Jesus is More Than Enough

[Below is the text of the message shared during today's worship services with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, as well as live stream video of both services.]

John 1:6-8, 19-28

Every Church Year, we listen to an account of Jesus being tempted in the wilderness by Satan. But before that happened, someone else was tempted: John the Baptist. Today’s Gospel lesson written by John the Apostle shows that John the Baptist was also tempted in the wilderness, near Bethany, on the other side of the Jordan. And he endured it in order to point the world to Jesus Christ for forgiveness and eternal life from God.

Apparently, John the Baptist was an impressive person. Of course, we can assume that it was God Who made John so impressive and caused the whole Judean countryside and the city of Jerusalem to go out to listen to John call people to repent and be baptized in preparation for the coming of the Messiah.

When people started saying John was the Messiah, or Elijah returned to the earth, or the Prophet that Moses had long ago foretold, John could have caved into the temptations to accept people’s accolades, to let himself be pampered and treated like a king. He wouldn’t have been the first person to believe what adoring crowds said of him. But John the Baptist didn’t do that.

Our lesson says, “He did not fail to confess, but confessed freely, ‘I am not the Messiah’ [and] ‘I baptize with water,...but among you stands one you do not know. He is the one who comes after me, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie.’”(John 1:20, 26-27)

In a hauspostille, a message about the day’s appointed gospel lesson that he shared with his family and guests on a Sunday evening in his Wittenberg home, Martin Luther observed that today’s gospel lesson is “one of the beautiful, glorious [gospel lessons] about the highest article of our faith, where we do not hear anything about the Ten Commandments, or what we are to do, but about something higher; namely, what Christ is and what He has done…” And in this lesson, Luther goes on to say, we hear John the Baptist, certainly a holy man who walked closely with God, as he “freely confesses” that he was unworthy even of untying Jesus’ sandals.

Why did Luther think the passage that makes up our Gospel lesson is such good news for us?

It’s this. This universe in which you and I live for a few years is a dark place. Sin has brought the darkness of death, suffering, human cruelty, disease, and conflict. And none of us is exempt from the sin that brings these ills to us. “We are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves,” we Lutheran Christians often confess to God and each other. The Bible says about the whole human race descended from Adam and Eve: “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God…” (Romans 3:23)

What’s more, our sin condition blinds us to the sins we commit because of it. I’ve told the story before, but years ago, Ann and I were talking with our good friends, Pat and Steve. Some mutual acquaintance came up in our conversation and I said, “I find him awfully opinionated.” The room went silent. “What?” I asked everyone. “What? Do you think I’m opinionated?” Finally, Pat said, gently and honestly, “Mark, you’re very opinionated.” I had been blind to this obvious fact about myself. I have to say that, in this area, as in the rest of my life, I’m only a recovering sinner. But from that moment, I became aware of yet another of my enduring sins that I need to bring out into the light of God for him to crucify and raise this old sinner to new life.

The gospel of John says that Jesus is the Light of the world. He also says that “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” (John 1:5) No amount of the darkness that is spawned by sin can extinguish the powerful light that is God! But John also tells us that Jesus, God the Son, the Light of the world “was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him…” (John 1:10)

This is why John the Baptist was sent “as a witness to the light,” sent to point blind people to where the holy God Who reconciles God and sinners can be found. (John 1:8) Now that’s a ridiculous statement on its face. I mean, if you walk into a dark room and flip on the light switch, nobody will have to tell you where the light is…unless you’re blind, which is precisely what we all frequently are, insensitive to how our sin alienates us from God and causes us not love God and not love our neighbor. We can be so focused on ourselves that we can see nothing and nobody else, not even God.

John turned away from the temptation to become a big shot. He pointed others to Jesus, the Light! He was like the apostle Paul who later wrote to the first-century Church at Corinth. “When I came to you,” Paul says, “I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.” (1 Corinthians 2:1-2)

For John the Baptist, for Saint Paul, and for billions of people who have confessed Jesus as Lord through the centuries and Who confess Jesus as Lord today, Jesus and what He did for us at the cross and what He gave to us when He rose from the dead–forgiveness, eternal life, peace with God and ourselves–Jesus is more than enough.

John the Baptist was executed for his faith–his imperfect and sometimes faltering faith–in Christ.

So was Paul.

But they faced persecution and death knowing that Jesus, the Light of the world, has an eternity of blessings for those who trust in Him.

This is why Paul, on the brink of death for his faith, could write to his young protege, Timothy: “I am already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time for my departure is near. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day—and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing.” (2 Timothy 4:6-8)

Christ, the Light of the world, has appeared.

He will appear again.

He has finished His salvation work at the cross.

He has risen and sits at the Father’s right hand.

He has sent the Holy Spirit by whom we who dwell in the darkness of sin can see and be covered by the light of His great and conquering love, the only love that overcomes our sin, our death, our fears, and that gives to all who, by His grace turn to Him repentance and faith, life with God that never ends.

These are Christ’s gift to you today, given in His Word and in His body and blood in, with, and under the bread and the wine.

One of my favorite promises in Scripture is one you’ve heard me mention many times, promises Jesus first gave to a grieving friend, overwhelmed by the darkness of our fallen world and angry at Jesus for not preventing their grief. “I am the resurrection and the life,” Jesus says. “The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?” (John 11:25-26)

In a world of darkness, it’s easy to cave into fear, or egotism, or indifference, or hatred, or being a control freak who tries to block reality from view.

But Christ has pierced the darkness and destroyed death and every dark power that taunts us, deflates us, or harms us.

Jesus Christ gives us Himself.

And, for living these days and looking beyond death itself, Christ is more than enough for you and me.

The One Whose sandals we are unworthy to untie long ago decided that we were worth the suffering and death He went through to buy us out of our bondage to sin and death.

And if you remember nothing else today, remember this: That’s how desperately God loves you!

Friends, you can entrust your whole life to Christ and, believing in Him, know that no matter what, you belong to God always.

Amen

Jesus: The Light of God for Our Darkness

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

John 3:1-18

A man I know lost his wife at a young age. It was devastating for him. 

We lived in the same city at the time and I did my best to be there for him. There were times though when I prayed for him that I wondered whether the darkness that enveloped his life would ever go away. 

We both later moved and largely lost touch with each other. 

But then, unexpectedly, I ran into him at a conference. I could hardly believe it. The darkness in his life had given way to the undeniable light of God’s love given to believers in Jesus Christ even in a world that can be tragically dark.

As followers--disciples--of Jesus Christ, the crucified and risen Lord, we are as prone as anybody else to fall into the darkness that can fill our lives as human beings: the darkness of sin and doubt that lead to things like self-pity, fear, the denial of realities we don’t want to face, and the demonizing of those with whom we disagree. 

Of Jesus, we confess with the apostle John: “In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” (John 1:4-5) 

And yet, we can often be like the first-century world--Jewish and Roman--that nailed Jesus to a cross, of which John writes, “...though the world was made through [Christ], the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.” (John 1:10)

Why is that? Why did the world reject Jesus? Why is the first impulse of every human being to reject Jesus or our need for Him?

Jesus tells us the answer to those questions in John 3:19: “This is the verdict [He says of the human race]: Light has come into the world [Jesus has come into the world], but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.” 

When we are honest, we must admit that we do prefer darkness. We wouldn’t say so overtly, but there are parts of ourselves that we like to keep tucked away in the darkness, places that we think are out of God’s sight. 

But it’s no good. To God, Jesus says, “...there is nothing hidden that will not be disclosed, and nothing concealed that will not be known or brought out into the open.” (Luke 8:17)

Our Gospel lesson for this morning, John 3:1-18, tells us that a teacher of the Jewish religion, Nicodemus, went to see Jesus...at night...a time when it would be less likely that his peers or the peons he was supposed to be qualified to teach could see him. 

You see, by the time Nicodemus makes his visit to Jesus, associating with Jesus was starting to be suspicious, even dangerous, stuff. 

If you wanted to have others’ respect...if you wanted to get ahead in the world, you didn’t have anything to do with Jesus. 

Isn’t that still true today? 

How often have you wanted to tell a friend living in darkness about Jesus but kept quiet? 

How often have you wanted to pray with someone in Jesus’ name when you were in a public place but didn’t offer for fear that people might think you weird? 

How often have you wanted to tell people at the office that a decision being contemplated is more filled with the darkness of sin than with the light of God’s love, but clammed up? 

Then you know why Nicodemus visited Jesus at night. 

He knew that Jesus wasn’t just some preacher, that there was something more to Jesus than that. Still, Nicodemus wanted no one else to see Him fraternizing with Jesus.

How often do we justify dwelling in the shadows, hiding our faith from others, hiding our lives from God, by saying that faith is a private matter or that we don’t want to offend others? If Jesus is our Savior, our faith is not a private matter. It is a deeply public matter. 

After Jesus had died, risen, and ascended back into heaven, the apostles Peter and John told temple leaders who had ordered them to never again speak about Jesus, “...we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard." (Acts 4:20) They refused to conceal Jesus, the light of the world, from others!

So, in our lesson for this morning, we go with Nicodemus to Jesus under the cover of darkness. Even in the dark though, Jesus sees Nicodemus for the man cowering in the darkness he truly is. Nicodemus, Jesus sees, is a man afraid of being seen by his friends, of losing his position, of having his self-righteous religious belief exposed by Jesus, to seek out Jesus. 

So, Jesus tells him, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.” (John 3:3) 

The word translated as again that John uses to quote Jesus here is anothen in the Greek in which John wrote his gospel. It can mean again, but it also means above. And, as is typical of John, it’s safe to say that he has both meanings in mind here. 

• We must be born again if we’re to have life in God’s kingdom. We are born sinners. The sinner must die to sin and rise to newness of life through repentance and faith in Jesus. 
• We must also be born from above. It’s God Who gives us new life. We have no control over it. And in the final analysis, when we are reborn matters less than that we are reborn. Listen: Even if you don’t have your birth certificate, your existence proves that you were born. Just so, the fact that you can confess that Jesus is your Lord, tells you that even if you don’t remember the time or the place it happened, Jesus has given you new life, you are born again, born from above.

Jesus underscores that being born again is God’s work and not ours when He tells the incredulous Nicodemus: “...no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit.” (John 3:5) 

Your salvation, your born again life, your birth from above, is God’s work. 

It’s a gift that came to you when you were baptized when the Holy Spirit moved over the waters of Holy Baptism and you were made God’s child. 

Just as you had no control over when your parents conceived you, you had no control over when the Spirit moved over your baptismal waters to give you new life with God. 

This is true even if you were baptized in later childhood or adulthood. Only the Holy Spirit would impel you to believe in Jesus and want to be baptized at that point. 

After the lay evangelist Philip explained the good news of new and everlasting life for all who repent and believe in Jesus, an Ethiopian eunuch spied a desert wadi and asked Philip, “Look, here is water. What can stand in the way of my being baptized?" (Acts 8:36) 

It was the Holy Spirit who caused that man to be born from above, born again, not his own decision, not his ethnicity, not reason, not emotion, not an experience, not his parents. 

“The wind blows wherever it pleases,” Jesus tells Nicodemus in our Gospel lesson. “You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” (John 3:8) 

Left to our own inborn devices and impulses, we will always choose darkness, choose life without God, which is death, over life with God. 

We are so mired in ourselves, in our inborn desire to exercise power over our own lives, that we wouldn’t even think to turn to God. The desire we inherit from Adam and Eve--to 'be like God'--is integral to our characters and personalities. 

But when the gospel--the good news of new life for all who entrust themselves to the crucified and risen Jesus--comes to us, the Holy Spirit batters away at our defenses. 

He tears down the walled cities we erect around our hearts, minds, and wills. 

He floods our lives with light so that we first, see our need of God’s forgiveness and grace, and second, see Christ not just as the light of the world, but as the way to eternal life with God. 

Jesus becomes our light and we confess that what Jesus says of Himself is true: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6)

In the Bible’s most famous verse, Jesus tells Nicodemus today, “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) 

Friends, if you believe in Jesus, imperfect though you may be, imperfect though your faith may be, you have been born from above. 

The Holy Spirit has done His work in you, creating faith in Christ within you. 

So, no more quaking in fear. 

No more hiding in the dark. 

Live in the light of God’s love given through Jesus, because all who can confess their faith in Jesus belong to the Kingdom of God. 

You belong to Jesus now and forever. Amen

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

[The photo above shows sunrise on an ocean body. It's a NASA satellite image. Jesus is the Light Who banishes the darkness of sin and death for all who believe in Him.]