Who God Is: The Apostles' Creed (Back to Basics: Revisiting the Catechism)

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

Genesis 1:1
Job 33:4
Romans 3:22-24
John 14:25-26
1 Corinthians 12:3

Last week, as we began this series, Back to the Basics: Revisiting the Catechism, we took a 30,000-foot view of the Ten Commandments through the prism of Martin Luther’s Small Catechism.

Tonight, we move into the Catechism’s second part, the Apostles’ Creed. 

In The Large Catechism, which he wrote for adult disciples and pastors, Luther explained the rationale for starting with the commandments, then moving to the Creed: “So far we have heard the first part of Christian doctrine. We have seen all that God wants us to do or not to do. Now there properly follows the Creed, which sets forth to us everything that we must expect and receive from God...the Creed teaches us to know [God] fully…” He then writes: “...the Ten Commandments are set so high that all human ability is far too feeble and weak to keep them…” 

In other words, when the proud delusion of our goodness, righteousness, and worthiness of life with God, of life beyond the grave, is punctured by God’s Law, then we are ready to meet the God Whose fondest hope is to give new and righteous lives to the dead and dying sinners the commandments show us to be.

If the Ten Commandments show us the chasm between the pure and omnipotent God of the universe and us unrighteous and powerless human beings, the Creed shows us that this same God cares about us so much that He creates (and re-creates) us, redeems us (or buys us back from sin and death) through Christ, and sanctifies us (makes us holy, set apart, fit for everlasting life with Him). 

The Apostles’ Creed, of course, can’t be found in the Bible and wasn’t written by the apostles themselves. 

But it does summarize what the apostles, Jesus’ designated first teachers of His gospel word, taught, and is accepted by every major Christian tradition in the world. 

In the Creed, we see that God bridges the chasm between God and us, allowing us to know Him personally and eternally. So, let’s come into God’s presence again tonight through the doorway of the Creed.

The Creed is divided into three parts, each corresponding to the three Persons of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. 

The first article is almost deceptively simple: “I believe in God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth.” It goes by so quickly that we may miss something. The Old Testament rarely referred to the Creator of the universe as Father. It’s Jesus Who teaches those who have been saved by God’s grace through faith in Him to address God as, “our Father.” “This, then, is how you should pray,” Jesus tells His Church, “‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name’” (Matthew 6:9) 

In the first words of the Creed then--I believe in God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth, we see that God is both infinite, eternal, and almighty on the one hand, and loving, accessible, and our Father on the other.

The catechism emphasizes that God didn’t just create the universe with its stars and planets, suns and black holes. He also made us and He’s still in the creating business: “I believe that God has created me and all that exists [isn’t it interesting that Luther starts by talking about how God created me and then mentions “all that exists”?], that He has given me and still preserves my body and soul, eyes and ears,” etc. 

And then, Luther explains, “He does this purely out of fatherly and divine goodness and mercy, though I do not deserve it.” And then Luther says in a burst of joyful worship, “Therefore I ought to thank, praise, serve, and obey Him. This is most certainly true!”

The Creed then shifts to the second article, dealing with the Second Person of the Trinity, God the Son, Jesus the Christ (or, Jesus the Messiah, the Anointed King). It summarizes the basics about Jesus: 

• that He was born of a virgin, not because the normal way of human conception and birth are wrong, but because if God was going to create a new human race, He couldn’t do so through an ordinary human being inheriting the sins of his or her parents; 
• that He suffered, died, was buried; 
• that He rose again from the dead;
• that He is now on the right hand of the Father in heaven, interceding for those who dare to believe in Him; and
• that He will come back to this world to finally and fully, make all things right, ushering those who have believed in Him into eternity with God and consigning all who have rejected Him to the condemnation in hell they have chosen.

In the Small Catechism, Luther talks about how Jesus offered His own innocent life on the cross in order to free us “from sin, death, and the power of the devil.” And then, Luther tells us the reason that God the Son did these things is the same one for which the Father created us and all that exists: His absolute goodness. “He has done all this,” Luther writes, “in order that I might be His own, live under Him in His kingdom, and serve Him in everlasting righteousness, innocence, and blessedness, even as He is risen from the dead and lives and reigns for all eternity. This is most certainly true!”

There were some in the early centuries of the Church who misunderstood the nature of the Trinity, the Biblical teaching that we worship one God Who is in three Persons. But the Creed, Luther says, summarizes what we see in the gospels, that Jesus is “true God, begotten of the Father from eternity and also true man, [was] born of the virgin Mary--is [just like the Father] my Lord.” 

The Gospel of John tells us that Jesus is the Word of God Who was with God the Father and was one with God before the creation. 

The New Testament book of Colossians tells us that everything created by God is created through God the Son and for Him. 

Jesus says of Himself, “I and the Father are one.’ (John 10:30) 

And, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.” (John 14:9) 

Jesus has revealed the Father’s heart for the fallen human race and from this great love, gives Himself on the cross for us so that all who believe in Him everlasting life with God.

But how can people born in sin, inclined to worship ourselves, or other people, or the things of this world we see rather than the God Who, right now, we can’t see? 

How can people for whom the basic psychological developmental conflict from birth is trust versus mistrust, trust in Who God is and what He has done for us in Christ?

This is where God the Holy Spirit, subject of the Third Article of the Creed, comes in. He is the One Who makes it possible for us to believe. 

In the Small Catechism, Luther writes of Him: “I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to Him; but the Holy Spirit has called me through the Gospel, enlightened me with His gifts, and sanctified me [that is, set me apart for God] and preserved me in the true faith.” 

The apostle Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 12:3: “...no one can say “Jesus is Lord” except in the Holy Spirit.” 

It’s the Holy Spirit speaking the Word of the Gospel to us through the pages of Scripture, the proclamation of the Gospel, the witness of other Christians, and the Sacraments of Holy Baptism and Holy Communion, Who makes it possible for us to have saving faith in Jesus Christ.

The Creed reminds us that God, perfect in righteousness, hates the rift between Himself and the children He creates, redeems, and to whom He seeks to give ever-new life. He hates all the death and suffering that our sin condition unleashes on us in this life. And He seeks to give us new life. 

This is the gracious God we know in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. 

Next week, we begin a discussion of three ways that this perfect God strengthens His relationship with us, as well as our faith in Him.

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

We Can't. God Can! (AUDIO)

Here.

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

We Can't. God Can!

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

Mark 4:35-41

In today’s Gospel lesson (and really in all our Bible lessons for today as well), Jesus confronts us with a simple question: Do we want Him or do we want to be comfortable? Do we want the God we meet in Jesus Christ or do we want easy trouble-free lives?

Some of the religious hucksters on TV sell a brand of Christianity that tells us if we believe in Jesus and stay positive, we’ll be flush with cash, healthy, and successful. The problem, of course, is that Jesus never promises any of this to those who follow Him. 

Jesus does promise wonderful things. 

He promises that when we repent and believe, we will be part of the Kingdom of God. 

He promises that when we trust in Him as the only Son of God and the only way to reconciliation to God, we will have everlasting life with God. 

Believers in Jesus know that we have the presence and guidance of God with us in this life. He will give weary souls rest. He will be with His people always, even to the close of the age. 

Christ’s people have the hope of the life for which we are made--a life which at present we can only see as through a mirror dimly, a resurrected life in which tears are dried, bodies restored, work is meaningful, and joy is complete.

But not once does the God we know in Jesus Christ promise that following Him will make us comfortable in this world. 

Not once does he say that turning from our favorite sins to follow Him will go without a hitch. 

Not once does He say that decisions will be easy. 

Not once does He say problems will go away. 

Not once does He say that the life of discipleship--of following Him, of sacrificing ourselves and our own comfort out of love and worship for God and out of love for neighbors will be easy. 

In fact, Jesus says, "In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33)

Our first lesson for today comes to us from the Old Testament book of Job. It’s thought to be the oldest book in the Bible. In it, Job, a man who strives to follow God, who repents not only for his own sins, but also those of his children, is struck down by some of the horrors that this world can bring. All his property and livestock are destroyed. All his children are killed. He is stricken with a horrible disease. Job had worshiped God and played by the rules. But in one fell swoop, his world was decimated. Following God had not brought Job a comfortable life.

Job's friends try to tell him that had he been more faithful, these bad things wouldn’t have come to him. He insists he doesn’t deserve his suffering and angrily challenges God to explain Himself. At the end of the book, God chastises Job’s so-called friends. 

Faith in God isn’t a pass to easy street and Job’s distress wasn’t caused by Job being sinful. 

But, as we can see from our first lesson, neither does God explain Job’s suffering. Job suffered in spite of being a follower of God because we live in a fallen world in which bad things happen even to faithful people.

In our second lesson, written in about 55 AD, the apostle Paul recounts some of the sufferings he underwent because he followed and proclaimed the crucified and risen Jesus. Paul said that he and his ministry team commended themselves to people in the church at Corinth precisely because they had endured calamities for the sake of their faith in the God we know through Jesus. He then catalogs some of the horrible experiences he’d been through.

Believers in Jesus are called to keep following Jesus even when it’s inconvenient, painful, challenging, uncomfortable. 

When Christ commands sacrifice. 

When being faithful disciples of Jesus threatens our reputations, our financial security, our lives. 

Jesus calls us to choose between a life with Him, on the one hand, and a comfortable life, on the other.

He does this emphatically in our Gospel lesson, Mark 4:35-41. The incident narrated here comes right after Jesus gives a series of parables describing what the Kingdom of God, the kingdom He is going to die and rise to bring into being, is like. 

It all begins with a command from Jesus: “That day when evening came, he said to his disciples, ‘Let us go over to the other side.’ Leaving the crowd behind, they took him along, just as he was, in the boat. There were also other boats with him.” 

Of course, when Jesus issued His command to the disciples, they probably wouldn’t have given it a second thought. Most of them were experienced fishermen accustomed to sailing the Galilean waters at night, as He was now commanding them to do at sundown. “Easy peasy,” they may have thought...only in Aramaic. 

Following Jesus may often seem easy peasy, a simple thing, comfortable. But we don’t know what storms may lay ahead.

You know what happens next. Verse 37: “A furious squall came up, and the waves broke over the boat, so that it was nearly swamped. Jesus was in the stern, sleeping on a cushion. The disciples woke him and said to him, ‘Teacher, don’t you care if we drown?’”

We Christians ask a version of that question every time adversity strikes, every time Jesus calls us to do hard things we’d rather not do, uncomfortable things: confront a fellow believer with a hard truth; forgive someone who has hurt us; give sacrificially. “Lord,” we wonder, “don’t you care if we drown? Don’t you care if we lose our comfort? Don't you care if what you're calling me to do could result in killing my reputation, killing my investment portfolio, kill my health, kill me? Can’t you ask me to do something easier than surrender my whole life to You?” 

Jesus' answer to these questions, quite frankly, is, “No.” 

The God Who tells us that "whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it," the God Who went to a cross to bear our sins cares more about fitting our character for eternity than about our comfort in this death-bound world. 

He cares more about our learning to follow Him faithfully than He does about our ease. Our ease can come in eternity. For now, our call is to follow even in the darkest, most difficult times.

But Jesus doesn't leave us to wallow in the darkness of this world without hope.

Verse 39: “He [Jesus] got up, rebuked the wind and said to the waves, ‘Quiet! Be still!’ Then the wind died down and it was completely calm. He said to his disciples, ‘Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?’”

When storms come, we wonder how we can survive. We forget that nothing can separate those who trust in Jesus Christ from the love God gives through Jesus Christ. Nothing.

A young woman, a member of our church in Cincinnati, Karen, was dying. She and her husband had two young children. She gave her testimony of faith during worship one Sunday. This was in 1999. She talked about all the things she hoped to be able to see in this world: her children grown, the new millennium. She knew that she might not see any of these earthly hopes come into being. And it saddened her. She tried to understand. (I remember her telling me once as her battle with two forms of cancer went from bad to worse, "I just can't seem to catch a break.") 

Yet she also told us that she was confident that the Lord Who was leading her through her darkest valley would not only lead her to Himself, but also lead her children. She said that she knew that Christ's Church in which her children were baptized would faithfully share Christ with them, forge their characters by the power of the Holy Spirit, and help them to know the eternity of hope we have in Jesus Christ.

When she died, she left a number of us with notes. In the one she wrote for me, she detailed some of her desires for her funeral service. But I can also recite by heart how she ended the note: "Please tell people, Mark, that just because I have died it doesn't mean that their prayers didn't 'work.' Life is so much more than having a whole and healthy body here." Jesus carried her through the storms and assured her of life, peace, and wholeness beyond the gates of death.

After Jesus had sternly spoken to the disciples, they contemplated in awe-filled fear, “Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey Him?” 

The answer to those questions can be found all through the Scriptures. But I mention just two places in the Old Testament. 

• In Psalm 104:7, the psalmist confesses of God, “...at your rebuke the waters fled, at the sound of your thunder they took to flight…” 
• Genesis 1:1 tells us that God the Holy Spirit moved over the waters of primordial chaos and brought into being peace, order, and life. 

The One Who calmed the storm that so frightened the experienced fishermen sailing with Jesus that night was and is God Himself.

Storms, challenges come and go in this life. Jesus will sometimes ask us to do things, to endure things, to sacrifice things, and to trust only in Him, none of which, in our own power, we are capable of doing. 

But, listen: Whenever we can’t, God can. 

And after the storm, the God we know in Jesus Christ still stands. And so do all who put their faith in Him. They’re the ones who prove to be more concerned with following Jesus than with being comfortable. I pray each day that God will forge me to be one of their number.

What storms are you going through today? 

What is Jesus asking you to do that you don’t believe can be done? 

Is there a comfortable sin for which you need to repent? 

Has a spirit of fear, or bitterness, of self-worship or self-loathing hijacked your life and carried you away from Jesus? 

Follow Jesus and let the One Who can still our storms see you through and set you free to be the joyous child of God you are meant to be. 

Amen

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

Saved for a Life Lived On Purpose

I begin most days in quiet time with God. To see how I approach this time, see here. Below is my journal for today's quiet time.

Look: “He has saved us and called us to a holy life—not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace. (2 Timothy 1:9)

If Paul were a televangelist, I suppose you’d expect him to write here that we have been saved and called to live with God for eternity, focusing more on the sweet-by-and-by beyond death.

But that’s not what Paul writes. He says that God in Christ “has saved and called us to a holy life.” It’s an accomplished fact. Right now in this messy world.

The follower of Jesus is saved for and called to a different way of living in this life. Believers in Jesus aren’t waiting for their own resurrections to start living like people who have been called and saved by the God of the universe. They can do it right now.

Listen: That the implications for everyday life in this world is what Paul has in mind here is underscored by what he writes in verse 7: “For the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love and self-discipline.”

God doesn’t give the Holy Spirit to believers just so that they can have goose-bumpy experiences with the wild and uncontrollable Holy Spirit. God’s not a junkie whose aim is to sell us a dose of Holy Spirit-religion, our fix until the next time we need to feel something.

The God we meet in Jesus Christ is uncontrollable by human beings, even wild as perceived on this side of the resurrection. He is the Lion and the Lamb (Revelation 5:5-6). Lewis has it right when several characters in The Chronicles of Narnia say of Aslan, the Christ-figure in his books, “He’s not a tame lion. But he’s good.” But God does not set us free to be Jesus addicts.

To all with faith in Jesus and through our Baptism, He gives us the Holy Spirit, Who bears down on the chaos of our lives (Genesis 1:1) of jumbled motives and self-serving actions to make us new (2 Corinthians 5:17), set free from the tyranny of sin and our selfish motives. As we attend to Christ faithfully, we can no longer be tossed to and fro by the latest craze, impulse, religious fad, or need to feel “relevant” (Ephesians 4:14).

Instead, we hold steady, filled with the strength of God for living.

The Holy Spirit empowers us with the boldness to live out our trust in Jesus by giving us “power, love, and self-discipline.”

He saves us to live holy lives, lives set apart for God’s purposes for our lives, according to the blueprint He set for us when He formed us in the womb.

I find that when I’m seeking to live in tune with the Holy Spirit, in submission to Christ and the will of God, I become more myself, not less. Jesus died and rose to save me for just this: to be myself, not the person my sin-darkened heart and mind sometimes imagine that I should be. I become more straightforward, less ambiguous, less complicated. Not simplistic, simple. Self-disciplined, more dependent on my Creator and therefore more the bold, powerful, loving, and self-disciplined child of God I am meant to be. Liberated to be my true self.

This isn’t passivity. I don’t stop dreaming or having ambitions. But my dreams and ambitions are set on being the me God sets me free to be.

Respond: Lord, You know how I wander from You and want to be my own god and become disappointed by dreams that come from my ego, from Satan, and from the world, rather than following the path of freedom to be all that I am made to be in Christ. Help me to live like a new creation and not an old Adam, mired in sin.Today, help me to live like a disciple of Jesus. Amen

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

How Christmas Looks from Heaven

John 1:1-14
The Gospel of John, from which today’s gospel lesson comes, is both the easiest and the hardest to understand of the New Testament’s accounts of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection.

John’s gospel is a bit like Jesus Himself, I suppose. A child can understand that Jesus died for our sins and rose from the dead so that all who turn from their sin and trust in Him have forgiveness and new, eternal life with God. But even a mature believer who has given steady attention to an intimate relationship with Jesus over many years, will never be able to fully understand everything about Jesus.

There will always be some mystery about Jesus and that’s as it should be because, after all, Jesus is God and you and I aren’t.

On Christmas Day, we encounter the mystery of God in full through the prologue to John’s Gospel.

It’s appointed as our Gospel reading, even though, unlike Matthew and Luke, John never tells the story of Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem.

The Christmas story is in the first fourteen verses of John’s gospel, though. Whereas Matthew tells the story from the perspective of Joseph, the carpenter chosen to be Jesus’ earthly father, and Luke tells it from the vantage point of Mary, the virgin chosen to be Jesus’ earthly mother, John through the first thirteen-and-a-half verses of our lesson, tells us what happened on the first Christmas from the perspective of eternity, from the vantage point of God Himself.

Then, starting in the middle of verse 14, John switches perspectives. But let’s not jump ahead of ourselves.

Go to our lesson, starting at verse 1: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”

John’s Gospel starts out like Genesis 1: “In the beginning…” But while Genesis only goes back to the beginning of the universe God made for us, John’s “in the beginning” goes back before God had created the first thing.

John starts when the only life that existed was God, ever one, ever three persons.

We will meet the Holy Spirit later in John’s Gospel, but for now, his focus--like our focus at Christmas--is on the second person of the Trinity, the Word.

God the Word, God the Son, was, John says, the very power by which God brought creation into being. According to Genesis, God spoke and creation happened. According to John, God the Word was that word that God spoke into chaos and nothingness and made life, order, peace.

God the Word was God’s, “Let there be life” and there was life, including life for you and me.

This eternal Word seared the darkness of nothingness with the blazing light of His powerful, life-giving love. Darkness, John says, “has not overcome it,” or more literally, “has not seized it, overcome it, arrested it, or comprehended it.”

Created light, you know, travels at 186,000 miles per second, but its power dissipates over distance. The Word, the Light of God though, cannot be chained, inhibited, hid, or brought under control. It never fades or gives out.

Whenever humanity has sought to stop or avoid this Light, the Word has kept on shining: showing us our sin, showing us the way to be free of our sin, lighting the way to free others of their sins, so that the Word can keep doing what He did at the creation, make life.

Verse 6: “There was a man sent from God whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all might believe. He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light.”

Some scholars believe that the John who wrote our gospel lesson was originally a disciple of the John he writes about here, John the Baptist. (Is that confusing enough?)

The gospel writer says that the Baptizer was, above all, “a witness,” pointing the world to the Word. “Don’t get confused,” our gospel writer is saying, “John the Baptist was a great and faithful man. But he wasn’t the Word and he wasn’t the Light of the world. His job was to point to the Word and the Light.”

By now, some of the gospel’s original hearers and listeners would have likely become impatient. “Spit it out, John,” they might have thought, “what’s this whole Word business about?” So far, you’ve told us Who He isn’t; but you haven’t told us Who He is. We’ve heard of God before. We’ve even heard of God’s Holy Spirit before. But what is this Word you keep talking about in circles?”

Had he been challenged in this way, John might have thought, “Glad you asked.” Verse 9-14a: “The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God. The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.”

The Word of God didn’t remain in the comfort of heaven.

He refused to be a mere philosophical proposition.

He wouldn’t be a distant deity.

He wouldn’t be, as some people picture God, a cosmic watchmaker who set the mechanics of the universe and then left His creatures to their own devices.

No!

The brilliant blazing second Person of the Trinity decided to brave the darkness of this sinful, fallen world to light our way to life with God.

He took our flesh upon Himself and “made His dwelling among us,” literally, “pitched His tent” with those He first made in His own image.

He became a baby subjected to death by exposure as he lay in a manger on a silent night, who cried from hunger and pain, who soiled His diapers and would need to learn to walk and run eventually, do the work of a fix-it man.

The Word came to live lives like ours, full of challenges, tragedies, joys, fulfillment, and temptations. He came to live one perfect life, so that, in the words of Hebrews 4:15, He could be: “...tempted in every way, just as we are--yet he did not sin.”

Then He could give His sinless life as the perfect sacrifice for our sins. The Word was born into this world so that He could die in our places and so that all who turn from sin and believe in Him will have life with God, given “the right to become children of God— children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God,” as John puts it.

The Word Who once spoke the world into being, has come into our world. By His death and resurrection, He pronounces the good news that, by His grace, all who believe in Him are saved and made new. By grace through faith in Christ alone, we become God’s children.

At the end of verse 14, as I mentioned, John’s perspective changes. He moves from what God has done through this Word to explaining how he and his friends who followed this Word experienced Him on earth.

He talks about what He saw in the Word Who said of Himself, “Anyone who has seen Me has seen the Father.” [John 14:9]

And: “The Father and I are one.” [John 10:30]

And: “Before Abraham was born, I AM.” [John 8:58]

John writes in our lesson: “We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

In the book of Exodus in the Old Testament, we’re told that after Moses met with God at Mount Sinai, his face shone with the reflected light and glory of God Himself. The Israelites were so afraid of God’s brilliant light--fearful that their sins would be exposed, fearful that they would clearly see the way God wanted them to live and be forced to trust in Him, rather than themselves and their own preferred and sinful ways--that they told Moses, “Speak to us yourself and we will listen. But do not have God speak to us or we will die.” [Exodus 20:19] They were terrified to be exposed in their sinfulness in the fiery presence of God.

Their terror was not ill-founded.

If we dare to stand before God without repentance and without faith in the Word, the only one Who can make us clean, we don’t stand a chance. Hebrews 10:31 says: “ It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”

But remember: Jesus came not just in truth; He also came in grace. Grace means charity, God’s charity for people born in sin like you and me. (The word we translate from the Greek in which the New Testament was written as grace is charitas, from which we get our English word, charity.)

The Word Who came to pitch His tent among us also came to cover us in the favor, resurrection, new life, and grace He won for all who believe in Him.

Because of His grace, we can say with the preacher in Hebrews 4:16: “Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.”

An intimate and eternal relationship with the Almighty King and Lord of the universe! That’s what the Word made flesh came to make possible for you and for me.

We know this Word as Jesus, truly God and truly man.

Jesus, the Word, is more than a Hallmark card, words of love spoken from afar by God.

Jesus is God with His sleeves rolled up, doing the hard work, making the painful sacrifice of love for each of us.

Jesus, the Word, is Immanuel, God with us, God for us, God our redeemer.

Even a child can understand this about Jesus. And even an adult needs Jesus just as much.

Always receive Him and you will have what you can find nowhere else: Life--new, eternal life--from God and with God, now and always.

That’s what Christmas is about.

Amen

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

Jesus or a Comfortable Life?

[This was shared during both of today's worship services with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Springboro, Ohio.]

Job 38:1-11
2 Corinthians 6:1-13
Mark 4:35-41
In today’s Gospel lesson (and really in all our Bible lessons for today as well), Jesus confronts us with a simple question: Do we want Him or do we want to be comfortable? 

Do we want the God we meet in Jesus Christ or do we want easy, trouble-free lives? 

Some of the hucksters on TV sell a brand of Christianity that tells us if we believe in Jesus and stay positive, we’ll be flush with cash, healthy, and successful. 

The problem, of course, is that Jesus never promises any of this to those who follow Him.

Jesus does promise wonderful things. 

He promises that when we repent and believe, we will be part of the Kingdom of God. 

He promises that when we trust in Him as the only Son of God and the only way to reconciliation to God, we will have everlasting life with God. 

Believers in Jesus know that we have the presence and guidance of God with us in this life. 

He will give weary souls rest. 

He will be with His people always, even to the close of the age. 

Christ’s people have the hope of the life for which we are made--a life which at present we can only see as through a mirror dimly, a resurrected life in which tears are dried, bodies restored, work is meaningful,* and joy is complete.

But not once does the God we know in Jesus Christ promise that following Him will make us comfortable in this world. 

Not once does He say that decisions will be easy. 

Not once does He say problems will go away. 

Not once does He say that the life of discipleship--of following Him, of sacrificing ourselves and our own comfort out of love and worship for God and out of love for neighbors--those we can see and those we can’t see--will be easy. 

In fact, Jesus says, "In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33)

Our first lesson for today comes to us from the Old Testament book of Job. It’s thought to be the oldest book in the Bible, recounting events that took place long before Abraham. In it, a man who strives to follow God, who repents not only for his own sins, but also those of his children, is struck down by many of the horrors that the world and the devil can bring to human beings. 

All his property and livestock are destroyed. 

All his children are killed. 

He is stricken with a horrible disease, his body covered with open sores. 

Job had worshiped God and played by the rules. But in one fell swoop, his whole world was decimated. 

Following God had not brought Job a comfortable life. 

Through much of the book that bears his name, Job's friends try to tell their suffering friend that had he been more faithful, these bad things wouldn’t have come to him. He insists he doesn’t deserve his suffering and angrily challenges God to explain Himself. 

At the end of the book, God chastises Job’s so-called friends. Faith in God isn’t a pass to easy street and Job’s distress wasn’t caused by Job being sinful. 

But, as we can see from our first lesson, neither does God explain Job’s suffering. 

Job suffered in spite of being a follower of God because we live in a fallen world in which bad things happen even to faithful people.

In our second lesson, written in about 55 AD, the apostle Paul recounts some of the suffering he underwent not in spite of following and proclaiming the God revealed in the crucified and risen Jesus, but because he followed and proclaimed the crucified and risen Jesus. Paul said that he and his ministry team commended themselves to people in the church at Corinth precisely because they had endured calamities for the sake of their faith in the God we know through Jesus.

He writes:  “...as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: in great endurance; in troubles, hardships and distresses; in beatings, imprisonments and riots; in hard work, sleepless nights and hunger; in purity, understanding, patience and kindness; in the Holy Spirit and in sincere love; in truthful speech and in the power of God; with weapons of righteousness in the right hand and in the left; through glory and dishonor, bad report and good report; genuine, yet regarded as impostors; known, yet regarded as unknown; dying, and yet we live on; beaten, and yet not killed; sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; poor, yet making many rich; having nothing, and yet possessing everything.” 

Believers in Jesus are called to keep following Jesus even when it’s inconvenient, painful, challenging, uncomfortable. 

When it commands sacrifice. 

When it threatens our reputations, our financial security, our lives. 

Jesus calls us to choose between life with Him and being comfortable.

He does this emphatically in our Gospel lesson, Matthew 4:35-41. 

The incident narrated here comes right after Jesus gives a series of parables describing what the Kingdom of God, the kingdom He is going to die and rise to bring into being. It all begins with a command, which Jesus disciples obey. “That day when evening came, he said to his disciples, ‘Let us go over to the other side.’ Leaving the crowd behind, they took him along, just as he was, in the boat. There were also other boats with him.” 

Of course, when Jesus issued His command to the disciples, they probably wouldn’t have given it a second thought. Most of them were experiences fishermen accustomed to plying the Galilean waters at night, as He was now commanding them to do at sundown. 

Following Jesus may often seem a simple thing, comfortable. We don’t know what storms may lay ahead. 

You know what happens next. Verse 37: “A furious squall came up, and the waves broke over the boat, so that it was nearly swamped. Jesus was in the stern, sleeping on a cushion. The disciples woke him and said to him, ‘Teacher, don’t you care if we drown?’” 

We Christians ask a version of that question every time adversity strikes, every time Jesus calls us to do hard things we’d rather not do, uncomfortable things: forgive someone who has hurt us; confront a fellow believer with a hard truth; give sacrificially. “Lord,” we wonder, “don’t you care if we drown? Don’t you care if we lose our comfort? Don't you care if what you're calling me to do could result in killing my reputation, killing my investment portfolio, kill my health, kill me?”

Jesus' answer, quite frankly, is, “No.” The God Who tells us that "whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it," the God Who went to a cross to bear our sins cares more about our character than our comfort. 

He cares more about our learning to follow Him faithfully than He does about our ease. Our ease can come in eternity. 

For now, our call is to follow even in the darkest, most difficult times.

Verse 39: “He [Jesus] got up, rebuked the wind and said to the waves, ‘Quiet! Be still!’ Then the wind died down and it was completely calm. He said to his disciples, ‘Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?’” 

When storms come, we wonder how we can survive. We forget that nothing can separate those who trust in Him from the love God gives through Jesus Christ. Nothing.

A young woman, a member of our church in Cincinnati, was dying. She and her husband had two young children. She gave her testimony of faith during worship one Sunday. This was in 1999. She talked about all the things she hoped to be able to see in this world: her children grown, the new millennium. She knew that she might not see any of these earthly hopes come into being. And it saddened her. She tried to understand. Yet she also told us that she was confident that the Lord Who was leading her through her darkest valley would not only lead her to Himself, but also lead her children. She said that she knew that Christ's Church in which her children were baptized would faithfully share Christ with them, forge their characters by the power of the Holy Spirit, and help them to know the eternity of hope we have in Jesus Christ.

After Jesus had sternly spoken to the disciples, they contemplated in awe-filled fear, “Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey Him?” The answer can be found all through Scripture. But I mention just two places. 

In Psalm 104:7, the psalmist confesses of God, “...at your rebuke the waters fled, at the sound of your thunder they took to flight…” 

Genesis 1:1 tells us that God the Holy Spirit moved over the waters of primordial chaos and brought into being peace, order, and life.

The One Who calmed the storm that so frightened the experienced fishermen sailing with Jesus that night was and is God Himself.

Storms, challenges come and go in this life. 

Jesus will sometimes ask us to do things, to endure things, to sacrifice things, which in our own power, we are incapable of doing. 

But, listen: Whenever we can’t, God can. 

And after the storm, the God we know in Jesus Christ still stands. 

And so do all who put their faith in Him. 

They’re the ones who were more concerned with following Jesus than with being comfortable. I pray each day that God will forge me to be one of their number.


What storms are you going through today? 

What is Jesus asking you to do that you don’t believe can be done? 

Is there a comfortable sin for which you need to repent? 

Follow Jesus and let the One Who can still our storms see you through. Amen

*Work is not a punishment for human sin, as some suppose. Human beings, created in the image of God, are meant to share in His work. But after the fall into sin and the world's subjection to futility, work was marred, along with all human enterprises, by futility. In eternity then, God's resurrected people will be restored to our full function in the new creation and once again fulfill our calling to manifest God's image in work marked by purpose, joy, and fulfillment.