The Hour Is Getting Late

Today is the Sixth Sunday of Easter. Below, join the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, for worship. Beneath the video, find the written text of today's message. God bless you!



Acts 17:29-31
The Bob Dylan song, All Along the Watchtower, famously covered by Jimi Hendrix, contains an apocalyptic vision that plays out in the dialog of a joker and a thief. In the second verse, we hear,

“‘No reason to get excited,’ the thief, he kindly spoke 'There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke But you and I, we’ve been through that, and this is not our fate So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late.’”

“The time for having a false view of reality is through,” Dylan’s thief tells the joker. Life isn’t, to paraphrase Jesus, about eating, drinking, and being merry. It’s not about acquiring the most toys before the hearse takes our bodies to the cemetery. Like the thief crucified on the cross next to Jesus, who repented and turned to Jesus in faith, Dylan’s thief insists, “It’s time to get real. The hour is getting late.” That truth has a special urgency for me today. Maybe it does for you too. We all know that the conditions Jesus said were necessary for His return had already been met during His time on the earth: That’s why He said that His return to bring an end to the life of this old, dying universe could come at any time. But these days of the most lethal pandemic to visit the planet in one-hundred years remind us that we are mortal, that this life is fragile, that, whether for us as individuals or as the human race, “the hour is getting late.” And that’s true whether every one of us gathered for worship today survive this dangerous moment and this world continues for another million years or if Jesus returns tomorrow. The promise of God’s Word is, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (Acts 2:21, Romans 10:13, Joel 2:32). God’s Word tells us that faith comes when we hear the gospel Word of Jesus, the Christ and, through our hearing of this good news and the faith in Christ this Word from the Holy Spirit creates within us, we are saved from sin, death, and eternal separation from God. But, are we listening? Are we paying heed to this Word from God, the Word about Christ, that can save us? Or are we speaking falsely? Are we among those who treat all talk about God, Jesus, life, death, judgment,  salvation, or the lateness of the hour, like a joke?

Our second lesson for today, Acts 17:16-31, presses these questions on us. Acts, you know, is the New Testament book of the Bible that tells what the Holy Spirit did in the lives of the first believers in Jesus through the first three decades or so after Jesus rose from the dead and ascended into heaven. In today’s lesson, the apostle Paul enters the city of Athens. Athens was a major center of thought and debate. It was also, as Paul noticed while walking through the city, a place in which people worshiped all sorts of gods, a bit like today, when people have “pick and choose” religion, even when their religion is atheism in which they worship human brains, will power, or cunning. Paul, who believed in God and had encountered the risen Jesus, may have been tempted to lash out at the Athenians for their idolatries. But Paul had bigger fish to fry. He needed to share the good news of new and everlasting life for all who repent--turn from sin and trust in Jesus Christ as their God and Savior--with these people.

All of which brings us to the last three verses of Paul’s message for the Athenians, a message for you and me and for the whole world this morning. Take a look, please, at verse 29. After quoting one of the Greeks’ poets who said that human beings were the offspring of a Deity the Greeks themselves didn’t know, Paul says: “Therefore since we are God’s offspring [as we are, since Genesis assures us that you and I are made in the image of God], we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by human design and skill.”

“Let us not speak falsely now,” Paul is saying. Human beings worship false idols like money, security, power, and status. Why? For some, it’s because it’s easier to worship a god you can see--whether it’s a statue erected in the town square or Ben Franklins in our wallets--than to worship the God you can’t see. But the bigger reason that human beings worship idols is our love of control. All of our favorite godlets are things that, if we can acquire them, we think we can control to our own benefit. We’re prone to idolatry because we worship ourselves: our comfort, our freedom, our power. But, Paul says, this is a lie we tell ourselves. We are not in control and the quicker we realize that, the better off we’ll be.

Then Paul says in verse 30 of our lesson: “In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent.” God is compassionate. God is patient with us. But Paul tells the Athenians (and us), “Now that you’ve heard the truth that you’re born in bondage to sin and can only be freed from God the Son Jesus, Who has overcome sin and death, you can’t go on living like you’ve been living.” Paul says it’s time to repent. To repent is to turn to God in sorrow for sin and in recognition of our need of God. When we repent in Jesus’ name, God not only forgives us for our sin, He gives us new and ever-renewing life with Him that never ends. Because of the power of sin and death, The Small Catechism reminds us that we need to live in “daily repentance and sorrow for sin” so that “the new person should come forth every day and rise to live before God in righteousness and purity forever.”

Finally, in verse 31 of our lesson, Paul tells us, “For [God] has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.” The phrase translated as with justice is more literally, with righteousness. When Jesus returns, an event which His resurrection from the dead assures is going to happen, He will see two kinds of people. He will judge each person according to the version of righteousness they cling to in this life.

• To those who have clung to the notions of righteousness or right living favored by this world--whether it’s salvation by good works or material wealth or influence or ease, God will give this world and the eternal destruction for which it’s ticketed.
• To those who, like the thief on the cross at the last moment, cling to Christ alone for righteousness, God will give everlasting life in His kingdom.

The times for speaking falsely, for treating life as a joke, for putting Jesus off until some other time, for unrepentant sin, or for keeping Jesus at arm’s length have ended. In the next months--and likely in the next two years, if Jesus still hasn’t returned to judge the living and the dead, our lives, our worship, our church gatherings will look and feel different from what they have. Masks, social distancing, online worship and online small groups: Love for God expressed in love for neighbor and an unwillingness, like Jesus, Who refused to jump off the pinnacle of the temple, to put God to the test, will make precautions like these necessary.

But all of this only makes the call that Paul issued to the Athenians and that he issues to us today all the more urgent. First, we must understand that the God we know in Jesus is a living God not to be ignored. Second, we need each day to turn from sin and turn to the God we meet in Jesus. He alone gives life to those who trust in Him. And third, we need to cling in faith to Jesus. As a gracious gift, He covers us with the perfect righteousness of God so that when it comes our time to be judged, God won’t see us in our sin but will only see the Savior Jesus to Whom we cling. Dear friends, the hour is getting late; today and everyday, cling to Jesus Christ alone. Amen

A King, an Illegal Order, and Who Wins in the End

During my quiet time today, I read 1 Samuel 20-22.

There, the paranoia of King Saul is on full display. He's intent on ridding himself of David, who he sees as his enemy. Because of Saul's murderous intent, David is on the run.

When Saul learns that a priest named Ahimelek gave food to David and a few of David's men and that Alimelek "inquired of the Lord," that is, asked God to reveal His will to David, Saul is furious. He sees the priest as a co-conspirator with David, even though Ahimelek had done similar things for Saul and Saul's people. (Even though David was not conspiring against Saul, for that matter!)

Saul then issues an illegal order. He commands his guards to kill Ahimelek.

Although loyal to the king, the guards refuse to do what he commands: You don't kill priests for simply doing their work, for one thing. And you don't kill innocent people.

Unbowed, Saul ordered Doeg, his chief shepherd to kill Ahimelek. He killed Ahimelek, along with a total of 85 priests!

Saul had once been anointed by God to be the king. But the Spirit of God had left Saul when Saul stopped trusting in God and started trusting in himself, his power, and the trappings of his office. Nothing became so important to Saul as retaining the power that had been given to him.

But without faith in God, his use of power became self-serving. He worked at destroying the lives of those who got in his way, often, as with Doeg, with the help of people too weak or too ambitious to tell him, "No!"

God saves people from themselves--from sin, death, and futility--as a free gift to those who trust in God as ultimately revealed to everyone in Jesus.

When we have faith in Christ, God empowers us to live for more than just ourselves.

When we have faith in Christ, we understand that we belong to God forever and nothing can separate us from God's love, not even death.

But when, like Saul, we live for whatever this dying world has to offer us, we wreak havoc on our own lives and the lives of others.

As a man and as a ruler, when he turned away from God, Saul became a conduit for hell to enter the life of his country and his family. Saul hated Ahimelek because he was a conduit for the love and grace of God. So, Saul had Alimelek cut down. But who was the stronger? The one who fought for a piece of a world that we can only hold onto for a human lifetime? Or the one who fought to help others know the grace and love of an eternal God?

And who, Saul or Ahimelek, still lives in peace with God? Here's a clue: "...everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved" (Joel 2:32)

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

Remembering Not to Forget

These are reflections on my morning quiet time with God for today.

Look: “...take care lest you forget the Lord, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” (Deuteronomy 6:12)

Moses is imparting God’s commands to ancient Israel as the people are about to enter the promised land. God is enjoining Israel not to develop amnesia. He wants them to remember that it’s by His grace that they’re about to take the land He was giving to them, by His grace that they escaped slavery in Egypt, by His grace that these faithless people had been forgiven by God and not given up as a bad “project” long ago. God was committed to Israel. He wanted them to trust in Him so that they could have His good blessings and not the pain that’s experienced when we try to build lives apart from the Great Life-Giver.

God was concerned that Israel might forget its relationship with God and their need of God for a good reason: He was about to shower them with undeserved blessings. Deuteronomy 6:12 completes a sentence that goes like this: “...when the Lord your God brings you into the land that he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give you—with great and good cities that you did not build, and houses full of all good things that you did not fill, and cisterns that you did not dig, and vineyards and olive trees that you did not plant—and when you eat and are full, then take care lest you forget the Lord, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery…” (Deuteronomy 6:10-12)

Listen: Material comforts can delude us. As we rely on them and they provide us with a level of ease, we’re tempted to think several things.

First, we’re tempted to think that this stuff comes from us. It doesn’t. “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.” (James 1:17) No matter how hard we’ve worked in life for the things that we have, they don’t come from us. Even our capacity to work hard with sound and patient minds or strong bodies is a gift from God.

Second, we’re tempted to think that our stuff will insulate us from the realities of our fallen world. Jesus told a parable about a man who stockpiled his wealth, thinking that he could then sit back and live in infinite ease. But after he built all of his self-storage units, God told the man, “You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?” (Luke 12:20) In this parable, Jesus isn’t telling us not to save or plan. He’s telling us to hold onto the things of this world loosely and to be willing to part with them and to not make them or the ease they can buy our gods.

And our stuff can become our deities. But to worship anything but God is fatal to our eternal health. That’s why Jesus told His disciples after their encounter with a wealthy man, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God." (Mark 10:25)

Money, comfort, ease, and possessions aren’t the problem, though. The things of the world can’t make us forget God. The problem is our relationship with things like money, comfort, ease, and possessions, and how we use them.

The problem is the way, when we have the wrong relationship with these things, they can delude us into believing in our self-sufficiency or into thinking that these good things are the highest good in the universe, fogging our minds, cultivating forgetfulness of God and His goodness.

In a famous and famously-misquoted passage of Scripture, the apostle Paul doesn’t say that money is the root of all evil (no matter what the Pink Floyd song says). Paul actually says: “Those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.” (1 Timothy 6:9-10)

Love for money and other things in the world can supplant love for God, even among those who know and repeat the Apostles’ Creed and the Lord’s Prayer and join in the Order for Confession and Absolution at worship each week.

One of my favorite psalms asks, “What shall I render to the LORD for all his benefits to me?” (Psalm 116:12) The psalmist remembers the goodness of God.

I find myself, if not completely forgetting God, sometimes taking God and His grace for granted. I take the gift of life, an incredible gift, the scientific odds against which are so small that, when I remember it, I can’t help being overwhelmed and thankful. I take forgiveness from God for granted, sometimes ignoring the cost Jesus paid on the cross to give it to me. What can I give to God to show my gratitude for all that He has done for me?

The psalmist answers that question by saying, “I will lift up the cup of salvation [this refers to the “cup” of a saved life God gives to us; lifting it acknowledges it as a gift I can’t earn] and call on the name of the LORD, I will pay my vows to the LORD in the presence of all his people.” (Psalm 116:13-14)

In other words, I won’t forget what God has done and is doing for me. I’m called to do this not because God needs my worship, praise, or gratitude. God really is a self-sufficient Being. Though God wants me, God doesn’t need me or my gratitude. 

I’m called to remember and thank God for all that He does for me because when I forget God, I fall for the lie of my own self-sufficiency, wandering away from the only One Who can give me life, “to the full” (John 10:10), prone to forget that I can call on the name of the Lord and be saved (Joel 2:32, Romans 10:13, Acts 2:21). In a very real sense, ingratitude toward God is suicide; gratitude is the way of life.

Respond: God, if there are things of this world I need to get rid of because holding onto them makes me forget You, show me what they are and help me to act accordingly. Remind me daily, moment by moment, of my need of You so that I am always calling on the One Who can save me from myself, from my sin, and from the worship of anyone or anything but You. Thank You for all that You have done and are doing for me. Grant that today, my life will be lived in gratitude for You and Your grace. In Jesus’ name. Amen

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

"Red and yellow, black and white...we all need Jesus"

Matthew 15:21-28
God has interesting timing.

Just as the attention of our country and much of the world is on the recent activities of white supremacist and Nazi groups in our midst, the lectionary--the plan for Bible lessons based on ancient Christian practice--appoints today’s gospel lesson for tens of thousands of churches throughout the world.

That’s no coincidence...it’s a God-incidence!

It is exactly the word that you and I and all the world need to hear today.

The lesson tells us about Jesus’ encounter with a woman who is a member of a race of people hated by God’s people since Old Testament times, the Canaanites.

At the end of the lesson, Jesus confirms two important insights into Christian faith known by this Canaanite woman, insights that Saint Paul later summarized: “...all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:27-28)

Jesus came into this world to die and to rise and to call all who believe in Him to become part of one race, the fully restored human race who populate the Kingdom of God.

The Church of Jesus, whatever the denomination, color, or nationality of its people, is a preview of John’s vision in Revelation: “I looked, [John says] and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language...And they cried out in a loud voice: ‘Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.’" (Revelation 7:9)

One of my favorite Sunday School songs growing up, said: “Red and yellow, black and white, all are precious in His sight / Jesus loves the little children of the world.” Today, in a world rocked by hatred, we need the gospel message. We need Jesus!

When I say that, I’m not just using words. I’m proclaiming the absolute, bottom-line truth: WE NEED JESUS!

Only Jesus can fill our deepest need.

Only Jesus can bring forgiveness of sins.

Only Jesus can put God’s love into our hearts.

Only Jesus can give us sanity for living and thinking.

Only Jesus can give us eternal life with God.

WHAT WE All NEED IS JESUS AND ONLY JESUS!

As the Church, we need to be challenged to proclaim, with no embarrassment, that Jesus is the way, and the truth, and the life, that no one comes to the Father except through Him; that God loves us and that Christ came to die and rise to offer new life with God to all people: Jews, Canaanites, blacks, whites, browns, yellows, Republicans, Democrats, Americans, Arabs...everyone.

WE NEED JESUS!

Desperately.

Totally.

Now.

In today’s lesson, Jesus meets a woman who knows just how much she needs Jesus.

Jesus, she knows, is the only hope for her demon-possessed daughter.

By faith, she knows the truth of what the Bible repeatedly teaches: “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved." (Romans 10:13; Acts 2:21; Joel 2:32)

Let’s take a look at our gospel lesson, Matthew 15:21-28. It begins: “And Jesus went away from there and withdrew to the district of Tyre and Sidon.”

Jus before our lesson's narrative begins, Jesus has been teaching His fellow Jews that it’s not the outward rituals that people perform that make them right with God, it’s a faith that turns to God in humility, repentance, and faith that God uses to build righteousness within us.

Most of His fellow Jews didn’t care for this message. They thought of their religion in transactional terms: They offered sacrifices, did good things, or pointed to their pure Jewish ancestry as their part of the bargain and they thought that in return, God had to give them favor.

Jesus said that unless they (and we) turn to God in surrender and faith, we will still be dead and separated from God. No matter how many good things we do. No matter how religious we are.

Not a popular message. Even today. People don’t like to think that their relationship with God or their salvation aren’t under their control, but God’s control.

So, Jesus left His homeland for a bit. It wasn't that Jesus was afraid of unpopularity or of dying. He had come to be rejected by the people and go to the cross. He had His face set for Jerusalem for precisely this reason. He would go to a cross, but it wasn’t the right time yet (John 7:6, 30). He and the disciples go to Tyre and Sidon, a pagan area filled with Gentile unbelievers.

Verse 22: “And behold, a Canaanite woman from that region came out and was crying, ‘Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David; my daughter is severely oppressed by a demon.’”

Back in Old Testament days, God decided that because of the Canaanites’ idol-worship and injustice, He was going to take their land from them and give it to Israel, the Jews, His people. That’s what God did. Canaanites were still, at the point when Jesus meets this woman centuries later, idol-worshipers. They were also hated and mistrusted by the Jews. And yet, here’s this Canaanite woman, approaching Jesus, calling Him by the title that Jews associated with the Messiah, “Son of David.”

See what happens next, verse 23: “But [Jesus] did not answer her a word. And his disciples came and begged him, saying, ‘Send her away, for she is crying out after us.’ [Jesus] answered, ‘I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.’”

Some people look at this passage and think that Jesus is being heartless.

I’ve even heard some preachers suggest that the Canaanite woman came along and taught Jesus a lesson. According to these people, Jesus was a bigot who had to be set straight by this petitioner.

Please! Jesus is both God and man. He knows exactly what's going to happen before it happens. Jesus was not surprised that this Canaanite showed up.

And there is no bigotry in Jesus! God does not hate what God creates. The God Who is love, Who commands loves, and Who is sinless, doesn’t need to be taught how to love. (1 John 4:8)

So, how do we explain Jesus’ words then?

For one thing, they’re the truth. Although in the Great Commission, Jesus would later command His disciples to go to all peoples, Old Testament promises from God said that, during His time on earth, the Messiah would go to Israel. Jesus knows, as Paul writes in our second lesson, “God did not reject his people...” (Romans 11:2) And so, while Jesus would encounter Gentiles (non-Jews) in His ministry and even make a Gentile, the good Samaritan, the hero of one of His most famous parables, the Messiah had to be proclaimed among God’s people before Jesus died and rose.

I think Jesus also said this--"I was sent only the lost sheep of Israel"--because Jesus had things to teach His disciples, including you and me. Jesus always knew the teachable moment!

Verse 25: “But she came and knelt before him [Jesus], saying, ‘Lord, help me.’”

Most English translations of the Bible do an inadequate job of rendering this passage. The verb knelt translates the Greek word proskuneo, which is the word that Matthew used when writing this verse in the Greek. Proskuneo means worship.

It’s the same word Matthew used of the eleven disciples who meet the risen Jesus, about to ascend to heaven in Matthew 28:17, literally, “Having seen Him, they worshiped Him...”

This foreign woman of the wrong race and ethnicity, from the wrong side of the tracks who is hated by Jesus' fellow good Jews, worships Jesus!

She sees Him not only as a human descendant of King David, she sees Him as God.

And she offers no evidence that she’s a good person deserving of what she begs Jesus to do for her daughter. She just believes and is completely helpless.

And belief and helplessness, as our mentor Ole Hallesby has taught many of us here at Living Water, is what we need to be every time we approach God in Jesus’ name. As Hallesby points out, without belief and helplessness, it's doubtful that any of our prayers are really prayers. The Canaanite woman truly prays!

“Lord,” she says, “help me.”

Jesus accepts her worship because He is God. You may remember that in the book of Acts, the Christian missionaries Paul and Barnabas were being hailed as gods by Gentiles. They were horrified and told the crowds to stop, that there was only one God, the one revealed in Jesus (Acts 4:12-15).  Jesus accepts the woman's worship. How could He not? He IS God!

It's hard to imagine what the disciples who were with Jesus must have thought of all this. But Jesus lets things go on a bit still: He has a lesson to teach we disciples.

Verse 26: “And he answered, ‘It is not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs.’”

Many Jews used the term dog for Gentiles the way that white racists use the N-word to describe African-Americans today.

Most Jews regarded non-Jews as subhuman trash.

Now, we must always let Scripture interpret Scripture. And what we know from the rest of Scripture about Jesus totally precludes the notion that He shared His people's prejudice against Gentiles.

I believe that, as one Bible scholar has said, Jesus used this term with a twinkle in His eye, a bit like a comic tweaking prejudice. Humor is always a good tool for demolishing prejudice. 

Make no mistake about it though, Jesus saw this woman’s desperate, audacious faith. He was about to perform a sign showing that He is the Messiah and God of all who have a desperate, audacious faith in Him.

And the Canaanite woman is in on Jesus’ joke. Verse 27: “She said, ‘Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table.’” 

“Yes, Lord,” she’s saying, “I know that the Jews are God’s people and that salvation will come into the world through the Jews. That’s the first thing I know. But I also know a second thing: that You are the Lord of heaven and earth and that through You, salvation will come to all who believe in You. Even those with the wrong color of skin and those with the wrong ethnic background. Just as the dogs get the crumbs, You have grace enough to spare for everyone!”

In verse 28, Jesus explodes with the same kind of joyous exclamation that must come from God every time we turn to Him with desperate, audacious faith. “‘O woman, great is your faith! Be it done for you as you desire.’ And her daughter was healed instantly.”

God receives all who turn from their sin and trust in Jesus as their only hope, the only way to life, the only way to God.

God receives all who turn to Him with desperate, audacious faith.

God hears all who trust Jesus with desperation and helplessness, who know that Jesus is our only hope for this world and the next!

God will, through Jesus, even receive you and me and all the other Canaanites who trust in Jesus.

The only in-crowd in the Kingdom of God is the crowd who confess that Jesus is Lord and then follow Him wherever He leads!

Amen

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. This is the text for the worship message this morning.]

Forgiveness: Hard and Beautiful

[This was shared today, during a Living Water Lutheran Church women's retreat. I subjected people to listening me sing parts of a few of my songs.]

After teaching the disciples how to pray--including the petition, “...forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors”--Jesus says in Matthew 6:14-15: “... if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.”

The God we know in Jesus is in the forgiving business. That’s why John the Baptist said of Jesus: “Behold, the Lamb of God Who takes away the sin of the world.” Jesus is the ultimate sacrificial lamb. He offered Himself to take away the power of sin over our lives “once and for all.” Jesus’ self-sacrifice and our faith in Jesus ensures that we’re set free to live with God for eternity, even now in the messiness of this life. The forgiveness of God offered in Jesus is great news. But Jesus says that in order to claim the Father’s forgiveness, we need to be forgiving. If we don’t forgive, Jesus tells us, “your Father will not forgive your sins.”

The word that Jesus uses that we translate as forgive is, in the Greek in which Matthew rendered the Lord’s Prayer, a form of the word aphiemi. It’s a verb that literally means to send away from, or release, even divorce or separate from. Psalm 103:12 conveys the picture of forgiveness as God sending our sins far from us, when it says: “...as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.” When Jesus brings God’s forgiveness to the repentant believer, we are released, set free, and our sins are sent packing! “The wages of sin is death,” Romans 6:23 says, “but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

When we’re forgiven through Christ, the boulder of sin that prevents us from claiming the life Jesus died and rose to give us is removed from our path. “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” [Jesus asked the woman caught in adultery.] “No one, sir,” she said.“Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.” That woman was released from the debt she owed to God for her sin and her sins were sent away. She could walk with God. That’s what forgiveness lets us do.

But forgiveness is hard. The first thing that makes forgiveness hard is that we have to admit that, whether in our thinking or in our actions, we’re in the wrong. Yet, if we’re to receive forgiveness, we have to be open to confessing our sin. One of the most courageous prayers in the Bible is Psalm 139:23-24: “Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”

When I listened to the first drafts of Georgeann’s, Nancy’s, and Dawn’s presentations for this weekend, I urged them to be unafraid to share what they felt comfortable in sharing as they spoke with you. It’s when we see each others’ hearts and lives honestly and appropriately shared, that the message of Christ can be best transmitted between people. So, I’m going to follow my own advice and make a complete fool of myself on this subject of forgiveness.

I write songs...or more accurately, mostly I write parts of songs, most of them never getting completely finished. I started writing songs when I was eight years old after I'd watched The Al Jolson Story and realized for the first time that songs didn't just appear. People actually wrote them. I thought, "That's a good job." So, I went to my bed room, sprawled out on the floor, and wrote my first song. It was only later that I realized that it was written to the tune of The Daring Man on the Flying Trapeze. But it got the ball rolling. I can't not write songs, probably coming up with an average of three song ideas a day. They come to me as I experience life and as I observe the lives of others.

A few years back, I became conscious of a sin into which I’d fallen (it’s amazing how long we can live in denial about our sins, isn’t it?). I confessed. And then, a song came to me. Here's the first verse. (And the embarrassing and vulnerable part.):

What I did was wrong
And there isn’t any way I can make it seem that it was right
Which is why I try avoiding detection in Your light.
It’s a foolish game that I try to play
Running from You see me anyway.
What I did was wrong.

I once sat through an evening with an agnostic man. We talked late into the night. He unfolded a lifetime of regrets, exposing his sins to me.

As I was getting ready to leave, he smiled and told me, “They say that confession is good for the soul. I guess it is.” I told him that yes, confession can be cleansing. But unless we let Jesus take away the garbage, our sin will always be with us.

Forgiveness comes when we let Jesus take our sins away. That’s when we’re released. Many people realize that they’ve sinned; but they’re never forgiven because they don’t give it to the Savior Who wants to nail our sins to the cross and kill off their power over us forever.

And that leads to another song fragment. A friend committed a damaging sin and had no sense of regret for it. On the night we learned of it, I drove to lead a Bible study, thinking about what I would say to my friend had he not cut off contact with all us. This song started to come to me:

Everybody falls off their pedestals and tumbles to the ground
And there’s no point in feigning strength when we all have fallen down
But when I’m made weak
By the things that I seek
I know someone who’s strong
I lift up a prayer
And I know that He’s there
And somehow I can carry on. 

Through the joy and through the pain
Through all the driving rain
In the deep heart of a bleak night
I know my Lord is there
Through the laughter and the tears
Through all the raging years
When all my hope has left sight
I know
I know
I know my Lord is there.

What I wanted to tell my friend is, “Don’t run from God! Don’t run from those who come to you in the name of God. There may be some hard words that need to be heard. There may be some repentance and an honest dealing with your faults. But Jesus shows that God wants what’s best for you. God wants to forgive you and give you a fresh start.” I never got to tell him any of that.

So, forgiveness is hard, first of all because we have to admit that we’re wrong (we have to be vulnerable) and secondly, because it entails surrender to God, the only way we’re to experience the truth that God loves us and is always there for us!

But to me above all, it’s Jesus’ implacable demand that we forgive, that we lay down our demands that others pay up on the debts that they owe to us in order to receive God’s forgiveness, is what makes forgiveness so hard.

When we hear or read about this demand, we seem to automatically think of our need to forgive other people: the people who have wronged us, hurt us, or harmed us. But I think that there are two others apart from other people we must forgive in order to be set free by God’s forgiveness.

The first is this. We must forgive God.

The truth, of course, is that God never wrongs us. Even when He disciplines us or refuses to give us what we want, God doesn’t wrong us.

In Hebrews 12:7-8, we’re told to, “Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as his children. For what children are not disciplined by their father? If you are not disciplined—and everyone undergoes discipline—then you are not legitimate, not true sons and daughters at all.”

In other words, whatever bad we experience in this world doesn’t come from God’s hand, but if we will go through it clutching God’s hand, our faith will grow, our character will grow. We will be transformed into the image of the Savior Who died and rose for us.

Besides, as someone has said, when we see that God is all we have, we come to realize that God is all we need.

When Paul asked God to remove that mysterious thorn in his flesh, God turned him down three times and finally told Paul: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” (2 Corinthians 12:9) When we’re weak enough to lay our sins at the foot of the cross, God fills with the strength to live forever!

The other person we need to forgive is, for me, the most difficult one of all to forgive: myself.

Three years ago, I came to be the pastor of Living Water. I believe that it was God’s call to come here and I love this church.

But I have also found it hard to forgive myself these past three years because of how I handled my leaving Saint Matthew, the church we served before.

There were people who had gone to battle on our sides in defense of the Lordship of Jesus and the authority of God’s Word. They were people to whom we’d grown close. They’d endured nastiness, recrimination, and shunning from others. And though I’d intimated that it might be best for me to leave and eliminate a lightning rod of controversy as the congregation moved to the North American Lutheran Church, I caught people off guard when I announced that we were coming to Living Water. Four people in particular, all of whom had firmly stood with Christ and the Bible, felt betrayed by me. They felt lied to and I’ve carried guilt for that ever since. People in whom I've confided have tried to counsel me to receive grace and forgiveness for my repented sin, but mostly, I've insisted on holding onto my guilt, even after Saint Matthew folks have expressed their forgiveness.

I did this even though I’ve long known that there’s a certain egotism associated with refusing to accept forgiveness that’s been offered by God and by others. It’s as if I was saying, “I know that God forgives me and I know that others forgive me, but my standards are higher.” That’s egotistical!

And it’s probably also needy.

I needed to be reminded by God’s Word and by other disciples that even when I don’t feel forgiven or forgivable, Jesus died and rose to make it possible for me to be released--set free, divorced--from my sins. To be forgiven!

Maybe that’s why I often remind people of the promise in God’s Word: “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved!”

That includes you. Don’t withhold from yourself what God freely gives to all who call on Him with repentance and belief, forgiveness.

All of which leads me to one more humiliating self-disclosure in the form of a song that is completed and which I even shared with the congregation last year. It’s called Confession and Absolution Song and it’s about forgiveness. There’s a part for you, if you care to join in:

Father, forgive us for all of our sin
Come, Holy Spirit, make us clean within
Through Jesus Christ, we know You're our Friend
Alleluia
Alleluia 

A Friend indeed, but also our King
The One to Whom all creation sings
Our needy selves are all we can bring
Alleluia
Alleluia

Now all who call on the name of the Lord
The One Who saints and angels adore
You have new life and life evermore
Alleluia
Alleluia

Forgiveness is God’s sweetest gift and it’s ours through faith Jesus, Who died and rose for us. Alleluia!

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

Let go of sins...no matter how accustomed you've grown to them

Jesus went to Galilee preaching the Message of God: “Time’s up! God’s kingdom is here. Change your life and believe the Message.” (Mark 1:14-15, The Message)

If you [God] kept a record of our sins,
    who could escape being condemned?  
But you forgive us,
    so that we should stand in awe of you. (Psalm 130:3-4) (Good News Translation)

God's promise is clear: Whoever calls on the Lord, now revealed definitively not just to Jews but to all people everywhere through Jesus Christ, will be saved (Joel 2:32; Acts 2:21; Romans 10:13).

Let Christ conquer your sins, your errors in judgment, the hurt you've caused others and yourself, the ways you've failed to love God and others. Let Christ conquer you!

Apologize to those you've hurt. Make right what you can. (See here.) But do it all in the freedom of one who has given unconditional surrender to Christ and lives in the freedom of being God's child now and in eternity.

Today, turn from sin and turn to Christ, entrusting your life to Him.

Then do it again tomorrow.

And the next day.

For the rest of your earthly life.

You'll make mistakes. But, as you keep turning from sin and turn to Christ, your mistakes...your sins, won't master you.

Christ will master them for you.

You'll be learning to live in Christ and you'll know the truth of God's Word: "Anyone who is joined to Christ is a new being; the old is gone, the new has come" (2 Corinthians 5:17).

Yay, God!

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