Do Not Be Troubled

[Below, you'll find livestream video of both May 7 worship services from Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, as well as the message presented during the services. Have a blessed week!]

John 14:1-14

Our Gospel lesson today takes us back to the room in which Jesus and the apostles observe the Passover on the night of His arrest, just before His suffering, death, and resurrection.

The disciples are troubled for several reasons.

One reason is that they’re in Jerusalem. Not long before, Jesus has raised Lazarus from the dead, and, alarmed by His power over death, the leaders of the Jews from Jerusalem had vowed to get Jesus killed by the Romans. In Jerusalem, Jesus is easier to seize.

Also troubling to the apostles is Jesus’ announcement that one of them would betray Him.

Peter is troubled because Jesus insists that Peter will deny knowing Jesus before the rooster announces the new day by crowing three times.

None of the apostles can imagine turning their backs on Jesus.

Or that they, faithful men of Israel, would be so disloyal and sinful toward the One they said was the Messiah.

You and I may be troubled by many things about our world today.

Abortion used as birth control.

Almost daily mass shootings.

The LGBTQ+ agenda being crammed down our throats.

Misogyny and violence against women.

The ideology that tells us one’s gender can be chosen.

Racial injustice.

These troubling things are all expressions of our fallen, sinful human nature that befoul the cosmos in which you and I live.

But, like the apostles, something else might trouble us.

Our sin.

Our disloyalty to God.

Our betrayal of Christ.

Our denial of Him.

This is evidenced in our thoughts, words, or deeds daily.

The apostles thought they were righteous because they were Jews who did the right thing. We tend to have the same self-righteousness.

But Jesus and all of God’s Word tell us that if we think God is going to judge us righteous because we think we’ve led pretty good lives, we are deluding ourselves.

God’s judgment of us for our sin is clear.

Ecclesiastes 7:20 tells us, for example, “Indeed, there is no one on earth who is righteous…”

And Paul, the apostle of grace, puts things even more pointedly: “...do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men[ nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.” (1 Corinthians 6:9-10) If we’re honest, that list pretty much takes in the whole human race in one way or another, including you and me.

But to us who are troubled by the ills of the world and might be troubled by the horrors of our own sin that separate us from God and mark us as unrighteous from our births and worthy of condemnation, Jesus tells us, as He told the apostles on Maundy Thursday: “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.” (John 14:1-3)

Now, I’ve always known that these three verses from John 14 presented a Gospel Word, a Word of promise from our Savior. But I used to think that the promise was that after He died, rose, and ascended to heaven, Jesus would get a house in heaven ready for us to occupy after we die and rise. I pictured Jesus remodeling heaven to accommodate us.

But, it isn’t heaven or the kingdom of God that need to be changed though. It isn’t God that needs changing, it’s us! We need to be made righteous, because in our inborn state of unrighteousness, we’re not fit for life with God, now or ever.

So, this is how Jesus prepares a place for you, how you can live with untroubled hearts: Jesus goes to the cross for us, the righteous God of all creation taking on human flesh, offers His sinless life to take the damnation and death we deserve so that all who trust in Him have the very same life God the Father restored to Jesus on the first Easter Sunday!

When did Jesus go? When He went to the cross!

When did He come back? When He rose!

And when we’re able to trust in Jesus, we know there’s already a place for us in God’s vast and gracious kingdom!

This is God’s Gospel Word for you and me, a Word that the Bible speaks to us repeatedly.

“At just the right time, when we were still powerless,” Romans tells us, “Christ died for the ungodly.” (Romans 5:6)

And Peter reminds us: “Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God.” (1 Peter 3:18)

And in Ephesians, we’re told, “In [Jesus] we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us.” (Ephesians 1:7-8)

Of course, one day, this creation’s last day, Christ will raise those who have died while believing in Him and welcome them into His new heavens and new earth. All our grief, tears, and troubles will be behind us. But already, all who have been baptized into Christ and who have, by the power of His Word. come to believe in Him, live in His kingdom, live in the certainty that through Christ, all our sins are already and eternally forgiven.

By His death and His resurrection, Jesus has already prepared a place and given us a place with Him. Right now!

This is what the Bible means when it says, “If anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” (2 Corinthians 5:17)

People say, “How can I know I’m saved? How can I be sure?” Do you believe in Jesus Christ? Yes. That’s how you know. If your heart, in response to the Holy Scriptures and the witness of the Holy Spirit can believe and if your mouth can declare that Jesus is your Lord, then you know you are saved!

So the next time someone asks you, “Are you born again?” you can say, “Yes! I was born of water and the Spirit according to the Word and will of Jesus as expressed in John 3, at my baptism. And, by the power of the Holy Spirit Who has been unleashed in my life since then, I know that Jesus Christ is my Lord. Now, get behind me, Satan.”

When Luther was taunted by the devil and temptation, he would declare, “But I am baptized!” It doesn’t matter how I feel, my salvation comes down to what God has done for me. Jesus has prepared a place for you. It’s already furnished.

Through His Word and His Sacraments, the crucified and risen Jesus comes to you today and promises that wherever He is, in heaven or on earth, there He is, triumphant over sin, death, darkness, weeping, and sorrow, with you!

Sin no longer condemns you, friends.

Jesus has destroyed its power over you, Don’t let the devil try to convince you otherwise because the devil has been a liar from the beginning. This is how He has prepared your place in God’s Kingdom.

Because He has, you can be assured that He is with you now and as His Holy Spirit empowers you to trust in Him, you are His now and forever.

Jesus has freed us to believe in God and in the Son He sent to spare you an eternity in hell. You need not be troubled.

By grace through faith in Christ, you belong to God, now and eternally. Amen.

The Sermon of the Ashes

[Below is the live stream video of the Ash Wednesday worship service of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio, along with the message shared during the service.]



Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

Tonight, friends, Jesus tells us not to engage in religious activity that calls attention to us.

Also tonight, we have received the mark of the cross on our foreheads which, if we stop by a store or a filling station on the way home, will be noticed by everyone who sees us.

Are we violating the very commands Jesus gives us in tonight’s Gospel lesson? Let’s talk about that.

The Imposition of Ashes isn’t you being a religious show-off. It’s something else altogether.

As good Lutherans, you know that every sermon, in order for it to be faithful to God, must include both Law and Gospel.

Law and Gospel are the two ways speaks to us in His Word.

It’s God’s Law that convicts us of our sin, showing us that, from the moment we’re conceived, despite God’s good will for us, we are in rebellion against God and we are indifferent to others. This means that we deserve death, condemnation, and everlasting separation from God and from others.

It’s God’s Gospel that comes to us through the crucified and risen Jesus assuring us that, despite our sins, we are justified, made eternally right with God, because, by the power of God’s Spirit-borne Word, we believe Jesus Christ gave His sinless life to cover even our sins on a cross for us.

Paul summarizes the Gospel about Jesus Christ when he says in Romans: “For we maintain that a person is justified by faith apart from the works of the law.” (Romans 3:28)

Because on this side of our own death and resurrection, when Jesus will call believers in Him from the dead to live with Him forever, we who have been made saints by God’s grace through faith in Christ will keep needing to hear God’s Law and Gospel again and again. As Martin Luther noted, “We need to hear the Gospel all the time because we forget it all the time.” And, as we forget that Gospel, we slip back into a reliance on our good deeds or personal goodness to save us. That course is the way to death.

We don’t receive ashes on our foreheads tonight in order to impress people.

Given current attitudes toward Christian faith, people who see us are more likely to think we’re weirdos than to be impressed with our spirituality or our devotion to Christ.

The ashes are meant to be a sermon to and for those of us who receive them and not for anyone who may see us wearing them.

But what is the content of this sermon in ashes?

After Adam had fallen into sin in the garden of Eden, God told him, “You are dust and to dust you shall return.” (Genesis 3:19, ESV)

This is the Law and God spoke it to us again tonight. Like Adam, we have failed to keep God’s Law or live with righteousness. We know this because of the Ten Commandments, the distillation of all of God’s moral law for us, which we constantly fail to obey.

And you never get so old or so advanced in the faith as to not need to be catechized again. So, let me do it for you once again tonight.

God says, “You shall have no other gods before Me.” Yet, we’re constantly worshiping other things: youth, health, success, and so on, chasing after them as though they were the end-all and be-all, as they could justify our existences.

God says, “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.” Yet, even while using God’s name to pray for our needs and the needs of others, as well as to praise and thank God, we use His name as a punchline or to curse or swear or mislead others.

God says, “Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy,” a command all about gladly receiving the Word of God. But our Bibles often grow dusty. And we look at our watches on Super Bowl Sundays, wanting to be sure that the service won’t eat into our pre-pre-pre-game viewing.

God says, “Honor your father and your mother,” meaning to honor those in authority, yet we tend to believe that anyone in authority over us is a liar, a thief, an incompetent, or all of the above. Because we want to be God, we’re always sure we could do better than anyone else that God places in authority over us.

God says, “You shall not kill (or murder),” which Jesus says includes not just killing people physically, but also not killing them in psyche or spirit by denigrating them, berating them, or labeling them. We violate this command all the time, it seems!

God says, “You shall not commit adultery,” yet our brains are often a maelstrom of lustful thoughts.

God says, “You shall not steal,” yet we justify conniving to get something for nothing because, after all, “it’s a dog-eat-dog world.”

God says, “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor,” yet gossip is our favorite indoor sport.

God says, “You shall not covet,” yet our envy of others’ success, possessions, status, or achievements ruins our moods and our relationships with them and with God. I’ve seen more families destroyed by greed and resentment than by dishonoring parents, adultery, and theft combined!

When the world preaches a cheap gospel, telling us that God doesn’t really care if we heed His commands to love God or love our neighbor or to honor the will of God, the ash on our foreheads is a sermon from God telling us: This is who you are, a dust-bound sinner who can’t keep My Law and because you cannot keep My Law, you deserve damnation.

But there is Gospel–good news–in these ashes too!

The mark on your foreheads is meant to be in the form of the cross.

This is the part of the sermon meant to tell you that while there is nothing you can do to set yourself free of the death sentence you deserve for sin, Jesus Christ, God the Son, has already acted to set you free from that condemnation. Now and for all eternity!

As you’ve heard me say a zillion times before and I will keep saying it as long as I have breath in my body, when Jesus Christ said, “It is finished,” He meant it!

And He meant it for you.

Jesus took the punishment He didn’t deserve to spare us the punishment we do deserve.

Peter, a man who knew what it meant to be caught by God dead-to-rights in his sin and unrighteousness, declares, “Christ…suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive in the Spirit.” (1 Peter 3:18)

And the apostle Paul who knew the power of the crucified Christ to save enemies of God and to save sinners from condemnation and to make them righteous in the eyes of God, says: “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.” (Romans 5:8-9)

And Jesus, Who would soon be going to His cross to win everlasting life for us, told His grieving friend Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die…” (John 11:25-26) That is what the cross means for us!

That smudgy cross on your forehead is the Gospel Word–the Good News Word–from God to you.

The psalmist wrote centuries before Jesus’ birth: “As a father has compassion on his children…[God] remembers that we are dust.” (Psalm 103:13-14)

What a promise! God grades us on a curve…the Christ curve…the grace curve.

There’s a great scene in the movie, Jesus of Nazareth. Simon Peter is portrayed of being very critical of Levi, Matthew, the tax collector. And in this telling of Jesus’ story, Jesus tells the parable of the prodigal son, the tale of the notorious sinner who comes back to the father. After telling it, Jesus looks at Peter, who begins to weep. Peter says, “Forgive me, Master. I’m just a stupid man.” He may as well have said, “I’m just dust.”

God never forgets that about us. He was the One Who formed you from dust. He is the One Who chose to give you life. And He’s the One Who chose to take on dust for Himself and go to a cross to save you from yourself. The cross on your forehead is a proclamation of the Gospel from Jesus’ cross for you!

Jesus Christ, God the Son, died and rose to set sinners free from condemnation and separation from God. We don’t have to do it with our little religious works that we try to tout during Lent. Things like, “I’m going to give up chocolate.” God doesn’t care if you give up chocolate!

God wants you! He wants you! And He saved you! The call of Lent is to turn as He calls you to follow Him and receive life from Him.

So, when the world, the devil, and our sinful selves want to preach only Law to us, damning us, discouraging us, miring us in hopelessness and futility, setting us off on some spiritual self-improvement program designed to prove ourselves worthy of God’s favor, an effort that will always fail, we can say with confidence and hope, “But Jesus Christ died for me. Jesus has done everything needed to make me righteous, to give me life, to make me commendable in the eyes of God. Because of Jesus and because I take refuge in Him alone as my God and Savior, when God looks at me, He doesn’t see my sins, failings, and unrighteousness; He sees only the sinless Jesus Who graciously covers me in His righteousness!”

This dust will live forever with God not because of anything I do or ever will do, but solely, completely, totally because of what Jesus has already done for me at the cross and the empty tomb! I have been saved by grace through faith in Christ alone. And I will be made holy, righteous, and acceptable to God by grace through faith in Jesus Christ alone!

The ashes preach Law and Gospel to us. And the Gospel of salvation of new and everlasting life in Christ will have the final word over the lives and eternal destinies of all who acknowledge their sin and take trusting refuge in Jesus Christ! 

Ann and I bought our gravesites a few years ago. Our ashes will be buried at Sunset Cemetery, just west of Columbus. The thing I love about that is that the day I am raised, I am going to see all the people from the west side of Columbus I knew and loved and shared faith in Jesus with. And then I’m going to look you all up. And we will party for all eternity.

I pray that the sermon preached by the ashes on your forehead is one you hear tonight and always! Amen

Do Lutherans Celebrate the Mass? Yes! (Part 16, The Augsburg Confession)

We’ve been looking at what it means to be Lutheran Christians by considering the Biblical underpinnings for one of the Lutheran movement’s basic confessional documents, The Augsburg Confession. Since all Lutheran bodies claim to accept the Confession’s understanding of Christian faith, it’s a good place to go to for guidance. Today, we come to Article 24 of the Confession, titled The Mass.

For some of you, hearing a Lutheran worship service called the Mass may seem strange. But that’s what we celebrate together when we receive Christ’s body and blood in Holy Communion. The word mass comes from a Latin word for dismissal which appeared at the end of an ancient Roman Catholic liturgy for Holy Communion. “Ite missa est,” the presiding minister would say: “Go, it is the dismissal.”

We often have something similar in our own Lutheran Communion liturgy when we sing a musical setting of the words of Simeon after he had seen the eight-day-old Jesus at the temple in Jerusalem. We call it the Nunc Dimittis, another Latin phrase that means, “Now dismiss,” as in: “Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace...”

In the Mass, God gathers us together to literally taste and see the goodness of the Lord in Holy Communion, as well as to hear His Word receptively, allowing the gift of faith to take root and grow within us, then God sends us into the world to make disciples. Fortified by Christ’s body and blood and the forgiveness He brings to us through Holy Communion, God dismisses us to tell our neighbors that they too can have eternal life through repentance and belief in Jesus Christ.

So, yes, we Lutherans celebrate the Mass. But someone else might ask, “Didn’t we already talk about Holy Communion in this series?”

Yes, we did, back on March 3, when we looked Article 10, The Lord’s Supper. But The Augsburg Confession is divided into two sections. The first twenty-one articles deal with subjects that Philipp Melanchthon, the colleague and friend of Martin Luther who wrote the Confession, felt for certain that none of the Roman Catholic theologians he was to dialog and debate with at Augsburg, Germany in 1530, could possibly disagree with. (That turned out not to be true.)

The last seven articles dealt with subjects over which Melanchthon expected to receive more pushback. So, in Article 24, which you can find starting on page 25 in the buff and brown editions of The Augsburg Confession, Melanchthon deals with Lutheran understandings of the Mass he knew would be controversial.

They still are. But like Martin Luther, we insist that unless we can be shown by Scripture and plain reason based on Scripture where we have erred, we must stand with Christ and with His Word as we understand them.

Article 24 is long. So, I want to hone in on four main points it makes.

The first is this: Anyone who receives the Sacrament should do so with the deepest reverence, love, awe, respect, and fear of God.

Starting in the second sentence of the article, we read that: “The Mass is held among us and celebrated with the highest reverence.”

I don’t need to belabor this point. Lutherans take Jesus literally when He says, “This is my body” and “This is my blood.”

We may not be feeling it on the days His body and blood are offered to us.

We may not be able to understand His promise to be present “in, with, and under” the bread and the wine in the Sacrament.

It doesn’t matter!

Jesus, the One Who died for us and then rose for us, can be counted on to keep His promises.

If Jesus says that His body and blood are in the bread and the wine, you can bank on it.

This means that every time you receive the Sacrament, even on the days my sermons are off, even when the kids are restless, even when the choir or Cyndy hit a rare sour note, even if you’re tired, whatever your circumstance, you’re coming to the altar to meet the King of kings, the Lord of lords, the God of the universe. He deserves our reverence.

A second and related point the Confession makes is this: Holy Communion should only be shared after we have made confession of our sins.

Slide down to the last half-sentence at the bottom of page 25. It says: “No one is admitted to the Sacrament without first being examined...”

This is stated well in Paul’s words about Holy Communion, 1 Corinthians 11:27-29:

Therefore whoever eats this bread or drinks this wine in an unworthy manner will be guilty of the body and blood of the LORD. But let a man examine himself [or a woman examine herself], and so let [them] eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For he who eats and drinks in an unworthy manner eats and drinks judgment to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body. 

This is why our liturgy offers us the opportunity to confess our sins every time we receive the Sacrament.

Confessing our sins lets us, like King David in Psalm 139, pray to God:

Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts. See if there is any wicked way in me and lead me in the way everlasting. 

When God shows us our sins, we can confess them and lay them at the foot of Jesus’ cross, confident that they are lost forever in what some call God’s “sea of forgetfulness” and we can welcome the body and blood of Jesus as a sign and seal of God’s gracious forgiveness of our sin!

A third point the article makes is this: Everyone who is able to receive Holy Communion in public worship should do so.

Except in the cases of shut-ins, the ill, their families, or others in emergency circumstances, the term private communion should be an oxymoron. Holy Communion is meant to be a community meal partaken by all who have repented for sin, who believe that Christ is truly coming to them in the Sacrament, and trust Jesus’ promise that this Sacrament is “for you.”

There was a practice in the Church back in the days when the Confession was written of paying priests, often handsomely, to celebrate private masses. Melanchthon cites 1 Timothy 3:3 as condemning any practice designed to make money from the ministry of Word and Sacrament. There we’re told that anyone who wants to be an overseer of this ministry should not be “greedy for money.”

But greed for money on the part of clergy isn't the only wrong motive for the celebration of private Communions. I once heard of a man who wanted a pastor he liked to bring Holy Communion to him because he didn’t like the pastor of his congregation. But the pastor he contacted explained to him that as flattered as he was by the man’s admiration, the effectiveness of the Sacrament didn’t depend on which called pastor handed him the bread or the wine, but on the Word and promise of God meeting the bread and the wine. He explained: “In a way, for me to bring private Communion to you would be showing contempt for Christ and the Sacrament.” That pastor was right. But after that, the man disliked two pastors. 

The fourth and most important point the Confession makes here is this: Jesus is not sacrificed again every time we celebrate Holy Communion.

The theology of the majority Church of the sixteenth century held that Jesus’ death on the cross only covered up humanity’s original sin and that in order to cover the sins people commit each day, Jesus had to be sacrificed over and over again.

That, it was held--and is still held by Roman Catholic theology today--was what Holy Communion--the Mass--was: in essence, putting Jesus back on the cross and crucifying Him again every time the Sacrament is offered.

For Lutherans, this teaching doesn’t ring true for two reasons.

First: It drains Jesus’ crucifixion of its power, making it seem like a half-measure. Please turn to Hebrews 10:11-12. Contrasting the sacrifices the Jewish priests made constantly for people’s sins to Jesus’ sacrifice of Himself on the cross, Hebrews says:

...every priest stands ministering daily and offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But this Man [Jesus, God and human, Priest and sacrifice] after He had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God... 

Slip down to verse 14:

For by one offering [Jesus] has perfected forever those who are being sanctified [that is, being made holy, set apart for God]. 

1 Peter 3:18 affirms this same truth:

For Christ also suffered once for our sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God...

Second: To see Holy Communion as a sacrifice makes something less than a sacrament of it. Splitting hairs? I don’t think so.

A sacrifice, one scholar has written, “is a ceremony or act which we render to God to honor him.” But “a sacrament is a ceremony or act in which God offers us...the promise joined to the ceremony.” In sacrifices, human beings are the actors. In sacraments, God acts and we are called to receive in faith what God promises.

For example, Jesus says this about Holy Baptism in Mark 16:16: “He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe is condemned.” We can’t understand how Holy Communion (or Holy Baptism, for that matter) may work. We know only that we can receive it in faith, trusting Jesus at His Word to be present in the Sacrament and to give us life and forgiveness through it. He’s already done all the work to set us free from sin, death, and the devil. He’s already done all the work to set us free from the sins we confess, known and unknown to us, that we bring to Him. He’s already died on a cross as the atoning sacrifice for all our sins. He’s already risen from death to give new lives to us. We simply receive His body and blood with a desire to be clean and a desire to trust in Him. Jesus will do the rest!

The Mass in which God calls His people in Christ together to receive His body and blood is a great gift.

It’s a gift to be received with reverence.

It assures the repentant that Christ Who died and rose for them gives them forgiveness of sin.

It’s a gift Christians should be eager to receive as often as it’s offered.

And, it’s something God does for us, not something we do for God.

There’s nothing we have to do to be worthy of this gift but to turn from sin, to turn to Christ, and trust Him when He says, “This is My body; This is My blood.” Amen