God has no favorites!

[This was shared with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, during both worship services on May 6.]

Acts 10:34-48

We’re considering church lessons, lessons for we disciples of Jesus Christ taken from the book of Acts. Today we come to Church Lesson #5: God has no favorites. 

This comes to us from some of the first words in today’s first Bible lesson, Acts 10:34-48, spoken by the apostle Peter: “I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism…”

Another way to express this insight is put on the lips of Papa, the character who represents God the Father in the novel, The Shack. Repeatedly, Papa says of people, “I’m especially fond of…” whoever it might be. In time we learn that Papa is “especially fond” of everyone, every one of us, no exceptions. God shows no favoritism. He loves all people equally.

An Anglican scholar of the New Testament explains though: “This doesn’t mean that God runs the world as a democracy, or that he simply validates and accepts everyone’s opinion about everything, or everyone’s chosen lifestyle. It means that there are no ethnic, geographical, cultural, or moral barriers...in the way of anyone and everyone being offered forgiveness and new life…” through Jesus Christ. God has no favorites.

Sometimes, I think that this is the hardest of all lessons for we who make up Christ’s Church to learn.

We can be like the older son in Jesus’ parable of the prodigal son. When the prodigal son came home, you’ll remember, he did so intending to beg his father, who he had treated disrespectfully, for nothing more than a job as a hired hand. But the father instead threw a party for him. The older son wasn’t happy. “...All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!’” (Luke 15:29-30)

We can fall into the same kind of thinking, deluding ourselves with the idea that we deserve more of God’s grace and forgiveness than others and that some people deserve nothing from God. But we are sinners saved only by the grace of God through our faith in Jesus Christ. As disciples of Jesus, we are not less than others; neither are we more.

We need to remember that we follow a Savior Who told a murderous thug being crucified next to Jesus confessed his sin and confessed his faith in Jesus and was told by the Lord, “Today, you will be with me in paradise.”

Sometimes, we forget that God has no favorites, not even us. And sometimes, we forget that Scripture teaches us that God so loved the world that He gave His only Son so that all who believe in Him will not perish, but live forever with God.

God loved the world: Not just us or our family or our congregation or our posse or the people we like at our church or our country or our race. God loved and God loves the world. The apostle Peter is reminded of this truth in today’s lesson from Acts.

Before we look at this important passage, a bit of background. Remember, in a verse mentioned last week, the crucified and risen Jesus’ parting words to the Church before He ascended to heaven were: “...you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” 

Up through Acts 10, where today’s lesson appears, we see the Holy Spirit setting out to prompt the Church to fulfill the first three aspects of this mission. Starting in Jerusalem, the center of Judean religious and political life, out into all of Judea, then to neighboring Samaria, the message of new life for all who turn from sin and trust in Jesus and His death and resurrection for sinners, the Holy Spirit empowered the Church’s proclamation of Jesus. 

In chapter 10, the Gospel reaches “the world,” in a city not terribly far from Jerusalem, Caesarea. But Caesarea, named for the Roman rulers, was an outpost of the Roman world, the world beyond the normal experience of those Jews who were the first Christians. There, a Roman official, Cornelius, and his family come to faith in Jesus. Peter saw this, which is where today’s lesson starts.

Verse 34: “Then Peter began to speak: “I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism but accepts from every nation the one who fears him and does what is right.” 

By “does what is right,” Peter doesn’t mean religious or charitable acts meant to earn salvation. If we could earn our salvation by being good people, Jesus would not have had to die for your sins and mine. Anyone who thinks they can be saved by the good they think they do is pouring contempt on what Jesus has already done for us. Jesus tells us what doing right is in John 6:29: “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent [to believe in Jesus, to surrender daily to Jesus].”

As if to make sure that Cornelius and his family understand just what they’re signing up for by confessing faith in Jesus and to convince the Jewish Christians who were with him (and maybe to reassure himself that it was OK for him as a Jew to share Jesus with these Gentiles), Peter then lists seven actions God took through Jesus to bring new life to all who believe in Jesus. 
God, Peter said: 

(1) had Jesus proclaim the message of peace with God for those who we believe in Jesus;  

(2) anointed Jesus will the Holy Spirit, just as the Old Testament had foretold of the Christ, the Messiah; 

(3) remained with Jesus, just as He had always been with His called leaders;  

(4) raised Jesus from the dead, showing that because He was sinless, death could not hold Jesus and that Jesus can give life to whoever believes in Him;  

(5) chose the Church, you and me, to be witnesses for Christ;  

(6) told the Church to tell the good news of new life for all who believe in Jesus everywhere; and  

(7) made Jesus the final judge of the living and the dead. 

This, as explained by one Biblical scholar, is what Peter talked about in verses 36-43 of our lesson.

Look at what happens next, starting at verse 44: “While Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit came on all who heard the message. The circumcised believers who had come with Peter were astonished that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on Gentiles. For they heard them speaking in tongues and praising God.”

This event has often been called the Gentile Pentecost. As happened on the Pentecost that happened ten days after the risen Jesus ascended to heaven, when Jews who had believed in Jesus were filled with the Holy Spirit and empowered to share Christ with others, Cornelius and his family, Gentiles, were now filled with the Holy Spirit and proclaiming in all sorts of languages the good news, the gospel, about Jesus!

Peter and the Jewish believers in Jesus who were with him needed no more evidence to convince them God has no favorites. Verse 46 forward, “Then Peter said, ‘Surely no one can stand in the way of their being baptized with water. They have received the Holy Spirit just as we have.’  So he ordered that they be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ.” 

Ordinarily, of course, we are baptized and then we receive the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:38; 19:12). But we cannot and must not limit God, even though it’s so easy for all of us to do just that when we look at the challenges and the difficulties of our lives. 

Whenever we find ourselves trying to limit what God can do, we should remember the words of God to Moses when Moses was doubting God would accomplish what He set out to do, “Is the LORD's arm too short?” (Numbers 11:23) (Or, as another translation renders the passage, “Has my arm lost its power?” [New Living Translation]). 

On that day in Caesarea, in response to the good news of Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit filled people who had come to believe. No wonder Peter said in essence, “I’ve seen enough evidence from God. Baptize them all right now!”

So, what does this all have to with you and me? Just this: God never gives up on us; it would be a sin for us to give up on anyone just because they’re different from us. 

Everyone in this world is as loved by God and as in need of Jesus as you and I are. 

We dare not write anyone off. We dare not stop praying for every possible opportunity to share Christ with the people in our lives so that they too can walk with God in this world and the next.

Besides, our judgments about the hopelessness of people are not infallible. When our son Philip was in seminary, he spent about a year working with ex-cons and recovering addicts who would show up at an inner-city Columbus church. On the last night he spent with these men, Philip told them, “You know, when I first started working here, I thought to myself, ‘I’ve got so much to teach these guys.’ But tonight, I want you to know that I have learned much more about Jesus and His grace from you than I have ever taught. Thank you.”

Listen: Your world (our world) is filled with Corneliuses for whom Jesus suffered, bled, died, rose, and ascended, filled with Corneliuses who, whether they know it or not, are looking for someone to save them from their sin, from themselves, from death. And if you don't know any Corneliuses in your life right now, find them, befriend them, love them, tell them about Jesus. 

They need someone willing to tell them and show them how God has acted to save them and to give them life with God, right now, right in the midst of this imperfect world. They’re looking for someone who can show them and tell them the truth: God has no favorites and every child of God is one of whom He is especially fond. Will you be the person who lets others know that? Amen

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

He's the God of All Creation...Let Your Praises for Him Thunder!

This is my journal entry from my quiet time with God today. I read Psalm 47.

“God reigns over the nations; God is seated on his holy throne...the kings of the earth belong to God…” (Psalm 47:8, 9b)

I love this psalm! It calls for the unrestrained, selfless worship of God. Believers are called to clap, shout with joy, sing praises, sound trumpets, and exalt in God’s greatness and goodness as they worship God.

Of course, God cares more that we worship Him “in the Spirit and truth” (John 4:24) than He does about the ways we worship Him.

Our worship, however we worship, should call attention to God and not to us. That’s true of worship in liturgical settings as well as of modern “praise and worship” services.

But the psalm makes clear that our worship should be entirely free in giving God glory, praise, and honor. We should be free of self-consciousness when we worship God. That’s the how of worship, according to the psalmist.

In the verses cited above, the psalmist also tells us why we are to worship God. The God Who has definitively revealed Himself in Christ, Who first revealed to the people of Israel, isn’t some humanly-created deity worshiped by Jews and Christians. This is the “God [Who] reigns over the nations...the kings of the earth belong to [this] God.”

The God of Israel revealed to the world in Jesus isn’t some small, two-bit idol: He is the living, infinitely creative, passionately loving Maker and King of everything!

This one true God, available and accessible to all through repentance and faith in Jesus Christ (Mark 1:15; John 3:16-18; Acts 2:38; Acts 4:12), is the God of all people, whether they know it or recognize it or not.

When I was a Sunday Schooler coloring in the lines of Joseph’s coat of many colors, He was God of everything.

When, for a decade-plus, I turned away from God and called myself an atheist, He was still of God everything.

When, in response to His grace in Christ and the claim the Holy Spirit made on me as an infant in my Baptism, I turned back to Him to live, He was still of God everything.

When the world is going crazy, steeped in evil, sin, and fear, God is still the God of everything and everyone.

He will have the last word over this universe. His words of grace will save those who trust in Him from sin and death, futility and darkness, injustice and wrath.

It is this God Who sets us free from self-consciousness, freed knowing that whatever judgments the world may make about us as we surrender our lives and wills to God, we always belong to God. So, we can praise and honor Him with our whole beings!

It’s this same God Who then calls us to join His mission of reaching out with His good news, the gospel that all who repent and believe, have life with God. The Lord of all nations has given His baptized, believing people a great commission. We are to let the people of all nations, including the people in our own families and our circles of acquaintance and friends, that the God of all nations sent His Son to die and to rise for the people of all nations, so that people from every nation who trust in Him will live.

My prayer: You are the big God of all creation, Lord. Forgive me for treating You like an afterthought, an also-ran, a secret I keep to myself lest people think that I’m weird. I AM weird: holy, set apart. Holy and set apart not because I’m “all that,” but because You’re “all that.” You set me and all baptized believers apart to lift You up for all the world to see, know, and worship.

You’re the omnipotent, omniscient Creator and King of the universe; yet You care enough about all You have created to have taken on human flesh (John 1:14), suffered and died for our sins (Romans 5:8), and now offer new and everlasting life, a life that starts right now, to all who trust in Christ.

You’re big, God. But You’re not so big as to ever leave or forsake Your people. You are with us always, even to the close of this old universe’s age. Because of that, set me free of my inhibitions. Today, help me to be unable to restrain myself from praising You or from commending the hope that I have in Christ to others (1 Peter 3:15).

Lord, I praise You, glorify You, honor You, love You because You loved me and the rest of the human race first!

Make my life today a living offering of praise to You!

In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen!

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

"Am I Saved?"

[This was prepared to be shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio this morning.]

Galatians 4:4-7
Let’s pretend that you’re an average, normal Lutheran walking through a crowded mall.

You’re minding your own business, not bothering anybody else--because, after all, you are an average, normal Lutheran--when a young man walks up to you and with urgency in his voice, asks, “Are you saved?”

Now, as an average, normal Lutheran, you’re thrown off by this sudden violation of your personal space. (After all, you’re still trying to get used to the pastor who hugs everybody during the Sharing of the Peace!) All you hear at first is the word, “saved” and naturally, as an average, normal Lutheran who likes to save a buck, you assume that this guy is bragging about a bargain that saved him a lot of money.

But the young man's message and manner don’t quite compute. So you respond to his question by saying, “Huh?” The young man repeats himself, “Are you saved?” “Oh,” you think to yourself, “one of those Christians!”

By now, you are practiced at fending off such unwanted discussions of God, salvation, sin, and being born anew. So, you say, softly, so that nobody else can hear, “Why, yes, I am saved.” The young man, pleased with your answer and concerned that he might soon be stopped by security, looks over his shoulder, then scans the mall for his next victim.

Let me say at the outset that by that little vignette, I mean no disrespect either for the interviewer or the interviewee. The young man is right to want to share his faith in Christ with others. Jesus has commanded—and not just suggested that—all Christians to make disciples.

On the other hand, the average, normal Lutheran is right to feel that making disciples ought to happen more in the course of conversations between two willing participants—sort of like Philip telling Nathanael in the Gospel of John to come and see Jesus for himself—than in a flash of religious verbiage among strangers.

Nonetheless, as our average, normal Lutheran finds a bench to wait for his wife while she hits the After-Christmas Sale at Bath and Body Works, he can’t help thinking of the young man’s question: “Are you saved?” “Am I saved?” he asks himself.

Actually, this is a question I get a lot from Lutherans. “I don’t know what to say when people ask me that question,” they’ll say. “Am I saved?”

Our second lesson for this Sunday in which we celebrate the power of Jesus’ Name may help you to feel a little more comfortable in addressing that question.

Before digging into the lesson though, we should note that both Jesus and the Bible teach that there are people who will not be saved and that there are things from which we all need to be saved.

According to Jesus, there are people—maybe people you and I know—who will go to hell. In one of Jesus’ parables, which we looked at this past week as part of reading the Bible together in a year, Jesus tells about a wedding banquet filled with people who gain entry into the party by wearing special wedding robes issued by a king. One man crashes the party without such a robe. The king has him thrown out, Jesus says, into the “outer darkness, where there [is] weeping and gnashing of teeth.” The point of Jesus’ story is clear: Those who seek to gain entrance into eternity with God while remaining naked in their sins, unclothed by the forgiveness of sin that belongs only to those who repent for sin and believe in Christ, will ticket themselves for separation from God, for hell.

Hell is real. But life with God is also real. And because both heaven and hell are real, this business of salvation has life-and-death importance for every single human being!

Now, pull out the Celebrate insert, please, and turn to our second lesson for today, Galatians 4:4-7.

The church in Galatia was started by the first-century evangelist Paul in about 49AD. Galatia was a prosperous region in what is today Turkey. The church’s members were Gentiles, that is, non-Jews. They had received the good news of new life for all who believe in Jesus Christ through Paul’s ministry. It had come as great, life-changing news to them.

But since Paul had left them, a group of people known as Judaizers had come along to confuse them about their faith. They told the Galatians that it wasn’t enough to believe in Jesus. If they really wanted salvation, the Judaizers said, they also had to submit to Old Testament ritual law. The men had to be circumcised. Everybody had to conform to Jewish dietary laws. They needed to make sacrifices for their sins. All of these things and more, they claimed, were the conditions for salvation.

Some of the folks in the church at Galatia bought into all this nonsense. They allowed themselves to turn what God had given as a free gift—new and everlasting life for all who believe in Jesus Christ—into a legal transaction.

Others, intimidated by the Judaizers in the way our avergage, normal Lutheran was in his encounter with the young man at the mall, were rocked back on their heels and wondered, “Am I saved?”

Paul responds to this question and to the decision of some to turn their backs on Christ to take up the notion that they could save themselves by doing the right things. “You foolish Galatians!” he says at one point. “Who has bewitched you?”

He goes on to say that all who simply trust in Jesus Christ become descendants of Abraham, the founder of God’s Jewish people. Abraham himself was saved, Paul points out, not because of any good works he had done, but simply because he believed in the promises of God, promises that pointed to the sending of God’s Son for the salvation of all people.

Paul talks about the coming of the Son in verses 4 and 5, the opening of our lesson. Take a look at those verses, please: “…when the fullness of time had come, God sent His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem [that is, to buy them back from slavery to sin and death] those who were under the law, so that they might receive adoption as children.”

When God decided that the time was right, He sent His Son. But, as we remember at Christmas, Jesus didn’t come in the full majesty of His deity. Nor did He arrive with the paraphernalia of the world's tinhorn kings and dictators. He came as a man to share our lives, our deaths, and our condemnation for sin.

The Bible tells us that Jesus, after His death, even experienced life in hell, where “He made a proclamation to the spirits in prison.” Jesus shared the condemnation that belongs to human beings when they refuse His outstretched hand of mercy, who decide that they don’t need God and don’t need to worry about the question, “Am I saved?”

To be "saved" is to be adopted as God’s children. This is an important point! Jesus once told some of His fellow Jews who refused to believe in Him that, because of their failure to trust in Him, they were children of their father, the devil. Imperfect ourselves, we are nonetheless saved by the blood of Jesus, our Savior! We are adopted into the family of God as a gift of God to all with faith in Christ.

Verse 6 says: “And because you are children [of God], God has sent the Spirit of His Son [this is another way of talking about the Holy Spirit] into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’”

People sometimes ask me, “How do I know that I have the Holy Spirit?”

One way to confirm that you have the Holy Spirit is to ask yourself, “Do I believe in Jesus Christ?” If your answer is, “Yes,” you know that the Holy Spirit is operating in your life because, as the New Testament tells us elsewhere, “No one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit."

You can also know you have the Holy Spirit when you’re able to call God, “Abba!” “Abba” is the term Jesus used for “our Father in heaven” when He taught us the Lord’s Prayer. In Jesus’ everyday language of Aramaic, “Abba” was the term that little children used for their fathers, a term that connoted all the trust a child has in her or his daddy. When you trustingly and submissively pray to your Father in heaven, your own spirit is confirming that God’s Holy Spirit lives within you and that you are a child of God through faith in Christ.

Besides, we have the promise of the Bible, in the words of Peter at the first Pentecost, among other places, that all who are baptized in Jesus’ Name have forgiveness of sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Don’t let anyone ever make you feel like a second-class Christian because you don’t have the same spiritual gifts that they claim as some achievement on their parts! If you humbly pray to God, your Father, you have the Holy Spirit. And He will bring You comfort, hope, guidance, and the assurance of God’s love for you, no matter what happens in your life.

Paul underscores this in verse 7 of our lesson: “So you are no longer a slave but a child, and if a child then also an heir, through God.” In the New Testament book of Romans, Paul writes in another passage: “If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.”

In neither of these passages are there any ifs, ands, or buts. If you believe in the Jesus revealed in life and on the pages of Scripture—who was born of a virgin, suffered death on the cross for our sins, raised from the dead by God the Father, who offers new life to all who turn from their sins and believe in Him—you can rest assured that you have been saved. You are a child of God!

Now folks, that’s such an incredible thing that, while we may not like the method of the young man in the mall of our little scenario, we should be able to understand why he wants to share the good news of salvation for all who believe in Jesus with others, don't you think?

Confident that we have been saved through Christ, may 2012 be a year in which we average, normal Lutherans join the apostles Peter and John, who, when facing persecution told those who threatened them with punishment if they ever again spoke in the Name of Jesus, “we cannot keep from speaking about” Jesus, the One Whose Name is above all names, the One Who has saved us.

If you believe in Jesus Christ, you are saved. That's good news. Amen!