Ever notice how so many people described as being "cutting edge," "prophetic," or even "courageous" are just jumping on board the latest flavor-of-the-week bandwagon?
This is the kind of thing Paul warned the young pastor Timothy would happen, as it does in some form in every generation: "...the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander away to myths" (2 Timothy 4:3-4).
Buck the waves: Stick with Christ and the Word of God. "All other ground is sinking sand..."
Friday, May 25, 2012
This is One of Those Items That Makes Me Say, "Oy!"
Two characteristics of post-modern culture are:
Now, apparently, in one segment of the post-modern church, new prayers for animals that go way beyond blessing them are being considered. Check out Pastor Peters' summary. Make sure you read his comments at the end; I laughed out loud!
- Our elevation of sex as an end in itself, rather than the creation of a good God to be used by husbands and wives to express their love and bonding to one another and, when God and they choose, a means of sharing their love with children.
- Our elevation of the value of other creatures, even as we denigrate the value of human beings.
Now, apparently, in one segment of the post-modern church, new prayers for animals that go way beyond blessing them are being considered. Check out Pastor Peters' summary. Make sure you read his comments at the end; I laughed out loud!
Five Great Insights on Growing Churches
Great food and prayer for thought here from the latest issue of Thrivent Magazine:
Spring 2012 | Volume 110 | Number 663
Spring 2012 | Volume 110 | Number 663
Live, Give, Grow: Faith
Growing Congregations
Interested in growing your church? You may find some ideas in a recent study of American congregations done by Faith Communities Today, an ongoing multi-faith research effort based at the Hartford Institute for Religion Research in Connecticut. Here's what growing congregations are doing:- Using four or five technologies (Twitter, Facebook, blogs, email and more) to serve existing members and connect with new ones (57%).
- Offering parenting events, which they consider a "specialty" of the congregation (64%).
- Holding special events once a month or more to attract people from outside the congregation (44%).
- Always having children or youth read, speak or perform during worship (45%).
- Emphasizing prayer groups, which they consider a "specialty" of the congregation (47%).
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
This Morning's Discussion of Luke, chapters 7 to 11 (Read the New Testament in a Year)
The people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, are currently taking a year to read the New Testament. We read five chapters each week. On Wednesdays, we get together for discussions of the week's readings. People can choose to come either in the mornings or the evenings.
Here is this morning's discussion of Luke, chapters 7 through 11.
Here is this morning's discussion of Luke, chapters 7 through 11.
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
"Bold Lutheran" Need Not Be an Oxymoron!
[This is from my devotions for the Saint Matthew Church Council this evening.]
Tonight, I'd like to look at three passages of Scripture. The first is John 14:1. It comes from the same section of John as our gospel lessons for the past few Sundays have come. It's what scholars call the Farewell Discourse, words spoken by Jesus in the presence of the twelve apostles on the night of His arrest. In John 14:1, Jesus says:
First, Luther said:
Words on a T-shirt I saw not long ago give a good characterization of we Lutherans:
Our hesitation is learned and cultural, not spiritual. It's not of God!
A second passage of Scripture I want to look at underscores this fact. It's 2 Timothy 1:6-7. These verses come from the second letter we have in the New Testament that was written by the apostle Paul to a young pastor named Timothy. Paul writes:
We do this by daily contact with God, especially by praying throughout our days about anything and everything, seeking God's help and guidance and praising Him, along with regularly reading and studying God's Word.
The Holy Spirit is not "a spirit of cowardice." The more we Christians rely on God, the more the Holy Spirit ignites and sustains our passion and makes us bold in sharing our faith with others.
We need to seek the help of God's Holy Spirit so that we can live with the same boldness and conviction shown by Paul in the book of Romans:
Tonight, I'd like to look at three passages of Scripture. The first is John 14:1. It comes from the same section of John as our gospel lessons for the past few Sundays have come. It's what scholars call the Farewell Discourse, words spoken by Jesus in the presence of the twelve apostles on the night of His arrest. In John 14:1, Jesus says:
"Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in Me."Martin Luther had some especially important things for Lutherans to hear about these words of Jesus.
First, Luther said:
...if we Christians stay close to [Christ], we know that He speaks to us.Those who trust that Jesus is God and Savior and is risen and is living, seated at the right hand of God the Father, know that, to this day, Jesus speaks to us.
- Jesus, first of all and most assuredly speaks to us in the only book in the world the contents of which were breathed into its writers by the Holy Spirit: the Bible.
- And, Jesus speaks to us in what one pastor calls "whispers," bits of guidance, messages to the heart, that the Holy Spirit speaks to the minds of those who follow Jesus. (Those "whispers" will always be consistent with what we know of Jesus from the Bible, by the way. Whispers that urge us to sin aren't from God!)
- Jesus also speaks to us through the Sacraments: Holy Baptism and Holy Communion, the "visible words" that have been instituted by Christ, involve physical elements (bread and wine or water), and bring the forgiveness of sins.
We can be sure of this: a sorrowful, timid, and frightened heart doesn't come from Christ.Wow! We Lutherans need to especially latch onto the truth in those words. That's because when it comes to living our faith out loud or sharing the Good News of new life that can belong to anyone who turns from sin and believes in Jesus, we Lutherans tend to be timid.
Words on a T-shirt I saw not long ago give a good characterization of we Lutherans:
I'm proud to be a Lutheran...but not too proud.I want to tell you that our hesitation about letting the light of Jesus shine from us and about telling others the Good News about Jesus does not come from Jesus or from the Holy Spirit.
Our hesitation is learned and cultural, not spiritual. It's not of God!
A second passage of Scripture I want to look at underscores this fact. It's 2 Timothy 1:6-7. These verses come from the second letter we have in the New Testament that was written by the apostle Paul to a young pastor named Timothy. Paul writes:
For this reason I remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is within you through the laying on of my hands; for God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline.All Christians have the Holy Spirit living within them. The Spirit is sometimes portrayed in Scripture as a burning flame. Paul says that we need to rekindle this flame, stoke the fire of passion and belief in Christ within us.
We do this by daily contact with God, especially by praying throughout our days about anything and everything, seeking God's help and guidance and praising Him, along with regularly reading and studying God's Word.
The Holy Spirit is not "a spirit of cowardice." The more we Christians rely on God, the more the Holy Spirit ignites and sustains our passion and makes us bold in sharing our faith with others.
We need to seek the help of God's Holy Spirit so that we can live with the same boldness and conviction shown by Paul in the book of Romans:
...I am not ashamed of the gospel [Paul writes]; it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek [or Gentile, the non-Jew]. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith; as it is written, "The one who is righteous will live by faith."May God's Holy Spirit fill us with boldness as we spread the good news of new life that belongs to those (and only to those) with faith in Jesus Christ!
Wants, Needs, and Daily Bread
| MAY 21, 2012 |
| Couples Argue 3 Times per Month Over Finances |
| Financial matters trigger an average of 3 arguments per month for married couples, an incidence that rises to 4 per month for those aged 45 to 54, according to a U.S. survey conducted for the American Institute of CPAs by Harris Interactive. The most common source of contention is disagreement over what's a "want" and what's a "need." The next most common issues are unexpected expenses and insufficient savings. |
| Source: AICPA Survey: Finances Causing Rifts for American Couples |
This bit of information was the daily stat from the Harvard Business Review yesterday.
After I shared it with my wife, we both agreed that, happily, money or how to spend and save it, isn't a bone of contention between us.
You know, Jesus teaches Christians to pray, "Give us this day our daily bread."
Martin Luther explains this petition in The Small Catechism: "God indeed gives daily bread to all, even unbelievers, without our prayer, but we pray in this petition that He would help us recognize this so that we could receive our daily bread with thanksgiving."
Of course, there are many millions of people in this world who lack "daily bread."
But this is not a provision problem. God provides all that we need, including all the technology we need to cause even the most challenging of environments provide people with sustainability.
The widespread existence of hunger in our world today--every twelve seconds, a child dies of hunger somewhere on the planet--is a sharing problem: We who have aren't sharing with those who have, often not sharing even the know-how by which people who live in parts of the world that suffer drought or, as the result of human power games, famine.
This is why the people of our congregation, Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, are involved with World Vision.
Through World Vision, we sponsor a child in Ethiopia. The money doesn't go directly to the child or to her family, but to efforts toward creating a sustainable future in the village in which she lives. (As well as sharing the Good News of Jesus Christ with her.)
The youth of our church also have, for the past two years, participated in the 30 Hour Famine. During their famine, the teens go without food for thirty hours and receive pledges from those supporting their efforts, with the monies also going to World Vision's efforts to erase the global food shortage. (Over the course of the thirty hours, the young people also learn about the world hunger challenge and what can be done to address it.)
It's gratifying being able to give up some of our own comfort and resources in order to be the conduits through whom God provides our global neighbors with their daily bread...today and in a sustained future.
I also believe that if couples will daily seek to align their lives with the will of God as revealed in the Bible, their arguments over money will begin to diminish. Grateful for the undeserved gifts of forgiveness for sin and everlasting life with God that comes to all who repent and believe in Jesus Christ, they'll want to spend less superfluously and give more generously. (Learning this is a process, by the way, and it's a lesson we never fully learn this side of the grave.)
It isn't that God doesn't want us to have fun, of course. But when "fun" is the aim of our lives, we separate ourselves from God and others, we can become selfish, and we lose ourselves.
Jesus once asked: "What does it profit...to gain the whole world, but lose or forfeit [yourself]? (Luke 9:25). Good question!
Monday, May 21, 2012
Jesus' Goodbye Prayer
[This was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, yesterday morning.]
John 17:6-19
Imagine, for a moment, that you’re the parent of younger children (if you're the parent of younger children, no imagining necessary) and you’re about to go away on a long trip.
As a responsible parent, before going, there are at least three major things you would be sure to do.
First, you would arrange for someone to take care of your kids in your absence.
Second, you would review for your children any essential instructions, including remembering that you always love them.
And third, you would pray, asking that God would see that your children were looked after and that you would all be safely, happily reunited.
Jesus does all three of these things in chapters 13 through 17 of John’s gospel, a section of the New Testament scholars call Jesus’ Farewell Discourse. They’re words Jesus speaks at the Last Supper in the presence of the apostles on the night before His crucifixion.
After being crucified, of course, Jesus would rise from the dead and, forty days later, ascend to heaven. From that moment, Jesus knew that no one on earth would see Him face to face for a period of time known only to God the Father.
So, in John 13:36, Jesus says: “Where I am going, you cannot follow Me now, but you will follow Me afterward.” Like a responsible parent, Jesus is preparing His followers for His impending departure.
Later, in John 14:18, Jesus assures the disciples that, even with Him being physically absent, they wouldn’t be alone: “I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you.” Jesus will come back some day, the dead who have believed in Him will rise again, and Jesus will welcome His children into the new heaven and the new earth He has prepared for believers in Christ. But until that moment, He would not (and He does not) leave those who believe in Him by themselves. He sends the Holy Spirit to be with us!
Then in John, chapter 17, having arranged for the care of those who believe in Him and having instructed believers in how to live until He comes back, Jesus does what any responsible parent does before a time of separation from his or her children: He prays.
Turn to John, chapter 17, please. There, you’ll see that Jesus’ chapter-long prayer, called by some the high priestly prayer, has been divided by translators into three sections.
Of course, not everyone looks at Jesus and sees that He is God in the flesh. Some refuse to see God in Jesus. The fact is that only those who are willing to see Jesus in this way are granted the gift of faith. These are the people who become disciples.
Disciples --followers of Jesus--aren’t perfect people. Nor are they people who don’t sometimes have doubts. They’re people who come from an imperfect world and are themselves imperfect. But by God’s amazing grace, God gives forgiveness to those who repent for sin and grants brand new, everlasting lives to those who surrender control over their lives to Jesus. Disciples are forgiven sinners in whom, day in and day out, the Holy Spirit is constructing faith in Jesus as Lord, God, Savior, and King of their lives.
In verse 9, Jesus prays something curious. We know from John 3:16 and other passages that God the Father sent Jesus because God so loved the world, in spite of our sin, that He sent God the Son--Jesus--so that all who believe in may not perish, lost to God forever, but have everlasting life. God loves the world and the human beings who populate it!
Yet look at how Jesus prays in verse 9: “I pray for them [meaning the disciples] . I do not pray for the world but for those whom You have given Me, for they are Yours.”
You see, more important to Jesus than this world are the people God has given to Him, the people who entrust their lives to Him, the people who make up His Church.
Long after this universe has been destroyed and Jesus establishes His new heaven, new earth, and the new Jerusalem, believers in Jesus--the Church--will still exist. (Revelation 21:1-4)
The Church, the fellowship of Jesus’ disciples, is eternal.
The Church isn’t buildings, gardens, classrooms, sanctuaries, pipe organs, albs and stoles, hymn books, or offering plates.
I love how Article VII of the Augsburg Confession, one of the basic confessional documents of the Lutheran movement, based on the Bible, describes the Church. It says that the “...one holy Christian church will be and remain forever. This is the assembly of all believers among whom the Gospel is preached in its purity and the holy sacraments are administered according to the gospel.”
None of this is to say that the Church on earth is perfect. Personally, I know that I drag my old sinful self, sometimes kicking and screaming, whenever I come into the presence of Christ or gather with the fellowship of believers in Christ! This side of our own resurrections, every saint is still a sinner: a forgiven sinner, a recovering sinner, a sinner who lives in daily repentance and renewal, but still a sinner, saved only by the grace God gives to all who believe in Jesus Christ.
Article VIII of the Augsburg Confession notes that even in the church there are “many false Christians, hypocrites, and even open sinners [who] remain among the godly...”
But that doesn’t make the Church any less essential for anyone to have a life with God.
Life with God only happens in the lives of those who hear, receive, and believe in the gospel--the good news about Jesus--and who receive the sacraments of Holy Baptism and Holy Communion.
And these things--gospel and sacrament--are only offered by the Church.
This is why Jesus goes on to pray in John 17:11: “Holy Father, keep through Your Name those whom You have given Me, that they may be one as We are.”
Let’s be clear about what Jesus is praying here.
Jesus is not praying that everybody will all just get along.
There’s nothing wrong with people getting along, of course, and one day, after Jesus has returned to the earth, the dead who believed in Him arise, and He establishes the new heaven and the new earth, the harmony God intended for this fallen world will come into being.
But Jesus is not praying for unity in His Church in these days before His return at the expense of the truth.
He’s praying that our oneness, our unity, as Christians will be rooted in the truth that can only be found in Him and in the Word of God inspired by the Holy Spirit and revealed in the pages of Scripture.
That’s why Jesus prays as He does in John 17:17 (look at the verse, please): “Sanctify [that is, set them apart from the rest of the world, make them holy]...by Your truth. Your word is truth.”
A group of people united by anything other than the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ and the revealed Word of God is not a church.
When Martin Luther nailed the 95 Theses to the church door in Wittenberg, Germany and unintentionally began the Reformation, he didn’t mean to divide the Church. He did it in hopes of uniting the Church behind the truth as revealed in Jesus and in the Bible, the living Word of God.
Luther was condemned by bullies of Church and State who told him that the Bible and Christian faith were what they said they were, no matter what Christ and the Holy Spirit-inspired Scriptures themselves may have said to the contrary.
To the bullies, rituals, edicts, traditions, and “church unity” were more important than the truth God has revealed in Christ and reiterated in the Bible.
They wanted to force unity at all costs.
Martin Luther and the other leaders of the Reformation said, “No. We won’t play God for a chump. We won’t turn our backs on the truth.”
Folks, unless a church teaches and believes that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life and that people can only come to life with God the Father through faith in Christ, it’s not really part of Christ’s church.
Unless a church believes that Jesus was born of a virgin and was physically raised from the dead, it’s not a church.
Unless a church believes that the Bible is God’s inspired Word and is useful for teaching, reprimand, correction, and for training in righteousness, it’s not really a church.
Unless a church draws its being, life, and joy from Christ alone, Word alone, faith alone, it’s not really a church.
The church is that fellowship of believers among whom the gospel of new life for all who believe in Jesus is rightly proclaimed and the sacraments are administered according to the gospel.
It’s the fellowship being taken care of by God’s Holy Spirit, in which we hear and heed the Word of God, and is bathed in prayers: the prayers of Jesus for us and the prayers we offer for one another and for our witness about Jesus in the world.
If all these things aren't true of a group of people who call themselves church, they are not part of Christ’s Church. They may be a social club. Or a service club. Or a keep-up-the-building club. But they’re not part of the Church. Salvation isn’t happening among them. Its life isn’t being built on the truth of Christ.
If the church as you experience it is anything less than what Christ intends for you to have, why not join in praying to God today:
John 17:6-19
Imagine, for a moment, that you’re the parent of younger children (if you're the parent of younger children, no imagining necessary) and you’re about to go away on a long trip.
As a responsible parent, before going, there are at least three major things you would be sure to do.
First, you would arrange for someone to take care of your kids in your absence.
Second, you would review for your children any essential instructions, including remembering that you always love them.
And third, you would pray, asking that God would see that your children were looked after and that you would all be safely, happily reunited.
Jesus does all three of these things in chapters 13 through 17 of John’s gospel, a section of the New Testament scholars call Jesus’ Farewell Discourse. They’re words Jesus speaks at the Last Supper in the presence of the apostles on the night before His crucifixion.
After being crucified, of course, Jesus would rise from the dead and, forty days later, ascend to heaven. From that moment, Jesus knew that no one on earth would see Him face to face for a period of time known only to God the Father.
So, in John 13:36, Jesus says: “Where I am going, you cannot follow Me now, but you will follow Me afterward.” Like a responsible parent, Jesus is preparing His followers for His impending departure.
Later, in John 14:18, Jesus assures the disciples that, even with Him being physically absent, they wouldn’t be alone: “I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you.” Jesus will come back some day, the dead who have believed in Him will rise again, and Jesus will welcome His children into the new heaven and the new earth He has prepared for believers in Christ. But until that moment, He would not (and He does not) leave those who believe in Him by themselves. He sends the Holy Spirit to be with us!
Then in John, chapter 17, having arranged for the care of those who believe in Him and having instructed believers in how to live until He comes back, Jesus does what any responsible parent does before a time of separation from his or her children: He prays.
Turn to John, chapter 17, please. There, you’ll see that Jesus’ chapter-long prayer, called by some the high priestly prayer, has been divided by translators into three sections.
- In verses 1 through 5, Jesus prays for Himself, not selfishly, but to ask that, as He had glorified God the Father during His time on earth, the Father would now glorify Him through His suffering, death, and resurrection, all so people will believe in Him and have life.
- In verses 20 through 26, Jesus prays for people who will come to believe in Him through the witness of those who first followed and believed in Him. (That includes you and me.)
- Our lesson is John 17:6-19. Here, Jesus prays for His first disciples.
Of course, not everyone looks at Jesus and sees that He is God in the flesh. Some refuse to see God in Jesus. The fact is that only those who are willing to see Jesus in this way are granted the gift of faith. These are the people who become disciples.
Disciples --followers of Jesus--aren’t perfect people. Nor are they people who don’t sometimes have doubts. They’re people who come from an imperfect world and are themselves imperfect. But by God’s amazing grace, God gives forgiveness to those who repent for sin and grants brand new, everlasting lives to those who surrender control over their lives to Jesus. Disciples are forgiven sinners in whom, day in and day out, the Holy Spirit is constructing faith in Jesus as Lord, God, Savior, and King of their lives.
In verse 9, Jesus prays something curious. We know from John 3:16 and other passages that God the Father sent Jesus because God so loved the world, in spite of our sin, that He sent God the Son--Jesus--so that all who believe in may not perish, lost to God forever, but have everlasting life. God loves the world and the human beings who populate it!
Yet look at how Jesus prays in verse 9: “I pray for them [meaning the disciples] . I do not pray for the world but for those whom You have given Me, for they are Yours.”
You see, more important to Jesus than this world are the people God has given to Him, the people who entrust their lives to Him, the people who make up His Church.
Long after this universe has been destroyed and Jesus establishes His new heaven, new earth, and the new Jerusalem, believers in Jesus--the Church--will still exist. (Revelation 21:1-4)
The Church, the fellowship of Jesus’ disciples, is eternal.
The Church isn’t buildings, gardens, classrooms, sanctuaries, pipe organs, albs and stoles, hymn books, or offering plates.
I love how Article VII of the Augsburg Confession, one of the basic confessional documents of the Lutheran movement, based on the Bible, describes the Church. It says that the “...one holy Christian church will be and remain forever. This is the assembly of all believers among whom the Gospel is preached in its purity and the holy sacraments are administered according to the gospel.”
None of this is to say that the Church on earth is perfect. Personally, I know that I drag my old sinful self, sometimes kicking and screaming, whenever I come into the presence of Christ or gather with the fellowship of believers in Christ! This side of our own resurrections, every saint is still a sinner: a forgiven sinner, a recovering sinner, a sinner who lives in daily repentance and renewal, but still a sinner, saved only by the grace God gives to all who believe in Jesus Christ.
Article VIII of the Augsburg Confession notes that even in the church there are “many false Christians, hypocrites, and even open sinners [who] remain among the godly...”
But that doesn’t make the Church any less essential for anyone to have a life with God.
Life with God only happens in the lives of those who hear, receive, and believe in the gospel--the good news about Jesus--and who receive the sacraments of Holy Baptism and Holy Communion.
And these things--gospel and sacrament--are only offered by the Church.
This is why Jesus goes on to pray in John 17:11: “Holy Father, keep through Your Name those whom You have given Me, that they may be one as We are.”
Let’s be clear about what Jesus is praying here.
Jesus is not praying that everybody will all just get along.
There’s nothing wrong with people getting along, of course, and one day, after Jesus has returned to the earth, the dead who believed in Him arise, and He establishes the new heaven and the new earth, the harmony God intended for this fallen world will come into being.
But Jesus is not praying for unity in His Church in these days before His return at the expense of the truth.
He’s praying that our oneness, our unity, as Christians will be rooted in the truth that can only be found in Him and in the Word of God inspired by the Holy Spirit and revealed in the pages of Scripture.
That’s why Jesus prays as He does in John 17:17 (look at the verse, please): “Sanctify [that is, set them apart from the rest of the world, make them holy]...by Your truth. Your word is truth.”
A group of people united by anything other than the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ and the revealed Word of God is not a church.
When Martin Luther nailed the 95 Theses to the church door in Wittenberg, Germany and unintentionally began the Reformation, he didn’t mean to divide the Church. He did it in hopes of uniting the Church behind the truth as revealed in Jesus and in the Bible, the living Word of God.
Luther was condemned by bullies of Church and State who told him that the Bible and Christian faith were what they said they were, no matter what Christ and the Holy Spirit-inspired Scriptures themselves may have said to the contrary.
To the bullies, rituals, edicts, traditions, and “church unity” were more important than the truth God has revealed in Christ and reiterated in the Bible.
They wanted to force unity at all costs.
Martin Luther and the other leaders of the Reformation said, “No. We won’t play God for a chump. We won’t turn our backs on the truth.”
Folks, unless a church teaches and believes that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life and that people can only come to life with God the Father through faith in Christ, it’s not really part of Christ’s church.
Unless a church believes that Jesus was born of a virgin and was physically raised from the dead, it’s not a church.
Unless a church believes that the Bible is God’s inspired Word and is useful for teaching, reprimand, correction, and for training in righteousness, it’s not really a church.
Unless a church draws its being, life, and joy from Christ alone, Word alone, faith alone, it’s not really a church.
The church is that fellowship of believers among whom the gospel of new life for all who believe in Jesus is rightly proclaimed and the sacraments are administered according to the gospel.
It’s the fellowship being taken care of by God’s Holy Spirit, in which we hear and heed the Word of God, and is bathed in prayers: the prayers of Jesus for us and the prayers we offer for one another and for our witness about Jesus in the world.
If all these things aren't true of a group of people who call themselves church, they are not part of Christ’s Church. They may be a social club. Or a service club. Or a keep-up-the-building club. But they’re not part of the Church. Salvation isn’t happening among them. Its life isn’t being built on the truth of Christ.
If the church as you experience it is anything less than what Christ intends for you to have, why not join in praying to God today:
I want to build my life on the truth of Christ. I want to be part of a fellowship that scares the devil and shares life in Christ with a world that is dying in its sin by the second. I want to see Jesus’ prayer for His Church answered in my own life, along with the lives of all who are part of Saint Matthew. Grant this, O Lord! AmenIf that prayer expresses the desire of your heart today, I invite you to keep offering prayers like that every day you live and to allow the Holy Spirit to make you part of God the Father’s answer to Jesus’ John 17 prayer! Amen
Friday, May 18, 2012
Go Beyond Others' Expectations...You'll Smile!
Yesterday, my wife and I went to buy a few items at Giant Eagle. As we headed toward the self check, I spotted a display of DVDs. Among them were several titles by Leslie Sansone, the inventor of the simple walk at home workouts Ann and I really enjoy. One title looked especially good to us and the price was just $7.99.
We tossed the DVD into our cart and headed for the checkout. The last item I scanned was the Leslie Sansone DVD. As I did, the computer-generated voice said, "9.99." I touched the button on the computer screen for assistance and within seconds, a store manager appeared.
I explained what happened and she said, "Go ahead and complete your transaction, sir, and meet me at the register ahead." At the register, she hit some buttons and was handing my receipt to me when my wife, more alert than me, said, "You gave us the DVD for free?" "That's right!" she said, "have a nice evening and enjoy the workout."
Even if Ann and I didn't already love Giant Eagle, we would have become fans at that moment.
I've since learned that what the manager did is corporate policy.
But can you imagine what the world would be like if we did always did more than was expected of us?
What would happen in our families and marriages?
In our businesses and churches?
Based on what Ann and I felt as we left Giant Eagle yesterday, I can tell you there would be a lot more smiling faces. (The fun thing is the manager smiled too. It feels good when we go above and beyond people's expectations of us!)
Jesus once said that those who follow Him are to love even their enemies and to pray for the people who persecute them for their allegiance to Him.
At one level, that makes sense: The believer in Jesus knows that because of God's great charity, we're forgiven for our sins and Christ has given us a relationship with God that lasts eternally. We can afford to be loving and to pray for those who hate us. We know that nothing can separate us from the love of God given through Jesus!
Still, loving and praying for enemies is a countercultural and, really, who in this world would expect a person to do such crazy things?
But Jesus goes on to explain: "...if you love those who love you, what reward do you have?...And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others?..." When we fail to love our enemies and pray for those who give us a hard time in life, we're no different from everybody else. But, Jesus calls those who want to follow Him into eternity, to be different. In Matthew 5:48, He tells His followers to "be perfect...as your heavenly Father is perfect," meaning abandon the fractured, self-protecting ways of this world and embrace the wholeness and self-giving ways of God Himself.
Company policy at Giant Eagle set that manager free to be more considerate of two customers than we expected her to be.
Jesus Christ sets those who believe in Him free to be the people of love and consideration that we want to be, that God made us to be.
Loving enemies and praying for those who hate us way may not change the minds or hearts of those who experience our love. But then again it might.
And having permission to go above and beyond others' expectations like that is a wonderful thing!
If you confess that Jesus is your God and King, you are among the most free human beings on the planet. (Even when your enemies are powerful people who put you in jail for your faith in Christ!)
So, use your freedom!
Go ahead, right now: Do something loving for an enemy, pray for those who persecute or ridicule your faith. It will make you smile!
[Be sure to look at the passages from Scripture that you can click onto from the links above.]
We tossed the DVD into our cart and headed for the checkout. The last item I scanned was the Leslie Sansone DVD. As I did, the computer-generated voice said, "9.99." I touched the button on the computer screen for assistance and within seconds, a store manager appeared.
I explained what happened and she said, "Go ahead and complete your transaction, sir, and meet me at the register ahead." At the register, she hit some buttons and was handing my receipt to me when my wife, more alert than me, said, "You gave us the DVD for free?" "That's right!" she said, "have a nice evening and enjoy the workout."
Even if Ann and I didn't already love Giant Eagle, we would have become fans at that moment.
I've since learned that what the manager did is corporate policy.
But can you imagine what the world would be like if we did always did more than was expected of us?
What would happen in our families and marriages?
In our businesses and churches?
Based on what Ann and I felt as we left Giant Eagle yesterday, I can tell you there would be a lot more smiling faces. (The fun thing is the manager smiled too. It feels good when we go above and beyond people's expectations of us!)
Jesus once said that those who follow Him are to love even their enemies and to pray for the people who persecute them for their allegiance to Him.
At one level, that makes sense: The believer in Jesus knows that because of God's great charity, we're forgiven for our sins and Christ has given us a relationship with God that lasts eternally. We can afford to be loving and to pray for those who hate us. We know that nothing can separate us from the love of God given through Jesus!
Still, loving and praying for enemies is a countercultural and, really, who in this world would expect a person to do such crazy things?
But Jesus goes on to explain: "...if you love those who love you, what reward do you have?...And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others?..." When we fail to love our enemies and pray for those who give us a hard time in life, we're no different from everybody else. But, Jesus calls those who want to follow Him into eternity, to be different. In Matthew 5:48, He tells His followers to "be perfect...as your heavenly Father is perfect," meaning abandon the fractured, self-protecting ways of this world and embrace the wholeness and self-giving ways of God Himself.
Company policy at Giant Eagle set that manager free to be more considerate of two customers than we expected her to be.
Jesus Christ sets those who believe in Him free to be the people of love and consideration that we want to be, that God made us to be.
Loving enemies and praying for those who hate us way may not change the minds or hearts of those who experience our love. But then again it might.
And having permission to go above and beyond others' expectations like that is a wonderful thing!
If you confess that Jesus is your God and King, you are among the most free human beings on the planet. (Even when your enemies are powerful people who put you in jail for your faith in Christ!)
So, use your freedom!
Go ahead, right now: Do something loving for an enemy, pray for those who persecute or ridicule your faith. It will make you smile!
[Be sure to look at the passages from Scripture that you can click onto from the links above.]
Sunday, May 13, 2012
Love and Obedience
[This was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, this morning.]
John 15:9-17
Sometimes, you’ll hear the recording of a 911 call on a news report. If the caller seems to be in distress or danger, the 911 dispatcher always tells the caller to stay on the line until help arrives. “Stay on the line!” they sometimes almost plead. I’ve yet to hear a caller tell a dispatcher, “You can’t tell me what to do. Buzz off, buddy!”
When a person’s life is at risk, it’s unlikely that they’ll disobey the orders of a person who can save them.
Yet, day in and day out, all kinds of people tell God, the only One Who can save them from sin and death, to buzz off. They may not be so crass or impious as to say that out loud, but there are lots of people, even people who identify themselves as Christians, who, by their lives and actions, shake their fists at God, cut themselves off from God, and tell God. "You're not the boss of me! Buzz off!"
Today’s gospel lesson, is part of the long Farewell Discourse from the Gospel of John that starts in John 13 and extends through John 17.
In last week’s gospel lesson, words which immediately precede those in today’s lesson, Jesus begins to use the word abide, a word meaning to remain, to continue.
Jesus uses it again today. Please turn to today’s lesson, John 15:9-17. Look particularly at verses 9-12. Jesus says: “As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you; abide in My love. If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love. These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be full. This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.”
Jesus is telling all of us who follow Him: “Don’t hang up! Stay in touch with Me. Maintain your contact so that you can keep receiving the blessings of my love for you. Stay in touch so that you need not face eternity naked and judged in your sin, but covered, clothed in my forgiving grace, worthy through Your faith in Me to enter eternity with God. Only I can save you. Obey My Father and Me: Live in My love. That’s My commandment.”
I suppose that when preachers start talking about loving God and loving others, we risk sounding like a Hallmark card, all mush and misty eyes. But Jesus’ love is more than mere sentiment or thinking nice thoughts.
Jesus’ love for us was so passionate, so consuming, that He voluntarily went to a cross to take the punishment for sin you and I deserved.
And He tells us to live that same kind of love for others--for our neighbors, co-workers, family members, strangers.
It’s a love that sees every person in the world as friends worth dying for. “Greater love than this has no [one],” Jesus says in verse 13 “than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” Then Jesus tells us that we’re to love like that: “You are My friends if you do whatever I command you.”
Jesus wants us to abide in His love so that we can know and experience the same joyful love He had for us when He went to the cross to kill the power of sin, not over His life, but over ours.
Now, we all know that Jesus’ love can make a difference in our everyday lives. Christ’s love assures us that the God of the universe Who made everything cares about us and what happens to us.
Author Brendan Manning tells the story of an Irish priest walking through his parish one day when he saw a peasant on the side of the road, praying. The priest was pleased and said, “You must be very close to God.” The praying man thought about that for a moment, smiled, and said, “Yes, He thinks a lot of me!”
God thinks a lot of you, too. And when we know how much we’re loved by Christ, we’re no more inclined to tell Him to “buzz off” than is a person talking with a 911 dispatcher. When you realize how desperately you need Christ, you want to abide in Him. You want to stick close to Him. Abiding in Him isn't a grim commandment when you think about it, but an undeserved and infinitely valuable treasure!
But, that’s the easy part of being a Christian. It’s easy to let the God we know in Jesus Christ to love us. There’s a harder part.
That’s the part Jesus talks about in verse 12 of our lesson. He says: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.”
The way we remain connected with Christ is to do what He tells us to do: To love others just as He has loved us.
But as was true of Jesus, Who went to the cross to give away His love, for us, loving others entails more than thinking warm thoughts about others.
It entails obedience to God’s commandments--the commandment to repent and believe in Jesus, the call to keep the ten commandments, the great commandment to love our fellow believers--even when everything within us wants to do what we want to do, to seek our own pleasure and our own ease, to go it alone.
That’s the hard part of being a Christian!
Author Philip Yancey tells about Mother Teresa's appearance at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, DC during the Clinton years. Yancey says that Mother Teresa was, “… [r]olled out in a wheelchair, the frail, eighty-three-year-old Nobel Peace Prize laureate needed help to stand up. A special platform had been positioned to allow her to see over the podium. Even so, hunched over, four-feet-six-inches tall, she could barely reach the microphone. She spoke clearly and slowly with a thick accent in a voice that nonetheless managed to fill the auditorium.
“Mother Teresa said that America [had] become a selfish nation, in danger of losing the proper meaning of love [which she defined in this way]: ‘giving until it hurts.’"
Love is giving it until it hurts. Not just your money, but your whole life.
That’s what Jesus commands us to do, to love as He has loved, to love others until it hurts.
To be honest, I don’t much like that definition of love. I want to think of myself as being a loving and giving person. And I want others to see me in those ways, too. But I don’t want to love so much that it hurts.
And yet sometimes when love really is love as Jesus loves us, it will hurt.
And that is hard. When I was a young pastor, a seasoned pastor gave me a warning. "A pastor who doesn't love the people of his parish is worthless," he said. "But brace yourself: Sometimes the people you have loved and cared for most sacrificially, the people in whom you have poured your heart and soul will be the very ones who turn on you, cause trouble with your church, talk about you most viciously behind your back." Maybe because people hate facing people before whom they've been so vulnerable and human, whether because of tragedy, difficulties, or sin that bent them so low they felt that they had to talk with their pastor, I have found that pastor's warning to have been warranted. Sometimes the people on whom a pastor has expended the most time and the biggest investments of Christ's love and grace are the people who become the pastor's biggest thorns in the flesh. But a pastor who doesn't love the people of his parish is worthless.
The people we love or serve in Jesus’ Name may not love us back.
The people we love may die or move out of our lives.
But remember this: When Jesus commands obedience to God’s commandments even if it hurts, He doesn’t ask us to do anything that He Himself wasn’t willing to do!
When Jesus went to a cross for you and me, it was no picnic. And He says that to maintain a connection with Him that will sustain us and encourage us through bad times and good and give us the assurance of eternity spent with Him, we’re to love in the same way.
Love entails sacrifice. It entails risk. It also entails obedience to Jesus command to live His love.
“The men of Block 14 were digging gravel outside the Auschwitz concentration camp in July 1941,” writer Harold J. Sala says. “Suddenly the sirens began to shriek. There’d been an escape. That evening [the fears of the other prisoners] were confirmed: [the escapee] was from their block. [That meant that their Nazi captors would take it out on them.] Next day, the block’s six hundred men were forced to stand on the parade ground under the broiling sun. ‘At the day’s end,’ [a reporter named Connie Lauerman later said], ‘the deputy commander, Fritsch, arrived in his crisply pressed uniform, and shiny jackboots to announce the fate of the terrified men in dirty...prison suits. “The fugitive hasn’t been found,” barked Fritsch. “In reprisal for your comrade’s escape, ten of you will die of starvation.”’
“The men slated for starvation were selected. One of them...a Polish army sergeant, was sobbing, ‘My wife and my children.’ Then a Polish Franciscan priest, Maximilian Kolbe, pushed his way to the front as...guards sighted their rifles on his chest. ‘Herr Kommandant,’ he said, ‘a request.’ ’What do you want?’...’I want to die in place of this prisoner,’ [he said, pointing to the sobbing man]...’I’ve no wife and no children...’ [There was] a stunned silence, and then [the commandant said curtly,] ‘Request granted.’”
What would cause a man to sacrifice himself like that?
Simply, he was obedient to the command to love that comes from the One he knew had loved Him on the cross. Maximilian Kolbe loved because he had been loved by Christ and through that love, was confident that beyond the grave, Christ would keep on loving Him eternally.
Do you have that confidence this morning? Are you certain enough of Christ’s love for you and your connection with Him that you can love others, even those you find unlovable, until it hurts?
Thank God that our obedience to love others like Jesus loved us probably won't call us to die a martyr’s death, though we can't say for sure.
But we will certainly be called to love as Christ loved nonetheless and it’s only as we remain obedient to that call that we will stay connected to Christ.
Today and every day, may we remain obedient to God’s commandments and live in the love Christ gave us on the cross. Amen
John 15:9-17
Sometimes, you’ll hear the recording of a 911 call on a news report. If the caller seems to be in distress or danger, the 911 dispatcher always tells the caller to stay on the line until help arrives. “Stay on the line!” they sometimes almost plead. I’ve yet to hear a caller tell a dispatcher, “You can’t tell me what to do. Buzz off, buddy!”
When a person’s life is at risk, it’s unlikely that they’ll disobey the orders of a person who can save them.
Yet, day in and day out, all kinds of people tell God, the only One Who can save them from sin and death, to buzz off. They may not be so crass or impious as to say that out loud, but there are lots of people, even people who identify themselves as Christians, who, by their lives and actions, shake their fists at God, cut themselves off from God, and tell God. "You're not the boss of me! Buzz off!"
Today’s gospel lesson, is part of the long Farewell Discourse from the Gospel of John that starts in John 13 and extends through John 17.
In last week’s gospel lesson, words which immediately precede those in today’s lesson, Jesus begins to use the word abide, a word meaning to remain, to continue.
Jesus uses it again today. Please turn to today’s lesson, John 15:9-17. Look particularly at verses 9-12. Jesus says: “As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you; abide in My love. If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love. These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be full. This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.”
Jesus is telling all of us who follow Him: “Don’t hang up! Stay in touch with Me. Maintain your contact so that you can keep receiving the blessings of my love for you. Stay in touch so that you need not face eternity naked and judged in your sin, but covered, clothed in my forgiving grace, worthy through Your faith in Me to enter eternity with God. Only I can save you. Obey My Father and Me: Live in My love. That’s My commandment.”
I suppose that when preachers start talking about loving God and loving others, we risk sounding like a Hallmark card, all mush and misty eyes. But Jesus’ love is more than mere sentiment or thinking nice thoughts.
Jesus’ love for us was so passionate, so consuming, that He voluntarily went to a cross to take the punishment for sin you and I deserved.
And He tells us to live that same kind of love for others--for our neighbors, co-workers, family members, strangers.
It’s a love that sees every person in the world as friends worth dying for. “Greater love than this has no [one],” Jesus says in verse 13 “than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” Then Jesus tells us that we’re to love like that: “You are My friends if you do whatever I command you.”
Jesus wants us to abide in His love so that we can know and experience the same joyful love He had for us when He went to the cross to kill the power of sin, not over His life, but over ours.
Now, we all know that Jesus’ love can make a difference in our everyday lives. Christ’s love assures us that the God of the universe Who made everything cares about us and what happens to us.
Author Brendan Manning tells the story of an Irish priest walking through his parish one day when he saw a peasant on the side of the road, praying. The priest was pleased and said, “You must be very close to God.” The praying man thought about that for a moment, smiled, and said, “Yes, He thinks a lot of me!”
God thinks a lot of you, too. And when we know how much we’re loved by Christ, we’re no more inclined to tell Him to “buzz off” than is a person talking with a 911 dispatcher. When you realize how desperately you need Christ, you want to abide in Him. You want to stick close to Him. Abiding in Him isn't a grim commandment when you think about it, but an undeserved and infinitely valuable treasure!
But, that’s the easy part of being a Christian. It’s easy to let the God we know in Jesus Christ to love us. There’s a harder part.
That’s the part Jesus talks about in verse 12 of our lesson. He says: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.”
The way we remain connected with Christ is to do what He tells us to do: To love others just as He has loved us.
But as was true of Jesus, Who went to the cross to give away His love, for us, loving others entails more than thinking warm thoughts about others.
It entails obedience to God’s commandments--the commandment to repent and believe in Jesus, the call to keep the ten commandments, the great commandment to love our fellow believers--even when everything within us wants to do what we want to do, to seek our own pleasure and our own ease, to go it alone.
That’s the hard part of being a Christian!
Author Philip Yancey tells about Mother Teresa's appearance at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, DC during the Clinton years. Yancey says that Mother Teresa was, “… [r]olled out in a wheelchair, the frail, eighty-three-year-old Nobel Peace Prize laureate needed help to stand up. A special platform had been positioned to allow her to see over the podium. Even so, hunched over, four-feet-six-inches tall, she could barely reach the microphone. She spoke clearly and slowly with a thick accent in a voice that nonetheless managed to fill the auditorium.
“Mother Teresa said that America [had] become a selfish nation, in danger of losing the proper meaning of love [which she defined in this way]: ‘giving until it hurts.’"
Love is giving it until it hurts. Not just your money, but your whole life.
That’s what Jesus commands us to do, to love as He has loved, to love others until it hurts.
To be honest, I don’t much like that definition of love. I want to think of myself as being a loving and giving person. And I want others to see me in those ways, too. But I don’t want to love so much that it hurts.
And yet sometimes when love really is love as Jesus loves us, it will hurt.
And that is hard. When I was a young pastor, a seasoned pastor gave me a warning. "A pastor who doesn't love the people of his parish is worthless," he said. "But brace yourself: Sometimes the people you have loved and cared for most sacrificially, the people in whom you have poured your heart and soul will be the very ones who turn on you, cause trouble with your church, talk about you most viciously behind your back." Maybe because people hate facing people before whom they've been so vulnerable and human, whether because of tragedy, difficulties, or sin that bent them so low they felt that they had to talk with their pastor, I have found that pastor's warning to have been warranted. Sometimes the people on whom a pastor has expended the most time and the biggest investments of Christ's love and grace are the people who become the pastor's biggest thorns in the flesh. But a pastor who doesn't love the people of his parish is worthless.
The people we love or serve in Jesus’ Name may not love us back.
The people we love may die or move out of our lives.
But remember this: When Jesus commands obedience to God’s commandments even if it hurts, He doesn’t ask us to do anything that He Himself wasn’t willing to do!
When Jesus went to a cross for you and me, it was no picnic. And He says that to maintain a connection with Him that will sustain us and encourage us through bad times and good and give us the assurance of eternity spent with Him, we’re to love in the same way.
Love entails sacrifice. It entails risk. It also entails obedience to Jesus command to live His love.
“The men of Block 14 were digging gravel outside the Auschwitz concentration camp in July 1941,” writer Harold J. Sala says. “Suddenly the sirens began to shriek. There’d been an escape. That evening [the fears of the other prisoners] were confirmed: [the escapee] was from their block. [That meant that their Nazi captors would take it out on them.] Next day, the block’s six hundred men were forced to stand on the parade ground under the broiling sun. ‘At the day’s end,’ [a reporter named Connie Lauerman later said], ‘the deputy commander, Fritsch, arrived in his crisply pressed uniform, and shiny jackboots to announce the fate of the terrified men in dirty...prison suits. “The fugitive hasn’t been found,” barked Fritsch. “In reprisal for your comrade’s escape, ten of you will die of starvation.”’
“The men slated for starvation were selected. One of them...a Polish army sergeant, was sobbing, ‘My wife and my children.’ Then a Polish Franciscan priest, Maximilian Kolbe, pushed his way to the front as...guards sighted their rifles on his chest. ‘Herr Kommandant,’ he said, ‘a request.’ ’What do you want?’...’I want to die in place of this prisoner,’ [he said, pointing to the sobbing man]...’I’ve no wife and no children...’ [There was] a stunned silence, and then [the commandant said curtly,] ‘Request granted.’”
What would cause a man to sacrifice himself like that?
Simply, he was obedient to the command to love that comes from the One he knew had loved Him on the cross. Maximilian Kolbe loved because he had been loved by Christ and through that love, was confident that beyond the grave, Christ would keep on loving Him eternally.
Do you have that confidence this morning? Are you certain enough of Christ’s love for you and your connection with Him that you can love others, even those you find unlovable, until it hurts?
Thank God that our obedience to love others like Jesus loved us probably won't call us to die a martyr’s death, though we can't say for sure.
But we will certainly be called to love as Christ loved nonetheless and it’s only as we remain obedient to that call that we will stay connected to Christ.
Today and every day, may we remain obedient to God’s commandments and live in the love Christ gave us on the cross. Amen
Sunday, May 06, 2012
Life from the Vine
[This was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, this morning.]
John 15:1-8
On the night of His arrest, in the room where He and the apostles had their Passover meal, Jesus tells them (and all who believe in Him) at the beginning of our lesson: “I am the true vine...”
What exactly does this mean and why should we spend the next few minutes of our lives trying to understand it?
In the Old Testament, God’s people Israel were pictured as a vine. For example, Psalm 80:8 says: “You have brought a vine out of Egypt. You have cast out the nations and planted it.” The mission of God’s people, Israel, was to be a light to the world, pointing others to the life that only God can give to those who turn from sin and believe in Him.
Israel's mission was later to be placed on the shoulders of one anointed king, a person described at least five centuries before the birth of Jesus in the book of Isaiah as the Servant. God speaks to this Servant in Isaiah 49:6: “I will...give You as a light to the gentiles, that You should be My salvation to the ends of the earth.”
In our gospel lesson, Jesus claims to be that Servant, the true Vine, Who is a light to all nations and Who offers salvation to all the world.
In that first verse, Jesus also says, “My Father is the vinedresser.”
Every vine needs pruning. Otherwise, it grows crazy and sprouts small, unhealthy, useless grapes. A vinedresser makes sure that his investment of time, energy, water, and fertilizer are maximized. He cuts off the branches that are likely to rob life from the other branches and not produce much themselves. Jesus evidently has branches that will be pruned away. We'll learn more about that as we dig further into this passage.
In verse 2, Jesus explains: “Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He [God the Father] takes away; and every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit.”
Now, Jesus, like most Jewish teachers in the ancient world and like the Biblical writers, loved plays on word. They helped make teaching more memorable. The word that Jesus uses for prune in verse 2 is kathairei, a word that is similar to one He uses in verse 3, where He says: “You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you.” The word for clean in verse 3 is, in the original Greek, katharoi (we get the words like catharsis or cathartic, used of cleansing experiences, from it). Jesus is equating cleansing with pruning. “My word,” Jesus is saying, “the word that all who believe in Me will not perish but have everlasting life, has made you clean. I wash away the sins of all who believe in Me and am the way you to eternal life with God.”
Jesus makes those who believe in Him clean. Our sin is pruned away. But, Jesus says, God the Father also rids His vine of unproductive branches and rids even the productive branches of unproductive shoots.
This is important, because in verse 5, Jesus tells us: “I am the vine, you are the branches...”
Jesus says that those who are baptized and believe in Him are connected to Him, sort of like a lamp is connected to electric power through a wall outlet. A lamp that remains unplugged just sets and collects dust. It only serves a function and only "comes to life" when it's connected to its power source. Believers in Jesus draw their life from Jesus alone and as branches on the same Vine, Jesus, they are also connected to each other. You can't be a Christian on your own: You need both Jesus and His Church.
The apostle Paul says something similar to this in 1 Corinthians, where he writes that those of us who make up Christ’s Church “are the body of Christ and members individually.” So, we are branches who draw life from Jesus, we’re part of His body.
But that raises a problem. Jesus is sinless. The New Testament book of Hebrews says that Jesus “was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin.” Now, if Jesus the Vine is going to thrive and give life to those who truly repent for sin and truly believe in Him, God cannot allow anything impure or sinful to be attached to Jesus. God must prune or cleanse Jesus the Vine of those branches that want to take life and blessings from Jesus without bearing fruit: without repentance for sin or trust in Jesus.
Unless the Father prunes the branches that are wasting God’s grace on the sins they want more than they want God, the whole vine, the entire body of Christ and God’s intention to create a new and everlasting kingdom for those who trust in Christ, is put in jeopardy.
This is why making our relationship with Christ and His Church the highest priority in our lives is so important. Jesus is saying that if we’re not all in with Him and His body, the Church, we’re really locking Him out of our lives.
This leads to what Jesus says in John 15:4. It’s both an order and a plea from the Savior Who loves us like no other: “Abide in Me...”
Abide means live, stay, or remain. Jesus is saying, “Stick with Me.”
Jesus goes on to say: “As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me.” Then, at the end of verse 5, Jesus says something that sticks in the craw of any self-respecting, self-sufficient human being: “without Me you can do nothing.”
Who has the guts to admit that today: "Without Jesus, I can do nothing?" I learn it more every day! A few months ago, God impressed on me a simple message: “Don’t try to be creative with your sermons. Less of you; more of Me. Preach My Word and let the chips fall where they may.” It’s liberating to know that while I can’t, God always can!
Listen: Some of you may be trying to live a good, wholesome life on the strength of your own effort. If that’s what you’re doing, I’m telling you that you are bound to fail. We can never be as good as we were made to be or as we sometimes imagine ourselves to be. Jesus says we can do nothing without Him.
Others of you may think that you’re living a wholesome, godly life without paying much attention to God. As I’ve mentioned before, my grandmother used to say, “It’s easier to be good when you’re old than when you’re young.” What a stupid thing to say! That statement may be true only when you have one sin in mind.
But, I’ve found that the older I get, the easier it is for me to do just what I want to do. Society allows that as we age. “Age has its privileges,” we're told. Live enough years with that mentality and you start to believe it! You think that you’re entitled.
As the years go by--I’m talking to people in their teens as well as those in their 80s--maybe the best thing we could pray in the morning is, “God, what do you want me to do today that I don’t want to do?” I guarantee that if we will pray like that, we’ll be pushed so far out of our comfort zones we’ll have to remain connected to Christ for support and the sheer ability to get the thing done. We’ll know that we can’t, but God can.
In verse 6, Jesus says that if we refuse to be connected to Him, we will be cast out, thrown into the fire and burned. Lest we misunderstand Jesus' meaning here, He says something similar in Matthew's gospel: "So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the rightweous and throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth" (Matthew 13:49-50). The difference between the good and evil people Jesus describes here is not that one group are sinners and the other is not; it's that one group of sinners places its confidence in its own capacity to be good, while the other group relies for its goodness on Christ, the true vine, alone.
Those who don’t believe in hell need to take the subject up with Jesus; He clearly did believe in hell. In fact, He died and rose to prevent any of us from experiencing it. All that is required of us is that we remain connected to Him, trusting in Him alone.
But verse 6 isn’t the most challenging verse in the lesson. Verse 7 is. Jesus says: “If you abide in Me and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you.”
A lot of games get played with this verse and others like it. “If you only had enough faith,” some people will say, “you would never get sick and everything you ever wanted would be there for you.” That’s not faith, but magical thinking.
So, let’s not play games and deal honestly with what Jesus says here, with what we can understand and what we can’t. Probably every person in this sanctuary has prayed for the earthly lives of loved ones or friends, the new job or career, good health for ourselves or other things, and not received the answers we desperately sought. I cannot and will not explain away all the pain you’ve gone through as a result. Nor do I know why God seems to say, “No” to the prayers of Christians.
But, just a few thoughts. Please look at Psalm 37:4. It says: “Delight yourself...in the Lord, and he shall give you the desires of your heart.”
Notice that the prerequisite for God giving us the desires of our hearts is that we delight in Lord. To delight in the Lord must mean, in part, putting God and God’s priorities first in our lives. We delight in God as we abide in Christ and remain connected to Him. As a result, what we desire changes because we delight in God. God's mind and our minds move more in sync. Some of what we pray for may change when delight in God. God may teach us to truly pray the hardest petition of the Lord’s Prayer: “Thy will be done.” Maybe this is why Jesus makes this promise to give us whatever we desire within the context of His plea and command to abide in Him.
When I first became a Christian, the passage of Scripture that bothered me the most was Genesis 3:24. It comes after Adam and Eve have fallen into sin. It says that God drove Adam and Eve out of the garden and kept the whole human race from getting to the tree of life. “Why did God do that?” I wondered. Doesn’t God want to give us life?
The answer, of course, is that God does want to give us life. But more than that, God wants to give us life with Him. Had the human race gotten access to the tree of life without the change in our relationship with God that comes to those who believe in Jesus Christ, it would have meant an eternity of suffering and separation from God. We would have gotten the desires of our hearts, but the desires of hearts darkened and perverted by sin. We would have been lost to God forever, still in our sins.
God’s ways may not lead us to the answers we seek. But God’s ways, when we persevere in abiding with Christ, always lead to life beyond the confines of this suffering, dying world. God's ways always lead to resurrection victory and eternal life in His kingdom when we stick with Jesus.
The crucified and risen Jesus is the only one with the credibility to ask us to believe that, to trust God even when tragedies we devoutly prayed would not come, come anyway.
That's because Jesus on the cross assures us that God understands our pain and because Jesus risen assures us that there will be a time beyond our earthly sadness when all that seems senseless and barren will be explained, when all the hurts and kills us today will be in the past.
The apostle Paul, who knew all about suffering and about God rebuffing him when he asked that suffering be removed from his life, could, because of his connection to Jesus, say in Romans 8:18: “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed to us” when Jesus returns to bring His new creation in its fullness!
Until that day when Jesus returns, as we remain connected to Christ and our prayers move in sync with God, God will build up our faith, we will delight in God and desire the things God desires, and God will use us to share His love with and bring His kingdom to others. Like our Savior, we will share in others’ sorrows and joys and, in this way, bring the life of Christ to them. It is just this life--a life of deep connection with Christ and the needs of others--that Jesus calls “bearing fruit,” living the same faith Sunday afternoon through Saturday that we profess on Sunday mornings.
“By this [abiding in Him],” Jesus says in verse 8 of our gospel lesson, “My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit. So [or, in this way] you will be My disciples.”
Stick with Jesus and His body, the Church.
That’s where life is.
That’s where, even in the midst of questions we can’t fully answer in this world, purpose can be found.
Amen
John 15:1-8
On the night of His arrest, in the room where He and the apostles had their Passover meal, Jesus tells them (and all who believe in Him) at the beginning of our lesson: “I am the true vine...”
What exactly does this mean and why should we spend the next few minutes of our lives trying to understand it?
In the Old Testament, God’s people Israel were pictured as a vine. For example, Psalm 80:8 says: “You have brought a vine out of Egypt. You have cast out the nations and planted it.” The mission of God’s people, Israel, was to be a light to the world, pointing others to the life that only God can give to those who turn from sin and believe in Him.
Israel's mission was later to be placed on the shoulders of one anointed king, a person described at least five centuries before the birth of Jesus in the book of Isaiah as the Servant. God speaks to this Servant in Isaiah 49:6: “I will...give You as a light to the gentiles, that You should be My salvation to the ends of the earth.”
In our gospel lesson, Jesus claims to be that Servant, the true Vine, Who is a light to all nations and Who offers salvation to all the world.
In that first verse, Jesus also says, “My Father is the vinedresser.”
Every vine needs pruning. Otherwise, it grows crazy and sprouts small, unhealthy, useless grapes. A vinedresser makes sure that his investment of time, energy, water, and fertilizer are maximized. He cuts off the branches that are likely to rob life from the other branches and not produce much themselves. Jesus evidently has branches that will be pruned away. We'll learn more about that as we dig further into this passage.
In verse 2, Jesus explains: “Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He [God the Father] takes away; and every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit.”
Now, Jesus, like most Jewish teachers in the ancient world and like the Biblical writers, loved plays on word. They helped make teaching more memorable. The word that Jesus uses for prune in verse 2 is kathairei, a word that is similar to one He uses in verse 3, where He says: “You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you.” The word for clean in verse 3 is, in the original Greek, katharoi (we get the words like catharsis or cathartic, used of cleansing experiences, from it). Jesus is equating cleansing with pruning. “My word,” Jesus is saying, “the word that all who believe in Me will not perish but have everlasting life, has made you clean. I wash away the sins of all who believe in Me and am the way you to eternal life with God.”
Jesus makes those who believe in Him clean. Our sin is pruned away. But, Jesus says, God the Father also rids His vine of unproductive branches and rids even the productive branches of unproductive shoots.
This is important, because in verse 5, Jesus tells us: “I am the vine, you are the branches...”
Jesus says that those who are baptized and believe in Him are connected to Him, sort of like a lamp is connected to electric power through a wall outlet. A lamp that remains unplugged just sets and collects dust. It only serves a function and only "comes to life" when it's connected to its power source. Believers in Jesus draw their life from Jesus alone and as branches on the same Vine, Jesus, they are also connected to each other. You can't be a Christian on your own: You need both Jesus and His Church.
The apostle Paul says something similar to this in 1 Corinthians, where he writes that those of us who make up Christ’s Church “are the body of Christ and members individually.” So, we are branches who draw life from Jesus, we’re part of His body.
But that raises a problem. Jesus is sinless. The New Testament book of Hebrews says that Jesus “was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin.” Now, if Jesus the Vine is going to thrive and give life to those who truly repent for sin and truly believe in Him, God cannot allow anything impure or sinful to be attached to Jesus. God must prune or cleanse Jesus the Vine of those branches that want to take life and blessings from Jesus without bearing fruit: without repentance for sin or trust in Jesus.
Unless the Father prunes the branches that are wasting God’s grace on the sins they want more than they want God, the whole vine, the entire body of Christ and God’s intention to create a new and everlasting kingdom for those who trust in Christ, is put in jeopardy.
This is why making our relationship with Christ and His Church the highest priority in our lives is so important. Jesus is saying that if we’re not all in with Him and His body, the Church, we’re really locking Him out of our lives.
This leads to what Jesus says in John 15:4. It’s both an order and a plea from the Savior Who loves us like no other: “Abide in Me...”
Abide means live, stay, or remain. Jesus is saying, “Stick with Me.”
Jesus goes on to say: “As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me.” Then, at the end of verse 5, Jesus says something that sticks in the craw of any self-respecting, self-sufficient human being: “without Me you can do nothing.”
Who has the guts to admit that today: "Without Jesus, I can do nothing?" I learn it more every day! A few months ago, God impressed on me a simple message: “Don’t try to be creative with your sermons. Less of you; more of Me. Preach My Word and let the chips fall where they may.” It’s liberating to know that while I can’t, God always can!
Listen: Some of you may be trying to live a good, wholesome life on the strength of your own effort. If that’s what you’re doing, I’m telling you that you are bound to fail. We can never be as good as we were made to be or as we sometimes imagine ourselves to be. Jesus says we can do nothing without Him.
Others of you may think that you’re living a wholesome, godly life without paying much attention to God. As I’ve mentioned before, my grandmother used to say, “It’s easier to be good when you’re old than when you’re young.” What a stupid thing to say! That statement may be true only when you have one sin in mind.
But, I’ve found that the older I get, the easier it is for me to do just what I want to do. Society allows that as we age. “Age has its privileges,” we're told. Live enough years with that mentality and you start to believe it! You think that you’re entitled.
As the years go by--I’m talking to people in their teens as well as those in their 80s--maybe the best thing we could pray in the morning is, “God, what do you want me to do today that I don’t want to do?” I guarantee that if we will pray like that, we’ll be pushed so far out of our comfort zones we’ll have to remain connected to Christ for support and the sheer ability to get the thing done. We’ll know that we can’t, but God can.
In verse 6, Jesus says that if we refuse to be connected to Him, we will be cast out, thrown into the fire and burned. Lest we misunderstand Jesus' meaning here, He says something similar in Matthew's gospel: "So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the rightweous and throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth" (Matthew 13:49-50). The difference between the good and evil people Jesus describes here is not that one group are sinners and the other is not; it's that one group of sinners places its confidence in its own capacity to be good, while the other group relies for its goodness on Christ, the true vine, alone.
Those who don’t believe in hell need to take the subject up with Jesus; He clearly did believe in hell. In fact, He died and rose to prevent any of us from experiencing it. All that is required of us is that we remain connected to Him, trusting in Him alone.
But verse 6 isn’t the most challenging verse in the lesson. Verse 7 is. Jesus says: “If you abide in Me and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you.”
A lot of games get played with this verse and others like it. “If you only had enough faith,” some people will say, “you would never get sick and everything you ever wanted would be there for you.” That’s not faith, but magical thinking.
So, let’s not play games and deal honestly with what Jesus says here, with what we can understand and what we can’t. Probably every person in this sanctuary has prayed for the earthly lives of loved ones or friends, the new job or career, good health for ourselves or other things, and not received the answers we desperately sought. I cannot and will not explain away all the pain you’ve gone through as a result. Nor do I know why God seems to say, “No” to the prayers of Christians.
But, just a few thoughts. Please look at Psalm 37:4. It says: “Delight yourself...in the Lord, and he shall give you the desires of your heart.”
Notice that the prerequisite for God giving us the desires of our hearts is that we delight in Lord. To delight in the Lord must mean, in part, putting God and God’s priorities first in our lives. We delight in God as we abide in Christ and remain connected to Him. As a result, what we desire changes because we delight in God. God's mind and our minds move more in sync. Some of what we pray for may change when delight in God. God may teach us to truly pray the hardest petition of the Lord’s Prayer: “Thy will be done.” Maybe this is why Jesus makes this promise to give us whatever we desire within the context of His plea and command to abide in Him.
When I first became a Christian, the passage of Scripture that bothered me the most was Genesis 3:24. It comes after Adam and Eve have fallen into sin. It says that God drove Adam and Eve out of the garden and kept the whole human race from getting to the tree of life. “Why did God do that?” I wondered. Doesn’t God want to give us life?
The answer, of course, is that God does want to give us life. But more than that, God wants to give us life with Him. Had the human race gotten access to the tree of life without the change in our relationship with God that comes to those who believe in Jesus Christ, it would have meant an eternity of suffering and separation from God. We would have gotten the desires of our hearts, but the desires of hearts darkened and perverted by sin. We would have been lost to God forever, still in our sins.
God’s ways may not lead us to the answers we seek. But God’s ways, when we persevere in abiding with Christ, always lead to life beyond the confines of this suffering, dying world. God's ways always lead to resurrection victory and eternal life in His kingdom when we stick with Jesus.
The crucified and risen Jesus is the only one with the credibility to ask us to believe that, to trust God even when tragedies we devoutly prayed would not come, come anyway.
That's because Jesus on the cross assures us that God understands our pain and because Jesus risen assures us that there will be a time beyond our earthly sadness when all that seems senseless and barren will be explained, when all the hurts and kills us today will be in the past.
The apostle Paul, who knew all about suffering and about God rebuffing him when he asked that suffering be removed from his life, could, because of his connection to Jesus, say in Romans 8:18: “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed to us” when Jesus returns to bring His new creation in its fullness!
Until that day when Jesus returns, as we remain connected to Christ and our prayers move in sync with God, God will build up our faith, we will delight in God and desire the things God desires, and God will use us to share His love with and bring His kingdom to others. Like our Savior, we will share in others’ sorrows and joys and, in this way, bring the life of Christ to them. It is just this life--a life of deep connection with Christ and the needs of others--that Jesus calls “bearing fruit,” living the same faith Sunday afternoon through Saturday that we profess on Sunday mornings.
“By this [abiding in Him],” Jesus says in verse 8 of our gospel lesson, “My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit. So [or, in this way] you will be My disciples.”
Stick with Jesus and His body, the Church.
That’s where life is.
That’s where, even in the midst of questions we can’t fully answer in this world, purpose can be found.
Amen
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