Sermon for 12/4/13 "What's in a Name?"

Sermon “What's in a Name?”

Isaiah 62, Colossians 1

What’s in a name?

 People adopt names for use on the Internet sometimes.

 “Christian” name

 Change of name at marriage

 Corporate entity

 when a pet becomes a family member

 the chair with a name

Isaiah 62

 Forsaken

 Desolate

 Sought Out

 Married

 Holy

 Redeemed

Colossians 1

 alienated

 reconciled

How does this re-naming happen?

God has loved his world, his creation, the people he created.

 separated by sin

 forsaken

 desolate

By his coming as a human, Jesus, God the Son, we are confronted with

 Immanuel, God with us

 Jesus, the deliverer

 Messiah, the anointed one

As we trust in Jesus, he adopts us. We become

 sought out

 married - taken to his side

 holy - set apart

 redeemed - bought back from destruction

 reconciled - put into a right relationship

What’s your name?

Lord, take us who were not your people and make us see our name, our identity, our hope in you. Flood our world with the hope that you give, the adoption as your children, our eternal destiny.

Sermon for 11/18/12

Sermon: The Confidence of the End Grace, mercy, and peace to you in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. There are some people in this world who are obsessed with different things. Do you know any of them? Some people aren’t satisfied unless they know all the stats not only for their favorite football team but for all the football teams. Some people are focused on keeping that lawn free from weeds and mown smooth like a carpet. Some people have perfectionistic tendencies, some even say I do. And someone recently remarked on my terribly messy office, saying I must be obsessive about keeping it tidy because it was so neat. Sometimes we see our obsessions and sometimes they are more visible to other people. Does our world have an obsession? I think it does. I think there’s one within the Church as well. It’s an obsession with the end times, the things of the last days, the fear of God’s final judgment. If you want to make a lot of money as a Christian author, write a book about heaven. Write a book about the transition from earthly life to eternal life. Write a book about the end times. Would you like to have a full church building? Hold a multiple-evening seminar on who the Antichrist is. Would you like an empty church building? Hold a multiple-evening seminar on who the Christ is. That shows the obsession our world has. And today, as we move to the end of the Church year our Scriptures look to the time of the end. In just two weeks we will start the new year, with Advent, the time for both mourning and eager anticipation of the coming Christ. But for now we are bringing the year to a close. We are looking at the end times, the last days, the coming of Christ at the end of the world. From our very brief passage in Daniel I’ve pulled three critical points. 1) Eternity is for everyone. 2) Those who are “wise” are those who stand firm trusting Jesus. 3) All who trust in Jesus will be delivered in perfect safety during the last days. First, eternity is for everyone. In the resurrection, at that last day, all the dead will be raised, all the living will be taken. Everyone will be judged. Some will have what the Bible calls life, others will have what Daniel calls “shame” and “contempt” that will last forever. All people are ushered into an eternal existence. Everlasting death is pictured in the Bible as conscious punishment, pain, grief, suffering, agony. Unlike the Seventh-Day Adventists and the Jehovah’s Witnesses, who say that unbelievers will simply cease to exist, the Bible teaches an eternity of conscious torment for those who die outside of Christ. Sadly, in 1995 the Anglicans took an annihilationist position as well, becoming the first mainstream Christian group to take an official stand in favor of it. We have to ask ourselves what death looks like in the Bible. God told Adam and Eve that in the day they ate of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil they would die. How did they die? They became subject to separation from God. They became subject to the kind of pain that we endure because we are not in unity with our Lord. This is death. And in eternity those who are dead, dead to Christ, dead to God, live on and on with all the pain of the curse of God. They have shame, they have bitterness, they have hatred, and they have nothing at all to do with it. They are described as being in a perpetual burning with no hope of relief. Eternity is for everyone. We don’t just cease to exist. There should be great fear in approaching death outside of Christ. So I’m going to pause for a moment and sound a little less like a Lutheran. I trust you’ll be understanding. The Bible calls us to trust in Jesus. The Bible tells us that we can be raised to glory as we are looking to Jesus in faith. Maybe you are someone who has just come to the Church recently, or maybe you are someone who has been around Christians for a very long time. But being around the Church doesn’t always mean you are looking to Jesus in faith. Do you believe that Jesus is, as the book of Hebrews describes him, the author and finisher of your salvation? Or are you someone who may be unprepared for eternity, who is not trusting in Jesus? Don’t be taken, don’t be raised to shame. Believe that Jesus is here for you, full of grace and truth, full of forgiveness, the one who will give you eternal life in his glory, in his presence. Trust in him. And whether you are just now trusting in him or have believed him before, turn to him, daily hoping in his mercy and his forgiveness. He is faithful and just to forgive you your sins and cleanse you from all unrighteousness. Eternity is for everyone. Trusting in Christ we are raised to glory. This brings us to our second point, which will be very short.  Those who Daniel presents as “wise” are the people who have “the brightness of the heavens” (Daniel 12:3, NIV1984). Who are the wise people? Those are the people who stand firm, trusting Jesus, as we read in our Gospel passage today. Whom do we trust? What do we trust? Do we remember that Jesus is the one who is presenting us to God the Father as his perfect bride, dressed all in the white robes of Christ’s righteousness? This is our Lord’s promise. He will awaken us to him. We have no reason for fear. We have no reason for doubt. It is not our own works, it is not our own righteousness, but it is Jesus’ perfect life which he applies to us as we trust in him. Would you like to be perfectly good, perfectly right, perfectly holy? This is what Jesus does for you when he forgives you and presents you to God the Father. Eternity is for everyone. Those who are wise, trusting in Christ, are presented to God in Christ’s holiness. And now our third point, all who trust in Jesus will be delivered in perfect safety during the last days. When are these last days? That brings us to another doctrinal difficulty in the Church, and it’s one that has taken hold of this country in a very serious way, the doctrine of the millenium. For almost two thousand years now, the view of the vast majority of the Church has been that we are in the last days, as Peter proclaimed in the second chapter of Acts. By faith in Christ we are in that time period presented in Revelation chapter 20 as the “millennial” or “thousand-year” reign of Christ on earth. The idea of the millennium, which means “period of a thousand years” seems to be taken from a simple bit of symbolic math which the author of Revelation presents. The trinitarian number three plus the number for completion and perfection, seven, equals ten. This is why there are so many threes, sevens, and tens in the Bible. Now I’m no expert at biblical numerology, nor do I want to be one. Many people try to find symbolic number patterns throughout the Bible and miss the fact that the Bible is all about Jesus. Yet this number, ten, when cubed, ten times ten times ten, see the “three” coming back, adds up to a thousand. When used outside of actual counts of people, such as in military actions, the idea of a thousand is intended to indicate as much perfection, as much completion, as you could have. So here we have a thousand year period. It’s a time period nobody could live through, a time period nobody could completely count systematically. It’s the time period of the last days, Christ’s gracious rule on earth, the time of the Church. Some people have decided to look forward to a coming thousand year reign. They find it makes Revelation 20 relatively easy to explain. But it makes it impossible to explain many of Jesus’ statements in the Gospels without having to twist his words about his kingdom being present, his believers seeing his kingdom, all sorts of statements which he makes to comfort us. When confronted with the millennial views of the more radical parts of the Reformation there are two directions they take us. One of them, held by many Presbyterians, is called “postmillennialism.” In this picture, by working diligently for social change we will bring the Gospel to all nations and usher in a period of Christ’s rule on earth. This pushes our Calvinist brothers and sisters to enthusiastic missionary activity. While the emphasis on proclaiming the Gospel is something we should all learn from and embrace, the Bible doesn’t picture us as bringing a time of peace. It says Jesus brought that peace when he died for the sins of the world. The other direction millennialism can take us is more common among Baptists and the more broadly evangelical people in our culture. They say that the world will reach a crisis point, Jesus will come, and at that point he will judge the world and usher in his thousand year reign. This “premillennial” view still can’t explain the time of the Church that we are in. Both views are full of difficulties. That’s why the historic Church says we are in the millennium now, but that it is not necessarily limited to a literal thousand years. What’s at the heart and center of these views? It is that Jesus is working to deliver his people, and they will be brought to him perfectly safely. There is no fear in the love of Christ. We see in Revelation that the throne of God is surrounded by a great multitude of people who have trusted in Jesus. The people who have been killed for their faith, the people who have died of natural causes or in accidents or from cause of warfare not related to their Christian faith, all who die trusting in Jesus are perfectly safe in the resurrection. Jesus, the Lord of heaven and earth, is able to bring all who trust in him into the presence of the Father. We will all be perfectly safe. One of my historical heroes, Stonewall Jackson, when asked how he seemed perfectly at ease on the battlefield with bullets and cannon balls flying around him, said that in the arms of Jesus his savior he was just as safe there as he was at home in his bed. His Lord and Savior would protect him and bring him home as a partaker of the resurrection no matter the circumstances of his death. Eternity is for everyone. Those who are wise trust in Christ. Those who trust in Christ are perfectly safe both now and for eternity. Let us then trust in our Lord as we join with the multitude of saints who have gone to their eternal rest and with those who are still laboring on this earth, confessing our common faith together, trusting that Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith will make us shine in the heavenly realms forever. Amen.

Sermon for 11/11/12

Sermon “A Little and A Lot” Dearest Lord, open our hearts to receive from you according to the riches of your grace, in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Today we read about an elderly lady, no husband, no money, one who has outlived her resources. She has a little bit of money, but not much, really not enough. She’s living in poverty with nobody to take care of her. I’m sure if you have been around Christianity for long you have heard sermons about the widow from our Old Testament reading in 1 Kings 17 as well as the widow in the Gospel from Mark 12. Neither of these women has any assets, at least not that we can see. Neither has any hope in earthly things. One is preparing to eat her last meal. One is giving a small amount of money which is a lot to her. I’ve heard the sermons and you probably have also, those about how when we dedicate all that we have to the Lord he takes it and makes it a lot. It preaches well. Leaves us with a good feeling, especially if we don’t have much money and we decide to make a big pledge by faith to support the church or maybe a missions project. The preacher turns into an auctioneer and begins working the price up, building an emotional frenzy that will bring in the pledges. Here’s one I saw, actually experienced, once. The evangelist was talking about the love of money being the root of all evil. Of course, he misquoted 1 Timothy 6:10, just as I did. The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. But he persuaded people to find their wallets, take money out of them, hold it up to God, and wave it before Him, renouncing the Devil. Then he proceeded to pass the offering plates an extra time. Tremendous peer pressure to put money in the plate. Who seemed to be loving money? But people will take these passages and use them to pile the guilt on their hearers. If we truly trust the Lord, won’t we want to give away everything we have? If we really trust God, won’t we pledge our last cent to his kingdom? If we really trust God enough we can dedicate ourselves, our resources, our families, all we have, to his service. Now don’t get me wrong. Our Lord calls us to lay down our lives. He demands our life, our all. There’s no question about that. Yet we see the Bible full of examples of people, wealthy people, using their resources wisely to further God’s work on earth, including providing for the needs of their family in their own generation and in future generations. If God has blessed you with the ability to earn money and set it aside for your family, use it wisely. Give in a planned and reasoned way, give extra when there are needs you are aware of and when you are able to contribute to those needs, and care for your family. I’m veering off from the Gospel passage for a moment. I hope you’ll forgive me. Many people talk about the “tithe,” a 10% portion of your income, as the appropriate amount to give. They will tie this back to Old Testament passages requiring the giving of a tenth. “Tithe” literally means “tenth.” This seems to be an idea that has caught on and has remained within the body of Christ. I’ve even run across church congregations in which the membership agrees to give a tenth of their gross income in the offering or to be subject to church discipline. I know some of us in this room have been in situations where that is the norm, and it’s a good norm, at least the giving part, not the discipline part. If everyone in this congregation gave ten percent we would have enough to help those who are in need, to support many ministry projects locally and around the world, we’d have an abundance. It isn’t a bad idea at all. But there is something flawed in the reasoning. At the time when God called Israel to make those offerings, they provided not only for the needs of the priesthood and for charity to the poor, they also provided for all the functions of government which were necessary in the nation. There was no separate civil government taxing the people. To make matters more complicated, in some years there were multiple different offerings of a tenth of your increase, resulting in a much higher level of giving. In the New Testament we do see Jesus complimenting the Pharisees because they are rigorous about giving the offerings required by Moses, but we also see the apostolic pattern from 1 Corinthians 16:2 of setting aside something on the first day of the week, Sunday, “in keeping with” income. The percentage isn’t mentioned. At that time there is a civil government which taxes its people. There are plenty of needs for giving. There will always be poor among us. There will always be projects we need to accomplish. But the idea of the ten percent doesn’t seem to be specifically what the New Testament would require. Instead we see a picture much more like a planned amount that is fitting in terms of our income and the needs of others, as well as additional offerings from time to time as needs present themselves. This might just revolutionize our giving strategy. We use the money God has given us in a planned way to meet the known needs as well as we can, setting aside a budgeted amount, and supporting God’s people. At the same time we realize that the Church does not serve all the functions that our government has assumed. We give liberally so there will not be a need for continual special offerings. And we do it, like the widows in our readings today, in faith, trusting that the Lord who provided us with all we have is able to make it last as long as he wants to. We do it in faith, knowing that God’s mercy is upon us and that he will use us to show mercy upon others. We give not to be seen, but to accomplish what is needful. There, we’ve returned to mark 12. Jesus commends this widow who gives what she has. He wants us to realize that we also have nothing in particular. We ourselves are poor. We have no means of our own, it all comes from the Lord. We have no great claim to glory and honor. We simply go about our business, helping others as well as we can, in the end being unsung heroes. We give our little bit. We trust in our Lord. And as everyone does the same, we find that the confidence we have in Jesus is a great reward. We find that we are lacking nothing. And when we are lacking something, since there is an abundance of giving, we are not afraid to ask our brothers and sisters, the body of Christ, to support us in our need. What is our need? Most of the time we need prayer and encouragement. As I’ve gone around visiting people in the Faith Lutheran congregation, making it to more of the homes of people who are not shut-ins, the biggest need people have talked about has been a need for encouragement. May the Lord grant that our times of worship and fellowship together can be a time for encouragement. Have you told someone recently what a blessing he is? Have you gone to those who are sick or troubled and brought them care? It’s a job for all of us, not just the pastor. What other needs do we have? I hear from people who might come to church more often or more easily if they had a ride. Do some of us drive right past with empty seats in our cars? We used to attend a church congregation with a number of younger families. It wasn’t uncommon to find a sort of a swap meet in the parking lot after worship. Our family often had the back of the van propped open with a number of items from our house which we were no longer using, ready for others to take. Other people did the same. Sometimes we brought things to church that didn’t come back with us. Sometimes we went to church and brought back gifts. We never know what we’ll find. Sometimes there are other needs, financial needs, a need for help with a big project. Can we step up to the plate, let our needs be known, and trust that Christ’s people will meet our needs? Or do we want to be like those people Jesus talked about in Mark 12 who say their lives are in perfect order, who deny their poverty, who give rich gifts to be seen by others? May God give us the grace he gave the widow, to give out of our poverty, realizing that we have nothing that doesn’t come from our Lord, that we need his grace in every way. What is the greatest need we have, and we all do have it? It’s the need we express week after week, that need for forgiveness. Are we ready to admit our poverty in spirit before the Lord? Are we ready to confess that we are sinners in need of salvation? Are we ready to confess that we are too quick to trust in our own ways, in our own ability, in our own resources? Then let us turn to our Lord and Savior in faith. Jesus, God the Son, gave his life as a sacrifice for our sin. He gave the riches that we need, his perfect eternal life. As we look to him in trust, he will give that life to us. We don’t really bring anything, just a couple of copper coins. He brings us forgiveness, life, and salvation. And he delivers it to us freely, richly, as we trust in him and receive from the Word of God. Let us pray. Lord of all, let us see that we in ourselves are poor widows with no inheritance. Yet as you give us what we need through Word and Sacrament, make us trust you and live as those who have received all your grace and mercy. Have mercy upon us, Lord Jesus, Amen.

Sermon for 11/4/12

Sermon “Jesus the Mediator of the New Covenant” Open our hearts and minds to you, Lord of the covenant, that we may know the grace you have bestowed on us, giving your great and precious promises. This we pray in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. As with all our Bible readings, there were quite a few sermons asking to be preached today. It’s always exciting to see what the Lord would have us ponder whenever we open our Bibles. And I hope you take our readings and ponder them on your own, asking the Lord to speak through His Holy Word on a daily basis, renewing your hearts and minds. Today we’re brought to the message of God’s covenant love. This idea of a covenant comes from Old Testament customs. At the time of Abram, probably about 1500 B.C., some 3500 years ago, this custom of sealing a covenant was well established. In the ancient cultures of his time, rulers who were making a treaty would take a variety of sacrificial animals, divide them in half, make a pathway between them, then walk down the pathway together. The ground and the animals were spattered with blood. By the end of their walk, the rulers would be wet with the blood of the sacrificial animals. The smell of death was all around them. In this ceremony both of the rulers would pledge that if they were to break their agreement, their covenant, they themselves should be put to death, just like the sacrificial animals they had killed. We find a covenant like this sealed in Genesis chapter 15. If you have a Bible handy, you might want to look at this passage, in Genesis 15. God has promised Abram a son who would be his heir, who would inherit the great land of promise, who would be great, and who would be a blessing to all nations. There’s just one problem. Abram is old. He has no children. When God repeats his promise to Abram he asks how he will know that the promise will be for him. God sets up a sacrifice. Abram is to bring sacrificial animals, but he is not to pass between them. During the night, the LORD tells Abram more about his future. Then the LORD himself passes between the animals, but he doesn’t allow Abram to do so. By doing this God has said clearly, for all time, that if he fails to keep his promise he is no longer God, he deserves to be torn apart and put to death. By preventing Abram from passing through this sacrifice he says that Abram cannot and will not keep the promise. He keeps Abram from convicting himself. Over the generations the nation of Israel grew. They continued making the sacrifices that God had appointed. And these sacrifices did bring forgiveness. The people were sprinkled with the blood of their sacrifices. This sprinkling cleansed the people of God. Yet it would not have any effect except that Jesus came to pass between the sacrifices on our behalf. Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, as we read in Hebrews chapter 9, passed through death, “by his own blood” (v. 12, NIV84), bringing us eternal forgiveness. Jesus himself took the place of Abram. He took the place of Moses. He took your place, he took my place. He walked through the valley of death, the passageway between the parts of the dead animals, representing you and me, acting as our mediator. What is a mediator? Before we get ahead of ourselves I think we’d better make this clear. A mediator is, strictly speaking, a middle-man. It is the person who represents one person to another and that other person to the first person. It’s sort of like a messenger, but it is normally a messenger who has authority agreed on by both people to represent their points of view. Often in modern days a mediator is a lawyer who speaks for a client who is unable to be present, then speaks back to the client about the other party’s needs and desires. We see in this passage of Scripture that Jesus is our mediator. He is the one who works on our behalf, taking our needs before God and bringing God’s answer back to us. He is the one who walks between the sacrifices for Abram and for us. So what is the critical factor in this event? How does the author of Hebrews see it? Jesus, our priest, the one who makes sacrifice on our behalf, the one who stands for us, enters God’s presence pleading for us. But just as we have confessed, we have a problem. Jesus is like the lawyer who is coming to the judge on behalf of someone who has committed a terrible crime, one with plenty of evidence for conviction, and who has confessed that crime. What response does the judge have for us when we plead guilty of our crimes? He may commend us for our honesty. He may even thank us for coming clean. But someone has to go to jail. The penalty stands. We are guilty. The penalty of our guilt before God? As we know from Romans chapter 6 verse 23, sin receives death. We are guilty. We deserve present and eternal death. What will we do? How do we receive forgiveness? All the offerings we can make, all the sacrifices we can make, all the penalties we can pay are of no use. Someone has to die. And it looks a lot like that someone is you. It looks a lot like that someone is me. Really? Just for those “little” sins? Yes. There is no sin that is too small to convict us. There is no failure before God which goes unnoticed. Our Lord is perfect. In Matthew chapter 5 he demands that we should be perfect, just like him. Ezekiel chapter 18 tells us that the soul who sins must die. So what are we going to do? Go cry without stopping until we die? That won’t do us much good, will it? In fact, it will do us no good. There is nothing we can do of our own accord that will stop the penalty of God. He kept his promise made to Abram. He remains the true God and is not condemned. The good news in all this is that Jesus did walk down that path for us. He passed between the sacrificial animals, and he did it for us. He did it for you, he did it for me, he did it for every single man, woman, and child ever born in this world. And by doing that he stands before God as a mediator of the new covenant. He pleads before the Father that we should not be torn apart, but that he should instead. He asks the Father that our sins should be laid upon him. He asks the Father that all the sacrifices anybody had ever made should be replaced by his perfect sacrifice and that he may end it all, taking our penalty upon himself. Someone has to die. Jesus, our mediator, begs that he should be the one who dies for us. Jesus, then, is the mediator of a new covenant. He is the mediator of a covenant that is completed. He is the one who has finished the work of our forgiveness. He is the one who has wiped away all our sin, all the sin we have ever committed, all the sin we will ever commit, all our sins of commission, what we have done, all our sins of omission, what we have left undone. He has taken it all upon himself. He has died for your sin and for my sin. He has become sin for us, according to 2 Corinthians 5, so that we could become God’s righteousness. And how did he do that? He did it by having his body broken for you and for me. He did it by having his blood shed for you and for me. He has sprinkled us with the blood of his covenant, he has brought us forgiveness, life, and salvation, to as many as believe him. Do you come today with a guilty conscience before God? Jesus has taken all your sin. Do you come today with a burden of sin? Jesus has taken it away from you. Do you come today doubting whether God keeps his promises? Jesus has fulfilled all righteousness, keeping all the promises of God. Do you wonder whether this work of Jesus is for you? He has given us his true body and his true blood, whenever we gather in his name and receive his gifts of grace in communion. And this gift is for you and for me, for as many as believe that he died for us. Jesus gives you life! He is the mediator of the new covenant! As we read in 1 Peter chapter 5, let us cast our cares on him. He cares for us. When we gather to receive communion, when I raise the bread and the cup, join with me in trusting that his body is broken for you and his blood is shed for you. When you receive our Savior in your mouth, trust that he is here, as he said in John chapter 6, to give you true food and true drink that will last for eternity. Trust in our Lord Jesus Christ with me. He is the mediator of the new covenant, a covenant in his blood, which will wash you from all your sin. (2 Cor. 13.14, NIV) Now may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all, amen.

Sermon for 10/21/12

Sermon “Dealing with Difficult Passages” Lord, open my lips to speak your word with courage, truth, and grace. Open our ears and our hearts to receive what you would give us. Open our hands as your instruments, in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Our sermon today is entitled “difficult passages.” When you heard that and you were confronted with the Scriptures we read you may have started to construct an idea of what the sermon would be about. I hope some people try to predict it. But what are we talking about here? Is it the fact that these are “passages” of the Bible which are difficult? Maybe I want us to see how to deal with texts which are hard to work with, and these are difficult texts today. Or maybe we’re thinking about the theme in Ecclesiastes of our goods and possessions passing from ourselves to others. That’s a difficult thing to see, and many of us do see that we labor and toil and often don’t recognize or enjoy the gain. There’s always somebody wanting to use the money we earned, always another expense. Maybe we’re thinking about how we pass our time, sometimes in very hard labor, seldom recognizing that our hard work is for our Savior Jesus Christ. Maybe we’re concerned with the passage from Hebrews and the passage to enter into God’s rest. That’s an exciting passage, because it might refer to our release from sin as our Lord brings us forgiveness, it may refer to our release from this earthly life and entrance into heavenly blessing, it may refer to both. That’s a difficult passage in many ways. Maybe you were thinking about the text from Mark and the passage of the rich man into the kingdom of God, the camel through a needle. Yet another difficult passage of Scripture and another difficult life passage as well. So many passages here we could find ourselves in a maze! Here’s where I want to look today, though, considering Hebrews chapter 4. You might want to follow along a little bit, as we jump to vese eight in the text. I’d like to read verses 8-16 again for you so it’s fresh in all of our minds. 8 For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken later about another day.9 There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; 10 for anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from his own work, just as God did from his. 11 Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one will fall by following their example of disobedience. 12 For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. 13 Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account. 14 Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has gone through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. 15 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin. 16 Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need. The difficult passage here in Hebrews is a passage from death to life. It’s a passage from our frenzied attempts to work out our own spiritual lives to the life of rest in the Lord which we are promised by God. The author is comparing it to Israel entering the promised land. The people of Israel didn’t bring themselves into God’s promises. The Lord brought them in. They didn’t make up the plan for conquest of Canaan, God did, All the deliverance, all the protection of the people of Israel was founded on God’s calling and promise. He is the one who told them where to go and what to do, and he is the one who made them able to do his will. There’s an important principle behind the conquest of Canaan that the author of Hebrews talks about. God makes commands but he knows we are not able to keep his commands. Because we are by nature sinful and unclean, just as we confess again and again, we are incapable of doing anything that is truly pleasing to God. We can’t do it ourselves. What we can do is look to the promise of God which is included in his command. For instance, when he commands the people of Israel to take the land he is promising to give them the land. When he commands us to seek his face he promises to give us grace to do so. When he commands us to be holy as he is holy he gives us the means of grace to make us holy. When we are told to enter into God’s rest he promises to bring us into his rest. And how has he done that? Through Jesus living a perfect life, dying a perfect death, and rising again from the dead on our behalf. Jesus, who no longer dies, gives us his life and protects us from eternal death. By his grace, as we believe Jesus is our savior, we can enter into the rest, the deliverance from sin, that he has purchased for us. This entry into life, into holiness, through trusting Jesus is true entry into rest. We no longer have to strive with sin, for Jesus has already done all the striving. We no longer have to do battle with death. Jesus has already won the victory. All we do is trust that he is who he said he is and that he has done what he said he would do. Jesus commands us to enter into his rest, and he gives us the means by which we can do it. How is this passage from death to life informed? By the Word of God. If we are not guided by God’s Word we are lost indeed. In verses 12-13 we see that God’s Word is sharp, it is accurate, it cuts into us with surgical precision, doing what no human hand can do. Have you ever experienced this? I know I’ve had times when I go to church and the pastor has seemed to be looking right through me, taking the Scripture and talking as if he knows exactly what I’m thinking. There are some people who take the Scripture and are able to pin it right to my life. The pastor who was responsible for a lot of my formation as he nurtured me as an elder and leader in the church used to put it this way. He said that some people had a “thin” Bible and others had a “thick” Bible. The people with the thin Bible were the people who looked at the Gospel and didn’t see God accomplishing that much. The Bible speaks to matters of salvation but doesn’t have much to do with how we’ll live our lives, how we’ll decide what kind of candidates to vote for, how we can go about defending those who can’t defend themselves, how we will run our businesses. That’s all left up to secular sources, worldly wisdom. These are people who have a thin Bible. They finally have to trust themselves and the culture around them. Trust your heart! But what does the Bible say about that? Jeremiah 17.9 (NIV 1984) says, “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” We don’t want to trust our heart. We want to trust our Lord. What about those people with a thick Bible? These are the people who look at the Gospel and see that Jesus has redeemed all our life. They are the people who ask the Lord for their daily bread and see that God graciously provides them with all they need. They are the people who trust that Jesus has delivered them from death in eternity and that he has also rescued them from every evil that can come upon them today, including the sin they are committing. These thick Bible people know that the Lord has given them hope and help through Jesus as revealed on every page of the Bible. They are going to be wearing their Bibles out by reading them, pondering them, learning to discuss what they are reading. As a side comment, that’s exactly why I assign my confirmation students to read five chapters in the Bible each week and to come on Sunday prepared to re-tell something they were reading. How long does it take to read a chapter in the Bible? A few minutes. Would you like to know what’s even better than the confirmation student reading that chapter? It’s if the family reads it together, maybe at the dinner table, maybe at the breakfast table, maybe near bedtime, and if they spend a while letting the Scripture inform their discussion. The Scripture informs all our walk. Through the Word of God we receive what we need to pursue the righteousness of God, to enter into the rest of God. We need those thick Bibles. What is our goal? Our goal is Jesus, the one we look to, the one in whom we hope, the one all of the Bible centers upon. That’s what we read about in the end of our passage in Hebrews. Jesus is the one who is our great high priest. He is the one who comes before the Lord, who makes sacrifice on our behalf, and who becomes our sacrifice. He is the one in whom we can trust. He is the one who knows all our struggles, all our pains, all our suffering, all our weakness. Jesus is the one who became sin for us and died in our place. He is the one who suffered all the wrath of God poured out against all the sin of all humanity. Jesus is the one who can sympathize with us. And Jesus is the one all the Scripture points to. So as we make that difficult passage, the passage from death to life, the passage from striving to rest, we are making a passage from ourselves to Jesus. How do we make that passage? I hope here I don’t mess our accompanist up. You’re familiar with the revivalist hymn from the second half of the 19th century, aren’t you? “Trust and Obey”? The song has some merits, it truly does. But there’s something wrong with the theology. Are we supposed to obey? We sure are. Yet it is not our obedience. It is Jesus’ obedience that gives us rest from sin. How are we happy in Jesus? Just by trusting. He’ll take care of the obedience part. He’ll work it in us. He’ll fulfill his promise, making us able to keep his command. How do we pass from death to life? We trust in the Lord. How do we pass through this life as long as we live? We trust in the Lord. How do we finally pass from this life to the everlasting life of the resurrection? We trust in the Lord. Now may our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ take His Word and add faith to our hearing, that he may work his perfect love and perfect trust in us, in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Sermon for 10/14/12

Sermon “Something’s Missing” Lord of all, guard our hearts. Change them to honor, trust, and serve you. Let us look to you above all else, in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. This encounter Jesus has in Mark 10 would absolutely astound most of us if it were to happen to us. It’s rather rare even for me as a pastor to have someone come to me asking how to receive eternal life. And, come to think of it, the times it has happened to me the other person has been challenging me. I think those cases have probably been either because of the church body I represent or because of the “pastor uniform.” After all, there’s a large segment of American Christianity which thinks anybody associated with a Lutheran church or anybody who might wear some sort of a special dress code in ministry is almost certainly not a genuine Christian. There area lot of Christians who wish to shed all sorts of traditions and enter into a faith that is genuine, earnest, and from the heart. They see that as incompatible with candles, robes, crosses, or special gestures in a church service. But these people are making a distinction that doesn’t need to be made. After all, if we have a heart full of reverence for the Lord it is quite appropriate to bow before him or, for that matter, the symbols we have of his presence, such as a cross or an altar. If we have a clear concept the dark black sinful lives we have and the white robe of righteousness our Savior places on us the very garments I’m wearing make perfect sense. If we are grateful for Jesus’ cross, death, and resurrection applied to our lives it is very appropriate that we would make the sign of the cross over ourselves or over people for whom we ask God’s blessings. Treating the elements of communion with reverence, remembering that we consecrate them for consumption, reminding ourselves of that purpose by making sure we consume them, it’s all perfectly consistent with showing reverence for what our Lord has done. And this is consistent with loving Christ with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. The people who may wish to criticize such acts of devotion may in fact simply not recognize the devotion we are expressing or the fact that some people who go through motions are doing much more than going through motions. Yet here in Mark 10 the man who is asking Jesus how to receive eternal life isn’t trying to trap him. He isn’t trying to tempt him. He isn’t suggesting that Jesus will not know. He’s asking it for a different reason. He wants to know. And one of these days we can all hope someone will ask us the same question, or at least give us good permission and attention while we answer the question anyway. After all, we often give people answers to the questions they should have been asking. What must he do for eternal life? First, Jesus reminds the man that he does have authority to answer. Only God is good, but the man seems to be recognizing him as God, or at least as God’s teacher. Look what Jesus does. See where he goes. He starts quoting God’s commandments. He reminds the man of the part of the Bible which shows up in our catechism segments in the bulletin just now. And like we try to be able to explain God’s word, just like people in every age have tried to explain God’s word, Jesus’ questioner gets to try explaining the commands. Jesus reminds him of several that he knows. The man in Mark 10 knows how to explain these commands. That isn’t a problem. He can look at his life and he can tell whether he has kept these commands or not. He may not see them perfectly or exhaustively. But he knows about murder, adultery, theft, false witness, cheating, and dishonoring people. This is a good list, just like the other lists of behaviors that we find in the Bible. And each one of the items on the list, at least as far as the man can identify them, can be measuerd. He’s an upright person. He doesn’t go around killing people. He’s faithful to his wife. He buys his things, he doesn’t steal them. He can say he has been honest. And I say, “Good for him.” He is doing what he should do in society. Yet all this doing, all his upright deeds, the way he lives his life still leaves him with a question. It’s an important question, then. All his living and doing things does not earn eternal life for him. It hasn’t worked. It’s just like the person who thinks that by attending church regularly and serving on this committee or that committee, or even by becoming a pastor and saying a lot of prayers or singing a lot of songs or doing other acts of service he can earn eternal life. I have news for you. If I wear black and then put on a white robe I’m just like any other guy wearing black and white. If I bow once, twice, or three times in front of the altar I have potential for being someone who made some large muscle group adjustments. If I read the Scripture aloud I may manage to simply exercise my voice. Are you seeing the distinction? I can do all sorts of things, and they may be very good things, but like the man who came to Jesus I may be finding that they are of no help at all. What did Jesus leave out of the list of commands? He left out what the man wasn’t doing. He left out the beginning, the commandments that all the others depend on. He left out loving God and honoring his person and word. He left out the attitude of the man’s heart, exactly the thing that was wrong. You see, I can make a prayer using words and skip over repentance and belief. Or I can pray using the same words but engage in belief on Christ. The first one is just words. In the second one the words are good for something. I can lift up the cup at communion because that’s what you do. Or I can lift up the cup and show us all that we exalt Jesus in his real blood shed for us. Both times the motion is the same. But one is done in faith. We can either trust in ourself, our riches, the things we have stored up for ourselves, like the man in Mark 10 did. Or we can trust in our Lord and Savior, Jesus. Jesus’ call to that man was that he should give up all the things he had. How are we doing on that? Truth be told, we really should be sad. We should be moved to repentance. We should realize, day by day, how we don’t love the Lord with all our heart, how we don’t love our neighbor as ourselves, how we trust in our wisdom, our education, our financial resources, all sorts of human elements rather than trusting in God. We ought to be going away sad. And we can do that, like this man questioning Jesus did. Does it do us any good? No, it simply separates us from the love, mercy and grace of our Lord. What should we rather do? We can look to our Lord, confess our sins, recognize that we truly need a savior to come, live, die, and rise again for us. We can confess our sins to the Lord and trust that he will forgive us. We can ask him to make us depend on the resources he has given us. And we can go away justified, trusting our Lord, knowing that he pours out his mercy on us. We can walk away knowing that we have inherited eternal life. Do you trust that Jesus has given himself for you? Do you believe that he forgives you all your sin? Then you get to go away happy, knowing that he has promised to be with you and to care for all your need. Do you wonder what you need to do for eternal life? Then I’m here to tell you all we do is trust that the Lord Jesus Christ has promised to give us that life as we are sorry for our sin and ask him to forgive us. Trusting in our Lord and his good favor, let us rise and pray again in the words of the confession you found in the front of your bulletin, again receiving God’s forgiveness and then confessing our common faith together.

Sermon for 10/7/12

“Made Perfect through Suffering” Grace, mercy and peace to you all in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Our readings today are full of struggles, full of troubles of various kinds. We have the man God created, naming and classifying all the rest of creation, finding out in his work that he is all alone. We see Jesus talking about the trouble we inherit when we are not faithful to that husband or wife the Lord has blessed us with. We see children brought for blessing and others hindering them, trying to keep them from receiving God’s blessing. But the struggle I want to look at today is the one we see in Hebrews chapter 2. It’s a serious struggle. It’s a deadly contest. It’s a matter of life and death. What is our temptation? Drifting away. The penalty? We are told that we cannot escape if we ignore salvation. This is a very serious matter. Yet I’m concerned that sometimes we don’t realize the true nature of the struggle. We are products of our culture, just like the people who received the letter to the Hebrews were products of their culture. But we are in very different cultures. How we understand drifting away is, I would suggest, quite different from the way the original readers of this letter would understand it. The Jewish audience by and large realized that they were God’s special, chosen people. He had made a covenant with them. But the covenant was dependent, in some way, on their works. If they were obedient they were able to be full partakers of God’s covenant promises. If not, they were subject to his rejection He promised always to keep a remnant of the faithful, but his blessings were seen as depending on how well the people obeyed the law which Moses had laid down. The author of Hebrews points out to these Hebrew Christians that they have been saved by grace through faith in the promised work of Jesus Christ on their behalf. They are not saved by their obedience to the law. They are not saved by anything they do, but rather by the one in whom they believe. Of course, this is exactly the same way we are saved. God has not changed. But what do we modern Western Christians think about maintaining our salvation? The Hebrews, if they drifted from faith would start considering that they were delivered by their works of obedience to the law of Moses. They would be tempted to depend on their sacrifices or their keeping of the dietary laws or maybe their faithful routine of chanting prayers for assurance of their salvation. While we see this sometimes as modern Gentile Christians, with people depending on their years of service as deacons, Sunday school teachers, or their record of giving to their local church, we also see another way of depending on something, something other than the Gospel, which I would say is a more common problem and much more harmful to the Church as a whole. We are warned not to drift from the true faith. May God give us grace to be faithful to him. What is this danger which I think we face in our world, right where we are, right now? It’s the temptation to look to our own perception of our faithfulness for assurance of salvation. Let me describe a true situation to you. I’ll mask the identity of the person involved. I think I am probably the only person alive who would recognize the situation and be able to put it in its context. Here’s how it works. I was called upon to visit someone who was in an institution and not thriving. This person was suffering from a number of physical and emotional difficulties and was not eating. The staff and the family members could not get any nutrition into the person, who was rapidly wasting away and would die of starvation in another few days. As I visited with this individual I found that although there were numerous physical difficulties that root problem was one of unforgiveness. The person enumerated several sins, which were serious, no doubt. When I asked my question, you know my question, “Do you believe Jesus forgives you all your sin?” this dear saint of God said that other people’s sins could be forgiven. But that forgiveness would not extend to my friend. I asked why not. The answer? “I’m just not faithful enough. I don’t think I’m worthy of forgiveness.” I asked if there was some sort of sin that Jesus didn’t suffer for. The person thought for a while and said that Jesus suffered for all sorts of sins but not for that one. The disfavor of God the Father, His righteous wrath against sin was poured out on God the Son for all sin except for this individual’s sin. I asked if it was a faithful act to punish oneself for sin or if Jesus had really accomplished salvation. After a moment’s thought, the answer was that it was a faithful act to kill oneself for failure in one area of life. So Jesus’ forgiveness extends to everyone but you? Yes. I closed my communion kit. “Why did you do that?” “You just said that Jesus’ forgiveness is not great enough for you and that you need to earn your own forgiveness and try to die for your own sin.” “So you aren’t going to give me communion?” “That’s right. You have just told me that Jesus’ death is not sufficient for you, that you can do it better than he can.” I asked if I could continue to pray that this person would receive God’s grace in Christ. That was fine. We prayed together and then the person asked if I would give communion with a promise that today’s supper would be eaten instead of being thrown at the institution’s staff. “Are you going to try to trust that Jesus will forgive you all your sin and that you can’t earn your own salvation?” “Yes, I will.” We prayed, the saint received communion, and has been eating regular meals ever since. When we depend on our perception of our faithfulness to maintain us in our salvation we put ourselves in the driver’s seat. We say that Jesus is useful but not as useful as we are. We deny what Jesus did in dying for all our sin and shame. We reject our Savior who has freely given us forgiveness, life, and salvation. The author of Hebrews warns us about neglecting our salvation. He warns us that we can reject Jesus’ mercy by depending on ourselves in any way. Let it never be! May we rely on him and him alone, the author and finisher of our salvation. Jesus has done all you need, all I need, all anyone in this world needs, for life and salvation. He has promised to give us forgiveness. May we never trust in ourselves, but always trust in the saving grace of Jesus, the one who is able to bear all our sins, all our sorrows, all our suffering, all our grief. Do we have a tremendous load of guilt and shame? Let us cast it upon our Lord and Savior. Do we have physical and emotional suffering? Yes we do. Let us cast it upon our Lord and Savior. We cannot trust in our faith or our faithfulness. We can only trust in Jesus, who bore all our sin, even our own attempts at making salvation for ourselves on our own terms. Cast your cares on the Lord, for he cares for you. Receive this forgiveness, once again, knowing that he has taken all your sin. He promises you, day after day, as long as you need it, until you are perfected in his presence, abundant life and forgiveness. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Sermon for 9/30/12

Sermon “I Wish All Were Prophets”

Lord, grant us grace to live as vessels of your Gospel, in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Bickering. Strife. Envy. The grass is always greener. Do we have to eat that again? We’re not the only people who fall into those traps, are we. The people of Israel did just the same thing as we saw in Numbers chapter 11. Once they got going for a while Moses was at the end of his rope. Coming before the LORD he complained. “What am I supposed to do with these people? I work, slaving away, being God’s servant to deliver them out of Egypt. I follow Your commands, looking to Your promises, and here they are unhappy with the way You are miraculously feeding them! What am I supposed to do?”

Now before we go too far into this sermon, I think I’d better point out two important elements. First, there’s a wonderful resource that we use here called a “lectionary.” It picks out readings for us. The one we use has a three year cycle. I pulled out today’s Scripture readings from that lectionary and they are the passages for today simply because it is today. That’s something I want everyone to know. Second, I’m not preaching this sermon out of frustration with anybody. I’m going to this topic because it is in the passages of the day. It’s one of those topics that you need to preach about when you don’t think you need to and which you don’t dare preach about when you really want to. It’s kind of like righteous discipline of a child. When you really want to discipline that kid it’s probably the wrong time. There are certain trainable times. We need to hear this topic. But I’m not convinced we are in critical trouble due to ignoring the topic. We’ll let that unfold. So this topic is on the table today because of the preaching schedule, not because of my personal opinion.

Back to Moses. “What am I supposed to do? These people are driving me crazy! They don’t believe You and they are taking it out on me!” What is God’s response? He gathers a handful of elders. Looking at the text you might think seventy is a large number, but let’s remember that the people of Israel are at least a half million people. So it’s a relatively small percentage of the people. He gathers the elders of Israel together and pours out His Spirit on them. The result? They prophesy, but they don’t keep doing so. It seems to be limited in its time and scope.

Does anyone else find that difficult to understand? I don’t mean finding the words difficult to understand. We can grasp that just fine. It makes perfect sense, we know what they did. But why is this happening? What is the importance of it? It’s kind of like seeing a person with his hair dyed maroon, carrying a big maroon foam rubber glove with an index finger extended. We could all recognize the situation. We might not understand it unless we knew the local school color was maroon and there was a football game coming up. But what’s happening with these elders? Why do they make prophecies? Why do they stop? Is this a good thing, as Joshua thinks, or is it a bad thing, as Moses thinks? What does it say to us? It seems pretty distant from our time and place.

Why do the elders make prophecies? This is the natural result of the Spirit of the Lord falling upon the people. They are consumed with God’s majesty and glory. What do we do when we are moved, deeply moved? We show that in our lives. Maybe we are struck silent. Maybe we are moved to tears. Maybe we start smiling or laughing. Maybe we become excited. When God comes upon these people they start speaking out in His name. They don’t have any other choice. A post-communion canticle that I’ve been teaching our young people, we sang it here not long ago, says “tell everyone what He has done.” When we know what our Lord is doing our natural reaction should be to tell about it. The people of God, moved upon by the Holy Spirit, start telling about God’s wonderful works. We saw that in the first chapter of Acts. We see it throughout the Bible. When people see God’s glory they tell about it.

So why do the elders stop making prophecies? The Bible doesn’t tell us. We don’t know. But Moses considers it a bad thing. He would like them to keep speaking out boldly as they were. Joshua is uncomfortable with it. That may be a clue to the elders’ actions. You see, when you start doing something, something that may be a very good thing, but people aren’t used to it, it’s easy to start to fear. Many biblical counselors I know would term this “Fear of Man.” I think you know how it works. Let’s take a very unimportant desire. For instance, if I decide I like a particular type of hat and want to wear it. Does anyone here have anything against hats? Nobody finds them offensive? I just want to be clear that putting a hat on is not a problem in our society. Now, what if I want to wear this hat? If I am the person who always wears a silly hat you might not want to be seen with me, at least not until you figure out that I am not otherwise offensive.

The elders of Israel were speaking God’s words, possibly singing his praises, in public. How many of you plan to go down the street this afternoon singing hymns aloud? Is it easier if nobody is present? I know my tendency, and it isn’t on the street. If I’m singing a Matins or a Vespers service on my patio or even in my office and I hear someone coming by I have a tendency to sing under my breath. Why is that? Fear of man. It’s more controversial than a silly hat. Singing God’s praises involves actual content about who God is and what he has done. It involves proclaiming that Jesus has come to bear our sins. That means that God says we have sinned and that we need a savior. It means that we are telling anybody who is around us that Jesus is able to take his perfect life and apply it to us by grace through faith. It means that we are telling everybody that, well, that we are made perfect in Christ. And someone is going to be offended at that. “Do you mean you’re perfect and I’m a sinner?” Of course, you can take it that way if you want, but I’d rather say it means I’m a sinner who has been made perfect in Christ and you are a sinner who needs to be made perfect in Christ. Then we get to go into the whole bit about being a saint and sinner at the same time. And it’s uncomfortable. Most people around us won’t give it the time of day and will shut the conversation down pretty fast.

Yet Moses wishes all the people would be prophets. He wishes all the people would be so transfixed by the Holy Spirit that they would proclaim God’s wonders. I think by this point we see what the passage has to do with us. Think back to the Epistle and Gospel readings. How does Jesus carry on his work in this world? He does it through us. He does it by pouring out His Spirit through the prayers and faithful acts that we engage in. He does it by working to call people to himself, to heal them, to forgive them, to cast out their demons through his Word. And he delivers the Word through us, his messengers. Do we need to be careful? Of course we do. That’s why in our churches we have ministry standards. That’s why we examine candidates for the pastoral office. Those who are placed in the office of dealing with Word and Sacraments in a regular and public manner are responsible for training the next generation of pastors, for guarding their flocks, and for giving them all the right food. It’s a big responsibility, more like that of Moses than of the seventy elders. But Moses has a limited shelf life. I have a limited shelf life. As we pass on the Word of God from generation to generation, though, God’s Spirit will work in one person after another, raising up pastors, teachers, all sorts of Christian workers, bringing that Gospel to every nation, every generation.

We are preparing for a missions weekend. May the Lord send His Spirit to call many of us to be prophets, to proclaim His good works, to proclaim the glory of God through Jesus Christ, to our generation and to the next, as many people as the Lord will bring into contact with us. Amen.

Sermon for 9/23/12

Sermon “Sow Peace, Harvest Righteousness”

Our merciful Lord, let us delight in you, drawing from you all the mercy and grace that we will ever need, in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Garbage in, garbage out. You reap what you sow. When life gives you lemons, make lemonade, not coffee. We understand there is a relationship between the resources we have and use and our outcomes. Handsome is as handsome does. We can look for this relationship to be active almost everywhere. After all, when I planted green beans in the garden this year I knew if I got anything from the plants it would be green beans. I expected my tomato plants to give me tomatoes, not plums. We put the potato sets in the ground so we expect to find potatoes, not radishes there. Yet in our reading from James we have a slightly different pattern. It’s related, but just a little different. We sow peace but we harvest righteousness. We plant one item but the harvest is more of a finished product. Consider for instance, planting cucumbers but harvesting pickles. The righteousness we harvest is the polished version of peace. It is peace not only with ourselves, not only with our neighbors, but also with God.

As we saw last week, it’s very difficult to plant peace. Strife seems to be all around us. We are conflict magnets. Some of us attract more conflict than others. Yet God in His Word says to sow peace and look for a harvest of righteousness. It is no coincidence, then, that James goes on to tell us where conflict comes from. It comes from our selfish desires. It comes about when someone tries to get something at any cost. It comes about when we decide that we want what we want when we want it and we are either willing to sin to get it or to sin if we don’t get it. When we cross that line, when we want something that badly, we are betraying that we have set it up as an idol. It’s something that we are going to love and serve no matter what. Those sinful desires grow, they take root, and they bear their fruit - thorns and thistles that bring harm to us and to all around us. We sow in strife and we reap all manner of trouble.

What happens when we plant peace instead? Remember, peace is not the absence of strife. It’s not the absence of anything. It is a very real thing itself. When we act in peace, when we are messengers of peace, when we speak God’s words of peace and comfort, approaching our situations with Jesus’ attitude of peace, like our Savior considering ourselves as nothing but considering our neighbors as more important than ourselves, when we sow the seeds of peace we will find a harvest of righteousness. We have done what is right. We have acted as God’s blessing to others. We have been giving out a precious gift. And whether we see those we treat with God’s kindness or mercy change in any way is really not the issue. You may act in peace and kindness toward the worst, most evil person in town. That person might not change. But you will change. The people you treat with kindness may brush it off. Or they may be unaware of what just happened to them. But you are aware that you have been God’s instrument of blessing. You will change as you realize what it cost Jesus to give himself for you. You will change as you count the cost of caring for others and do it anyway. You will change as your reward for your kindness done in secret is given to you in secret by your Lord who smiles upon you with pleasure. This is the harvest of righteousness.

This brings us to our Gospel passage for the day, doesn’t it? Sowing peace is a lot like what Jesus did. When the people were arguing about who would be greatest in the kingdom of heaven, Jesus took a little child and pointed to him as God’s favored person. The little kids are the ones who get lost in the shuffle. They come last. But when we consider the last to be first, when we prefer others to ourselves, when we seek their good instead of our own, that’s when we are sowing peace. That’s when we can expect to see a harvest of righteousness.

I wonder if some of us have been realizing that we are not sowing peace, but that we’re planting strife instead. Maybe you’ve been pursuing your own selfish desires. Sometimes you win, sometimes you don’t. But there’s always going to be a trail of rubble. There will always be hurt feelings, crushed dreams, and broken relationships on that pathway. You get some of what you want but it doesn’t really satisfy. You see the collateral damage. And, truth be told, you’d be furious if anyone treated you or someone you love that way. Today is the day for repentance. Today is the day to confess that selfishness before the Lord. Today is the day to turn your dreams over to Jesus and to ask him to give you his dreams instead.

I wonder if some of us have been sowing peace, at least we think we have, for a long time. But we wonder where the harvest is. Life seems to go on and we don’t get the reward we were hoping for. Do you remember Romans 8:29? Jesus is working in you to make you into his image. But sometimes that polishing is difficult. Sometimes it hurts. He’s rubbing our rough edges off. And he uses abrasive people and situations to do it. Be strong and courageous! He is able to use you wherever you are, planting peace. It may bear fruit for the other person in your conflicts. We don’t know. But it will bear fruit in your life, in the time the Lord has appointed.

But what of those of us who are despairing. We are afraid that God’s peace is meaningless. We think of it as something that’s so far away from our reality that we may as well give up. Let me tell you once again that Jesus, by his perfect life, death, burial, and resurrection on your behalf has broken down the wall of enmity between God and man. He has made peace, breaking down the sin that separates us from God. And in his resurrection his desire is to be the firstborn among many brethren. He is the one who will bring all his people to God the Father by faith in the name of Jesus, the one who saves us from our sins. And he has made that promise for you and for me, for all who call on his name. We walk by faith, which is a confidence that God’s promise are true. We don’t walk by sight. Trust in the Lord! He has purchased your salvation.

So what are we sowing this year? Are we going to sow peace? We can look for a great and glorious harvest. Stand with me if you can, as we pray.

Our Lord, you have purchased peace with God through your perfect death on our behalf. Grant that we may receive your peace, the peace that passes all understanding, to guard our hearts and minds. Use us as your instruments planting peace, that is your Word, the living Word, Jesus Christ, through all your gracious promises, in our world. Bring forth the increase, a great harvest of righteousness, as you bring many to glory, for you live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

Sermon for 9/16/12

Sermon for 9/16/12 "Where's the Beef?"

“May grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord” (2 Peter 1:2, ESV). Amen.

A campus pastor I knew years ago was once giving a seminar on open-air preaching on the college campus. This is not something that most people are comfortable with. It isn’t that we are uneasy with the idea that everyone needs to hear about God’s gracious act of sending his Son to die for us and bring us forgiveness. It isn’t that we are uneasy with the facts of the Gospel, either. If we’ve been living a Christian life, growing in Christ, taking in the Word of God for any period of time we should be very familiar with the ideas of Christ for sinners, that the sin of man required a man to die, that an adequate sacrifice needs to be of like kind as the sinner but perfect, which requires a perfect man to die on our behalf. We might be uncomfortable with people seeing or hearing us making such proclamations, though I’m not sure that is the issue most of the time for college students and people on college campuses. Different points of view are often promoted publicly, at least they were twenty-odd years ago when I was there. It seems harder to get an honest hearing of different opinions in our more politically correct academic culture nowadays. But I don’t think that is the big problem we face when we want to proclaim the Gospel publicly. Rather, I think it is the same problem my campus pastor friend articulated. He said you haven’t started preaching in a public space until someone argues with you. You haven’t started preaching in a public space until someone argues with you.

This idea brings us back to our Gospel reading for the day. The disciples had been confronted by a problem. They were asked to pray for a young man and bring God’s healing. When they were unable to do so an argument broke out between the disciples and the “teachers of the Law.” We don’t know the details of this argument but it isn’t hard to imagine, is it? The disciples are certain that God can heal this person and that Jesus wishes it to happen. The teachers of the Law are certain that God works through the processes laid out in Moses and the Prophets and that the disciples are leading the young man and his family astray, since Jesus is not an authorized representative of their system. The disciples promote their faith in Christ. The teachers of the Law make theological arguments which they know the disciples can only partially understand. The disciples don’t know who the various teachers are in the arguments. They are frustrated because the healing is not happening and because they are being opposed. The teachers of the Law go in for the kill, tearing at the disciples with their highly trained verbal abilities. The disciples respond in anger, eroding their argument that they are the representatives of the God of all love and grace. When Jesus comes on the scene nobody has actually punched anybody yet, but they are about to.

Have you ever been there? You say something about Jesus and his love. The person you are talking with retaliates with accusations about the Crusades or the Spanish Inquisition. You say something about the way Jesus wants to protect life. The person you are talking with talks about how the christian militias in the Middle East act as much like terrorists as do those people they are trying to kill. You say something about how Jesus cares for the economic well-being of his people. The person you are talking with reminds you that single moms, allegedly forced to bear their unwanted children by well-meaning or sinister Christians, have a higher risk of poverty than childless people. It is so very easy to be dragged into a conflict which you never intended. This is what happened to the disciples here in Mark chapter 9. Their expectation of acceptance was thrown to the ground and trampled. They themselves felt trampled and responded in anger. A dispute broke out. What was at issue? At issue was whether God would actually care for this young man or not.

My friend the campus pastor would say that the preaching was ready to start. There was an argument, or at least a dispute, for those of you who remember the difference between an argument and a dispute. I’d rather call it a dispute, since that’s what it is. An argument, after all, takes one of the points at issue and provides a specific reason why that point is right or wrong. That’s an argument. They are few and far between. Most of the time we don’t have arguments. We have disputes.

How does Jesus take care of this dispute? What does he do? People are running to the scene. A fight is breaking out! Remember these are people who don’t have TV, radio, internet, or telephones. They depend on live action for their entertainment and information. What’s happening over there? A crowd is assembling. Must be some sort of excitement. We’d better run so we don’t miss something. After all, it will never be replayed on YouTube. But before the crowd is overwhelming Jesus asks the boy’s father about his case. He reassures the father and heals the boy. Jesus understood the problem. He knew the situation fully. He was able to address it. He did not want to see that family suffer as they had been. So he brought healing and grace. It was entirely straightforward in his mind. It was easy for him to do. It was included in the work he came to do, as he came to drive out demons, defeat them, and bear the penalty for the sin of the world. Jesus needed no argument. He made no argument, not with the crowd, not with the demon.

Remember that an argument provides a specific reason why a point is right or wrong. Jesus had no argument, not even with the demon, certainly not with the boy or his father or the crowd. Rather than arguing, he commanded the demon to be gone. That was that.

How often do we, as Christians, think that we need to get into an argument of some sort? Worse yet, how often do we settle for a mere dispute in which there is no substantive point for discussion and where it is impossible for the facts to stand on their own? Tragically, we wait for a dispute to happen and then think we can blast our way out of the dispute with a doctrinal gun. We try to get someone talking about a spiritual topic and we wait for the chance to blast our opponent away with both barrels. We think we’re facing a squirrel and are loaded for bear. In fact, we’re facing an elephant and we have a pea shooter. We end up in a dispute and finally fling accusations at other people so that we show ourselves as self-righteous, stupid, arrogant, or all three. We face those teachers of the Law. We fight with them. Meanwhile the boy is suffering with a demon. We aren’t helping him. We aren’t helping his father. Finally his father, if he is smart, takes the boy and walks away before either of them gets hit with brick that someone is throwing at nobody in particular.

Are we ready to start preaching when the dispute breaks out? No. We missed the opportunity. Jesus redeemed it in this instance in Mark 9. But he won’t always break in on us like he did there. How can we redeem those opportunities? Let’s take our cue from Jesus. He investigated the situation. He prayed the Father’s blessing. He asserted his authority over the situation. He presented the boy back to his father. Are we ready to ask questions about the life issues people bring us? Or do we want to jump right to our answer? Are we ready to hear the pain and suffering of those around us? Or maybe we’d rather walk away, dropping a Gospel grenade as we go. I had an acquaintance who was blind. She often would ask the leaders of the local church to pray for her. Before she could share her prayer need, that her husband would believe on Christ, they would pray for her to receive her sight. She eventually stopped trying to ask for prayer since nobody would listen to her. Jesus asked about the situation. Let’s care enough to ask.

Do we jump right into the fight or do we pray God’s blessing? Do we think that we can solve everyone’s trouble? The greatest trouble we have is our sinful nature and the fact that other people in this sin-cursed world show their true nature to us. Are we committed to blessing those who curse us? Do we care enough for the people around us to ask that the Lord would care for them? He is able to care for you far better than I am. He is able to meet your true needs. I’m able to meet a few of the needs you recognize. He’s able to do it all. Jesus prays the Father’s blessing.

Now who has authority over the conflicts in life? Do I? Do you? Finally it is Jesus who has shown he is the one who is ruler of heaven and earth, the one who has overcome all that this life can throw at him, the one who rose victorious from death. Do we want to assert our authority over someone? Or should we assert Jesus’ loving care for that other person’s situation? What does Jesus say about our troubles? Isn’t that better than what I say about our troubles?

You might ask, then, if all we do is proclaim Jesus’ work and then walk away, what kind of hypocrites are we? Why, just last week I talked about showing our faith through our works. And we do need to do that. But let’s realize that our works will not save anyone. It is only Jesus’ work that will save someone. It is not our works that will make peace with God. It is Jesus’ work that does that. It is not our works that can bring full and final healing. Jesus can do that, but we can’t. But what if Jesus’ healing is not what you were looking for? What if his proclamation on the cross, “It is finished” is not enough? What if his living a perfect life, dying a perfect death, and being raised from the dead by the power and for the glory of God is not enough? What if his applying his perfect resurrection life to you and taking away your old man who is dead in sin is not enough? Then you have no dispute with me. You have a dispute with Jesus. Jesus has done all this. He is ready to pick you up and present you back to your father, your heavenly Father, whole, like you have never been before. This is his proclamation of truth.

Do you remember that there is no actual argument here? There is only Jesus’ action. Jesus doesn’t argue with sin. He doesn’t argue with death. He doesn’t argue with sickness. He doesn’t argue with hunger. He doesn’t argue with any of the sorrows that we might have. He makes no argument. He simply conquers them. He proclaims them to be resolved. He casts out sin and all evil. He is powerful to do all things by his word. And when he has proclaimed that you have new life by the faith that he gives you, it is so. You can rise up and walk in that newness of life, the life that Jesus gave you, as he presents you back to the Father.

So where’s the argument? It is gone. It is between the disciples and the teachers of the Law. Do you want argument? Go be like they are. Do you want life? Look to Jesus. He is the resurrection and the life. He is the one who has borne our griefs. He is the one who has made peace with God, removing the curse of the Law which was against us. Trust in Jesus, the one who has done all we need. There is no argument. Only his proclamation. That’s where true preaching begins.

Rise with me, if you can, to pray. Lord, give us a heart to look to you and your proclamation of perfect peace. Give us forgiveness, life, and salvation. Show yourself again to be the one who heals us and presents us to the Father, for you ever live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, who has favored us. Amen.

Sermon for 9/9/12

Sermon “Show the Faith”

Lord, open our hearts to hear you and receive your word by faith. Change us from inside out so we are ready to show our world your mercy and your grace, in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

In today’s readings we saw very clearly that when God comes on the scene he changes everything. Old things pass away. New things spring into being. He takes away fear, blindness, suffering. He conquers affliction of every kind. This is the big message of our passage from Isaiah 35 (4-7). Many times we’re tempted to settle for a glorious message like that, leave it there, and go no farther. Do you doubt me? I’ve heard it in countless children’s sermons. It’s all over the place in the Sunday school curriculum I’ve surveyed and reviewed for nearly thirty years. It’s there in vacation Bible schools. And it’s that way in many sermons you hear in churches. When God comes on the scene he changes everything. He’ll take care of you. Just trust. That’s the end of the story, the end of the sermon, the end of the Sunday school lesson.

Now, everybody, because I think it wasn’t just the children who were listening to the children’s sermon, what was wrong with that? Does God come on the scene? Yes he does. Does he change things? Yes he does. Do we respond in trust? Yes we do. Who or what was missing from those statements? There was nothing false. But there was something missing. What was it? Right. Jesus was missing. And if Jesus isn’t there, it isn’t specifically a Christian sermon. It’s the same as with songs we sing. If we are not specific about the person and work of God in Christ in what we sing, our culture can fill in the blanks and have any old god of their own imagination doing whatever it is they want. Remember from the children’s sermon? Is Jesus mentioned? Is he doing the verbs? What kind of verbs do we find Jesus doing? Well the first little part of the sermon failed. It wasn’t specific enough.

Let’s try again. When God comes on the scene, he changes everything. And he does it through the person of Jesus, as we saw in Mark chapter 7. Jesus came and brought his mercy and grace to a disabled man. He saw the man’s plight. He treated him with dignity by taking him off into private and having a little time with him. He treated the specific problems the man was having, touching his ears and his tongue and healing both. Now, knowing this, we are free to say both, “Good for Jesus, he did what he wanted to do,” and “Good for that man who needed healing and received it.” Did we pass the sermon diagnostic? We did. Excellent. Is the job done yet? Not exactly. Though we have redeemed this and made it a Christian sermon it doesn’t seem to have much connection to you yet.

As I often do, I’m going to come up with two ways we can handle this situation. We’ll see how they work. One way, and I think it’s a good way, to apply this kind of passage to you is by offering to pray for the sick. In James we read that if anyone is sick he should call the elders of the church and they will anoint him with oil and pray for him. And some of you have been in situations where I have come and anointed you with oil and prayed for you. I used to attend a church congregation where they would do a variation on this on Sunday evenings. There would be an extended time of prayer and the elders would be stationed near the front of the nave. People in the congregation could come up and the elders would pray over them specifically. We went to another church for some years where there would be a few prayer meetings in evenings during the year and people would have opportunity to ask for prayer and others would gather around them to pray. Jesus is indeed the God who answers prayer and who comes to heal the sick. You can’t read the Bible and deny that. It’s certainly a good thing to gather together and pray for one another. No doubt about it. Yet we need to realize that even as Jesus healed this one man there were others in the world whom he did not heal. Even when we pray earnestly and fervently for those we love we find that sometimes the Lord doesn’t heal them, or he doesn’t heal them in the way we hoped. There is no denying that several people whom I have anointed with oil and prayed for have later had me officiating at their funerals. They were not healed from their illness in the way we may have prayed, though Jesus did give them ultimate healing.

What’s another way we can handle the situation? We can decide that we will dedicate to praying for one another that Jesus would bring his healing. And we should do that, trusting that he will continue to show his mercy. But another thing we do is to turn to our reading from James chapter 2 and find that we can care for the poor and needy in our midst. This includes people with little or no money and it includes people with other types of difficulties. Some people involve themselves in projects to support medical research, programs to help people with disabilities, programs like the ARC house next door to the parsonage – some of the folks who live and work there have been attending church services here and we want to welcome them with open arms. We care for those people who are in need. We treat them with dignity and respect. Why do we do that? It’s because Jesus cares for them. We love our neighbor as ourselves. Jesus loves us as himself. And as we do that we remember that our neighbors need forgiveness above all, just as we do. You see, we who have received forgiveness, healing, and grace from Jesus who gives it freely should also give it freely. We who have been honored and respected by Jesus should honor and respect those he brings into our lives. We whom Jesus preferred above himself should also prefer others above ourselves. This is why as Christians we show our faith through our works. We don’t have any other way to do it. Jesus showed his love through his works. Now we go and show his love through our works. We go to heal the sick, clothe the poor, feed the hungry, visit those in need, and bring the Gospel with us always.

Now we’re getting pretty close to having our sermon in order. We’ve used the words of the Bible. We have spoken specifically about Jesus, telling what he does. We’ve received the command Jesus gives us to go and love our neighbor as ourselves. But there’s still one thing missing, and it is an important element. I’ve mentioned it but only in passing. It’s been kind of obscured, I’m afraid. And I want to be very bold and clear. Just like in our music we sing I don’t want to leave too much to our imagination or intuition. I want to connect the dots for you. If we are going to show the works of Jesus, we don’t want to leave with the idea that Jesus’ work is primarily in healing the sick of their illnesses, helping people overcome their physical limitations, or even feeding or clothing them. Those are good and right actions and we need to be about them. But what is the prime work of Jesus? It is to live a perfect life, to die a perfect death, and to apply his death for your sins and mine to you and to me so we can live a new life, being recreated into the image of God. This brings us full circle. We go back to Isaiah and we see that when our sin and shame are cast out by Jesus’ perfect righteousness which he applies to us we have no need to fear. We have his riches, his forgiveness, his perfect love. And then we are enabled to be his instruments, telling others of his grace. We are then able to bring healing to people. We are able to give to their needs, feed the hungry, clothe the poor, visit people who are sick and in prison, reminding them all the while that Jesus has suffered and died for them. We are ready to tell and show that it is through God’s mercy in Christ that we are motivated to care for them, to treat them with dignity and respect, to bring them his grace.

Do you believe that Jesus gave himself for you? We don’t just trust in any old thing. We trust in his giving himself on our behalf. We don’t simply make up our own morality and say that we are going to do what we have determined is good. We take on his values and do what he has said is good. We become the instruments of God in Christ as we trust in his name. Trust in the LORD, Jesus Christ, with all your heart. He comes onto the scene and changes everything. And he will change you, as he changes me. He gives us the true faith, faith in him, which we can then show to our world. If you are ready to show this faith, stand with me as we confess our common faith in the words of the Apostles’ Creed.

Sermon for 9/2/12

Sermon “Inside Out”

As young Christian parents, wanting to establish God’s Word in our household, as we had both been raised in unbelieving homes, I remember that Martha and I did some searching for ways to teach our children in the faith. We didn’t have the advantage of a solidly confessional church body to help us. We were young in the faith, both having been converted to Christ as young adults ourselves. We posted and worked with a series called “The 21 Rules of This House.” I looked them up on the Internet recently. The author of the program still has them available. The rules are good. They are biblical. They include telling the truth, loving, honoring and praying for one another, speaking quietly and respectfully, forgiving, comforting, lots of good things. We worked with those rules for a time. We were surprised to see something very negative growing out of them. There was a smugness that developed, not humility, not dependence on the Lord. We see the same thing sometimes among people who are involved in the churches that have their leaders plege to avoid certain things, generally it’s alcohol, tobacco, dancing and theater-going. Yes, those churches are very common in some parts of the country, though not as common in this area. Often we seem to decide that if we follow all the rules we’ll be just fine. Again and again, when visiting the sick, people will tell me that they have always tried to be a good person. That’s a great thing. I’m all for it. Absolutely in favor of it. Go and be a good person. Treat others with respect. Exercise self-control in all you do. And as we saw in today’s readings, those are absolutely approved in the Bible. But isn’t there something more here?

A few years ago a research group took a poll to see what Christians would say best described the Bible. Do you know what won out? It was the statement, “God’s rules for right living.” Again, like the 21 rules of the house or the idea of trying to be a good person, this is fine, but only a partial answer. Does God give his Law? No doubt. Does he tell us how we should live? He certainly does, and our reading from Deuteronomy points out that the people of Israel have laws which are superior to their neighbors. We can see that people who conduct their lives according to God’s Word tend to do better than those who do otherwise. We see this in antiquity, where in the Bible people who committed crimes had to make restitution which was a serious penalty to them, but that their cases were treated with mercy. In the neighboring nations criminals were simply killed out of hand without taking responsibility, trying to restore what they damaged, or being brought back into society. We see through history that people who have governed their lives according to biblical principles tend to be healthier, wealthier, happier, and live longer than those who don’t. There’s a case in point with marriage today. In this country, did you know that married men tend to earn more money and report themselves as happier than unmarried men? Did you know that marriages of people who have not lived together or engaged in other marital relations before marrying tend to be happier and longer lasting than marriages of people who don’t exercise self-control and who don’t wait to be faithful within marriage? What’s more, children of married parents are healthier and get better grades in school than children of unmarried parents who live together. That’s something we can’t quite find a reason for, especially the health issue. To get right to a current news and election issue it seems that children of just one parent tend to do worse than children of married parents, children of a single parent with a non-parent living in the household do worse, and those with same-sex couples in the role of parents do quite poorly. I don’t want to make anyone feel bad. If you are a single parent I know there’s plenty to the story and it’s a complicated and hard story. Another thing I know is that we will do well to pitch in and help and support those families which aren’t in the traditional pattern. They can have a lot of challenges that some of our families don’t face.

Life goes well for those who are following biblical patterns. But is that all the Bible is about? What about our Gospel reading for today? Even if we have followed all those rules, even if we do pretty well, even if our families are together, even if we have been a good person, even if we adopt pets and people who need adoption, what does Jesus warn us about? He says that all sorts of things come pouring out of our lives. No matter how we work to uphold God’s standards we find ourselves full of those evil thoughts, those bad attitudes, those desires to enter into all sorts of evil, or arrogance that we have not entered into evil. No matter how you stack it, we all have a sin problem. We can’t escape it. Like the people in the film The Village a few years ago, people who tried to escape from sin and evil by setting up a new society, we find that sin and evil comes with us. This is something I’ve found talking with a wide variety of people. I have met some monks now and then. One, a Roman Catholic who was a monk and Latin teacher was a fairly good acquaintance over the Internet for some years. Several I’ve spoken with who are Russian Orthodox have expressed the same to me. Though you would think their lives would be relatively stress-free, they are actually quite difficult. Here they find themselves in a Christian community where they are surrounded by other people of like faith and where they are able to dedicate much of their lives to Scripture, prayer, and worship together. What do they find? They find the same thing Jesus talks about. Evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. They are all there, lurking below the surface, trying to get out. And they are there not only in the monastery, not only in those neighborhoods you don’t want to go to, not only in the people you don’t want to associate with, they are there in you and in me. We all need repentance. We all need forgiveness. We all need cleansing.

What will we do? Jesus has proclaimed us unclean. And we find ourselves agreeing with his proclamation. Or if we don’t, we need to notice that the word “arrogance” is still in that list. Then we really don’t have any choice. We have to agree with him.

I have good news for you. Did you know that in the Bible the word “confess” really means “say that you agree”? Confession is to agree with God that we are sinners in need of a savior. It’s to agree that God has given his law and that we have not lived up to it. It’s to agree that no matter how hard we try to follow God’s pattern, his desires, his values, we have other desires that are in conflict with him. It’s to agree that we need forgiveness.

Jesus himself has won that forgiveness. Jesus himself has become sin for us. He has taken upon himself all of the sin and evil that we are bringing out of ourselves. He has promised us cleansing. He has promised that when we confess our sins he is faithful and just to cleanse us from all sin and to give us his perfect righteousness. This is Jesus’ promise. That’s much bigger than what we can do by obeying rules, by trying to be a good person. God’s Word promises forgiveness. And it’s rich, it’s free, and it’s for you and for me.

Do you realize that you have been trying to be a good person and leave it at that? Or maybe you have done pretty well at keeping the commands of God and wish you could be congratulated for it, falling into the arrogant category? Or maybe you are confronted by another type of sin that comes from within, out of the heart. Maybe you have not been able to conquer it. Maybe you see that you won’t be able to conquer it. The victorious life seems far away from you. Let me remind you that Jesus is here for you. He is here to give you forgiveness and life. He is ready to take your sin upon himself and give his perfection to you, again and again, as often as you find yourself in need of his forgiveness he will grant you all the forgiveness you need. Believe in the Lord! He has given himself for you.

As we gather today for communion, you can receive from Jesus not only words of forgiveness but the body and blood which he has given, placed in your hand and in your mouth, as he tells you this cup is a new covenant in his blood which is shed for you for the forgiveness of all your sin. Receive this forgiveness with us. Receive life. Receive the hope of God. Now may the peace of God which passes all understanding guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.