My Lord and My God (Sunday Worship, Living Water Lutheran Church)

Here's Sunday worship from Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. Below the video is the manuscript for today's message. God bless you!



John 20:19-31
One day during seventh-grade English class, our teacher, Mrs. Biggs, told us that we were going to have a say in what book we would read together over the next six weeks. 

She gave us three choices. I can’t remember what the other two were. But I do remember the one I definitely didn’t want to read: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. 

I thought I would be bored out of my skull if we read that book. But the vote for the Holmes stories was nearly unanimous. 

Then I read the stories and got hooked. I read all twelve in the collection even before we were actually supposed to be reading them for class. I loved them for the puzzles they presented, the vivid characters, the strange plot twists, and the friendship of the brilliant Holmes and the sometimes clueless Watson. I couldn’t stop talking about the stories. And for Christmas that year, I received the complete Holmes collection: all fifty-six short stories and four novels. I still have that book!

Have you ever noticed how skeptics can become the biggest fans of something they once disdained? And it’s often these people who have what’s called “the zeal of a convert.” It’s often former skeptics who tell us the most about the things they once dismissed but have come to love.

Our gospel lesson for today, John 20:19-31, gives us a portrait of such a person. His name is Thomas. He was called to be an apostle of Jesus, one of the twelve Jesus would send into the world to witness that all who believe in the crucified and risen Savior will have eternal life with God and plant Christ's Church everywhere.

At the beginning of his gospel, John introduces us to Jesus, the Second Person of the Triune God, the one God in three Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. 

Jesus, John said, is the Word, God the Son, Who spoke the universe into being. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,” John says (John 1:1). 

Later in that same chapter, he says, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14) 

John spends the rest of his gospel recounting signs, sermons, and dialogs pointing out to those who dared to pay attention that Jesus was no ordinary man. They all demonstrated that Jesus was more even than the Messiah, the Christ, who God’s people had long-awaited. Jesus was God the Son in the flesh, the Creator becoming one of His creatures so that in His sinlessness, He could die for sinners and win eternity for all who believed in Him, their sins forgiven, made forever new.

Now, Thomas was with Jesus throughout Jesus’ earthly ministry. He knew that there was something special about Jesus. That’s probably why he kept following Jesus. But he refused to give in to the enthusiasm of faith. (The word enthusiasm comes from the Greek phrase, en Theos, in God.) 

Thomas held back, determined not to get hoodwinked into giving his loyalty to anyone. Not even Jesus. 

Thomas was there to see Jesus bring sight to the blind man who, when Jesus identified Himself as the Son of Man had told Jesus, “Lord, I believe” and proceeded to worship Jesus as God (John 9:38). But while others exhibited faith in and devotion to Jesus, however imperfect, Thomas folded his arms. 

When Jesus announced His intention to go to Bethany after His friend Lazarus had died there, Thomas was less than enthusiastic. Bethany was in the heart of the territory from which Jesus and the twelve had just run for their lives. At Jesus’ announcement, Lazarus cynically told the others, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.” (John 11:16) 

Even at the Last Supper, after Jesus had raised Lazarus from the dead and after Thomas had heard Jesus speak repeatedly of how He was going to Jerusalem where God the Father would glorify Him, through His death, resurrection, and ascension, Thomas asks Jesus, Who had told the disciples that they knew the Way He was going, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?” (John 14:5) 

When Jesus told Thomas, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me,” Thomas remained immune to Jesus’ Word (John 14:6).

After Jesus’ died and all hope of His being the Messiah seemed gone, the other disciples, grief-stricken and disappointed, nonetheless stayed together, probably drawing comfort from one another. Not Thomas. He was nowhere to be found on Easter Sunday morning. He had moved on. 

Nor was he around on Easter Sunday evening when Jesus entered a locked room to greet the disciples and show them that He had conquered sin, death, and the grave for all who believe in Him. When, a week later, Thomas was told about several encounters Jesus’ other disciples had with Jesus raised from the dead, Thomas refused to believe.

I have a confession to make. 

I can sometimes be a Thomas. 

I live on the Easter side of Jesus’ time on earth. 

I believe in Him as my Lord and King. 

But sometimes I act and live as though the Word never became flesh and dwelt among us, that He never died to destroy the power of sin and death over me, that He didn’t rise to make me a new creature to whom He wills an eternity of good. 

I can wake up and go through the next sixteen hours of my day like someone who never heard of Jesus. I can live like Jesus never died and rose for me. Like those who don’t know Jesus, I can stew over how things are going to turn out, forgetting that the Lord Who was raised by God the Father on Easter has believers and our ultimate destination in His strong grip, that Jesus has prepared a place for us with God in eternity and He will be with us every step of the way on this earth. 

How about you? 

Can you be a Thomas? 

Do you sometimes let unbelief, cynicism, skepticism, selfishness, or a kind of thoughtless, default atheism setting cloud your vision of Jesus, of Who He is, and of what He has done for you on the cross and from the empty tomb?

Today brings you (and me) good news! 

Like John, the beloved disciple, who saw the empty tomb on the first Easter Sunday morning and believed, Thomas got his chance to see the risen Jesus on the following Sunday. 

And when that happened, Thomas, the hardened skeptic, became the only person in the Gospel of John to make this ringing confession about Jesus: “My Lord and my God” (John 20:28). 

No one had previously dared to say Who Jesus was (and is). 

Thomas confessed Jesus not just our Lord. Not just the Lord Who conquered sin and death and Satan. 

Thomas looked at Jesus and declared Jesus to be God! 

Jesus says of believers like you and me, who have received the Word about Jesus that would be shared by the lives and martyrdom of witnesses like Thomas, Peter, John, Mary Magdalene, and Paul, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” (John 20:29)

We are blessed. 

Although like Thomas, we can doubt or be disbelieving or forgetful, we are blessed. 

That’s because the truth of our faith in Christ is not measured either in how often we allow our human nature to get in the way of trusting in Jesus. It isn't measured in our imperfections. 

Our faith is truly seen in this: in how, when confronted by Jesus in His Word, in the Sacraments, and in the fellowship of the Church, we realize again that this Jesus, this One raised from the grave on the first Easter, is Lord and God and His Word has transformed us from sinners dead in their trespasses and given us the saving faith to say with Thomas, “My Lord and my God!”

Friends, Jesus never tires of coming to us and always remains the Word made flesh, true God and true man, Whose desire above all else is to fellowship with us and make us His forever. 

May we who, by the power of God's Word about Jesus, give us the zeal of converts, people who sold out to Jesus that we can't keep from telling the world about Jesus and His gospel.

And when Jesus calls us, may we always hear His voice and may we always come to Him, our Lord and our God. Amen

Growing in Christ (Part 2, Bearing Fruit for God's Kingdom)

[This was to have been shared with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio during worship this morning. But we were snowed out.]

2 Corinthians 3:12-18
Last Sunday morning, we showed you what we think of as a “video postcard”: a graphic illustration of the pathway of discipleship, the pathway of a deep, joyous, and eternal relationship with the God revealed in Jesus Christ. Let’s take a look at it again.



The pathway of discipleship we seek to follow and to make possible for people both within the congregation and beyond these walls begins with knowing Christ. 

To know Jesus Christ is to know Him as “the way and the truth and the life.” When we know Christ for Who He is, we know that He took our sins on Himself at the cross and made it possible for us to know God, to have life with God, now and in eternity. 

Christ sets us free from the world’s punishing demand that we prove ourselves worthy. By His death and resurrection, Christ covers sinners who repent and trust in Him with His grace. And so, we have nothing left to prove. Hebrews 10:14 tells us that “by one sacrifice [Christ] has made perfect forever those who are being made holy [that is, eternally set aside as God’s people by grace through faith in Jesus].” 

To know Jesus is to know Him as Savior, Lord, and God. “Truly this man was the Son of God [meaning, in the parlance of first-century Judea, God the Son, God Himself],” the Roman soldier announced when He saw the manner in which Jesus died for others. (Mark 15:39)

“My Lord and my God!” Thomas called Jesus when he finally knew that Jesus was more than just a great teacher (John 20:28). 

To know Jesus is to know God’s love for us and the salvation from sin, death, hell, and futility that He gives to those who trust in Him. This is God’s gift for sinners who trust in Christ: “For it is by grace you have been saved,” Ephesians 2:8-9 reminds us, “through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast.”

When we know Christ, His Word has been planted in our lives and, as Jesus says, we ourselves become like seeds must be planted and die in the earth in order to come to life and to grow and thrive as children of God. 

Growing in Christ, the second leg of the pathway to discipleship, isn’t easy. It entails dying to our old sinful selves so that we can become the people God designs us to be. “Very truly I tell you,” Jesus tells us,  “unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.” (John 12:24) 

God wants all people to know Christ and grow in Christ so that they can show Christ. 

But growing in Christ--what the theologians call sanctification--isn’t something we do. 

It happens in the same way that we come to know Christ and life with Him in the first place: By the power of His Word to transform us, to enter into our lives, calling us to turn from sin (to repent) and to trust Christ not only with our sins, but also with our lives, our past, our present, our future, our all.

Paul talks about how growing in Christ happens in 2 Corinthians 3:12-18. Let’s take a look at it now. It begins: “Since we have such a hope [that is, the hope of having a portion of the glory of God in eternity with Him], we are very bold, not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face so that the Israelites might not gaze at the outcome of what was being brought to an end. But their minds were hardened. For to this day, when they read the old covenant, that same veil remains unlifted, because only through Christ is it taken away. Yes, to this day whenever Moses is read a veil lies over their hearts.”

The New Testament tells us that, as disciples of Jesus, we can bold in living, bold in sharing Christ with others, bold in praying. “...the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love and self-discipline,” 2 Timothy 1:7 reminds us. 

In 2 Corinthians, the apostle Paul is telling us that because God has planted--not a wish, but a certainty guaranteed by Christ’s death and resurrection, but the hope of glory with Him, we can be bold in living as confident, joyful Christian disciples. 

Unlike the Hebrews of Old Testament times and even, Paul says, his first-century Jewish contemporaries, we can turn to God in Jesus’ name with unveiled faces, without pretense, without feigned holiness, just as we are without one plea. 

A child needs never be ashamed to come to his or her father or mother, no matter how inadequate they feel or how sinful they may feel, knowing that while their father or their mother may discipline them for their wrongs, they will never stop loving them. Their parents' love will always be available to them. 

At the funeral of famed evangelist Billy Graham, his daughter spoke of how as a young woman, she defiantly married a man that her parents had warned her against. When the marriage went bust, she was afraid that her father would condemn or even disown her. But when she went to her parents’ North Carolina home following the divorce, her father embraced her with love and support. If a forgiven sinner like Billy Graham, or the mother or father of any child, can love and accept their children, think how much more the perfect God we know in Jesus Christ is willing to do the same thing and so much more for us when we turn to Him!

There need be no veil, no wall, between God and us. At the moment Jesus died on the cross, we’re told, the curtain concealing the holy of holies, the place where God dwelt on earth in the temple, was torn in two. When we turn to God through the crucified Jesus, there is no distance between God and us at all. We can approach our Father with boldness and confidence, knowing how much He loves us and always wants what’s best for us. 

We turn to Jesus when we heed the Spirit’s call to worship with God’s people, when we confess our sins in Jesus’ name, when we hear, read, and reflect on His Word, when we receive the sacraments. These are means by which God helps us to grow in Christ.

Paul underscores this in the balance of our lesson. Verse 16: “But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.”

Remember the Samaritan woman Jesus met at the well outside the village of Sychar? Her sins were notorious. She’d been with lots of men and was living with another. But when, the Word made flesh opened her to see the truth, she knew that she was in the presence of a Man who, improperly, according to the standards of the time, talked with a woman--a sinful woman--in public. This man, she told others, “told me everything I ever did,” and knew all about her, yet offered her everlasting life with God anyway.

When we meet Christ the Word, whether in the Bible, in worship, in prayer in His name, or in the sacraments, He changes us just like He began to change the woman at Sychar that day. 

You may remember the REVEAL study we did some months ago. It showed us steps in the pathway of Christian discipleship like our knowing Christ, growing in Christ, and showing Christ and it underscored this truth: Every step of Christian growth happens because of the Christian’s daily interaction with God’s Word. 

The more I stand under the authority of the God I meet in Scripture, the more I grow as a disciple. The more I turn away from encountering the God of Scripture, the less of a disciple I become, the less I reflect Christ's presence in me.

In our passage from 2 Corinthians, Paul says that we are “transformed,” using the same word Mark uses of Jesus’ being “transfigured” on the mountain before Peter, James, and John. 

Imagine what Paul is saying! As we dare to spend time with the God we know in Jesus and the love letter He has given to us in the Bible, God undertakes the most unlikely makeover in history. 

Paul says that when we come into the presence of God’s Word, “with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, [we] are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another…” 

We grow in Christ when we dare, boldly, to spend time in His presence each day. 

And the result of this growth? More and more each day, in ways we ourselves do not understand or even perceive, we reflect the presence of Christ in our lives. 

We look more and more like Jesus, without our even knowing it, because God is doing His work in our lives. His glory comes to live in us!

Don’t be skeptical, underestimating what God’s Word can accomplish in your life. “...the word of God is alive and active,” the Bible tells us [Hebrews 4:12]. And God says that “[My word] will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.” [Isaiah 55:11] 

I sometimes wonder why God puts up with me, why He doesn’t condemn me for my sins, my sinful thoughts, the fitful, imperfect way I follow Him. But when I spend time in God’s Word, like you and I are right this moment, I am assured that, if God can be patient with me as He works to transform me after the image of Jesus, I can be patient with me and with my life in Him too. I can be patient as the master sculptor does His work on me, happy to pray, with the prophet Isaiah that, “We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand.” [Isaiah 55:11]

And don’t think that I’m laying some new law on you, some grim obligation. I’m simply inviting you to spend time with Jesus each day. “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest,” Jesus tells us [Matthew 11:28]. God wants us to rest easy in His grace. 

You and I can’t make ourselves holy; that’s totally the work of God and the tool He uses to accomplish it is His Word. 

Let God’s Word work on you, in you, and for you. 

• Don’t turn from God, but turn to Him each day. 
• Have a quiet time with God in His Word.
• If you can do it, become part of a small group that reads the Word and prays together. 
• Be in worship each Sunday, take Holy Communion every time it’s offered. 

None of these are things that we do, but are things God offers to us. 

So, don’t try to play the Christian or make yourself Christian; that never works! 

Let Christ, the Word of God, work in you and, whether you perceive it or not, you will be growing in Christ. More next Sunday. Amen

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

God can be my friend, never my buddy

Here are reflections from a recent quiet time with God. I try to do this five days a week, letting God's Word speak to me in a dynamic, relational way. To see how I approach quiet time, read here. I hope that these journal entries are helpful to others. But nothing can replace your own personal quiet time encounters with God!

Look: “...And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.” (Exodus 3:6)

God has just revealed Himself to Moses in Midian at the burning bush. When Moses realizes that he’s in the presence of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, he hides his face. Moses understands the infinite distance between God and himself: God is immortal; Moses is mortal. God is perfect; Moses isn’t. God is the Creator; Moses is the creature. God is sinless; Moses is, like the rest of the human race, sinful.

No wonder Moses hid his face. His response is appropriate, understandable. Centuries later, Isaiah was conscious of the infinite distance between God and himself when he encountered God. He knew that for an unclean human to dare to look at God meant death. He cried out after God had initiated His call to Isaiah to be His prophet: “ “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!” (Isaiah 6:5)

Theologians and experts in comparative religions say that Moses and Isaiah experienced “numinous awe,” awe, respect, terror, fear in the presence of the God of all creation.

Neither in Biblical history nor in the history of Jews and Christians since would this be the first time that people experienced awe or terror in God’s presence. During their wilderness wanderings, the people of Israel, who God called Moses to lead, caught a glimpse of God’s holiness and were terrified. They asked Moses to act as a go-between so that they wouldn’t have to look at God and be killed by the infinite distance. "Speak to us yourself and we will listen. But do not have God speak to us or we will die." (Exodus 20:19)

Decades later, Israel would marvel at how Moses enjoyed an intimate relationship with God. Deuteronomy 34:10 says, “Since then, no prophet has risen in Israel like Moses, whom the LORD knew face to face…”

Here’s what strikes me in this passage: Where is my numinous awe?

I often seem to treat God as an afterthought.

Or I take Him and, maybe worse, His grace for granted.

I often ignore Him or treat Him like a buddy.

Listen: Of course, with Jesus, the new covenant or the new testament has come. God has revealed Himself to all people in Jesus Christ. John writes in the prologue to his gospel: “No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known.” (John 1:19)

In Jesus, to use Martin Luther’s phrase, all are able to see God’s friendly face, the same friendly face Moses, Isaiah, and others came to “see” as their relationship with God developed.

God IS perfect. God IS immortal. God IS sinless, righteous, and, in Lutheran theologian Paul Tillich’s phrase, “wholly other.”

But God loves us, cares for us, and wants a relationship with us. If these things weren’t true, God wouldn’t have met Moses and Isaiah. And if these things weren’t true, He wouldn’t have reached out to Gentiles as well as Jews, to the whole world, in Jesus Christ.

God wants to be reconciled to us, to forgive us our sins, to give us new life, and to shower His love on us for all eternity. Jesus told Nicodemus: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.”

To all who repent and believe in God as revealed to us in Jesus, God offers life, forgiveness, citizenship in His kingdom, and intimacy with God.

Through Jesus, we can speak with God and ask of God anytime, anywhere. “Until now you have asked nothing in my name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full,” Jesus says (John 16:24).

“...we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin [God has been subjected to temptation and death when He shared in human life in Jesus]. Let us then approach God's throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.” (Hebrews 4:15-16)

Citizens of God’s kingdom, believers in Jesus, are to approach the God revealed in Jesus, our “high priest,” “with boldness,” the preacher in Hebrews says. But it’s interesting to see where Jesus is as we approach Him: “God’s throne of grace.”

No matter the intimate friendship with God that Jesus opens to those who believe in Him (John 15:15), He is still the King of all creation, my God, my Creator. He still deserves our honor, praise, and submission. When unbelieving Thomas finally realized all of Who Jesus is, he fell to his knees and confessed Jesus, “My Lord and my God” (John 20:28).

The God Who seeks intimacy with me is also owed by submission, surrender, awe, and praise. In fact, His desire for intimacy with a sinner like me, along with His desire to cleanse me of sin and make me fit for living in His kingdom, should incite me to the deepest and most reverent of fear, honor, and praise.

But too often, I turn Jesus into a buddy.

Or my prayers are like emails dashed off to an indulgent uncle, an easy mark.

Not only does such an approach to God mock Him and His desire for closeness with us, it risks turning God into an idol, a good luck charm. Instead of being an expression of an intimate friendship with God, my “prayers” risk becoming messages to a false god I’ve created in my own head, a god I use for my convenience and comfort. I don’t want that! I want real intimacy with God! And I never want to forget that God is God and I am not!

Forgive me, Lord! For taking You for granted. For forgetting, in the words of the preacher of intimacy with You, that it is nonetheless, “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Hebrews 10:31). Forgive me for forgetting that only You are God and I am not. With the saints in the heavenly city, help me to say and believe, “Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise!" (Revelation 5:12).

I realize that this is a practical issue. If I don’t reverence, fear, honor, praise, and glorify God, it indicates a deficiency in my understanding of You, a deficiency in my relationship with You.

Help me, Lord, to heed the words of the preacher in Hebrews 12:28: “Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe,”

Respond: Lord, to help me to get in the habit of acknowledging Your holiness and giving it to You, help me to spend time next week contemplating several passages of Scripture for five consecutive days: John 9:16-24; Revelation 5; psalms of praise. Help me to note reasons to honor and praise You. Help me to understand more fully the depths of Your love and grace. Teach me to honor You more fully as God. Help me to not be flippant. Help me to know You more fully as my best Friend, but not my buddy. In Jesus’ name I pray.

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