Born Again

[Below are the live stream videos of today's worship services with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, along with the message prepared for the day.]





John 3:1-17

​​”The law says, 'Do this,' and it is never done. Grace says, 'Believe in this,' and everything is already done.” 

With these words, Martin Luther describes the two ways in which God speaks and interacts with us. 

First, God speaks His Law to condemn us in our sin. 

God’s Law shows us that we are sinners who merit eternal condemnation for our sinful natures and sinful actions. 

God’s Word says of us, “They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.” (Romans 1:29-32)

Of course, we all know God’s Law. We’re to love God and neighbor, worship God alone, love God’s Word, do and think only good things about our parents, presidents, and neighbors, and build others up, not tear them down. We do know God’s Law, His will for us. 

But people like us and everyone else who has ever walked on this planet–except for one–could be taught God’s Law continuously from dawn to dusk every single day of our lives and still not do God’s Law. In His Law, God says, “Do this” and because of who we are, it never gets done.

And that’s a problem because, as the apostle Paul reminds us in God’s Word, “...wrongdoers [literally, he says here, “unrighteous ones”] will not inherit the kingdom of God…” (1 Corinthians 6:9) 

To be righteous means to keep God’s Law perfectly. And righteousness is the baseline requirement for having life with God, now and in eternity. Yet, when God tells us to obey His righteous Law, it never gets done. 

What are we to do?

That was a question that occupied a man named Nicodemus a lot. Nicodemus was a Pharisee. The Pharisees lived under the misplaced confidence that they (and we) could behave righteously, do God’s Law, and so deserve life with God, life beyond the grave. 

Part of the Pharisees’ misplaced confidence resided in how they twisted God’s Law. Jesus once condemned them, for example, for teaching that people could get around God’s command to honor their parents by telling their parents that whatever money they would otherwise spend on their parents, they would instead spend on God. No wonder Jesus told the Pharisees, “You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men.” (Mark 7:8-13)

The Pharisees, including Nicodemus, grew up believing that righteousness was about what human beings do. But they also gave themselves little escape clauses, humanly-created fine print to God’s Law meant to cover and deny the stench of human sin with the perfume of fake obedience. 

When a Pharisee asked about God’s Law, “What are we to do?” they were really asking, “What is the bare minimum we can get away with doing and still be considered righteous?” When they hit the low threshold of their own preferred version of righteousness, they let all the world know how good they were!

Nicodemus, with his confidence in his own righteous capacity to obey God’s Law was, in some ways, no closer to God than the modern-day atheist who thinks he can be a good person. Anyone who thinks they can rise above their sinful nature or if they’re inclined to believe in God, make themselves acceptable to heaven, is deluding themselves.

I believe this was just beginning to dawn on Nicodemus when he visited Jesus that night. He’d been living in darkness. In Jesus, he began to see a sliver of the One the Bible calls, “The true light that gives light to everyone…” (John 1:9) Because of Jesus, Nicodemus was starting to see that the Law hadn’t and never could make him righteous. 

And so, this member of the Sanhedrin goes to see Jesus. But soon, the teacher of the Law becomes the student of the One he already calls rabbi. Jesus tells Nicodemus, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.” (John 3:3)

Now, Nicodemus should have heard these words of Jesus as the second of the two ways God speaks and interacts with us. Nicodemus should have heard that God saves us from sin, death, and darkness not by the things we do, but by what God does for us. Here, Jesus is telling Nicodemus, “There is a way to righteousness–to acceptability to God–that has nothing to do with rules or laws.” It’s about being born again–or born from above.

The image of birth itself which Jesus uses should tell Nicodemus that being ‘born again” has nothing to do with what we do or what we decide. 

Being right with God is nothing like what a high school classmate of mine described to decades ago when she told, “I decided to be born again.” Now, that's a silly statement on the face of it when you consider it!

When we are born is not a decision made by children when they are born. We are born when we are born. 

Just so, we are born again when God’s Word comes to claim us and it’s only by the power of that Word that we come to saving faith in Jesus Christ. 

Nicodemus hears Jesus’ words and wonders what he can do, what he must do, to be born again, as though he could be both the baby and the obstetrician at his rebirth. 

Nicodemus wants Jesus to give him a guidebook so that he can get busy obeying a new law. “How can someone be born when they are old?” he asks. (John 3:4)

Jesus clarifies matters for Nicodemus. 

Referencing Baptism, the Christian sacrament that infants and children have undoubtedly undergone since the first Christian Pentecost ten days after the crucified and risen Jesus ascended into heaven, Jesus says, “...no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit.” (John 3:5) 

Baptism, the apostle Paul tells us elsewhere, is like circumcision, the rite every eight-day-old Jewish boy underwent to initiate his life with God. 

Our lives with Christ are meant to be initiated in Baptism. That’s what’s what will happen to Sofia and Leo today and will happen to Alina in less than two weeks. 

But even if, as sometimes happens, because our God is a big God out to free all of us from the condemnation of sin and death, God’s grace comes to us before we’re baptized, we’re still not saved by what we do or what we decide. Our salvation is still not our doing!

We apprehend Christ’s victory over sin and death for us by faith. And even our faith is His gift to us! It’s all God’s work. 

As Paul tells us in Ephesians: “For 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.” (Ephesians 2:8) 

Our call from day to day is to turn in trust away from our sin, including our sinful reliance on our own goodness or good deeds, and turn to Christ Who died and rose to shield us in His righteousness.

Jesus’ words to Nicodemus are His words to you again 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. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” (John 3:16-17) 

“The law says, 'Do this,' and it is never done. Grace says, 'Believe in this,' and everything is already done.” 

God’s Law condemns us. 

But God’s Gospel saves us. 

Friends, you can trust in what Christ has already done for you to make you righteous, fit for life with God, now and forever. Amen

[Below are pictures from today's Baptisms at Living Water.]

While It's Still Day

[This was shared during online worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, for Sunday, March 22, 2020.]

John 9:1-12
In our gospel lesson for this Sunday, Jesus tells His disciples, “As long as it is day, we must do the works of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work. While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”

As He speaks here, Jesus, the One described by John the apostle as “[t]he true light that gives light to everyone,” knows that one day, darkness and condemnation for our sins will envelop Him. He will go to a cross, die, rise, and then ascend into heaven only to return to this world when the Father says it’s time. 

But until all of that happens, Jesus is intent on doing the works that God gave Him to do.

We who by God’s grace through faith in Jesus, belong to God, are called to a similar intent for our lives. 

No matter how dark the world may become, we are called to be about the work of the God Who has saved us from sin, death, darkness, and eternal condemnation.

In the coronavirus, our country and our world face perhaps the gravest physical threat to the human race since the invention of the atomic bomb. Now, we all, from the moment we are born, “walk through the valley of the shadow of death (Psalm 23:4, ESV).” But we are all likely more conscious of it now than we have been at most times in our lives. 

Yet, as Bishop Dan Selbo pointed out during a conference call with deans last week, for all the dangers and difficulties with which this moment confronts us, it also brings us opportunities to be about the works of our Lord, to bring His light into the darkness. 

In an essay written during a sixteenth-century plague, Martin Luther wrote about the Christian’s duty in such circumstances. Luther said that not all had the duty to do the same things: some would be called to stay where the plague was happening, others to where it hadn't reached. But he asserted that the call of every Christian was to find ways to love others as Christ has loved us.

In our lesson, Jesus and His disciples are walking along when they encounter a man that we’re told was “blind from birth.” The disciples ask Jesus, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” (John 9:2)

Whenever a person is afflicted with disease, adversity, or hardship, you can bank on it that someone somewhere will likely say either that it’s all the victim’s fault or someone else’s fault. The disciples believe themselves to be good people to whom a bad thing like being born blind could possibly happen. 

People say things like the disciples say to make themselves feel superior or safe. 

They do this even when they become afflicted and need a scapegoat.

But Jesus shows no interest in assigning blame for people’s afflictions. 

Jesus has different priorities. 

We see this in His reply to the disciples, found in verses 3-5. Most English translations get Jesus’ words at least partly wrong. Our translation, the New International Version, for example, says that Jesus answers: “Neither this man nor his parents sinned...but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him. As long as it is day, we must do the works of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work.” 

The way Jesus’ words are rendered here seems still to imply that God caused the man to be blind in order that Jesus could perform the miracle of opening the man’s eyes to sight. 

But the Greek in which John composed his gospel reads literally like this: 

“Neither this man nor his parents sinned. But in order that the works of God might be revealed in him, we must do the works of him who sent me while it is day.” 

“It doesn’t matter where this man’s blindness came from," Jesus is saying. "I’m here to bring the light of God’s love. Period!” 

The application for you and me is clear. 

Don’t worry about assigning blame, especially if it makes you feel superior (because you’re not and neither am I), just get about the business of doing God’s work in the world.

Throughout the gospels, Jesus shows us that our work as His people isn’t something we do in order to gain God’s favor. We know that we can only be saved by grace through faith in Jesus. (See here.)

Instead, Jesus says that there are two basic things that constitute the work you and I are to do while it’s still light, while we still live, before we pass from this life. 

First, we are called to believe in Jesus. “This is the work of God,” Jesus says in John 6:29, “that you believe in him whom he has sent.” 

Of course, we can’t convince ourselves to believe. Belief in--or trust in--anyone but ourselves is foreign to our natures. 

That’s why the Holy Spirit gives us God’s Word about Jesus--the Gospel--so that as we hear it, receive it at the baptismal font, and taste and see it at the Communion table, God will create saving belief, faith, within us.

Second, we’re to bring the light and love of Jesus to others. Think for a moment of the light of Jesus has brought to our dark world through Living Water in just the past few months. 

We’ve fed homeless men at St. Vincent’s; helped the victims of the Dayton tornadoes to rebuild their lives; joined together in small groups to meet God around His Word, pray for one another, and be empowered to live out our faith with others; provided rice and beans for and helped spread the Gospel among people in Haiti, and done similar work among families in South Africa; joined in the work of the Miami Valley Women’s Center, Love Monkey, and the Life Enrichment Center. We’ve helped our children know and grow in the faith in Jesus. 

And now, we’ve extended our outreach for Christ and the Gospel onto YouTube, whole new works of light for a dark world to which God has called us in the face of the coronavirus crisis.

We do none of these things in our own power. Jesus says: “...apart from me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5) We are helpless in the face of darkness to do anything useful or helpful for our neighbor, anything that honors God or points others to Jesus. 

But we have a promise from Jesus: “Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.” (John 14:12) 

Jesus, Who sits at this moment at the right hand of God the Father and has sent the Holy Spirit to His believing Church, empowers us to bring more light in more places than He ever was for thirty years in Galilee, and Samaria. As we trust in Him, Jesus empowers us to bring His light to others!

So, this week and for as long as you still have breath, do Your Father’s work. 

Believe that Jesus died and rose to bring you into the eternal light of His loving kingdom. 

And while, out of love for neighbor, you’ll need to keep your distance from others, because, without testing, you may be an unwitting carrier of a terrible disease, do those works of love that Jesus gives you to do as His child: 

• steep yourself in God’s Word, 
• pray for our world and for leaders that God will give them wisdom on which they act, 
• telephone your neighbors within and outside the church to see how they’re doing, 
• pick up groceries or prescriptions for someone who can’t get out, 
• reach out to others through email and social media, 
• share the Gospel whenever and by whatever means you can

Jesus says, “As long as it is day, we must do the works of him who sent me.” This week, be about the work given you by the One Who has sent you: Trust in Jesus and, as you spend time with Him in His Word and in prayer, do whatever loving, light-casting thing He calls you to do. 

This is how the God revealed in Jesus will call our world out of darkness into His light! Amen

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

While It's Still Day (Online Worship for March 22, 2020)

Here's today's online worship from Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. Below that, you'll find this evening's live-streamed presentation of Holy Communion. Our church YouTube address is here. (There are a few skips in the second video because of limitations in the WiFi at my home. Apologies for that.)

In Christ, You ARE Salt and Light

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

Matthew 5:13-20

The God we know in Jesus Christ speaks a powerful Word. 

When God spoke over ancient chaos, saying things like, “Let there be light,” “Let the land produce vegetation” and “living creatures” on land and in the sea, He brought all the physical worlds we have ever seen or will ever see into being. 

When God speaks over the waters of Holy Baptism in the name of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, He declares us part of His new creation, His children. 

At Jesus’ transfiguration, the Father said to Peter, James, and John--and us--”This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to Him!” (Matthew 17:5) 

The Father says this because His Word has power and when we listen to it, it transforms us. "Faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word about Christ." (Romans 10:17)

That’s why God tells us in Isaiah: “As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.” (Isaiah 55:10-11)

In Matthew 5:13-16, the first four verses of today’s gospel lesson, Jesus, the Word of God, God the Son, makes two powerful declarative statements. He tells us, “You are salt of the earth” and “You are the light of the world.” 

In making these declarations, Jesus is not saying that we should be salt and light, or we have to be salt and light, or we need to become salt and light. 

If, by the power of God’s Holy Spirit-powered Word given to us in the Scriptures and in Baptism and Communion, we can say, “We believe in God the Father...We believe in God the Son...We believe in God the Holy Spirit,” we are salt and light. 

Even on those days when our faith seems weak. 

Even on those days when we wonder where God is and whether He cares. 

Even on those days when we're not "feeling it."

God’s Word always accomplishes what God desires, always achieves the purpose for which He sends it. And His Word says that disciples are salt and light.

But what does it mean to be salt and light?

Take a look at verse 13. Jesus says, “You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.”

From ancient times, the Jewish rabbis have associated salt with wisdom. True wisdom, you know, always comes from God (Proverbs 2:6). And, Paul says that even the foolishness of God (if God could be foolish) is wiser than the smart-alecky cynicism that passes for wisdom in our world (1 Corinthians 1:25). The ultimate wisdom that God reveals to a human race bent on “being like God” sounds foolish--insane--to the world. This wisdom says that life, everlasting life, as we are meant to live it begins with a cross and only culminates in a resurrection of those who have trusted in Jesus. 

As Paul puts it elsewhere: “...the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” (1 Corinthians 1:18) 

Jesus says that you and I--He uses the plural form of you, roughly equivalent to "y'all," meaning all baptized believers--are the wisdom of God for a world gone foolish, born foolish, from sin and death. 

We are the salt of the earth, God’s ultimate wisdom staring the world in the face. Jesus has spoken His saving Word to us. His Holy Spirit has empowered us to believe the good news of new life for all who repent and believe in Him. We are the salt of the earth.

But what if salt loses its saltiness? We know that sodium chloride can’t lose its salty quality. Salt only loses its salty influence if it becomes diluted. 

Our saltiness as disciples is diminished when we allow it to be diluted in us. 

When Christians say things like, “The Bible is good, but I don’t think God knew as much back then as we do now,” they’re trading in God’s wisdom for human wisdom, trading in Jesus for the world. 

When we hear Christians utter blasphemies like, “I think Jesus is a Republican” or “I think Jesus is a Democrat,” their saltiness is diluted and they’re at risk, as Jesus says, “no longer [being] good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.” Whenever we try to add our finite, imperfect, short-sighted “wisdom” (some people call it common sense), for God’s wisdom, we lose our saltiness. 

We become faithless. 

We dilute the power of God’s wisdom over our lives and the power of our witness for Jesus to others in our world. 

In fact, where Jesus says in our translation, “loses it saltiness,” the word it translates in the Greek in which Matthew wrote--μωρανθῇ, from which we get the word moron--literally means become foolish. 

We lose our saltiness when we foolishly dilute the truth of the Gospel and of the Word of the Bible. 

We avoid becoming foolish by remaining in close daily contact with the God Who has brought us to faith in Jesus and has declared us His own. 

But listen: Jesus makes us salt of the earth so that we have life with God that never ends through faith in Jesus, for sure. But He also makes us salt of the earth so that we can season the whole world with the truth of the Gospel, the ultimate wisdom of God.

Jesus carries this theme on in His next declarative Word for believers. Verse 14: “You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.”

Wait a minute, we might think, isn’t Jesus supposed to be the “light of the world”? Yes, Jesus is “the true light that gives light to everyone” (John 1:9). 

To speak of Jesus as the light of the world is to speak of the God of  blazing perfection, Who gives illumination and direction to those who follow Him, Who burns away the sin and impurities that can mar our relationships with God and others. 

This Light, Jesus, is living in us, guiding us, making us new, warming us in the glow of God’s tender love for us. 

In the Light of Jesus, His Word, whether we consider it together as we are now or in our own daily quiet times we God, “we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.” 

Jesus tells us today that we need to keep the fires of His light stoked within us by remaining connected to Him and His Church.

At the end of today’s gospel lesson, Jesus says something that would be disturbing if He hadn’t already declared us to be His salt and light. 

“For I tell you,” He says, “that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.”  

As Christ's Word enables you to believe in Him, your righteousness does exceed that of the Pharisees and all the other fussy, self-righteous, chest-thumping, judgmental, holier than thou religionists you can name. 

Why? 

Because Jesus has declared you to be His salt of the earth and His light in the world. 

And because, in daily repentance and renewal, in regular worship with God’s people, and regular attention to His Word, You turn again and again back to the One true God we know in Jesus Christ lives in you. 

The tastelessness of sin and death are gone. 

So are their darkness or their ability to make us be afraid or to worry. 

You can say with Paul, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” 

That’s what it means to be salt of the earth and the light of the world. 

This is the powerful Word Jesus speaks to you today  and you can believe it. Amen

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