Truth at the Jordan: The Message of John the Baptist

[Below is the message from this past Sunday's worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Matthew 3:1-12

This past week, a colleague of mine posted a picture on Facebook that probably expresses what we all secretly think on hearing about John the Baptist as we get ready for Christmas. Here it is:



Now, it’s true that we can call John the Baptist the last of the Old Testament prophets. We can also say that he called those who made a show of repenting for their sins and did other religious acts “a brood of vipers.”

But John also proclaimed the Gospel, the good news about God acting in the crucified and risen Jesus to save us from sin and from death and to give us life with God.

John proclaims both God’s Law, God’s commands that we love God and love neighbor, and God’s Gospel, the good news that God makes innocent any sinner who, by the power of God’s Word, trusts in Jesus as Lord and God!

We see how John proclaims these two elements of God’s message to all people especially in two verses of today’s Gospel lesson, verses 2 and 12. Let’s unpack each verse to see how John the Baptist shouldn’t be seen as the party pooper of our Advent and Christmas gatherings and, more importantly, how in his words, he gives us the Gospel, and in fact, gives us Christ Himself.

In  verse 2, John says, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” The word translated here as repent is, in the Greek in which Matthew writes his gospel, metanoiete. It literally means change of mind. But even that doesn’t fully convey what repentance is.

Looking at the Bible’s teaching on this subject, our Lutheran confessions tell us that, “repentance consists of two parts. One part is contrition, that is [listen to this] terrors striking the conscience through the knowledge of sin. [This isn’t terror at the propspect of being punished for our sin, but terror at the thought of being separated from God, the giver of every good and perfect blessing. The confessions go on to say that…] The other part [of repentance] is faith, which is born of the Gospel…[this faith] believes that for Christ’s sake, sins are forgiven. [Repentance then] comforts the conscience and delivers it from terror.” (Augsburg Confession, Part XII)

Repentance then is both sorrow for sin and, by faith, reconciliation with God Who, through Jesus, saves us from the eternal consequences of our sin!

So, in verse 2 of our lesson, John is telling us that, in Jesus Christ, God’s kingdom, His reign, the enveloping grace of God has come to us. We don’t have to do anything or be anything for this to be so. Before we ever gave God a thought, God decided to act and then acted decisively in Christ to come to us and save us from ourselves.

This word of good news from God tells us that we can turn from our self-absorbed, self-involved ways–turn from sin–and live under God’s loving reign now and always: forgiven, free, filled with hope!

Repentance assures those who confess their sin and their need of Jesus that we will be changed from God’s enemies to God’s friends, now and eternally!

In verse 12, John says of Jesus, “His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering his wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”

At His second coming, His second advent, Jesus will “judge the living and the dead.”

Those who have harbored the fantasy that no God created the universe in which we live and those who have entertained the equally false fantasy hat they are good enough on their own to earn being part of the kingdom of heaven, will all be eternally condemned. Jesus says His angels will throw those who have refused to believe in Him “into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” (Matthew 13:42)

This is not what God desires. Otherwise He wouldn’t have bothered coming to be our Savior. The Bible tells us that God “wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth…” (1 Timothy 2:4)

But, just as you can’t blame the death of the man who decided to keep sitting on the roof of his house on the helicopter pilot who lowered a rope to save him from the flood, we can’t blame God when people who have refused Jesus’ offer of forgiveness and new life are condemned.

As Jesus says elsewhere: “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath [God’s condemnation of the sin into which we all were born]  remains on them.” (John 3:36)

But to those who have had their minds changed and their thinking clarified by God’s Word and have so, trusted in Christ instead of themselves, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world.” (Matthew 25:34)

John the Baptist was sent by God in these last days of this universe’s life to tell us to turn to Jesus with our sins and regrets.

We can do that because Jesus Christ, crucified and risen, has already turned to us with His forgiveness and grace, working to not only change our minds, but our whole lives, to make us God’s people, to usher us into God’s kingdom.

The promise is true: “...if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” (2 Corinthians 5:17)

Friends: Because Jesus has already come near to you and comes to you again today, you can turn in daily repentance and faith to Christ and know you belong to God forever. Amen

Tonight's Weeknight Bible Study of Ephesians, Chapter 1

Tonight's Weeknight Study of Romans, Chapter 4

The Call: Listen to the Word, Speak the Word

[This message was shared yesterday afternoon during the Service of Installation of Brian McGee as associate pastor of Grace Lutheran Church in Springfield, Ohio.]

1 Samuel 3:1-11
Ephesians 4:1-16
A colleague of mine sat down on the steps of the chancel at the church he served to do the children’s sermon. The gospel lesson appointed for that Sunday was Jesus’ parable of the prodigal son. My friend had planned his message and began by asking the children if they had ever heard about the prodigal son. 

One boy raised his hand and proceeded, in his own words, not only to tell the parable but to unpack its meaning. 

He said that God the Father never gives up on finding us no matter how lost we may become. And that was why the Father sent His Son Jesus: so that everyone who turns away from their sin and follows Jesus will have life with God forever. I heard a recording and can vouch for both what the boy said and for what happened next. The pastor and congregation had listened with rapt attention. There was silence for a few moments.

Then the congregation burst into applause not, I suspect, only for the boy who told the gospel story, but also and more importantly, for the gospel itself: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16) That is always good news! 

It’s the hearing of this Word--read, sung, proclaimed, embodied in Holy Baptism and Holy Communion--that is, as Saint Paul reminds us in Romans, “the power of God,” the gospel that, when believed, transforms our lives now and forever. The good news about Jesus, this Word of God, brings forgiveness, reconciliation with God, the ability to live each day with hope, and everlasting life with God!

I recently gave a ride to a woman from our church. Macular degeneration has significantly robbed her of her sight, so she relies on rides from friends or Uber or Lyft to get to and from events at our building. She was talking about the people of the congregation. I said, “Yes, it’s a wonderful church.” 

“No, Pastor,” she said, “it’s not just that. We have the gospel. I had been a Christian for seventy years. But I finally heard the gospel among the people of this congregation. I finally realized that as I turn to Jesus and spend time with Him in His Word, He gives me life!” “And,” she went on to tell me, “by getting close to Jesus through the Word each day, God has helped me share Him with others and I’ve learned something: People are starving to hear God’s Word!”

I’m convinced that she’s right. People are starving for the Word about, the Word of Jesus: the Way, the Truth, and the Life. When they hear it, they respond like my colleague’s congregation did when a five-year-old boy hijacked the children’s sermon. 

Even when people don’t consciously know it, they are hungry for God’s Word, hungry for the God we know in Jesus. 

When God and His Word are absent from our lives, we may not notice. But when God and His Word invade our ears, our minds, our hearts, our wills, we know that God is at work in our lives...and we rejoice. We know what we have been missing and are overjoyed when God finds us!

In the first Bible lesson that Pastor Brian has chosen for this afternoon, we meet another boy, Samuel. Samuel’s mother had prayed fervently for a son. God heard Hannah’s prayers and, being so blessed, she decided her son was to be in service to God at the temple under the supervision of Eli the priest. 

That’s where young Samuel was, trying to fall asleep one night when God and His Word came to him. 

Samuel didn’t know what to make of it because, as one of the saddest passages in all of Scripture tells us, “In those days the word of the LORD was rare…” Days when the Word of the Lord is rare should be non-existent for those who know the God first revealed to Israel and then revealed to us all in Jesus Christ! If you and I aren’t hearing the Word of God every single day--in quiet time, in study with other believers, in regular worship, it doesn’t mean that God has stopped talking with us; it means that we have stopped listening. If we refuse to hear God, we won’t hear God.

When Samuel heard the Lord calling him, he thought that it was Eli. He ran to Eli several times to see what the old priest wanted. Finally, Eli  told Samuel, “Go and lie down, and if he calls you, say, ‘Speak, LORD, for your servant is listening.’” When God called Samuel again, Samuel responded, “Speak, for your servant is listening.” In verse 11 of our lesson, we’re told, “And the LORD said to Samuel: “See, I am about to do something in Israel that will make the ears of everyone who hears about it tingle.”

Pastor Brian, your call here at Grace Lutheran Church in Springfield, no less than that of Pastor Tom, with whom and under whom you serve, is to listen to God’s Word, then to share it so that “the ears of everyone who hears about it [will] tingle.”

This doesn’t mean that your preaching, teaching, praying, visiting, serving, or leading need to be dramatic or memorable or eloquent or, God help us, cute. 

In fact, the word in the Hebrew in which 1 Samuel was written connotes something more mundane than we might mean when we use the English word tingle. It refers to the simple vibration that words or sounds we hear make on our eardrums. In a world like the one in which Samuel lived, where the Word of God was seldom heard, simply hearing it would bring about a reaction. 

That is no less true in 2019: If we will speak the Word of God, if we will share Jesus, that message will reach its target and God will go to work to create the faith to listen to it and the boldness to speak it in those who listen.

I concluded after the events of 2009 when many of us who were part of a church body saw that body’s witness for the Word and for Christ being hijacked and syncretized with false teachings by those who seemed to specialize in drama and cuteness and relevance, that what the Church needs and what the world needs is not preachers who are clever or brilliant or dazzling. The Church and the world need pastors who listen to the Word of God and speak the Word of God. 

It is precisely such faithful pastors who fulfill the pastoral calling as described in our second lesson this afternoon. They “...equip [God’s] people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.” 

That’s because it’s this Word of God, heard, spoken, enacted, that creates faith: “...faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word about Christ.” (Romans 10:17)

Pastor McGee, my friend, listen to the Word of God, speak the Word of God. If you do these two things, you will be equipped to fulfill the call to which you, with the help of God, commit yourself today.

Dear friends of Grace Lutheran Church, your charge is similar, to listen to the Word of God here proclaimed and shared in the water, bread, and wine, considered in your quiet time with God, discussed in your small groups, and prayed over and then to speak that Word to others.

As you join together today as pastors, people, and staff, may you be seen by a world hungry for the God we are privileged to know in Jesus Christ as a congregation in which all of you listen to God’s Word and speak God’s Word. Amen

[Pictured above: Artist Marc Chagall's etching of God's call to the boy Samuel.]

[This picture was taken after Pastor McGee's installation. He's shown here in the center. The other colleagues, from left to right, are: Pastors Bruce Kramer, Tom Brodbeck, Patti Morlock, and me.]

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

Our Partnership in the Gospel

[This was shared during an Evening of Worship and Celebration with the people and pastors of the Southwest Ohio Mission District, North American Lutheran Church, on Sunday, September 8.]

Philippians 1:1-11
Tonight’s Evening of Worship and Celebration began with your district executive council reading and discussing Philippians, chapter 1. 

Things happen when God’s Word comes to us. 

Something happened at this executive council meeting. 

Saint John’s pastor, Brian McGee, suggested that we have an event to worshipfully celebrate the partnership we have as congregations of the North American Lutheran Church in southwest Ohio. 

We loved the idea! 

And, in good church fashion, the person who had the idea was delegated with executing the idea. So here we are.

We have a lot to celebrate. 

We began our life as a district, under Pastor Dan Powell’s leadership, by gathering about 90 to 100 representatives from our congregations to prayerfully discern what God was calling us to do as a district over our first few years. The results are reflected even in the line items of our district budget. 

We have an annual youth retreat for the young people of our congregations. (The next one’s happening on April 17, 18, and 19, 2020.) 

We have events to strengthen the lives of our congregations, like the retreat for all congregational church councils happening on January 11 of next year. 

We’ve had events on discipleship too. 

Your pastors get together every other month around God’s Word, sharing and praying. I feel blessed to be part of this district.

Which leads us to today and back to the first chapter of the apostle Paul’s letter to the first-century Christians in the Greek city of Phillippi. It was written in about 60 AD and, at the time, Paul was thought to be imprisoned in Ephesus.

In those days, government authorities who held prisoners didn’t provide food for the internees. Prisoners were locked away, unable to do anything that might bring them some money to buy food. Philippian Christians sent one of their members a distance of about 250 miles, to take money to Paul so that the apostle could eat.

And so, Paul’s letter is filled with thankfulness to the Phillippian Christians for their growing faith in Jesus and for their partnership with him and with the whole Church in the gospel.

If you have a Bible close at hand, take a look at where Paul specifically mentions that in the passage of Scripture just read to us by Pastor Hohulin. Philippians 1:3-5: “I thank my God every time I remember you. In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now…”

The word translated here as partnership is, in the Greek language in which Paul and the other New Testament writers wrote, is κοινωνίᾳ. It’s usually translated as fellowship, which we in the Church usually use to describe get togethers over food. (Or ice cream sundaes.) 

This kind of koinonia is good for Christians to enjoy together. As King David writes in Psalm 133:1, “How good and pleasant it is when God's people live together in unity!” The mission of the Church--being and making disciples of Jesus Christ--is facilitated by the unity of the Church strengthened by fellowship.

But the word koinonia was originally used of business partnerships. Business partnerships happen when partners realize that they need to work together to accomplish what they can’t accomplish separately. Business partnerships entail shared risks, shared work, shared accountability, shared results, and, in really good partnerships, shared joy in fulfillment. 

It’s this aspect of our koinonia as congregations in the Southwest Ohio Mission District, this partnership in the Gospel, as well as our fellowship as fellow believers, that we’re celebrating today.

Our partnership in the gospel differs from business partnerships in three ways, I think. I want to talk about those three ways briefly now. 

The first way is that the aim of this partnership isn’t to make a profit, but to make disciples. “Go and make disciples of all nations.” This is the purpose Jesus has given you and me in the Great Commission. Our partnership--our unity--in the Gospel is rooted in Christ Himself. Disciples reflect Christ and share Christ. 

In some church bodies today, unity is less about being united with Christ and His saving gospel than it is about unity around a set of social and political propositions. True Christian unity is built around the Gospel Word of new and everlasting life through faith in the crucified and risen Jesus Christ. Period.

There are other partnerships in the world and they can be useful. But our partnership is about working together and helping one another in making disciples of Jesus. 

What God is teaching us in our North American Lutheran Church and here in southwestern Ohio is that, to make disciples, we need to be disciples, people who are being daily transformed by the Gospel Word through the reading of Scripture, hearing the Word preached, taught and shared among friends, and receiving that Word in Holy Baptism and Holy Communion. 

Our partnership reflects Christ living in and among us.

The second way our partnership in the Gospel differs from other partnerships is that it’s created, not by us, but by the Holy Spirit. 

Faith in a crucified and risen Savior isn’t something a human being dreamed up. It’s so outrageous to imagine that the God of all creation, saddened that our sin would only bring us death and wanting to save us from ourselves, would take the dramatic step of becoming one of us, lead a sinless life, die on a cross to take the punishment for sin we deserve, and rise from the dead to give forgiveness and new life to all who repent and believe in Him. A love that deep, that pure, that saving, is beyond human imagination. 

Our capacity to believe this good news comes from God. In Ephesians 2:8, we’re told, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith--and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God…” 

Martin Luther’s explanation of the Third Article of the Creed says, “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 and preserved me in the true faith…” 

The operating question in most human partnerships--even in many marriages and families--is, “What’s in it for me?” The operating question in the partnership in the Gospel given to us by the Holy Spirit, is, “How can we follow Christ individually, as congregations, and as congregations bound together?” 

That we even care about this question is a sure sign that the Holy Spirit has created an outrageous faith in Christ’s outrageous Gospel within and among us.

Finally, our partnership in the Gospel allows us to affirm both the ways we are different and the ways we are the same. 

Some partnerships demand uniformity. 

When I worked fast food in high school, a representative from the company that sold my boss his franchise, came by to make sure that we were using the same hamburgers as everyone else, the same milkshake mix with the same quantity of mix and water as everyone else, the same coffee and french fries as everyone else, and so on. 

In our congregations, we’re encouraged to use our different gifts and different passions for the good of the one mission we’re on as people of “one faith, one Lord, one Baptism.” 

The same is true of our varied congregations: We have different styles of worship, different favorite hymns and praise songs, different pastoral styles. We all have unique contributions to make to the mission of being and making disciples. 

Lutherans have always seen such diversity within our unity as a sign of strength. Article VII of The Augsburg Confession, a foundational statement of faith for Lutherans, says: “For the true unity of the Church it is enough to agree about the doctrine of the Gospel and the administration of the Sacraments. It is not necessary that human traditions...or ceremonies instituted by men, should be the same everywhere.”

Tonight we celebrate our partnership in the Gospel, that we are people with a common Lord, a common faith, and a common mission. In that partnership, God may call us to new joint ventures of faith. (I have one such new venture in mind that I’ve been praying over and will share soon.) 

But for now, let’s celebrate who God has called us to be together...and, in a short time, share in some fellowship together over those ice cream sundaes. Amen

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. I also serve as dean of the Southwest Ohio Mission District, North American Lutheran Church, in which capacity I was asked to share this message.]

Intimacy with God (AUDIO)

Here.

Intimacy with the Almighty

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

John 16:23-33
Sometimes, people tell me, “You have a pipeline to God. Could you please pray for me?” I usually tell them something like, “I’ll be happy to pray for you. But my pipeline isn’t necessarily better than yours.” 

For some, my response is mystifying and they tend to say their goodbyes quickly. But others ask me what I mean. I explain that I’m as imperfect and as much of a sinner as anyone else, that I’m not worthier of God’s attention to my prayers just because I’m a pastor, and that anyone can pray. Sometimes, the conversations go longer and deeper than that, but only rarely.

Human beings have an inborn terror of God. 

Adam and Eve enjoyed an intimate relationship with God until they fell into the sin of seeking to be gods themselves. When that happened, they hid from God. They were afraid that, because of the distance now between themselves and God, coming into His presence would bring the full condemnation of God’s Law crashing down on them.

Their feelings are understandable. 

Sinners, naked in their sin, living without repentance, forgiveness, or faith, have every reason to be terrified. Martin Luther said that when human beings are out of sync with God, even the rustling of a wind can terrify us, filling us with fear that it--or any other mysterious "omen"--may be bringing God’s judgment. 

For many people, the prospect of coming into God’s presence is a fearful thing. Yet, in the interest of “covering all their bases,” they will sometimes approach people they deem holier than themselves to use their “pipelines” on their behalf. And some people, thinking themselves pious, will appeal to "superheroes of the faith," especially dead ones, to pray to God the Father for them. 

But listen: God the Father, Who sent Jesus to die and to rise for us doesn’t want there to be any walls between Him and us. 

Jesus died to give us complete, intimate contact with our Father in heaven. 

Because of what Jesus has accomplished in the crucifixion and resurrection, it’s possible for us to go directly to God the Father without fear, not because we’re perfect, but because He is. That’s what today’s gospel lesson is about.

Take a look at the first part of John 16:23-33, please. This is a continuation of words Jesus spoke to His disciples just before He was arrested. Verse 23: “In that day [Jesus says] you will no longer ask me anything. Very truly I tell you, my Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive, and your joy will be complete. Though I have been speaking figuratively, a time is coming when I will no longer use this kind of language but will tell you plainly about my Father. In that day you will ask in my name. I am not saying that I will ask the Father on your behalf. No, the Father himself loves you because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God. I came from the Father and entered the world; now I am leaving the world and going back to the Father.”

The “that day” to which Jesus refers is the day when He has been glorified, the day when He has accomplished His mission on this earth: Dying for our sins, rising to open up life to those who trust in Him, ascending to heaven. Once “that day” has come, Jesus is saying, the disciples, including you and me, will be able to go directly to the Father, ask for anything in His name, and receive it.

But what does it mean to ask in Jesus’ name? 

Is the invocation of Jesus’ name a magical incantation binding on God the Father? 

Is Jesus telling us to pray, like Janis Joplin, “Oh, Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz?” 

No.

Listen: The baptized believer in Jesus is the beneficiary of what Jesus has accomplished for us on the cross and from the empty tomb. 

When Jesus gave up His life, the temple curtain that shielded people from being in the direct presence of God the Father was torn. That means that nobody needs to use someone else’s pipeline to connect with God. 

People baptized in the name of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are covered with Jesus, not with their sins. 

They’re a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17). 

If you believe in Jesus, you are covered with Jesus, even on the days when you don’t feel like it. Christ is still the Lord Who died and rose for you and opened up a relationship with God for you no matter how happy, sad, elated, depressed, victorious, defeated, healthy, or unhealthy you may feel at any given time.

And when you are baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, not only do you have a connection with the Father made possible by Jesus for you, not only are you covered in Jesus’ identity so that when God looks at you, all He sees is Jesus, you also have God the Holy Spirit living in you! 

In John 14, Jesus promised that He would send an Advocate for believers in Him: “...the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you.” (John 15:17) 

To pray in Jesus’ name then is to speak to the Father directly, covered with Jesus and filled with the Holy Spirit. 

Think of that! 

This is true whether the person doing the praying is an elderly saint in a nursing home or the two young Living Water disciples who are receiving Holy Communion for the first time this morning, Eve and Addison.

But, this gives rise to a nagging question: Has God given you everything you’ve ever asked Him for? 

Are there marriages you prayed for that ended anyway, children you prayed for who still made the wrong decisions, healings you asked for that didn’t come...even though you prayed for them all “in Jesus’ name”? 

All of us can point to prayers that weren’t answered the way we wanted them to be answered. 

Jesus had the same experience. In the garden of Gethsemane, you remember, He prayed to the Father that His cup of suffering would be removed from Him. Jesus didn’t want the agony of the cross He bore for you and me. But then He prayed, “...yet not my will, but yours be done” (Luke 22:42). 

And this tells us a lot about what it means to pray in Jesus’ name. It means to ask the Father to do His will in and through us, even when the answers God seems to give make no sense to us. (I say “seems to give” because it’s just possible that God’s final answer to our prayers is something we’ll never perceive or understand in this world!) 

To pray in Jesus’ name is to trustingly lay ourselves, our world, and the people and situations about which we pray before God. 

The apostle Paul says, “We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God.” (Romans 8:26-27)

To pray in Jesus’ name is to cede control of our lives and all for whom we pray to our Father in heaven. 

Our words may be jumbled. 

We may not understand all involved in what we pray for. 

We may not know what God is going to do with our prayers or how He will deploy His power in the situations we pray about. 

But we can trust that God does and will answer rightly, even when, like Jesus briefly did on the cross, we may think that the Father has forsaken us. 

We can pray and we can live in the confidence of Jesus’ promise, made at the end of today’s gospel lesson: “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33) 

YES, HE HAS! 

Amen!


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