jesus’ life and death, is foolishness to those who do not believe, a ridiculous fable that makes a Christian somwhere between pitiable and detesable in the world’s eyes.

But why is the message of the cross, and specifically Jesus’ cross, foolishness to the world? Because it runs contrary to everything we naturally think and what we want to be true. What we want to think is true about us is that we’re not perfect, but we’re pretty good. We want to think that we can fix the problems we’ve caused. We want to think that while we might need or at least benefit from God helping us in our salvation, we can contribute something to that.

And if you think about it, that’s the way the world works, right? If I do something to really hurt a loved one’s feelings, perhaps a thoughtful gift or gesture will help to make up for that wrong. If I break the law, some fine, community service, or jail time will eventually even things out. Punishments should fit the crimes, and once the punishments are completed, then things are done.

But not so with God. You and I cannot contribute to making our sins and failures against God right again. It’s not that we lack the desire but the ability. It’s not that we just often don’t give it our all; it’s that this is impossible. No good work can make up for sin. We cannot make any decision to trust in God’s forgiveness. On our own, we are completely and utterly hopeless in all spiritual matters.

So God, in his wisdom and love, made a plan to take care of this problem himself. And that plan was something so absurd, so beyond the realm of comprehension, that no person would have ever been able to come up with it. So, for those of you who have been Christians for many years, perhaps all of your life, take a step outside of your faith for just a moment and try to view this from the outside:

We have two players in this scene: God and the collective of mankind. Now, God gave to mankind everything they could need or want and expected perfect obedience in return. What he got were rebellion and insubordination; he got his precious creatures making war with him with their sin. So, what’s the likely outcome of that? From a human point of view, we expect God just to stomp out mankind as a whole and be done with us, or at least set up a system where we have to try to make things right that we have messed up.

But not with God. That doesn’t work, and his love for us is so great that he can’t bear the thought of us being punished for our sins for eternity with no hope of rescue. So the plan of pure madness is that God himself, the one who was wronged in all of this, is the one who will take on the punishment for mankind’s sins. To try to put it in human terms, that’s like the police officer paying the speeding ticket for you, or the judge doing your community service, or even more egregious, the murder victim’s family taking on the life sentence in jail. If I can be bold and be understood properly, that is the most ridiculous plan I can think of.

Is it any wonder that the world scoffs at this plan? Is it any wonder that it might be seen as taking the easy way out or wildly misguided and naïve to believe such a thing? It’s no wonder that the world would think little of people who believe in this foolish plan.

My brothers and sisters, how good it is to be fools in Christ! That Jesus, God himself, would die to save sinners like you and me is insane! The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God. By the Holy Spirit’s work in you, you can see this plan for what it is: the wisdom of the all-knowing God. It’s foolish because it makes no sense to our human rationale. It’s wise because it is the only thing that would work to save us. Since it was impossible for us to save ourselves or to even contribute minutely to that salvation, if God wanted us safe from hell, he had to do it himself.

The world can’t stand this. Your conscience is baffled by it. Your reason recoils from it. But what is greater? My reasoning or the all-powerful Creator of the universe? Where is the wise man? Where is the expert in the Jewish law? Where is the probing thinker of the present age? Has God not shown that the wisdom of this world is foolish? Indeed, since the world through its wisdom did not know God, God in his wisdom decided to save those who believe, through the foolishness of the preached message. The Holy Spirit used this message, this gospel, to create faith in your heart, so that even believing what God did is God’s work for you rather than something that you contribute! This foolish preached message is the means that God uses to crush our stony hearts of sin and replace them with hearts of flesh that trust in his love and forgiveness.

You can see rebellion against the simplicity and one-sidedness of the gospel in every other world religion that requires the human being to make peace with God, or the universe, or whatever might be its focus. Sadly, you can see even Christianity itself fighting against this as certain branches of the Christian faith put much more emphasis on your works instead of God’s, or assume you had the ability to decide to believe, or emphasize spiritual gifts or earthly wealth over and above Jesus’ forgiveness.

Everyone is looking for something else, something with more spectacle or personal responsibility. If we radically changed what we taught here, I imagine we could see a positive uptick in attendance and maybe even membership numbers. However, you and I care far too much about our and others’ eternal well-being to mess with the message God has given us to proclaim.

And some things never change because this tension was felt by Paul and the other messengers of the gospel way back in the first century: Yes, Jews ask for signs, Greeks desire wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified—which is offensive to Jews and foolishness to Greeks, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God.

No matter how appealing a different message might be to our natural reason or the world around us, we will continue to preach Christ crucified for sins. It might not make sense to our rational brain, but that’s only because we cannot fully see and understand God’s wisdom on our own. But with the Spirit-given faith to trust God’s work for us, we can see the necessity and completeness of God doing all of this in our place.

When Jesus died, God died for us. We heard Paul’s beautiful summary of the gospel to the Romans last week in our Second Reading: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. This is the core of the gospel, the core of Christianity, the core of the hope of eternal life. We can do nothing; God did everything.

That might not prop up our egos, but it certainly gives us confidence. If God did it all for me, if Christ crucified alone is my rescue from this world of sin and rebellion against God and into eternal life, then I can be sure it was done right and completely. There is nothing left for me to do because Jesus did it all for me, just as he did for you.

The closing verse of our second reading speaks to those still-present protests from within our minds, “But I’m not that bad! But I can do something! But I have power in this!” The wisdom of my natural self is foolishness. The foolish-sounding will of God is true wisdom. We preach Christ crucified, because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. Something as important as our eternal life is not the place to try to insert yourself because that will end in eternal disaster. Instead, hide yourself in the foolishness of Christ’s death for you, which is God’s true wisdom and strength.

Rejoice in your blessing to be ever-so-foolish with God! Amen.

"Suffering Produces... Good?" (Sermon on Romans 5:1-11) | February 25, 2024

Sermon Text: Romans 5:1-11
Date: February 25, 2024
Event: The Second Sunday in Lent, Year B

Romans 5:1-11 (EHV)

Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. 2Through him we also have obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand. And we rejoice confidently on the basis of our hope for the glory of God.

3Not only this, but we also rejoice confidently in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces patient endurance, 4and patient endurance produces tested character, and tested character produces hope. 5And hope will not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, who was given to us.

6For at the appointed time, while we were still helpless, Christ died for the ungodly. 7It is rare indeed that someone will die for a righteous person. Perhaps someone might actually go so far as to die for a person who has been good to him. 8But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

9Therefore, since we have now been justified by his blood, it is even more certain that we will be saved from God’s wrath through him. 10For if, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, it is even more certain that, since we have been reconciled, we will be saved by his life. 11And not only is this so, but we also go on rejoicing confidently in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received this reconciliation.

Suffering Produces… Good?

Do you ever think about how pain is a good thing? We’re always striving to manage or even eliminate pain. We take medicine that helps to take it away; we seek treatments and physical therapies that will help to end a specific pain. Why? Well, because it’s painful! It’s uncomfortable. It can make even everyday tasks like walking or talking difficult, so we look for options to get rid of it as much as possible.

But pain, for all of its downsides, is very important. Pain tells you that something is wrong. The pain of a sore throat might point to an infection of some sort. The pain of touching a hot burner on a cooktop ensures you won’t irreversibly damage your hand, as it will cause you to pull away from the heat very quickly. Pain, for all of its downsides, has very important uses. But it can be really difficult at the moment to be thankful that you were not seriously injured while nursing a nasty burn.

In our Gospel for this morning, Jesus noted that we had to carry crosses. He didn’t say this would be optional or that it might happen. He said, very clearly, that if we want to follow him, that requires self-denial and taking up our crosses.

What are crosses in the sense that Jesus spoke about? Well, we can understand them narrowly or broadly. In a narrow sense, we might think of a cross as troubles we bear, specifically because we are Christians. Maybe this is persecution or other hardship we endure because of our faith in Jesus. But we can also understand crosses more generally as anything that produces sadness, grief, hardship, or heartache in this life. Regardless, as we were reminded of last weekend in worship, trouble is coming to us in this life. It will not be able to separate us from the love of God, but Jesus has promised us that we will not have a life without difficulty and sorrow.

In our Second Reading this morning, we are journeying back into the apostle Paul’s letter to the Romans, a few chapters earlier than our look last week. While Paul’s point in Chapter 8 was that God will not let trouble overwhelm us, in Chapter 5, he makes an even stronger point. Here, Paul is arguing that suffering and hardship—these crosses we have to bear—are actually good for us.

Now, to understand where Paul is coming from, we need to start where he starts in our reading. Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we also have obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand. And we rejoice confidently on the basis of our hope for the glory of God. We really, really don’t want to overlook this point, not only because it’s so very important for us eternally but also because it’s essential to understanding Paul’s point in the following verses.

We have been justified, declared not guilty of wrongdoing, through faith in Jesus Christ. We did not and cannot work off or pay off our sins. We cannot convince God to overlook them. We cannot manipulate things to look better than our neighbors and have better things happen to us than to others. No, we stand in battle with God because of our sins. And it doesn’t matter if, from our arbitrary and biased point of view, we think we’re better than this other person over here. God demands perfection, and we have not been perfect.

But Jesus solved that. In v. 8, Paul has what is perhaps my favorite single-verse summary of the gospel message in the entire Bible: God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Jesus’ death was the solution to sin that we needed and that we have. And, again, we don’t earn this or deserve this. We have it as a gift. God gives us faith to trust in his promise that he’s taken away our sins. That faith doesn’t accomplish anything on its own. Faith simply receives what Jesus did for us. Faith doesn’t cause our justification; faith is the way we receive God’s justification.

So, because of Jesus, this is our standing with God: forgiven, justified. Jesus took our sins away and paid for them all by his death on the cross. There is no remainder on this debt to pay, no sentence from the judge to finish; there is nothing left to do about our sins. They are gone, and we will be in heaven with God forever.

And that reality might lead us to think, “Well, if God cares that much about me for eternity, surely he cares about me a lot right now, so I must have a quiet, peaceful life to look forward to.” While the premise is right (God does, in fact, care about you very much right now), the way God shows his care for us in this life might not always be what we would choose. Sometimes, he allows suffering, hardship, and sorrow into our lives. Sometimes he places those crosses on our backs. But, Paul says, he does that for a reason, and a reason that could even lead us to rejoice in these pains! We also rejoice confidently in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces patient endurance, and patient endurance produces tested character, and tested character produces hope. And hope will not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, who was given to us.

Growing up, one of my favorite comic strips was Calvin and Hobbes. Calvin, a precocious six-year-old, was often shown dreading a meal he was sure he wouldn’t like, having to help shovel the snow from the sidewalk, or going on a camping trip with his Dad. What was his dad’s assurance every time Calvin complained? This scene, this experience, would “build character” for Calvin.

Now, understandably true to life, this did not often speak much to Calvin or convince him that the current situation was good for him. But that doesn’t mean that his dad was wrong. And Paul says something very similar in Romans. What is the point of suffering? Why would we rejoice in it? It produces good things in us: patient endurance, tested character, and hope.

What does that mean? Think on a small scale: if you do touch that hot burner on the stove, it’s probably not going to stop you from eating for the rest of your life, but you’ll probably be that much more careful when cooking a meal. The pain and frustration of getting a speeding ticket and having to pay the fine is likely to lead you to drive more cautiously going forward—for your safety and the safety of everyone around you.

So, too, larger-scale sufferings like heartbreak, family conflict, wrestling with personal sin along the lines of addiction, or other continual frustrations produce character and resolve in us. It allows us to see the troubles of this life, painful as they are, as temporary. We can look back and see that we made it through that suffering, that we could bear and then eventually put down that cross; God will strengthen us to do the same thing with the current cross he has placed on us.

You know that God’s purpose behind these sufferings is never to hurt you or to be painful just for pain’s sake. He’s not looking to make you suffer for your sin—Jesus already did that for you. But God does use difficulty and crosses in this life to make us resiliant and stronger. In the moment going through hardship can dfeel overwhelming and especially so if we think that this is God preparing me for something even more difficult in the future. But that may, in fact, be what he’s doing.

But what is the big-picture purpose behind all of this? Why does God let us build endurance and character? Paul says the ultimate production is hope. And this is not the uncertain hope in the way that we might say, “I hope it doesn’t rain on our plans tomorrow” or “I hope that my flight isn’t delayed,” while all the while we’re assuming that those things are likely to happen. No, this is confident, certain hope in what is ahead. Paul goes on: Therefore, since we have now been justified by [Jesus’] blood, it is even more certain that we will be saved from God’s wrath through him. For if, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, it is even more certain that, since we have been reconciled, we will be saved by his life. And not only is this so, but we also go on rejoicing confidently in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received this reconciliation.

God’s ultimate goal is always to get us focused on his gift of forgiveness through Jesus, to look past this life and to the life that is coming. He might use the troubles and his guidance through those troubles to encourage us to stick firm to his promises through the faith that he has given us. He might use those hardships to be a vivid reminder that this life is not the be-all, end-all of our existence. Lest we become distracted by the joys and pleasures of this life or the pain and turmoil of our time here, God directs our eyes heavenward.

That eternal perspective is what gives us the ability to rejoice even in suffering. Because our joy is never, “I’m so glad that this terrible thing is happening to me!” but rather, “I’m so thankful that my God is with me through these difficult trials and will bring me home to himself one day.” Or, to use Paul’s words, “We also go on rejoicing confidently in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received this reconciliation.”

We have been united with God through the life and death of Jesus. That unity is not something that will be given to us in the future; it is the unity that we have now, today. Our sin that separated us from God is gone because while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. This love of God ensures our eternal safety and means that we can see the good God works, even in suffering today.

God, give us your strength to have and maintain this eternal perspective! Amen.

"Who Can Be Against Us?" (Sermon on Romans 8:31-39) | February 18, 2024

Sermon Text: Romans 8:31–39
Date: February 18, 2024
Event: The First Sunday in Lent, Year B

Romans 8:31–39 (EHV)

What then will we say about these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32Indeed, he who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also graciously give us all things along with him?

33Who will bring an accusation against God’s elect? God is the one who justifies! 34Who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus, who died and, more than that, was raised to life, is the one who is at God’s right hand and who is also interceding for us! 35What will separate us from the love of Christ? Will trouble or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? 36Just as it is written:

For your sake we are being put to death all day long.

We are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.

37No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.

38For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor rulers, neither things present nor things to come, nor powerful forces, 39neither height nor depth, nor anything else in creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Who Can Be Against Us?

If you were able to attend or connect in for our Ash Wednesday worship this past week, you know we went spent some time with Job and his sufferings. We were reminded how we all easily accuse God of wrongdoing when things are not going our way. It’s easy to think that our lives, as Christians, should be pain-free and easy-going and that any deviation from that ideal is some sort of failing on God’s part.

But as Job needed to learn, God has uses for suffering and plans for us that are well beyond our ability to see in the moment. But God goes out of his way in Scripture to assure us that his plans for us are good and beneficial—that he only wants positive things for us. But his laser focus on eternity might mean some earthly hardship until we reach our heavenly goal.

All of God’s Word is important and wonderful, but Romans chapter 8 might be my “desert island” chapter of the Bible, that is, if I could only have one chapter to refer back to and to hold dear, it might be this one. Paul heaps on the comfort and the joy for the struggling Christian in this chapter, especially to the Christian undergoing difficult trials. Our Second Reading for this morning is the tail-end of that chapter, so before we dig into what Paul says in our focused reading, let’s do a quick overview of where we’ve been in the letter to get to this point.

The first several chapters of Romans can be a downer because Paul is going out of his way to show that no person, not a Jewish person nor a gentile, could ever stand before God on their own merit. All have sinned and fall short of God’s glory and expectations. But he doesn’t leave us there, as he quickly transitions to the gospel, assuring that all are also justified (that is, declared “not guilty”) freely because of Jesus’ work for us. “The wages of sin is death,” Paul reminds us in Romans chapter 6, “but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:23).

Despite this all-surpassing comfort, Paul goes on to acknowledge that the Christian life is difficult. We struggle with a sinful nature that wants us to disobey and hate God. So, the life of a Christian is a constant, internal battle. But it’s not just this internal struggle against sin; there’s also the struggle against those things outside of us. Spiritually, the hardships of temptations placed before us by the world and Satan’s cohort make it difficult to walk the line we want to walk. All of this compounds to make our lives difficult.

They can be difficult for many reasons. Maybe as a consequence of my sin. Maybe from the persecution I face for being a Christian. Maybe from the suffering I undergo because of other people’s sins and failures. Maybe it’s just living in a sin-corrupted world and all the blech that is associated with that. But it’s difficult. There’s no getting around that. Jesus did not promise a rosy life; he promised a life of cross-bearing. And we know those crosses so very well.

But, in Romans chapter 8, God unveils some very specific comfort for us, and of great emphasis for Paul is that despite the loneliness that might come from our trials in this life, God is always on our side. And very specifically, God is on our side in ways we perhaps can’t see. Earlier in this chapter, we hear the assurance that the Holy Spirit himself prays for us in the unique language of the triune God during those times when we are so rattled that we don’t even know what to pray for. Just a couple of verses before our Second Reading for this morning is that well-known and loved passage, “We know that all things work together for the good of those who love God, for those who are called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28).

Our Second Reading is the crescendo and high point of this soaring chapter. Paul takes a step back to look at the whole scene he’s painted up until this point—the sin we’ve committed, the hell we deserve, the forgiveness God gives, the heaven he’s won, and the constant promise of support and care—and he asks a holistic question: What then will we say about these things? What is there left to be said? How does one react to God’s amazing grace? Should it be despair? Should the worries of this life drag us down the pit of hopelessness?

Paul’s second question is even more pointed than the first: If God is for us, who can be against us? The assumed answer? No one! Who could possibly take their stand against God? Who could possibly fight God to get us? Even the account of Job and all the suffering he endured at the hands of Satan’s torment only happened because God allowed it. No one gets the jump on God. Nothing happens to us without his knowing. And he never, ever stops being on our side, in our camp, for us.

And where’s the proof? As he so often does, Paul points us to the cross! Indeed, he who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also graciously give us all things along with him? If someone paid off your debt of millions of dollars, do you think they’d be willing to buy you a sandwich for lunch? Seems ridiculous to even think otherwise, right? Why wouldn’t you be worth a few dollars for a meal if you were worth a vast sum to pay off that debt? And that’s the point that Paul makes here. God gave us everything when he gave us his Son. If God did not withhold even Jesus from us but sacrificed him to pay for our sins, why should we think that anything is beyond his ability or desire to give? Can God guide you through that financial crunch or that family hardship? Can he bring balm to that heartache or calm those worries? Of course he can! If he could pay for your sins and rescue you from hell, there is nothing beyond him!

And Paul underscores that point with his next questions: Who will bring an accusation against God’s elect? God is the one who justifies! Who is the one who condemns? Who could possibly bring an accusation against you? No one! Because Jesus, who died and, more than that, was raised to life, is the one who is at God’s right hand and who is also interceding for us! Jesus, our loving Savior, God the Father’s only-begotten Son, joins the Holy Spirit in pleading and praying for us! What are his prayers? It’s not for the Father to overlook our sins, nor is it an attempt at deception, trying to hide our sins from his Father. No, Jesus’ prayer is simply this, “You have declared them justified, not guilty. You cannot punish them for their sins, Father, because you already punished me.”

And Paul knows that this doesn’t always feel real. We won’t always feel loved; we won’t always feel forgiven. The hardships and difficulties of this life will lie to us and say that God doesn’t care, he doesn’t love us, he’s left us on our own. And so Paul wants to confront those thoughts and feelings head-on: What will separate us from the love of Christ? Will trouble or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?

Will hardship separate us from God? No! In fact, we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. So complete is Jesus’ victory on our behalf that we haven’t just won the day against sin, death, and hell, we didn’t just get through by the skin of our teeth. No, in Jesus, we are conquerors, obliterators of all those things that stood against us. Not because of our work or effort but because of Jesus’ work for us. His death paid for our sins; his empty tomb will prove that more-than-conquering status. He didn’t just die for us; he destroyed death for us!

God is indeed for us, and thus, no one can be against us! For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor rulers, neither things present nor things to come, nor powerful forces, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Nothing can come between you and your Savior. No person or thing, not even Satan himself, can drag you away from the God who saved you. Those hardships and griefs and troubles that plague us now? They are dead-men-walking because Jesus has obliterated them and will bring them to a complete end in our lives when he brings us home to himself, where it will be crystal clear that nothing will ever be able to take us away from him!

We’ve begun our solemn Lenten season. It is not always pleasant to dwell on our sins or think of what our rebellion cost Jesus to save us. But take this comfort forward. Who can be against you? Who condemns you? There is no one, for your Savior is at your side to protect and forgive. Take your stand with him during trials. As you see others suffering, reach out to support them. As you go through hardship, reach out to your family of believers here because, at many times, God gives the support that he promises through us to others or from others to us.

He who did not spare his own Son will graciously give us everything we need to be with him in eternal life. Praise, thanks, honor, and glory be to our God forever and ever! Amen.

"The Light of God's Love Shines in Our Hearts!" (Sermon on 2 Corinthians 4:3-6) | February 11, 2024

Sermon Text: 2 Corinthians 4:3-6
Date: February 11, 2024
Event: The Transfiguration of Our Lord, Year B

2 Corinthians 4:3-6 (EHV)

But even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled among those who are perishing. 4In the case of those people, the god of this age has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from clearly seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is God’s image.

5Indeed, we do not preach ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. 6For the God who said, “Light will shine out of darkness,” is the same one who made light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the person of Jesus Christ.

The Light of God’s Love Shines in Our Hearts!

This past Sunday evening I did some rounds on campus with a flashlight. I was looking to make sure things were in good order during the storm, no giant branches down, no gutters clogged and overflowing, hill tarps still (mostly) where they were supposed to be. As I came back up to the parking lot area I took a moment to look at the lights in the parking lot and two things came to my mind at once: 1) How much nicer and brighter it is in the parking lot at night with the new lights we installed about a year ago and 2) how pitiful even those nice new lights are compared to when it’s day time, even on a heavily overcast day as Sunday was.

Light is important, and darkness is dangerous. I know many of our members lost power for some time in the last week and a half, and if that happened to be after the sun went down, you know how darkness can transform even a familiar place into an unfamiliar one, a place that goes from comfortable to maybe a bit scary and treacherous.

How much more would this have been true in the ancient world! Without light at night beyond the moon and what a lamp or candle flame could provide, the darkness was even more debilitating for them than it can be for us. And so it’s no surprise that Scripture is filled with light/dark analogies, where the light is the positive thing, and darkness is the negative thing. Light is safe; darkness is dangerous.

In our Second Reading we have one of those analogies, and a fitting one to consider on this Transfiguration Sunday. As Paul is writing to the Corinthians in his second New Testament letter, he faces some challenges. One is that his travel plans have changed, so he’s not been able to come to Corinth as initially hoped and planned. This may seem somewhat trivial, but the second problem is that Paul had enemies in the Corinthian congregation who tried to bad mouth and speak poorly of him to lessen his impact, reach, and importance. These travel plan changes were just fuel for the fire to make the point that Paul could not be trusted. The congregation wrestled with factions and allegiances to different teachers; for some, Paul was seen as unreliable.

As Paul gets into the heart of this letter just before our reading for this morning, he spends a lot of time reminding the Corinthians that this gospel message and its associated ministry isn’t about any specific messenger; it’s about God who gave the message. In the verses immediately following our Second Reading, Paul goes so far as to downplay the importance of any gospel messenger, or at least their worth and standing on their own: We hold this treasure in clay jars to show that its extraordinary power is from God and not from us (2 Corinthians 4:7). He calls gospel messengers clay jars. Not exactly glowing praise. Rather than getting into a competition to prove who was the greatest teacher, he comes down on the side that all of them are fragile and helpless on their own, and without God’s grace, they are nothing.

That’s not a message that the world looks for or something impressive to people from a worldly point of view. Who gets the most attention? The people who can capture it and hold on to it, those who have the charisma to gather a crowd and keep it. If you have things that draw people to you and want that following, you don’t hide those qualities. And if you don’t have those qualities, you might not expect to get much of a following.

And this is where God does things so very differently, even the opposite of what we would expect him to do. Paul often talks about how he was not a good speaker and he was far less eloquent in person than he was in his letters. One would think that God chose dynamic speakers to spread his gospel message, but that’s often not true.

But if that’s true for the gospel messengers, it’s even more true for Jesus. Throughout this Epiphany season, we've seen that Jesus’ true nature had to be revealed bit by bit because it wasn’t self-evident. The worship of the Wise Men, the testimony of the Father at his baptism, and the demonstrations of authority in teaching and healing and driving out demons all led people to understand that Jesus was more than he appeared. Because he appeared to be just like everyone else, just a guy, a normal person. But the reality was that this was God in human flesh.

But the hidden nature of what’s happening with Jesus doesn’t stop there. What looks like the weakest, most miserable defeat at the cross is the most powerful victory ever won by conquering sin, death, and hell. The most permanent resting place—the tomb—becomes the site of a brief respite for his body before his resurrection. You wouldn’t have guessed any of this by looking at Jesus. You couldn’t have dreamed up this plan for God to save us from sin, but here it is.

And this is why Paul is so eager to downplay himself and hype up Jesus. Paul doesn’t matter, Peter doesn’t matter, faithful servants of the gospel throughout the world of all times do not matter. What matters is Jesus. What matters is his forgiveness that he won, the victory he won in apparent defeat, the strength he proved in what looked to be an utter weakness. Indeed, we do not preach ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake.

At Jesus’ transfiguration, we have a pulling back of the curtain for Peter, James, and John. They're in shock as they see Jesus in a state of glory that they have never witnessed before. As they share the same hilltop with the legendary messengers of the Old Testament, Moses and Elijah, they are completely overwhelmed. What does this scene show? Nothing in this came from these men. Peter, James, and John brought nothing to this scene or gave Jesus any of his influence or power. This is completely one-sided. The one gleaming like lightning, the one soon to be stripped and flogged and mocked and crucified, he is the one through whom all blessings and everything good flow. What Peter? What is James? What is John? Honestly, what is Moses or Elijah? Nothing without God’s love, both in prominence and eternal safety.

I don’t know if you wrestle with pride, of thinking you’re kind of God’s gift to the world or even that God should be thankful to have someone like you among his church, but if that’s a thought that comes to mind at times, let’s lay those thoughts at the cross. The hyperbole and sinful pride that thinks we have something to contribute and that we can give God something that he needs should be crucified in us. It is a total misunderstanding of the relationship we have with God, a total distortion of the epiphany we’ve had about who Jesus actually is.

Because if I get too cocky and self-assured, if I become too stuck on myself or think that God must be really grateful to have me among his people, I do well to consider how I got here in the first place. And I’m not talking about being a pastor and serving our congregation; I’m talking about simply being a Christian, someone who clings to Jesus as the solution to sin. How did that happen? Well, it wasn’t me. It wasn’t a choice I made, nor was it a special spark I had in me or something, even ever-so-small, that I contributed to my spiritual state. No, on my own, there is only the darkness of sin and unbelief. That’s what I bring to the table—nothing good or useful or worthwhile at all.

But Paul reminds us how we got where we are: For the God who said, “Light will shine out of darkness,” is the same one who made light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the person of Jesus Christ. The one who was able to call the literal light into existence with his voice at the beginning of time is the one who made the light of faith shine in your heart and mine through that same voice. Whether it was the Word read, shared, or proclaimed, or perhaps the Word connected to the water of the most joyous adoption of Baptism, God spoke, and it came to be. God spoke, and the light shone in our hearts. God spoke our faith into existence; by him alone, we cling to Jesus as our Savior.

And maybe your wrestling isn’t with pride; maybe it’s with self-loathing. Maybe you embrace that message of the law and don’t often hear the gospel. Maybe you think you are worthless and a failure and someone God should not spend any time on because you’re beyond hope. The faith that God gives to you allows you to see yourself in a different light, to see yourself not as a worthless failure, but as someone so precious, so important to God, that he was willing not only to die for you to forgive every sin but also to come to you and speak this faith into your heart.

Your worth doesn’t come from how good you are, nor is your value calculated on your failures. Your worth is shown most clearly in all God was willing to do to save you.

And this faith, the light of God’s love, reveals mysteries. We can see reality that we couldn’t see before because things are lit rather than being shrouded in darkness. You can look at Jesus and not just see a kind man, a popular preacher, or someone patient under the most severe suffering. By the light of God’s love, by the faith he has called into being in your heart, you see Jesus as your Savior, as the one who rescued you from every sin, including any potential sins of pride and self-righteousness or self-loathing and self-hatred. You have the complete rescue from sin because Jesus has completely rescued you. You do not stumble about in darkness; you walk in the light of God’s forgiveness.

That means you can see! You can see what God has done for you. You can see that he loves you and that he loves the world. And you can see what it cost him. Keep this light in mind as we begin our journey into Lent’s quieter, more solemn days this Wednesday. It’s going to look and feel pretty dark. The Garden of Gethsemane, the midnight trial with the Sanhedrin, the dark ignoring of the truth with Pontious Pilate, and the darkened sky at Jesus’ crucifixion will all communicate a message different than reality. The darkness will not win; Jesus, the light of the world, will triumph.

Cherish that light God has placed into your heart. Cling to your bright Savior as the complete and only solution to the darkness of sin and hell. Rejoice that God has not kept this hidden from you but has given you his love in Jesus, our Savior. Alleluia! Amen.

"Do You Not Know? Have You Not Heard?" (Sermon on Isaiah 40:27-31) | February 4, 2024

Sermon Text: Isaiah 40:27–31
Date: February 4, 2023
Event: The Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany, Year B

Isaiah 40:27–31 (EHV)

Why do you speak, O Jacob?
O Israel, why do you say,
“My way is hidden from the Lord,
and justice for me is ignored by my God”?
28Do you not know? Have you not heard?
The Lord is the eternal God.
He is the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He will not grow tired, and he will not become weary.
No one can find a limit to his understanding.
29He is the one who gives strength to the weak,
and he increases the strength of those who lack power.
30Young men grow tired and become weary.
Even strong men stumble and fall.
31But those who wait for the Lord will receive new strength.
They will lift up their wings and soar like eagles.
They will run and not become weary.
They will walk and not become tired.

Do You Not Know? Have You Not Heard?

He sat there on the side of the road, tears streaming down his face. He thought he could make it through what had happened, but now he wasn’t so sure. The guilt was overwhelming, and the consequences of his actions felt like an impossible weight. Others’ reactions to his situation hadn’t made things any better. He considered, ever so briefly, that he was truly alone in his life, and perhaps it just made sense to act on that and be done with what felt like a God-forsaken existence.

Do you not know? Have you not heard?

Another fight, another impossibly bull-headed person. How could she keep this up? Work was a mess, home was a mess, she was a mess. Didn’t God promise not to give her more than she could handle? Didn’t he promise a way out of temptation and testing? She was just so done. She’d given everything she had, and now she had nothing left to give. It sure felt like God was ignoring her prayers and not paying attention to the difficult path she was walking.

Do you not know? Have you not heard?

Failed. He had failed to live up to every single expectation that someone had for him. He had done his best, at least he thought he had, but he had disappointed so many people so many times. Where was the support from God to change his ways? Where was the relief he was supposed to feel from these failures and these sins? If God truly loved him and cared about him, why couldn’t he feel it or see it? Where was God hiding himself? Why did he not care?

Do you not know? Have you not heard?

Have you been there? Have you been where those people are? Overcome by the sadness and difficulties of this life? Overcome by the sin of others poured out against you? Overcome by your own sin where you fail to be who and what you should be, over and over again? Guilt presses down hard. We might be able to sympathize with King David, who described the torment of guilt as his bones wasting away inside of him.

Perhaps the worst part about guilt is not the phyiscal manifestations that it can have, but rather the loneliness. You failed those people—those important people in your life!—and now, will they ever want to have anything to do with you again? But the even more intolerable loneliness is the separation from God.

Because that’s what sin does: it divides us from God. He demands perfection, and we are far, far from perfect. So sin causes that division, and the ultimate expression of that division is hell, an eternity of separation from God for failing to be the perfect people that God requires. Hell, as awful as it is, is exactly the punishment we deserve for the sins we’ve committed against God. Even those sins that feel smaller than other people’s sins; even those sins that we have convinced ourselves are not so bad or not hurting anyone; even those sins we try to hide from the world but can never hide from God.

Do you not know? Have you not heard?

Let’s take just the first verse of our first reading in isolation for a moment. Removed from its context, let’s hear these questions from God, as perhaps many people have heard it, as a rebuke: Why do you speak, O Jacob? O Israel, why do you say, “My way is hidden from the Lord, and justice for me is ignored by my God”? Depending on your perspective, you might hear God saying in this verse, “Why are you wasting your breath with these statements? Of course your way is hidden from me, of course I’m ignoring your calls for so-called ‘justice.’ You’ve done the exact things that I told you not to. You knew that this was what was going to happen. Adam and Eve knew that their sin would lead to death, so also your sins lead to death. Save your breath and save your whining; you’ve brought this on yourself.”

And it’s not just the unfaithful Southern Kingdom of Judah nearly 2800 years ago that such a rebuke could be leveled at, right? This finds application and hits home for us today. Consider those feelings that God is far, far away from you. Of course he is! You’ve sinned against the perfect God and he hates it. Nothing you can do will ever change that. Why is God so far away from me? Because I have utterly failed to be the person he expects me to be. I have failed as a husband, father, son, and friend; I have failed as a pastor and leader; I have failed as a member of our community and as a representative for God among the people around us. I have spat on God’s expectations in every area of my life! And so have you. We have separated ourselves from God with our sin, and we cannot bridge that gap or heal that divide.

Do you not know? Have you not heard?

Taking a single verse out of its context in isolation is not a particularly good way to interpret and understand God’s Word. In fact, this “rebuke” is exactly what Satan would want you to hear in these words. While nothing we’ve heard here this morning was false, those things are not at all what God is communicating here. Yet, this hopeless abandonment by God is exactly what Satan wants you to feel and believe. The very one who tries to get you to rebel against God in sin is the first in line to look at you, after you’ve sinned, and say with mock-horror, “What have you done?”

See Satan’s goal is not that we worship or serve him. He doesn’t care about religions dedicated to him or people debating if he exists. All he wants to do is preserve, and perhaps widen, that gap between you and God. He wants to distract and discourage you from thinking there’s any possibility of healing between you and God. He can approach that in many different ways: he can sow apathy in the heart formerly dedicated to God; he can cause the hardships of this life to be too overwhelming for us to believe that God cares anything for us; he can even use great riches and fun to make us behave as if this life is the only life that exists and nothing else matters—especially not the eternal. So whether you are separated from God by despair or fun, grief or greed, Satan doesn’t care as long as you are separated. Then, that prowling lion has found his prey and devoured it.

So, if this guilt and grieving are the work of Satan that must mean that they are not trustworthy, and they’re not. Except while Satan’s native language is lying, the most insidious of those lies are the half-truths. There is no denying it when he accuses you and me of sin. We have not been the perfect people God expects and demands we be. No one is at fault for my sins except me. We have no one to blame but ourselves. We’ve plunged into the sewer of sin and reek with the stench of rebellion.

But the lie comes when Satan says to you, “See, now God could never love you or care about you because of what you’ve done.” He even sits here in a worship service, as the forgiveness of sins is repeatedly announced, and each time whispers to you, “Yeah… for them, not for you. He’s not talking about you. You’re too far gone. You’ve done too much wrong.”

Do you not know? Have you not heard?

Let’s revisit God’s words through Isaiah in our first reading as a whole: Why do you speak, O Jacob? O Israel, why do you say, “My way is hidden from the Lord, and justice for me is ignored by my God”? Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Lord is the eternal God. He is the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired, and he will not become weary. No one can find a limit to his understanding. He is the one who gives strength to the weak, and he increases the strength of those who lack power. Young men grow tired and become weary. Even strong men stumble and fall. But those who wait for the Lord will receive new strength. They will lift up their wings and soar like eagles. They will run and not become weary. They will walk and not become tired.

What is God’s point in asking those questions at the beginning of this reading? They are silly and ridiculous, but not for the reason Satan would want us to think that they are. Is your way hidden from the Lord? Is God ignoring justice for you? No! Far from it!

This morning, we had the opportunity to see God’s protective work in clear, visible action. In baptism, God made Nysha part of his family, just as he has adopted you and me into his family through that same washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit. Are you separated from God? Is he ignoring you? No! You are his dearly loved child!

Do you not know? Have you not heard?

The proof of God’s care for you is seen most clearly in Jesus. Not only has God not abandoned you, not only has he not ignored you, but he actually took your burdens and sorrows on himself. As we’ve seen throughout this Epiphany season, God himself took on our human nature. We saw him lying in Bethlehem’s manger; he saw the beginning of his ministry at his baptism by John the Baptist. As we get closer to the season of Lent, we will see again the enormous pains and disaster that Jesus took on himself, a disaster that will culminate on dark Friday when the creator of the heavens and the earth was suspended between the sky and the ground, nailed to a cross.

But all of this is not a tragedy of a helpless man suffering and dying for crimes he did not commit. Nor is the account of Jesus’ death a model for us to follow in humility and putting others ahead of ourselves. No, Satan doesn’t want you to see this scene or at least not understand what’s going on here. Because there, at the cross, the one who had the power to drive out demons with a single word is crushing Satan’s head. Here is the forgiveness of our sins, not because of anything we can or have done, but because of God’s great mercy and love for us. There at the cross, he bemoans the abandonment from God, not in a misguided way like Israel or you and I might have done, but bemoaning the literal abandonment from God. There on the cross, Jesus suffers hell and is separated from God in the most gruesome and confusing scene, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”

Why did he do it? For you. For me. Because that’s what our sins deserve, and neither the Father nor Jesus nor the Holy Spirit was willing that you and I suffer hell, suffer the punishment we deserved, and so Jesus did it for us, in our place, to rescue us from our sins. He died so that we could live. His death counted for us all, as if we were all nailed to that cross, and our sins are gone.

Do you not know? Have you not heard?

And God, in his mercy doesn’t just leave it there. Jesus’ body was laid in a tomb after he commended his spirit to a brief respite with his heavenly Father. Then, on Sunday morning, it was back to work. An earthquake! A rolling away of the stone! More questions: “Why do you look for the living among the dead? Do you not know? Have you not heard? He is risen, just as he said!”

When Satan has his claws in us, when we are weighed down by the guilt that is so real because the sins we’ve committed are so very real, journey once again to see this tomb empty. Remember that water paired with the Word that adopted you into God’s family. Come, take, eat, and drink the true body and blood of your Savior in, with, and under the bread and wine for the forgiveness of your sins.

Do you not know? Have you not heard?

Don’t let Satan’s lies and half-truths deceive and distract you. You are a dearly loved child of God. He will never grow weary of protecting you or forgiving you. So take those burdens and those sins and bring them to Jesus. Cast all your anxiety on him, because he cares for you (1 Peter 5:7). And there, when you leave these hardships with your Savior who lived, died, and rose for you, you find relief from all those terrible things. There you are lifted up on the wings of eagles. There, you find the spiritual strength not to be tired or weary because you know what your God thinks of you and has done for you. There, in God’s forgiveness, you receive his new strength, strength that doesn’t come from within you but comes as a direct work of God for you.

All of this is sufficient until the day that God ends any notion of separation from himself when we will not be cast into hell but welcomed into the perfect courts of heaven for Jesus’ sake. Then, we will not need to go through this cycle of being wearied and finding strength in God’s forgiveness. Then, we will not need to seek God out in his Word or the sacraments where he gives us himself. No, then, in that day, we will see God face to face. We will see our Savior scared with those marks of his crucifixion yet alive and well. Then there will be no more night; we will live in the protection of our God forever.

My dear sisters, my dear brothers, Do you not know? Have you not heard? Your sin separates you from God, but God has separated you from your sin in the body of Jesus. You are forgiven. You have peace with God now and forever! Amen.

"The Messiah Follows God's Will" (Sermon on Isaiah 49:1-6) | January 14, 2024

Sermon Text: Isaiah 49:1-6
Date: January 14, 2024
Event: The Baptism of Our Lord (Observed), Year B

Isaiah 49:1-6 (EHV)

Listen to me, you coastlands.
Pay attention, you faraway peoples!
The Lord called me from the womb.
When I was inside my mother, he mentioned my name.
2He made my mouth like a sharpened sword.
He hid me in the shadow of his hand.
He made me a polished arrow.
He concealed me in his quiver.
3He said to me, “You are my servant Israel,
in whom I will display my glory.”
4But I said to myself, “I have labored in vain.
I spent my strength and came up empty, with nothing.
Yet a just verdict for me rests with the Lord,
and my reward is with my God.”
5But now the Lord,
who formed me from the womb to be his servant,
to turn Jacob back to him,
so that Israel might be gathered to him,
so that I will be honored in the eyes of the Lord,
because my God has been my strength—
6the Lord said:
It is too small a thing that you should just be my servant
to raise up only the tribes of Jacob
and to restore the ones I have preserved in Israel,
so I will appoint you to be a light for the nations,
so that my salvation will be known to the end of the earth.

The Messiah Follows God’s Will

How are you at planning? That is a large weak spot for me. I tend to react in the moment to things rather than charting a course. And even if I chart a course, sticking to that plan is entirely different. That’s not necessarily a good or bad thing; it just tends to differ between people. Some people meticulously plan every moment, some fly by the seat of their pants all day, and probably most people fall somewhere in the middle of those two extremes.

What about God? Is he reactionary? Hardly. Sometimes, God allows it to look like that for the sake of the people he interacts with. (A good example would be his apparent hot temper at the Israelites when they were worshiping the golden calf, which allowed Moses to plead for the people and see his dedication to God’s people.) Even if we can’t clearly see or understand what God is doing or why, he always has a plan, is always organized, and perfectly executes his plan.

There is no clearer place to see that than in his plan of salvation. God knew exactly what, how, and when he would save mankind from our sins. While God slowly let people know the plan's details, that wasn’t because he was still figuring it out. It was just that he had reason to dole out that information steadily through the generations. At Jesus’s baptism, we can see that plan coming to fruition. John understandably hesitates to baptize Jesus, recognizing that John should be the one being baptized by Jesus, not the other way around. But Jesus assured him that this is part of the plan, that it’s right to do this to fulfill all righteousness.

In our First Reading for this morning from Isaiah 49, we get an idea of the plan. As the Messiah speaks through the prophet’s pen, we learn that his calling and this plan were not arbitrary. God called him from the beginning to be the Savior of all people. Listen to me, you coastlands. Pay attention, you faraway peoples! The Lord called me from the womb. When I was inside my mother, he mentioned my name. He made my mouth like a sharpened sword. He hid me in the shadow of his hand. He made me a polished arrow. He concealed me in his quiver. He said to me, “You are my servant Israel, in whom I will display my glory.”

God didn’t just randomly pick some guy someday and have John baptize him and claim him as his Son. No, the eternal Son of God was always going to be the Savior. God had a clear plan and would fulfill that plan.

But we hear a very human perspective from the lips of the Messiah. But I said to myself, “I have labored in vain. I spent my strength and came up empty, with nothing.” Perhaps we hear echoes of Jesus in Gethsemane pleading with the Father to let this cup of suffering pass from him—not by Jesus’ will, but as the Father willed. Or perhaps the cry of anguish as Jesus suffers hell on the cross for our sins, pleading from the torment of being forsaken and abandoned by God, the true and full definition of hell. Or perhaps this could even be seen as the Messiah giving voice to the people around the cross. They had hoped Jesus was the one! And now? He was dead on the cross and then laid in a tomb. By all human measures that is labor in vain.

But God’s will and plan didn’t end with the cross; it didn’t end with a tormented servant, and it didn’t end with a dead Messiah. The angels appear at the tomb and roll the stone away, not to remove the body or let Jesus out, but to show that he was already gone. Jesus’ resurrection from the dead proves that God accepted his sacrifice and did everything the Father had ordained for him to do. His work was truly finished, complete. Jesus’ resurrection was the Father’s seal of approval on everything he did. “Yet a just verdict for me rests with the Lord, and my reward is with my God.”

But what is the result of all of this will-following on Jesus’ part? What happened because Jesus’ ministry was complete, from his baptism to his resurrection and ascension? God states it clearly: It is too small a thing that you should just be my servant to raise up only the tribes of Jacob and to restore the ones I have preserved in Israel, so I will appoint you to be a light for the nations, so that my salvation will be known to the end of the earth. I love this phrasing and attitude from God. He says, “You know what? If you were just the Savior of one people, of one nation, that’s ridiculously easy. That’s tiny, almost like a child’s game. You, dear Messiah, will be the Savior of all people. A light for all nations, to bring the forgiveness of sins to everyone, to the ends of the earth.”

We noted last week, as the Wise Men came to visit the child Jesus in Bethlehem, how this child was for all people. As these Gentiles came to worship the King born from the Jewish people, it was recognition not just of authority and power but of his divinity. This God-Man was not like the pagan gods who supposedly had jurisdiction over a small sliver of the earth; this was the true God, come to be the Savior of all.

And that fact, as difficult as it was even for the early Jewish Christians to grapple with, was never something that was hidden or secret. God was always clear that the Savior would be for all. The Messiah would come to rescue all people from all nations, every descendant of Adam and Eve, and everyone in the family tree of Noah; these are the people Jesus came to save.

That means you and that means me. No matter your family, racial, or religious background, Jesus is your Savior. Every sin you’ve ever committed was laid on Jesus at the cross. Your forgiveness is why he carried out his work; his love for you is why he began his formal ministry at his baptism. Because the Father noted that saving others but not saving you would have been beneath Jesus, too small a thing. Because your Savior God is greater than any challenge or task placed before him, you can be confident that his work means your sins are gone, you are forgiven, and eternal life stands waiting for you.

The will of God was that mankind not suffer in hell for our sins, and the Messiah accomplished that will. By his perfect life in our place, his innocent death that paid the penalty our sins deserve. This is for you; this is for everyone. So, just as Jesus began his public work at his baptism, we continue making this good news known in all places—our homes, our communities, and even far-off lands where we personally might never set foot. Where there are people, there are objects of God’s affection, the desire of his will, and the ones he has saved. Let us cherish and continue to share this good news until our Savior brings us home to himself. Amen.

"A Star Comes Out of Jacob" (Sermon on Numbers 14:15-17a) | January 7, 2024

Sermon Text: Numbers 24:15–17a
Date: January 7, 2024
Event: The Second Sunday in Lent, Year C

Numbers 24:15–17a (EHV)

Balaam took up his oracle and said:

The declaration of Balaam son of Beor,

the declaration of the man whose eye is open,

16the declaration of the one who hears the words of God,

who receives knowledge from the Most High,

who sees the vision of the Almighty,

who is falling down, but his eyes are wide open:

17I see him, but not now.

I behold him, but not near.

A star will come out of Jacob.

A scepter will rise up out of Israel.

A Star Comes Out of Jacob

There are a lot of things surrounding the birth of Jesus that are traditions, but not necessarily biblical truths. For instance, many of the pictures we have in our heads from artwork or other sources are only sometimes accurate. Mary riding to Bethlehem on a donkey? Perhaps, but that’s not recorded for us in Scripture. Were Mary, Joseph, and Jesus in a wooden barn that first night? Probably not; it was probably more like a cave area for the animals.

But perhaps the most perplexing and tradition-filled part of this season is Epiphany, the Wise Men’s visit. The Wise Men weren’t there the night the shepherds came; when they arrived in Bethlehem Mary and Jesus were in a house. The word used to describe Jesus is more akin to our word “toddler” than “newborn” or “infant.” And how many Wise Men were there? No idea. There were three gifts, but who knows how many people made this journey. This scene is filled with many questions that we cannot definitively answer. Where did these men come from? What was the star they followed—something miraculous or a natural occurrence in the stars that God used to indicate the birth of the Messiah? And how did they even know that a star appearing like this indicated that the Messiah had been born from the Jewish people?

We’re not here this morning to answer those questions or to play Christmas-time trivia. That merely serves as a reminder that there are a lot of unanswered questions about this whole season that we’ve been through. Epiphany starts a new season in the church year, a season about revelation. We begin with the Wise Men’s visit to worship the child Savior because this is our first recorded mention of people who were not Jewish coming and seeing their promised Redeemer.

Our focus for this morning will be our First Reading, one of the early promises of the Savior. It takes place during Israel’s 40 years of wandering in the wilderness, not long before they would finally take over the Promised Land. One of Israel’s enemies, Balak, the king of Moab, hired Balaam to curse Israel for him. We have a lot of unanswered questions about Balaam, too. Where did he come from? What was his job, really? He seems to be invested in the spiritual things—but more along the lines of the occult rather than anything dealing with the true God. In fact, he seems to see the true God as a tool in a toolbox in the same way a carpenter would regard a saw or hammer.

Now, certainly, God could do whatever he wanted to or needed to despite what Balaam said or did, but God chose to make a statement through Balaam. He would not allow Balaam to speak curses on his people; rather, God put words of blessings for his people into the mouth of this occult practitioner. Perhaps you recall Balaam’s donkey whom God enabled to speak to Balaam when the donkey could see the Angel of the Lord, but Balaam could not (Numbers 22:22ff). Through Balaam, God is making a point about who is in control here. It’s not Balaam, it’s not the king of Moab, it’s not even Moses or the people of Israel. God is the one who is in charge.

Our text is taken from the second-to-last of Balaam’s messages about Israel. He can never utter the curses that the king of Moab hired him to do. Instead, he can only speak blessings on Israel and curses against her enemies. And this oracle, or message, gets to the heart of the purpose of this division: God has an incredibly important plan for this nation.

The introduction to Balaam’s message emphasizes his own frailty in this whole matter and God’s superiority: the declaration of the man whose eye is open, the declaration of the one who hears the words of God, who receives knowledge from the Most High, who sees the vision of the Almighty, who is falling down, but his eyes are wide open. What is Balaam bringing to this? Nothing. Any power, any significance to the words that Balaam speaks comes directly from God.

And what words of significance does God have to bring through Balaam? I see him, but not now. I behold him, but not near. A star will come out of Jacob. A scepter will rise up out of Israel. He sees someone who is coming but has yet to arrive. He’s on his way, but he’s not close yet. He is described as a star coming out of Jacob’s family, a scepter coming out of the people of Israel. Stars and scepters were both linked to royalty. A king is coming, a powerful ruler will come out of this people.

There would be pale echoes of this coming ruler in Israel’s history. Joshua who would take over for Moses, some of the judges like Gideon or Ehud, and certainly the days of the powerful monarchy of Israel in Saul, David, and Solomon. But none of these fulfill the true scope of what is being promised. None of these were “the one” who could fulfill these promises. Balaam’s words echo what God had promised through Jacob as he blessed his sons some 500 years before this: The scepter will not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, until the one to whom it belongs comes (Genesis 49:10).

Only one has the right and authority to rule over all people, the one who would bring people from distant lands not just to greet and pay respects but to worship as the Wise Men set out to do. The one coming, but not yet seen, but not yet close at hand, is the Savior of mankind, the Messiah God promised to bring through his chosen people, Israel.

Balaam’s words are spoken roughly 1400 years before Jesus was born. I see him, but not now. I behold him, but not near. He’s there, he’s coming, there’s absolutely no doubt about that, but he hasn’t arrived yet. As the people of Israel begin to settle in the land promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, this is another step on the Messiah’s journey. He is coming to take his place, to rule.

Over the last several weeks we’ve seen more detailed riffs on this regal Messiah. David was promised someone to sit on his throne forever. Mary was assured that her firstborn would have a kingdom that would never end. This Messiah, this Savior, this Jesus is the king in the most important way possible.

A king’s primary responsibility is to protect and care for his people. The picture of the shepherd is fitting here, and it’s a picture that Jesus applies to himself. A shepherd seeks the physical welfare of the sheep in his care. He ensures they have plenty to eat and drink, and when a predator comes, he steps in to protect the vulnerable animals. A king also looks to provide for his people physically—ensuring there’s enough food and that their enemies pose no threat to them.

We can certainly see Jesus as being that kind of physical provider, an all-powerful King who ensures that we have our daily bread and who ensures that while we may not have everything we want, we do have everything we need, especially from a spiritual, eternal perspective.

And that’s the special emphasis that Jesus provides that no earthly shepherd, king, parent, or philanthropist can do. Jesus provides not just for the here and now, but for eternity. In fact, while our here and now well being is incredibly important to him, this rising star and scepter’s purpose was always focused on eternal life. While we certainly need our daily bread, we need food, water, clothing, shelter, and all that God provides, what we really need is a king to defeat our spiritual enemies.

The Wise Men knew this. They weren’t coming to make a peace treaty or inspect an odd astronomical occurrence. They were coming to worship the special king who was promised from the Jewish people—the Savior of mankind. They were coming to worship this king who would grow and mature but do so perfectly, without sin. They were coming to worship this king who would take that perfect life and offer it on the cross in exchange for our sinful failures of lives. They were coming to worship this king who would defeat our true enemies—sin, death, and hell—by his death and then prove it by his resurrection from the dead. They were coming to worship the long-promised Messiah, the star rising out of Jacob. They were coming to worship Jesus.

And so do we. We don’t have Balaam’s perspective anymore. Jesus’ work is not far off in the future. We don’t even have the perspective of the Wise Men who knew that these things would happen to this child in the years ahead. No, today, Jesus' work is complete and accomplished. Your salvation is won. Your forgiveness is certain. The Star promised out of Jacob shines on you, assuring you that your sins are gone and that eternal life is a free gift.

And still, we wait. We can have Balaam’s perspective: I see him, but not now. I behold him, but not near. While the work of our salvation is complete, our full experience is not yet here. We are still in this world of sin, and we are individually still hampered by our own sinful natures. Jesus will return to bring us home, either at our deaths or on the last day, but we do not know that day or hour. I see him, but not now. I behold him, but not near. Or maybe our perspective is, “I see him, I behold him, but the time of fulfillment is blurry.” Today? Tomorrow? 30 years from now? 1,000 years from now? We do not know when our lives will end, and even less do we know when Jesus will return to bring us home.

But that star has risen out of Jacob. Your sins are forgiven. So whether we have hours or decades left in this life, whether there are moments or millennia ahead for this world, our forgiveness and eternal security are certain. Jesus lived and died for us. Our king defeated our enemies. Our Star shines on us now and will shine fully forever in heaven. Thanks be to God! Amen. 

"What Will Tomorrow Bring?" (Sermon on James 4:13-17) | December 31, 2023

Sermon Text: James 4:13-17
Date: December 31, 2023
Event: New Year’s Eve, Set 2

James 4:13-17 (EHV)

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into this or that city, spend a year there, do business, and make a profit.” 14You do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? Indeed, it is a mist that appears for a little while and then disappears. 15Instead, it is better for you to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live, and we will do this or that.” 16But right now you are boasting in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. 17So, for the one who knows the right thing to do and doesn’t do it, this is a sin.

What Will Tomorrow Bring?

The end of year and beginning of a new year always seems to include a lot of looking back and looking forward. Top 10 lists and online subscription service summaries try to wrangle the events of the year past, down to what music you listened to or what movies you watched. But it is also a time of looking forward. As I was browsing headlines this week, I saw more than one article aimed at trying to predict what new styles and trends may be coming in various disciplines such as graphic design or electronic hardware. Just what will 2024 bring?

The easy answer is we don’t know. We can’t predict the future with any sort of accuracy. We can make some educated guesses. We can look at trends from the past and extrapolate to make a pretty solid guess. But no matter how informed those guesses are, they are still just guesses. The immense amount of amazing brain power, math, and technological advancements that go into predicting the weather is a great example. It’s usually pretty good, but sometimes the unexpected happens. Sometimes, that rain that was forecasted for the week never materializes. Sometimes, that break from extreme temperatures never comes.

But, there is one who does know, right? God knows what is going to happen. His omniscience means that he knows the decisions every person is going to make, even if he’s not specifically causing that to happen. It means that when he promises to work things out for our good, and he actually can because he is uniquely able to know and ensure things work as he wishes.

But as we plan for a new year, how often do we rest those plans on God? How often do we plan or set goals with God’s will in mind? How often do we remember that tomorrow, even later today, is an unknown and that our plans may not always align with God’s plans?

In his brief New Testament letter, James reminds us where our focus should be during this transition to a new year. As we consider what tomorrow will bring, we can be assured that we don’t know and that God’s will will be accomplished.

Let’s review our Second Reading: Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into this or that city, spend a year there, do business, and make a profit.” 14You do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? Indeed, it is a mist that appears for a little while and then disappears. 15Instead, it is better for you to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live, and we will do this or that.” 16But right now you are boasting in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. 17So, for the one who knows the right thing to do and doesn’t do it, this is a sin.

Does James’ description sound like you? I know it desribes an approach that I often. I assume that as I lay out events on my calendar, they will probably happen and that my poor organization or time management is the most likely cause for them not happening. If I plan to do something, of course, it will happen.

But James right rebukes that line of thinking. Is that so sure? Can we be so confident? Will the plans we make be what we end up doing? Maybe, but maybe not. You do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? Indeed, it is a mist that appears for a little while and then disappears. We don’t like to think of our plans or even our entire lives as a mist, do we? Something so temporary and fleeting. Like the fog rolling in off the ocean in the morning and is gone by midday, our lives and plans are temporary.

What might happen to make those plans disappear without a trace? Well, situations around my plans may change, making them impossible. I may recognize that the plans could have been better thought through and see reason to change them. And, in the most extreme cases, my life might suddenly and unexpectedly come to an end, or Jesus may return on the last day. We were reminded regularly throughout the end of the last church year and in the recently completed Advent season that we have no idea when the end will come. So, if it could be any time, my plans for the summer, or thoughts for next week, even the rest of this service printed in the bulletin may be something that never happens.

And while planning in and of itself is not bad, James points out there can be a certain amount of hubris in those plans, especially if we don’t acknowledge God’s role in our lives. Can I make anything happen? Can I ensure that my health will be great, that I’ll be financially prepared, and that everything will work as I want it to? I can do my best on all those fronts, but it is a great arrogance to think that I can make those things happen.

And so, James urges us to see our plans from God’s perspective: Instead, it is better for you to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live, and we will do this or that.” Maybe you’re in the habit of doing that already. Maybe you amend “Lord-willing” to any plan or schedule. But how regularly do you take it to heart, even if you do that? Do you always have at the forefront of your mind that your times are in God’s hands? Do you always acknowledge your weakness and God’s strength?

As we wrestle with these matters on the brink of a new year (and, Lord willing, throughout the year ahead), we do well to remember Jesus’ sacrifice for us. There was something we couldn’t do and had no power over. There was something we desperately needed, but it was completely out of our control. We couldn’t get rid of our sins. We couldn’t make our lives right with God. And yet, what was the Lord’s will? It was the Lord’s will that Jesus take our place. It was the Lord’s will that the punishment of hell that we deserved be placed on him. It was the Lord’s will that we not suffer for our sins but be with him forever in heaven. There’s the Lord’s will.

And because that was the Lord’s will, we can look back at all the times that we have not considered what God wanted, where we have arrogantly and presumptively laid plans for the future that we had next to no control over, and in Jesus find forgiveness for all those sins. Our poor consideration of God’s will, timetable, and plans need not haunt us; we don’t need to have a burdened conscience as we go into 2024 because Jesus has freed us from those sins. They are forgiven, gone, and done.

But these thoughts give us things to consider as we move forward into this new year. If this has been a place where we have struggled, if we get a bit of tunnel vision on the here and now and lose sight of eternity and God’s role in our lives, maybe now is the time to attempt to shake those bad habits, to be able to uncouple our desires and plans from the certainty that they will happen, and instead keep Jesus in the forefront of everything. To approach every day confident of his care, protection, and guidance, and with the prayer and the heart that says, “Lord, your will be done.” If our plans do not succeed despite our best efforts, that’s not necessarily a failure on our part. It is, instead, very likely that that particular thing was not God’s will, but something else probably is.

In all things, let us keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, on his manger where he humbled himself to serve us under the law, on his cross where he paid for our sins, on his empty tomb where he assured us of his victory over sin, death, and hell, and also to the skies where he will return to bring us home to be with him. He loves us and forgives all our sins so we can have the confidence and peace of his abiding care.

So, what will tomorrow bring? We can confidently and boldly say, “I don’t know.” But what we do know is that whatever happens, our loving Savior will be by our side. His will for us will be done in earthly things, all with the end goal of eternal life with him. So uncertainty in the future doesn’t need to be scary; it’s simply another opportunity to rest our hearts in Jesus’ perfect work and promises.

Lord keep us ever focused on you today, and by your will, in the year ahead. Amen.

"The Mystery Is Revealed!" (Sermon on Romans 16:25-27) | December 24, 2023

Sermon Text: Romans 16:25-27
Date: December 24, 2023
Event: The Fourth Sunday in Advent, Year B

Romans 16:25-27 (EHV)

Now to him who is able to strengthen you—

according to my gospel and the proclamation of Jesus Christ,

according to the revelation of the mystery that was veiled in silence for long ages past, 26but now has been revealed through the prophetic Scriptures and made known to all the Gentiles, in keeping with the command of the eternal God, resulting in the obedience of faith—

27to God, who alone is wise, be glory forever through Jesus Christ. Amen. 

The Mystery Is Revealed!

Do you like mysteries? Maybe a book or movie, maybe a real-life unsolved mystery is really exciting. There’s something special about the unknown—especially if later you can know it. Perhaps you’ve watched a movie with a twist ending and then watched it again but with a friend who hadn’t seen it. It’s kind of a neat feeling to know something they don’t know, to watch them learn the secrets you came in knowing.

As we arrive at the end of the Advent season, we can reflect on the mysteries of God’s revelation and how he gave us a full understanding of it. The mystery of what God would do was never a complete secret. Right from the beginning in the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve sinned, God promised a Savior. The fate of mankind’s eternal well-being was never in doubt. God promised to deal with it right from the start.

But how he would deal with it, what that would look like, and when? Well, that was all unknown to Adam and Eve and for a long time afterward. The line of the Savior was narrowed down to Noah’s family at the time of the flood, as they were the only human beings left on earth. And then, a long time later, God narrowed it down again to the descendants of Abraham.

Slowly, but surely, as time marched on, more and more details were revealed. The Savior would be descended from Judah, specifically King David’s line. The Savior would suffer in his work to atone for the world’s sins. He would have a forerunner to prepare the way before him. He would be born of a virgin. God eventually revealed that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem, in Judea, in the region of Ephrathah.

And while we could see many more details about the coming Savior throughout the Old Testament, we still needed the answer to that key question: when? When is this going to happen? There’s no question that it would happen—God promised it, so it is as good as done—but still, people longed to know when God would follow through on those promises.

In our Gospel this morning, we saw the switch flip. Once Gabriel appears to Mary, the wheels are all in motion. We will have the opportunity to celebrate this fulfillment in full tonight and tomorrow morning, but for now, let us take a birdseye view via Paul’s observations in our Second Reading. As he closes his letter to the Romans, written 50 or 60 years after Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem, he says this: Now to him who is able to strengthen you— according to my gospel and the proclamation of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery that was veiled in silence for long ages past, 26but now has been revealed through the prophetic Scriptures and made known to all the Gentiles, in keeping with the command of the eternal God, resulting in the obedience of faith— 27to God, who alone is wise, be glory forever through Jesus Christ. Amen. 

Paul is writing to people that he’s mostly never met before. Eventually, Paul will make it to Rome, but he hasn’t been there yet when he’s writing this letter. So he’s writing this tremendous outline of the Christian faith to strengthen the recipients and to show that what God had revealed to them is the same gospel God was sharing through Paul elsewhere.

Earlier, we mentioned that some of the how and nearly all of the when of the Savior’s arrival and work remained largely unknown for many, many years. That’s what Paul means when he says according to the revelation of the mystery that was veiled in silence for long ages past. At this time, the message of Jesus was relatively new. We’re only about 30 years removed from Jesus’ death and resurrection. So the fulness of what is being preached was new for Jewish believers who had been waiting for the promised Messiah, and it was certainly new for the non-Jewish people who were learning about God’s promises and their fulfillments all at the same time.

But Jesus had been clear before his departure and in his work after his ascension: this message is for everyone. Everyone had to hear what had happened; everyone needed to hear this gospel message that Paul and the others had been entrusted with.

Why? Because God commanded it because the stakes are so high. This is not like the twist ending to a book that you don’t share with a friend to let them experience it. No, this is somewhat akin to having the cure for a terminal disease. Not sharing it is unconscionable! Think of how many people could be helped—could be saved! And yet, the gospel is so much more important because this isn’t just for a subset of people with a specific disease; it addresses everyone’s need. And it’s not “merely” about preserving our physical lives from a specific disease while knowing something will bring about the end of that person’s life at some point. No, the gospel gives eternal life free from any hardship or trouble. As Gabriel assured Mary, the Savior’s kingdom will never end.

And so the message of the gospel had to go out. Mary heard that the one promised for ages was coming by God’s work through her. We’ll hear tonight the angel also gave Joseph the name for this child and explained that he was to be named Jesus because he would save his people from their sins. Jesus’ name literally means, “The Lord Saves.”

From the fall into sin onward, God has had one specific goal: that mankind not suffer in hell for their sins. And so the message about Jesus has one goal: the obedience of faith, not a work to earn forgiveness, but a faith that acknowledges what God has promised is true, which clings to those promises as sure and certain.

God strengthens you through this gospel message. When your conscience weighs you down with guilt and shame, the message of sins forgiven in Jesus unburdens your heart. When you feel weak and powerless, the gospel reminds you that God takes care of you and has done everything for you, in your place. When doubt creeps into your mind about whether or not God could ever truly love someone like you, the gospel takes you to his promises and assurances never to leave us nor forsake us, that Jesus’ suffered hell in your place and in my place, and that from God’s perspective, our sins are gone, buried in the depths of the sea and forgotten about.

And so when you feel weak and burdened, look at God’s promises and his track record. Is there any promise he has not kept? Is there any possibility that he might change his mind and abandon you? No! The mystery is revealed in Jesus. The love of God that goes beyond all our understanding is shown to us in the fact that while we were still sinners and rebellious enemies of God, Jesus died for us.

This was not something we could have guessed or come up with. God’s wisdom, shrouded in mystery to us,  has been revealed in the gospel message. We were lost on our own, but with God, who alone is wise, we are saved.

As we approach our Christmas celebrations tonight and tomorrow, remember this perspective: These celebrations are really never simply about the birth of Jesus but what Jesus would accomplish. We do not worship just a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger, but a man crushed for our sins and triumphantly raised to life. We sing with the angels about the peace that has come to earth, peace between God and sinful mankind in the life, death, and resurrection of our Savior Jesus. Thanks be to God that he has revealed this mystery to all people in his Word that his long-promised mission to save has been accomplished. Thanks be to God that he has chosen to save all people, even you and me! Amen.

"Rejoice in God’s Changes!" (Sermon on Isaiah 61:1-3, 10-11) | December 17, 2023

Sermon Text: Isaiah 61:1-3, 10-11
Date: December 17, 2023
Event: The Third Sunday in Advent, Year B

Isaiah 61:1-13, 10-11 (EHV)

The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me,

because the Lord has anointed me

to preach good news to the afflicted.

He sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,

to proclaim freedom for the captives

and release for those who are bound,

2to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor

and the day of vengeance for our God,

to comfort all who mourn,

3to provide for those who mourn in Zion,

to give them a crown of beauty instead of ashes,

the oil of joy instead of mourning,

a cloak of praise instead of a faint spirit,

so that they will be called oaks of righteousness,

a planting of the Lord to display his beauty.

10I will rejoice greatly in the Lord.

My soul will celebrate because of my God,

for he has clothed me in garments of salvation.

With a robe of righteousness he covered me,

like a bridegroom who wears a beautiful headdress like a priest,

and like a bride who adorns herself with her jewelry.

11For as the earth produces its growth,

and as a garden causes what has been sown to sprout up,

so God the Lord will cause righteousness and praise to sprout up

in the presence of all the nations.

Rejoice in God’s Changes!

Rejoicing is a tough thing to suggest this time of year. Now, on the one hand, it is a joyous time of year, isn’t it? The lights and other decorations, the food, the celebrations, the time with family and friends, the time to celebrate our Savior’s first advent and his coming second advent at the same time. Rejoice in the Lord!

But for some of those very reasons that some might rejoice, others might have reason to be downcast. Maybe this is the first (or fifteenth) holiday season without that loved one God called to himself in heaven. Maybe relationships with family are strained, and friendships seem hard to come by. Regardless of the season, news about work, your health, or a loved one’s health can make rejoicing difficult if not impossible.

But, am I not rejoicong if I feel sad and downcast? Am I ignoring my God if I feel down in the dumps? Am I sinning if I cannot muster even a masked, forced smile? After all, Paul in our Second Reading directed us to rejoice always; do I really have faith in God’s forgiveness if I am not happy?

I want to draw your attention to the service theme paragraph on p. 3 of the bulletin, especially the second paragraph. I did not write this, but it is a good summary that may direct our thoughts and hearts this morning and in the coming days: Joy is not the same thing as happiness. Happiness is an emotion. Joyfulness is a condition. Happiness comes from your circumstances. Joyfulness comes from your King entering into your heart and assuring you of his abiding love and your glorious future. Therefore, happiness is fleeting. Joyfulness is enduring.

We often equate joy or rejoicing with happiness, but they’re not the same thing. And just because I’m not happy doesn’t mean I’m not joyful and thankful. So, how can we think about these things? How can we rejoice even if we’re sad? How can we be joyful even if we are separated from those we love? How does true, God-given joy show itself?

This morning we’re going to focus on our First Reading, Isaiah’s words of prophecy. This is the fifth of the so-called “Servant Songs” in Isaiah, pieces of poetry that put words into the mouth of the coming Messiah. Isaiah is writing about 700 years before Jesus’ birth, but through God’s inspiration the message that he would proclaim is crystal clear:  The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the afflicted. He sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release for those who are bound, 2to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor and the day of vengeance for our God, to comfort all who mourn, 3to provide for those who mourn in Zion, to give them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, a cloak of praise instead of a faint spirit, so that they will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord to display his beauty.

During Isaiah’s ministry, it seemed that God’s people had little to rejoice about. The nation of Assyria, the world super-power at the time, was running roughshod over the Promised Land. The northern ten tribes would be carried off into exile by Assyria, while the southern two tribes would remain. However, even though the southern kingdom would not be exiled at this time, the Assyrians still made their lives miserable. It was only through a miraculous intervention by God that the invading army didn’t destroy the city of Jerusalem.

And yet, despite this, the Messiah is given the commission to go and deliver good (dare we say it? Joyful!) news: binding to the brokenhearted, freedom for those taken captive, and joy instead of mourning! However, at the time that Isaiah’s first audience would have heard this, it would have seemed like a pipe-dream. “Really? Will we have freedom? Rejoicing? Look around, Isaiah! Read the room! How will this happen?!”

And while Assyria would be turned away, not so many years later, the nation of Babylon would rise up, and God would use them to carry his people off into exile for their unfaithfulness to him. The nation would return home seventy years later, but never again would it see the freedom and joy they had under kings like David and Solomon. They would have an imperfect freedom under the thumbs of the Persians, the Greeks, and eventually, the Romans.

So, they were left waiting… and waiting… and waiting for this messenger of freedom to arrive. You can understand why the idea of the Messiah as a political savior had grown in popularity, can’t you? Someone to save them from the oppression of foreign governments? Someone to rescue God’s people and restore them to a position of prominence that seemed fitting for God’s chosen nation? And so when the Messiah does arrive, and he’s a little baby in a manger, or an unimpressive man preaching and teaching that ends up being executed by the very foreign government people hoped he would rescue them from, you can understand, why there wasn’t a lot of rejoicing in what God was doing here. And that is, in part, because because they could not see the whole picture.

Let’s come back to you and me and our life of rejoicing. What does that look like? Should Christians be happy all the time, smiling their way through life? I mean, we might have reason to. We know what Jesus accomplished, that the cross was a victory for him, not defeat. But in many ways, we are like those people suffering under bondage while promises of freedom drift in front of us.

We know that Jesus’ work is done, but how often do you really see the effects of it? Sure, you know it, by God’s grace you trust and believe it. You have the forgiveness of all of your sins because of Jesus’ life and death in your place. But look around you! Look inside of you! How much evidence can you see that Jesus defeated sin? I look around and see a world crumbling to decay because of the corruption of sin. I see empty places at holiday meals where loved ones have been separated from me by death. I look at myself and see a heart, mind, words, and actions that, at best, are tainted with sin and, at worst, are nothing but sin. If Jesus is victorious, why don’t I see it? If Jesus came to proclaim this message of comfort and release, why am I still so uncomfortable and bound?

My dear sister, my dear brother, be assured of this: Jesus’ work is complete; your sins are completely paid for; there is no punishment for your rebellion against God. However, like an inheritance may be inaccessible, though certain, and like a deposit may take time to grow in a financial account, what you and I have right now is just a bit, just a taste of what is to come. When Jesus brings us to heaven, we will have it all in full. No more sorrow or pain. No more slavery to sin or mourning in my heart. No more sinful nature to lead me astray. No more temptations trying to pull me in ways I should not go.

That’s not the situation right now. I don’t experience that in full today. But I will. And so will you.

And that’s what we rejoice about: we have the forgiveness of sins, and one day, we will experience it in full. The Messiah did come and do the work to set people free. Even if I can’t always see it or feel it, this is what Jesus has done for me: I will rejoice greatly in the Lord. My soul will celebrate because of my God, for he has clothed me in garments of salvation. With a robe of righteousness he covered me, like a bridegroom who wears a beautiful headdress like a priest, and like a bride who adorns herself with her jewelry.

Jesus has covered me in his forgiveness, in his righteousness. He has taken my shame away and dressed me in divine wedding clothes. But those clothes, though mine, may seem less like they are wrapped around me and more like their hanging in a closet in my room in heaven. They’re there, they’re certain, but I can’t always see it or feel it.

And so this time of year and every time of year, we rejoice in God’s changes that he has made for us, even while recognizing that we still live in this sinful, corrupted world. If your holiday joy is muted because of circumstances around you, that is ok. But as we approach the Christmas manger and as our eyes look forward to Jesus’ return, let the change that God has given you and the ultimate change that he will give in heaven lighten your heart and encourage you until that day. I will rejoice greatly in the Lord.Thanks be to God! Amen.

"Look to the Past for Strength for the Future" (Sesrmon on Psalm 85) | December 10, 2023

Sermon Text: Psalm 85
Date: December 10, 2023
Event: The Second Sunday in Advent, Year B

Psalm 85 (EHV)

You showed favor to your land, O Lord.

You restored Jacob.

2You removed the guilt of your people.

You covered all their sin.

Interlude

3You put away all your wrath.

You turned from your burning anger.

4Restore us, O God who saves us.

Put an end to your indignation with us.

5Will you be angry with us forever?

Will you extend your anger through all generations?

6Will you not turn and revive us,

so that your people may rejoice in you?

7Show us your mercy, O Lord,

and give us your salvation.

8I will hear what the true God, the Lord, will say.

He indeed speaks peace to his people, to his favored ones,

but do not let them turn to foolish ways.

9Surely his salvation is near for those who fear him,

so that glory may dwell in our land.

10Mercy and truth meet together.

Righteousness and peace kiss each other.

11Truth springs up from the earth,

and righteousness looks down from heaven.

12The Lord will indeed give good things,

and our land will yield its harvest.

13Righteousness walks in front of him.

It prepares the way for his footsteps.

Look to the Past for Strength for the Future

In our Sunday Morning Bible Class as we’ve been studying the life of Abraham, we’ve had numerous opportunities to see Abraham and those around him as examples for us. Sometimes they are positive examples—holding to your faith despite great challenges. Sometimes, the examples are negative—don’t follow this example as these people descended into sin. But as the Bible presents these people, positive things and flaws, they serve as both warnings and encouragements for us.

In Psalm 85, the sons of Korah have a similar goal: look to the past for strength for the future. And that is a wonderful Advent theme for us, because our preparation for Christmas and especially our Savior’s second coming hinges on God’s faithfulness in the past. And so, with joy, we look to the past and the future and, at the same time, find comfort in the present day.

It’s unclear when this psalm was written because most of its backward-looking is very general. We could see many different applications to God’s people from the time of the Exodus to the wandering in the wilderness to the times of trouble during the judges, to the unfaithfulness under most of the kings, to the exile by Babylon and then returning home after 70 years. Any of these could fit these verses: You showed favor to your land, O Lord. You restored Jacob. You removed the guilt of your people. You covered all their sin. You put away all your wrath. You turned from your burning anger.

Regardless of what era the psalm writer has in mind, the statements are true. God was routinely angry with his people for their sins, and yet had mercy on them and rescued them. His rescue was sometimes physical, delivering his people from the hands of their enemies, but it was always spiritual as he atoned for their sin by covering it in the blood of the promised Savior.

So, then, the psalm writer leads us to consider those truths as we consider present difficulties. Restore us, O God who saves us. Put an end to your indignation with us. Will you be angry with us forever? Will you extend your anger through all generations? Will you not turn and revive us, so that your people may rejoice in you?

Will God deliver us? Will he rescue us? Well, what did he do in the past? He rescued his people from their troubles, and despite their faithlessness and sin, he remained faithful to them. He was true to his promises to be with them and rescue and forgive.

So, as the psalm writer asks questions he also answers them: I will hear what the true God, the Lord, will say. He indeed speaks peace to his people, to his favored ones, but do not let them turn to foolish ways. Will God be angry with us forever? No, because he speaks peace to his people.

We have a great example of God’s faithfulness and speaking peace in the Gospel this morning. John the Baptist’s preparation work for the Messiah was long-promised. We heard an early promise of John’s work in our First Reading this morning from Isaiah. More than 700 years before John and Jesus were born, God assured that the coming Savior would have a voice crying out to prepare the way before him.

In John, God fulfills that promise and uses his work to get the people’s hearts ready to hear Jesus’ teaching and, more importantly, to see the meaning behind his life, death, and resurrection that would happen in the coming years. God promised; God followed through; God is faithful.

And John’s message was one focused on forgiveness. His message was repentance, a turning away from sin and trusting God’s promise to save. John was preaching a message of law to people to get them to see their sins as serious. Still, he also proclaimed the beautiful gospel truths as he was able to point out Jesus as the ultimate fulfillment of all of God’s promises—the Lamb of God who would take away the sins of the world.

You and I are blessed in ways the writers of Psalm 85 were not. We know how God kept these promises in full. We know how he sent his only begotten Son to be our Savior. We know that the angel instructed that his name should be Jesus because he would save his people from their sins. We know the torment and torture of the cross and the victory of the empty tomb. We can look at God’s faithfulness and stand in awe of his goodness to us.

All of that addresses our now and our future. We might ask similar questions as the psalm writer did. Will God be angry with us forever? Will he punish us for our sins? Our guilty consciences really wonder this, or more, they try to convince us that the answer is yes, that there will be no end to God’s anger and wrath over what we’ve done and left undone. That our destiny is inescapably hell.

But our conscience is wrong. God is greater than what we know by nature and what we feel in our hearts. Yes, we’ve sinned, yes, we’ve brought God’s wrath on our heads, and yes, we do truly deserve hell for not being the perfect people that God demands us to be. But Jesus took our place. His blood shed on the cross covers those sins, making atonement for us so that we have nothing to hide. Our sins are gone, and there is no anger at us left in God because Jesus took it all on himself. He has completely saved us.

That’s exactly what God had promised to do, and that’s exactly what he did. While that is certainly the biggest promise God has made, it’s not the only promise he’s made to us. He’s promised us things that are very important in the here and now: he will work all things in our life out for our eternal good, he will continue to pray and plead for us, he will guard our coming and going, he will never leave us nor forsake us, but will be with us always to the end of the present age. And when this age ends, he will bring us to himself in heaven because he has removed our sins and loves us.

When it doesn’t feel like those promises are being kept, go back and look at God’s track record. How did he do in the lead-up to Jesus’ first advent? Was he faithful to his promises? Was he faithful even when it might not have looked or felt like he was? Most assuredly yes. If God was faithful to this global promise to send a Savior, can he keep these relatively smaller, personal promises? He who didn’t spare his Son—how could he not give us every good thing?

Look to the past for strength for the future. God perfectly keeps his promises. We’ll see that in the coming weeks as we rejoice in John the Baptist’s work and eventually celebrate the birth of our Savior. God is trustworthy. He will keep his promises. He will not leave you alone. Lean on him, now and forever.

Come quickly, Lord Jesus! Amen.