Resurrection Power!

[This was shared during today's worship services with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Acts 4:1-12

Yesterday, the nation said goodbye to a woman beloved by many, the wife of one president, mother of another, Barbara Bush. 

One theme that ran throughout the funeral was her belief in Jesus Christ and in the resurrection from death that will come to all who believe in Him. Her son, former Florida governor Jeb Bush, reported visiting his mother shortly before she died. He wondered if she was ready to die, if she was frightened. “Jeb,” Mrs. Bush told him, “I believe in Jesus and He is my Savior. I don’t want to leave your dad, but I know that I will be in a beautiful place.”

Barbara Bush expressed the faith we have as disciples of Jesus Christ, God the Son, Who took on human flesh to receive the condemnation for sin that you and I deserve, the condemnation of death and separation from God, then rose from the dead to assure that all who turn from sin and daily entrust their lives to Him, will also be raised to live with God “in a beautiful place,” the eternal kingdom of God.

In the past two centuries or so, the Western world has seen the rise of what some see as rational thought. It features a rejection of belief in God, the deity of Christ, or His resurrection. 

In fact, one of this nation’s founders, Thomas Jefferson, was just such a “rational” thinker: He produced his own version of the Bible, with Jesus’ miracles and His resurrection, deleted. For Jefferson, his “bible” produced a more palatable “Christianity.” 

Today, there are large numbers of ill-informed people who have never taken the time to consider the evidence who agree with Jefferson. Earlier this month, Scientific American cited polling showing that the number of Americans who profess no religious belief whatever rose from dramatically between just 2005 and 2013. 

This is why our friend Bill Mowry and others say that the United States is one of the largest mission fields in the world. 

Some who reject the witness of the early Church that Jesus rose from the dead and the belief that those who trust in Him will also be raised are members of Christian churches who attend worship only out of habit, for social connection, or something to make them feel good once a week.

But rationalism, in my judgment, isn't the biggest reason some people reject Christ and His resurrection. The biggest reason revolves around the old question of power. It's a question that goes back to the garden of Eden where the serpent lured humanity into sin and death by lying to them, telling them that if they ate of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they wouldn't die as God had warned they would. Instead, the serpent insisted, God only warned Adam and Eve against the fruit because at the moment, they did, they would be like God (Genesis 3:1-5). We human beings have been hot on the trail of god-likeness, of power ever since. We look for it in all the dying stuff of this world because the last thing we want to do is play second fiddle to anyone, even to the God Who made us!

But think about it: When you know that one day, if you will remain faithful to Jesus, you will be reunited with Him “in a beautiful place,” how powerful are the things of this world? 

How powerful is money? 

How powerful are comfort or ease? 

How powerful are governments or the in-crowd? 

The power and utility of each will end for us at the moment we draw our last breaths.

If you belong to the risen Jesus, can anything intimidate you? 

Can you be intimidated by sickness or setbacks, adversity or rejection? 

Can you be intimidated by death? 

Years ago, South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu raised his voice in Christ’s name against the system of racial slavery known as apartheid that existed in his land. He received multiple death threats daily. Why, a reporter asked him, did he keep pressing Christ’s case against government-authorized hatred, he was asked? He couldn’t help it, Tutu said, God hates injustice and loves it when we treat others justly. “Besides,” he said, “death is not the worst thing that can happen to a Christian.” 

Do we live in that assurance? 

Do we dare to fight for the good of our neighbor, not worrying about what’s best for us in this world because we know that by God’s grace through our faith in Christ, we have a share in God’s best for all eternity?

Do we brave the taunts of an ego-imprisoned world to share the good news of new life from the risen Jesus with people who need Him as much as you and I do?

The early Church, having gone through the darkness of Good Friday, the glory of Easter, and now filled with God’s Holy Spirit, did live in the assurance that because Jesus rose from the dead and they belonged to Jesus, nothing could separate them from God (Romans 8:31-39).

They knew that no power in this world could rob them of eternal life with God! 

That’s why after the Holy Spirit came to them at Pentecost--as He comes to us in our Baptism, they shared the good news of new life for all who repent and believe in Jesus. 

They were and they made disciples, just as Christ calls and commands you and me to do.

But their message about the risen Jesus threatened those who clung to the power and comforts of this world, just as He does today. 

In Acts 3, we’re told that, in the name of the risen Jesus, Peter and John, two of the apostles, healed a lame beggar at the temple in Jerusalem. Not surprisingly, eople were amazed! Peter explained that this had happened not because he and John were great, but because the risen and living Jesus is infinitely the greatest of all.

The temple crowds weren’t the only ones who witnessed these things though. So did the powerful, in this case, the Sadducees, the priestly class who wielded both religious and earthly power. They didn’t believe in Jesus’ resurrection. And they feared that if the people started believing in the resurrection, they might become fearless. They might realize that they no longer needed the system of temple sacrifices by which the Sadducees kept the people under their thumbs. 

That’s where our second lesson for today, Acts 4:1-12, begins. When the Sadducees saw that after the healing of the lame man and Peter’s sermon, 5000 men (and who knows how many women and children) came to believe in the resurrected Jesus, they took the apostles into custody. 

With Jesus’ crucifixion fresh in Peter’s and John’s memories, the Sadducees undoubtedly thought that some time in a jail cell and time in their intimidating presence would make the two of them (and the rest of the Church) stop claiming that Jesus rose from the dead.

But they soon learned that intimidation cannot work on those who follow Jesus. As they stood before the powerful custodians of the temple, Peter and John are asked, “By what power or what name did you do this?” (Acts 4:7) (Back to the perennial human issue of power again.) 

Notice: The Sadducees didn’t deny that the lame man had been healed. That’s not the issue. They know that the man really had been lame and now really was healed. No, their interest is in the power question. “In whose name are you defiantly flouting our power here in the seat of our power, the temple?” they demanded to know.

The reaction of Peter and John is instructive for we who bear the name of Jesus and confess Him to be our Lord and God. They didn’t counterattack. Like the Lord Jesus, when He was tried, they didn’t become defensive. They didn’t issue a torrent of condemnations. 

But here’s what they also didn’t do: They didn’t buckle under the power arrayed before them. After all, death isn’t the worst thing that can happen to a Christian. 

Verse 8: “Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them: ‘Rulers and elders of the people! If we are being called to account today for an act of kindness shown to a man who was lame and are being asked how he was healed, then know this, you and all the people of Israel: It is by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth,whom you crucified but whom God raised from the dead, that this man stands before you healed…” 

Peter declared that the lame man had been healed by the Savior they’d had a hand in (and we all have a hand in) nailing to a cross, but was very much alive, sitting at the right hand, the power hand, of God the Father! 

The world had not been able to get rid of Jesus. Even when the world killed Him off, He rose again, and there is nothing that the powerful, the cynics, the hopeless, or the joyless of this world can do about it! Jesus is risen; He is risen indeed!

Peter goes on to cite a verse from Psalm 118. It's interesting that he does because Psalm 118 celebrated the restoration of the temple in Jerusalem after the Babylonian captivity of God’s people. The temple had been an important place long before Jesus came into this world. It was where God’s presence dwelt on the earth. It was where pious Jews offered sacrifices for their sins and prayed. 

But those days were done. 

When Jesus died on the cross, the curtain shielding worshipers from the holy of holies where God lived was torn from top to bottom. 

Jesus was and is the final, definitive sacrifice for sin; no more sacrifices were needed. 

“Behold,” Jesus’ earthly cousin John the Baptist had told his own disciples when he caught sight of Jesus at the Jordan, “the Lamb of God Who takes away the sin of the world.” 

Jesus was and is the only foundation stone on whom eternal life is built, which is why Peter described Jesus to the Sadducees, quoting the psalm, as “the stone you builders rejected, which has become the cornerstone…”

No matter how the power-hungry, rational, self-worshiping world may rail against belief in Jesus’ resurrection or the resurrection of those who follow Him as nonsense, the truth cannot be altered. 

The 500-plus disciples of Jesus Who had saw Him risen from the dead and staked their lives on that truth cannot be ignored (1 Corinthians 15:3-8). 

Nor can the millions of lives that have been changed, transformed by the risen Jesus. 

Nor could they possibly deny the truth of Jesus’ resurrection if they dared, with the help of Christian friends like you and me, to put their trust in Jesus. When I came to faith in Christ after being exposed to the faith of the people of our home church in Columbus and the Biblical witness on which they built their lives, I reached a point at which I told God, "Lord, I find it hard to believe. But I am willing to believe. I'm willing to trust what these people believe and what your Bible tells me. Help me to believe." If people would dare to come to God in this way, the Holy Spirit would begin to build their faith in Jesus Christ. He and His resurrection would become undeniably and palpably real in their lives!

It’s to underscore the truth of Jesus' resurrection victory over sin and death that Peter says in the final verse of today’s lesson: “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.”

Today is the third installment of our series, Church Lessons, taken from the New Testament book of Acts. Here is our third lesson: 

The only power to overcome the sin, death, and futility of this world is the risen Jesus Christ. The true, eternal Church is made up of those who trustingly live as though they believe that’s true...because it is! 

Jesus Christ calls us to live in this truth. Are you in?

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Resurrection Conspiracy?

"[After the Roman soldiers who had been at Jesus' tomb and witnessed an angel announce Jesus' resurrection to several disciples, they went to Jewish religious authorities. They presumably did so in hopes that they could protect them from the wrath of Roman governor Pilate.] ...the religious leaders...came up with a plan: They took a large sum of money and gave it to the soldiers, bribing them to say, 'His disciples came in the night and stole the body while we were sleeping...The soldiers took the bribe and did as they were told..." (Matthew 28:12-13, 15, The Message)

Conspiracies always break down.

The lie that Jesus hadn't risen but that His body had been stolen, cooked up by the priests, who knew from the soldiers' testimony that Jesus had risen from the dead, couldn't be sustained. Conspiracies never can be. Someone always cracks. Someone always lets the cat out of the bag. So, it is with this conspiracy designed to suppress the truth that Jesus Christ had risen, hatched on the first Easter Sunday.

But the conspirators' lie contrasts with the message of the angel who met several of Jesus female followers earlier that day and the message of Jesus' resurrection carried from the tomb by those women. It wasn't a lie designed to keep people out of trouble. It was a truth that was bound to get anyone who believed and bore witness to it in trouble.

In spite of threats, persecution, ridicule, and the murder of believers though, none of the early Christian disciples "cracked."

Elsewhere in the New Testament, the apostle Paul, himself once a skeptic and later a witness of the risen Jesus, says that more than 500 disciples saw Jesus after His resurrection. None, that we know of, ever changed their story under pressure.

That's pretty remarkable when you consider that they had all pretty much fled from their fellow Jews and their Roman overlords or had stayed at a distance when Jesus was arrested, tried, and executed.

How to explain this sudden and sustained courage in the face of disdain and death threats?

It's this. They weren't in on a conspiracy to trick the world into believing that Jesus rose. There wouldn't have been anything in it for them--no power, no prestige, no wealth--to incite them to engage them in such a conspiracy anyway.

The powers of that time and place--the first century Judean equivalents of Church and State--and public opinion were against them and against their Messiah, Who by His refusal to fight and His acceptance of death, had offended some and disappointed others.

On the first Easter, a conspiracy was hatched. It's been exposed. It was the conspiracy of some power-hungry religious leaders threatened by the Savior of the world and some Roman soldiers.

On the first Easter, Christ rose and the evidence--in the courageous witness with nothing to gain by proclaiming Christ risen and in the lives of billions still being changed daily by following Christ--says that it really happened.

Help me today, Lord, to never turn tail and run, but to lift up the risen Jesus. Amen

[Blogger Mark Daniels is the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio.]

The Son of God (Augsburg Confession, Part 3)

We’re involved in a sermon series that seeks to answer the question, “What is a Lutheran Christian?” We’re using one of the basic confessional documents of Lutheranism, The Augsburg Confession, which presents the Lutheran understanding of Biblical Christian faith, to help us answer that question.

Before launching into an exploration of the Confession's Article 3, “The Son of God,” I want you to know something: The devil worked hard to prevent this sermon from being studied for, written, and delivered. This past week, I have learned anew the truth of the words of Ephesians 6:12: “...our struggle [as followers of Jesus Christ] is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil...” The devil has fought with me every step of the way. I have been in the midst of the very kind of spiritual warfare that Martin Luther wrote about in A Mighty Fortress is Our God. And it is only by the grace of God, given to those who cling to Jesus Christ, that I've been able to push through.

This is a sermon then, that the devil does not want you to hear. So, I ask you all to pray that the Holy Spirit will work powerfully in this moment to open our minds, hearts, and wills to the only Truth we can reliably build our lives upon.

Now, there’s a reason the devil doesn’t want this sermon to be given today. It’s because the truths The Augsburg Confession’s Article 3 asserts about Who Jesus is, about what Jesus has done, and about what Jesus will do in the future, contradict the lies about Jesus that are gaining increasing currency in our time.

And Satan, the one Jesus calls “the father of lies” is behind every one of the lies told about Jesus today. You can’t go through a week without encountering these lies on the Internet, on TV, or in newspapers and magazines. Supposedly knowledgeable people say that Jesus wasn’t God in the flesh, wasn’t born of a virgin, didn’t rise physically from the dead, and isn’t the only pathway to God.

They ignore the testimony of reliable witnesses as to Jesus being the Son of God and Savior of the world.

They also ignore the fact that the ancient documentation for the understanding of Jesus they denigrate came earlier and from more different sources than any of the documentation that exists in relationship to other figures of the ancient world.

For example, Colossians 1:15-20, written by Paul in about 60 AD, is composed of material reflecting the confession of faith that all scholars, conservative and liberal, agree Christians were using to give witness about Jesus almost immediately following Jesus' death and resurrection.

The confession of faith found in these verses came together so close to the days of Jesus' time on earth that to read it is almost like reading an email about an event that happened yesterday. Take a look:

[Jesus] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross. [Emphasis is mine.]

It’s bad enough that these lies are being foisted on the world at large. But what’s worse is that these revisionist views, held by people who want to revise God’s truth, have taken root in our own Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA).

For example, recently an assistant to the bishop of the Texas-Louisiana Gulf Coast Synod of our ELCA, Don Carlson, writing a guest post on his bishop’s web site, wrote of Jesus’ virgin birth: “I think that the [Christmas] stories are made up...”

In 2009, our ELCA publishing house issued a version of the Bible they called Lutheran Study Bible. It had footnotes written by ELCA scholars ostensibly designed to help readers better understand the Bible. Now, one of the most important passages in Scripture is Matthew 28:19-20, in which the risen Jesus, just before ascending into heaven, gives what we call “the great commission” to His Church, commanding us to make disciples of all nations, baptizing and teaching people to obey all that He commands.” But Dr. Duane Priebe, professor of systematic theology at another ELCA seminary, Wartburg in Iowa, wrote this in his footnote on Matthew 28:19-20: “[Jesus] does not mean make everyone disciples...Jesus includes in salvation people who do not believe in Him.”* While the New Testament intimates that people who have not heard the good news of Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection and seek to live in accordance with the law that God has written on every human heart (see Romans 2:14-16), will be treated with mercy by God, those who have heard the good news of Jesus and have not believed, according to Jesus, will be eternally separated from God (see John 3:16-18; Mark 16:16; John 8:24).

These incidents of revisionism aren’t isolated. Increasingly, revisionist theology is favored by the hierarchy, clergy, and publications of our denomination.

The reason for revisionism’s popularity is no mystery.  According to Genesis 3:5, Adam and Eve, responding to the temptations of the serpent in the Garden of Eden, wanted to “be like God” and so do we. Deny the revealed truths about Jesus, the Son of God, and you can be a god yourself, the ultimate authority over your life. But, folks, lose these truths about Jesus in order to act as our own gods, and we lose life, hope, peace, our humanity, and our salvation!

Please pull a copy of The Augsburg Confession from the pew racks and turn to Article 3, on page 12. It says:

Our churches teach that the Word, that is, the Son of God..., assumed the human nature in the womb of the blessed Virgin Mary. So there are two natures--the divine and the human--inseparably joined in one person. There is one Christ, true God and true man, who was born of the virgin Mary, truly suffered, was crucified, died, and was buried. He did this to reconcile the Father to us and to be a sacrifice, not only for original guilt [which we talked about last Sunday], but also for the actual sins of [humankind].

He also descended into hell, and truly rose again in the third day. Afterward, He ascended into heaven to sit at the right hand of the Father. There He forever reigns and has dominion over all creatures. He sanctifies [meaning, He makes holy or sets apart for God] those who believe in Him, by sending the Holy Spirit into their hearts to rule, comfort, and make them alive. He defends them against the devil and the power of sin.

The same Christ will openly come again to judge the living and the dead, and so forth, according to the Apostles’ Creed.

Every word of this article is rooted in the witness of Scripture. Every word lifts up Jesus as the Son of God. And it stands as a condemnation of the lies a revisionist world tells about Jesus.

But how can we know that the revisionists are wrong?

How can you and I know that Jesus is the Son of God Who can fill both dead consciences and dead bodies with new life?
 
Let me lay before you one rational, empirical reason for believing that Jesus is the Son of God.

And then let me tell how I believe you can personally know that what the Bible and The Augsburg Confession teach about Jesus is true.

The revisionists say that the first Christians didn’t really meet the resurrected Jesus. They say that after Jesus’ death on the cross, the first Christians thought back on Him and had good feelings. These good feelings, the revisionists claim, caused the first Christians to think of Jesus as being with them in some way. Then, they claim, the Christians made up the stories of Jesus’ resurrection to convince others that they could have good feelings too.

Please pull out the pew Bibles and turn to 1 Corinthians 15:3-8.

First Corinthians was written by the apostle Paul in about 55 AD to the church at Corinth, which he had founded. Here, he reminds them, of the most basic evidence that Jesus is Lord. He says:

...I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He was seen by Cephas [Cephas is the Latin version of the apostle Peter’s name], then by the twelve [apostles, including  Matthias, who took the place of Judas after Judas betrayed Jesus and took his own life]. After that He was seen by over five hundred [believers in Jesus] at once, of whom the greater part remain to the present, but some have fallen asleep [some had died by 55 AD]. After that [the risen Jesus] was seen by James [this is one of physical sons of Mary and Joseph and Jesus grew up in the same household with James], then by all the apostles. Then last of all He was seen by me also...

Paul claims that more than 500 people had seen the risen Jesus!

He was no figment of their good feelings.

He was real.

He was true God and true man, born of a virgin, the only way to peace with God, Who died and rose to give us a life with that not even death can destroy.

The first Christians never wavered in affirming the reality of Who Jesus was, of His physical resurrection, or of His promise to return one day to fully establish His kingdom.

They staked their lives on these truths, hard as nails people who had drunk deeply of life and of sin, but who had been given new life through Christ.

And many of these tough people--fishermen, tax collectors, former prostitutes, soldiers, manual laborers, scholars, rich, poor, men, and women would, like Paul and Peter, accept execution a punishment for their belief in the Son of God, rather than turning their backs on Jesus!

The first followers of Jesus weren't firebrands. They weren't kooks. They weren't desperate. They had everything to lose and nothing to gain from sticking with their story about Jesus. Yet they did stick with it!

When you see rational people staking their lives on the veracity of a truth they claim to have experienced--John says that he and the other first Christians had heard, seen, and touched with their hands the crucified and risen Son of God (see 1 John 1:1-3)--that’s an empirical reason for believing that Jesus is the Son of God.

But trusting in Jesus--having faith in Jesus--isn’t the result of believing in empirical evidence.

I have known people and you have too, who believed that Jesus is the Son of God, that He was born of a virgin, and that after suffering for us, He rose from the dead. Yet they still don't believe in Jesus. They don't trust Him. They trust themselves. Or they put their trust in things of the world, every one of which will die.

The simple truth is that we can’t be forced into believing in Jesus by trotting out facts. Nor can we be said to believe in Jesus just because we accept the veracity of the New Testament's claims about Jesus. According to 1 Corinthians 12:3, faith in Jesus is a gift that God’s Holy Spirit creates only in those who are willing to believe in Jesus.

And this leads us to how, finally, you and I can know that Jesus, the Son of God, is, has done, and will do all the things claimed by Article 3 of the Confession.

Turn please to Hebrews 11:1. It says:

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. 

You’ve heard me tell many times of my experience as an atheist who came to faith in Jesus Christ.  Intrigued by the Lutheran Christians of Ann’s home church, I attended a 16-week class called, Life with God.

I read the book we used for the class.

I read and wrote down all the Bible verses to which it referred.

I asked questions.

I listened.

The more I heard and read about Jesus, the more I wanted Him as my Lord!

I was still resistant. I had my own plans. I really wanted to be my own god.

But, in the midst of all this, even when I still thought of myself as an atheist, I found myself praying to the God revealed to the whole world in Jesus.

There wasn’t a lightning flash moment when faith came to me. I simply had been open to believing and the closer I got to Jesus, the more firmly the Holy Spirit created faith in Jesus within me.

I believed in the Son of God.

As the passage from Hebrews tells us, my faith became the evidence of things unseen.

Among the people I've meet on this earth, I’ve never known a person born of a virgin.

Or a sinless human being.

Or someone who rose from the dead days after their death.

And neither have you.

But by faith I came to know and I still know such a person, the God-man Jesus.

And if we will open ourselves to Him, all of us can, by faith, know Him.

We can experience His presence with us as a constant companion who will usher us into the presence and love of God.

And as we hold onto that faith, as we cling to Jesus, we can be assured that one day we will see Him face to face.

This is a sermon the devil didn’t want you to hear, which only proves how important it is to know, follow, and surrender to Jesus, the Son of God. Amen!

[This was shared during both worship services with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio today.]

*After numerous protests, Priebe's comments were excised from the next edition of Lutheran Study Bible. However, he never recanted for the position he took on Matthew 28:19-20. Nor, apparently, was there ever any attempt on the part of the ELCA or the synod to correct him or the church's publishing house for his original comments.