Come Out of Your Tomb!

[Below you'll find live stream video of the Sunday worship services with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio, from this past Sunday, along with the text of the message shared.]





John 11:1-45

There are two verses I want to focus on as we encounter Jesus in today’s Gospel lesson.

The first gives us the words of Martha after Jesus has ordered that the stone covering the entrance to her brother Lazarus’s tomb be removed. Martha says, “But, Lord, by this time there is a bad odor…” (John 11:39)

The second tells us the words of Jesus once the stone of Lazarus’ tomb is rolled away: “Lazarus, come out!” (John 11:43)

In that first verse, after four days in the tomb, the body of Lazarus stunk. His corpse was rotting. To this world, he was beyond helping, incommunicado, dead as the proverbial doornail.

In the second one, Jesus, the Word of God, the very Word God Who spoke to chaos back in Genesis in order to bring the life of the universe into being–this Jesus, God the Son–called out to Lazarus who had died to this world, “Lazarus, come out!” and Lazarus emerged from the tomb, alive and whole.

Friends, these two verses–”he stinks” and “Lazarus, come out”–speak God’s Law and God’s Gospel to us.

How had Lazarus died? We don’t know the specific circumstances of Lazarus’ illness and death.

But we do know that the cause of all human suffering and death is sin.

That doesn’t mean that Lazarus had committed sins and God punished Lazarus with death.

It does mean that God originally created us righteous, sinless, and filled with eternal life from God. But Adam and Eve, our first parents, rebelled against God’s good will for them and we have inherited the condition of sin, the condition of alienation from God and others, of alienation from the life God means for us to live.

As the Bible explains elsewhere, “...sin entered the world through one man [Adam], and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people…” (Romans 5:12) Lazarus, who we’re told Jesus loved…Lazarus, the brother of two sisters we’re told Jesus also loved, just like Jesus loves you and me…Lazarus died.

That’s what happens to human beings. We die to life in this world.

Believers and unbelievers.

Repentant and unrepentant.

The perfect Law of God commands perfect righteousness of us and none of us is perfectly righteous. And so we die. “The wages of sin is death…: (Romans 6:23)

What Jesus knows before He goes to Bethany is that from the perspective of this dying and fallen world, Lazarus was dead. But, speaking from the perspective of heaven, He tells the disciples, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep; but I am going there to wake him up.” (John 11:11)

This is exactly how the apostle Paul speaks of those who have died believing in Christ. In about 55 AD, he tells the Christians in Corinth of the more than 500 witnesses of Jesus’ resurrection, “most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep.” (1 Corinthians 15:6)

You see, when the Word of God does its work in you, both in the Law that convicts you of your sin and in the Gospel that sets you free from sin and its death sentence, you already have died.

For most Christians, deaths happens at our baptisms. As Paul says elsewhere in the Bible: “...don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.” (Romans 6:3-4)

Every time the Word of God comes to a person in Holy Baptism, a death and resurrection happen, new life occurs as the baptized is born again of water and the Spirit. (John 3:3)

Every time an unbaptized person beyond infancy or childhood encounters the Word of God that condemns their sin, drives them to repentance, and gives them faith in Jesus Christ, death and resurrection happen. This is what happened to the thief crucified alongside Christ and to the Ethiopian eunuch who heard the gospel of Jesus’ death and resurrection from the layperson Philip.

People may walk away from the covenant of their baptism. People who have made Spirit-prompted confessions of faith in Christ may abandon Christ. We have no free will when it comes to the Gospel. Our default position as descendants of Adam is to not turn to Christ.

The Word must come to us and come to us again and again so that Christ can daily free us from our natural sinful inclination to walk away from God.

That’s why we need to hear and be given the Gospel Word–in words and in the Sacraments–daily.

We need to be reminded that having died already, we need not die again.

We can simply fall asleep in the Lord, awaiting that day will call all those who have trusted in Him from our graves and call us to life in the new heaven and the new earth!

And so, Jesus knew, as He headed for Bethany, that Lazarus, although dead to the world, his body beginning to decompose, was asleep in the Lord.

Jesus’ Word would do what no human word, no human effort, no human decision, could do. Jesus was going to wake Lazarus and call His friend from the tomb! “Lazarus, come out!” (John 11:43)

Before doing that, Jesus tells Martha, who thinks of resurrection as something that will only happen on some distant someday, “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.” “I am the resurrection right now,” Jesus is telling Martha. “I give life now. By the power of My saving Word.” Then, Jesus asks Martha, “Do you believe this?” (John 11:25-26)

That question is for us as well. “Do we believe this death-conquering Gospel?”

Friends, I know that many of you are here this morning dealing with the harsh realities of this life.

You have family members who are sick.

You have your own illnesses.

Some of you may be facing tough stuff you wish would go away: decisions, relational discords, hopelessness.

You may feel like you’re bottled up in some tomb, a prisoner to temptation, sin, death, other people’s expectations, the judgment of God’s holy law.

Today, Jesus calls to you from whatever dark place you may feel yourself to be, alone, separated from God, dead, and He says, “Come out of your tomb! Live knowing your sins are forgiven. Live, knowing that I have taken all your sins onto myself so that the tomb cannot hold you any more than it held Me. Live by grace through faith in Me. Live with Me, now and forever.”

This is Christ’s saving Word to you today.

It’s a Word that spells the death of death for all who believe.

Folks, Jesus Christ has already died and risen for you.

He has already called you from death and to life.

That’s the Gospel Word for you.

And you can trust in that Word always.

Amen

Holy Baptism (Back to Basics: Revisiting the Catechism, Part 4)

[This week's online Midweek Lenten worship from Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, focuses was on Holy Baptism, part of our series, Back to the Basics: Revisiting the Catechism. Below is the video and the text of the message.]



In Holy Baptism, God saves us from sin, death, and separation from God. 

This is what God’s Word teaches us in 1 Peter. Recalling the global flood of Noah’s day, Peter says, “only a few people, eight in all, were saved through water, and this water [the water of the flood] symbolizes baptism that now saves you also—not the removal of dirt from the body but the pledge of a clear conscience toward God. It saves you by the resurrection of Jesus Christ…” (1 Peter 3:20-21)

Some Christians, confronted by the words of Jesus’ apostle, shake their heads in disbelief. “Wait a minute,” they say. “Baptism saves us? Don’t I have to do something? Don’t I have to decide to follow Jesus? ” 

Listen: Scripture teaches that all human beings are born with sinful natures (Psalm 51:5). 

Ephesians 2:3 tells us that, “we were by nature deserving of wrath.” 

I would have an infinitely greater chance of deciding to look like Matthew McConnaughey than I have of deciding to be saved or deciding to follow Jesus. 

If you were suddenly dumped into the Pacific Ocean, your capacity to yell for help, swim, or even cling to a piece of sinking flotsam could only take you so far. You could not save yourself! 

In Baptism, it’s God Who does the deciding and God has decided through Christ to save the baptized. 

At least that’s what God’s Word teaches.

So, Baptism is life-saving, life-changing stuff! Jesus tells Nicodemus in John, chapter 3: “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again…[and] Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit.” (John 3:3, 5)

In Holy Baptism, God remakes us as human beings. As Paul puts it in 2 Corinthians 5:17: “... if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” 

When God’s Word and His Holy Spirit assault chaos, including those born into the chaos of sin, new life happens. 

This has always been so! 

In Genesis 1, the Spirit moved over the waters of chaos and brought the universe into being. 

At the beginning of His earthly ministry, Jesus went to the Jordan River to be baptized by John the Baptizer. “When all the people were being baptized, Jesus was baptized too. [the Bible tells us] And as he was praying, heaven was opened and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven: ‘You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.’” (Luke 3:21-22) 

This is what happens when we are baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God opens His kingdom to us and He sends us the Holy Spirit, the One Whose word brings the benefits of Jesus’ death and resurrection to us and we become children of God.

But how, Luther asks in the Catechism, can water do such great things? “It is not the water [the Catechism says] that does these things, but the Word connected with the water and our faith which relies on that Word. For without the Word of God it is simply water and not Baptism. But when connected with the Word of God it is a Baptism, that is, a gracious water of life and a washing of regeneration in the Holy Spirit.” 

Luther then quotes Paul’s New Testament letter to Titus: “[God] saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life. This is a trustworthy saying.” (Titus 3:5-8a)

In Holy Baptism, God’s saving Word about Jesus comes to us and remains with us, tenaciously refusing to leave us or give up on us even when we turn away from Him, when we stop worshiping God with His people, even when we cease to believe in Him. 

God will not force the baptized to believe in Jesus, the Way, the Truth, and the Life. 

But, through the indelible commitment that God makes to us when we are baptized, He will keep bringing His saving Word to us so that we might believe in Jesus and be saved. 

This is what happened to me. I spurned God and claimed atheism as my religion for ten years. But God kept pointing me back to Jesus. God refused to give up on the commitment to be my Father and Lord and Savior that He made when I was born from above at the Baptismal font!  

Holy Baptism is the saving Word of God, embodied in the element of water. Just as I had no control over when I was born, I really have no control over when I am born anew in Holy Baptism. If we are baptized as infants, we cannot be unborn even if I walk away from God. And if a person is baptized as an adult, it will still be God Who calls them out of the darkness of sin and death into the light of His loving grace and will cause them to crave Holy Baptism. (In The Large Caetchism, Luther says that if a person comes to faith without having been yet baptized, they will "not despise" the sacrament!)

In the New Testament book of Acts, we read accounts both of individual adults being baptized after coming to faith in Jesus and of whole households, including the children, being baptized. 

In the entire New Testament, nobody says, “Before you can be baptized, you have to understand things.” 

And it doesn't say, “Before you are baptized, you have to reach a certain age.” 

Instead, the apostle Paul compares Holy Baptism to circumcision, the Jewish rite by which boys eight days old, were initiated into the faith. This happened long before they could know Who God is, long before they could understand the faith.

The evidence suggests that because God wants to give us new life and unleash His saving Word in people as soon as possible that the early Church baptized infants and children. They took Jesus’ words seriously, as we do, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.” (Matthew 19:24)

In Holy Baptism, God gives all the baptized a share in Jesus’ victory over sin and death. On this point, Luther quotes Romans 6:4: “We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.”

As good Lutherans, we know that we can only be saved by grace through faith in Christ. 

That leaves the question of whether, like the man thrown overboard in the Pacific Ocean, we will stop striving and struggling and trust in Christ. 

And how do we do that? 

We don’t. We don't do anything!

The God Who comes to us in Holy Baptism sends us His Spirit to empower us to believe. “...no one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord,” except by the Holy Spirit,” 1 Corinthians 12:3 reminds us. 

And the God Who comes to us in Holy Baptism keeps sending the baptized His saving Word: “...faith comes from hearing the message [that is, the Good News of Jesus], and the message is heard through the word about Christ,” Romans 10:17 teaches.

The Small Catechism reminds us that Christ has commissioned His Church to baptize. “...go and make disciples of all nations,” Jesus commands us, “baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit…” (Matthew 28:19) 

It also reminds us that Jesus tells us why we need to baptize. In Mark 16:16, Jesus says, “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.” 

However God creates faith in Christ within us, we are saved. If you've already been baptized, it is Holy Baptism that is the primary engine by which God moves us toward faith. And if you've come to faith without baptism, you will surely want to be baptized, a holy desire God will create within you. (As He did in the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts.)

Jesus commands us to baptize so that people who cannot decide to follow Him by the power of their own wills may be reborn and so that, by the power of the Holy Spirit unleashed in our lives each day, we will come to saving belief in Jesus and we will be sustained in that belief. 

That’s why Holy Baptism is so important. 

Our series ends next week with a look at Holy Communion.

Walk in the Spirit (Part 5, The Disciple's Life)

[This was shared tonight during midweek Lenten devotional worship with the people of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Galatians 5:16-25
1 John 2:15

Tonight, as we complete our look at The Disciple’s Life, we come to an element of being a disciple that's probably discussed too little and misunderstood a lot, particularly in Lutheran circles.

It’s walking in the fullness of the Holy Spirit.

What on earth does that mean and what do we have to do to walk in the fullness of the Spirit?

If we approach this subject with that question though, we’ll come out all wrong. As with everything else in the life of a Christian disciple, walking in the Spirit has to do with what God does for us and not what we do for ourselves.

Remember these words in Ephesians: “...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 2:8-9)? The whole life of a Christian disciple is from God, not from us. That’s true even of the good works we may do in the name of God the Son, in response to God’s call, and in the power of God’s Holy Spirit. As Ephesians goes on to say: “...we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” (Ephesians 2:10)

Yesterday, a man called me here at the church and asked for $22. He said that he needed that amount to complete what he needed for airfare to Florida, where his mother just died. I couldn’t verify that he was telling the truth, of course. But I looked in my wallet and saw that I only had $16. So, I called Ann; she swung by here with the other six bucks.

When the man came here, he thanked me profusely and asked if I could take him to the bus hub in Miamisburg. I was leaving anyway, so I did.

I am not telling this story to boast. I mean, it was only $22 and a ride that was on my way to where I was going anyway!

What I’m saying is that I had prayed about how I should respond to this man and I just did what I thought God was telling me to do. If a stranger asks me for money, my first impulse is to say no. Sometimes I do say no. And sometimes after saying yes, I realize that I’ve been “had.” But that doesn't matter.

Here’s the deal: I felt called and led by God to give away the money. With something as small as this, I feel no need or compulsion to use the pastor’s discretionary fund. God seemed to say to me that the money should come from my pocket. After all, if I'm going to ask others to give to God's work in the world, to respond to the needs of strangers, I need to be willing to do the same thing!

God was teaching me two things yesterday, I think. First, that my money isn’t my money; it’s God’s money! James 1:17 tells us: “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.” I sensed God telling me, “I want you to give this stranger some of My money, Mark.”

Second, God was telling me, “This is one of those good works I prepared long ago for you to walk in. You don’t need to know whether the request is legit or not. I’m planting seeds here. Give the man $22!” Walking in the Spirit can be scary, but as Saint Paul shows in Galatians, walking in the Spirit is the way of life with Jesus.

Take a look at what Paul says in Galatians 5:16: “So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.” Older translations have Paul saying “walk by the Spirit and do not gratify the desires of the flesh.” But that’s a bad translation of--you’re going to have to take my word for this--the aorist subjunctive active second person plural verb, will gratify.

In other words, Paul is not laying down the law here. He’s not issuing an imperative. He’s not saying, “Do not gratify the desires of the flesh.” He’s saying that when we walk by the Holy Spirit, when we let God be our guide--not our consciences, not our instincts, not our hearts, not our guts, we will be walking in line with the Holy Spirit and not our own selfish desires.

Paul is not barking orders; he’s making an observation about two different kinds of lives.

One life is spent gratifying the desires of the flesh, flesh here meaning life spent pursuing those things that align with what I want to do.

The other is life in the Spirit, in which our primary aim becomes walking in the direction in which the Holy Spirit, given to us at our Baptism, leads us.

Life lived in response to the flesh is lived under the condemnation of God’s law, because it’s a life lived according to our own standards with no reference to God.

The life of the Spirit is one set free of the law because, as Paul writes elsewhere, “...there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus…” (Romans 8:1)!

In the rest of the passage from Galatians, which we read earlier, Paul helps us to see the profound difference between a life in which we call the shots and a life in which we follow where Christ’s Spirit leads us.

Verse 19: “The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality [The word Paul uses in the original Greek is porneia, from which we get the word, pornography. It means any and all sexual intimacy outside of marriage.], impurity and debauchery [The word Paul uses here means unrestrained, unrepentant lewdness.]; idolatry and witchcraft [Putting anything ahead of God.]; hatred, discord [This refers to the practice of creating divisions.], jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. [Paul goes on:] I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.”

Let’s be clear: Any human life lived apart from the saving grace of God granted to all who repent and believe in Jesus will manifest one, some, or all of these characteristics. We who are born in sin are all inclined to live in these ways. But when, by water and the Word in Holy Baptism, we born from above (John 3:3), God gives us a share in the victory over sin and death Jesus earned for us through His death and resurrection and makes it possible for us as disciples of Jesus, to walk differently, to live differently, to live by faith in Him and in His way.

Paul explains, beginning at verse 22: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.”

Notice again what Paul doesn’t say here. He does not tell Christians: You'd better live in love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. He says that these behaviors are “fruit of the Spirit.” These wonderful attributes aren’t the cost of admission into the kingdom of God. These attributes aren’t the fruit of our work. They’re the fruit of the work of the Holy Spirit working in a life surrendered to Jesus Christ. They’re what happen, often without our even knowing it, when we daily yield our lives to Christ, examine our lives in the light of God’s Word, repent for sin, and receive the renewing Word of forgiveness that comes to all who humble themselves before the mighty grace of Jesus!

By faith, we open ourselves to the work of God’s Spirit within us and the Holy Spirit goes to work, working intimacy between God and us, scrambling our priorities, using us to accomplish the good works God prepared for us before we were even born. All we must do is take a step in faith, a step toward Jesus. When we do this, we are walking in the fullness of the Spirit.

How can we do this?

How can we dare to do things that seem frightening or not in our best interest, but that respond to the will of God?

Paul explains in Galatians 5:21: “Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.”

When we are linked with Christ through Holy Baptism and the faith to which Jesus calls us, our old selves are crucified.

And as we keep our eyes on Jesus, the old self with all its selfish, sinful desires is crucified.

The new us rises every time we repent, every time we receive God's grace in Christ with faith, every time we respond in faith to God’s call in our lives.

And our new selves, knowing that we belong to God forever, are set free to live the lives of love, joy, peace, and selfless that are the hallmarks of Christ’s presence in us.

Only Jesus Himself has walked in the complete fullness of the Holy Spirit, of course. But the more we move toward Him, the more of Him will be evident in our lives, the more fruit of the Spirit will be apparent in us.

This is why Paul says in Galatians 5:25: “Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.”

Disciples

• believe and follow Jesus, 
• love God and neighbor, 
• live as the Church, and 
• pray. 

In so doing, God makes it possible for us to walk in step with the Spirit.

You could say that Christ sets us free to walk the beat of God’s drum.

If you want the simplest definition of the disciple’s life and of walking in the Spirit, it might be this: Disciples walk where Jesus leads them. 

Let’s do that together. Amen

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

Again and Again

[This message was shared during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church this morning.]

John 1:6-8, 19-28
The other day I was working a crossword puzzle that included this clue: Double French affirmative. The answer, of course, was, “Oui! Oui!” Strange as it may seem to us, French speakers will sometimes actually say, “Oui! Oui!” “Yes! Yes!” like that.

But it’s really not that strange. In the years when Jesus walked the earth in Judea, where people spoke Aramaic, words were often repeated twice like that. Jesus Himself spoke this way.

In John 3:3, for example, Jesus is speaking to a Jewish teacher, Nicodemus, and says, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again." That’s our English translation. But in the Greek in which John wrote his gospel, he retains a typically Aramaic way of speaking. Jesus says, not “very truly,” but, “Amen! Amen!” “Truly, truly!”

The repetition of a single word like that is a way of emphasizing a point. Jesus is saying, “Truly! Truly” tells us, “This is important. You need to catch this.”

There’s a reason why I’m making this point. It’s because in the one verse I want to focus on in today’s message, John the gospel writer emphasizes something about John the Baptist, something it’s important for us all to catch, something it’s important for all Christian disciples to apply to our lives.

It’s John 1:20, where we’re told about John the Baptist: “He did not fail to confess, but confessed freely, ‘I am not the Messiah.’”

John never failed to confess and confessed all the time.

When asked whether he was the Messiah, the Christ, God’s anointed King, John would confess and confess again, “I am not the Christ.”

“Get this clear,” John is saying, “I’m not the King you’re looking for. I can’t save you. I’m just a witness for Him.”

John insists that he is not the Messiah and that no matter how many thousands may come out to hear him preach and receive his baptism of repentance, he is nothing and the Messiah to come, the Savior, is everything.

Why is that such a big deal? For one reason, had John gone along with people’s desire to treat him as though he were the Messiah, he could have gotten out of that ridiculous outfit of his and maybe eaten something tastier than locusts and wild honey. Who knows, maybe he could have wangled his celebrity into a kingship or gigs at the first century Judean version of Las Vegas?

John the Baptist could have become an important person in the world’s eyes. Imagine the faith required of John to turn away suggestions that he was hot stuff!

Instead, in the face of the fame and the accolades, John said, “I am the voice of one calling in the wilderness...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 1:23, 26-27)

The other reason I think that John’s double confession of not being the Messiah is so remarkable is that his message is so counter, not just to first century culture, but even more to twenty-first-century culture. John couldn’t care less about whether his achievements in this world stroke his self-esteem or make others bow down to him. What John cares about is being faithful to the God Who would send the Messiah Jesus to save all who surrender to Him from the eternal death we deserve for our sin.

John had no need to be important in the eyes of the world. It was enough for him to know that God loved him and the whole human race enough to send His Son to die and rise for them...for us, you and me.

John didn’t need a trophy for participating in the bowling league.

He didn’t need to win an argument.

He didn’t need people telling him, “Thank you.”

He didn’t need the affirmation of the crowds. John knew that the God Who made him was going to save and remake all who trust in His Messiah. And that was enough.

Is it enough for you and me? Is Christ enough for you and me? If Christ isn’t enough for us, we need to repent and trust in Christ. Again. Today and every day.

The team planning a discipleship conference for our district of the North American Lutheran Church, which will be held this coming February, met in this building yesterday. Doug and I are on the team and I’m hoping that every member of Living Water will attend.

But after the meeting, two of the pastors and a layperson chatted a bit with Doug and me. We were talking about the subject of congregational decision-making. One pastor underscored how important it is for every disciple to be heard. And, he said, it’s equally important that when making decisions, every church member ask themselves a simple question: “What does God want?”

It’s no trouble for any of us to identify what we want, what we think, what we feel.

But the real question we should ask when making decisions is, “What does God want? What is God showing me through prayer and Scripture? What is God telling me through the godly wisdom of other disciples rooted in God’s Word? What is God telling all of us as we prayerfully seek His will as we meet and talk?”

And these sorts of questions apply as much to our personal lives as they do to our congregational lives.

What does God want? What does God think about our desire to buy a new house, work with the poor in a Third World country, take the promotion with the bigger pay even though I love the work I’m doing right now and don’t really need the raise? What does God say about someone's desire to end their marriage rather than working things out? What does God want?

This is the question of a disciple seeking to be faithful to the God they know in Jesus. It’s the question of the person who, like John the Baptist, confesses and confesses repeatedly that they, that we, aren’t God. We aren’t in charge. We don’t have the final say.

The fundamental war every Christian disciple must wage is the fight to subdue our own egos, our inborn desire to “be like God,” and to instead, surrender totally to Jesus Christ.

But know this: When, like John the Baptist, we put God first and ask that His will be done and not our own, God will ask us to take risks of faith.

• God told Abraham and Sarah to go to a place He would show them. 
• He told Moses to traverse the wilderness with the whiny people of Israel until He said to stop. 
• He told David he could take on a giant. 
• He told Gideon that his army was too big; he needed to rely on God by whittling the army down. 
• He told Ezra and Nehemiah to rebuild Jerusalem even though they didn’t have the resources, didn’t have the technical skills, and were surrounded by enemies.

The risks of faith God asks us to make often don’t make human sense. In fact, when a course of action meets our human standards of "common sense," it's probably the wrong way to go. God's sense usually doesn't make common sense.

And most of you here know about that.

• When a group of people left a congregation of which they’d been members for decades because they believed that congregation was no longer faithful to the gospel, then formed Living Water, it didn’t make sense. But God was faithful. 
• When Living Water faced division over disagreements, some wondered if it made sense to continue the life of this congregation. But God was faithful. 
• When this congregation was forced to move out of a 38,000 square foot school building that would be torn down five months later, some thought it nonsensical to think that we could continue. But God was faithful and here we are.

God doesn’t promise that when His people confess and keep confessing their faith in the God we know in Jesus, everything will turn out great in this life.

John the Baptist lost his earthly life in taking the risk of doing what God called him to do. In confessing Christ as his Lord in his words and in his life though, John also gained something that will never be taken away from him: The life with God that belongs to all who repent and believe in Jesus Christ!

As Jesus promises believers in John 16:33: "...In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”

Despite the odds. Despite what his intellect or his fears or his heart may have told him, John confessed and kept confessing his faith in Jesus. We are called to do no less!

And when we keep confessing Jesus with our words, our lives, our worship, our witness, and our discipleship, we can rely on a promise from our Lord: “...the one who stands firm to the end will be saved.” (Matthew 24:13)

Stand firm and keep confessing Jesus always!

Amen

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

Growing in Discipleship

[This was prepared for presentation during worship with the people and guest of Living Water Lutheran Church in Springboro, Ohio, earlier today.]

1 Corinthians 3:1-2
Matthew 28:19-20

During these weeks in Lent, we’ve been talking about the five building blocks of Christian discipleship and of the mission of Christ’s Church. Today, we come to the fifth building block: Personal growth in discipleship.

Now, this may seem like the least interesting and maybe the least important of the five. But I believe that every time the Church or individual Christians fail to live out the other four building blocks--loving God, loving our neighbors as ourselves, loving our fellow believers as Christ loved us, and making disciples--the root cause of this cluster of failures is that we have failed to grow as disciples.

In his book, Real Life Discipleship, Pastor Jim Putman identifies five stages of spiritual development. The first stage is being spiritually dead. Every human being is born spiritually dead. We are turned in on ourselves. We are born in sin. We are separated from God, the only one Who can give life.

This is why Jesus told Nicodemus: “...no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again." The old must die so that the new can rise, which is what happens in Holy Baptism.

This need is why God, not wanting to see the people He created eternally lost to Him, sent God the Son Jesus to die and rise so that all who repent and believe in Him will have eternal life with God.

And this is why God commissioned the Church--you and me--to act as His rescue mission to a world filled with the spiritually dead. The simplest statement of what it means to be a disciple--a follower of Jesus--was made by Jesus Himself when He called the first disciples in Matthew 4:19: “Come, follow me," Jesus said, "and I will send you out to fish for people."

The ultimate goal of discipleship is to grow up and become strong enough in our discipleship that we reproduce ourselves, making new disciples. That’s why I think Putman’s five stages of spiritual development are right on:

• spiritually dead,
• spiritual infancy,
• spiritual childhood,
• spiritual adulthood, and finally,
• spiritual parenthood.  

We don’t like to hear this. I don’t like to hear this. We don't like the idea that God wants us to grow, to change.

We’d prefer to remain spiritual infants, sopping up the grace and love of Jesus with no thought of being changed by grace or of passing it onto others.

We’d prefer to turn our faith into a kind if intellectual transaction: We give assent to Jesus’ lordship and in exchange, He gives us forgiveness for our sins and life with God.

We want to be able to just say: “Thank you very much, Jesus, we’ll see you when I die and now onto the stuff I really want to do in this world.”

Or we want to make discipleship into membership, like belonging to the Kiwanis or the local health club.

But to be a disciple means to submit to the ongoing process of trusting Jesus to, day after day, destroy our addiction to the dying ways of this world and to make us more like Him.

God does not want us to get too comfortable with life in this world. He wants our whole way of life to be alien to this world. That’s why 1 Peter tells Christians: “Beloved, I urge you as aliens and strangers [to this world] to abstain from fleshly lusts which wage war against the soul. Keep your behavior excellent among the Gentiles, so that in the thing in which they slander you as evildoers, they may because of your good deeds, as they observe them, glorify God in the day of visitation [the day when Jesus returns to the earth].”

Keep so growing in your faithfulness, Peter is saying, that when unbelievers observe you, they’ll have every reason to follow Jesus themselves and then, on the day He judges the living and the dead, join you and all of Christ’s people in glorifying God in eternity because, through you, they too will be disciples.

Often, when I talk with people about the importance of growing in faith, they tell me I’m ignoring Jesus’ call to childlike faith. “All I need is faith as a child,” they say. “I don’t need anything more than that.”

But Jesus never called Christians to be infants. Paul echoes Jesus’ implicit teaching on this subject when in 1 Corinthians 14:20, he writes: “In regard to evil be infants, but in your thinking be adults.”

And the fact is, if we are not growing in our faith, we are dying. If we are not growing closer to Christ, we are, by default, falling away from him.

Under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the early Christians understood the importance of growth in discipleship. Turn please to 1 Corinthians 3:1-2 (page 794 in the sanctuary Bible). Paul is confronting first century Christians in Corinth. He laments that they weren’t spiritually mature enough for him to speak to them as he needed to. He writes: “Brothers, I could not address you as spiritual but as worldly--mere infants in Christ. I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it.”

Paul was saying if there is no spiritual growth, Christians aren’t really ready to do Christ’s mission for them. They aren’t ready to be who Christ died and rose to set them free to become!

So, how do we grow as disciples?

Theologians call the process of growing in discipleship sanctification, the process by which God makes us over in Jesus’ image. Paul says that, “...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.” In other words, as we lay our lives open to Christ each day, God is remaking us, deepening our faith and our discipleship. We let the Holy Spirit call, gather, enlighten, and work on us as we seek to follow Christ. That’s how we grow as disciples.

But how do we do that exactly? How do we keep still and let God make us over as disciples?

When I was learning how to play in the outfield as a little leaguer, I realized that I had no control over what pitch the pitcher threw or how fast. I had no control over how hard or high or where the batter hit the ball. But if I positioned myself right in the field and used my glove and throwing arm in the right ways, I could catch balls hit to my field. In that conversation with Nicodemus, Jesus said that the Holy Spirit blows where it will and we have no control over it. But if we position ourselves spiritually, we can receive the growth God wants to give to us. We can breathe in the Holy Spirit and grow as disciples. That often can be painful and we will frequently not understand what God is trying to accomplish in our lives. Growing as Christ's disciple isn't easy. But it is the way of life.

Here are a few ways we can breathe in the Spirit and grow.

First of all, ask a person you know who is more spiritually mature than you are to meet with you periodically--once a week, once a month, once every two weeks--and informally. Make sure it’s someone you trust and who isn’t a gossip. Talk about your struggles, spiritual and otherwise. Read Scripture together. Pray together. Make yourself accountable to this person and keep your  appointments. God will meet you as you meet and you will grow.

Second, read God’s Word and pray regularly on your own, with your spouse, or with your family. God’s Word has power. Isaiah says God’s Word never returns empty. Even when we don’t perceive it, as we submissively read and consider God’s Word, the Potter is molding His new creations, you and me.

Third, worship and receive the sacrament regularly with your church family. Hebrews 10:25 says that when Christians worship together, we not only praise God, we also encourage one another and prepare one another for the day we see Jesus face to face.

Fourth, get involved with a small group Bible study. You might want to join us for the studies we’re beginning on Mere Christianity and on discipleship itself after Easter. We gain insight from studying God’s Word together that we can’t gain on our own.

Fifth, get involved with mission and service and evangelism projects. We have lots of them at Living Water. And we’re going to be doing more with our regular Kindness Outreaches in the near future. These outreaches can change both your life and the lives of those you touch. In both of my previous parishes, we did kindness outreaches. In Cincinnati, we committed more than 12,000 individual acts of kindness in five years--giving away cold water or Coke on summer days; cans of soup in the winter; money off at a local gas station; and our youth group loved going to local businesses to clean toilets. And with each act, we handed out a card or were able to verbally tell the recipients, “We’re doing this to share the love of God in a practical way.” Whether others are nudged closer to faith in Christ or not, when you serve others in Jesus’ Name, your discipleship grows.

Sixth, cultivate friendships with people you think are spiritually dead. They’re all around us. We meet them every day. They need to know Jesus. Pray for them. Invite them to your house. Truly befriend them. And then, in Peter’s words from 1 Peter 3:15: “...be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have [in Christ]...” Be willing to be a mentor and faith guide to a co-worker, classmate, or friend. Growing disciples are mentors as well as mentees. It's how we grow.

In Matthew 28:19-20, Jesus gives the great commission. Let’s look at it one more time (page 698). Jesus says: “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

It’s God’s plan that we who make up Christ’s Church will be His hands and feet in this world. More than that, it’s His plan that we--His sheep--not the Good Shepherd--Jesus Himself--will make other sheep. As Dan and Trish have both pointed out this past week, there is no Plan B. God is counting on us to play our parts in calling the spiritually dead to new and everlasting life with God through faith in Jesus Christ.

We have no control over the message of the Gospel. That has been set by God.

And we have no control over how others will respond to the Gospel, whether they receive Jesus and live or reject Jesus and choose death.

But we do control whether we will allow Jesus use us to live the Gospel through the five building blocks of loving God, loving others as we love ourselves, loving fellow disciples as Christ loves us on the cross, making disciples, and growing as disciples.

As we position ourselves to receive the life and power God gives to those who are “all in” for Jesus, our lives will be built on the solid foundation of Jesus and we will fulfill our one and only purpose in life: to have and to be Christ’s disciples. Amen