Truth for the "Self-Sufficient"

[This is a presentation shared last evening, during a dinner following a charity golf tournament supporting Whole Truth Ministries. Whole Truth is a Christian ministry that helps the addicted community to transition successfully to healthy, productive lives. If you would like more information on Whole Truth or to donate, here is a link to the ministry's website.]

Months ago, when Jim Lopez conveyed the invitation to me to speak here tonight, I was honored to be asked and because I so believe in the work of Whole Truth, I immediately said, “Yes!” 

When, a few days ago, Jim reminded me that last year’s speaker was Anthony Muñoz, I wondered whether I hadn’t made a big mistake. 

But if you’re willing to scale down your expectations to about a guy at 5’8” and 150 pounds, with no past or present athletic ability, I want to spend a few minutes sharing my heart with you about Whole Truth Ministries.

Now Jim, who is a member of the congregation I serve as pastor, Living Water Lutheran Church, was the first one to tell me about Whole Truth. Once a month, Jim takes a spread he prepares for women and men served by this ministry. Several years ago, he asked if I would be willing to tag along with him and provide a Bible study.

I need to make a confession. When I agreed to do the Bible study, I had two reactions.

The first was wondering whether the men and women in recovery to whom Whole Truth ministers would be interested in what I had to say. Over the past thirty-nine years, I’ve gotten asked to do lots of presentations to groups. Usually, Bible study for these groups has been nothing more than a box to be checked.

My second reaction, the one of which I’m most ashamed, was thinking that in doing a Bible study, I would be the one giving and the folks sitting around those tables at dinner would be the ones receiving. What a lot of egotistical rot!

Never have I been around a group of people who, almost universally, were so hungry for the Word of God, so hungry for Jesus, “the living bread who comes down from heaven” and the “living water…” that becomes a “spring…welling up to eternal life.” (John 4:14) In their desire for Jesus and the new and everlasting life that only Jesus can give, the recovering folks I’ve met and interacted with at Whole Truth have given me far more than I have ever given them.

Above all, they’ve given me an important reminder. Jesus once told His disciples–and you and me, “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; [and then He said] apart from me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5)

Apart from Jesus, we can do nothing. Do you believe that?

You know what I think? 

I think that when our lives are going reasonably well, when things are OK at work, when our families are healthy, when we’ve got a comfortable home and get to take nice vacations, it’s easy for us to think that we can handle life without Jesus. Jesus, at most, becomes an add-on accessorizing our lives. We’re sure that through our brain, brawn, willpower, and stick-to-it-iveness, we’ll be OK. We even think that our charitable works–even these good things we do, speak to our self-sufficiency, our personal agency. 

We think this even though God’s Word tells us, “... it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” (Ephesians 2:8-10) 

The truth is that even your being here tonight, raising money for Whole Truth Ministries, is a good work that God already created for you beforehand. You’re only walking in it here this evening. (I don’t know whether he wanted you to walk into your double bogey or not. That’s another issue.)

But here’s the thing: Though we may doubt Jesus when He tells us, “Apart from Me, you can do nothing,” the recovering community served by Whole Truth Ministries doesn’t doubt that. 

The reason for that is simple: When you’ve come to the end of yourself and Jesus Christ is all you’ve got, you realize that Jesus is all you need. 

The folks with whom I’ve shared the Word of God at Whole Truth are often already steeped in the Word of God because, down in the bottom of life, in the lowlands of human experience, the God revealed in Jesus Christ reached out to them through His Word and the work of Whole Truth, which is built on His Word!

Whole Truth is a ministry of God’s Word. Its primary ministry is to serve the Word of God to the people it serves.

The New Testament says that “the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword…” (Hebrews 4:12) 

The two edges of God’s Word, the two ways God speaks to us, are Law and Gospel. 

The Law gives us the will of God and leads us to recognize that we’re sinners who, no matter how hard we work to fool ourselves into believing we’re self-sufficient, good people, without Jesus Christ, we can do nothing. Nothing that matters. Nothing good. Nothing helpful. Nothing lasting. The Law means to drive us to the ends of ourselves to the foot of the cross where Jesus freely gave His life for self-sufficient sinners.

The Gospel is God’s good news that He covers those who are at the end of themselves and come to Jesus by faith, with the righteousness, life, grace, peace, and hope that only come from Jesus Christ. 

People who have been reached by Christ and His gospel are those who recognize the delusion of self-sufficiency, lay aside their defenses, and compelled by the Word of God, confess that “Jesus is Lord. Not me. Jesus alone.” 

It is the Gospel, the good news of forgiveness, new life, fresh starts, and everlasting hope freely given to those who turn to Jesus, that I see in the people served by Whole Truth Ministries. 

They may have once thought when they were abusing various substances that they were making their own decisions, even as their lives spiraled out of control. The Word of God given to them by Whole Truth, turns them from the self-destruction that happens when we cling to the lie of self-sufficiency and shows them Jesus, “the way, and the truth, and the life.” (John 14:6)

Whole Truth Ministries has helped me see this more clearly and I thank everyone involved in it for their ministry to me in Jesus’ name. 

I also thank you for the support you’re giving to Whole Truth, making it possible to reach even more people who need this ministry.

Finally, I want to remind you that the Word of God about Jesus Christ, the gospel, the good news, that is changing the lives of so many through Whole Truth Ministries can transform all of our lives. You aren’t and you don’t need to be self-sufficient either. The power of God, given in Christ, can lead us each day and change our eternity. 

The Gospel of Mark records only one sermon preached by Jesus, encompassed in a single verse: “The right time has come…and the Kingdom of God is near! Turn away from your sins and believe the Good News!” (Mark 1:15, GNT)

If we all are reminded by Whole Truth Ministries to turn away from sin and the garbage that bedevils, distracts, and harasses us in this life, and to turn in trust to Jesus, our Good News, its work will impact more than the just community it directly serves. It will impact and change for the better the lives of all who are part of it. 

Thank you.

Holy Spirit, Scream Into My Heart!

I’m a bit behind on the Bible readings for my daily quiet time with God. I haven’t been keeping up with the assigned readings of the ‘5 by 5 Bible Reading Plan’ produced by Navigators. So, since today and tomorrow are appointed as days for reflection, with no assigned readings, I’ve decided to read two chapters, rather than the usual one, for today. This was important to me because I didn’t want to miss out on reading 1 Peter, one of the important and often overlooked gems among the books of the Bible. That’s wonderful because God showed me something I hadn’t really noticed before in the first two chapters of this book!

Look: “...Now that by your obedience to the truth you have purified yourselves and have come to have a sincere love for other believers, love one another earnestly with all your heart. For through the living and eternal word of God you have been born again as the children of a parent who is immortal, not mortal.” (1 Peter 1:22-23, Good News Translation)

The apostle Peter wrote the letter we call 1 Peter to the largely Gentile churches in Asia Minor, an area we now call Turkey. The churches there were facing some kind of rejection, although recent scholarship tends to think it was more like what we face in the United States: marginalization, not overt persecution.

Peter’s basic message in the letter is, “Hang in there, Christians! By your faith in Jesus, you are reposing your trust in God the Father, and no matter what happens to you, you belong to God and can be God’s credible spokespeople for the good news of new life through faith in the crucified and risen Jesus as you remain faithful to Him.”

In the two verses of 1 Peter, chapter 1, cited here, Peter says, first of all: “Now that by your obedience to the truth you have purified yourselves…”

Peter isn’t here talking about some moral or ritual law that the first-century Christians obeyed to be purified. The “truth” to which he refers is mentioned in 1 Peter 1:21: “Through [Jesus] you believe in God, who raised him from death and gave him glory; and so your faith and hope are fixed on God.”

The Christians of Asia Minor, Peter is saying, were purged of sin and its consequences--death, darkness, futility--by their faith in Jesus. To have faith in Jesus is to obey God. It’s also to know God and to have life with God. Jesus says, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent." (John 6:29, New International Version)

The obedience of faith in Christ ushers into the eternal presence of God. Why? Because, “The Son is the image of the invisible God...in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him...He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” (Colossians 1:15-17, New International Version) Jesus explains things more succinctly in John 14:6: “I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one goes to the Father except by me.” (New International Version)

(Peter, himself a Jew, points out elsewhere in chapter 1, that Jesus is precisely who the Old Testament prophets had been looking for.)

To have faith in Jesus will cause people to love the Church, Peter says in the next line of the verses above: “...have come to have a sincere love for other believers, love one another earnestly with all your heart.” Believers in Christ--the Church--are called to love one another because we are all sinners saved by grace through faith in Jesus. We have experienced the same love of God and are called to live it out together.

When the world marginalizes us or deems the gospel (the good news) too good to be true, or impractical, or difficult to accept, we encourage one another.

When our own faith is flagging or we fall into sin, the Church is there to call us to repentance and new life through Jesus.

Besides all that and most importantly maybe, the Church is Christ’s body in the world. To be contemptuous of the Church is to be contemptuous of God Himself. Colossians 1:18: ‘[Christ] is the head of the body, the church…”

But, if we’re tempted to think that all this obedience and faith and love he commends in these verses are our achievements, Peter reminds us of the truth: “For through the living and eternal word of God you have been born again as the children of a parent who is immortal, not mortal.”

I am given new life--born again--not when I decide to be obedient, faithful, and loving. If I could decide to be obedient, faithful, or loving, Jesus would not have needed to die on the cross.

But Jesus did need to die on the cross because I’m a big fat clump of sinful and unredeemed and dead humanity without Him. The “eternal word of God,” the word about Jesus to be found in the Law and the Prophets in the Old Testament, the gospels in the New Testament, and all the rest of the Bible, is spoken to me, in words and in the sacraments (Holy Baptism and Holy Communion) and, by the power of the Holy Spirit Who composes the Word and makes it possible for others to speak it to us--whether in simple conversation, the reading of the Word, the preaching of the Word, the imposition on us of water enlivened by God’s Word, bread and wine made to also be the body and blood of Jesus by this same Word, or by other means--brings us to never-ending life with God. By this Word, I am made the child of an immortal parent, the God revealed to all people in Jesus!

Listen: Peter’s words tell me that the main business I need to attend to in my daily life, whatever I’m doing and whether what I’m doing is deemed by the world to be “holy” or “churchy” or not, is to keep coming back to God’s Word.

When I turn to God’s Word, to Jesus, God the Holy Spirit rolls up His sleeves and goes to work on me. He pries open my will and lets Jesus live in there to change me from the inside out--often little by little and with frequent setbacks and near evictions of the Savior because I’m a great sinner who, despite all of God’s love, still want my way when it comes to...everything.

But the Word is powerful. “For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.” (Hebrews 4:12) God’s Word does what it sets out to do: “My word is like the snow and the rain that come down from the sky to water the earth. They make the crops grow and provide seed for planting and food to eat. So also will be the word that I speak—it will not fail to do what I plan for it; it will do everything I send it to do.” (Isaiah 55:10-11)

And the truth is that Jesus, God the Son, is the Word that was spoken to primordial chaos to bring life into being (Genesis 1-2).

This is how the apostle John identifies Jesus:, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made...And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth...from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father's side, he has made him known.” (John 1:1-3, 14, 16-18)

The incessant, consistent, unwavering, tenacious, loving, powerful Word of God in Jesus comes to us as it once did to the chaos on the first day of creation and creates us anew.

That happens every time His Word comes to me. He creates within me faith, obedience, and love. When I, weak, finite, mortal, and sinful, hear this Word again, I am born again, just as I was at my Baptism, all over again.

It’s all Jesus, not me. Thank God!

Respond: Today Father, as I face challenges, doubts, decisions, joys, temptations, or marginalization, when I’m tempted to give my opinion rather than speaking Your Word, or live out of my purported wisdom rather than Your truth,  cause the Holy Spirit to scream into my heart, “Turn to Christ! Turn to Christ! Turn to the saving Word!” In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen

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

The Little Church

[This message was shared during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, yesterday morning, September 22.]

Deuteronomy 6:4-9
Colossians 2:11-12
One thing that people taking lifesaving training are taught is that if a person you’re trying to save from drowning fights against you by thrashing and flailing to save themselves, you must not allow two people to drown. Sometimes, no matter how perfectly a lifesaver does her or his job, drowning people, by their actions, will choose not to be saved.

As we come to part three of our series, Living Out Our Baptism, I offer this as an incomplete illustration of Holy Baptism. 

God is our Lifesaver. He has sent His Son into this world to die and to rise so that we can be saved from sin, death, darkness, and separation from God. The Holy Spirit gives us an undeserved share in Christ’s victory over these things, accomplished on the cross and confirmed by the empty tomb when the Word about Christ meets water. In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, God claims us as His own. 

But just as the drowning person must stop thrashing and trust the lifesaver, we too must trust the One Who has claimed us as His own. 

We need to trust in the One Who died and rose for us. 

Jesus puts it succinctly: “Whoever believes and is baptized,” Jesus says, “will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.” (Mark 16:16) 

In Holy Baptism, God saves us; but unless we trust in the Savior, if we insist on thrashing around, intent on being gods unto ourselves who try to save ourselves, we will be condemned. 

“The work of God is this,” Jesus says elsewhere, “to believe in the one he has sent.” (John 6:29) 

Faith is jettisoning all attempts to save ourselves--through good deeds, high achievements, sterling relationships--and clinging only to the God we know in Christ.

Holy Baptism is usually the beginning of our lives with God. Whether we’re baptized as infants or adults, our call will be the same: to live out our baptisms by doing the work of God, believing in Jesus. 

Baptism plays the same role today in the lives of all believers in Jesus as circumcision once played in the lives of male believers in Yahweh in Old Testament times. 

In circumcision, God called Israel to faith in Him, not to thrash around, seeking after other gods or going their own ways. And every circumcised boy was called, usually at about fourteen years of age, to make a confession of their own faith in God. 

Today, a person is baptized, then called to confirm their faith at a point when they’ve been instructed and are able to confess for themselves their belief that, “Jesus us Lord.” We call the rite in which a person confesses Christ as their Lord for their own lives, Affirmation of Baptism or Confirmation.

The apostle Paul shows us how Baptism has replaced circumcision and brings even greater blessings in Colossians 2:11-12: “ In [Christ] you were also circumcised with a circumcision not performed by human hands. Your whole self ruled by the flesh was put off when you were circumcised by Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through your faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead.”

Last Sunday, we talked about the importance of the Church in helping the baptized to believe in Jesus. But for children, especially, there’s a more intimate community that God has given to help the baptized to trust their lives to Jesus. It’s the family. Martin Luther called the family the little Church. 

Through the years, I’ve asked Christians who most influenced them to believe in Jesus. Sometimes, but rarely, they tell me it was a pastor. Far more often they say things like “my father,” “my mother,” “my grandmother,” “my grandfather,” “my brother.” “my sister,” "my husband," "my wife."

Families can be places where the baptized are instructed or catechized in the faith. To catechize someone is, according to the dictionary, to “instruct…[them] in the principles of Christian religion…”  People who are catechized are people who learn the basics of Christian faith. And no matter how advanced any Christian disciple may appear, no Christian disciple ever advances so far as to not need daily refamiliarization with the basics of our faith, things like salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ alone, the Ten Commandments, the Apostles' Creed (which faithfully summarizes the Bible's teaching about Who God is), the Lord's Prayer, Holy Baptism, and Holy Communion. Luther spoke of the importance of Christians reconnecting to the Catechism, by which he didn't mean the Small and Large Catechisms that he wrote, but the basic truths of Christian faith.

But Luther did write his Catechisms to help Christians do this. In fact, he wrote them in response to what he saw as an urgent need. Not long after those who adhered to the principles of the Reformation were excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church, it was decided that in Saxony, where Luther lived, theologians would be sent out into the congregations to determine how well the Reformation was being instituted. Luther himself visited some churches and was appalled by what he saw.

In the preface to The Small Catechism, written for use by families in their homes, Luther minced no words:

The deplorable, miserable conditions which I recently observed when visiting the parishes have constrained and pressed me to put this catechism of Christian doctrine into this brief, plain, and simple form. How pitiable, so help me God, were the things I saw: the common man, especially in the villages, knows practically nothing of Christian doctrine, and many of the pastors are almost entirely incompetent and unable to teach. Yet all the people are supposed to be Christians, have been baptized, and receive the Holy Sacrament even though they do not know the Lord’s Prayer, the Creed, or the Ten Commandments and live like poor animals of the barnyard and pigpen. What these people have mastered, however, is the fine art of tearing all Christian liberty to shreds.

In our baptismal liturgy, there’s a point in which parents bringing their children to the font are asked to make certain commitments. The pastor tells them: 

In Christian love you have presented this child for Holy Baptism. You should, therefore, faithfully bring her to the services of God’s house, and teach her the Lord’s Prayer, the Creed, and the Ten Commandments. As she grows in years, you should place in her hands the Holy Scriptures and provide for her instruction in the Christian faith, that, living in the covenant of her Baptism and communion with the Church, she may lead a godly life until the day of Jesus. 

The pastor then asks, 

Do you promise to fulfill these obligations? 

And the parents are called to respond, 

I do. 

The parents are asked to make these commitments for their baptized child so that, when she or he has received some basic instruction in the faith, they will be able to say, for themselves, “I believe!”

God has always intended for children to receive their most influential instruction in discipleship in the home. 

This pattern--God claiming children as His own and calling their families to teach them the faith so that, like their parents, the children can believe in God and be saved from sin and death--goes all the way back to the Old Testament. Take a look with me, please, at Deuteronomy 6:4-9. Deuteronomy is an address by Moses given to the people of Israel just before their entrance into the land God had promised them. In this passage, Moses begins, 

Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. 

Now, the word translated here as commandments is, in the Hebrew in which the Old Testament was written, haddebarim, from the root word, dabar. That literally means not so much commandments, as words. 

Moses is telling Israel to remember the words of God, God’s commands and promises, Law and Gospel. Israel was to keep at the center of their beings the Word of God, which is filled with God’s life. (As Hebrews 4:12 reminds us, "...the word of God is living and active...")

Moses goes on: 

Impress [God’s words] on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates. 

God’s Word needs to be at the center of not only our own lives, but of the lives of our families. 

Without attending to God’s Word, without commending this saving Word that points us to repentance and faith in Jesus, it’s too easy for us and our loved ones to thrash around without hope or peace in the dark waters of a world fallen into sin and death.

Some of you have heard me speak of the time when, after a spring rain, my great-grandmother and I walked out into her front yard. I was about six years old. In the sky to the southeast, there was a rainbow. My great-grandmother told me that because of God’s love for us, He made rainbows a sign of His promise to never destroy the human race in waters and to save all who believe in Him. She catechized me and obviously, her words had an impact because I still remember them some fifty-nine years later!

Parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and other family members: You have an important role in ensuring that the other baptized people in your families know to take hold of the lifesaving Jesus. 

He has done everything needed to save us. 

But unless we impress God’s Word on our families, talking about it when we travel, when we lie down at night, when we rise in the mornings, those precious baptized people in our lives may not remember that Christ’s outstretched hands are there to be grasped, that Christ’s gospel, His promise to never leave us, and His promise to give us eternal life with God can be trusted, are free to all who will let go of saving themselves and trust in Him to save them. 

Jesus gives us a great commission to make disciples around the world. That disciple-making starts in our own families, in our own homes, among the baptized people under our own roofs. 

May we fulfill this part of Christ’s great commission. 

Amen

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