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

The Sure Foundation

[Below you'll find live stream video of today's worship services with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. You'll also see the text of the message shared. The traditional service was a wild, but satisfying ride, including a baptism!]

Matthew 21:33-46

Over the past few Sundays, we’ve listened in on Jesus’ confrontation with “the chief priests and the elders.” Today, identified as “the chief priests and the Pharisees,” that confrontation continues in our Gospel lesson. These leaders of God’s people are offended by Jesus, claiming Jesus has no authority to forgive sin, perform miracles, or claim to be the King of the world.

This morning, Jesus tells another parable, a story, the beginning of which would have been familiar to everyone around Him. You can see similar stories told by the prophet in Isaiah 5 and by Asaph, a musician in the court of King David, in Psalm 80.

In all three stories, we’re told how God graciously planted His people in Israel the land He promised to them. And in all three cases, something goes terribly wrong.

According to Isaiah, when God turned to the vineyard Israel, He “looked for a crop of good grapes, but it yielded only bad fruit.” (Isaiah 5:2) In other words, God saw an Israel that had turned its back on God to worship false idols, the gods of other peoples. For its idolatry and all the sins that flowed from it, God allowed His people to be conquered and turned out of their land.

Asaph sees a nation that has turned away from God, relying instead on false idols, self-sufficiency, and military and economic power. For, this Psalm 80 says God will break “down [Jerusalem’s] walls so that all who pass by pick its grapes” and, referring to enemy peoples around ancient Israel, says that “boars from the forest ravage it, and insects from the fields feed on it.” (Psalm 80:13)

In these two passages from the Old Testament, God was reminding His people that salvation and oneness with God were not the product of their behavior, goodness, or strength. They were saved solely by God Who gives forgiveness and new life as a gift to be received by faith alone.

This is why the Old Testament says of Abraham, not yet renamed by God, “Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness.” (Genesis 15:6)

When God saved Israel and planted it in the world, just as when God saved you and me in Holy Baptism and gave us faith in Christ through the Word and sustained that faith in the sacrament of Holy Communion, it wasn’t because the ones saved were, in themselves or by their actions, holy and righteous, it’s because the God Who saves us from sin, death, and futility is holy and righteous. It’s because God gives His holiness and righteousness to sinners by grace through the faith in Him that His Holy Spirit creates in us.

In speaking to the religious leaders of first-century Judea, Jesus creates a different twist to the ancient story of God’s people.

In Jesus’ telling, the “landowner,” clearly God, rents out to farmers, clearly Israel, a vineyard, which He prepared and protected, then went elsewhere. When harvest time came, the landowner expected to receive fruits from his land and investment, just as God expects to see the fruit of His righteousness and His forgiveness manifested in our lives.

But, as you know, the landowner sent many different people to collect what the farmers owed and each of his servants were beaten, killed, or stoned, just like the prophets God sent to His people Israel to call them back to saving faith.

Finally, the landowner decides to send his son to collect the harvest. “They will respect my son,” he reasons. (Matthew 21:37)

You know what happens.

The farmers think that if they kill off the son of the landowner, clearly representing Jesus, they will be free of the owner; they will, to speak clearly what Jesus means here, be their own gods, free of the authority of almighty God.

And that friends, is the goal of all human-centered religion: to be the makers of our own righteousness, to be gods ourselves, without accountability to God.

Humanly-centered religion, whether secular or clothed in the pretense of piety, says with the poet, “I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.”

And it always leads to death and damnation for one simple reason: One day, we will all stand before the God we meet in Christ for judgment.

Those who try to claim a place in eternity because they think they’ve been good people or because their grandfather was involved in mission work or they gave money to the church, will stand naked in their sin and be sent to hell.

Those who can say with the saints, the forgiven sinners who trust in the God revealed in Jesus, “My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness,” will be welcomed to live eternally with God.

Matthew says the religious elites realize Jesus had told this parable about them, secure in their self-generated goodness and unrepentant rule-keeping as well as their descendance from Abraham.

When Jesus asks them what the landowner will do to those who killed the landowner’s son, just as they will soon join the Gentiles in killing God the Son, they say, “He will bring those wretches to a wretched end…and he will rent the vineyard to other tenants, who will give him his share of the crop at harvest time.” (Matthew 21:41)

Antisemitic people over the ages have used these words to say that Gentile Christians have superseded Jews as God’s people. But this is not what Jesus says. It’s what the Jewish chief priests and elders say.

Trust, faith, in the Messiah and Lord pointed to by the entire Old Testament and revealed in Jesus of Nazareth, brings salvation to Jews and Gentiles like. The apostle Paul, himself a Jew, says “it is not the children by physical descent who are God’s children, but it is the children of the promise [that is, the promise of justification by grace through faith in Jesus Christ alone] who are regarded as Abraham’s offspring.” (Romans 9:8)

Jesus says that the landowner–God Himself–responds to those, both Jew and Gentile whose sin put His Son on the cross to die, very differently. He shows them this through Psalm 118: “The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; the Lord has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes…” (Matthew 21:42)

There are those who try to commend themselves to God for their own effort, supposed goodness, and ingenuity. Like us, such people have an inborn penchant to turning from God and doing things their own way. They turn a deaf ear to Jesus’ call to repent and believe in Him for forgiveness and life with God that never ends. Whether in this life or, absent repentance and faith, in eternity, the self-reliant will be smashed by Jesus Christ, true God and true man, who bears the full weight of a holy and mighty God.

But there are those who, like you here this morning, have heard the Gospel Word about Jesus and believe that Jesus is the cornerstone for everlasting life with God.

You know that you can build your life on Him.

You know Jesus’ promise about Himself: “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life…” and so, He has become the foundation for all your hopes. Jesus has become the One Who tells you that because He died on the cross for you, all Your sins are forgiven. (John 3:36)

Jesus has become the One Who assures you that He is always with you. (Matthew 28:20)

Jesus has become the One Who tells you as He told the grieving Martha: “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die…” (John 11:25-26)

In Jesus, you and I see THE foundation of our eternal help “and it is marvelous in our eyes.”

Keep your eyes on Jesus, friends.

He brings forgiveness to sinners, hope to the repentant, life to the dead and the dying and He will never let you down.

Amen

Surprising People with Grace

Each week, members of Living Water Lutheran Church do Kindness Outreaches. Through them, the love of Christ is shared in practical ways with our neighbors.  

We give quarters for carts to shoppers at Aldi...

Hot chocolate to people picking out their Christmas trees...

Doggie treats to people out walking their dogs...

Cold water and other cold drinks to families at parks for soccer games.

When asked why we do this, we tell people things like, "God loves you, no strings attached."

Or, "We're sharing God's love in a practical way."

Today, on a chilly Autumn morning, we gave away hot chocolate.

It's clear we're beginning to get a reputation in the community.

"Are you the Lutherans?" one man asked. When we said, "Yes," another said, "You gave me a cold Coke a few weeks ago. I love the Lutherans!"

Someone else asked, "Can I give you a donation?" "No," answered one of our Living Water disciples, "we're just sharing God's love." When pressed about doing something in response to the gift, our member said, "Just pray for us." "I can do that!" the person said.

The Bible tells us that while you and I were still dead in our sin, Jesus Christ died for us, giving His innocent life to take the death sentence for sin that you and I deserve, then rising from the dead to give eternity to sinners like me and you. 

The Bible tells us: "God demonstrates his own love for us in this: "While we were still sinners, Christ died for us." 

And Jesus Himself says: "I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die." (John 11:25-26)

Life with God is a gift He freely gives through Jesus Christ. There's nothing you need to do or possibly could do to earn it or merit it. It's a gift He gives that calls us to repent--that is, turn from sin and death--and trust in what He has already done for us through His death and resurrection.

It's a privilege to share God and His grace with others, alongside the people of Living Water Lutheran Church.

The Sermon of the Ashes

[Below is the live stream video of the Ash Wednesday worship service of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio, along with the message shared during the service.]



Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

Tonight, friends, Jesus tells us not to engage in religious activity that calls attention to us.

Also tonight, we have received the mark of the cross on our foreheads which, if we stop by a store or a filling station on the way home, will be noticed by everyone who sees us.

Are we violating the very commands Jesus gives us in tonight’s Gospel lesson? Let’s talk about that.

The Imposition of Ashes isn’t you being a religious show-off. It’s something else altogether.

As good Lutherans, you know that every sermon, in order for it to be faithful to God, must include both Law and Gospel.

Law and Gospel are the two ways speaks to us in His Word.

It’s God’s Law that convicts us of our sin, showing us that, from the moment we’re conceived, despite God’s good will for us, we are in rebellion against God and we are indifferent to others. This means that we deserve death, condemnation, and everlasting separation from God and from others.

It’s God’s Gospel that comes to us through the crucified and risen Jesus assuring us that, despite our sins, we are justified, made eternally right with God, because, by the power of God’s Spirit-borne Word, we believe Jesus Christ gave His sinless life to cover even our sins on a cross for us.

Paul summarizes the Gospel about Jesus Christ when he says in Romans: “For we maintain that a person is justified by faith apart from the works of the law.” (Romans 3:28)

Because on this side of our own death and resurrection, when Jesus will call believers in Him from the dead to live with Him forever, we who have been made saints by God’s grace through faith in Christ will keep needing to hear God’s Law and Gospel again and again. As Martin Luther noted, “We need to hear the Gospel all the time because we forget it all the time.” And, as we forget that Gospel, we slip back into a reliance on our good deeds or personal goodness to save us. That course is the way to death.

We don’t receive ashes on our foreheads tonight in order to impress people.

Given current attitudes toward Christian faith, people who see us are more likely to think we’re weirdos than to be impressed with our spirituality or our devotion to Christ.

The ashes are meant to be a sermon to and for those of us who receive them and not for anyone who may see us wearing them.

But what is the content of this sermon in ashes?

After Adam had fallen into sin in the garden of Eden, God told him, “You are dust and to dust you shall return.” (Genesis 3:19, ESV)

This is the Law and God spoke it to us again tonight. Like Adam, we have failed to keep God’s Law or live with righteousness. We know this because of the Ten Commandments, the distillation of all of God’s moral law for us, which we constantly fail to obey.

And you never get so old or so advanced in the faith as to not need to be catechized again. So, let me do it for you once again tonight.

God says, “You shall have no other gods before Me.” Yet, we’re constantly worshiping other things: youth, health, success, and so on, chasing after them as though they were the end-all and be-all, as they could justify our existences.

God says, “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.” Yet, even while using God’s name to pray for our needs and the needs of others, as well as to praise and thank God, we use His name as a punchline or to curse or swear or mislead others.

God says, “Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy,” a command all about gladly receiving the Word of God. But our Bibles often grow dusty. And we look at our watches on Super Bowl Sundays, wanting to be sure that the service won’t eat into our pre-pre-pre-game viewing.

God says, “Honor your father and your mother,” meaning to honor those in authority, yet we tend to believe that anyone in authority over us is a liar, a thief, an incompetent, or all of the above. Because we want to be God, we’re always sure we could do better than anyone else that God places in authority over us.

God says, “You shall not kill (or murder),” which Jesus says includes not just killing people physically, but also not killing them in psyche or spirit by denigrating them, berating them, or labeling them. We violate this command all the time, it seems!

God says, “You shall not commit adultery,” yet our brains are often a maelstrom of lustful thoughts.

God says, “You shall not steal,” yet we justify conniving to get something for nothing because, after all, “it’s a dog-eat-dog world.”

God says, “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor,” yet gossip is our favorite indoor sport.

God says, “You shall not covet,” yet our envy of others’ success, possessions, status, or achievements ruins our moods and our relationships with them and with God. I’ve seen more families destroyed by greed and resentment than by dishonoring parents, adultery, and theft combined!

When the world preaches a cheap gospel, telling us that God doesn’t really care if we heed His commands to love God or love our neighbor or to honor the will of God, the ash on our foreheads is a sermon from God telling us: This is who you are, a dust-bound sinner who can’t keep My Law and because you cannot keep My Law, you deserve damnation.

But there is Gospel–good news–in these ashes too!

The mark on your foreheads is meant to be in the form of the cross.

This is the part of the sermon meant to tell you that while there is nothing you can do to set yourself free of the death sentence you deserve for sin, Jesus Christ, God the Son, has already acted to set you free from that condemnation. Now and for all eternity!

As you’ve heard me say a zillion times before and I will keep saying it as long as I have breath in my body, when Jesus Christ said, “It is finished,” He meant it!

And He meant it for you.

Jesus took the punishment He didn’t deserve to spare us the punishment we do deserve.

Peter, a man who knew what it meant to be caught by God dead-to-rights in his sin and unrighteousness, declares, “Christ…suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive in the Spirit.” (1 Peter 3:18)

And the apostle Paul who knew the power of the crucified Christ to save enemies of God and to save sinners from condemnation and to make them righteous in the eyes of God, says: “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.” (Romans 5:8-9)

And Jesus, Who would soon be going to His cross to win everlasting life for us, told His grieving friend Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die…” (John 11:25-26) That is what the cross means for us!

That smudgy cross on your forehead is the Gospel Word–the Good News Word–from God to you.

The psalmist wrote centuries before Jesus’ birth: “As a father has compassion on his children…[God] remembers that we are dust.” (Psalm 103:13-14)

What a promise! God grades us on a curve…the Christ curve…the grace curve.

There’s a great scene in the movie, Jesus of Nazareth. Simon Peter is portrayed of being very critical of Levi, Matthew, the tax collector. And in this telling of Jesus’ story, Jesus tells the parable of the prodigal son, the tale of the notorious sinner who comes back to the father. After telling it, Jesus looks at Peter, who begins to weep. Peter says, “Forgive me, Master. I’m just a stupid man.” He may as well have said, “I’m just dust.”

God never forgets that about us. He was the One Who formed you from dust. He is the One Who chose to give you life. And He’s the One Who chose to take on dust for Himself and go to a cross to save you from yourself. The cross on your forehead is a proclamation of the Gospel from Jesus’ cross for you!

Jesus Christ, God the Son, died and rose to set sinners free from condemnation and separation from God. We don’t have to do it with our little religious works that we try to tout during Lent. Things like, “I’m going to give up chocolate.” God doesn’t care if you give up chocolate!

God wants you! He wants you! And He saved you! The call of Lent is to turn as He calls you to follow Him and receive life from Him.

So, when the world, the devil, and our sinful selves want to preach only Law to us, damning us, discouraging us, miring us in hopelessness and futility, setting us off on some spiritual self-improvement program designed to prove ourselves worthy of God’s favor, an effort that will always fail, we can say with confidence and hope, “But Jesus Christ died for me. Jesus has done everything needed to make me righteous, to give me life, to make me commendable in the eyes of God. Because of Jesus and because I take refuge in Him alone as my God and Savior, when God looks at me, He doesn’t see my sins, failings, and unrighteousness; He sees only the sinless Jesus Who graciously covers me in His righteousness!”

This dust will live forever with God not because of anything I do or ever will do, but solely, completely, totally because of what Jesus has already done for me at the cross and the empty tomb! I have been saved by grace through faith in Christ alone. And I will be made holy, righteous, and acceptable to God by grace through faith in Jesus Christ alone!

The ashes preach Law and Gospel to us. And the Gospel of salvation of new and everlasting life in Christ will have the final word over the lives and eternal destinies of all who acknowledge their sin and take trusting refuge in Jesus Christ! 

Ann and I bought our gravesites a few years ago. Our ashes will be buried at Sunset Cemetery, just west of Columbus. The thing I love about that is that the day I am raised, I am going to see all the people from the west side of Columbus I knew and loved and shared faith in Jesus with. And then I’m going to look you all up. And we will party for all eternity.

I pray that the sermon preached by the ashes on your forehead is one you hear tonight and always! Amen