The Good Deposit

[This sermon was shared during the opening of worship of The Ohio Mission Region, North American Lutheran Church convocation earlier today.]

2 Timothy 1:8-14

The book or letter we call Second Timothy, a verse of which provides the theme for our weekend together, has been described as both an “official” and deeply “personal" letter.

The writer, of course, is the apostle Paul, then sitting in a prison in about 65 to 67 AD. All of Paul’s appeals that might save him from execution have been exhausted. 

Paul wants to see his protege Timothy; he has fatherly feelings for the young pastor. That’s the personal part. 

But he also wants to see Timothy in order to impart a kind of official “last will and testament” to him, so that he can plead that Timothy will stay true to the pure Gospel Word that we are saved by God’s grace through the faith in Jesus Christ the Holy Spirit gives through God’s Word, including the Gospel Word of forgiveness and new life we receive in the sacraments. Paul wants to remind Timothy to, paraphrasing the apostle’s words in Romans, not be ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ, “...for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes…in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, ‘The righteous shall live by faith.’” (Romans 1:16-17)

But Paul knows that he might die at any time and that, for the Christian, there is no time like the present to share Christ and His Gospel with others, whether those others are Christians or unbelievers. 

There is no time like the present to share Christ with Christians because, as Martin Luther said, “We need to hear the gospel every day because we forget it every day.” We easily forget that we are sinners in need of a Savior and we forget just as easily that in Jesus Christ, we have a Savior and that in Him–listen, friends–all your sins are already completely and totally forgiven and so you can trust in Him, you can take refuge in Him, right now.

And, of course, unbelievers need to hear the Gospel for their reconciliation with God and their eternal salvation. Without Christ, we remain dead in our sin and separated from God. The apostles knew all of this when they said, “...there is salvation [salvation, that is, from sin, death, and condemnation] in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among [people] by which we must be saved.” (Acts 4:12)

In the opening verses of his letter to Timothy, Paul has a three-part message. First, he tells Timothy to rekindle the gift of God within him and so, second, by the power of the Holy Spirit Who lives in believers, display the power, love, and self-control that God manifests in those who trust in Christ. We rekindle the Gospel within us when, as repentant sinners, we return again and again to partake of the means of God’s grace in Word and Sacrament. Finally, Paul tells Timothy to be ready to share in suffering for the Gospel. Many people in our world are antinomians–that is, anything goers, who think that God doesn’t care what we do as long as we enjoy ourselves. Others are rigid legalists who are weighed under by or want to weigh others under by the idea that God will only love us if we’re perfect. Good luck with that.

The world, the Church, our individual congregations, and our neighbors then, need to know Jesus. We, as the Church, need to hear Paul’s inspired word for us today: “By the Holy Spirit who dwells within us, guard the good deposit entrusted to you.” (2 Timothy 1:14)  At our Baptism, a good deposit was given to each and every one of us. That deposit is the good news, the gospel. We guard or keep the Gospel, the verb in the original Greek is phylaxon, not when we hide it under a bushel–NO!, but when we let the others see that, imperfect though we are, sinners though we are, vulnerable we are, through Jesus Christ, we have everlasting life with God that can never be taken from us. And our neighbors can have that same life with God!

I spent roughly the first eight-and-a-half years of my life living on Thomas Avenue, just a few miles up the Three C Highway from here in the Bottoms of Columbus. My great-grandmother lived across the street from us. Her door was always open to me, no matter the time of day. Often, I would sit with her as she read her Bible and waited for her to tell me what she had read. One day, we sat in her living room when spring rain fell. After the rain had stopped, we went out to inspect her flowers. I remember her pointing to the sky over Jet Stadium on Mound Street, where there was a rainbow. She told me about Noah and his ark and how God puts the rainbow in the sky as a sign of His promise to never destroy the world by flood, a promise God made despite humanity being just as sinful after the flood as before, a promise born of grace. My great-grandmother died when I was just eight. In the succeeding years, I would be an atheist but God and His gospel promise would find me. (I kept dating Lutheran women and ended up marrying one of them!) When I heard the Gospel at the now-deceased Bethlehem Lutheran Church in Columbus, I recognized it. I knew Jesus and His Gospel because my great-grandmother, Elva Henry, among others, had guarded the good deposit entrusted to her and knew that it wasn’t for hoarding but for investing…in our families, our communities, our world.

Sisters and brothers in Christ: Jesus Christ has set you free from sin, death, and condemnation. This is the good deposit He has placed in your life. I urge you to keep it by gladly hearing, learning, and receiving it and then, giving it away. 

Amen

Listening: A Consequential Thing

[Below you'll find live stream video from this past Sunday's 8:45 AM traditional and 11:00 AM modern worship services at Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. Also below is the text of the message. Have a good week!]





Luke 10:38-42

As we begin our consideration of today’s Gospel lesson, Luke 10:38-42, let’s be clear about what Jesus is not saying. Jesus is not telling Martha (or us) that hospitality is a bad thing. The Bible tells us repeatedly that it’s God’s will for us, both as an expression of our love for Him and our neighbor, that we show hospitality to others.

Our Old Testament lesson this morning, for example, recounts how three strangers showed up at the tent of Abraham and Sarah, the father and mother of ancient Israel, and how they bent over backward to welcome and provide for these visitors. Those visitors turned out to be, I believe, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. It’s this incident that informs the call to we Christians found in Hebrews 13:2, in the New Testament: “Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it.” On many occasions, Jesus says that in our hospitality toward strangers, more than anything, we extend hospitality to Him. We welcome Him. And that’s a good thing.

But, friends, there are different ways to welcome Jesus. 

One way is exemplified in today’s lesson by Martha, who is busily involved in seeing to it that everyone is fed, everyone’s glass is filled, and everyone has a place to sleep. 

Another way of welcoming Jesus is exemplified by Mary, who sat at Jesus’ feet and listened to His Word.

There are times and places for us to show each kind of hospitality to Jesus, times to get busy with serving, and times to sit and listen to God’s Word. 

Martha did a good thing by inviting Jesus and His entourage to the home she shared with her sister Mary and her brother Lazarus. 

But Jesus says that Mary did the better thing, chose “what is better,” by sitting at Jesus’ feet and listening to His Word. (Luke 10:42)

Mary seems to understand that when Jesus, the Word of God, came to the place she lived speaking His Word, telling all who will listen that He has brought the free gift of forgiveness and new life for all people and calling all to trust in Him, it’s time to set down the pots and pans, time to forget about the roast, time to forgo even treasured leisure time activities and listen. 

It was time, in the words of Psalm 46:10, to “Be still, and know that [Jesus is] God…”

Martha seems to think–in the same way that we modern Christians, concerned about the apathy or even hostility toward God that exists in our world, sometimes think: that she had to serve Jesus, that she had to prop Jesus up, that Jesus needed her to throw herself into frenzied action. 

But there are times when the greatest act of service and worship we can render to God is to hear His Word, receive the assurance of His love and forgiveness, and receive the bread and wine of Holy Communion. In Mark 10:45, Jesus says: “...the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:45) God transforms us from His enemies to His friends and brings His grace into our lives not by what we do for Him, but by what He has done and still doing for us!

Jesus didn’t need a scrap of the food that Martha was preparing for Him; but she needed the Word of life He was serving up as a free gift right there under her roof! So do we…week in and week out.

So what about us? 

Are we too busy to listen to Jesus? 

Are we so involved in activities and projects, at work, at home, even good and laudable ones, that we can’t keep still long enough to hear from Jesus and His Word? The fact that you're here, placing yourself under the Word of God is a very good thing!

That we need Jesus and His Word is a central teaching of the Bible. In the demands of daily life and in the face of overpowering temptation, it can become hard for us to remember that Jesus, God the Son, has already conquered our sins, conquered the power of temptations to separate us from God, and conquered death. It becomes easy when we become absorbed in mountains of activity, some of which may be designed to prove how wonderful we are or even to lift Jesus up to the world that, “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.” (Acts 4:12) 

At the Mount of Transfiguration, the voice of God the Father told Peter, James, and John (and us), “This is my Son, whom I have chosen; listen to him.” (Luke 9:35) 

Both for our own salvation and to lend the power of God to our witness and service to others, we need to push the pause button on our sometimes frenzied lives to just listen to Jesus and His Gospel Word. “...faith comes from hearing the message [the message that Jesus, God in the flesh, took our punishment for sin on the cross, then opened up eternity to all who turn to Him], and the message is heard through the word about Christ.” (Romans 10:17) 

Listen, friends: It’s the Word of Jesus and the Word about Jesus, not our work or our serving or our good deeds, but the Word of Jesus and the Word about Jesus alone, that creates and sustains and grows the gift of faith in Jesus that saves us from sin, death, and hell and saves us for life with God that never ends.

This is why God created the Sabbath day for His ancient people. God wanted them to hear His Word of Law that reminds us of His will and His Word of Gospel by which, through the crucified and risen Jesus, He saves us from the consequence of our complete inability to keep His Law. God commanded ancient Israel in the Third Commandment: “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.” (Exodus 20:8) 

Even though today Jesus has liberated the Sabbath so that the grace and new life He brought into the world on the first Easter Sunday is ours every single day of the week, we still need, like Mary, to sit at Jesus’ feet to hear His Word. Regularly.

Being in worship regularly when we could be tailgating at a Bengals game, sleeping in (like I did in the early years of Ann's and my marriage when, she would go to worship, and I'd stay at home worshiping at Saint Mattress of the Springs), or catching up on chores around the house can seem onerous. 

But one pastor pushes back on all that with a little scenario. Imagine, he says, that you’re part of a family that’s had a long day without the time to eat. You’re famished. Then, back home, a family member takes the time to go to the kitchen and fix a meal. Eventually, you’re told, “Come and get it.” It’s unlikely that you’d say, “Do we have to eat again? I ate yesterday.” No, you’d gladly come to eat up the food offered to you because you know you need it to live! At one level, the call to "Come and get it!" may be a law, a command: "You need food. Here it is. Now start eating." But in reality, it's a gracious word of promise, of good news: "Here's the food that I've prepared for you to give you strength and good health." That's why the Sabbath call to worship with God's people and to welcome the Word and Sacraments isn't onerous, but life-giving!

No matter what else happens in your week, you know that on at least one day of the week, Jesus will come to you and His Church just as He came to the home of Martha, Mary, and Lazarus. 

And, as was true then, He will come to you through His Word: read, proclaimed, and even imparted to us in, with, and under simple elements like water, bread, and wine. 

He invites us to feed each week on His grace, forgiveness, and love. 

This is why in his explanation of the Third Commandment–to keep the Sabbath day holy–Martin Luther writes not of a day of grim obligation, but of a day of stillness and humble receptivity to Jesus. “We should fear and love God,” Luther says, “so that we do not despise His Word and the preaching of it, but acknowledge it as holy, and gladly hear and learn it.” 

When we worship with God’s people as often as circumstances allow, whether here in our home church or at another church when we’re on vacation, we join the apostle Peter who once said to Jesus, “You have the words of eternal life.” (John 6:68)

Friends, let’s be fair to Martha. 

There are times for the kind of hospitality she wanted to exercise the day Jesus visited her home. 

But every Sunday, in the Word and the Sacraments, Jesus comes to His Church to call them, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. “ (Matthew 11:28) 

In His Word, Jesus works the gift of faith in Him within us. 

He gives us rest in Him. 

He gives us the assurance that He has died and risen for us. 

He announces that He has already done everything needed for our eternal salvation. 

In the end, there is only one thing we really need–Jesus and His Gospel. 

We need His Word and His Sacraments. 

Sunday worship may not seem like much to an unbelieving world. Sometimes, it may not seem like much to us. But, friends, joining our sisters and brothers to sit at Jesus’ feet and welcome Jesus and His Word into our hearts and minds and wills each Sunday is the most consequential thing we can do during this and every week we live in this world. Martha’s sister Mary knew that. May we always know it too. Amen

You Can Thank God You Live Today

[Below, you'll find the live stream videos of yesterday's two worship services of Living Water Lutheran Church and the text of the prepared message.]





John 16:12-22

Rosie, some of you may know, was a member of Ann’s and my home church in Columbus. She was in worship and Sunday School every week. She was usually very quiet. One Sunday, a seminarian was leading our adult class and asked what commemoration we would add to the annual calendar of the Church. No one spoke for a long while. But then, Rosie raised her hand. “I sometimes I think we should have a ‘Thank God We Live Now Sunday’ because I’m afraid that if I’d lived around Jesus back when He was on the earth, I wouldn’t have believed in Him. I’m glad I live now and can believe in Jesus.”

Rosie was an older person. Older people sometimes seem to spend a lot of their time pining for the supposed “good old days.” But here was Rosie suggesting that we should thank God for being alive today because living today makes it easier for us to have saving faith in Jesus than it would have been for those living in first-century Judea.

We know, of course, that there were people who saw Jesus’ miracles, including things like walking on the water, restoring the sight of the blind, and raising the dead but still didn’t believe in Him as their Savior and Lord for everlasting life with God. Many saw or heard Jesus doing these things and then called for His execution. Some of these same people celebrated when Jesus drew His last breath on the cross. Even the disciples scattered in fear and disbelief. We know all that, but was Rosie wrong to suggest that, in this age of cynicism and nihilism and unbelief, we have a better chance of having saving faith in Jesus than did the people who saw and heard Jesus?

Our gospel lesson for today is John 16:12-22. It’s part of Jesus’ farewell discourse, a time of teaching His disciples before His betrayal and arrest. He’s been talking about the Holy Spirit.

In today’s lesson, Jesus tells the disciples: “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.” (John 16:12)

There are two reasons the disciples can’t yet bear the many things Jesus wants and needs to say to the Church. The first is that the disciples don’t yet know that death cannot stop Jesus. They don’t yet see how unique Jesus is, that not even death can thwart His power to forgive our sins or give us new and everlasting life with God. They largely see Jesus as a tool by which “good people,” which is how they think of themselves, will get the good things they want in the world. They don’t see that Jesus hasn’t come into the world to be a genie granting the wishes and demands of those who follow Him. Jesus hasn’t come into the world to make us comfortable in a dying world, but to make it possible for sinners like us, who deserve nothing but condemnation and hell, to be forgiven our sins and have life with God that begins now and is brought to perfection in eternity.

The second reason the disciples can’t yet bear the things Jesus wants to teach them is that Jesus hasn’t yet sent the Holy Spirit to those who believe in Him

This second reason is what Jesus addresses next in our lesson: “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine; therefore I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.”

The Holy Spirit is “the Spirit of Truth.” Jesus tells us that the Spirit will guide us into all the truth. The truth Jesus is speaking of here isn’t an abstraction. It’s not the mere opposite of a lie. Jesus says elsewhere, you know very well, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6) What Jesus means is that God, one God in three Persons, of which Jesus is the second, God the Son, is the foundational truth, the cornerstone, on Whom the whole creation is founded. Jesus claims that He is Who Psalm 118:22 was describing when it said, “The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.” Jesus also says that it’s the wise person who builds their lives on Him as their Rock. (Matthew 7:24) Because God has given no other name but the name of Jesus by which we can be saved from sin and death, the old hymn nis right when it says that “all other ground is sinking sand.” (Acts 4:12) Our natural impulse is to build our lives on falsehoods, things that won’t last like self-sufficiency, our own presumed goodness, material wealth, good health. But only Jesus, the Truth, can give us life with God that never ends. “Everyone who believes [in the Son of Man, Jesus says, referring to Himself] may have eternal life in him.” (John 3:15) So, Jesus is saying in today’s gospel lesson that after He has died, risen, and ascended, He will send the Holy Spirit to guide us to Jesus. The Spirit will speak the words and deeds of Jesus to us through the Word and the Sacraments–Holy Baptism and Holy Communion–and lead us to believe in Jesus. It’s the Holy Spirit, working through these means, Who makes it possible for us to believe what the first disciples found hard to believe. “I want you to know,” the apostle Paul would write to the Corinthian Christians some three decades after the events in today’s gospel lesson, “that no one who is speaking by the Spirit of God says, “Jesus be cursed,” and no one can say, “Jesus is Lord,” except by the Holy Spirit.” (1 Corinthians 12:3)

Jesus sends the Spirit then, to first, give us the truth about us: the truth that we fail to love God wholeheartedly and fail to love others with the same passion and commitment with which we love ourselves.

And the Spirit also makes it possible for us to believe the gospel, the good news that God loves us and has overcome our sin, death, and darkness through Jesus. Romans 5:8 says: “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” When Jesus sends the Holy Spirit, He brings faith to those who are drenched in the gospel Word at their Baptism, who stand under that gospel Word, and who, in faith, receive Christ’s body and blood with His words, “This is My body, given for you! This is My blood shed for you.” The Word that comes to us from the Holy Spirit is what enables us to believe, no matter the circumstances of our lives. Because the world is such a dark and death-filled place, we need to hear and receive this Word over and over again, especially in the fellowship of the Church.

The story's told about a pastor newly arrived at a congregation who, on his first Sunday, preached a stirring sermon. People greeted him at the door after worship and said, "Nice sermon, pastor," "Good sermon, pastor." The next Sunday, he preached the same sermon. People filed by after worship with the same words, "Nice sermon, pastor," "Good sermon, pastor." This went on for several weeks. Finally, a perceptive member of the congregation said, "You know, pastor, I can't help noticing a similarity between the sermons you've been preaching." The pastor said, "When I'm sure you've heard it, I'll stop preaching it." 

We need to hear the Gospel over and over again, Martin Luther observed, because we forget it all the time. And so, if there's a sameness to the sermons from Sunday to Sunday, there's a reason. Do you remember the children's book, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever? In it, some neighborhood kids who had never before had any connection to the Church get involved in a local congregation's annual Christmas play. "What's it about?" one of the kids asks. "Jesus" is the answer. The kid responds, "They can't stop talking about Him here." 

We cannot stop talking about Jesus. And so the Word comes to us again and again so that we might believe.

“A little while, and you will see me no longer; and again a little while, and you will see me,” Jesus then tells the disciples. (John 16:16) Soon, He’ll die on a cross, then He will rise. To the disciples, these words are a riddle. Jesus, being God, knows their thoughts and supposedly secret conversation. He tells the disciples, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice. You will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn into joy.” (John 16:20)

Friends, this promise is for you too. Today, you don’t see Jesus, Who is seated at God’s right hand. But Jesus still comes to you in those means of grace–Scripture, Baptism, Communion–and in the fellowship of believers. In the Word given to us by the Holy Spirit, given to us personally and directly, Jesus comes to you and helps you to trust that because Jesus has died and risen, you belong to God forever! The Spirit reminds you again today of Jesus’ promise that even when, “you have sorrow now…I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you.” (John 16:22) One day, by God’s grace through faith in Christ, you will see Jesus face to face and live in His perfect kingdom eternally.

Rosie was right. It is a blessing to live today, on this side of Jesus’ cross and resurrection. The Holy Spirit has been unleashed so that you can believe in Jesus and so have eternal life with God. You can thank God for that! Amen

Saints: Who Are They? Who Aren't They?

[This message was shared with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio during All Saints' Sunday worship last Sunday.]

Revelation 7:9-17

What is a saint? All Saints’ Sunday challenges us to ask that question each year. 

The first thing we should do in approaching this question, I suppose, is to talk about what saints aren't, or in a phrase used by the late Lutheran composer John Ylvisaker, what the saints ain't. There's a helpful discussion of this subject in Article XXI of what's known as the Apology to the Augsburg Confession. The confession makes up a portion of The Book of Concord, a place where Lutheran Christians summarize their understanding of Biblical Christian faith.

Article XXI deals with the subject of the invocation of saints, the use of saints' names to intervene for people in prayer. Behind this idea is that saints are somehow superabundantly good and can somehow put in good words for us with God that Jesus, the One we confess to be Lord, God, and Savior, doesn't.

The article says, in part, "Our Confession approves honoring the saints in three ways. The first is thanksgiving. [In their lives, we see examples of God's mercy for sinful human beings.]...The second service is the strengthening our faith. When we see Peter's denial forgiven, we also are encouraged to believe all the more that grace truly superabounds over sin...The third honor is the imitation, first of faith, then of the other virtues...[God, by His grace creates through Christ]...We admit that, just as the saints (when alive) pray for the Church universal in general, so in heaven they pray for the Church in general. However no passage about the praying of the dead exists in the Scriptures...Scripture does not teach the invocation of the saints, or that we are to ask the saints for aid..."

In short, dead saints aren't who we're to talk to when we're trying to communicate with God. Scripture teaches that we're to pray in the name of God the Son, Jesus. The early Church knew that there is no other name given by God by which we can be saved. Jesus says that He is the way, the truth, and the life, the only connection that humanity can have to God for salvation and prayers heard by God. As a young person said to me years ago, "If I can go right to the top, to God, in my praying, why would I talk to a dead believer who can't hear me?"

That's what saints aren't. To find out what they are, we’ll turn to today’s first lesson, Revelation 7:9-17. 

Revelation, as you know, is based on a series of visions given to the apostle John about sixty years after Jesus’ resurrection. 

Beginning at chapter 6, John sees Jesus, the second Person of the one God, open the first six of seven seals. With the opening of each seal, John sees this old creation in which we live move closer to its inevitable end. He also sees glimmers of the new creation that the risen and ascended Jesus will fully usher in at His second coming, when He returns to this world to claim His kingdom from our enemies: sin, death, and the devil. Jesus’ return will bring celebration and relief to all who have turned from sin and who have believed in Christ.

But, as the last verse of Revelation 6 points out, the return of Jesus won’t be universally welcomed, any more than He or His people are universally welcomed today. Those who have rejected Christ will ask the caves, mountains, and rocks for help. “‘Fall on us,’ they will beg, ‘and hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb [the Lamb being Jesus]!’ For the great day of their wrath has come, and who can withstand it?” (Revelation 6:16)

Then, just before the opening of the seventh and final seal, John is allowed to see two scenes which he records in Revelation, chapter 7. 

The first scene comes in Revelation 7:1-8, right before today’s lesson. The location of this scene is this world. God assigns four angels to hold back the final destruction of the old creation. “Don’t damage the earth,” God tells the angels, “until we’ve marked all of the servants of God with a seal on their foreheads” (Revelation 7:3) (This is the seal of the Holy Spirit which every baptized person receives on the day they’re made new by water and the Spirit.) Then the numbers of those sealed for salvation are counted out. The total comes to 144,000. The Bible is not here saying that just 144,000 people out of all human history will be part of God’s eternal kingdom! The number 144 is derived from multiplying the 12 tribes of Israel times the 12 apostles Jesus chose to lead the post-resurrection church. For John, it would have been a number implying perfection and completeness. And, tacking three zeroes onto the back of 144, would be a bit like one of us saying that “a gazillion” people showed up for an Ohio State football game or watched the seventh game of the World Series this past week. 

Then comes Revelation 7:9. John writes: “After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count…” 

This is no little crowd of 144,000! It’s a crowd so big that “no one could count” it! 

I find this incredibly moving because on a starlit night 4000 years ago, an elderly man to whom God had promised the impossible struggled to believe that God could overcome decay and death to give him a son and a future to his descendants.

The man’s name at the time was Abram. (Later to be changed by God to Abraham.) To Abram, the promise seemed too good to be true. So, God reassured Abram in Genesis 15:5: “[God took Abram] outside and said, ‘Look up at the sky and count the stars—if indeed you can count them.’ Then he said to him, ‘So shall your offspring be.’” 

The multitude from every nation that John is shown in His vision of heaven after the life of this old world has come to an end are the descendants of Abram, the very descendants God had promised on that starry night so long ago. They were, in the words of John in his gospel: “children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God” (John 1:13). This multitude comes to be numbered among Abraham’s descendants not by genetics, but by faith in the God Who ultimately revealed Himself to Jews and Gentiles in the person of Jesus Christ. 

Jesus says in John 14:9: “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.” This the Father, God the Father, the same one Who made Abraham and Sarah the ancestors of nations, not because their bodies were capable of making children, but because God’s Holy Spirit, by the grace of God, can make new life in all who turn from sin and entrust themselves to Jesus.  

Jesus, God the Son, is the God Who gave Abraham that promise four millennia ago. And He is the God Who promises that all who turn from sin and believe in Him become descendants of Abraham. They are saints of God. When we come to believe in Christ as our God and Savior, we are the saints of God!

Saints are those who trust God to give them the free gifts that come to all who follow Jesus: gifts like forgiveness of sin, eternal life, and the power to live each day for His purposes. 

But if sainthood is a free gift from God, we must not think for a moment that sainthood is easy. We see this from just four words in our lesson from Revelation today. 

The first two of those words appear at the beginning of verse 9: “After this.” After what, exactly? John saw the multitude of saints after an event that’s mentioned in verse 14. 

That’s where you can read two more important words: “great tribulation.” 

Despite the propaganda that comes from those who misconstrue Revelation, "the great tribulation" does not refer to some endtime cataclysm. The great tribulation is the common experience through which every believer in Jesus goes in this life.

Life in this world is the great tribulation. 

We live in a place filled with beauty and wonder. But with its beauty and wonder marred by human sin, death, and even the suffering of the saints, this world, at its best, can still only give us a glimpse--a kind of shimmering shadow--of the beauty and wonder—the perfection—that await all who persevere to the end in following Jesus as their only God and King. 

After completing life in this world, the saints who have kept on trusting Jesus, will be met by the Savior, Who will make them clean forever, Who will dry their tears, Who will feed their hunger and quench their thirst for the righteous life that only He can give, and He will welcome them into the new creation for which each of us was made. 

For now, we live in a time in which, as Paul writes Romans 8, both we and the whole of creation wait with eager longing for Christ to reveal Himself and His children. 

But even in the best of times, this life can be a struggle. 

And sometimes, our struggles are made even harder because God’s Word has ignited faith in Jesus Christ within us. 

How much easier the lives of Christians would be if we just went along with the world instead of rooting ourselves in the truth and grace of God revealed in His Word. Of course, along with that ease would come death, because life is only found in Christ!

The devil tests, tempts, and tries the saints. And every believer in Christ will, eventually, bear the scars—physical, emotional, relational, or all three—that come to those who seek to follow Christ. 

Mark it well: Follow Christ and He will most certainly thwart you in some of your most heartfelt desires because He is far less interested in giving you momentary happiness than He is in fitting and forging you and your character for an eternity spent in His presence. In this life, I have chafed under Christ's hand of loving discipline more than once and I'm sure that I will chafe under it many times again before I die. I'm reminded of the words of the preacher in the New Testament book of Hebrews: "Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as his children. For what children are not disciplined by their father? If you are not disciplined--and everyone undergoes discipline--then you are not legitimate, not true sons and daughters at all. Moreover, we have all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit to the Father of spirits and live! They disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, in order that we may share in his holiness." (Hebrews 12:7-10)

The Old Testament saints living in exile, the victims of injustice, would cry out to God, “How long, O Lord?” Their pain was echoed for me in the words of a saint and friend battling cancer who told me, “I just can’t seem to catch a break.” In this life, we’ve all been there...or will be. 

Our own personal “great ordeals” may include persecution, chronic or fatal illness, disagreements over priorities with those we love or with whom we work, or the conflicts that happen within us when a sin tantalizes us and we know that we must choose God’s way and not our own. The latter may be the greatest tribulation of all!

What is a saint? 

Saints are people who daily turn to Jesus for forgiveness, faith, courage, and new life. 

Saints are sinners who trust that Jesus loves and gives new and everlasting life to sinners. 

Sometimes saints turn to Jesus haltingly. Always imperfectly. At times, speaking for myself anyway, resentfully. But saints find that their lives as disciples and human beings are always buttressed by daily repentance and renewal. 

No matter how saints’ hearts may wander, they always know to come back to Christ. 

They know to Whom they belong and they know where they’re headed. 

They know that this life is not perfect. But they have a purpose in their living: To live for and to let the whole world know about the Lamb Jesus, Who will, after the last page has been closed in the last chapter of the last volume of this world's story, welcome all who have trusted in Him to His new creation. 

In the meantime, dear saints of God, trust in Jesus. Know His love for you even in the midst of life’s greatest tribulations and know for a fact that, if you remain steadfast in following Jesus, like saints before us, you will be in Jesus' everlasting kingdom. You will hear Jesus say, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world.” (Matthew 25:34) Amen!

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. I'm also a saint by grace through faith in Jesus Christ and a sinner by my very nature at the same time.]