Dear Christians, in this world we are surrounded by spiritual darkness.  It is like being in a strange place in the middle of the night.  The sky is overcast – no moon, no stars.  Other people try to tell us which way to go.  They think they know.  One says, “Come with me I’ll show you where to go.”  Another says, “No, come this way.”  None of them have a light to help guide them and we wonder how they know where they’re going?  But Look! There is a light.  Pay attention to the light! This world is spiritually dark and God’s word is the only sure light able to guide us out of the darkness to our eternal home.

People in this world want to guide us in this spiritual darkness.  The world claims to have a light.  Science tells us, “We know where humans came from! Using our own minds we have figured out humans evolved on the earth. Humanity is in control of its destiny,” but they don’t have a light.  The prevailing philosophy of the day wants us to follow our own truth.  “I can believe what I think is true for me and you can believe whatever you think is true for you and we’ll get along just fine.”  But they don’t have a light.  And many churches today will say, “We are all one big happy family, it doesn’t really matter if you believe Jesus physically rose from the dead, the important thing is that you follow Jesus’ example to love your neighbor.  That is the light we need to follow.”  But, in truth, they don’t have the light.

Do you hear these lies, these cleverly invented stories the world offers as a light in this spiritual darkness? They seem like powerful arguments.  We hear them so often in this world we may even start to believe them or try to mix them with what God says.  Sometimes we might prefer to believe the lies rather than the truth of God’s word.  But Peter said, “We did not follow cleverly invented stories.”  Why did he say that?  Was the world at that time full of clever stories trying to get Christians to doubt God’s word, just like today?  Absolutely.

Satan also wants us to follow him.  Disguised as an angel of light, he comes to us and tries to lead us back into the darkness.  Satan’s ploy from the beginning is to get people to doubt what God said.  Remember, Satan’s first words to Eve in the Garden of Eden were, “Did God really say, ‘you must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”  Satan wanted Eve to doubt what God said.  Satan also wants us to doubt what God said.  More specifically, Satan wants you to doubt what God says about Jesus, that he came in power to save you from your sins.  And yes, the first coming of Christ was powerful.  The world did not recognize his power, but it took the power of the Son of God to take your sins away.  Satan wants us to doubt this and remain in the dark.

The world and Satan want us to doubt God’s word and look away from that light.  The sinner in us wants nothing more than to follow those who would lead us into darkness.  As a result we sometimes forget about the light.  Perhaps our Bible stays on the shelf a little too long without being read.  Or we neglect the Lord’s Supper.  Maybe we question God’s promises when we see the suffering in our lives or the lives of others.  If we ignore God’s Word then we wander back into darkness.

God provides a light in that darkness.  God gave Peter the words he wanted written and preserved them also for us today.  So God, through Peter, is telling us to remember that the light of God’s Word is not just “cleverly invented stories” because he knows that we are surrounded by cleverly invented stories.  God is telling us to pay attention because he knows that sometimes we don’t pay attention to his Word.  He is telling us to trust in the powerful coming of our Lord Jesus Christ because he knows by Christ’s coming we are saved.

With his own eyes Peter saw Jesus reveal his glory to him.  As we heard in the Gospel lesson, Peter, James and John went with Jesus up a mountain and there Jesus was transfigured and became bright like the sun.  Peter saw the glory of the Lord.  In the Old Testament the Glory of the Lord is associated with God’s desire to save sinners and now the one who would carry out this desire was revealing his glory as true God.  Peter sees the light of the Gospel in visible form.  Peter heard the words of the Heavenly Father when he said, “This is my son, whom I love.” Yes, Peter knows from firsthand experience that Jesus is the Son of God and that Jesus came in power to save us.

Peter had an amazing experience on the mountain that day.  It certainly made an impression on him, but Peter doesn’t say that we have to have a mountain top experience like he did in order to be certain of our faith.  He doesn’t say, “I saw it firsthand, I was an eyewitness, all you have to do is trust me.”  He doesn’t even say, “I will pray for you so you have an experience like this too and then you’ll be sure of your faith.”  No, he says we have something even more sure, more certain, than his experience.  We have the sure word of God.

Peter exclaims, “And we have the word of the prophets made more certain.”  We can trust God’s Word.  There are two things to keep in mind when we look at this statement.  First, the word “prophets” refers not only to those who told the future, but all those who spoke God’s word.  Peter is referring to all the scriptures when he says, “the word of the prophets.”  Second, we will understand Peter’s point a little better in this translation, “And we have, as something more sure, the prophetic word.”  Peter is telling us, “Yes, I saw the glory of Jesus.  I am an eyewitness and I know what I tell you is true, but we have something that is even more sure, more certain, and that is the scriptures – the very words of God.”  The scriptures are the light that leads us through this dark place we live in, past the clever stories of this world, the lies of Satan, and the doubts of our own heart.

The Scriptures are sure and certain because they come from the true and faithful God.  Peter goes on to tell us that the scriptures didn’t come about simply because human beings decided to write something down.  He even repeats the thought, “prophecy never had its origin in the will of man.”  No, the scriptures came about because the Holy Spirit directed men to write down the words God wanted recorded.  This is true of the entire Bible, Old and New Testaments.  Peter wanted these Christians and us to know where the true and reliable light is found.  Through God’s Word we have the true and reliable light that illuminates for us the cross and the empty tomb – those sure and certain signs that God loves you, your sins have been paid for, and heaven is your home.

It is in the darkness that covered Mount Calvary on Good Friday that we see the glorious light of our salvation.  It is a light that banishes all of our sins of doubt to a place God does not look.  Our sins of forgetfulness are forgotten by God.  As for our sins of not paying attention to God and his word, God pays no attention to them.  What about our sins of following the temptations of this world instead of the sure and certain word of God? We can be sure and certain that they are forgiven because of Christ.  Now, on judgment day we will see that glorious light of Christ’s glory in the same way Peter saw it on the mountain.

Like a father sharing his wisdom with a child who is about to go out into the world, Peter instructs us concerning God’s word.  He says, “And you will do well to pay attention to it, as to a light shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the Morning Star rises in your hearts.”  Pay attention to it! As we pay attention to God’s word through Bible study, church attendance, and personal devotion and as we pay attention to the sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, the day will dawn and the Morning Star will rise in our hearts more and more.  We will recognize our salvation in the powerful coming of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and we will recognize the so-called “lights” of this world for what they are – “cleverly invented stories” and lies of Satan.

In this world there is still darkness, but God’s word dispels the darkness and shows us the love and forgiveness our Heavenly Father has for us because of Jesus who died for us.  This light is the porch light on our heavenly home welcoming us from far off, and when we see it we say, “Yes there is my home.  That is where I am going.”  Pay attention to this light.

Amen.

What are you thinking? You know, with all the internet technology we have today, you can share whatever you are thinking with people all over the world. You can create a blog, use Twitter, or share your life on Facebook! It’s all pretty amazing!

If you really want people to know what you are thinking, there are thousands of ways of doing it both on and off the internet. But what if you don’t want people to know what you are thinking? Imagine if modern science developed a device to continually scan your brain and send every thought you had to the internet for everyone to read? What would people find? Would they find a constant stream of good, wholesome thoughts or would they find sinful thoughts of which you would be ashamed? Of course God doesn’t need such a device. He already knows all your thoughts.

Today, in Matthew chapter 5, Jesus uses a few examples to make clear to us that our sinful thoughts deserve the punishment of hell just as much as our sinful actions. Be prepared for this! Jesus describes God’s Law in harsh detail. It is not intended to bring comfort. It is intended to open our eyes to the miserable condition of our human existence in the presence of God’s holy standard. For today we will look at the first two examples.

First is murder. Of course we know murder is wrong, but do you see how Jesus applies the 5th commandment even to our thoughts and attitudes? If you are angry with someone, watch out because the fires of hell are waiting for you. Jesus says, “Anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment.”

That is easy enough to understand, but difficult to accept. “Really, Jesus, my thoughts make me a murderer?” Yes, they do. So, you see the referee make a bad call during the game. “Get that ref off the field!” or something similar goes through your mind or comes out of your mouth. You are a murderer. Or you go to the grocery store and someone pulls into the parking spot you were heading for. You feel the blood pressure rise slightly as you think, “What is he doing? That was my spot.” You are a murderer. Perhaps your anger at times is expressed with words, “Oh, that was really dumb!” or something even stronger. You are a murderer.

Now you might say, “But pastor, at least the other person is still alive. My angry thoughts don’t actually kill them.” True, the consequences for that person here on earth are different, but on judgment day God will treat them the same. The consequences for you will be hell whether you are guilty of physical murder or just murder in thought. Then I ask, how have you sinned in thought or action against what Jesus says here?

Next, Jesus talks about adultery. In our world it is difficult enough to convince people that the act is wrong let alone the thought. If you tell people today that sex outside of marriage is wrong or living together before marriage is wrong, most will look at you as if you are crazy, a prude, or way behind the times.

Yet, this is clearly what Jesus teaches. He says to look at someone lustfully is a sin. We could also translate it “to look at someone with desire.” Not only does that include the whole realm of pornography, but couldn’t it also include a desiring look at a person who walks by you or even advertising that is designed to illicit that sinful desire to sell a product?

But it also includes any physical act that is the result of those thoughts. Any sex outside of marriage is going to begin with the sinful desire. Jesus is clearly condemning all of those things. And we know how serious he is about this because right after condemning these things he says that it would be better for you to be blind than for you to go to hell because of what you see.

“But pastor,” you might say, “times have changed.” Yes, times have changed. Before Jesus was crucified, people wanted to stone a woman to death who was caught in adultery. Yet, when Paul was in Corinth, living together and other sexual sins were not a problem. A few hundred years later, sex only within marriage would again be the norm. Yet, later in history times would change and those sins would again become acceptable. Throughout history opinion has changed back and forth. Do you see my point? The current ideas about sex are not new ones. Human beings are fickle. They go back and forth and people just blindly follow because its the thing to do or because they don’t stop to think about the consequences. They are not listening to the God who does not change and whose ways are always best.

To say it another way – do you really believe that human society is so enlightened now that we know better? Just look at the track record. By following the world’s ideas about what is right and wrong are we really better off? Has pain from broken relationships become less? Are children now being raised in safer, more loving, and less stressful homes? Are we really better off because people think it is OK to ignore what God says about sex and marriage? No, it is just the opposite.

Then I ask again, how have you sinned in thought or action against what Jesus says here?

Our natural reaction is to rebel against and to reject words like these, but that will not help us on judgment day. Instead, think about why Jesus says these words. As I said earlier, Jesus speaks this way to cause us pain. He intends to cut away our pride and cut away any false pretense that somehow we are good people. He does it for a good purpose. His words force us to our knees in the presence of God, to humble ourselves so that we rely on his mercy alone for our forgiveness. When we realize there is nothing good in us, then we get the point.

That is when Jesus comes to us in the rest of Scripture and invites us to turn our eyes away from ourselves and to him who is our Savior – Jesus. Jesus came to do what the law demands. He pushed back every evil thought so that even his thoughts were perfect. Can you begin to imagine what that would be like to never have an angry or lustful thought? Yet, because of Christ, that is exactly how God sees you. God has given you all of the perfect thoughts Jesus ever had. He now sees you as perfect. God also took all of your angry thoughts and your lustful thoughts and every other impure thought, word, or deed and he covered them with the blood of Christ. Every one of your sins was placed on Jesus and punished.

Through faith in Jesus, God has now made you his child. Through faith he has created in you the desire to live according to his will, the desire to serve him. Have you ever wondered how God wants you to serve him? Here it is. Take what Jesus has said and put it into practice in your life.

Don’t you know what Jesus was talking about when he said, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”? (Matt. 6:24) This is it. This is the cross. To deny your sinful flesh and the desires of the sinful flesh, to struggle daily with the sin in your life, that is the cross. There will certainly be failures, but it is not success or failure that you should focus on. It is the struggle, because if you are not struggling against sin then you are not a disciple of Jesus.

And so, as we struggle, we try to avoid anger. We try to resolve problems that might exist in our relationships. We try to respect God’s gifts of sex and marriage in our thoughts and actions. We try because Jesus has asked us to carry this cross and with that cross he drives us back into his Word for strength and forgiveness.

Keep in mind that when you feel like you are being pulled in opposite directions between the desires of your sinful flesh and the desires of your savior, then you know that you are still following Christ.

So, what are you thinking? Can your thoughts kill you? Yes, they can destroy you in hell. But Jesus Christ has already won the victory over our thoughts. No matter how many battles you lose, Christ has won the victory for you.

Amen.

Unity. What is it? Here is some human wisdom on the topic: “All for one and one for all!”- Alexandre Dumas (The Three Musketeers). “United we stand, divided we fall” – Aesop. “When spiders’ webs unite, they can tie up a lion.” – Ethiopian Proverb. “We cannot be separated in interest or divided in purpose. We stand together until the end” – Woodrow T. Wilson.

It seems that the collected wisdom of human experience tells us that unity is a good thing. Even human wisdom tells us that when people come together they can do things they wouldn’t be able to do on their own. It also makes sense to human reason that true unity does not come from a superficial cooperation. A group of people standing at the same bus stop do not have unity. In the same way, simply attending the same church does not mean we have unity. True unity comes from a fundamental agreement in beliefs and a common purpose. True unity means working together to reach a common goal because everyone has a belief that points them to that one goal.

The question for us today is: “Do we have unity here at St. John’s?” What do you think? Unity can certainly be damaged if we each focus on how we want to worship and we fail to ask, “How does God want us to worship?” or unity is hindered if our opinion on which Lord’s Prayer to use is based on each persons individual preference and no one stops to think, “Well, what would be pleasing to God?” I, too, have hurt the unity in this congregation when I recently I asked whether you would prefer one worship service or two. I asked you to think about your own personal preference. That’s not unity. What I should have asked is “What would be more beneficial for this church? What would be better for your brothers and sisters in Christ?” Forgive me and remind me in the future if I make that mistake again.

Do you see what gets in the way of our unity? When our focus turns inward toward ourselves and our own desires, we hurt our relationship with God and with one another. Any time we put our desires above God’s desires, we sin – no matter how small that desire seems to be.

But, when we focus on God and let him direct our lives, we have unity with him and with one another.

We could compare it to our choir. What would it be like if one person started to sing the notes he or she wanted to sing instead of what was written in the music? It probably wouldn’t sound good, would it? That’s why the members of the choir study the music. They put aside their individual preferences for the good of the whole. They follow the direction of the person who composed the music and of their director. The result is a beautiful sound that communicates the Gospel.

Sin in our lives causes discord in the music we make as we come together as Christians. Self-centered thoughts and actions remove the harmony and replaces it with cacophony. Sin separates us. But greater than the sin that separates us are the promises of God that unite us.

In Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians he was telling them about the promises of God. Before Paul wrote this letter, he had a change of plans in regard to Corinth. He had planned to visit them, but then could not. The Corinthians started to wonder if they could trust Paul’s promises. He now assures them that even if he had to change his plans, God never does. God always keeps his promises – in Christ. All of God’s promises are “Yes” in Christ.

God’s very first promise to fallen Adam and Eve was that he would send a deliverer to rescue them from Satan’s power. Did he? “Yes!” Now all who believe in that promised Savior are also rescued from Satan’s power.

Christ’s selfless act of sacrifice was a promise kept. As the life-blood drained from his body, the cross became the instrument with which Jesus traded his perfect life for our sin stained life. With that act all of God’s promises to you became “Yes”.

Is God’s promise true that he forgives you for the discord you have caused by your sin? Yes, in Christ you are forgiven for every sin, every offense against God and neighbor. All the disunity caused by putting ourselves first is all wiped away. Because Jesus died for you, God looks at you and sees someone who is holy, someone who has led a perfect life.

Is God’s promise true that he adopted you into his family at baptism and made you his child? Yes, in Christ you are part of the family of God and you can call Jesus your brother and God, your Father.

Is God’s promise true that he will protect you from everything that is truly evil? Is God’s promise true that he will use everything that happens to you for your good? Yes and Yes, you are his child. You are the reason he sent his Son. You are the reason he has prepared a place for you called heaven. He will keep you safe.

Is God’s promise true that you will never die? Yes, even though your body will cease to function, it will be raised back to life and you will live with God forever in a place of perfect unity.

All these promises and more are “Yes” in Christ. But how do these promises unite us? Well, what happens when you believe something is true? You act on that belief. If you believe it is safe to go out of your house, then you will go out of your house and live a normal life. But if you don’t believe it is safe to go out of your house, perhaps if you lived in Egypt right now, you would believe that you were not safe outside and so you would stay in your house.

Since we all believe that God’s promises are true, doesn’t that mean that our actions based on those beliefs will be very similar? Since we believe that God’s Word contains the precious promises of forgiveness and eternal life, we will frequently come together to hear those promises. Since we believe that God will work all things for our good and that he has prepared an eternity of blessings for us, then we will not despair when trouble comes, but turn to God for strength to bear up under it.

Do you see the connection between what we believe and what we do? If we believe the same thing, then our actions are also going to be similar. And so we have the theme for today – we are “United under God’s Promises.”

When God gave Noah the sign of the rainbow in the sky, he promised that he would never again destroy the world with a flood. Every time we see a rainbow we can be reminded that God is keeping his promise. As Christians, we don’t just have a rainbow to guaranteeing that God will keep his promises. We have the Holy Spirit. He is the guarantee that all of God’s promises are “Yes” in Christ. So that by the Holy Spirit we can say, “Amen” – It is true. I know it is true. God promised. And in that promise we have unity.

Amen.

What is your favorite color combination? Is it purple and gold or is it green and gold? If the mention of those color combinations don’t immediately bring to mind a couple of professional football teams, don’t worry, that is not necessarily a bad thing. Even if you don’t follow a particular sports team, I’m sure that you understand and perhaps have seen how being a fan of one particular team can cause some rivalry between people. It often involves a friendly teasing that says, “You and I are different. You are for that team and I am for this one, and my team is better.”

Allegiance to a particular team can create division, and usually, when we talk about sports, it is just for fun. As we look at Acts 13 today, we, unfortunately, see a division that is not just for fun, but is a very serious division. The division is based on Jesus Christ, the Light of the World. Jesus Christ still divides people today. Is he your Savior or not? It is a matter of eternal life and death and you must be on one side or the other. You cannot be in the middle or simply choose not to answer the question.

In Acts chapter 13, we hear about the Apostle Paul and his companions preaching to the Jews in Pisidion Antioch. The people who heard the message were divided. They weren’t divided about Paul. They weren’t divided between Jews or non-Jews. The were divided on Jesus Christ. And they were divided on Jesus Christ because he is the light that has dawned on those living in the land of the shadow of death. He is the light of the world.

That was exactly the point of Paul’s sermon that day. Listen to his message, “Therefore, my brothers, I want you to know that through Jesus the forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you. Through him everyone who believes is justified from everything you could not be justified from by the law of Moses.”

Some who heard that message from Paul were moved. They wanted to hear more and they told their friends. The next week many people came to the synagogue to hear Paul preach about this forgiveness in Christ, and some of the Jews were jealous. “Are these people now going to receive God’s favor because of this Jesus who died? Many of these people never followed the law of Moses. Are they now going to slip right on in and receive forgiveness without doing any work? How dare they treat God’s law so lightly.”

Perhaps those Jews thought they had worked hard to keep those rules and regulations. Perhaps they thought they had kept the law well enough to earn salvation, or at least better than the others who were there. Perhaps they thought God’s law was being set aside. In any case they didn’t understand that the purpose of God’s law was to make it painfully clear that they needed a Savior. We too need the Light of the world.

Yet, we shouldn’t look too harshly upon those Jews. We are guilty of the same offense. Do you ever get jealous? If you see someone in church who you know has not lived a very Christian life, does it bother you that they receive the very same assurance of forgiveness that you do, perhaps even stand next to you at the Lord’s Supper? Do you feel good about the things you have done and think God is also pleased by your actions? Perhaps you think you are pretty good, at least compared to some. Those things do not hold on to the forgiveness of Christ, but instead rely on the law.

When you are confronted with the Light of the world, the light exposes who you really are. You must deal with the fact that you have sin that needs to be taken away. Not only must you admit that you have sin, but you must admit that your sin is so horrendous, so hideous, so great, that it took God shedding his blood as the Passover Lamb to wash away your sin.

What will you do? It is true that the good news of forgiveness through the blood of Jesus causes division. When the Light of the world shines, you are either in that light or you are in the darkness. Those who reject the good news of forgiveness, as Paul says, “do not consider [themselves] worthy of eternal life.” They are “scoffers” who will perish, and it will be their own doing.

The only other option is to believe in Jesus as your Savior. This means that God works a miracle in you, that the Holy Spirit creates faith in Jesus who has taken away your sin. This is completely God’s work and for it he receives all glory.

This is great news! Instead of worrying if we have been good enough, we know Jesus was good enough for us. Instead of fear of punishment because we haven’t kept the law, we are relieved because Jesus was punished for us. We have been forgiven for those sideways glances at people because we thought they were not as good as us. We have been forgiven for every time we compare ourselves to God’s law and fail to see the magnitude of our sin. That is the message of Jesus, the message that causes division, the message of forgiveness.

There is an excellent response to this forgiveness. We hear in Acts that when the Gentiles heard about forgiveness “they were glad and honored the word of the Lord.” How do we honor the Word of the Lord? We honor it by wanting to hear more; just as those who heard Paul’s message and believed. Even after the service was over, they followed Paul and Barnabas around, eager to hear more about this forgiveness.

Forgiveness through the Light of the world – it is a wonderful message and yet, a very divisive message. By God’s grace and blessing we are on the side of that division that stands in the light. May we always honor the word of the Lord by continuing to hear that word of forgiveness proclaimed to us.

Amen.

Do you remember Naaman? He was the foreigner who came to Elisha the prophet to be healed of his leprosy. Elisha told Naaman he would be healed if he went to the Jordan river and washed himself seven times. Do you remember what Naaman said? He became angry and said, “I know of rivers far better than the Jordan, why couldn’t I wash in them and be cleansed.” Eventually, he did wash himself in the Jordan and was cured, but at first he couldn’t believe that the Jordan river would do him any good.

Actually, he was right. The Jordan river really wasn’t going to do him any good. The Jordan river could never cure him of leprosy except that God’s promise was attached to it. God told him through the prophet Elisha to wash in the Jordan. The power in the waters of the Jordan to wash away his leprosy came from the Word of God.

What about baptism? Here in church when we baptize a baby, I put water in the baptismal font. It’s just plain water. If you want, you can come back to the sacristy after the service and see the faucet I use to fill the font. When you look toward the front and you watch a baptism take place what you see is a baby’s head get wet. How can that little bit of water create faith in a child. How can plain water wash away sins? How can common water save a precious soul? It can’t, except that God promises that it does! God’s promise gives baptism the power to do the impossible – to change us from a wretched follower of Satan into a blessed child of God.

That miracle was performed by God on you. Do you remember it? Perhaps not, but how often do you think about your baptism and the blessings God gives through it? Do not despise the water of your baptism as Naaman despised the water of the Jordan, but instead cherish it as Christ did. Do not think of it as mere water, but recognize how Jesus gave it the power to change you.

Jesus is about 30 years old when he comes to the Jordan river to be baptized. For the first 30 years of his life he had been doing what he would continue to do until the day he died – obeying God’s law for you. He did all the things we should do but don’t. He obeyed his parents. He helped instead of hurt others. He treated marriage with respect. He cherished God’s Word. Love for God was always first in his heart.

Now Jesus was starting his public ministry. For the next three years he would gather his disciples and train them, suffer ridicule, hatred, and insincere praise from others, suffer beatings and death at the hands of sinful men, and suffer hell according to God’s will.

He begins his public ministry and his journey to the cross with this journey to the Jordan river to be baptized. He doesn’t start at the temple where you might expect the Son of God to start his ministry, but he starts at the Jordan river where repentant sinners gather to receive the assurance of forgiveness. He has no need to repent. He is sinless, yet like one of the many sinners coming to John the Baptist to be washed in the river, our Savior comes.

He comes because it is the will of God that he be baptized. He comes because he is our substitute. He comes to be one of us. I am the one who needs to be among those other sinners at the Jordan in repentance. I am the one, like John, who should be baptized by him, and yet he comes to be baptized. So he begins his ministry with this public proclamation of his intent to save the sinners that surround him, sinners like me. Through your baptism you have the benefit of his salvation.

Jesus cherished baptism. By taking this Journey to the Jordan, Jesus shows us how special this gift of God truly is. How then can we despise our baptism, or how can we not think often of the great blessings of our own baptism? Instead, every time we see this baptismal font we are reminded of our own baptism whether it was at this font or at another.

Even if you do not remember your baptism I can tell you the words that were spoken over you were “I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” Maybe it wasn’t exactly that word for word or perhaps it was even in a different language, but you were baptized into the name of the Triune God.

As we continue to look at Jesus’ baptism, we see all three persons of the Trinity are revealed to us. The God that was there at our baptism, the God who claims us as his own in baptism, was there at the baptism of Jesus.

God the Father reveals himself with a voice from heaven that said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” Would God say that about any of us if we didn’t have Christ? No. Jesus is the only one who pleased God with everything he did. That’s good to know because in baptism we receive the perfect life of Christ. In baptism we clothe ourselves with Christ, as Paul says. So, when God looks at us he sees his Son, Jesus, and he says, “with you I am well pleased.”

The Holy Spirit also revealed himself at the baptism of Jesus. He came on Jesus in the form of a dove. In the book of Acts Peter says that “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power” throughout his ministry. Here the Holy Spirit comes on him visibly at the beginning of his ministry. And he comes as a dove – a symbol of peace. Remember what the angels said at the birth of Jesus? “Peace to men.” Do you remember what Jesus said to his disciples when he saw them on the evening of his resurrection? “Peace be with you!” Jesus came to bring peace between us and God. He was working to establish that peace even as he was baptized.

Of course Jesus was there at his baptism. There was the sinless Son of God coming out of the Jordan River. Through Scripture we see the dove and we hear the voice and in faith we know that he is the second person of the Trinity. He is God. This man being baptized is also God.

Look forward three years and see this very same God-man dying on the cross for our sins. His death for our sins gives baptism its power. Paul says that at our baptism we are baptized into his death. In baptism his death and resurrection becomes ours. It is as if we died on the cross and all our sins have been punished, except that we didn’t have to suffer that punishment. Every baptism brings Good Friday and Easter Sunday to us and makes them our Good Friday and Easter Sunday. That is the power of baptism. That is why we can say that baptism brings faith, forgiveness, salvation, and the rest of God’s blessings. Because in baptism all the benefits of Christ’s work becomes ours.

At this baptismal font see your Savior. Even in baptism he becomes one of us and associates himself with our sin. Then at his crucifixion he removes our sin and fills our baptism with all the meaning and power of God’s unbroken promises.

Amen.

Very quickly, the sun comes up. The glory of the Lord rises upon her. She stands up and looks out over the now bright desert. People are coming to her from all around. No matter what direction she turns her eyes, people are walking, running, and riding toward her. Sons and daughters she never knew she had are coming to her. Not only are they coming to her, but they bring gifts: gold, incense, camels – the wealth of nations come to her. What joy and happiness is hers now!

Who is this woman on whom the glory of the Lord rises? Who is this woman to whom sons and daughters gather? We will get to that. Perhaps you already know, perhaps you will figure it out. At the end I will tell you. There are a few other things in these six verses of Isaiah we should talk about first.

What is darkness? You know, the electricity that comes into our houses is pretty reliable, but sometimes it does go out and sometimes even at night, when it is dark outside. Do you remember a time like that? You need a flashlight. Maybe you know where the flashlight is, but you have to get to the flashlight before you can turn it on. You walk carefully, trying to feel your way around so that you don’t run into something?

That is a spiritual picture of unbelief, except that the things people think will give light, the thing people reach for in the darkness is no flashlight, but only more darkness. The darkness in our world is thick. When people don’t realize the punishment that is coming because they disobey God, they are in darkness. When people don’t believe that Jesus has taken that punishment for them, they are also in darkness. Sadly, that description includes a lot of people. It includes not only those who follow Allah, Buddha, or Hinduism, but also those who trust that their own good deeds will get them to heaven and those who say they believe in God, but don’t come to hear his Word. They are still in darkness.

We were once in that darkness. We could not see our way out of the darkness, but the glory of the Lord rose upon us. The light of the Gospel came to us. You know, the better I understand what I should be the more I realize I need that Gospel. You and I are really not very good people. We are really more selfish and self-centered than we usually want to admit. But the glory of the Lord is this, that even though we deserve to live in darkness forever, he sent the light of his Son into the world. Jesus, the light of the world, was selfless to take away our selfishness. Jesus, dying for my sin and your sin, dying to make us holy, dying to make us perfect in the sight of God, that is the light that shows us how God loves us. That is the light that shows us that we have a sure and certain hope.

God saving us, that is the glory of the Lord that has risen upon you, and so Isaiah writes, “Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the LORD rises upon you. See, darkness covers the earth and thick darkness is over the peoples, but the LORD rises upon you and his glory appears over you.”

Isaiah says, “your light has come”. He calls it “your light” not because it originally came from inside of you, but because it was given to you from outside of you. It is God’s gift to you that now shines in you. The glory of the Lord shines in you and when you share the glory of Christ’s life and death for you, you attract others to the light of salvation. God tells us through Isaiah, “Nations will come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn.” For centuries now, people from all over have seen the light of the Gospel and have joined the gathering of believers.

But Isaiah was speaking about Israel and to Israel, wasn’t he? Yes, he was, but remember what God tells us in the New Testament, not all Israel is Israel, not all of the physical descendants of Abraham are a part of God’s people, but you are a child of Abraham and a part of Israel through faith.

As the light of the Gospel shines in the world, people are drawn to it – people from all nations come to hear what Jesus has done for them and become part of Israel. They are children of Abraham because they believe in God’s Savior just as he did. The doors have been opened – the gates flung wide. The Salvation that comes through the Jews is not only for the Jews, but for all nations. People from all nations come. Listen to how they come, “the wealth on the seas will be brought to you, to you the riches of the nations will come. Herds of camels will cover your land, young camels of Midian and Ephah. And all from Sheba will come, bearing gold and incense and proclaiming the praise of the LORD.”

Does that remind you of anyone – gifts of gold and incense and proclaiming the Lord’s praise? The Magi! The Magi mentioned in our Gospel for today were among the first to come from the nations, worship the Savior and bring him gifts. They were attracted to the light of the glory of the Lord – not the star they followed from the East, but the forgiveness and salvation God was about to accomplish for them in Christ.

Who else comes from the nations bearing gifts? We do. We are not Jews. Our ancestors are somewhat mixed in their nationality. We come from a variety of nations, but we all come to the light that is Christ. So Isaiah writes, “Lift up your eyes and look about you: All assemble and come to you; your sons come from afar, and your daughters are carried on the arm.” That includes us. We are the “sons come from afar” and the “daughters carried on the arm.”

We also come with gifts, perhaps not gold and incense, but we bring our wealth, our precious treasures. We bring hearts willing to serve our Savior. We bring our time devoted to him. And yes, we give back to him some of the material blessings he has given us.

At the beginning of this sermon I gave you my paraphrase of Isaiah’s words. I told you about the picture these words conjure up in my mind, about a woman who is, at first, in darkness. Who is this woman on whom the glory of the Lord rises, to whom sons and daughters gather? Simply, she is the church – the gathering of all believers throughout time.

It is through the glory of the Lord – Christ’s work of rescuing sinners – that the church is brought to life. The Gospel message of Christ dying for lost sinners is the light that shines through the church. That light draws believers from all around the world.

Since Isaiah is speaking to the church and about the church, you are the sons and daughters coming to the church and you are also the church to whom others come. You are the ones attracted by the light of glory of the Lord and you are also the one who shines with that light.

It is to you, then, that Isaiah says, “Arise, shine, for your light has come.” So arise! God has dispelled the darkness that covered you and has brought you to life in the church. And shine! Let others see the light of the Gospel in you so “nations will come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn.”

Amen.

Now in Ephesians 1, Paul expands on that wonderful thought – God blesses us. With magnificent and rich spiritual blessings, God blesses us! All of these blessings come to us through the one whose birth we just celebrated, Jesus Christ. We can not help but respond to our God with praise.

As Paul writes this letter to the Christians in Ephesus he is sitting in prison in Rome. In spite of his earthly problems, Paul talks in glowing terms about his spiritual blessings. This whole section is really one sentence in Greek. I’m convinced that the ancient Greeks could more easily follow the intricate logic of Paul’s long sentence. For us, it helps that our translation has broken it down into shorter sentences for us to understand. Let’s take a closer look at the blessings that are ours in Christ.

They come from God, don’t they. “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.” Yes, they come from God the Father and they are blessings in the “heavenly realms”.What does that mean? Well, it means that these blessings come to us in God’s rule over us, not from Satan’s. If they are in the “heavenly realms” does that mean they are of no use to us on earth? No, but it does mean that the people of this world will not see them as the blessings they truly are.

We will certainly talk more about these blessings, but notice that God gives us every spiritual blessing. There is not one blessing that God holds back. This was God’s plan from the beginning. Paul says it in two different ways: “For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will.”

Before God even created the world, he already knew what he was going to do. He chose you. Even though you and I are not even close to being holy and blameless, even though there is no reason that he should pick us over someone else, he chose us so that he could make us holy and blameless. He decided in advance that even though we were children of Satan, he would make us his children. It pleased him to do it.

How do these blessings come to us? God gives to us freely in the One he loves – in Jesus Christ. “In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace.” There it is – the blessing God planned to give us from the creation of the world – the blood of Christ. Through that blood, through Christ paying for our sins on the cross, God has redeemed us. He has repurchased us for himself from our previous masters: sin, death, and Satan. He has forgiven the debt of our sins – the debt we could never repay. He did all of this because the treasure stores of his grace are endless.

From this one blessing flows every other blessing we could think of: heaven, peace with God, protection from Satan on this earth, comfort in difficult times, joy in doing God’s will, and so on.

Not only did he give us Jesus Christ and so give us the huge wonderful package of every spiritual blessing, but he gave us these blessings “with all wisdom and understanding. And he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ,” Get it? He gave us even the understanding of this tremendous blessing. This plan that God was pleased to carry out from the beginning to send his Son to live and die in our place and rise again, this plan was not something we could have ever thought up on our own. Our sinful human minds could never have comprehended it, but God changed us. He has given us a heavenly wisdom and understanding. Now the mystery that we could not have known has been revealed to us in Christ, and Christ is revealed to us in his Word.

This understanding and wisdom makes us special. We are a part of God’s church. We are a part of the body of Christ. By revealing this mystery to others through us, God builds his church. It is a part of bringing “all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ.”

Revealing that mystery to us was part of God’s plan from the beginning. When he chose you to be his own before he created you, he also planned that the Gospel message, the truth about God’s blessings for you in Christ, would reach you, that you would read it with your eyes, that someone would speak it in your hearing. That was also God’s plan. He knew before he created the universe that he would send the Holy Spirit into your heart to hold on to God’s promises. Hearing the Word, that’s how God fulfills his plan for you – that’s how God fulfilled his plan for the Ephesians. Paul told them, “And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation.”

God also gives you a guarantee that all of this is true, that all of God’s blessings are indeed yours. “Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession.”

The very fact that you have faith, that you trust God’s promises, is the assurance that you have the Holy Spirit. In Biblical times a seal was a mark of property. It was a sign that this thing belonged to this person. The Holy Spirit working in us is God’s mark of ownership upon us. We belong to him. And if we belong to him, he will certainly not let any harm come to us. He will certainly not lose us. The Holy Spirit is also the deposit, a down payment in a sense, of all the blessings that will find their fulfillment in us on the last day.

There is one more thing, one word that has appeared three times in these verses and I have not mentioned it yet. It is the word “praise”. Praise is the natural response of the Christian to the blessings God has blessed us with. Praise is the heart of the Christian saying, “Jesus died and came back to life for me. I want to share this good news.” You know that every time we say what great things God has done, we are praising him? Praise also says, “God has made me holy and blameless in his sight. I want to do my best to live that way even in this sinful world.”

Our blessings are in the heavenly realms. Our praise takes place among those who exist in the earthly realms.

God planned all along to make you and me a part of his church by redeeming us, taking away our sins by his Son, Jesus Christ. He worked through history to make sure you heard that Gospel message and he sent his Holy Spirit to work in your heart. That is the gift of Christmas. That is the blessings that comes again with every New Year. I can’t help but respond, “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!”

Amen.

How do I get rid of this problem? I could try to ignore these feelings of shame and guilt – ignore them as much as possible. But they are still there. I could say that I am not so bad of a person. That’s true, isn’t it? I really do a lot of good things, don’t I? I’m certainly not perfect, but I think I’m doing pretty well, don’t you think?

Well, if those thoughts don’t work to appease my conscience, then maybe I can pretend that God doesn’t exist, and, if God doesn’t exist, I don’t have to worry about being punished, right?

Wrong, it is all darkness. It is all just groping around in the dark for some comfort that doesn’t exist. I can’t see the truth. All those thoughts come from the darkness of my heart. It is all that this world can come up with. On my own I can not know what God is like – what God thinks of me. My heart and mind are dark and so all I can do is make up my own ideas about God and they will always be wrong. There is no light, and so I can’t even see that with a single step into death I would fall into a chasm full of unspeakable terror.

If I stopped to think about it. If I paid attention to my conscience, I would realize that I am a sinner and I deserve God’s wrath. There really is no hope for me. Out of the darkness of the knife of “despair” comes to stab me through the heart – a knife with the words engraved on the blade, “God hates you!”

Left on my own all is darkness – a thick darkness, unyielding to any attempt to see the truth.

But that is not the end. John writes about a light that has pierced my darkness – a pure light, a light that reveals the truth, a light that is truth.

At first, I didn’t want this light. I didn’t want to see the truth, that I was a sinner, that I shouldn’t be doing what I want, but what God wants, that I couldn’t earn my own salvation, I had to let God do it for me. None of this made sense. I didn’t understand it. I couldn’t understand it. I wanted nothing to do with this light. I actually preferred the darkness.

To understand this light, let’s understand the darkness a little more clearly. To be in darkness is to not see God as he truly is. You live in darkness when you don’t look at your sin from God’s point of view. When you don’t think your sin is all that bad, then you don’t understand God’s holiness. You also live in darkness when you don’t see what God has done about your sin. You don’t understand his love.

But Jesus Christ is the light that reveals the truth. Jesus says, “Love God” and “Love your neighbor”. I haven’t done that and I see just how offensive my sin is to God when Jesus takes the punishment for my sin on the cross. But in the light that is Jesus Christ, I also see just how much God loves me when I see Jesus take my sin and guilt from me and place it on himself on the cross.

Jesus Christ is the light that has come into this dark world to reveal the truth about God. With that light comes life. At my baptism Christ lit up the darkness of my heart and I took my first spiritual breath. With every recounting of the Gospel that light comes to my senses and with every taste of bread and wine, body and blood at the Lord’s Supper, I take in the spiritual nourishment that keeps me alive.

Jesus Christ is light so that I see God clearly. He is life to me so that I live with God forever. But how does this happen? How does he reveal God to me? He is the Word.

He is more than just a simple “word” as we define it in the English language. The Greek word used by the Apostle John has much greater significance. That Greek word refers to more than a single word. It is a concept, a whole message. Christ is the message God wants to convey to you.

Jesus Christ is the means through which God tells us what he wants us to know. He communicates God’s will to us. Not only does he communicate God’s will, but he is God himself come to carry out God’s will. Isn’t that the definition of Christmas? Jesus Christ is God himself come into this world to personally deliver the message that God loves us and Jesus delivers that message by paying for our sins on the cross and earning eternal life for us. Christ is the message. He is the Word.

“And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.” That is Christmas in a nutshell. People talk about the reason for the season. They talk about being kind to other people, giving gifts, helping those who are less fortunate, and on and on. All of that is worthless if you don’t first see Christmas as something so much more profound, so much more miraculous – God taking on human flesh and blood. Consider the wonderful absurdity of it, God, through whom everything was created, became one of his own creation.

Why did he do it? If you can answer that, then you know the only reason Christmas is worth celebrating. He took on flesh and blood so that his flesh could be pierced by nails and spear. He took on flesh and blood so that his blood could flow and spill upon the ground. He took on human flesh and blood and a soul so all of him could suffer the pain of hell in my place. All of this he did so my pain would be taken away and my conscience quieted forever.

That is the light that now shines brightly in my once dark heart. That is the light that gives me life. Now when my conscience troubles me and the knife of despair tries to pierce my heart I shout back into the darkness that tries to overwhelm me, “My sin is covered by the blood of Christ.” And the darkness must draw back for Christ is my light and he has prevailed over darkness.

His light is now in me and I testify to others concerning that light. As I share the real meaning of Christmas with others, I am reflecting the light of Christ. There is a saying that goes, “All the darkness in the world can not extinguish the light of one candle.” That light of Christ shining in you infuriates Satan. With all the darkness that is in him, he cannot snuff it out.

We no longer are surrounded by darkness. Christ, our light, reveals the truth. Through the Word made flesh God reveals himself to us. We see him as he truly is, as one who loves us and made us his children in Christ.

Amen.

Today is Christ the King Sunday. “Christ the King” – just the words conjure up images out of the book of Revelation – a rider on a white horse, many crowns on his head as proof of his many victories, robes stained with the blood of fallen enemies, an iron scepter in his hand as the symbol of his authority. That is the king in all his glory and certainly a good picture for us to keep in mind.

One day everyone will see him as the victorious king, but as Christians we want to look at another picture of Christ the King. Christ the King on a white horse would be a terrifying sight for us as sinful human beings if it were not for Christ the King on the cross. We need to see him on the cross where the world makes fun of him and considers him anything but a king. Yet through the eyes of faith we see him as he truly is, a king through whom we have paradise. There on the cross the signs of his kingship are not a golden crown, fine clothes, and a scepter, but a crown of thorns, his own blood flowing down his body, and the cross upon which he paid for our sins. This is Christ our King. Now let’s consider what it means to have Christ as a our King and why it is a good thing to have Christ as our King.

It’s not so easy any more to understand what it is like to have a king. Our democratic form of government, as good as it is, has robbed us of a better understanding of this Biblical picture. Instead, the very form of our government encourages us to think that we are the ones in control and so we don’t have to answer or submit to some greater authority. That is one of Satan’s greatest lies. In fact, we each submit to some authority – either sin and Satan or God. Either way we must admit that someone else has control over us and not the other way around.

It goes against our sinful nature to submit to God as king. Maybe you’ve had thoughts like, “You know, I ask God for stuff and he doesn’t do what I ask. He he doesn’t seem to listen to what I want. He lets me suffer way too much and he expects things of me. He wants me to study his Word, come to church, he wants me to help out at church. I can’t do that I’m way too busy, doesn’t he understand that?”

Do you understand how messed up those thoughts are? Sometimes we expect our King to serve us in our own way. So instead of submitting to the forgiveness and salvation of Christ our King, perhaps we yawn when absolution is pronounced or we tire of hearing of this cross where Christ established his kingdom of grace. Really, what we are saying is that we don’t want him to be our king. We want to be king. We are just like the first criminal who said “save yourself and us.” Jesus was not a king who would follow his orders. If only Jesus had saved him from the cross, then I am sure that criminal would have believed that Jesus was a king, but Jesus was not that kind of King.

But what kind of King is Jesus? Christ does not create his kingdom in worldly power, but in weakness. He does not come to you or me and make us his subjects by force, but he gains subjects for his kingdom with a simple plea, “Believe in me!” To gain our humble and willing submission to him in his kingdom is not something he does by force. He simply shows us what he has done for us on the cross and calls us to respond to this wonderful good news. You see, for all the times that we have rebelled against God and have not submitted to the almighty God and his authority, we are the criminals, the malefactors, the evil doers who deserve to hang on the cross. We are the ones who deserve God’s eternal punishment, but Jesus took our place. That is the type of king he is. He serves us first in our greatest need and then brings us into his kingdom to serve him with willing hearts.

But the only way that we can see what he has done for us and recognize him as our King is through faith. Think about that second criminal on the cross. The second criminal saw the exact same thing that the first criminal saw – a man hanging on a cross and slowly dying. There was no evidence that this man was a king except for a crown of thorns and a sign over his head calling him the King of the Jews. Yet, the Holy Spirit worked through the gospel as it was carried out right there in front of this criminal’s eyes and produced faith, a faith that saw Jesus as he truly is, Christ the King. This criminal knew that he did not deserve anything from this mighty King. He was not so bold as to ask for a place in this kingdom, but simply asked, “remember me when you come into your kingdom.” It was a simple prayer of a dying sinner to his dying savior and the Lord answered in the most magnificent way, “I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise.”

The same is true for us. In baptism he made us subjects in his kingdom. Through faith he shows us who he is and what he has done for us. Through faith we see what the second criminal saw – Christ the King. Paradise is ours because in Christ’s kingdom we have forgiveness. With forgiveness we have rest from a guilty conscience, protection from Satan, power against the world, comfort in times of suffering. The blessings we have under this King go on for eternity. It certainly is good to have Christ as our King.

Having Christ as King means that you understand that his commands are for your good. As you follow them, you will be blessed. So, seeing his love for us on the cross, as followers of Christ and members of his kingdom we strive to obey his commands and we do that willingly.

Look at the second criminal. God called him to faith. He saw Christ as his King and he responded by speaking out for Christ, defending him against the first criminal, and with a simple prayer to his King.

If Jesus is your King it will show in what you say and do. When you hear Jesus say love your enemies, you want to help even those who try to hurt you. Or when you hear Jesus tell the woman caught in adultery, “Go and sin no more,” you know that you are forgiven and you can’t wait to leave whatever sin you are caught in and follow your King, Jesus.

I said earlier that his kingdom is not a kingdom of forced submission. This King wants your heart and if you are not willing that he have it, you don’t have to remain a part of the kingdom. You are free to leave! Being part of the kingdom means you respond to his love for you by submitting to his word and following his commands. If you are not willing to do that then you don’t have to remain in his kingdom. Just be clear that to claim to follow Christ and yet not live like it is hypocrisy. God knows the difference and you will not be part of the kingdom. If you find that you are straying from the kingdom in this way, look again to Christ, the King on the cross, and find the forgiveness he gives in his kingdom.

As for me, I want Christ as my king. He has brought me to faith and made me a part of his kingdom. He has shown me the blessings of having him as King. I will follow him. I will submit to his will for my life because my King knows what is best for me. I pray that God give me strength of faith to speak up for Christ, to defend him until my dying day. I ask you to join me.

Amen.

Multiplying minas. That’s what Jesus is talking about, isn’t it? It’s about multiplying minas and a mina is a sum of money – about $15,000. So, someone gives you a sum of money and you work with it and turn it into more money! But Jesus isn’t talking just about money, as we will see later. Just like the more familiar parable of the talents that Jesus told at another time, Jesus uses money to represent greater treasures.

I mentioned the parable of the talents where something very similar happens, but one of the differences here is that the one giving out the money is going away to be made king. In the parable there were people who did not want him to be king. They oppose him. As Jesus tells this parable he knows that his death and resurrection will come soon and he will again fully take up the power and glory he had before. In fact, the very next thing Luke records for us are the events of Palm Sunday, where the people shout, “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord.” Of course it becomes obvious later that there are people who do not want Jesus to be there king. When Pilate asks, “Shall I crucify your king?” The chief priests answer “We have no king but Caesar.” And when Pharisees see, “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews” above Jesus on the cross, they object.

As it is in the parable, so it is in real life. If you do not submit to Jesus Christ as your king, then you will be destroyed. It is that simple. Just like the nobleman who commands that his enemies be killed before his eyes, Jesus Christ will condemn every unbeliever to hell on judgment day.

Perhaps we know people who make it obvious they do not want to Christ to be their king, but what about us. While we certainly need to hear the warning not to reject Christ as King, Jesus more directly tells us, “Multiply your Mina!”

First, it is hard to escape the fact that Jesus uses money in his illustration. He is talking about money. How do you use the money God has given you for his glory?

But this is not just about money. We can use this same truth and applied it to everything that God has given us. None of it belongs to us. God has given it to us so that we can bring him glory in the way that we use it, so that on the last day we can say to God, “Look at it at what I have done with the things that you let me use for a while. Look how I have used them for your kingdom.”

But still we are not getting to the heart of the parable if we just look at material blessings. There is one gift that our King has given to every one of his subjects, to everyone in his kingdom, the church. That is the gospel. In the parable the nobleman calls 10 of his servants to himself and gives them each a mina. Often in the imagery we find in Scripture the number 10 indicates completeness or represents the whole. So, just like in the parable Christ calls all of us to himself and gives each one of us that precious gospel message, the message that God loves you so much that he decided, he chose, to punish his own Son for your sin. Through faith you now have a glorious, eternal life that you do not deserve.

What do you do with this good news? Are you like the third man in the parable who hides it, who does not put the gospel to work in his life? This third man in the parable may represent those who are not in church, or those who come to church simply because that is what they’ve always done, or because that’s what others expect them to do. Maybe they think that by coming to church every once in awhile they keep God satisfied as if there is some bare minimum that they have to do for God to be pleased with them. They hear the gospel. God gives them the mina, but they never really put it to work. The gospel just sits there all covered up in their lives and is never given the chance to multiply. That joy that comes from understanding what God has done for us never infects them, let alone anyone else. It does not spread. It does not grow.

God did not intend for you to just hold onto your faith and let it sit there. He wants you to put it to work. I get the impression that the first two men were busy and active in making the money grow that was given them. Maybe the man who earned the 10 minas purchased a building and set up a shop where he bought and sold merchandise. Perhaps the second man bought a field and with sweat and hard work turned his one mina into one plus five more.

God wants you to take this gospel message of Jesus Christ and what he has done for you, he wants you to take that message and combine it with your money and the other things that he has given you, your gifts, your abilities, your time, and add to that the sweat from good honest work so that the gospel produces fruit in your life and spreads into the lives of others.

Think about a boy who has just been given $100. He could put the money in his pocket and not use it. He might spend it on himself in some wasteful way. Or he might buy some tools that would allow him to do odd jobs and make more money. Or he might buy books that would help him learn a particular skill and earn money that way.

So how does that work with the gospel? How do you multiply the mina God has placed in you? It is really not that difficult. God is the one who does the real work. It is as simple as hearing God’s word. So, come to church on a regular basis. I found recently something that Pastor Liggett wrote to this congregation in 1982. He was concerned about church attendance and he said, ” I would hope that all of us would make our number one priority in life faithful church attendance.”

I would also add to that, Bible class. The two go together. Sunday morning worship gives you that basic message we need to hear so often, you are a sinner deserving God’s wrath, but God through Christ has rescued you. Bible class allows us to go a little deeper in certain areas and to cover a wider range of topics. The two really complement each other. Today, since it is Last Judgment Sunday, in Bible class we will look at what will happen on that last day when our Lord returns and how it will happen.

Not only as we hear the Word, but we grow as we remember our baptism, when God made us a part of his kingdom, and when we come to the Lord’s Supper to taste the Gospel as we receive our Lord’s body and blood.

Beyond even Sunday morning we multiply our mina as we read our Bible, read a devotion, and in general allow God’s word to influence the decisions in our life. Remember what I said last week. Remain in that sphere of Christ’s words and let his words be the guiding influence in your life as you interact with the world around you.

In that way the gospel will grow tremendously in your life and in the lives of others around you. Your mina a will increase fivefold or tenfold. The joy that you get from the gospel will be great in spite of the suffering you endure on this earth. You will enjoy having Jesus as your king. And you will hear him say to you “Well done, my good servant” not as if your work will get you into heaven, but that increase will be a sign of faith, because when you believe the gospel you will put it to work in your life and it will grow.

Amen.

Are you a slave? Even if you don’t think you are, you have been one in the past. Sometimes, you still act like one.

You might say, “But pastor, we live in a free country. I can do what I want. I can make my own choices. No one ‘owns’ me!” Really? If we could make our own choices, don’t you think we would do what is best for us? Don’t you think we would avoid the choices that end up hurting us?

Yet, what happens? We know that eating right and exercise are good for us, but we don’t always do what is good for us, do we? Even worse, we know that drugs, alcohol, gambling, TV, work, sleep and many other things can become an obsession that hurts us and others, but it still happens. Are you caught in one of those addictions? You know, the very word “addiction” implies that you are not in control, something else is your master.

If we thought about it, I’m sure we would realize that some of the words that come out of our mouths are not good for us and others. Yet, we still say them!

If we believe God’s Word, then we would know that everything he tells us to do is for our own good, but over and over again we ignore what he tells us is good for us.

So if we can’t even make the choices that are good for us, then what really owns us? It is sin. Sin is doing the opposite of what God wants. And if doing what God wants is always good for us, then sin is always harmful. Yet, sin was your master.

When you are watching sports and one person loses badly, you might hear someone say, “Oh, he was owned”, meaning, his opponent was in control and could do whatever he wanted. Sin owned you. Sin could do whatever it wanted with you. Over and over again it defeated you and you sinned, driving you away from God and making sin ever more firmly, your master.

But you are no longer a slave. You were set free. You didn’t earn your freedom. You didn’t break free on your own. God’s Son came to you and set you free. He did that as he lived a life for you free from sin. He did that as he took your place under the curse of sin on the cross. This is the truth that sets you free. God’s own Son, by his life, death, and resurrection set you free. If God’s Son set you free, then who can say you are still a slave? No one. If the Son sets you free, you are free indeed.

Consider what it means to no longer be mastered by sin. This means you are free not to sin. You are free to do what is right and good for you. Really, you are free to be a slave of Jesus Christ, who is by far the better, more loving master.

Hearing about Jesus Christ, how he has set you free, brings the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit creates and strengthens faith and works in you so that you can say, “No! I don’t want to sin. Jesus shed his blood for my sin. Now I want what Jesus wants.” We have strength through the gospel to resist sin, to say “No” to our old master.

When we do sin, Jesus sets us free from guilt. He sets us free from a troubled conscience. He sets us free to enjoy eternity with him. If sin is our master, we would suffer in hell, but Jesus sets us free from that fate.

We need to keep hearing this message of freedom. Continuing to hear this message is what identifies us as disciples of Jesus. When people see us listening and following what Jesus says, then they know we are his disciples, and isn’t that what Jesus says, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” “If you hold to my teaching.”

The NIV does a very good job of translating the Greek words John wrote by God’s inspiration, but if we translate the Greek more literally, instead of “If you hold to my teaching”, we would get, “If you remain in my words . . .” I mention this because I want you to notice the little word “in” and the imagery associated with that Greek word. What does it mean to remain “in” the words of Jesus?

To remain in the words of Jesus is like being in a hamster ball. You know, one of those plastic balls that you put your pet hamster in so that she can roll around on the floor. Think about it. When it is in that ball everything it sees is viewed through the plastic ball. Inside that ball, the hamster actually has more freedom to move around than when it is in its cage. When it is in that ball it is safe from the dog that so desperately wants to play with it.

Being “in” the words of Jesus is to be surrounded by his Word. You surround yourself and immerse yourself in what God says about your salvation in Jesus Christ. This means hearing and studying God’s Word so that everything you see is seen through the words of Jesus, so that everything you interact with is always done through the words of Jesus – just like the hamster in the ball does not see anything or interact with the world except through the plastic sphere it is in.

So, when you consider how much to give to the church or you consider what to do on a Sunday morning, you always make those decisions while looking through the words of Jesus – for example the words, “But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”

Or when sin comes and tempts you to follow it and serve it, you look through the sphere of God’s Word around you and you hear, “So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” and you say, “I am free. I don’t want to be a slave again to sin.”

Or, when death comes close and tries to terrify you, you are still in the protecting bubble of God’s Word. You remember the comforting words of Jesus, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.“ And you know that death with its gaping mouth and large fangs can not hurt you.

But it does not help us if we are in that ball once and then get out. Jesus tells us to “remain” in his words. You can not hear the Gospel once and think that you are covered. You can not complete Catechism class and think you have completed your study of God’s Word. No, if you don’t continue to be in the Word you will not continue to be his disciple! Therefore, you will cease to recognize the truth and you will again be a slave to sin.

When I talk to people about being in church more often, I have heard the comment, “Don’t worry about me, pastor, I still believe.” When they say, “Don’t worry about me” it is a good sign that I should worry about them. If they are not coming to church and they think somehow they are OK, then they are deceiving themselves.

And when someone stays away from church for a weekend and chooses some other pleasure over God’s Word, then sin does a happy dance. Satan considers that a victory, maybe a small one, but a victory nonetheless. There is one less gospel message that sin has to overcome in order to make you a slave again.

But there is a solution. Jesus has set you free. By his blood your sins have been forgiven. He has made you his disciple. Remain in the words of Jesus. Hold to his teaching. Being “in” the words of Jesus and knowing his salvation really does bring freedom. Freedom to do the things that will bring you blessing upon blessing.

Amen.

The license plate from the state of North Carolina makes a very a bold claim. It says, “First in flight.” Of course they are referring to the Wright brothers and the first powered and sustained flight at Kitty Hawk. Do you see some irony in that – a license plate on a car which takes pride in flying?

It may be true that the first powered, human flight took place in North Carolina, but long before Orville and Wilbur Wright were even born, the gospel was flying. God gave the gospel wings through his people, flying it to the hearts and minds of every nation, tribe, language, and people.

God tells us that the gospel has wings, but do you find that hard to believe? If you look on the Internet, you will find that one of the more popular YouTube videos proclaims, “God is dead. All Christians are weak and stupid.” As you watch the news you hear more than you ever have before about people who follow Allah, Buddha, or the gods of Hinduism. As you worship, more people act as if they have something more important to do on Sunday morning. Is the gospel really still flying today?

If it were not for John’s Revelation, we might not be able to answer that question very well. However, the fact remains that God’s Word in Revelation gives us great comfort and great encouragement in a world which desires to see the flight of the gospel grounded forever. Today, the Holy Spirit says to his people, The Gospel Is Flying: Through God’s People and To All People

It wasn’t always possible for a huge piece of metal to fly through the air. In order to fly, the Wright brothers had to overcome challenges. Yet, their challenges to flight are nothing when compared to the challenges facing the flight of the gospel. In three of the four visions leading up to our verses for today, the Apostle John tells us about the enemies of the gospel as they appeared in his vision. The first enemy is Satan pictured as “an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on his heads.” With him are two other horrible beasts – one representing Satan’s use of secular government to harm the church and the second, Satan’s use of false teachers to harm the church.

We could say that John had a nightmare in which the church would be attacked by dangerous enemies. John saw the saints dying and the church in a terrible struggle. Perhaps he felt much like the prophet Daniel. It was Daniel who laid in bed for days after hearing similar news about what the Jews would face. But what about the people who would actually live through that nightmare?

Well, we are the ones living John’s nightmare. In our own synod, you can see the results of Satan’s fight against the flight of the gospel. Leaders in our synod have had to say to missionaries, “You are coming home. We cannot support you financially in your mission of telling people about Jesus.” The president of our Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary has had to tell men on call day, “We know you are ready and willing to serve, but you might not receive a call to serve as a pastor.” WELS President Mark Schroeder has released a statement saying, “WELS membership statistics have been released, and once again they show slight declines.”

Yet, Jesus’ promise about the future is this: “Then I saw another angel flying in midair, and he had the eternal gospel to proclaim to those who live on earth – to every nation, tribe, language and people.” As we read this verse there are a few things that we must consider.

First of all, what does John mean when he uses the word “gospel?” John is specifically talking about the good news of salvation – the same good news he proclaims throughout his book. Take this passage for example, “You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased men for God from every tribe and language and people and nation.” So God says about us in the gospel, “I have written your name in the book of life. I wrote your name in the book with the ink of my Son’s blood. Believe it. You’re mine.” This is the gospel the angel had.

But who is the angel in the verse? Lutherans have often been reminded of Martin Luther when they read this verse. But the angel in this prophecy is more than just Martin Luther. God uses all his people to give the gospel wings. The gospel flies when a teacher says to her class, “Jesus is risen for you and for me. Look, his body is not in the grave.” The gospel flies when a pastor in New York City baptizes a new believer saying “I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”

In fact, the gospel flies as every single WELS man, woman, and child witnesses in their lives to the world. There are hundreds of thousands of us scattered all over the world flying with the gospel. So the gospel flies, as Tim studies the Bible with John in New York, in Montana as Matt prays with Sara, in Japan as a missionary explains the gospel to Helen, in Wisconsin as Jane tells her friend that death for a Christian means eternal life. So together, the gospel flies through God’s people.

But let’s get personal for a second. Is the gospel flying through you? Don’t think of anyone else right now. Simply answer the question for yourself, is the gospel flying through you? To find out, take a little quiz: #1) Do you look for opportunities to tell others about the love of Jesus? #2) In your personal budget, what receives the larger share: your offerings or your entertainment? #3) When is the last time you brought someone new with you to church? #4) Have you done everything in your power to share the gospel? Be honest with yourself and realize that if the gospel is not flying to others in your life, you have sinned against God.

Yet, see the trouble for what is it. We remain the redeemed of God. Our eternity remains secure. Our names are written in the book of life. Your sins are forgiven. Even more, God has made sure that angel after angel after angel has flown into your life to make sure you remain in Jesus. Parents, teachers, pastors, and even children are God’s messengers to us, proclaiming “Jesus has forgiven all your sins. Yes, he forgives you for the sins of timidity, fear, and selfishness.” He sends to you angels to personally speak the words of the gospel, just like he did for the shepherds when Jesus was born.

Now that you have the gospel, God makes you an angel so that, through you, the gospel may fly to many others. John wrote, “Then I saw another angel flying in midair, and he had the eternal gospel to proclaim to those who live on the earth – to every nation, tribe, language, and people.” The gospel is not sleeping, walking, strolling, or sprinting. It is moving at the speed of sound to the hearts of the world. But not only that, it is flying in midair so that many people could see him. In other words so that he could proclaim the gospel “to every nation, tribe, language, and people.”

But you are only one person and you know only a few people. You probably speak only one language, maybe two. How can you possibly fly to every nation, tribe, language, and people? It’s true that you are just one person, but you join with many others who want the gospel to fly just like you do. That is why you are a member of our church. That is why your church is a member of the Wisconsin Synod. We want all people to hear the gospel.

Together in the Wisconsin Synod, the gospel really is flying to every nation, tribe, language, and people. Sure Foundation Lutheran Church from our WELS Connection video is just one example of that. Sure Foundation is truly a joint mission. Through Sure Foundation, you are reaching the most diverse neighborhood in the world. On any given Sunday, up to 15 different nations may be represented in worship. Together, in the Wisconsin Synod, the gospel is flying to all people.

There were many nay-sayers ahead of the Wright brothers’ first flight in North Carolina. In the same way we face Satan and his primary opposition to the flight of the gospel. He has not yet been permanently damned and locked away in hell. Even so, the gospel is still true and will prevail. It is our gospel – and ours to proclaim. Let’s take our gospel so graciously given to us and fly with it to the ends of the earth!

Amen.

Imagine seven football fields arranged end to end. It’s pretty close to half a mile. Then imagine that whole length turned up on end and having that whole distance of seven football fields consist of rock over your head and your only path to the surface has just been blocked by a cave in. You have no way out – no way to escape. That is what the thirty-three miners in Chile experienced on August 5th when a section of the copper mine they worked in collapsed. Very suddenly they were faced with the very high probability that they would die in that cave.

Think about this. There was nothing they could do to save themselves. They could not dig themselves out. Beyond the limited supply found in the cave, they could not provide themselves with food, water, or even air. If it were not for the work of people on the surface they would have no hope.

But they had reason to hope. Many people on the surface were working to rescue them – to keep them from despair and bring them out of that pit. It is an amazing story of hope in the face of death and of a dramatic rescue.

Then, if you watched those miners as they were brought to the surface, you saw them kiss their family and hug everyone they could – you saw their thankfulness, the appreciation they had simply to be alive. They had a great reason to be thankful.

When you look around you in this world, you will often find that God gives beautiful illustrations of the things he tells us about in his Word. This week in the news and in the Gospel for today we have two striking pictures of what God has done for us and the great reason we have to be thankful.

The ten lepers that Jesus meets on the border between Samaria and Galilee were in an even more hopeless situation. They had leprosy. Leprosy is a disease that causes the skin to become very disfigured. It damages nerve endings, causing blindness and causing fingers or whole limbs to become numb and unusable. The disease continues to progress, making it more and more difficult to do even the simple things necessary for life.

These ten lepers had no hope of ever being cured. Even worse than that, they were excluded from society. They were forced to live by themselves. “Unclean, unclean” they were supposed to yell out when someone came close. Why? Because God commanded it.

Leprosy was to be a picture for the Israelites of sin and the horrible effects of sin. As the Israelites sent lepers out of the community they were acting out a living parable. It was God’s reminder to them that sin separates us from God. It drives us out of fellowship with God.

Do you see the hopelessness of their life? They suffered from this horrible disease and were cut off from the rest of humanity. They had no way to cure themselves, no way to get themselves out of this miserable existence.

No hope, that is, until Jesus found them. “Jesus, Master, have pity on us!” they called out to him. Jesus simply responded with, “Go, show yourselves to the priests.” The priest was the one who could verify that their leprosy was gone and allow them back into a normal life in the community.

On their way to the priest all ten were miraculously healed. What a hopeless situation these men had been in! What a dramatic rescue it must have been as they realized their skin was normal again while walking on the road. What a great reason to be thankful.

But only one came back to thank Jesus – only one out of ten! And that one was a Samaritan – someone hated by the Jews. He was the only one to say thank you. Doesn’t that disturb you? How ungrateful those other nine were, right? Yet, are we even 1/10th as thankful as we should be for all that he has done for us. Do we give thanks to God for even one out of every 10 things he has blessed us with? I am ashamed to say that I probably do not.

Jesus has one last thing to say to this one man at his feet, “Rise and go; your faith has made you well.” The thankfulness of this former leper is a fruit of faith worked by God. Through faith as the man obeyed Jesus and started to go to the priest, Jesus healed his physical disease. Also through faith, this man was healed of his sin. Through faith he would receive the blessings of Christ’s death on the cross. He would have that fellowship with God again because the sin that causes separation from God was gone.

Our rescue from sin is even greater and even more dramatic than the healing of leprosy or the rescue of 33 men from under half a mile of rock.

We could not realize the magnitude of our problem because we were steeped in sin. Sin was all around us. We wouldn’t have a clue what it would be like to be without sin. It is like being born with leprosy and living your whole life only seeing other people with leprosy. Or it is like being born in that cave with the 33 miners, living your whole life there and never knowing what it is like to see the light of the sun!

Even worse we were destined for hell – a separation from all of God’s blessings. Hell is not a place where the unbeliever gets to do whatever they want. No, hell is an existence where the pain is horrible and the loneliness bitter – a place where everyone cares only about themselves and no one cares about you. A place you want to escape, but know that you can not. There is no one to heal you, no one to rescue you, no one to give you even the smallest hope.

In the leper colony of your sin, you wouldn’t know that your life could be any different unless someone told you and someone did. You heard about the one who healed you, the one who drilled through the rock to save you. And there was hope.

Not a hope that you might be saved, but a certain hope that it was already done. There on the cross as Jesus spread his arms and suffered hell for you, your sins were forgiven – you thanklessness and your selfishness, your pride and rebellion. The cure was made that would recreate you without sin, the capsule that would bring you to the surface.

Through baptism God brought you who were spiritually dead back to life. He healed your soul and started your spiritual heart pumping again. In baptism God brought you out of the cave and to the surface so that you could see the light of his Son.

You and I were without help. There was no way we could rescue ourselves. It could only be God and he did it. He came to us, gave us hope, and saved us.

As the 33 miners in Chile were brought to the surface, many of them were wearing t-shirts with the words of Psalm 95:4 on the back, “In his hand are the depths of the earth, and the mountain peaks belong to him.” They recognized that the world belongs to God and it was only by God’s grace that the rescue workers were able to reach them. Even more so for us – only by God’s grace did he rescue us from our hopeless situation. We have great reason to be thankful.

Amen.

Which of them had the greatest wealth: the rich man or Lazarus? It is obvious that the rich man was enjoying his money. Lazarus, on the other hand, didn’t have money and valued the promises of God found in God’s Word. What about you? What do you value more: money or God’s Word? If you put them on a balance scale which would have the greater value. I think we would all want to say, “God’s Word” But would God’s Word win by a narrow margin or a large?

If you had a check made out to you for a million dollars and it said on the check “not valid after 90 days” would you wait until the 91st day to cash it? If you had a coupon for a free meal at your favorite restaurant would you hold on to the coupon until it expired? If someone was willing to give you a new car and all you had to do was process the paperwork to get the title in your own name, wouldn’t you do it quickly?

There is another piece of paper worth far more than any lottery ticket, and we all have it very close to us. In fact if you look in front of you, there’s a book called the Holy Bible. This book has incredible value for us right now, but after we die it will not help us. We have a portion of that book printed in today’s bulletin.

As Jesus tells us about the rich man and Lazarus, he wants us to know that now is the time to hear God’s word. The question for us as we hear Jesus tell this story is not whether we are the rich man or Lazarus, but the question is, “When you act like that rich man?” All of us here, because we trust in Jesus as our Savior, are like Lazarus, and we will stand next Abraham one day. But because we’re still sinful human beings we sometimes act like that rich man and ignore God’s word.

First let’s look at the rich man. Verse 19 says, “there was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day.” Jesus starts with the rich man. He is a nameless, faceless, generic kind of rich man who enjoys his wealth. He “lives in luxury every day.” It becomes more obvious later that this rich man does not place much value on God’s word. Here we see him focused on his wealth and showing more interest in the things which his money can buy. Perhaps by not having a name it makes it easier for us to identify a little bit of this rich man in each and every one of us.

After he dies it becomes obvious that this rich man had no use for God and his word. Even in hell when he wants help, he does not ask God, but instead he trusts in his physical relationship to Abraham. He trusts that Abraham can help him because he is a physical descendant of Abraham. He does not go to God, and he does not rely on God’s promises. He says, “Father Abraham, have pity on me.” When he finds out that no one can help him in his torment, he shows concern for his brothers. Still he doesn’t understand why he is where he is. He thinks that his brothers need to see someone rise from the dead. He still does not value God’s word. He didn’t think it was good enough for him to read and study it while he lived on the earth, and he doesn’t think that is good enough for his brothers. But Abraham makes it clear that God’s word, Moses and the Prophets – and we could also add the apostles of the New Testament – is what God has given us to hear and to study while on this earth. If we don’t think that’s good enough, if we think our time is better spent in joining the things money can buy or we are looking for other signs instead of reading his word, then we will end up in the torment of hell with this rich man.

Now let’s talk about Lazarus. In contrast to the nameless rich man, Jesus mentions the name of Lazarus. That is a wonderful comfort for each and every one believer because as children of God, God knows our name too. Lazarus however, suffered greatly while on this earth. Verses 20 and 21 tell us he was, “covered with sores and longing to eat what fell from the rich man’s table. Even the dogs came and licked his soars.” When Lazarus died, there is no mention of the burial. Perhaps there was no burial. Perhaps if there was one, it was so insignificant that it wasn’t even worth mentioning. But, as a child of God, Lazarus received a personal escort by God’s angels directly to Abraham’s side in heaven. Because Lazarus is in heaven, we can be sure that he heard God’s Word, he valued God’s promises and he trusted in God as his Savior.

Perhaps you have had the experience or you know of someone who has had something painful in their life which has brought them closer to God and his Word. God will use hardships in this life to draw us back into studying his Word and trusting in His promises. We can be sure that whatever Lazarus suffered while on earth, the agony of that rich man in hell was far worse. God sometimes allows us to suffer on this earth so that we can avoid the pain of hell. Perhaps we should even pray, “Lord, do whatever it takes so that I am in heaven with you when I die, even if that means I must suffer as Lazarus did.” That it’s not an easy prayer to pray is it?

The rich man had no trust in God’s word and went to hell. He would not have prayed that prayer, because it was his wealth and his connection to Abraham that he trusted. Let us learn from the rich man and understand these words that Jesus puts into the mouth of Abraham, “If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.” The Bible is the only place we can learn about our salvation. God does not promise to come to us in dreams, or through miracles, but only through the pages of Scripture. When we die, it is too late. Our time here on earth is the time that we have to hear God’s word and to share God’s word with others. That’s why evangelism is so important. Now is the time to hear God’s word.

And what is it that we hear in God’s word? We hear that we are guilty of neglect God’s word and sometimes considering the things of this world as more worthy of our time. We also hear that Jesus Christ lived a perfect life for us and died on the cross and paid for all those sins. We hear that God knows our names just as he knew Lazarus. We hear that God did everything needed to get us into heaven with him. We hear that when we die the angels will escort us to Abraham side.

As Christians, now is the time to spend time with our Savior. We want to hear what he has to say to us. Now is the time to spend time with God’s word. In heaven we will not hear the words, “You know, you really spent too much time reading God’s word.” God has rescued us from hell. He wants to spend time with us both on this earth and in eternity. He sent his son to prove it.

Amen.

As a pastor, sometimes I hear about some of the concerns of other pastors. I have heard that there have been times that a member of the congregation will suggest to their pastor that he shouldn’t preach so much about money. I have heard of one case where a member actually told his pastor outright not to preach about money.

I have never heard anything like that here at Saint John’s. That is to your credit. You understand that if I did not talk about money and then I would not faithfully be proclaiming God’s word. Do you realize how often Jesus talks about money, whether directly or indirectly. Right before the parable for today, Luke records the parable of the prodigal son who sets a poor example by wasting his wealth. Two weeks ago we talked about the cost of discipleship. It was clear from what Jesus said that we must give up even our money to follow him. Today Jesus again talks very directly about money and the way we use our money.

Think about the parable Jesus tells about this shrewd manager. What did you think about Jesus holding up this dishonest man as an example for us? Did that seem kind of strange? Jesus tells us about a man who had the job of taking care of the possessions of a rich man. In some way this manager was wasting his master’s possessions. We aren’t told whether it was through dishonesty or an inability to do the job. It doesn’t matter. The man was going to lose his job. His day of judgment was coming.

He scrambles to figure out how old he is going to survive without this job. They didn’t have unemployment benefits in those days and so this man has to figure out for himself what he will do. Suddenly, a thought comes to him. It is a way that he can use the resources that are available to him now to provide for himself in the future. He goes quickly to each person who owes something to his master and he reduces the amount they owe. What is he doing? He is using his master’s money to gain friends for himself, friends that will help him out when he is in need. He is planning for his retirement, isn’t he? Even though it might be dishonest, it is a very creative solution to his problem. Certainly his master is not happy with the situation, but he does recognize this man’s ingenuity, his cleverness.

Jesus wants us to practice that same ingenuity, that same cleverness. Now, he is not telling us to be dishonest. But this man use the resources that were available to him and figured out a way to attain his goal. God has given us tremendous blessings. Use them to ensure that you have for yourself an eternal dwelling. You are in many ways just like that manager. One day God will ask for an accounting of your life. What are you going to do? I hope you will want to make friends with someone who can give you a place to stay after that day of judgment. I hope you are planning for your eternal retirement. But with whom will you want to stay? There are really only two choices: God or Satan. If you want to stay with Satan, that is really no problem. Use your money to serve yourself and a dwelling with Satan is all yours.

If you want a dwelling with the almighty God in heaven, then let’s talk about that. Jesus tells us, “use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.” Jesus isn’t telling us that we can buy our way into heaven. An eternal dwelling with God in heaven comes to us only through faith in Jesus Christ as our savior from sin. But how do we use our money to ensure that we have an eternal dwelling?

This is the way it works. If heaven is your goal, if an eternal dwelling with God is what you desire, then you will recognize that the goal of heaven is more important than anything else on this earth, and you will you use your money and your possessions to make sure that you are holding on to the faith through which the blessing of eternal life comes. And how do you keep that faith growing, the faith that is your connection to eternal life? You listen to God’s Word. That’s the key, isn’t it? Jesus said it over and over again, that the only thing we really need is to hear the message of salvation thru God’s Word and the sacraments. Just like the shrewd manager, use the resources that are available to you to attain that goal of hearing God’s Word.

I have said this before, God doesn’t need your money. He really doesn’t. The whole world is his to do with what he wants. He really doesn’t even need this church to exist. But if this church ceased to exist, who suffers? Who really does need this church to exist? We do. If we don’t support this church with our money, then the church closes and we have just demonstrated to God that we care very little about him and his Word. We lose an opportunity to hear God’s Word and may even lose eternal life. If we don’t support the school with our money then that our children lose a very important opportunity to hear God’s Word and future generations will suffer. If we fail to take this parable to heart and we don’t use all are money to gain friends so that we are welcomed into eternal dwellings, as Jesus says, then we only hurt ourselves and our children and our grandchildren.

But what happens when our actions show that we understand what is really important? When faith shows itself in the way we handle our money and the way we cherish the precious gospel message, then God says, “you have been trustworthy in dealing with worldly riches, I can trust you with true riches.” You have shown that you can be trusted with a little and so God will bless you with much. You have been faithful with the property God has loaned to you in so he will give you property of your own, to keep forever in eternity. You see, the riches of heaven far out value and far of last the money you get to manage for a little while on this earth and those riches are the ones we really want. Those riches are yours through faith in Christ.

How do I know? I know because the Bible talks about money. One of the ways the Bible describes our salvation is through the very appropriate picture of the debits and credits. Think about every one of your sins as a check written against an already well overdrawn bank account. That number of entries in the debit column of your account with God is beyond your ability to count. Your debt to God is far beyond your ability to pay. Then the Son of God came to this earth and not once did he sin. His account was always in the black, never in the red. When Jesus Christ went to the cross and suffered as punishment, God was not simply forgiving the debt you owed him, but Jesus Christ was writing the check that would transfer his credit to you, making up for your debt to God, making your account with God in the positive and not the negative. “God will credit righteousness—for us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead.” Paul explains to the Romans.

The righteousness of Christ has been credited to your account. You have wealth that could only be purchased for you by the blood of the son of God. The money you have in this world is like monopoly play money in comparison. Use that money to show how you cherish the real wealth he gives you. I think you would agree when I say that planning for your retirement is good, but planning for your eternity is far better.

Amen.

So, you want to follow Jesus? You want to be his disciple? Good! Do you know what that means? After all, if you are going to do something as life changing is following Jesus, becoming his disciple, it would be good to know what is involved. Sort of like buying a used car. You want to know everything you can about the car both good and bad, before you spend money on that car. The same with following Jesus. In fact, he wants you to know the big picture, both good and bad, before you make such a large commitment. What do you think? Shouldn’t you consider the cost of following Jesus?

For a time Jesus was a very popular guy. As he walked around performing miracles and teaching the people, large crowds followed him. Maybe some in the crowd thought it was fun to see the miracles. It was entertainment. Perhaps some remember him feeding the 5000 and thought Jesus would provide an easy life with free food and they would have to work as hard. Yet, there were some who understood. They were following Jesus because he had the words of eternal life. Why do you follow Jesus?

For a time Jesus was a very popular guy. As he walked around performing miracles and teaching the people, large crowds followed him. Maybe some in the crowd thought it was fun to see the miracles. It was entertainment. Perhaps some remember him feeding the 5000 and thought Jesus would provide an easy life with free food and they would have to work as hard. Yet, there were some who understood. They were following Jesus because he had the words of eternal life. Why do you follow Jesus?

Jesus saw those large crowds following him. He turned and told them what it really means to follow Jesus. He doesn’t hide the undesirable parts in order to get the sale. He is not like Satan who tries to convince you how wonderful a sin would be, yet neglects to tell you about hell – the consequences of sin. No, Jesus is being honest, up front, hiding nothing.

What is the cost? In a word, “everything”. Following Jesus requires a total commitment to him. You cannot partly follow Jesus and partly follow your own ideas or the world. It is all or nothing.

Jesus groups the things that we must give up into three categories: relationships, the easy life, and earthly possessions. The first is the most difficult. He tells us to hate father, mother, brothers, sisters, even self. That doesn’t sound like Jesus does it? Doesn’t Jesus want us to love others? Yes, but think about what Jesus is doing. He is emphasizing the vast difference there should be between your love for him and your love for others. He is telling you that your love for him is exclusive. It is a one-of-a-kind love that is reserved for him and him alone.

So, when someone tries to get in the way of your relationship with your savior, it becomes obvious that your love for Jesus is more important. If a loved one tries to tell you “Oh, let’s skip church today”, you recognize that this person who is close to you is, at that point, leading you away from Christ instead of toward Christ.

The second thing you must give up to be a disciple is a life free from the burden of the cross. In other words you must give up a life where you are at peace with the world. Jesus says, ” anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.” If you were looking for a life free from pain, Jesus says it’s not going to happen. There will be problems. There will be suffering. You cannot be a disciple of Jesus and see how he suffered and expect to not to share in that suffering.

Third, Jesus says you must give up everything you claim as your own. He says, “anyone who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple.” Money, wealth, personal possessions, all those things that are really only on loan from God anyway, Jesus says give them up. Don’t let them get in the way of your love for Christ. Instead, shouldn’t we be using our money in God pleasing ways that eventually help draw us and others to Christ?

When you consider the cost of being a disciple, recognize that this is not a sprint, but a marathon. Being a disciple of Jesus requires a lifetime of giving up stuff. With two short parables, one about a man building a tower and the other about a king going to war, Jesus tells us to consider the whole cost. Will you be able to finish your life in this world as a disciple of Christ? Will you be able to continue giving up the things of this world until you die?

That is one reason why our giving up of this world must be complete and total. If we are still holding onto a little piece, what will happen when times get difficult? We will want to give up on Christ and go back to the world. Would it be better not to even start? If you are going to suffer in hell for all eternity, why not enjoy your peace with this world while you can?

Really, what is Jesus telling us here? Giving up stuff is not a way to pay for our sin or earn heaven for ourselves. Jesus is telling us to give up these things because these are the things that very often get in the way of our relationship with him and in the end of destroy us. The relationships, the life at peace with the world, the material possessions—do not put your trust in them. Give them up. Let them go. Jesus tells you this so you will enjoy eternal life with him.

If you were in an airplane, with the engines on fire and a parachute on your back, and you knew the airplane was going to crash, what would you do? Does it make any sense to jump out of the airplane and still try to hold onto part of the airplane? The airplane is going to crash and if you hold on to any part of it you will go with it. The only way you will live is to let go of the airplane and trust the parachute. Consider that this whole world is going down. It will crash and burn. If you try to hold on to part of this world, you will crash and burn with it. Let go of those things and put all of your trust in Jesus.

God never allows suffering in the lives of his disciples without a purpose. Whatever we suffer, whatever we give up, whatever we hate in this world, God uses it to draw us even closer to our savior. He does this because he wants us to enjoy the blessings for which he gave up so much to give us. No matter what Jesus asks us to give up, he has given up more. He gave up heaven to come to earth. He gave up his life to pay for ours.

At first glance we look at what Jesus says to us and we think, “How horrible. You expect too much!” But is Jesus trying to be mean? No, he is trying to help us. He wants you to keep the eternal life that he began in you at your baptism. In the waters of baptism he washed away all your sin. You are perfect and holy in the sight of God. One day you will enter the mansions of heaven. Never again will you have to give up things, but you will enjoy a all of god’s blessings to the full. And you will have such a future in front of you that all gave up in the past will be insignificant in comparison.

There is a cost to being a disciple of Jesus. That cost is giving up the things of this world. From the viewpoint of the world that cost is tremendous. It is everything. But really, it is not a cost at all, but a blessing. Jesus is simply telling us to get rid of those things that would get in the way of following him, that would prevent us from being his disciple. He wants all our attention, all our focus, all our energy to be directed toward our relationship with him, because through him we have blessings far greater than anything we give up in this world.

Amen.

It is the day of the wedding and you are a good friend of the groom. You go to the wedding. You get there early for the reception. You find a place to sit very close to the bride and groom. You are proud to be connected to this fine couple who just got married. You settle into your seat and get ready for what is sure to be a wonderful celebration. You see the groom come in the room and you wave and smile as he comes toward you. When he gets to where you are he says, “I was going to save that seat for someone else.” How embarrassing! Apparently you are not as important a friend as you thought you were.

Today, Jesus warns us against pride – not the pride you have in knowing you have used your gifts to God’s glory, not the pride you have when someone else is praised for a job well done, but Jesus warns against the pride of thinking more highly of ourselves than we should.

Have you ever seen this kind of pride? It’s pretty ugly, isn’t it! There is a saying that, “Pride is the only disease that makes everyone sick but the one who has it.”

One of the ways this pride shows itself is when people draw attention to themselves. You know the type – somehow conversations with them tend to focus on them more than on others. They want to tell you what they have done or who they know and they don’t seem very interested in your life.

But pride is not just saying, “Look how good I am.” Pride can also be, “Look how bad I have it.” When people are too eager to tell you all about their problems and are unwilling to listen, aren’t they still saying, “Look at me. I deserve your attention.”

Just as Jesus pointed out, pride causes us to take the better seat, to take the spotlight, to draw attention to ourselves.

But pride also shows itself in the way we treat others, as our lesson from the letter of James pointed out. Pride will cause us to treat someone well if we think we can get something back from them. Are they rich, have influence, or make us feel good? Then we want them around because that relationship could be a benefit for us. This is offensive to God because we are using our own standards to judge others instead of God’s standards. I am convinced that we do this more than we realize. This kind of pride leads to all kinds of prejudice, bigotry, and discrimination against those who don’t meet our own criteria.

It gets worse. Pride causes all sorts of other problems: Fights and arguments – “I’m right and you are wrong.” Jealousy when I think I deserve something more than the other person. Frustration and anger when things don’t go my way. Refusing to repent when I am wrong. Refusing to forgive when someone says they are sorry. Pride destroys relationships. It tears us apart from other people.

Pride also tears us from God. Because of pride we don’t want to submit to God’s Word. We don’t want to learn more. We think we know enough. We think we know better. Finally, any sin is a sin of pride. Every sin says to God, “I know better. I can decide for myself what is right and wrong.” Every sin is a rejection of God’s authority and a raising up of self. God will not tolerate it. All those who are proud God will send away. They will not enjoy his blessings. So we can say that in the end pride destroys those who are proud.

You have heard the saying, “Pride goes before the fall.” It is really a summary of a verse from Proverbs 16 – “Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.” You can probably think of examples of people who caused problems for themselves because of their pride. It has happened over and over again. Finally, pride will cause an eternal fall into punishment.

As we have already mentioned, pride is a very ugly thing when we see it in others. Pride causes considerable damage to our relationships when it comes into our lives. Eventually pride will destroy us in hell.

That is why Jesus warns us against pride with this parable about the man who thought he deserved the better seat and us through the Apostle Paul, “Let him who boasts boast in the Lord.” And in Proverbs, “Do not be wise in your own eyes; fear the LORD and shun evil.” Over and over again the Bible warns us to recognize our real status before God as sinners.

You might think that our own pride would be thwarted when we realize that we are only one in almost seven billion people in this world and that each one of us has only a very small amount of the wealth in this world. In the large picture of the world we are not as important as we think we are. But we need to hear more than that.

We need to hear about our status before God. Take a look at all the people who have, in their pride, rejected God – Cain, the people destroyed in the flood, Sodom and Gomorrah, Pharaoh, the people of Canaan conquered by Israel, the Israelites who would not repent before being captured by Babylon, and more. Did God owe them anything? Did they have anything to be proud of before God?

We are in the same situation. God owes us nothing. Standing before him we can only expect punishment. But instead of trying to take the best seat, we take the lowliest place. Instead of pointing to ourselves in pride, we point to Christ.

We point to Christ who called the Pharisees to repentance and warns us with this parable. We point to Christ who never pointed to himself out of selfish pride, but pointed to himself as our Savior out of love for us.

With him our status before God changes. When Jesus lived on this earth, it was a perfect life, never giving in to the temptation of pride. Then as he hung on the cross he stood before God carrying all our sinful pride. God punished him for our sin and exchanged our sin for his perfect life. Our new status before God is one of sinlessness. We can stand before God as his child without fear of punishment. It is something to be proud of, not in a self-serving way, but in a God-pleasing, grateful way, knowing that we are his children.

Not only that, but God lifts us up in another way. As we come to God in humility and trusting in his mercy, God lifts us up. He moves us to a seat closer to him and gives us a purpose that makes us not just one in seven billion, but a very special part of God’s plan. God continues to call people to faith through the gospel. He uses you to do that.

When you share your faith here in church with others with your songs and your words you are working with God to strengthen the faith of your brothers and sisters in Christ. When you share Christ with others around you, you are God’s agent for calling others to faith. When you give your offerings to the Synod to help with mission work, God is carrying out through you his plan to spread the gospel to all nations. You playing a part in God’s eternal plan of salvation. There is no greater work!

Here are the two possible outcomes for the people of this world. Those who, in their pride, ignore God and his Word, they will one day experience the humiliation of hell, but those who submit to God’s Word and humble themselves before God, they will be given a place of great honor in God’s kingdom. For Jesus says, “everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

Amen.

Do you follow baseball? I heard the Twins are doing well. The Texas Rangers are also doing well. When we lived in Texas we used to watch the Rangers play. Three years in a row while we lived in Texas the Rangers made it to the playoffs, but they always played the Yankees first and, well, let’s just say that a few times they came close to winning a playoff game. But close doesn’t count, does it? To continue the baseball theme, do you know the poem, “Casey at the Bat”? Let me tell you about it and then I will tell you how it fits with these words of Jesus.

As the poem begins it is the ninth inning and the home team of Mudville was losing 2-4. The hometown crowd was losing hope as the first two batters were thrown out at first. But with one out left, the next two batters got on base. Then the crowd really got excited when they saw the mighty Casey, their favorite player, carry his bat up to the plate with calm confidence. Listen!

There was ease in Casey’s manner as he stepped into his place; There was pride in Casey’s bearing and a smile on Casey’s face. And when, responding to the cheers, he lightly doffed his hat, No stranger in the crowd could doubt ’twas Casey at the bat.

And now the leather-covered sphere came hurtling through the air, And Casey stood a-watching it in haughty grandeur there. Close by the sturdy batsman the ball unheeded sped- “That ain’t my style,” said Casey. “Strike one,” the umpire said.

With the same calm confidence Casey lets the second strike go by. Casey doesn’t care about those first two. It’s the third pitch he is after and he is confident he will make it count. Here are the last two verses of the poem.

The sneer is gone from Casey’s lip, his teeth are clenched in hate; He pounds with cruel violence his bat upon the plate. And now the pitcher holds the ball, and now he lets it go, And now the air is shattered by the force of Casey’s blow.

Oh, somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright; The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light, And somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout; But there is no joy in Mudville – mighty Casey has struck out.

Casey thought the day was his. He was so sure he was going to hit a home run to win the game that he let the first two strikes go by without even the smallest effort. But his confidence was misplaced and when the third pitch came, he struck out.

Don’t be like Casey! Do you see the connection with what Jesus is saying? So many are so confident about their spiritual life that they don’t even make an effort. Today Jesus is warning us – don’t be like that! Make every effort to enter through the narrow door.

He doesn’t tell us to worry or get stressed out over salvation. He simply says, “make every effort to enter through the narrow door.” That doesn’t mean be good, obey the rules and God will let you into heaven. No, Jesus is saying, take every opportunity to draw closer to God through his Word. Jesus is the narrow door through which we must pass and he wants each one of us to get to know him better through his Word.

But that door does not remain open for everyone. There will be many who think they are going to heaven, but will not. There will be many who claim to have a relationship with Jesus – “We ate and drank with you, and you taught in our streets.” But he will say to them, “I don’t know you or where you come from. Away from me, all you evildoers!”

A person might claim to have a relationship with God, but would God claim that same relationship with him? Or will he say, “Who are you?” A recent survey questioned people who claimed to believe in the Bible and found that 50% of them couldn’t name the first four books of the New Testament. The Bible is the most widely distributed book in the world, but how few people really read it? Many people claim, “Yes, I believe in God. I still believe.”, but do you really think the door will be open for them if they are not willing to take the time to know what he says?

I know the attitude is out there that as long as I belong to the church or as long as I am buried in the church, then I will be OK. Not true! Is God bound by our membership list? If you do not come to hear God’s Word, if you ignore the opportunities God gives you to draw closer to him, your faith will die and you will suffer in hell. It doesn’t matter if your name is on the membership list or not. What do you think. Will there be members of St. John’s who find themselves on the outside when the narrow door is shut? Shouldn’t we warn them?

There are many who in one way or another seem close to God. We might even say they are “almost saved”, but being “almost saved” is really the same as “altogether lost.” Being close doesn’t count in eternity. They are like Casey the baseball player – confident to the point of losing. Don’t be like Casey.

Jesus pleads with you for your own sake to draw closer to him and I will plead the same. Come to church often. Come to Bible class. No matter how strong you think your relationship with God is, work to make it stronger. Don’t just assume you’re OK – that you will be fine – but do what Jesus says and make every effort to hear about the narrow door. Make every effort to strengthen your relationship with your Savior.

But do not let this warning turn into worry. Certainly for those who are confident that their faith is good enough, God gives this warning and others such as, “if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall!” (1 Cor 10:12)

But Jesus also comforts those who are unsure or uncertain. If anyone is plagued by doubts Jesus wants them to know, “I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.” (John 10:28-30)

We are in the hands of a loving God and we are safe, perfectly safe. God picked us up in his hands with baptism and through the blood of Christ we continue to be safe there. There, in the protecting hand of the Almighty God, we hear how he rescued us from evil, how he came to this earth, how he made every effort to save us, how he continued to struggle against sin for us even to the point at which our sin nailed him to the cross. In God’s protecting hands he tells us about the resurrection. In Christ’s resurrection we see the assurance that our sins are forgiven and that is the narrow door of salvation through which we pass.

From the beginning of creation God pursued our salvation for us. Now he tells us, “Make every effort to make your hold on salvation stronger and stronger.

If your confidence is such that you think you are OK, that you don’t see a need to hear more of God’s Word, then your confidence is misplaced. Be careful or you will strike out like the mighty Casey. But as you make every effort to learn about your Savior, God will comfort you with the assurance that you will be on inside with all the other believers when the narrow door closes.

Amen.

Why did I come to St. John’s? I know – God called me here, but did you think I would come and be nice to everyone? Did you think I would come and tell all of you to be nice to everyone else and not make others upset? If that’s what you thought, you are mistaken! I came to deliver God’s message to you. I came to do my best to be Christ’s representative among you. To show you the love of Christ. To deal with you as Christ would deal with you.

That means that to the repentant sinner I will say, “Your sins are forgiven. Go in peace!” But that also means sometimes I have to say the difficult thing that causes anger, hatred, and division. I have to say, “This offends God! This goes against what God says.” If I didn’t say those things, I wouldn’t be following Jesus. You too, as you follow Jesus will be the cause of conflict and division. That’s what Jesus said. Jesus brings division and everyone who follows Jesus will experience that division. To follow Jesus means conflict with the world. Expect it. But blessings come with and through the conflict so also cherish it.

Jesus is not talking about a division in the family because you can’t decide who is going to host the Thanksgiving meal this year or because you disagree on how to arrange the furniture. It is more than that. Real Christ-induced division comes when those holding on to God’s Word clash with those holding on to their own ungodly desires and ideas.

Realize that when Jesus came to this earth, he was not coming to a friendly place, but a hostile one that would eventually take his life. He came into enemy territory to establish his kingdom as a base of operations in this sinful world. He came with the specific purpose of causing division between you, whom he has called to faith, and the unrepentant in this world. When God brought you to faith, you stopped being at peace with the world and at war with God and you switched sides. Now you are at peace with God and at war with a sinful world.

That means there will be conflict with unbelievers, with those who teach false things about God’s Word, and with those who simply want to follow their own ideas of right and wrong. Don’t be surprised when that conflict comes. Expect it.

Certainly, it is obvious there will be conflict between the Christian and the unbeliever. When it comes to evolution, abortion, the definition of marriage, there is all sorts of conflict. Instead, let me give you two examples that might hit closer to home, after all, Jesus makes it clear that this conflict will happen even in families..

The first example starts with this quote, “We really do die and cease to exist. We will not be saved by a heroic soulechtomy, that is, by extracting an immaterial soul from our material body. Sin is a cancer that eats away at the totality of human existence leaving no organ, whether physical or spiritual, uninfected. The resulting death means true extinction”

You can find this quote in the book, “God – The World’s Future” by Ted Peters. Ted Peters is a professor at Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary in California, one of the seminaries of the ELCA. According to Mr. Peters, when you die, you cease to exist. There is no resurrection. However, you know that God promises just the opposite. In fact, the Apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15 that if you don’t believe there is a real resurrection of your body, then it is pointless to preach Christ or believe in him.

Think about that! A seminary professor who teaches future pastors in the ELCA saying there is no resurrection. And he is not the only professor in the ELCA teaching this and the ELCA is not the only church body teaching this to their future pastors. Think about the problems that creates. Don’t you think the false idea of no resurrection will get passed on to their members? Do you think those pastors are able to give much comfort at a funeral? Are they leading their flock to Christ or away from Christ? Do you see why there is a division between us and them, just as Christ promised?

This very likely affects all of us in the way Jesus mentioned – in our families. As other family members attend churches that teach things contrary to God’s Word there will be conflict – perhaps in discussions about God’s Word, perhaps when we ask them not to take the Lord’s Supper with us. Expect conflict. Jesus promised it.

Here is another example of the division that Jesus brings even in families. A set of parents have a grown child who is living with a boyfriend or girlfriend. In other words, they are acting like a married couple without being married. This goes against what God wants for marriage. Just look at the 6th commandment or passages like Hebrews 13:4 “Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral.”

But what should the parents do? Just accept it or say something to the child and risk their relationship with that child? God would have parents and all of us warn that child of their sin and what it is doing to their relationship with God. To warn someone caught in sin really is the loving thing to do, but in case there is doubt about that remember what Jesus said, “anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.” Expect conflict.

None of us really wants to be involved in this conflict. We usually want to avoid it, but look at where you live. You live in a sinful world and, even though many claim to be religious, they reject God and his Word. Jesus said “Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division.” You can be sure that as you remain faithful to Jesus, you will experience conflict. Expect it. Jesus promised it.

Yes, Jesus promised it and because Jesus promised it you can be sure that conflict is a necessary part of being a Christian in this world. You can be sure Jesus will use it in a loving way for your good. For that reason you can cherish the conflict that comes from being a Christian.

But why the conflict? I thought the angel said “Peace on earth” when Jesus was born. Yes, and Jesus is called the “Prince of Peace”, but it is not a worldly peace. It is not a peace with the world, but peace with God – a peace far more valuable than any other, a peace that means we can stand before our creator, confident that he will not send us away, but receive us as children.

This peace comes to us without any effort or cost on our part, but for Jesus the cost was heavy and the effort great. To secure this peace for us with God he endured conflict after conflict while walking this earth, always pointing out false teaching, always pointing out sin . . . always calling people to repent and receive the peace he would give them. Then he endured the conflict with the world that put him on the cross, and more than that he endured the division with his heavenly Father that is hell. He did that because we deserve to have that division between us and God. He suffered it so we wouldn’t.

Have you avoided conflict in the past? Have you avoided the conflict Jesus is talking about and by avoiding conflict shown contempt for the peace you have with God? Doesn’t that bother your conscience? It is forgiven – wiped away. God no longer sees your sine because Jesus brings you peace with God.

This is the peace we want. This is the peace for which we will suffer conflict with the world. We can cherish the conflict because we know the peace that comes with it.

I know conflict is not pleasant, but there are other reasons for saying we can cherish our conflict with the world. It drives us to Christ and as it drives us to Christ, it also draws us to one another. It helps sharpen our understanding of God’s Word – we learn better what we believe. It separates us from a sinful world that tries to pull us away from Christ.

Do you know what Jesus is telling us here? One conclusion we can draw from these words is this: being a Christian is not easy. Jesus is warning us that as we follow him we can expect conflict. But remember what Jesus told us last week – Do not be afraid, little flock, the kingdom is yours. As we endure this division with the world we can also cherish it, because it means we have peace with God.

Amen.

Dear Lord, why does the church struggle so much to carry out the work you gave it? “Do not be afraid, little flock.” But Lord, the church keeps growing smaller. “Do not be afraid, little flock.” But Lord, fewer and fewer people are motivated to serve . . . and money – there never seems to be enough, Lord. “Do not be afraid, little flock.”

God doesn’t give us all the answers, does he? He doesn’t tell us how things are going to work out or when these problems will go away. He simply says, “Don’t be afraid. You just focus on Jesus and what he has done for you and then you will be ready when he returns.”

Jesus tells us, “Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will not be exhausted, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” This follows so well what Jesus told us last week about that rich fool who died before he could enjoy his wealth, and the words of Solomon who told us that chasing after money is meaningless.

Again, with the sincere plea of a loving heavenly father, God calls us to let go of the things that only seem important in this world and focus on the only thing that really matters – the Gospel, God’s Word, the Holy Scriptures. Whatever words you want to use to describe it, God has pulled us out of an eternity of suffering and has given us the kingdom. (More about that later.)

Last week we heard God tell us to “be patient”. Be patient as a farmer is patient. This week God tells us to also be ready. Be ready like a servant watching for his master to return home so that when he comes home he can quickly open the door for him.

Doesn’t that describe the Christian – always ready for the Savior to return because the Christian is always watching for him to return. Perhaps we can relate to this illustration a little easier. The Christian is like a groom on his wedding day. He is at the front of the church. He is dressed well. He has the ring. All the arrangements have been made. He is ready for his bride and he is intently watching at the door for her to appear.

That is the mindset of the Christian waiting for his Savior to come back. We are ready and watching. But how are we ready? There is only one way to be ready for the master of the universe to come and knock on your door. It is only through the blood of Christ. It is only because Christ lived for you and died for your sin that you have the white robe of Christ’s righteousness. That is the only thing that makes you ready for his return. Now, as a redeemed child of God, made ready by God himself, you watch for your Savior.

But how do we watch? We watch by learning to recognize him. We need to know what our Savior looks like, don’t we? And the way to do that is to see what he is like in Scripture! Jesus tells all his disciples to do listen to his voice in Scripture. Learn to recognize your Savior.

You know that the longer you live with someone the better you know them. You recognize their voice on the phone. You can see them coming even from a long way off. You even start to understand the way they think. It can really be scary sometimes! Live with your Savior. Get to know him better and better each day.

That’s what Jesus told Mary and Martha was the one thing needed. He told his disciples it would keep them spiritually alive.

Let’s look at the Israelites for an example. In our first lesson for today we can see that they didn’t take God’s Word very seriously. It was not very high on their list of things to do. You can tell because they weren’t very concerned about God’s house. They fixed up their own houses, but not God’s house. They made sure their houses looked nice, but they weren’t too concerned about God’s house. And here is a good time to ask people to sign up to clean the church. As you clean your own house think about helping to clean God’s house.

Getting back to Israel – they were not watching for their Savior. It was obvious in the way they lived their lives that their treasure was in their own lives and so that’s where their heart was too.

God, in his grace, came to warn them. He graciously called them to repentance and they responded as any believer would. They “obeyed the voice of the Lord!” We don’t hear about Israel responding like that very often to God’s Word, but here they are an excellent example for us. They put God first in their lives.

That’s exactly what Jesus is asking of us right here. Put him first. Let it show in your life with the way you use your money, the way you deal with people, the way you deal with problems, and especially in the way you learn more about him.

But how can we keep Jesus and his Word first? There are so many distractions in this world. We have our own families to take care of. We have work to do. Problems come up that we have to deal with. There are so many things to think about! “God, I have to deal with all of that stuff. How can I focus on your Word?”

God says don’t be afraid, the kingdom is yours. Did you notice that sweet, little statement at the beginning of the Gospel for today? “Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom.”

You can focus on God’s Word because the kingdom is already yours. That really is a precious little verse, but let’s connect it with the verse right before it. Jesus told about the rich fool that we heard about last week, then he tells us about how God takes care of the birds and the flowers and we are more important to God than they are. “Seek his kingdom”, Jesus says and God will take care of the rest.

Now he takes one more step. Not only will God take care of you, but he has already given the kingdom to his church, to his little flock. There is no reason to worry or be afraid or stress about other things. The kingdom is ours. Think about what that means. Eternal life is yours, you do not need to be afraid of what comes after death. God’s wealth is yours, you do not need to be afraid of starving or going without. God’s holy angels are yours as God uses them to watch over you, you do not need to be afraid of any evil. You are free to focus on Jesus.

It pleased God to do this. He was pleased to come to this earth as one of us. He was pleased to die on a cross for us. He was pleased to suffer hell for us. He was pleased to come to us in baptism and make us his children. He was pleased to give us eternal life.

What Christian would not want to hear more about the kingdom that is his and how God was pleased to give it?

When things look bleak, whether in the church or outside the church, don’t be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom.

Amen.

The air conditioning in my office hasn’t been working for awhile now, but it should be fixed by Monday. You can be sure I will appreciate it. You can be sure I will understand more clearly that even though A/C is a human invention, it is still a blessing from God and not something to which I am entitled or deserve.

It seems that whenever you don’t have something for awhile, you appreciate it more when you get it back. It is a little easier to recognize it as God’s gift rather than a right owed to you. Perhaps that’s a good reason to come here every so often. It is good to see God’s creation, but we also appreciate the

We have many of these material blessings, don’t we. We are rich. God has blessed us. It is nice to have these things, but there is a danger. What value do you place on these blessings from God? What priority do they have in your life? What influence do they have over you? James warns us against having an unhealthy relationship with God’s blessings. He knows the pain and suffering that will come. Instead, he says, be patient in the face of wealth!

Before we hear the warning James gives us, let’s look at some positive uses of wealth. First, we give back to God. God has given so much to us and we give some of it back, not because he needs it – he doesn’t, but by giving back to God we thank him for what he has done for us. We tell him we want to continue to hear his gospel. God gives us material things so we can take care of our family, another one of his blessings. God also gives us opportunities to help others who are in need. And yes, some of his blessings are for us simply to enjoy.

The difficulty is balancing all those ways of using God’s blessings. Sin comes into play when God is not first, we put ourselves first in some way. Usually, we put our own pleasure first. You know, I have never had someone come to me and say, “Oh pastor, I have sinned. I have given too much money to the church and now I don’t have enough to take care of my family!” No, more often people take care of themselves first and give God only the leftovers.

James warns us not to think about wealth as something there for us to accumulate or something primarily for our own enjoyment. He begins this section with some pretty harsh words.

“Weep and wail!” Be afraid of the misery that comes because of the desire for wealth. Remember what Paul said, “Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.” (1 Timothy 6:10). The misery and grief comes in two ways. First, wealth will become worthless. Second, wealth will speak out against those who have misused others to get it and where the love of money has destroyed a person’s faith, their wealth will be a witness before God that they deserve hell.

James makes it very clear that whatever it is you desire to have on this earth, it will not last. Clothes will become moth-eaten, metal will corrode, things will become useless. Certainly at our death or on the last day all that we have will become worthless to us. It will do us no good. In Sweden there is a hotel that is rebuilt every year entirely of snow and ice. Every year much effort goes into the hotel, but then what do you suppose happens in the spring? It melts. It is gone. The pursuit of wealth here on earth is like that. One day it will all be gone.

Even before that time comes things will decay and tarnish. Have you ever had a garage sale and tried to estimate how much you originally paid for all that stuff? Here is another example. I have a computer mouse with me. It is probably 10 years old. It works, but the newer ones are so much better. This one is useful for this object lesson, but after this it will go in the trash. The things we work for and spend money on will all become useless sooner or later.

James points out another problem. The desire for money changes us. When wealth becomes more important than others, we start treating people in a way that is for our own advantage and not theirs. James says the wealth we gain at the expense of others will cry out against us. It will testify to God that you have sinned.

If you have sold something to someone while hiding the less desirable attributes of that something, the money you gained will cry out against you. If you borrow something and fail to return when you really should have returned it, it will speak out against you. If you take something or ruin something that belongs to someone else, it will cry out to God against you.

The words of James are harsh. They are a strong warning, but it is a good warning, a loving warning, because heaven is at stake and hell is a real possibility. James comes to us as a brother in Christ to warn us. That’s what Christians do for each other. We are tempted by the world and sometimes, if not often, give in. We need other Christians to warn us. That is part of what fellowship is about. As we meet with brothers and sisters from another church it is good to talk about how Christians interact with one another.

But there is more. Christians not only warn, but they comfort and strengthen one another. That is why James also tells us to be patient. He is giving comfort Be patient in the face of all the troubles that come because of the love of money.

First, be patient in the face of temptation. We already talked about the sins we are faced with. Be patient, “the Lord’s coming is near”. The times we fail to resist temptation are forgiven. Our Lord came the first time to deliver us from the punishment we deserve. He gave up his wealth for us so that we could have true wealth – life with him. He gives us a trust in God instead of trust in wealth.

Be patient. The Lord who has already given us so much will come to rescue us from temptation.

Second, he will also rescue us from those who seek wealth. Have you ever been taken advantage of by someone who desires wealth for himself? Probably all of us have. There are plenty of people out there like that. They are thinking of themselves and not us. James says, “Be patient . . . the Lord’s coming is near.” All those who have cheated us or who have stolen from us, they will stand before the Lord Almighty and their wealth will cry out against them.

Be patient in the face of their wealth.

Be patient. Like a farmer. You don’t go out to your field the day after you plant and get worried and upset that the crops aren’t ready to harvest? Be patient. The Lord will come at just the right time.

It is good to get away from the nice dry sanctuary that God has blessed us with so that we see some of the other blessings he has given us – fellowship with other congregations, the beauty of nature, and more, but also so that we appreciate what he has given us and realize it came from him.

I will end with these words of wisdom from Proverbs chapter 30.

“Two things I ask of you, O LORD; do not refuse me before I die: Keep falsehood and lies far from me; give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me only my daily bread. Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you and say, ‘Who is the LORD ?’ Or I may become poor and steal, and so dishonor the name of my God.”

Amen.

“Listen to me!” Have you ever said those words? Or heard them? I imagine that most parents have said similar words and most children have heard them. Usually parents say this because they have something to say for the child’s own benefit – telling them how to behave in a God pleasing way or telling them something that will keep them safe. It isn’t only parents who say, “Listen to me!” While they might not use these words exactly, there are many who want us to listen to what they say for our own good. The doctor tells us to eat healthy and exercise, the dentist tells us to brush our teeth, and the government tells us to obey certain rules. Most important of all is what God tells us for our own good. He tells us about our Salvation. God is speaking. Listen to him and listen to those through whom he speaks.

Three times during the night Samuel heard someone call him and three times he got up to go to his master Eli. Finally, Eli realized that the Lord was calling Samuel and he told Samuel to say, “Speak Lord, for your servant is listening.” Did you hear what Eli told Samuel? In this brief statement Eli told Samuel to tell the Lord that he was prepared to listen. By implication then, Samuel was to listen. Eli didn’t tell Samuel, “When God calls you tell him everything that’s on your mind” or “tell him what’s bothering you” or even “tell him what you want him to do for you.” No. Instead Eli told Samuel “This is the Lord speaking to you, listen to him.”

The Lord also speaks to us. But do we listen? Do we stop and tell God, “I am going to be quiet now and just listen”? Perhaps we are more often the ones doing the talking. We say those little prayers throughout the day, “God please help me get to my appointment on time, please Lord help me feel better, or Lord please help me with my financial problems.” We remember to come to God when we need his help, but God returns to the background of our daily routine when times are good. Now, please don’t misunderstand. It is not wrong to come to God in prayer. In fact, our heavenly Father wants us to pray and loves it when we do. But in prayer we are the ones doing the talking. If we are not also listening to God in his Word then we are like someone who goes to the doctor and says, “Please take care of this pain in my shoulder,” but then doesn’t listening as the doctor describes what needs to be done for the pain. God is speaking. Listen to him.

Who exactly is this God that is speaking to us? Eli told Samuel to say, “Speak Lord, for your servant is listening.” This is the Lord speaking to us. The Lord, spelled with all capital letters in your Bible – in Hebrew, Yahweh, sometimes written as “Jehovah.” It is that special name that God uses to tell us that he does not change – that he loves us and will always love us. It is the name God told Moses to use when he was going to rescue the Israelites from their slavery. It is the name he uses as the one who rescues us. This is who speaks to us. He is not coming to us as the judge of the universe, or as the Almighty God ready to crush sinful creatures that disobey his will. No. He comes to give us a wonderful message. He comes to tell us that his Son, Jesus, listened to him. Jesus listened even as he prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane about the suffering he would endure, “may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.” Jesus listened to his Father and did what his Father asked even though it meant going to the cross and suffering the torment of hell for all the times we don’t listen. As we grieve over the times we have closed our ears to God’s Word the Holy Spirit brings us words of comfort – our sins can not speak to us, they were silenced by the cross.

God still speaks to us. Listen to him. He certainly speaks to us through his Word, the 66 books of the Bible, and through the Sacraments, but the same Gospel message we find in God’s Word and the Sacraments are brought to us through those whom he has chosen as his representatives. God is speaking. Listen to those through whom he speaks.

The Lord does not speak to us in the ways that we might want him to speak to us. We want that personal pipeline to God that no one else has. “God just whisper in my ear or just let me know somehow that I’m making the right decisions in my life. Give me a sign.” It sometimes doesn’t occur to us to spend the time to study God’s Word, where God tells us all we need to know to make God pleasing decisions in our life. Yet, God has promised to speak to us in his Word, he has not promised to speak to us in other ways.

This does not mean that reading the Bible is the only way to hear God’s voice. God has placed other people around us through whom he brings us his Word. He has given us parents. They teach us to lead God pleasing lives and teach us about our Savior, Jesus. He gives us pastors who proclaim God’s good news of forgiveness and administer the Sacraments and teachers who increase our understanding of the Scriptures. Even the government is God’s representative to bring order to society and make it easier to study God’s Word. We listen to God when we listen to these people. Even though they are also sinful people, God has placed them in their positions to benefit you – to tell you something for your own good.

This is nothing new. Throughout the Bible, Old Testament and New Testament, we see God speak through others. God coming directly to people was rare and only to a chosen few. He gave his prophets or apostles a message and they conveyed that message to the people. Even in our lesson about Samuel, the message involved Eli and his family, but God chose Samuel as the one who would receive his message and Eli heard it through Samuel. The Bible is the collection of all those things God wants us to know as told through the prophets and the apostles.

The God of the universe doesn’t come to us in the majestic and glorious ways we might expect. Just like Elijah on Mount Horeb, Elijah did not find God in the great and powerful wind or in the earthquake or in the raging fire, but God spoke to Elijah in a gentle whisper. It is through simple ways that God speaks to us – words printed on paper and bound in a book just like any other book; words spoken as water is sprinkled on a baby’s head; a small piece of bread and a little wine; and God speaks to us through other sinful people. It is not the glorious way that we would expect the God of the universe to communicate with us, but that is the way he has chosen.

The message he speaks to us is also not what we expect. We expect to hear what we should do to get to heaven; instead God tells us that he has done everything. We expect punishment, but instead we have heaven as a gift.

Listening to God is not glamorous. It does not set us apart in some noticeable way. It is simply reading his Word and listening to God’s representatives. God is speaking. Listen to him. Listen to him as he speaks through his Word and the Sacraments and listen to those through whom he speaks.

Amen.

Normally, when you come to church you expect to hear a message of comfort. You have had to endure the suffering and hardships that this world throws at you and you want to hear that God still loves you. Today as we look at the story of the Good Samaritan, we look at the person to whom Jesus told that story and why Jesus told that story. We realize that this story is not intended to comfort. These words tell us how we fail to love our neighbor. These words tell us that we cannot love our way to heaven – we cannot by loving our neighbor get ourselves into heaven. It is not our love for others that makes us look good to God, but God’s love for us.

To understand why Jesus said these words, let’s look at the person to whom Jesus told the story. The Bible calls him “an expert in the law” and the Bible says that this expert wanted to test Jesus. He did not see Jesus as his Savior, instead he saw Jesus as a rival. He wanted to find out if Jesus knew as much as he did. He asked, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Well, the key word in that question is the word “do”. If he was going to do something to get to heaven then this expert in the law had the right answer, love. First, he must love God more than anything else, then he must love his neighbor as himself. Perhaps this man thought pretty good about himself. The Bible says he wanted to “justify himself”. He believed that he was doing everything he needed to do to get to heaven. He just wanted others to know it too. So he asked who his neighbor was that he had to love as himself. Now Jesus tells this story to show him that he had already failed. He could not by his own love for others get himself into heaven.

As Jesus tells the story we hear about a man who is attacked and left by the side of the road to die. Two religious men, who knew God’s command to love and should have been willing to help, passed by on the other side. What were they thinking? “I need to get my dentist appointment”, “Ouch, that must hurt but I’m glad it’s not me”, or “Well, there really isn’t anything I can do for him.”

But then a Samaritan comes by. The Jews didn’t really like Samaritans. They didn’t consider them part of God’s chosen people and treated them poorly. Yet, this Samaritan stopped to take care of the hurt man who was most likely a Jew and someone the Samaritan could very easily consider an enemy. Instead, the Samaritan looked on the side of the road and saw a fellow human being in need. He knew what he would want someone else to do if he were that person on the side of the road. He had compassion on this beaten and bruised man. At that point he made a personal sacrifice for the sake of this man in need. He gave up some of his time; it certainly took time to take care of this person. He used whatever skill he had in bandaging this man’s wounds, he got his hands dirty, even bloody, in this service he performed for another human being. Not only that but he spent his own money, using his own oil and wind to dress the wounds and paying the innkeeper to take care of this man.

Jesus said, “Go and do likewise.” This Samaritan is a picture of what it means to love our neighbor. This is the requirement we must fulfill if we want to get to heaven by our own love for others. Jesus gives no guidelines for when or how often, it is a perpetual requirement. You must love your neighbor like the Samaritan loved that man on the side of the road 24 hours a day seven days a week from the time you are born until the time you die. And if you also love God more than anything else you can then consider yourself perfect and by your own love for others you will have earned a place for yourself in heaven.

That expert in the law could not have gone away after that thinking that he lived up to that kind of love, but what about you and me? Do we love our neighbor, even our enemies, as the Samaritan loved this man on the side of the road? Are there times when we see someone that we could help and we fail to help with their physical needs? Perhaps we don’t even make the small effort it takes to pray for them. And as Christians we should be even more concerned about and more actively helping with our neighbor’s spiritual needs, right?

Spiritual needs – that is the reason Jesus told this story to expert in the law. Jesus was concerned about his spiritual needs and wanted him to see his need for a Savior. Remember how the man wanted to “test” Jesus and “justify” himself? How he thought he could “do” something to get into heaven? Jesus was trying to tell him that God didn’t think as highly of him as he thought of himself.

As you hear Jesus talk about this Samaritan helping this man are you filled with thoughts of “how nice” or “I could be more like that” or “what if everyone was like that”? Stop right there! Jesus didn’t say these words to show you what you could do. He gives you the example of the Samaritan to tell you what you have not done. These words, first and foremost, are not words to encourage, but words to terrify! You do not live up to God’s standard with the way you help others and neither do I. We deserve God’s punishment.

All our attempts at love will get us nowhere. Then we see how great the gift of God’s love truly is. In a spiritual way we were like that man on the side of the road – robbed by Satan and beaten up by our own sins, left to die in hell. Jesus is the one who saw us on the side of the road and had compassion on us. We were in that wretched state, a pile of bruises and broken limbs, and Jesus came to us and bandaged our wounds. He spent time on this earth living the perfect life of love that we could not live and spending his precious blood worth more than any amount of money we could earn. Now when God looks at us through Christ he sees people with perfect love for their neighbor – a Good Samaritan kind of love.

It is Christ’s love that is now the reason we want to love our neighbor. We love others not to earn our own way to heaven, but to say thank you to our Savior for showing such great love to us. I have seen this congregation help others in need. These things were love for your neighbor motivated by Christ’s love for you.

Now, as Christians we want to continue to love those around us by taking care of both the physical needs of others as well as the spiritual needs. We can do this in many ways. We can work with our hands, using the talents God has given us for the benefit of the church and others. As we contribute financially to the work of this church and of the school, we are helping to share the Gospel with our neighbors both inside this congregation and outside. And please do not look overlook Prayer as a way to show love for your neighbor. It is a very simple thing that has great effect. In love we are helping to meet the physical and spiritual needs of our neighbors.

Now, as we focus on others – as we focus on people other than ourselves, both as individuals and as a congregation, the Lord will certainly bless us.

We are all sinful human beings in a sinful world and we will not love our neighbor perfectly. Give thanks to God that we can turn to our Savior and ask him to forgive us. He does forgive. He forgives and even gives us his perfect love. You can not earn heaven by your own love, but our heavenly Father gives us heaven by Christ’s love.

Amen.

Do you remember the great victory Elijah had over the prophets of Baal? The false god, Baal, couldn’t even produce a spark to ignite the offering that was set up in his name, but when Elijah called on the Lord, fire rained down on the offering Elijah had prepared – even the stones were consumed. It was a tremendous victory, but soon after this Elijah was running to hide – afraid and depressed. Did he see the real victory? The victory God had won in the hearts of 7000 people in Israel who did not worship Baal? What about the disciples? They saw Jesus heal the sick, cast out demons, and even raise the dead. They saw the power Jesus had, and yet when Jesus was crucified, they hid behind locked doors. Did they see the victory Jesus had won for them? What about you? Do you see the victory Christ won for you? He destroyed Satan’s power over you and even gives you authority over Satan. This victory is yours both now and forever.

If this victory is so incredible, why don’t we always see the victory? We must admit that when we look around, sometimes it doesn’t look like Christ won anything and, as for us, we certainly don’t always feel victorious. This world is full of people who only want to serve themselves. There is the guy who speeds past you on the road, only concerned about how soon he can get to his destination. And what about the coworker who advances his career in a way that you might call “unethical” but even that term isn’t strong enough. If Christian virtues and a general keeping of the Ten Commandments were signs of victory, then a quick look at television programming would make it clear we were moving away from victory. Many churches have left the truth of God’s Word and follow the example found on television. They show little regard for God’s institution of marriage and condone couples living together outside of marriage, whether that couple is two men, two women, or a man and a woman. At a personal level, where is the victory in our own life? You mention church to a friend and she gives you that look – the look that says, “Why do you waste your Sunday morning?” You struggle with a particular sin and you fight against it, but it keeps coming back. You don’t feel victorious. You feel defeated. Even the simple monotony of daily life could bring you down. You might think as you wash the dishes or cut the grass, “I have done this so many times. Will it ever end?” It is difficult sometimes to see that we have won any kind of victory.

We want to be successful. We want to feel victorious. But we hurt ourselves by looking in the wrong place for victory. We think, “If we only had more people come to church, then we would be successful. Then we could celebrate our victory.” Or “You know, I could really see this victory if our church had more money.” We look at the big churches and think wow that church is truly successful. Perhaps we think that success would mean we are always happy or we are blessed with material blessings or even that we are able to get rid of the sin in our lives.

The problem is complicated even further because Satan, a fallen angel, and his followers are here on this earth. The victory Christ won for us was also his defeat. He will do everything he can to make us doubt that victory. He does not want us to believe it exists. He will cause you as much pain as he can or give you as much earthly success as he needs to so that your view of Christ’s victory is clouded. The unbeliever is already clouded in darkness and Satan needs to do very little to maintain their condition. Instead, Satan is using most of his time and resources to shroud the believer in darkness. That means most of his energy is directed toward you!

In spite of all we see in the world around us and in spite of the places we look for success and in spite of the deceit of Satan, Christ’s victory is certain. On the cross of Calvary Christ crushed the serpent’s head just as God had promised to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. The relationship between God and man broken apart by the first sin was made whole again. God punished Christ for every offense we commit against God, whether we say it or do it or it just remains a thought in our head. This victory was as good as done even when the 72 returned to Jesus. Jesus said, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.” The fall of Satan was made complete and final on the cross. Satan was thrown out of heaven, no longer before the judgment seat of God able to accuse you and me before the almighty judge. Instead, Jesus gives us authority over Satan. We didn’t fight in the battle. We didn’t have to pick up a weapon of any kind, but we enjoy the spoils of the victory won for us.

Jesus says, “I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy; nothing will harm you.” As you rely on Christ, it is not possible for Satan to hurt you. It doesn’t matter what crafty trick or venomous traps Satan has in mind for you. Christ’s victory is complete and his power absolute. Every angel, even the fallen angels, must submit to him. Satan will try to use temptation, suffering, and even earthly success to try to harm us, but God will use it to bless us. What is more, that gives us the authority to act in his name to call on his victory and on those unconditional terms of surrender that Satan had no choice but to agree to.

But where is that victory? How do we see that victory? When you hear the words, “your sins are forgiven” then Christ’s victory shines through all of the clouds Satan puts in the way. Satan, after all, does not want you to hear those words. His goal here on earth is to get you to live with your guilt and keep you away from God’s promise of forgiveness. So any time we proclaim the victory Christ has won for us, we hurl Satan to the ground and throw his defeat back in his face. Every time a baby is baptized, a soul is snatched out of Satan’s claws and placed into the arms of the Good Shepherd. When we celebrate Holy Communion, we celebrate the victory that Christ has won for us and we receive forgiveness for all our sins. As we taste the bread and the wine and we receive the body and blood that secured Satan’s defeat, we are enjoying the sweet taste of victory. When we hear God’s Word and take it to heart, we push a defeated Satan away from us. We celebrate our victory by simply living our Christian lives. Now, when Satan comes around to tempt us, we can say, “get away from me Satan” and that demon, Satan, must submit to you. If Satan tries to overwhelm you with the guilt of your sin – “do you really think God will forgive you for that horrible sin?” – tell him, “God has forgiven me! Jesus Christ defeated you on the cross and you have no power to accuse me.”

This is the victory we have now. This is how we can see it, taste it, grab hold of it right now. But this victory is not like any other victory that we might have here on earth. This victory will not end. The victory we have in Christ now is only the beginning. This victory is yours forever.

Jesus tells you and me to “rejoice that your names are written in heaven.” This is something God did before time was created – he wrote your name in heaven. It is your reservation – your name on the door to your room in the mansions of heaven. God has prepared a place for you there and it can not be given to someone else. It is already done – it can not be erased or blotted out. The one who would try to change this fact – Satan – has been thrown out of heaven and can do nothing about it. All his powers and tricks and schemes to cloud our ability to see the victory will be gone. We will see clearly the victory Christ has won for us.

This is truly the part of the victory worth rejoicing over. The victory we have over Satan and his demons here on earth is certainly wonderful and necessary, but that victory exists to give us the victory celebration in heaven. In heaven it will be a true victory celebration, lasting forever instead of the glimpses of victory we see here on earth clouded by the sin of this world and the tricks of Satan. This victory is not about me and what I can do here on earth, whether or not I can drive out demons, it is about what God has done for me without my help. He has written my name in heaven.

You have Christ’s victory and Christ gives you authority over the defeated enemy. This is true even at times when, to your own eyes, you don’t seem to be victorious. This victory is yours now, but more importantly it is yours forever.

Amen.

Today is the day to celebrate freedom, right? It’s the fourth of July. Today the whole country celebrates the freedoms freedom from a foreign government, freedom to tax ourselves and decide how that money is used, freedom to worship God in our own way, freedom to pursue a better life, and the list goes on..

These freedoms are a gift of God, not to be abused and not to be taken for granted, but as Christians we celebrate an even greater freedom – not just today, but every time we meet together to hear God’s Word. The freedom we celebrate is the freedom not to bear the guilt of our sin as we stand before God, the freedom to not die forever in hell but to enjoy God’s grace forever, the freedom to not be afraid of what this world can do to us, and the freedom to share this freedom with others.

This freedom comes to us not because we have fought for it or have earned it, but because of God’s grace. Jesus fought for and earned this freedom and he gives it to you, only because of God’s grace – his undeserved love. This grace is even for you.

We will see God’s grace as Jonah brings God’s message to the people of Ninevah. We will see that God’s grace is for the people of Ninevah, and many will stop there thinking that Ninevah is the main focus, but it is not. Jonah is the focus. It is even more important that we see God’s grace is even for Jonah because we are more like Jonah than we are like the people of Ninevah. So if God’s grace is even for Jonah then God’s grace is even for us.

As our Old Testament lesson begins, we hear that Jonah obeyed God’s command to go and preach to the people of Ninevah. Wonderful! That’s great! Jonah obeyed God even though the people of Ninevah were the bitter enemies of Israel. Would you have obeyed God? Let’s not forget that this is the second time God commanded Jonah to preach to Ninevah.

The first time God told Jonah to go to Ninevah, he got on a boat going the other way. It wasn’t until Jonah experienced God’s fierce storm, was thrown into the sea, almost drowned, was swallowed by a fish, stayed there three days, and felt the indignity of being vomited up that Jonah finally agreed to do what God wanted him to do.

It reminds me of a cartoon I saw once where the fish had just spit Jonah onto dry land. Jonah is dripping wet with seaweed hanging off of him and the fish is swimming away in the background. Jonah has his cell phone up to his ear and over the cell phone God says to him, “Can you hear me now?”

Isn’t it true, just like Jonah, that God has to drag us through one painful ordeal after another until finally he has our attention, finally, we start listening to him?

Jonah obeys God and goes to Ninevah. Now Ninevah was a large city – “a visit required three days”, as the NIV translates that phrase. Here is an indication on how long it should have taken Jonah to walk down all the major roads in Ninevah and deliver God’s message. We hear that Jonah started his first day of delivering God’s message, “Forty more days and Ninevah will be overturned.” When you hear the word “overturned” think of a dinning room table all set with food and china and silverware being lifted at one edge and turned over – what a mess, then imagine God doing that with a city, like he did with Sodom and Gomorrah. The people of Ninevah knew this wasn’t just a change in leadership, but a violent upheaval as the result of their sin.

We only hear about the first day of Jonah’s preaching and then immediately we hear about the repentance and faith of the Ninevites. One can imagine the commotion Jonah’s preaching must have caused as person after person heard the condemning words of God’s law and were cut to the heart. All Jonah had to do was get things started and the message quickly spread throughout the city and eventually reached the king.

Even the king repented and called for repentance throughout the city. They put on sackcloth – a cloth used to carry grain and other food. Perhaps not as bad as making your clothes out of paper bags from Schutz’s, but you get the idea. They fasted and didn’t even feed their animals. Can you imagine the noise from all those hungry animals? I think some of you can.

Greatest of all, they showed their sorrow over their sin by turning away from their sin and then they trusted God’s grace to save them. The words of the king, “Who knows? God may yet relent and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish.” are more than just wishful thinking. He has proof that God cares about Ninevah in the very fact that God sent Jonah to preach to it.

Doesn’t Ninevah do what is right? Aren’t they a good example of repentance? This is why I said Ninevah was not the main focus. Yes, we see God’s grace as he reaches out to these people who are the enemy of God’s chosen people of Israel, but they are a contrast to Jonah who refuses to repent. The repentance of Ninevah makes the unrepentant Jonah even more of an abomination.

What do I mean? Look at what happened. God saw that Ninevah had repented of their evil and so God did not bring about their destruction. It was one of the greatest miracles of all of Scripture that God turned the hearts of a whole city, and yet, how did Jonah respond? “But Jonah was greatly displeased and became angry. He prayed to the LORD, ‘O LORD, is this not what I said when I was still at home? That is why I was so quick to flee to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. Now, O LORD, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live.’”

You can see that Jonah’s attitude toward Ninevah has not changed from the first time God called him. Even though he knows about God’s grace in Israel’s history, even though he knows God’s grace from his own personal experience in the fish, he does not want God’s grace to be given to these people.

They were enemies of Israel. He certainly knew that anything good for Ninevah would be bad for Israel. Perhaps he also believed his own life would change if Ninevah became part of God’s family of believers. Perhaps he is afraid that they will be better “Israelites” than the Israelites. Perhaps he thought they didn’t deserve God’s grace.

What about you? Are you excited to share God’s grace with others or are you jealous of God’s grace. Are other people inferior and perhaps not worthy of God’s grace? Are you uninterested in sharing God’s grace because you know that some of the things we are used to around here would change? Are you simply “comfortable” with the way things are?

Perhaps you haven’t given it much thought at all, and that too is sin. To not do anything is no better or worse than Jonah running to Tarshish. When we confess our sins at the beginning of the worship service we confess that we have done what is evil “and failed to do what is good.” To not speak when we should, that is sin.

We desperately need God’s grace and God’s grace is even for us just as it was for Jonah. God was not done with Jonah. God came to Jonah to call him to repentance just as he calls us to repentance. “The LORD replied [to Jonah], ‘Have you any right to be angry?’” God was not going to let his prophet fall from faith through his unrepentance, but God came to him with these words and after these words, with an object lesson designed just for Jonah.

May we cherish all those times God calls us to repentance. As we come to repentance we have the assurance of forgiveness.

Just like Jonah, Jesus came to a people who were his enemies – us. He preached the Good News to them. He did more than that. He died to make God’s grace more that just words. Unlike Jonah he did it willingly. He did not need to be coerced or convinced. He came because he loved us and he truly wants us to repent and be saved. Unlike Jonah, he rejoices when we repent.

You are free. In Christ you have all the freedom that really matters, all by God’s grace.

Amen.

If you find yourself in Indonesia someday you might see a man holding a bag at a busy intersection looking for donations. He is not raising money to cure a disease; he is collecting money to fund a war against Christians in Indonesia. In Canada now there is a law against “hate speech.” In certain cases using portions of Scripture that call homosexuality a sin violates this law and could be punished by a fine or imprisonment. In this country if you follow Christ’s command to “preach the good news to all creation” and you tell a coworker about his or her Savior while at work you could be guilty of religious harassment.

The people who live around us go to a lot of trouble to make our lives difficult because of our faith in Jesus. And don’t ever think that the efforts are completely spontaneous. Just think of these advertising slogans promoted by atheist organizations: “A million New Yorkers are good without God. Are you?” or “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.” They work at putting the Christian message down. They conspire with one another to silence the voices of Christians. They actually plot to make life so difficult that Christians will finally keep quiet.

That’s exactly what happened to the prophet Jeremiah in our First Lesson today. The people who opposed him worked hard to silence Jeremiah’s voice. But Jeremiah discovered that nothing and no one was going to stop the message God wanted the people to hear. They could conspire and plan and work overtime, but when it came to their plots against him, Jeremiah discovered this truth: The People Plot for Nothing. (1) God knows theirs plans and (2) God achieves his plan.

Should we be surprised that people plot against us? No, in fact Jesus promised that we would be persecuted. He told his disciples, “If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first” (John 15:18). Their hatred is not only focused on us but they also hate the message we bring. The world does not want to hear God’s standards of right and wrong. When they hear what God condemns and look at their own lives they become aware that God will condemn them for their lifestyle. No, they would rather create their own standards. And when they want to be right with God the world will decide how to do it. They certainly don’t want to hear that God did it all through Jesus – after all, they wouldn’t get any of the glory. They couldn’t take credit for saving themselves. The world hates the Christian and his message.

The prophet Jeremiah experienced this hatred. It was Jeremiah’s job to tell the people of Judah they were not being faithful to the Lord. He was calling them to repent and to return to the Lord and receive the Lord’s blessing. Jeremiah was trying to help the people of Judah, but the people of Judah would not have it. Some men from Jeremiah’s home town plotted his murder. Jeremiah reports that his enemies said, “Let us destroy the tree and its fruit; let us cut him off from the land of the living, that his name be remembered no more.” They wanted no trace left of Jeremiah or his message.

Perhaps you will not be the target of a murder plot or imprisoned for what you say, but still the people of this world plot against you. Maybe at work you leave the room when the joking becomes coarse or immoral and you find that your presence in the lunch room is not as desirable as it once was. They don’t like the non-verbal message you send about their jokes. The people have plotted against you. Perhaps you tell others about your Savior, but the anti-Christian idea of evolution has been promoted so heavily by the world that your confession often meets with ridicule. The people have plotted against you

This doesn’t exactly inspire confidence, does it? Our desire to tell others about Christ drains from our body and like Jeremiah we feel betrayed – “like a gentle lamb led to the slaughter.” We are tempted to ask, “Where is God? If Jesus won the victory over sin death and the devil why do I suffer so much defeat?” With growing doubt comes growing uncertainty at the next opportunity we have to proclaim God’s word. Instead of proclaiming God’s truth we are tempted to just go along with the coarse jokes or we decide to keep our mouths shut when we have the opportunity to tell someone about Jesus.

There is no reason for our doubt. As much as they might try to harm us or intimidate us the people plot for nothing. God knows their plan just as he knew the plan to take Jeremiah’s life. As Jeremiah said, “Because the Lord revealed their plot to me, I knew it, for at that time he showed me what they were doing.” God knew their plan and stopped them.

Consider how God also knew and overturned Satan’s plans to keep you from heaven. Satan wanted you in hell, but God sent his Son to suffer hell in our place and tells us about it in his Word. Satan tries to convince you that God is a stern judge, not a loving Father, so God gave you baptism to make you his child and by the baptismal font you are reminded, “I am God’s child, he is my loving Father.” Satan tries to push you to despair over your sin, so God gave you the Lord’s Supper where he forgives your sin as he gives you the very body and blood that purchased your forgiveness.

Now there is comfort for this life. If God knew Satan’s plans he also knows the plans of Satan’s allies. Not only does our Lord know their plans but he is willing and able to do something about them. He may reveal those plans to us, as he did with Jeremiah. He may choose to stop our enemy without us ever knowing that there was a plan against us. He may use the plans of the enemy to bless us instead of causing us harm as our enemy intends.

Just look at the plans the Pharisees had to kill Jesus. They plotted for months to get rid of a political and spiritual rival, but God planned from the very beginning to get rid of sin, Satan, and death. The Pharisees thought they were successful, but the success belonged to God. It was God’s plan to send Jesus to live a perfect life for us on this earth even though the people around him were constantly plotting against him. And it was God’s plan that Jesus die on the cross and suffer hell in our place.

If God, in his plan to save us from Satan’s plot, subjected his Son to the pain of hell in our place, will he then leave us without hope in the hands of people of this world? No, the people of this world will plot and plan, but their plans will not succeed. God’s plan will succeed. The people plot for nothing, but God achieves his plan.

While on this earth we will not be able to avoid persecution yet we can be confident and comforted that God will achieve his plan. The people plot for nothing because God will use the plotting of the people for our benefit.

Just as the Pharisees plotted against Christ, people will plot against those who follow Christ. The man in Indonesia will collect money to persecute Christians; lawmakers in Canada will call portions of Scripture “hate speech”; and in the United States laws will limit how we share the Gospel. Yet, we can still proclaim the Gospel boldly because the people plot for nothing. God knows their plan and God achieves his plan.

Amen.

The Apostle Paul asked the same question more than 1500 years before Hamlet. To live or to die – “what shall I choose?” Paul knew it was up to God to decide when he would die, but he had a reason for contemplating these two options. He was in prison in Rome for preaching the Gospel and very soon his future would be decided – he would be released or executed. If he could make the choice which would he prefer – to live or to die?

However, Paul’s deliberation is very different than Hamlet’s. While Hamlet was trying to decide the lesser of two evils, Paul is contemplating which of two wonderful choices would be better – to live or to die! Either way Paul knew God was working out his deliverance from the evils of this world.

To live or to die – both are good. Which do you prefer? Let’s consider Paul’s question for ourselves.

If you had a choice between living and dying, wouldn’t you want to live? For most people the choice is obvious – being alive sure seems better than being dead, but for Paul and for us as Christians there is more to life than just tritely saying, “It beats the alternative”. Paul says, “to live is Christ.” For the Christian to be alive means Christ is your life. He is the substance of your life. Christ is your goal and the reason for your actions. Christ is constantly in view.

In fact Christ is the reason for your life. You could turn Paul’s statement around and say to have Christ is to live. Without Christ you have no life. I want you to think back to the time you were dead – spiritually dead. From the time you were conceived, you were dead, but Christ came to you through the waters of baptism and you became alive.

Christ is our life, yet even now every time you make something other than Christ your life, you invite death to come back to you. Every self-centered choice rather than Christ-centered choice is a step back into the dark death that once controlled us. When Christ and his word are the motivating and guiding principle of your life, in other words, when for you “to live is Christ”, then that is the life of Christ revealed in you. When money, personal time, or your own ideas of right and wrong drive what you do, then you are moving away from life toward death.

But with Christ there is forgiveness and with forgiveness there is life. Christ comes to you with his sacrifice for your sins already complete, and he fills you with life again. Because he gives us life, it is a joy to give that life back to him. It is a joy to serve him for as long as he gives us breath. Yes, as Christians, “to live is Christ.”

But is life better than death? For us as Christians, “to live is Christ,” but Paul also said, “to die is gain.” “Gain?” “To die is gain?” That’s not the way the world thinks of death. From the world’s point of view when you die, you lose everything! It all goes to someone else. That’s why you write a will, so you can try to exercise some control over what used to be yours after you die. But there is so much more to gain in a Christian death than the wealth you have amassed while on this earth.

Think about this scenario. You are going to receive ten million dollars next week. It doesn’t matter how it will happen, you know it will happen. Knowing what is coming how concerned will you be when you find out your car needs $1000 in repairs? You wouldn’t worry, right? As soon as your money comes you are going to buy a new car. The same us true with the kingdom of God. The wealth of heaven is yours. You have God’s guarantee and when you die you will be able to enjoy that wealth to the full. Why, then, is there any reason to worry about losing anything you might own in this world? “To die is gain!”

So death is better than life, right? Yet, if I live, it means “fruitful labor for me.” Understand that the joy that Paul had in sharing the gospel is our joy too. As you share the gospel, on your own or as part of this congregation, God promises it will bear fruit. So all of our labor in the Lord is fruitful labor. As long as we live on this earth and serve our Lord, God works through us to produce fruit. There is joy in knowing that God can and does use us to make a difference in this world. Then, to live is good!

But then again, to die and be with Christ is “better by far.” I’m sure Paul looked forward to hearing those words from his Savior, “Well done good and faithful servant, come and share your master’s happiness.” Doesn’t every Christian long to hear those words? Doesn’t every Christian long to enjoy the company of his Savior forever?

On the other hand, God leaves us here on this earth to serve our fellow Christians. They need us. As long as we are here on this earth, God has a reason for it. Our life serves some purpose in the kingdom. For example, when I was a student at the seminary, my fellow students and I would bring a devotion to a local nursing home once a week. God may have had many reasons for those people to be in the nursing home, but one of them was to give the seminary students the opportunity to serve them with the gospel.

I can remember one lady who because of her illness only said the word “here” and she would say this word over and over again even while the students were giving their devotion. On Easter when one of the students was giving his devotion and I was there to assist, the student talked about the resurrection of Jesus, and the assurance we have of our own resurrection. Suddenly this one lady stopped saying “here” and said, “that’s right.” I believe God placed that woman there so that I would see that the Holy Spirit works even when we can not see him working. As long as we live on this earth, God uses us to serve other Christians.

But when we die we will be “with Christ”, and we will enjoy it. Our labor here on earth will be done. The battle against sinful flesh will be over. We will enjoy the sweet taste of victory and have our rest. Perhaps there will still be service to perform, service to our God and Lord, but will be the most enjoyable and satisfying work that one could think of. Yes, to die is good!

In the end, whether I live or I die. Christ is exalted. That is the greatest desire of every Christian, that Christ may be magnified and glorified, that his name may be great. And not just that Christ is glorified, but the Christ be glorified in us. If I live Christ is glorified by the work he does through me. When I die Christ will be glorified by the work he has brought to completion for me. Either way Christ is exalted and glorified.

The words we focused on today were words Paul wrote to the Philippian congregation while he sat in prison, but really, what is a little prison time here on earth for the sake of the Gospel when you know you will escape the prison of hell for all eternity. It didn’t matter to Paul how things went in that Roman courtroom, he already knew the outcome for him in God’s courtroom.

We have the same confidence. Unlike Hamlet, we know what waits for us in the “undiscovered country” beyond the grave and we anxiously await our Savior to call us there. So we have two wonderful things that could happen to us. To live on this earth and be used by God to share the gospel – that is truly great. To die and be with my Savior that is even better. What shall I choose? I leave it up to Christ. Jesus, what plans do you have for me? I rejoice on whatever path you take me.

Amen.

Was there ever a relationship that you were unsure of? Perhaps you just offended a friend and you didn’t know if you were still friends or if that person even wanted to see you again? Now just imagine the relationship Adam and Eve had with God before they sinned. It was the closest relationship possible – God lived in them and they lived in God. God blessed them with everything they needed and more, and God was pleased with everything they did. Pleased, that is, until they ate the fruit God told them not to eat. They realized they had ruined their perfect relationship with God, and they were afraid. They had no hope of restoring this relationship on their own. Yet, in love God sent his son, Jesus Christ, to restore this relationship. Now as a believer in Jesus Christ we have this close personal relationship with God. God lives in us, and we live in God. We know this is true by God’s display of love and we can see this from our own display of love.

How do we know that our relationship with God has been made right again? When we look with our eyes at the world around us we see cancer and car wrecks and murder. Tragedy strikes our own lives, and if it isn’t something major then it is the little problems that eat away at us day after day. Even when we look inside ourselves we see the refuse of our own sinful thoughts. What is in us is not God pleasing and our conscience convicts us. Can our relationship with God really be as good as John says when he writes, “God lives in us and we live in God?”

John knows what he’s talking about. He saw firsthand the one sent to fix this relationship. John wrote, “We have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the savior of the world.” This savior is Jesus Christ. John stayed with Jesus throughout his ministry. John was there and saw Jesus hang on the cross and die. John touched Jesus after the resurrection and can verify that Jesus is alive. John is a reliable witness to the events that brought us back into fellowship with God – a reliable witness to God’s display of love for us.

We know God lives in us and we live in God because we see God’s display of love. As we look at baptism we see the water that washes away our guilt before God and makes us his child. As we look at the bread and wine of the Lord’s Supper, we are looking at the body and blood of Jesus that paid the penalty we deserve for our sins. As we read and study God’s Word, God displays his love for us in the story of Jesus Christ his Son.

As if that were not enough, God the Father gives us his Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit works through baptism, the Lord’s Supper and God’s Holy Word to create and strengthen our faith in Jesus Christ. It is only by this Holy Spirit that we can acknowledge that Jesus is the Son of God. When we confess in the creed, “I believe in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord.” we have proof that our relationship with God is good. For God tells us “If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him and he in God.”

What about those day-to-day problems and the tragedy in our life – the car wreck or even the cancer? What about the feelings of guilt that I carry with me as my conscience reminds me of my sin? John reminds us, “Perfect love drives out fear.” Because of God’s perfect love for me, I do not need to fear what the problems or tragedy or cancer or guilt will do to me. Fear and love are not compatible. John says, “there is no fear in love.” “Fear has to do with punishment,” and I have proof that God lives in me and I live in God. God does not and will not punish me. Everything that happens to me is only allowed by God’s perfect love. We have that beautiful promise from God, “we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” (Rom 8:28)

But am I still afraid? Sometimes I am. I am a sinner and my love for God is not perfect. I still fear that my work will not get done on time, that I might get sick, that the Lord may take one of my children away from me, that my sins are just too big to forgive or any number of other fears. But God keeps his promise and uses even these fears to pull me closer to him. To get rid of these fears I go to God’s Word and to the sacraments where I see the display of God’s love in Christ Jesus and where the Holy Spirit works to strengthen my faith in God’s love and drive out fear. Now I, along with all believers, can have confidence even on the Day of Judgment that God lives in us and we live in God. Christ has restored our relationship with God.

We know and believe the love God has for us. He tells us about his love in his Word and through that Word and the sacraments God’s Holy Spirit creates a faith that confesses Jesus Christ as God’s Son. Here is proof that God lives in us and we live in God, and now we can see the results of this relationship in our own display of love to others.

John said, “We love because he first loved us.” This love from God wells up inside of us and overflows to others, especially to other believers. It will just happen as we focus on God’s love for us. This love that we display is modeled after God’s love – it is selfless and self-sacrificing, unlike the love of this world often based on selfish desires. Seeing this display of love in our lives, we say, “God lives in me and I live in God, because if that were not true I would not love like this.”

Our love for others is not optional. We are told, “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ yet hates his brother, he is a liar for anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. And he has given us this command: whoever loves God must also love his brother.”

Perhaps the question comes to mind, “Do I love my brother?” Do I love my brothers and sisters in Christ who share this sanctuary with me? Do I display my love by encouraging them in their faith or to gently leading them back to Christ when they sin? Do I love my brothers and sisters in Christ who are spread throughout this country and the world? Do I display my love by remembering them in my prayers or supporting them with my offerings? “Whoever lives in love lives in God and God in him.”

I must admit that my display of love to others falls far short of God’s display of love for me in Christ. Even though we might look at our own display of love and wonder if God in fact is still living in us, let us look to God’s Word and to the sacraments and be assured of what God has done for us. He has forgiven us for our imperfect display of love and by his perfect love we are filled with love which overflows to others.

Our relationship with God is restored. God lives in us and we live in him. Even though sin clouds our view of this relationship and fears rise in our hearts, we have the same relationship with God that Adam and Eve had before they sinned. God does bless us with every good thing and because of Christ God is pleased with our display of love. In heaven it will be clear that God lives in us and we live in God.

Amen.

Aristotle sat at the feet of Plato and Plato sat at the feet of Socrates. Their ideas still influence the world today. Johann Sebastian Bach had several children who learned much about music while sitting at their father’s feet and became excellent musicians themselves. Consider what a privilege it is to sit at the feet of learned and accomplished men. Consider, also, the privilege Mary had as she sat at the feet of Jesus. Imagine, sitting at those feet that would one day walk to Golgotha, sitting at those feet that would be pierced by a nail in order to save us. What a privilege that must have been.

Dear fellow children of God, you have this same privilege. You sit at Jesus’ feet every time you open his Word. Every family devotion or personal devotion, every time you come to church or Bible class or Sunday school, every time you sing a hymn, you sit at Jesus’ feet and you give attention to those precious words coming from his lips. Yes, we do sit at Jesus’ feet. It is all we need and it will not be taken away.

This story is familiar. Jesus and his disciples were traveling and came to the home of Mary and Martha. Martha invited them in and was working hard to prepare a meal, but Mary sat at Jesus’ feet to listen. Martha thought Mary should also help with supper and said so, but Jesus told her “only one thing is needed”. Of course Mary chose that one thing and it was not going to be taken from her.

We can certainly understand that listening to God’s Word is important. We need to hear the gospel over and over again so that our faith becomes stronger, but is that the only thing we need? What about all the other things that we do on a day-to-day basis in order to have food on the table and clothes to wear and a place to live? Aren’t those “needed”?

To help us get to the heart of the matter, let’s consider this hypothetical question, “If God asked you, ‘Why should I let you into my heaven?’” What would you answer? What will you tell God? Will you tell him about the boards and committees that you served on or how you volunteered for this or that? Or will you tell him about all the times you loved your neighbor and the good you did for others? No, He will point out the many times you disobeyed him. Besides, without Christ, even the good things we do are like filthy rags, as Isaiah tells us. No, there really is only one thing to say, “God, your Son, Jesus, lived a perfect life for me and died on the cross for me, and now, because of Jesus I am holy and blameless in your sight. That is why you should let me into heaven.”

As Christians, eternal life in heaven is our goal. We can only reach that goal through a faith that is created and strengthened through the Gospel message that Jesus is our Savior. We only hear that message by sitting at Jesus’ feet. Sitting at Jesus’ feet is all that we need, the only thing we need. What good does anything else in this world do for us if we don’t end up in heaven? If we suffer forever in hell, isn’t everything on this earth worthless?

Now, let’s talk a little about Martha and what she was doing. Martha certainly believed in Jesus as her Savior and loved him dearly. She wanted to show this love for him. We hear that “Martha opened her home to him” and we know she was busy preparing a meal for Jesus and his disciples. She wanted to serve her Savior. All of this is good and pleasing in God’s sight, but Jesus gently asks her to look at her priorities. Jesus said, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and upset about many things.” Jesus doesn’t condemn what Martha is doing. What Martha is doing is good, but Jesus says, “Mary has chosen what is better.”

The work we do to serve our Savior at home and in the church is good and wonderful. We want to volunteer at church and we want to take care of our families at home, but let’s not forget what is better and what is truly needed. There is a danger if we regularly fail to sit at Jesus’ feet that we will not know how to serve him. Our service becomes what we want to do rather than what he wants us to do. It’s like a little boy who is methodically breaking his mother’s best china, one plate at a time. The mother frantically asks, “What are you doing?” The boy responds, “I love you so much mom that I want to break these plates.” That boy should have asked his mother for her ideas about showing love. If we are not sitting at Jesus’ feet we could find ourselves breaking God’s china.

Right now as we hear about Mary and Martha, Jesus gives us a way to serve him. In fact it is the greatest way to serve him. It has been said that “the best service we can give Jesus is to let him serve us.” That is why we come to church and read our Bibles at home. What does God gain by our worship and praise? God is still the almighty God if we don’t give him these things, but we are so much better off when God serves us by his Word. This is the most important part of the worship service – Jesus serves us! That’s what it means to sit at Jesus’ feet. It’s all we need.

As we sit at Jesus’ feet what will we see and hear? We will see those feet, worn and dusty, that traveled this earth as Jesus listened to his heavenly Father and obeyed God in everything. We will see the nail marks in his feet. We will know his wounds were suffered for us. We will recognize in his words the same voice that called out, “It is finished” as Jesus paid for our sins. As we sit at Jesus’ feet we will hear that Jesus knows we sometimes try to serve him in our own way and he knows that we get caught up with the busyness of life and we don’t take time to sit at his feet as often as we could. We will also hear that Jesus forgives us, that he lived a perfect life in our place. All the broken china is swept away.

We know this one thing is all we need and Jesus promises he will not take it away. We can come and sit at his feet as often as we like.

We can be sure that the one who made that tremendous sacrifice to save us will not then withdraw that very thing through which he gives us the benefits of his sacrifice. Our God is not a cruel God but loving God. We can be certain that God’s Word will be there in good times and in bad. We will always have that opportunity to sit at Jesus’ feet.

However, there are many examples throughout history of times when people no longer valued God’s Word. As they came to sit at Jesus’ feet less and less, the opportunities to sit at Jesus’ feet became fewer and fewer. Martin Luther describes God’s Word as a gentle rain shower; it stays in one place for a time and then eventually moves on as it finds other people who value the gospel.

We show God how much we value the gospel by coming to church and Bible class. We place a value on sitting at Jesus’ feet when we read God’s Word and we have personal and family devotions. When we look for opportunities to hear God’s Word God blesses us by continually and abundantly feeding us with his Word. He provides faithful pastors and teachers.

So we continue to sit at Jesus’ feet. We sit at Jesus’ feet because that is the one thing we really need. What a comfort it is to know that God will not take this precious message away from us.

Amen.

“Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” That was the new command Jesus gave to his disciples as they left the upper room and went to the Garden of Gethsemane the night before Jesus was crucified. It is also Jesus’ command for you. It is not a suggestion. It is not some optional feature to being a Christian, nor is it some hopeful wish on the part of Jesus. It is a command.

When Jesus gives this command he says this is a new command. It doesn’t sound all that new at first. It sounds a lot like the second table of the law where God tells us how to treat others. Jesus sums it up with “love your neighbor as yourself.” But this command is different. Jesus connects this command to love with his own love for us. It is not a fear of punishment that drives us, but the love of Christ. His love is our motivation. We could say that it is really his love working in us.

This command, then, is not a burden, not something that we as Christians dread. This love will flow from a heart that knows it has been loved by Christ and this love will be evidence that you have been loved. So love one another because you have been loved, and love one another to show others that you have been loved.

I want to tell you that I have enjoyed catechism class with you. We got to know each other better. I watched you grow in your understanding of God’s word. I enjoyed answering your questions, no matter how strange or bizarre they were.

As we studied God’s Word you grew in your faith and in your understanding of the basics of our Christian faith. I want to make it clear to you that you are not done. I encourage you to continue your studies in God’s word because in that word you find life, peace, and the only true happiness that there is on this earth. You have just learned the basics of our Christian faith. These past two years we have simply put together a framework or a skeleton on which all your future learning can hang. Continue to put flesh on that skeleton. The same is true for everyone here. If you have not recently added to your knowledge of God’s Word, then I encourage you to get back in to Bible class or even take one of the Bible information classes I conduct on occasion. Ask me about it.

There is something else I want you to learn from our time together. I want you to look at my example. I think each one of you would say that I care about each one of you. The love I have for you is genuine and I sincerely pray that each one of you will continue to let me be part of your life. But recognize that the concern I have shown for each of you is simply the love of Christ revealed in me. So I say love one another. As I have loved you so you must love one another. Just as the apostle Paul says, “Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ.”

In catechism class we learned that the entire Bible points to that one person, Jesus Christ, as our Savior. All of Scripture tells us how Jesus has loved us. So love one another because you have been loved by Jesus.

Before you were born he knew your name. Your name is written in the Lamb’s book of Life. He knows your whole life. “All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.” King David wrote. He knows you, your likes, dislikes, your personality – he made you. He “knit you together in your mother’s womb.” Even though he already knows everything there is to know about you, he still cherishes every word you speak to him. He tells you to pray, and he promises to listen and answer.

Even more important, he also wants to talk to you. He wants to tell you about what he did for you. He wants you to see his love for you in the way he healed so many others, in the way he pronounced forgiveness over repentant sinners, in the way he encouraged his disciples in spite of their shortcomings. He wants you to see his love for you in the way he spread out his arms for you on the cross and covered all our loveless acts with his blood.

Even though you would have nothing to do with him on your own, he came to you in Baptism and with his Word. He washed you clean in those baptismal waters and clothed you in his own perfect white robe.

This is his love for you and now he says in the same way that I loved you, you love one another.

What does that love for others look like? We are perhaps too familiar with the world’s kind of love – a love that says the words “I love you.” It may be affectionate, but it also often wants more than it gives, or perhaps is only there in the easy times.

You will be different. As you love one another, rejoice with each other in the good times, comfort one another in times of grief, and always encourage one another in faith.

At times that means that if one of you falls into sin, the others will want to bring that one person back to God, they will want to try to call that one to repentance. The same is true if one of you begins to be absent from the church. Be willing to be the Shepherd’s staff that God uses to bring the straying sheep back to the flock. It is a difficult thing, but when you love someone you care about their spiritual well-being.

When a group of Christians love one another in that way, in the same way Jesus has loved us, then that is real evangelism. Jesus tells us to love one another so that others will know that we are his disciples, in that way others will know that we have been loved by God himself.

This is the kind of love the world craves and longs for. When they see your love for one another they will want to know why. They will ask questions. The early church in Jerusalem was a good example of this kind of love. They shared their belongings, they worshiped together, they loved each other and the church grew quickly. People saw the love they had for one another and they wanted to be a part of it. The jailor who guarded Paul and Silas in prison also saw in them the peace and joy that comes from the love of Christ and asked how he could be loved by God.

When you love one another like this. You will be salt on the earth, and you will be a light shining in a dark place. There’s a saying, “All the darkness in the world cannot extinguish the light of a single candle.” The love of Christ shining through you is like a candle that no darkness can extinguish.

Others will see how you have been loved and so many ways and will look for it themselves. So love one another. You have been loved and you are loved, by your family, by me, by the members of this congregation, and especially by your savior Jesus Christ. So love one another because you have been loved and then also love one another so that others will see that you have been loved.

Amen.