Noah, the Flood, Christ, and Baptism

This is from my quiet time journal. Quiet time is a period I try to spend with God about five days a week. To see how I approach it, read here.

If you haven't yet been baptized and would like for Christ to claim you in this way, I urge you to contact a local congregation close to you to set up a time to talk about the meaning of baptism and what faith in Jesus is all about. Here is a list of congregations in the denomination of which I'm a part; one may be close to me. (In sharing this list, I'm not insinuating that Lutherans are the only Christians around. It's just offered as a handy list for your convenience.)

Look: “And when the Lord smelled the pleasing aroma, the Lord said in his heart, ‘I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the intention of man's heart is evil from his youth. Neither will I ever again strike down every living creature as I have done. While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.’” (Genesis 8:21-22) 

After the world-destroying flood, Noah and his family worshiped God. They offered a sacrifice which we can infer was no pro-forma performance, but an act of true worship and gratitude to God for His grace. 

In the Old Testament we see that God has no regard for “going through the motions” worship. 

For example, God says through the prophet in Amos 5:21-24: “I hate, I despise your feasts, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them; and the peace offerings of your fattened animals, I will not look upon them. Take away from me the noise of your songs; to the melody of your harps I will not listen. But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” 

And in his great prayer of repentance, King David notes: “...you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it; you will not be pleased with a burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.” (Psalm 51:16-17) 

In the New Testament, John recounts Jesus’ conversation with a Samaritan woman by a well near the village of Sychar. Perceiving that Jesus is a prophet, the woman tells Jesus that His people (the Jews) saw Jerusalem as the proper place to offer worship to God, whereas her people thought it was properly offered in Samaria. But Jesus told her: “...the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him…” (John 4:23) 

What God wants when we worship Him, pray to Him, and interact with Him is authenticity: authentic repentance, authentic praise and honor. No going-through-the-motions. No trying to find the right feelings or the right words or the perfect gestures. No desire to get what we “need” (read, want) out of it, whether it’s goosebumps or material well-being. 

Noah’s worship pleased God. And it wasn’t because Noah was perfect or “religious,” whatever that means. Nothing had changed about Noah or Noah’s family or the human race of which they were a part. 

Before the flood began, Genesis 6: “The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” (Genesis 6:5) It was human evil that caused God to regret making human beings and to cause the flood (Genesis 6:6). After the flood, Genesis says, “... the intention of man's heart is evil from his youth” (Genesis 6:21). Nothing had changed about the human race. 

But God hadn’t changed either. I see from the verses that so struck me today how much God loves us, in spite of our evil. He doesn’t want to see us destroyed. He loves us and wants to spare us the consequences of our sinfulness (“the wages of sin is death”: Romans 6:23). God wants to extend His grace to us. When we meet His grace with our trusting faith, as Noah and his family did, God saves. God acts on our behalf. 

Listen: God entered our world in the Person of Jesus Christ (John 1:1-2, 14; Colossians 1:15-20) in order to immerse His sinless life fully in the chaos of our sin and death and, after dying, rising in order to open up the only pathway to a resurrected life with God.
Jesus referred to His submersion into death and His rising to life as His baptism: “I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how great is my distress until it is accomplished!” (Luke 12:50) 

And it is through baptism into Christ, the baptism of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (Matthew 28:19) that we are today spared the consequences of sin and death. The old self dies and the new self, the Christ self, rises. 

First Peter talks about how Jesus’ accomplishment is sacramentally imparted to us. Recalling Jesus’ death and resurrection, Peter writes: 

“For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, because] they formerly did not obey, when God's patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water. Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him.” (1 Peter 3:18-22) 

After this amazing action of God, giving us a share in Christ’s victory over sin and death through our Baptism, our call is just this: to trust, to believe, just as Noah and his family did. 

 

As the apostles told their jailer: "Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved--you and your household." (Acts 16:31) 

Authentic faith in God as revealed to all the world in Jesus. 

Authentic repentance in Jesus’ name. 

This is what God asks of us whose hearts and minds are still soaked in evil. His promise of new life with Him will hold, overcoming our sin and death; our part is to trust in Him and His promises. 

Respond: Today, Lord, help me to trust in You and not lean on my own understanding (Proverbs 3:5-6).

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

AUDIO: One with Christ, God Enfleshed

Here.

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. This message was delivered at the 8:45 worship this morning.]

One with Christ, God Enfleshed

Colossians 1:21-29
Today brings us to the second installment of our series, Christ, the Fullness of God, based on the New Testament of Colossians, from which our second lesson is coming over these four weeks.

To even begin to understand today’s second lesson--and I’m only beginning to understand it myself,  I confess--we must reckon with the understanding of the Church from which Paul wrote.

You know, in today's world, when people get around to selecting a church community for themselves, they're moved by factors like: "The people are nice." Or, "The preacher's sermons are short." Or, "They've got things for the kids." Or, "They never ask for money." We can be superficial, looking for what's in it for us, looking for a church that won't make waves in our lives.

This would have been totally foreign to Paul! He had a different understanding of Church.

Paul got this understanding from Jesus Himself. It happened in the famous incident recounted in Acts 9, in which Paul, then named Saul and heading for Damascus, seeking to arrest Christians, was overwhelmed by a bright light that blinded him for three days and heard a voice that demanded of him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute Me?”

Saul asked who this was who has driven him to knees in abject helplessness. The voice answered: “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.”

In that moment, one of the many things that Paul learned was this: Whatever impacted the Church impacted the living and risen Christ. The crucified and risen Jesus Christ is one with His Church. His Church is one with Him. And His people are one with each other. If Saul was persecuting the Church, he was also persecuting Christ Himself.

It’s a lesson that Saul, now Paul, learned and taught well.

“Now you are the body of Christ, and each one is a part of it,” Paul would later tell believers in 1 Corinthians 12:27.

And: “If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.” [1 Corinthians 12:26]

Paul understood that through Christ, disciples of Christ are knit together with Christ and with each other. We are one with our King, Jesus, and with all who profess Jesus as Lord.

The verses that come after last Sunday’s second lesson (1 Corinthians 1:1-14) and before today’s, are among the most beautiful in all of Scripture. They were read near the end of this past Tuesday’s installment of Louie Giglio’s Passion films, Colossians 1:15-20.

There, Paul recites an early Christian poem or hymn. He does so because, as you’ll remember from last Sunday, the Colossian Christians were mixing other religions with their Christian faith. But, Paul wants them to remember that Jesus is God and only the God we meet in Jesus is worthy of following.

Read this hymn aloud with me, if you would:

“The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him,  and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.”

The hymn reminds us that through His death on the cross, Jesus, the fullness of God, God on earth, makes peace with all who turn from sin and trust in Him. And He does it not from a distance, but by taking on the limitations of our flesh, taking our place on the cross, the sinless sacrifice for our sin. God won salvation for all who repent and believe in Christ with the sacrifice of His flesh and blood. This is the most eternity-changing truth we will ever encounter.

Yet, Paul has learned that the Colossian Christians are starting to turn from following Jesus, treating Jesus like just another item on a religious menu. They seem to have forgotten Who Christ is or what Christ has done for them. Paul writes to them from prison. Please take a look at our lesson, Colossians 1:21-29.

It begins: “Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation— if you continue in your faith, established and firm, and do not move from the hope held out in the gospel. This is the gospel that you heard and that has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven, and of which I, Paul, have become a servant.”

Years ago, a man came to me in my office. He had made a mess of his life. He drank excessively and used drugs. There were brushes with the law. There were numerous false starts on new careers that only ended with failures. There had been a wife who left him because he couldn’t be relied upon.

It finally dawn on him that maybe he needed God. After our first meeting, I met with him weekly over a period of several months. He started attending worship, then Sunday School. In the meantime, he got a job and started doing well. He met a woman and they became engaged.

Then, as quickly as he showed up at my office, he was gone, off the radar. He didn't answer my phone calls or emails. God had helped him through his rough patch. Things were now going well. God didn’t seem as essential to him any more. He forgot all that Christ had done to redeem him, to make him new, to set his feet on solid ground. He walked away from God.

As our second lesson begins, Paul pleads with the Colossian Christians to not forget all that God had done for them in Christ, not to walk away from Christ!

In His own flesh, Christ had bridged the chasm between God and them, Paul reminds them. To all who repented and believed, Christ had brought new life with God that never ends.

But the Colossian Christians developed what Paul calls elsewhere “itching ears." They were enticed by other religious systems that, unlike Jesus, didn’t tell them to take up their crosses--in other words, to confess their sins and own their need of God--and follow Him.

For anyone who holds onto the futile desire to be gods over their lives, the Gospel can be tough to take. And that includes all of us because all of us have inherited from Adam and Eve a desire to "be like God."

Paul was calling the Colossians to remember the most basic confession of Christian faith: “Jesus is Lord."

Not me.

Not anyone else.

Not my family.

Not my country.

Only Jesus is Lord.

Only Jesus can make sense of my life.

Only Jesus can give me God’s presence today and life with Him beyond death.

Jesus is Lord!

When things are going well, that’s tough to remember. Paul says, “Never forget!”

Then, Paul writes the most curious part of this passage: “Now I rejoice in what I am suffering for you, and I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ’s afflictions, for the sake of his body, which is the church. I have become its servant by the commission God gave me to present to you the word of God in its fullness— the mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations, but is now disclosed to the Lord’s people. To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.”

There are two things that make these words strange, I think.

First, Paul is rejoicing in suffering. Is he sick? No.

This is the same rejoicing offered up by the very first Christians when facing persecution.

After being dragged before the Sanhedrin, the governing authorities, Acts 5:41 tells us: “The apostles left the Sanhedrin, rejoicing because they had been counted worthy of suffering disgrace for the Name.”

When I first came to faith in Christ at the age of 23, I thought to myself, "Now what?" I believed; now I wanted to know what I needed to be thinking and doing to live out that faith. I knew that the New Testament book of Acts was the history of the Church from the risen Jesus' ascension until about 60 AD. "Maybe," I thought, "I should read Acts to find out how to be a Christian." I remember reading Acts 5:41 in the study of the house we were renting at the time and starting to weep. "Oh, God," I prayed, "give me a faith like that."

Paul was happy that his suffering wasn’t for something wrong he had done, but for his faith in the crucified and risen Jesus. And he was happy too, because his suffering was a witness that pointed others to Christ.

Listen: If people get mad at you for being faithful to Christ, you’re doing something right!

The second reason this passage seems strange is because Paul says: “...I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ’s afflictions…”

It’s important to remember that Paul is not saying that Christ didn’t do everything necessary to win freedom from sin and death for all who repent and believe in Him. Christians don’t have to suffer more than Christ suffered in order to be saved.

In fact, the Greek word for sufferings used by Paul here, παθήμασιν, isn’t even the same word used of Jesus’ passion and death on the cross in the New Testament.

What Paul is saying is that until the day Jesus returns to the earth to raise the dead and bring His kingdom fully into being, Christ’s afflictions will continue to be experienced by His people, the Church.

We who trust in Christ will complete the Church’s story of suffering at the hands of the world for being disciples of Christ who share Him with the disbelieving world. That’s part of our oneness with Christ and with our fellow disciples.

Just as Christ has reached down into our humanity, experiencing everything we experience in order to fully connect with us, take the punishment we deserve, and buy us out of slavery to sin and death to give us eternal life with God, we also connect with Christ in His sufferings as He lifts us up to Himself in heaven.

We share Christ’s suffering in that, as we bear His name, we’re subject to the same rejection that He endured.

But we also have the hope of glory He secured for all who believe in Him when He rose from the dead. That’s what Paul was experiencing while imprisoned.

The blessing that comes when people like Paul live in enduring faith in Christ is that it inspires and upbuilds the Church. It even wins new disciples.

We all remember the execution of Egyptian Christians perpetrated by ISIS last year. Twenty-one people were killed, all of them confessing, “Lord Jesus Christ” as they died. But you’ll also remember that it was later learned that only twenty of the executed had been Coptic Christians before the moments of their deaths. A twenty-first had not been. But, impressed by the faith of the Christians with whom he would die, rather than renouncing them or Christ, he embraced Christ as his Lord. He too died confessing, “Lord Jesus Christ.” This is what happens when we endure in faith. Eternity gets changed. We become one with Christ and with His people, the Church.

Christ lives in all who trust in Him, implanting within them the hope of everlasting glory. Paul closes today’s lesson with words that could serve as the mission statement of every believer: “He is the one we proclaim, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone fully mature in Christ. To this end I strenuously contend with all the energy Christ so powerfully works in me.”

Brothers and sisters in Christ, may we who belong to Christ and to each other strenuously, lovingly, and with every ounce of energy Christ gives to us, proclaim Christ, admonishing and teaching each other with God’s wisdom so that we may all become mature followers of Christ, fully prepared to live and share the hope Christ gives to us with everyone we know and meet.

Ready for today.

Ready for eternity.

Amen

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. This message was shared during both worship services this morning.]

Leaders and the Opinions of Others

Leaders must take others' opinions of them, as is said, "with a grain of salt."

This doesn't mean that leaders should be heedless of others' opinions. But leaders must realize that assessments of their leadership will tend to gravitate toward one or the other of two extremes, adulation or condemnation. In other words, the people with the most extreme positive and negative opinions are the ones likeliest to speak and each will give leaders a distorted view of their leadership.

Leaders must use a different compass than the crowds.

In 1 Corinthians, the apostle Paul confronts the members of a church he had founded and from whom he had been absent for some time, for their arrogance, among other things. In their arrogance, they had begun aligning themselves behind preachers who had served them, rather than behind the God revealed in Christ that the preachers had proclaimed and the faith in Christ each had commended. Paul took the Corinthian Christians to task in this way:

You should think of us as Christ's servants, who have been put in charge of God's secret truths. Now, I am not at all concerned about being judged by you or by any human standard; I don't even pass judgment on myself. My conscience is clear, but that does not prove that I am really innocent. The Lord is the one who passes judgment on me. (1 Corinthians 4:1-4, Good News Translation)

Ultimately, every person--including every leader--is accountable to the God revealed to the world in Jesus Christ. Christ is the only true compass. Even with Christ as Lord, no leader will ever come close to batting 1.000 in their decision-making.

And leaders, as servants, must be accountable both to God and to others.

But leaders who play to the crowds, be they their employees, their citizens, or their flock, will never lead people anywhere.

Leaders must live with the kind of confidence that Abraham Lincoln possessed and talked about as he led the country through the Civil War: "I do the very best I know how-the very best I can; and mean to keep doing so until the end. If the end brings me out all right, what is said against me won’t amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference."

Leaders must take others' opinions of them with "a grain of salt."

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.

Who is the Word of God? Why Should You Read His Book?

[This was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church during worship this morning.]

John 1:1-3, 14
2 Timothy 3:16-17*
As you know, on Ash Wednesday, March 9, we begin a yearlong emphasis at Saint Matthew: Read the Bible in a Year.

The response to the announcement that we were going to read the Bible together in a year’s time has been gratifying! Some of our overachievers have already started reading the Bible. Several people have gotten or are looking at new Bibles, in translations that are more accessible. And I hope that those who, because of the current conditions of their eyes, find reading difficult will be able get an audio edition of the Bible, either through a vendor or at the library. (If you'd like help finding an audio Bible to purchase, let me know, and I'll try to help you with your selection.)

With Read the Bible in a Year coming in so short a time, I’m departing from my usual practice of preaching on the appointed lessons and instead today, focusing on two important passages of Scripture. I hope that they’ll help motivate and inspire you to join in reading the Bible this year. My aim is to do that by talking about two important questions:

• First, what do we Lutheran Christians mean when we speak of “the Word of God”? 
• And second, why should we bother reading the Bible?

So, let’s get to it. Please pull out a pew Bible and turn to page 611. There, you’ll find what’s known as the Prologue to John’s Gospel, John 1:1-18. We’ll consider just a few passages of the Prologue, verses 1 to 3 and verse 14. Read along with me silently, please.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.” [Now, slide down to verse 14.] “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.”

Long before the universe was created, there was the Word of God. This Word of God is not an “it.” Unlike an impersonal force, the Word of God can be known in the same way you know your family or your friends or your neighbors.

That’s why John says of the Word of God, “He was in the beginning with God” and “All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made” and “We have beheld His glory.”

I’m not emphasizing the maleness of those pronouns. What I am emphasizing is that the Word of God is a Being with passions and preferences and a personality.

It’s this Personality that the Old Testament book of Genesis tells us spoke to chaos and brought the universe into being: “’Let there be light’ and there was light.” It was the Word of God that made the light and you and me and everything else.

The New Testament book of Colossians says of the One John refers to as the Word of God: “In Him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible…all things have been created through Him and for Him.” And it says that in Him “all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.” 

This Word of God, the One Who created the universe, took on flesh and, as John’s Prologue says, “dwelt, lived” among us.

The Bible confesses that Jesus is the Word of God.

God, it turns out, is the Great Communicator. He used His Word to communicate all that was needed to bring the universe into being.

And from the very beginning, He has communicated with His personal favorites, the apples of His eye, the pinnacles of creation, the only beings made in His image: the human race.

We human beings have often turned a deaf ear to the Word of God, of course. But God has never tired of communicating with us.

The Word of God ultimately came to us when He took on flesh, became one of us, bore our sin on the cross, and rose from the dead so His Word of forgiveness and new life could come to all who repent and believe in Jesus.

When we Lutheran Christians speak of the Word of God, we mean first and foremost, Jesus, the Second Person of the Trinity, Who sits on the right side—the power side—of God the Father. The Word of God is, above all, God the Son.

Some people claim to see a different God in the Old Testament than they see in Jesus in the New Testament. Lutherans never have seen such a difference.

And for good reason. When Jesus walked on this earth, He said that He and the Father were one. He quoted Old Testament Scripture and He said that He came not to abolish God’s Old Testament law, but to fulfill it. Everything He did and said was consistent with the Personality of God revealed in Old Testament times. The New Testament writers show how the law and the grace that Jesus communicated for all the world, Jews and Gentiles, was precisely the same law and grace God communicated to His people Israel in the Old Testament. The preacher of the New Testament book of Hebrews says of Jesus, the Word of God made flesh: “[He] is the same yesterday and today and forever.”

As Lutheran Christians, we believe that God speaks and has spoken to people with the same simple message through the centuries, one composed of two parts: Law and Promise.

The Law is the moral law as embodied in the Ten Commandments, which God has never rescinded, revoked, or amended.

The Promise is God’s promise of forgiveness and new life to all who will repent and believe in Him.

God has personalized that promise for the whole human race in Jesus. This is why Jesus has given us the great commission to make disciples of all the world.

It was in response to Jesus' great commission and to help people know the Word of God personally and so, have the chance to repent and believe in Jesus, that John wrote his Gospel. “Jesus did many other things in the presence of His disciples, which are not written in this book,” John writes near the end of his Gospel. “But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in His Name.” 

Jesus is the Word of God and the Bible is the Word of God because, through the Holy Spirit, the Church has learned that the Bible perfectly reflects the message the Word of God has been communicating since Adam and Eve: Turn from sin, trust in Me, and live. The Bible is God speaking law and promise to us: the law to drive us to Him, the promise to reconcile us to Him for eternity.

So, if the Bible’s message can be summarized in a few minutes, why spend a year reading it?

It’s simple, really. The crush of life—what The Small Catechism calls, “the devil, the world, and our sinful selves”—can turn us into amnesiacs. We can forget all about Jesus, the Word of God, hurtling through our lives without a clue of how to live or what to do.

But in the Bible, God helps us to remember. God knows we need reminding.

That’s why Luther said that the born-again Christians of his day weren’t born-again enough. They thought of repentance and faith in Christ as a one-and-done deal. But Luther said, rightly I think, that if we don’t keep coming back to God each day to repent and be renewed in His forgiveness and love, we can drift away from God and from eternity with Him.

Reading the Bible regularly can help correct our courses through life.

That leads to a second passage of Scripture I’d like to ask you to look up in the New Testament, 2 Timothy 3:16-17. It’s on page 690 in the pew Bibles. It says:

All Scripture is given by inspiration of God [literally, it says all scripture is God-breathed; God invests His very life into the pages of this book!] and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the [person] of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work. 

In the Bible, the Word of God—Jesus—gives us a treasury of tools by which God empowers us to live with faithfulness and to share God’s Word of law and promise that can bring eternity to all who believe in Jesus.

True story. Monique Govender grew up in a Hindu home in Durban, South Africa. Her family regularly worshiped numerous idols.

Then, in the space of twenty days, two of her siblings died. Monique’s mother became fearful and, maybe just to cover all her bases, began going to a church to secretly pray to the One the Christians said was the one and only God of the universe revealed in Jesus.

Monique’s father, an alcoholic and a physical abuser of his family, hated Christians. Maybe he’d met the kinds of counterfeit Christians who give Christianity a bad name. However it happened, he misunderstood Christian teachings.

Over the course of her childhood though, Monique encountered the Word of God at different times, each time having an impact on her. Once, at age four, she attended “a memorable church activity.” At seven, buying booze for her dad, she saw street performers do two skits: one about Jesus’ parable of the ten wise and foolish virgins and the other about Joseph, the son of Jacob from Old Testament times. Most influential of all was when she learned that her grandparents, lifelong Hindus, had come to faith in Jesus Christ and joined a local church.

At age 15, Monique herself came to faith in Christ. Then, her brother, after reading a Bible he had been given, came to believe in Jesus.

At first, Monique’s father was angry at his two children and refused to let his daughter worship at church. But, trusting in Jesus, the Word of God, Monique began to pray for her family, asking God to let her worship with other Christians and to help her father recover from his alcoholism and to stop being an abuser. “Eventually, she was allowed to go to church, and [amazingly] in time both her parents came to know Christ as well.”

Monique reflects on the goodness of God. “I am not sure of what God’s thoughts were for me, but in looking back, it seems like He’s been thinking about me. And it’s [amazing] to think that I was just an unknown girl…[But] God knew me, and even as a little child, I could feel that God was there with me.”

Jesus is the Word of God. The Bible is His book, written so that, no matter how “unknown” or alone or adrift or overwhelmed you may sometimes feel, God loves you.

God wants to be in relationship with you.

He wants to give you an abundant life here and in eternity.

He wants to guide you with His wisdom and love.

Read the Bible every day and let Jesus, the Word of God, speak His grace and truth into your life all the days of your life!

*The renderings of these two passages, as linked here, are from the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) of the Bible. The Bibles in the pew racks of the Saint Matthew sanctuary are the New King James Version (NKJV). 

Faith Tidbit #1

[This begins a new series in which I'll present brief factoid about Biblical, Christian faith. I hope you enjoy it.]

The New Testament teaches that Jesus was (and is) both a man and God. See here.

Rick and Kay Warren Talk About Their Unlikely--and Sometimes Difficult--Marriage...What It Tells the Rest of Us

Rick Warren is the author of The Purpose Driven Life, among other books, and the founding pastor of Saddleback Valley Community Church in Orange County, California. He and his wife Kay have undertaken an international ministry dealing with Third World poverty and the prevention of AIDS.

But in a new book, excerpted in Christianity Today online, they reveal that their marriage hasn't been of the story book, happily-ever-after variety. Kay Warren recalls preparing for their wedding, an event precipitated by the belief each had that God meant for them to be together though they had no real affection for one another:

"I remember standing in the back of the church," Kay recalls, "waiting to walk down the aisle, going, 'Okay, God, those feelings that you said you'd bring? It would sure be nice if you'd bring those feelings sometime soon.'"

Things went from bad to worse as the couple descended into what the book describes as "marital hell," including a disastrous honeymoon, sexual dysfunction, constant squabbling, a hospitalization triggered by ongoing stress at home for Rick Warren, and other issues.

The two have kept their marriage together over the years, it seems, owing to two major personal factors.


First, they were, as mentioned above, convinced that God wanted them to be together.

Second, they entered their marriage with the firm resolve that divorce would never be an option. They believed firmly in Jesus' words on the subjects of marriage and divorce. One place where Jesus discusses these topics is in Mark 10:2-12:

Some Pharisees came, and to test [Jesus] they asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” He answered them, “What did Moses command you?” They said, “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her.” But Jesus said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote this commandment for you. But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

Then in the house the disciples asked him again about this matter. He said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”

These words may be grating to our twenty-first century ears. (They were probably even more grating on the ears of Jesus' first hearers: Whether among his fellow Judeans or their Roman overlords, divorces were far easier to get and far more common than is true today.) But, we must wrestle with the fact that Jesus was firm in asserting that God means for marriage to be a lifelong commitment and that it shouldn't be destroyed for flimsy reasons.

The Warrens believed that. So, they decided that no matter what, they would not divorce.

I once knew a couple who vowed to one another prior to their wedding day, as the woman told me some forty years into their marriage, "We will never divorce." Like the Warrens, this couple hasn't had the easiest of times. One of them is a recovering alcoholic; the other has found it hard to keep steady work. But they've stuck it out and today they enjoy a happy marriage, savoring each other, their children, their children's spouses, and their grandchildren.

Most of us, of course, never get a clear sense of God telling us to marry a particular person, as happened to both Rick and Kay Warren. (It was a weird experience for both of them, it seems. Rick Warren says that never before or since did he sense God telling him to do something so directly and clearly.) So, most won't have a moment of clear revelation to fall back on when a spouse drives them nuts for the umpteenth time or when the arguments seem never to stop or when husband and wife seem, simply, to be rowing in different directions.

But, like the Warrens and countless others, we can rely on God to help maintain and strengthen our marriages.

In the marriage liturgy of Lutheran Book of Worship, the following address, rooted in sound Biblical teaching, is often given to couples as they stand before the altar:

The Lord God in his goodness created us male and female, and by the gift of marriage founded human community in a joy that begins now and is brought to perfection in the life to come.

Because of sin, our age-old rebellion, the gladness of marriage can be overcast and the gift of family can become a burden.

But because God, who established marriage, continues still to bless it with his abundant and ever-present support, we can be sustained in our weariness and have our joy restored.

There are several things that I love about this address.

First, I love how it alludes to Genesis 2, where we're shown that men and women, created in God's image, are complementary. Males and females are called together into the marital relationships because only a man and a woman both share the imprint of God's image while remaining utterly different. The two of them are made complete by their union into one flesh. They are made for each other.

Second, I love how it reminds us of the promises of God. God is always willing to renew and strengthen us in the impossible venture of remaining in a marriage for a lifetime. Every time our faith flags, our enthusiasm wanes, and we think we can't take one more moment, those who dare to submit to God for help can find the same renewal the prophet Isaiah talked about hundreds of years before Jesus was born:

God gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless. Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted; but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint. [Isaiah 40:29-31]

I'm personally convinced that every day of the week, there are couples who crash land into divorce courts unnecessarily, faint, weary, and exhausted from trying to keep their marriages together with personal effort and duct tape.

But what happens if both husband and wife submit their marriages to God, if each partner willingly takes responsibility for whatever personal sin and selfishness they brought to the table on the day they said, "I do" and everyday thereafter?

That submission to the God we know in Christ and those confessions can be the first steps toward the healing and restoration of their marital relationships. Such reliance can help couples realize that their spouse may not be the enemy, that, in fact, their enemy is often themselves, or their ridiculous romantic notions, or a culture that so elevates individual and personal fulfillment that it leaves no room for the most wonderful human relationship any of us can enjoy, the marital relationship.

In recent weeks, as some people have challenged me for my opposition to changes made in the policies of my denomination, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), regarding the acceptance of monogamous homosexual relationships, whether among clergy or laity, I'm asked, "If the Church has so dramatically changed its views on marriage and divorce, why shouldn't it change its tune on gays and lesbians in committed sexual relationships, legitimizing such relationships?"

There's a certain fairness in the question. While the Church and Christians are not called to play the role of vigilante, the Church does have a responsibility to declare God's truth as found in God's Word. The Church is also called to exercise the Office of the Keys conferred upon it by Jesus, to declare forgiveness to the repentant and to withhold it from the unrepentant.

In spite of the call to both restraint and respnsibility though, the Church--the whole Church--has, in recent decades more or less looked the other way as Christians have married, divorced, and remarried. (And done so at levels which often surprass those of the general population.) We don't spend much time reminding couples that the Rick and Kay Warrens of the world, in staying together in spite of enormous challenges and differences of opinion, ought to be the norm and not the startling exception.

Christians are called to have the same unassailable commitment to making their marriages work that the Warrens have demonstrated. Like them, couples who decide to take Jesus seriously both as God-in-the-flesh and the One most capable ot laying down God's expectations when it comes to marriage, may need to seek out good counseling. Successful marital restoration isn't guaranteed; but failure is guranteed for those who don't seek God's help in prayer and who aren't honest enough and courageous enough to enlist the help of competent help from counselors who can provide godly advice.

To those who point to the failure of the Church to deal with the seriousness of marriage and God's dim view of divorce as a reason for ordaning gays and lesbians in committed life relationships and for allowing churches to bless the unions of gays and lesbians in such relationships, I can only say that I admit the mistake of the Church in not doing all that it can to encourage married couples to stay together. This is a mistake I personally pray to avoid in my future years as a pastor. We need to take marriage more seriously...and more inviolable.

But just because we have dropped the ball in upholding marriage as a lifelong commitment and ignored couples' adoption of a "for as long as we both shall dig it" proposition, doesn't mean that we should replicate the same mistake. Having turned our back on one Biblical imperative doesn't mean that we should ignore yet another Biblical teaching on marriage, namely that it exists for a man and a woman living in complementarity and mutual servanthood for a lifetime. One mistake cannot jutify making another one.

But the core point that Rick and Kay Warren demonstrate for us all is that not even the most problematic of marriages is beyond help from the God we know in Jesus Christ.

So, the next time you get exasperated with your spouse, remember a few inportant points:

• Whether you think that God brought you together or not, you are together. God expects the two of you to work things out, to do your level best to fulfill the vows you once made to each other.
  
• Pray for help from God. Be prepared for that help to sometimes come through competent counselors. (You should expect your counselor to evidence both counseling competence and a deep connection to what the Bible has to say about marriage, divorce, life, death, salvation, and priorities. If they don't fit the bill on both counts, don't go to them for counseling!)
  
• In the end, it doesn't matter what brought you together in Holy Matrimony, unless you have a spouse who has committed adultery, has utterly spurned you for your faith, or subjected you to abuse, divorce shouldn't be an option.

Where there's a vow, there's a way. The question is if both husband and wife remain willing to live out their vows. If they are, good things can happen. God can make it possible for them to do things they cannot do on their own, however well-intentioned they may be.

40-Days to Servanthood: Day 1

God’s goal for your life is for you to be like Jesus.

God has set apart every person called to follow Jesus Christ “to become like his Son, so that the Son [will] be the first among many brothers” (Romans 8:29, Good News Bible).

Does that seem impossible? It probably does.

After all, Jesus was (and is) not just a human being, but God. “He 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...all things have been created through him and for him...in Him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell...” (Colossians 1:15-19, New Revised Standard Version).

But I’m not making this up. God means for you to become like Jesus.

Jesus is the prototype of a new human race. This is what the apostle Paul was talking about in First Corinthians 15 when he effectively designated Jesus the new “Adam.” “For as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ” (First Corinthians 15:22, New Revised Standard Version). Sin infected the human family when Adam rebelled against God. Because human beings are the pinnacle of God’s creation, the only one of God’s creatures to bear “the image of God” (Genesis 1:26-28), all of creation bears the burden and the signs of our rebellion against God.

But God means to give fresh starts to all who turn from sin and surrender to Jesus Christ (Second Corinthians 5:17). Jesus is the new Adam, the resurrected first example and the pioneer of the new human race of which God invites all people to be a part.

In Christ, we are born anew (John 3:3). But just as our physical births are only the beginnings of our lives, so our spiritual births only begin our lives in Christ.

God’s goal for your life is for you to be like Jesus.

Bible Passage to Ponder: “God knew what he was doing from the very beginning. He decided from the outset to shape the lives of those who love him along the same lines as the life of his Son. The Son stands first in the line of humanity he restored. We see the original and intended shape of our lives there in him.” (Romans 8:29, The Message)

[This is the first installment of a forty-day series of extremely short devotional pieces which I wrote back in 2006. (Some have been slightly revised.) The pieces are being used at the congregation I serve as pastor, Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, as part of our Lenten walk toward Easter. I hope that you find them helpful.]

Son of God: God with Skin on Him

[This reflection was shared during joint midweek Advent services involving people from four area congregations, including Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, earlier this evening.]

Colossians 1:15-20
Luke 1:26-35
You may have heard the story of the little boy who was finding it hard to sleep at night. He called out from his room for his dad. When his father got there, the little guy said, “The longer I’m here, the darker and scarier it gets. Couldn’t you stay in here until I fall asleep?” “Son,” his dad explained, “nothing bad can happen to you here. Your Mom and I are right down the hall.” “I know, Daddy. But I’m scared.” “You don’t have any reason to be afraid,” the father explained, “God is right here in this room with you.” “I know, Daddy,” the little boy said, “but I want someone with skin on them.”

Christmas is the day you and I celebrate the miracle of God with skin on Him! This really is what the term “Son of God” means. When we call Jesus “the Son of God,” we’re not calling Him the junior partner in the God business or the son of God, the way Philip is our son. Tracing it back to its Semitic roots and uses, calling Jesus “Son of God” has the idea of His being fully God, only made known and visible to you and me. It’s what Paul is talking about in our first lesson, when he speaks of Jesus as “the image of the invisible God,” Who created “all things in heaven and on earth.” Jesus is God with skin on Him.

For some, the whole idea of God becoming human, is a horror, an affront to the dignity of God. But God doesn’t see things that way.

One of my favorite writers is journalist Philip Yancey. Once, he wrote about being in an ornate London auditorium, listening to Handel’s Messiah, and being struck by the chorus singing, “the glory of the Lord shall be revealed.”

Yancey writes, “I had spent the morning in museums viewing remnants of England’s glory—the crown jewels, a solid ruler’s mace, the Lord Mayor’s gilded carriage—and it occurred to me that such images of wealth and power” must have been in the minds of those familiar with the Old Testament prophecies of a coming Savior. “When the Jews read [the prophecies],” Yancey writes, “no doubt they thought back with sharp nostalgia to the glory days of Solomon, when ‘the king made silver as common in Jerusalem as stones.’”

Then, Yancey says this: “The Messiah who showed up, however, wore a different kind of glory, the glory of humility…The God Who roared, who could order armies and empires like pawns on a chessboard, this God emerged in Palestine as a baby who could not speak or eat solid food or control his bladder, who depended [on a poor tradesman and a teenage girl] for shelter, food, and love.”

In another place, Paul spoke of the incredible reality of God “with skin on Him,” saying of Jesus that “though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as a thing to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.”

But God showing up in our world is more than a neat trick. Writer Clark Cothern tells about the Christmas that a squirrel fell down his chimney and into the wood-burning stove in the basement. Cothern says, “I thought that if [the squirrel] knew we were there to help, I could just reach in and gently lift it out. Nothing doing. As I reached in...it began scratching about like a squirrel overdosed on espresso.”

Cothern and his family finally constructed a cardboard box “cage.” There was a hole in one side of it. The squirrel walked in and once inside, Cothern was able to take it outside into a nearby woods.

Later, Cothern says, he thought about how strange it was that before the squirrel was set free, he tried like crazy to bash his way to freedom from his “dark prison” and that the harder he tried, the more pain he caused to himself.

“In the end,” he writes, “he simply had to wait patiently until one who was much bigger--one who could peer into his world--could carry him safely to that larger world where he really belonged.”

This is, in a way is what Jesus, God with skin on Him, does for us. All who dare to entrust themselves to His “tender care” are fitted for heaven to “live with Him there.” This is the One we call our Savior, Emmanuel, God with us, and “the Son of God.”