Bearing Fruit for God's Kingdom (Part 4)

[This was shared with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, earlier today.]

Hebrews 5:12-14
Matthew 17:17-20
Not long ago, a group of us met to plan this year’s Ohio Mission Region Convocation. The theme will be Baptized AND Living It! and I hope that a good crowd from Living Water will be able to attend. In the course of our planning, we looked at Acts 2:40-41, where we’re told that, on Pentecost when the Holy Spirit came to Jesus' disciples, the apostle Peter, “...pleaded with [his fellow Jews], ‘Save yourselves from this corrupt generation.’ Those who accepted his message were baptized, and about three thousand were added to their number that day.”

I was struck again by that last verse. I couldn’t help asking a question: Don’t you ever wonder why we’re not taking in 3000 new believers as members of Christ’s Church every Sunday today? At least on Pentecost Sunday? 

What exactly is wrong with the Church today, at least in the Western world, that we’re not seeing those kinds of conversions to Christ as a result of the Church’s proclamation of Christ?

Some Christians will say, “All of my friends are Christians. I don’t have anyone I can reach.” But all this explanation tells us is that we aren’t very good about reaching out to people who are different from us. While we  cocoon ourselves from non-Christian people, the numbers of our neighbors, classmates, and co-workers who have no religion increases.

Other Christians will say that ever since the courts took prayer out of school, it’s harder to share our faith; we live in a hostile environment. Listen: You couldn’t have found a more hostile environment for the Church than what existed in the first-century Roman Empire in which Jesus died, rose, and established His Church. When was the last time an American Christian was thrown into a den of hungry lions? 

When Jesus gave the Great Commission, he didn’t give it to the public schools, the United States government, the entertainment industry, or the people who make cups for Starbucks, all of whom are among the people and institutions about which American Christians like to bellyache. Jesus gave the Great Commission to us, His Church, to every baptized Christian, to you and me.

Our explanations for the lack of growth and vitality in our Western churches sound like excuses or rationalizations rather than explanations. So, why don’t our churches grow the way the first-century Church grew early on? 

The question isn’t a new one. Even the second-generation early Church faced it. In Hebrews 5, the preacher tells a congregation of Jewish Christians, “...though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.” (Hebrews 5:12-14) Evil happens in the world, in the Church, and in individual Christians' lives when we aren’t growing as Christian disciples.

We can’t be the instruments of God’s love and grace that Christ wants us to be (and which, I’m convinced that, deep in the heart of every Christian, we want to be) if we insist on remaining babies in our faith. Babies are only cute when they’re babies; not when they hit ages 20, 30, 40, 50, 80, 90. 

It’s Jesus’ expectation that the baptized children of God will grow up in their faith. In Matthew 17, Jesus upbraids His disciples for not bringing healing to a boy whose life was being decimated by demons from hell: “You unbelieving and perverse generation...how long shall I stay with you? How long shall I put up with you? Bring the boy here to me.’  Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of the boy, and he was healed at that moment. Then the disciples came to Jesus in private and asked, ‘Why couldn’t we drive it out?’ He replied, 'Because you have so little faith. Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.’” (Matthew 17:17-20)

Why then is the Church of our day not growing like it did in the first-century? Even allowing for the fact that there are eras in history and in different places when people are more open to the good news of new life through faith in Jesus Christ, part of the answer may be is our lack of faith! 

In places like China, Ethiopia, in Germany where Lutherans independent of the state church are seeing hundreds of refugees from Iran come to faith in Christ, and in other places, the Church is growing. Today, in fact, in terms of conversions, Christianity remains the fastest-growing religion in the world. But here, where we’re distracted and comfortable, not so much. We’ve allowed the relative ease of our lives to rob us of our faith in Jesus.

Folks: We cannot and will not bear as much fruit for God’s kingdom--we won’t see people come to faith in Christ through our churches or through us as disciples of Jesus Christ--if we’re not growing. 

And growing isn’t something we can manufacture. If you leave here today and resolve, “I’m going to grow as a disciple,” you will not grow as a disciple. You can't resolve to be a growing disciple. 

It’s God’s Holy Spirit, employing the Word of God, the sacraments of Holy Baptism and Holy Communion, and the fellowship of the Church built around the good news--the gospel--of Jesus Christ that will bring us personal growth and bring spiritual and numerical growth to this wonderful congregation.

Here’s how disciples and congregations grow: by getting close to Jesus every day. 

Growth in our discipleship is a byproduct of spending time with Christ and with His people, the Church. 

That growth allows us to bear fruit for God’s kingdom: 

• to persevere in praying for others in Jesus’ name when all seems lost; 
• to seek from God and receive opportunities from Him to share the good news with others;
• to live in God’s peace even in the most challenging of circumstances; 
• to emit the magnetic joy of Christ from every pore of our bodies! 

To get close to Christ, we spend quiet time with God each day, read and let His Word speak to us each day, regularly gather with others around God’s Word, regularly surrender to Christ’s lordship over our lives. We get close to Jesus! 

This isn’t magical. It’s as simple as this: When we take root in Christ, He fills us with Himself and we bear the good fruit that only comes from Him.

Jesus says: “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5) 

The pathway of discipleship--knowing Christ, growing in Christ, and showing Christ--isn’t an end in itself. 

Knowing Christ, growing in Christ, and showing Christ: These are gifts that come to God’s people as we dare to come close to Jesus. They're what God uses not only to increase our joy in being eternally saved by grace through faith in Jesus, but also to produce the fruits of Christ living in us: “...love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” (Galatians 5:22-23) 

Through people rooted in Christ, God the Holy Spirit grows His Church. But more than that, these gifts evidence that God is at work making us into the people He always intended His children to be: Human beings who reflect the image of God in which they were first made, transformed into the image of Jesus Christ Himself. Amen




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

Transformation from the Gentle Savior

[This is the message prepared for presentation at the funeral of Elmer, a member of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. The funeral took place earlier this evening.]

Matthew 11:28-30
Mark 1:15
Galatians 5:22-23
John 11:21-27
Yesterday, I visited with one of the people in our congregation who knew Elmer best. He told me, with conviction, “Elmer was the gentlest man I ever met.” This echoes Sharon’s words: “Elmer was a gentleman.” Someone just told me, "He was a gentle giant."

The dictionary says that one way the word gentleman can be defined is, “...a man whose conduct conforms to a high standard of propriety or correct behavior.” That’s certainly part of what marked Elmer as a gentleman. But even more, I think, Elmer had a gentle spirit, a servant’s heart. In Elmer, love for God and love for neighbor was manifest in a simple willingness to do for others.

Everyone who got to know Elmer at Living Water can attest to his gentleness. On learning of Elmer’s passing, one member of the congregation wrote, “Loved Elmer's hugs and smiles. Heaven has a beautiful saint. I will miss him!”

Elmer was also a man who loved to have fun. He had a ready laugh, liked to dance and play golf (and did so nearly to the end of his life) and spend time with people.

Where exactly did Elmer’s gentle, loving personality come from? Well, genetics played its part, I’m sure. And he likely was nurtured to be such a person by his family. Nature and nurture have their effect. 

But I think that there was a deeper reason for why Elmer was the kind of man he was.

You know, Jesus invites all we human beings--sinful mortals in need of saving--to daily turn from sin and turn instead to Him for the forgiveness of our sins and life with God that begins in this imperfect world and that will be brought to perfection when all who trust or believe in Jesus will be raised from the dead just like Jesus.

Jesus speaks of this promise a lot. 

For example, Jesus once told the crowds that were thronging around Him: “The kingdom of God has come near. Repent [that is, turn from and repudiate your sin] and believe the good news!” [Mark 1:15] 

The good news is what Jesus talked about on another occasion: “For God so loved the world [He said] that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” [John 3:16] 

But what interests me in connection with Elmer is how Jesus talked about the good news--the gospel--that saves those who lay down their sins and trust their lives to Him in yet another verse of the Bible. There Jesus says, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” [Matthew 11:28-30]

The gentleness of spirit we all observed in Elmer came from the Savior in Whom he believed. 

This is the Savior Who promises that if we will lay down the burdens of sin, death, and futility into which we’re all born, and take on instead, the yoke of being a follower of Jesus, this gentle, humble Savior will give rest, serenity, peace to our souls. 

Once we rest easy in Jesus, we have nothing to prove to God or the world, no incentive to crawl over others in order to stand out or be successful, only to do our best to love God and love others in response to what God has done for us in Christ. 

When we daily renounce our sins and daily follow Jesus, we are infused with the power to live with the joy, hope, life, compassion for others, and being at ease in our skin that we saw in Elmer. 

Through our faith in Jesus, God unleashes the Holy Spirit in our lives and we reflect the very gentleness we all so appreciated about Elmer. 

God’s Word tells us, “...the fruit of the Spirit [the evidence of God living in us] is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” [Galatians 5:22-23] This is what we saw in Elmer.

Of course, the good news of new life through faith in Jesus transforms much more than our lives on this planet. It also gives us an eternity with God, an eternity without fear or death, without goodbyes or grief, without pain or sorrow. It gives us a life with God that never ends. 

In the passage we read a few moments ago, we’re told about Jesus going to the little village of Bethany, where a friend of his, a man named Lazarus, has just died. One of Lazarus’ sisters, Martha, is upset with Jesus and tells Him that if He had been around to help Lazarus, her brother would still be alive. But Jesus reminds her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die.” (John 11:25-26)

Because he believed in Jesus, trusted Jesus as the Lord of his life, the gentleman we remember today, Elmer, will enjoy a perfect life with God that never ends. I’m sure that Elmer wants nothing less than that for all of you. 

Let the gentle Savior Jesus cover your sin, overcome your mortality, and give you life with God. 

Let Jesus into your life to give you life eternally and to transform you in His gentle image each and every day. Amen

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

Faith Supplements: Living Like We Mean It

Today, during my Quiet Time with God, I reflected on what God has to say through the apostle Peter in 2 Peter 1. God especially spoke to me in 2 Peter 1:5-11:

5 For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, 6 and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, 7 and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. 8 For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9 For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins. 10 Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election, for if you practice these qualities you will never fall. 11 For in this way there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. (2 Peter 1:5-11) 

Just before this paragraph, Peter has told his audience that God, by His grace given through Christ to those who believe, has given “all things that pertain to life and godliness.”  

In other words, through Christ, God gives the power of the Holy Spirit to believers to live and thrive in godliness. The Holy Spirit makes it possible for us to live in ways that are beyond our own capabilities, to live as people made in the image of God, set free from the sinful state into which we’re born. Jesus sets us free to love and live in ways that are foreign to the world and the power for which only God gives. (In fact, Peter uses the verb give, several times in these few verses.) 

Filled with this power, Peter says, pursue the practice of qualities that will confirm--to us, to the world, and to God, I surmise--the presence and power of God’s grace in Christ working in our lives.  

Verses 3 and 4 of this chapter make clear that Peter is NOT saying that the pursuit of these qualities are a means by which we save ourselves. Christ is the only One Who can save us.  

But when Peter says to “make every effort to supplement [some translations say add to] your faith…” with these qualities, I think he means this: The Holy Spirit implants every one of these qualities in believers. They exist latently, like barrels of beer (or, you prefer, soft drinks) waiting for the Christian to tap into and lap up. Or, they’re like blank checks of character just waiting for the Christian to cash and live out.  

Even Christians, of course, who know and trust in Christ, continue to be both sinners and saints. For the Christian not lulled into fatalism by their inborn sinful nature (this is part of what Luther is describing in The Small Catechism when he speaks of “despair and other great and shameful sins”), life with Christ is a constant war between the allurements of the old self, the evil of the world, and the evil laid before us by the devil, on the one hand, and the “narrow path” of life, a life of joy, peace, and hope that only comes from Jesus (Matthew 7:13-14). 

Paul speaks of his own struggle with this in Romans 7:21-25: 

“21 So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. 22 For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, 23 but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. 24 Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? 25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.” 

Christ is the only way to win this battle to be truly human! 

It can’t be won by being virtuous. It can be won by tapping into the virtues that God gives to those who turn to Him daily through Christ.

So, Paul says elsewhere: “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” 

In other words, quit asking questions like:

Am I happy?

Am I getting enough of the stuff of this life? 

Am I being appreciated?

Am I honored by others? 

Blah blah blah blah! 

If Jesus is all I need, my daily bread, my living water, questions like these are irrelevant. 

My call then is to tap into those qualities with which the Holy Spirit imbues believers in Jesus, to “supplement” my faith by living out the calls of these qualities.  

By pursuing the qualities Peter talks about in these verses, rather than pursuing happiness, others’ appreciation, money, and so on, I will put all earthly things in perspective and I will be on the path of God.  

So, Peter says, pursue virtue. Virtue means moral goodness, uprightness in actions, graciousness toward others. It’s living as the loving person I want, in my heart of hearts, to be. 

Peter says to add to virtue, knowledge. This references both knowledge of the facts and a wise reflection on the facts.  

Knowledge and wisdom are only as reliable as the sources from which they’re drawn, as we’ve learned painfully from the fake news sites that played such an important part in the past presidential campaign.  

The ultimate truth source, of course, is God. Jesus says in John 14:6 that He is the way, the truth, and the the life. And Proverbs 2:6 says: “For the LORD gives wisdom; from his mouth come knowledge and understanding.” 

If I’m to supplement virtue with knowledge, I must begin (every single day) with God’s Word. I must be steeped in the Bible, God’s authoritative revelation of truth! 

I must supplement virtue and knowledge with self-control. This is an ongoing battle for me. I tend to be a grazer, allowing myself to be led along from one thing to another by what interests me at any given moment, then wonder where the time has gone and why I haven’t achieved what I set out to do, or to mindlessly munch on snacks, then wonder why I’ve gained so much weight.  

But God has given to me the ability to be self-controlled, if I will only tap into the power of the Holy Spirit residing within me as a believer in Jesus! Paul speaks of self-control as a “fruit of the Holy Spirit,” evidence of God having taken up residence in the life of a believer: “...the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control…” (Galatians 5:22-23). 

Next, Peter says, we’re to supplement our faith in Christ with steadfastness. The idea here is patient endurance.  

This means honoring one’s godly commitments, whether they’re my commitments to follow Christ, stay in my marriage, take care of my kids, honor my parents, doing an honest day’s work, treating my body as a temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19), respecting God’s ten commandments (all of them), and so on.  

Is there any Christian who has ever gone without breaking at least one of these commitments? No.  

Whether in thought, word, or deed, we (I) have broken them all. But repentance is all about returning to God through Christ and once again living in His gracious power to help us be more conformed to the image of His Son (Romans 8:29).  

For an imperfect person like me, part of steadfastness is knowing Who to come home to when I have strayed. I need to remember to come home to Jesus Christ!  

Next, I am to supplement my faith with godliness. This means devotion to and reverence for God.  

When I think of a devoted or reverent person, I don’t think of someone who solemnly worships with liturgical correctness. (Though the liturgies of the Church built on God’s Word, can draw us closer to God.)  

I don’t think either of a person who seemingly floats above the lives of mere mortals, someone who wouldn’t, in the old phrase, “say s--t if they had a mouthful of it.”  

Strong’s Concordance says of someone who is godly: “...[their] inner response to the things of God which shows itself in godly piety…” It says that godliness: “...naturally expresses itself in reverence for God.”  

A godly person is one who seeks to live in accordance with the revealed will of God, who seeks to honor God by living a life of love for God and love for neighbor, including loving God and neighbor enough to be committed to making disciples for Jesus.  

A godly person seeks to wipe out the disconnect between what I confess on Sunday mornings and how I act on Friday night. 

After godliness, I’m to supplement by faith with brotherly affection, φιλαδελφίαν (philadelphian). This is inside baseball--inside the Church--stuff. We are to cherish each of our sisters and brothers in Christ in the Church. 

The reason for this is simple. It is impossible to be a disciple of Christ without a connection to Christ’s Church. Life with Christ only happens when we rub shoulders with other believers in Christ in the fellowship of the Church.  

The Bible calls fellow believers in Christ sisters and brothers, God being our Father. The Church is an extended family.  

In any family, there are bound to be tensions between siblings, including the ones who live in the same house.  

In fact, I think that the family (which Luther describes as “the little Church”) is designed to help form us as disciples capable of loving others even when disagreeing with others or being different from others by subjecting us to the very differences between people which, apart from Christ, would drive us into isolation and self-absorption.  

Just so, God places us in the Church so that we are forced to confront our own sin, our self-absorption, and our lovelessness. Christ puts us in the Church so that there are people speaking for Him who can tell us no, when we need to hear it, and yes, when we need to hear it. 

Proverbs 27:17 says: “As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.” God gives us sisters and brothers in the Church to rub us the wrong way when we need it and to lift us up when we need it.  

He does this to form us as disciples, so Christ will be more and more essential to our lives and so that Christ will be more evidenced to others in us.  

The only new commandment Jesus gave has to do with His Church: “"A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another” (John 13:34).  

This differs from the great commandment, which Jesus reiterated but goes back to the Old Testament: It commands us to love others as we love ourselves.  

The new command is for Christians in Christ’s Church: We are to love each other exactly the way Jesus loves us, with a willingness to die for the sake of our sisters and brothers in the faith and for Christ Himself. Without constant turning again to Christ, I am incapable of being a true philadelphian. 

Finally, I’m to supplement my faith in Christ with love. The word in the original Greek is agapen.  

Strong’s says that this word describes love as a moral choice. In other words, love, as the Bible understands it, isn’t primarily about feelings. There may be brotherly affection, as mentioned earlier. But love is primarily the moral choice you make to seek what’s best for others, sometimes in spite of what you may be feeling at the moment or even what's in our own interest.  

Its biggest example, of course, is Jesus on the cross. Jesus had made it clear in the garden that He wanted to avoid the cross. Yet His love for the Father and for sinners like me caused Him to make the decision to take the cross.  

If brotherly affection is inside baseball, this is more about everybody else in the Christian's life. Our attitude and actions toward the world are to be characterized by love, even toward those who hate us. (Even when others force us to war against them, we must retain our love for them. If we allow ourselves to mirror the hatred of those who choose to war against us, we lose our moral grounding. Instead, when others make war against us, we must war back, but not engage in the savagery of hatred that might lead to indefensible acts like the murder of civilians or torture.)  

I can only supplement my faith in Christ with these qualities through deliberately, intentionally, and daily turning from sin and turning to Christ.

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

Pentecost: Out of the Ditches, Into God's Kingdom

[This was shared during worship this past Sunday, Pentecost Day, with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Springboro, Ohio.]

Acts 2:1-21

Pentecost already was an important day on the Jewish calendar when the day we Christians often call the first Pentecost happened. For Jews, Pentecost was the fiftieth day after Passover. While Passover celebrated ancient Israel’s deliverance from slavery in Egypt, Pentecost celebrated the giving of the law, the ten commandments, by God through Moses to Israel (and, through him, to all the world) at Mount Sinai. 

That may seem weird to us. We don’t like laws. They hem us in, keep us from doing what we want to do, control us. 

And some human laws can be unjust and oppressive, obviously.

But ancient Israel saw God’s Law, the ten commandments and the moral laws that stem from them, as good things, as blessings that marked out the boundaries of what they called shalom, a place of peace with God and neighbor and self. 

The Israelites even sang about God’s Law in their hymnal, which we know as the Psalms. “Oh, how I love Your law!” Psalm 119:97 says, for example, “I meditate on it all day long..”

God's people had a problem though: They loved God’s law. They couldn’t keep it. 

If following God’s law was like staying on a paved road marked out for driving, disobeying it was like falling into a ditch of mud. 

And like kids who have just taken a bath, Israel loved heading for the ditches of sin: the ditch of idolatry, the ditch of materialism, the ditch of wanting to fit in with others and ignore the will of God, the ditch of adultery and fornication, the ditch of false witness and character assassination, the ditch of self will, the ditch of thievery and false business and political dealings. 

Through the centuries though, even after God sent prophets to remind His people to obey His laws, as human beings they were incapable of keeping themselves out of the ditches of sin and death.

Life in the ditches leads inevitably to separation from God. And to be separated from God, the Maker of life, is to be separated from life. 

Yet, like the ancient Israelites, we can’t help ourselves. We’re born ditch-seekers. 

Some of us like some ditches better than others. But from the moment we’re born, we’re like lemmings programmed by the sin we inherit from our parents to head for the mud, to do the very sin we hate! 

We can hear and know God’s law and even delight in it. We may even spend some shameful time in condemning others who don't keep God's law in the way we think they should.

But we cannot, through the force of our own characters or wills, keep God's law.

Our only hope is the Gospel, the good news. 

The Gospel isn't some abstract story about love. 

The Gospel springs from a particular true story. 

It’s the true story of how God took on flesh in a particular human life. 

It’s the true story of Jesus, conceived by the Holy Spirit so that He would not inherit the sin that the rest of the human family inherits from our parents. 

Jesus was the perfect once-and-for-all sacrifice for the sins of the world. 

Jesus rose from the dead and offers the benefits of His sacrifice--new life--to all who believe in Him as their God and Savior. 

And Jesus came to replace the evil kingdom of sin and the dying kingdoms of this world with the kingdom of God for all who repent and believe in Him.

The new kingdom that Jesus died and rose to bring into being isn’t opposed to the law God gave through Moses. Some people have the erroneous idea that Jesus abolished God's law and has given us all a free pass to eternity.

In fact, in some ways, Jesus makes God’s Law even more demanding than it is in the Old Testament. 

In Matthew 5:21-22, for example, Jesus says, “You have heard that it was said...‘‘You shall not murder’...But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister [by which Jesus, Who got angry, clearly means here sustained, vengeful, unforgiving anger] will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to a brother or sister, ‘Raca,’ [raca was a term of derision that said a person was empty-headed] is answerable to the court. And anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.”

So, Jesus says to anyone who thinks that His death and resurrection are a free pass, a letter of indulgence, allowing believers to heedlessly and unrepentantly do whatever we want or believe whatever we want, no matter how disobedient or contemptuous of the will of God it may be, they’re wrong. 

“Do not think,” Jesus says in Matthew 5:17, “that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets…” 

Then He says in Matthew 5:20: “...unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.”

Our situation would be hopeless were it not for the fact that Jesus Christ, the One Who delivers this stern message, has done for us what we can’t do for ourselves. 

He has obeyed the law. 

Perfectly. 

Jesus has kept the law and so, by His innocent death for us, has conquered the law and its stern verdict against every one of us! 

So Romans 8:1-2 tells us this: “...there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death.” 

Think of that: No condemnation for those who live in the sheltering, saving, forgiving love of Christ!

Those who are saved by God’s grace through their faith in the crucified and risen Jesus Christ are pulled out of the ditch of sin and death and set on the narrow path that Jesus speaks of in Matthew 7:13-14. “Enter through the narrow gate” Jesus says. “For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.” 

Jesus is the narrow path and there is life to be found nowhere else. In no legalistic religious system. In no psychobabbling fad. In nothing that this world has to offer. All of those wide and inviting paths lead to condemnation because, as they're all built around the idea that I can be good enough to warrant a pass from God, they leave us naked in our sin, worthy only of condemnation. When we follow Jesus, He clothes us in His righteousness.

All of which brings us back to Pentecost. The first chapter of Acts shows us that the first Christians experienced how Jesus’ grace can change people’s relationships with God and with each other. Jesus forgave them for abandoning Him and denying Him on the night of His betrayal. Through the crucified and risen Jesus and their faith in Him, God pulled them from the ditches of shame and guilt. They were set right with God and learning what it meant to live in the kingdom of heaven. 

But their minds, like ours, were still fogged by sin. So they ask, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?” [Acts 1:6] 

Jesus tells them they need to pray, to quit striving and start surrendering. 

Then, the power of God’s Holy Spirit, the power that created the universe, would come to them. 

That’s exactly what happened on the Pentecost of our second lesson.

Like the first disciples, all who today believe in Jesus and are baptized receive the Holy Spirit. 

But, you may have noticed something: The world is a ditch and it’s so easy to wallow in its sins, to wallow in our own sins. 

This side of our own resurrections, we will never be completely free of sin. 

And, acting in our own strength, even when we think we're doing good things, we can only make things worse. 

That’s why Jesus has sent the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit gives birth to faith. 

The Holy Spirit convicts us of our sin and drives us to the cross. 

The Holy Spirit assures the repentant of forgiveness through faith in Christ. 

The Holy Spirit enables to be used by God to pull others out of their ditches.

As we submit our lives to the control and grace of Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit can empower us to live differently. We begin to exhibit what Galatians 5:22-23 calls “the fruit of the Spirit,” things like “love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” 

This is the life of the kingdom of heaven, the life of shalom, of peace with God, peace with others, peace with others.

The Pentecost crowd must have wondered how this kind of peace could come to them. So do we. 

How can we know peace in the midst of chaos? 

How can we have serenity in the midst of this world’s uncertainties? 

Peter knew the answer to those questions, not because he was perfect or arrogant or intelligent. Peter knew the way to peace because like the other first followers of Jesus, he had...

...seen it revealed, 

...heard its voice, 

...received bread and wine from its hand, 

...touched the hem of its garment, 

...saw it crucified and resurrected. 

Peter knew the one way to the peace for which we long. 

Peter knew the way to life with God personally because that way of life had been revealed to him, sometimes painfully, by God. 

In Acts 2:21, the last verse in our lesson, Peter shares God’s peace with the crowd. Quoting from an Old Testament passage that used the word Yawheh, I AM, God’s Name revealed to Moses the lawgiver and which we translate in our Bibles simply as LORD, Peter commended to the crowd the One he and his fellow disciples had come to call, “Lord." He commended the Lord Jesus to them. 

Peter told the crowd, “...whoever calls on the Name of the Lord shall be saved.”

Today, this week, the Holy Spirit can empower you to live each day in the assurance that, no matter how crazy, conflicted, marked by futility, sad, or even horrible and tragic the world may be, as you submit your sins, your hopes, your decisions, your family, your whole life to Jesus Christ, you are saved, again and again...from the law condemns us for our sin even as it shows us the will of God, from death, and from the devil. 

You are saved from the gossip that tears you down, from the fears that haunt you, from the temptations that allure you, from the sadness that dogs you, from sin, from death. 

To have Jesus is truly to have God’s peace.

Jesus Christ is in heaven at the Father’s right hand. But if you believe in Him and call His Name, you are not and you never will be alone. 

The Holy Spirit has come to let you know that whoever calls on the Name of the Lord Jesus--when you call  on the Name of the Lord Jesus--you are saved, safe forever in the arms of God, empowered forever to leave the ditch behind and walk as freed, redeemed, and forever loved children of God. Amen!