God is For You

[This message was shared with the people of Friendship Lutheran Church during worship celebrations on October 28 and 29, 2006.]

John 8:31-36

Back in the Stone Ages, when I did my student teaching at Bishop Ready High School in Columbus, my supervising teacher was a terrific guy named Joe Palazzo. One day, after he’d observed me teach twelfth-grade Government class, Joe had a few simple pieces of advice for me. First, he said: Get off of your mountain. Come down here with the kids. That’s where you can teach and they can learn. But he also gave a second and more important piece of advice. “All effective teaching, Mark, boils down to two principles: Repetition and concreteness. Repeat it in as many different ways and as many times as you can. And then, make it real. Help them to see it."

The greatest teacher who ever lived was Jesus of Nazareth. He was often called rabbi, teacher, even by those who opposed Him and thought that His claims to be God and Savior of the world were out to lunch.

In our Bible lesson for today, we find Jesus using Joe Palazzo’s principles of teaching to get across the most important message any of us will ever receive. Jesus tells us that He is the best friend we can have and that to be truly free, we need a connection to Him. He breaks this lesson down into three parts.

Part one: Jesus twice repeats, in different ways, a straightforward Biblical principle. Its this: Stick with Me and you’ll be free. At the beginning of our lesson, He says: “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” Then, at the end of our lesson, He repeats this point in a different way: “If the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.”

You and I might chafe under those words a bit. Jesus’ fellow Jews, people who had believed in Him, certainly reacted to His telling them that, insisting, despite a history of enslavement, that they had never been slaves to anybody. The last thing any of us wants to admit is that we aren’t free agents, doing exactly what we want to do in life. One of the phrases we repeat a lot around our house is something that little Michaela, from our congregation, said when she was just learning to talk. When someone would try to help her, she would pull away and say, “Mine a do it!”

Children aren’t the only ones who feel the need to prove that they are self-contained free agents. Adults do this, even when they’re in the clutches of addiction or sin. “I can quit any time!” says the alcoholic confronted with the truth about his destructive life style. “Good,” says someone who loves him, “quit.” “I don’t want to,” they’ll say...though the truth would actually be expressed with the words, “I can’t quit. I’m a slave to my addiction.”

In telling us, “Stick with me and you’ll be free,” Jesus was implicitly telling us what He makes explicit in Part Two: “Everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin,” He says. That rings true to me.

I’ve told many of you the story about the first time I remember a swear word crossing my lips. I was in the sixth grade. It was the day of the Halloween party and I was frustrated. Everyone had come to school in the costume they were going to wear on what we called Beggar’s Night in Columbus. I was dressed as a girl, complete with dress and make-up. I guess my mom and I were the only ones who didn't get the memo that said all students should bring a change of clothes. So, there I was at recess, playing Four Square with my classmates on the playground, the only one still in my Halloween costume. In drag!

All the other kids rode me pretty hard, which was frustrating enough. But then, Steve, a tough little guy who had started smoking when we were in the fourth grade in hopes that he could stunt his growth and become a jockey, spiked the ball in my square. I was out. “I guess you really are a girl,” one of my classmates said in words that in just a few years, we would regard not only as cruel but totally unenlightened.

Frustrated that I was in a dress, upset that Steve had just knocked me out of the game, and mad about all the insults, I picked up the ball, slammed it to the pavement, and said the first curse word I ever spoke. “D__n!” I barked. “Whooo!” the kids said, “Daniels cussed!”

Here’s what I found. After I’d sworn once, misusing the gift of language and violating God’s will for human beings, it was a lot easier to do it a second time. Easier still to do it a third.

Sin creates holes in our souls and unless we’re careful, sin will flood our lives, making us its slaves, sinking us into the muck of evil, far from God.

“When I first started raking money from the company, I was conscience-struck,” one man admitted. “But after awhile, it became easier. I had all sorts of justifications for it.”

It’s easy to become the slave of sin. In fact, the Bible tells us that we have an inborn inclination to sin. That’s why Jesus’ promise, “Stick with me and you’ll be free,” is really good news!

So, how do we get free? Well, we don’t. Only God can free us. That leads to Part Three of Jesus’ lesson: The Son has the run of God’s kingdom. Stick with the Son and He will set you free!

When I lived in northwestern Ohio, I got to know a local judge--a Democrat, by the way--who took both his faith and his work seriously. I saw him time and again wrestle with doing what was right and fair.

Another man I knew was charged with a crime and brought before that judge. The man was clearly guilty. But I knew how remorseful he was and I intervened, asking my judge friend to go easy on him, not imposing prison time.

The judge listened to me and said, “I understand all that, Mark. I know how much he regrets his actions. But the law is the law.” “Yes, it is,” I told him, “and I know that you have no choice. I was just hoping you could think of another way to handle things. But whatever you do, I’ll respect your sentence.”

Jesus looks at us and our failure to love God and love neighbor and knows, just like that judge, that the law is the law. All sin is the failure to love God and love neighbor. And, the Bible says unequivocally that "the wages of sin"--the appropriate payment for sin--"is death."

But after finding us guilty and pronouncing our death sentence over us, Jesus does something extraordinary.

He takes our punishment.

That’s what He did when He voluntarily went to the cross, though He had no sin. He took the punishment that you and I deserve. (Well, at least the punishment that I know that I deserve, anyway. You have to decide for yourself whether you've ever failed to love God or love others.)

All who remain with Jesus, everyone who sticks with Him, is set free from sin and death and have a life with God that never ends.

• On a cross, Jesus made God’s love so concrete you can’t doubt how real it is.
• And from an empty tomb, He made clear His power and His desire to give us life that lasts forever.

These are the greatest object lessons in human history!

Today, we have two celebrations at Friendship. One is of the Reformation, about which you can read in the handouts you found distributed throughout the sanctuary today. [The text of the handout is here.] The Reformation began when a young monk and priest, Martin Luther, dogged by a sense of his own sin and the fear that an angry God would never forgive him, discovered the true face of God is seen in the Good News of Jesus. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”

We also celebrate Friend Day. For us, this means a lot more than the fact that we are your friends. Back during my senior year of seminary, I was assigned to the Michigan District of the old American Lutheran Church. The bishop was a wonderful guy named Reg Holle and he came to the seminary to meet the graduating seniors who had been assigned to his district through what we used to call "the draft." I already had gotten to know Bishop Holle fairly well when I was on my internship the year before.

"Mark," he said. "I think I have a pretty fair fix on your theology. But I want to ask you something. What's the most important book you read over the past four years?"

I didn't hesitate. It was a short book by theologian Joachim Jeremias called, The Central Message of the New Testament. It's the central message we declare in the Church:

GOD IS FOR YOU!

That's it. God is for you. That's the message of the Bible. It's the message of the Reformation. God is your best friend. God is for you.

We’re grateful that some of our friends could be with us today. We wanted all of you to be reminded that God isn’t an angry judge.

He’s the Lord Who loves you and is reaching out to you again today through our fellowship to tell you how important you are to Him and that He wants to spend an eternity repeating to you over and over again in a million ways and showing you in ways you can see, understand, and experience that you are the apple of God’s eye!