Our Great Reward

[Below you'll find the message shared during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. Also here you'll find live stream video of both our 8:45 AM traditional and 11:00 AM modern worship services. A highlight of the day was welcoming five new members into the fellowship of the church!]

Matthew 10:34-42

At the start of today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus tells the twelve apostles He’s sending with His Word–and He tells us: “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.” (Matthew 10:34) These are jarring words.

But Jesus goes on to be even more jarring, claiming words from the prophet Micah for himself: “For I have come to turn ‘a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law—a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.’” (Matthew 10:35-36)

These words seem strange to us in two ways, I think.

First, we remember that the angels sang on the night of Jesus’ birth: “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.” (Luke 2:14) Didn’t Jesus, God the Son, come into our world to make peace between God and we sinful human beings?

Second, didn’t God make families fundamental to human life, giving the family first billing in the second table of the ten commandments: “Honor your father and your mother”?

The answer to both of those questions is Yes.

But not everyone wants God’s peace.

As Christians, we know and cherish what Paul talks about in our second lesson, from Romans 7: that by the grace of God given to us in Christ under which we were washed at Holy Baptism, we “died to the [condemnation of the] law [for our sin]” and belong to Jesus, Who will one day raise us up to live with God forever. (Romans 7:4)

God has already done this for us as a gift that we are simply called to receive in faith.

And even the power to believe–to have faith–in Christ is a gift from God, given in His Word. The Bible says, “Faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word about Christ.” (Romans 10:17)

But sometimes, even members of our own families will resist the Gospel Word about Christ. They will refuse to trust in Christ.

When I was a teenager, already an atheist myself, I watched my aunt break down in tears as one of my cousins told her he didn’t need God. He had heard the Word about Christ many times. He had seen the peace that the adults and even friends in his life had through faith in Jesus. But he wasn’t buying it.

For many people, the Gospel doesn’t make sense.

Some see the hatred, prejudice, injustice, suffering, and death in this world and can’t imagine that there is a loving and omnipotent God Who, they imagine, does nothing to change things. They don’t realize that God has already done everything necessary to change things, to give us life and peace, one person at a time. He’s done this through Jesus, Who says: “​​Everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life…” (John 6:40) This isn’t a call to wait for the sweet by-and-by. It’s a declaration from God that as you trust in Christ, you are set free to live life to the full without fear of condemnation, setbacks, or even death! You can even fight things like hatred, prejudices, injustice, suffering, and death without fear of the world because you know you belong to Jesus Christ for all eternity!

Others can make no sense of the Gospel–the good news of new and everlasting life with God through Christ–because they’ve been schooled in the ways of a hard world. They’ve been taught that anything worth having must be bought, earned, stolen, or swindled. They think the project of their lives is to keep themselves–and maybe their kids–as comfortable as possible until they die. That’s it. There is no room or desire for Jesus in such a worldview.

Still others can’t imagine that any of their sins–from gossip to sexual intimacy outside of heterosexual marriage, from petty dishonesty in personal business dealings to using God’s name as a punchline–could possibly concern a holy God they’ve never seen.

For people like these, Jesus’ will sound like nonsense when He says, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near. [literally, the eternal reign of God is here now in Me and the Gospel Word about Me].” (Matthew 4:17)

They’ll find it hard to believe that Christ is as close as His Word or as close as the water of Holy Baptism or the bread and the wine of Holy Communion.

His emissaries–parents, pastors, friends, family–will tell these folks, “The kingdom of heaven has come near [in Jesus]” and they’ll resist. (Matthew 10:7)

Or turn a deaf ear.

Or maybe lash out.

Or maybe even betray you!

Of course, no Christian filled with Jesus’ compassionate Spirit will be satisfied knowing that we have everlasting life with God and not want to share it with others. We won’t want to let others’ negative reactions to Christ’s Gospel keep us from sharing it!

So, Christians will want to see their children and grandchildren, all the children in their families, baptized. In Baptism, children are covered with the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Their spirits are crucified and raised and the Holy Spirit is unleashed in children’s lives that they may come to the point where they confess Jesus as their Lord. “Baptism…” the apostle Peter says, “saves you…It saves you by the resurrection of Jesus Christ…” (1 Peter 3:21)

Christians will want to let family members see that Christ is their hope and their life. Peter also told Christian women that their disbelieving husbands “may be won over without words by the behavior of their wives…” (1 Peter 3:2)

And Christians will also want to be able to share the hope of Christ’s Gospel with family members when they have the chance. Peter also writes, “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect…” (1 Peter 3:15)

In our Gospel lesson for today, Jesus tells Christians, “Whoever welcomes a prophet as a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward, and whoever welcomes a righteous person as a righteous person will receive a righteous person’s reward.” (Matthew 10:41)

Considering just the prophets for a moment: If you’ve ever read the Old Testament, you know that God’s prophets weren’t always rewarded in enjoyable ways. (Neither have those been made righteous by God’s grace in Christ, by the way.)

When we, like the prophets, speak God’s Word, we must first speak His Law that all people are sinners, deserving of eternal punishment and separation from God, before we speak God’s Word of promise, His Gospel, that our sins are forgiven and we have everlasting life with God through Jesus.

These words call us, and all people, to repent–to turn from sin–and to believe in Jesus as our only God and Savior.

The prophets were often slighted, hunted down, condemned, killed.

That was how the world rewarded them for their faithfulness.

It’s how the world today, even the worlds of our families, often reward Christians. Jesus doesn’t sugar coat that truth and neither should we.

But God has another reward for our faithfulness to Christ.

It’s the reward of which the prophet Isaiah spoke seven hundred years before the birth of Jesus, pointing to Jesus, God the Son, Himself, Isaiah wrote: “See, the Sovereign Lord comes with power, and he rules with a mighty arm. See, his reward is with him, and his recompense accompanies him. He tends his flock like a shepherd: He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart; he gently leads those that have young.” (Isaiah 40:10-11)

Jesus promises us, “the one who stands firm to the end will be saved.” (Matthew 24:13)

In Jesus Christ, all your sins are forgiven, friends. That’s your reward from God.

And in Jesus Christ, you know, intimately and personally, the God of all Creation Who saves you to be His forever. That too is your reward from God.

And in Jesus, you know that God is with you always. He will never abandon you. That also is God’s reward to you.

In the end, Jesus is your reward, friends!

And He is all the reward you and I could ever want or will ever need.

Amen

[I'm grateful for the scholarship of Drs. John Hoyum and Steve Paulson and others in the development of today's message.]

The Peace That Brings Conflict

Mark 10:34-42
This morning, I want to focus on just the first six verses from today's gospel lesson, Matthew 10:34-39.

That’s because Jesus’ words for us here are jarring. They’re not the kinds of words you’ll see quoted on a Hallmark card.

“I haven’t come to bring peace, but a sword. Happy birthday.”

“Anyone who loves family more than Me isn’t worthy of Me. Happy Father’s Day.”

“Take up your cross. Get well soon.”

“Lose your life to find it. Will you be my Valentine?”

But if we find Jesus’ words today jarring, know that the first disciples, on hearing them undoubtedly stood gape-mouthed at the Lord.

You see, as Jesus speaks the words in our lesson, the disciples were already coming to believe that He is the Messiah. And the Messiah, according to prophecy, would come to bring peace.

Eight centuries earlier the prophet Isaiah, under inspiration from God’s Holy Spirit, had said of the Messiah: “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” (Isaiah 9:6)

At Jesus’ birth, angels sang, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.” (Luke 2:14)

Yet, look again at what the disciples hear the Prince of peace say to them in today’s lesson: “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn ‘a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law—a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.’” (Matthew 10:34-36)

So, what is it, Jesus? Did You come to bring peace or conflict?

The answer is both.

It’s important to remember what the Bible means when it talks about peace. Peace, from God’s point of view, involves more than the absence of conflict.

In God’s eyes, peace is complete, unfettered harmony between God and those who trust in Him. It also means peace between those who trust in Him and their neighbors, their world.

This is the peace that comes to all who turn from their sin and surrender their lives to Jesus Christ. It’s called shalom in the Hebrew of the Old Testament, eirene in the Greek of the New Testament.

The peace that Jesus brings makes it possible for us to look ourselves in the mirror and to see, not just an imperfect sinner deserving of death, but a child of God redeemed and made eternally new by Jesus Christ.

The peace of Jesus makes it possible for us to look at God not only as the perfect Judge, but as the loving Father Who sent His Son to die and rise for us, Who sends His Spirit to live in us, guide us, and make us over into His image.

The peace of Jesus makes it possible for us to look on our neighbors as people for whom Jesus also died and rose, people who need to know and experience the good news of new and everlasting life that Jesus brings, people whom Jesus calls us to serve as if they were Jesus Himself.

In bringing the possibility of such peace in all of these ways to each and every human being though, Jesus inevitably creates conflict.

If we get serious about following Jesus, conflict will come. Jesus came to bring us peace with God, with ourselves, and with others. But not everyone wants what Jesus has come to bring. Not everyone wants to surrender to Jesus. Even those who believe in Jesus find that the hardest prayer He teaches us to pray is, “Thy will be done.” We have all inherited from Adam and Eve a desire to "be like God" and it's foreign to all of us to want to surrender ourselves even to the One Who makes and redeems us.

So, it’s in Jesus’ call to follow and surrender that conflict begins. That’s where Jesus, in the words He cites from the Old Testament book of Micah, pits “man against father, daughter against mother,” family member against family member.

Jesus is not just the great giver of peace, He’s also the great divider of human beings and of human history.

Years ago, the movie Chariots of Fire told the story of an Olympic athlete getting into the very kind of conflict that Jesus brings to those who follow Him. Eric Liddell was a young Scotsman who had trained for a track event. But he learned that his event was scheduled for a Sunday and, as a devout Christian, who would later be a missionary to China, he did not believe that he should run on the sabbath. The United Kingdom’s Olympic elite were appalled. “In my day,” one of them, a former Olympian himself, tells Liddell heatedly, “we knew who took first place between God and King.”

For the Christian, of course, no matter how patriotic, God must always take first place. The God we know in Jesus Christ must take first place over country, over family, over career, over friends, over self. And when Christians dare to make the God revealed in Jesus their highest priority, there will inevitably be conflict. Jesus is preparing us for that with His words to us today.

And Jesus isn’t done bracing us for following Him while we live in this fallen world. He goes on: “Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.” (Matthew 10:37)

When you follow Jesus, conflict may happen even in the intimacy of family. I was talking with a worried father a few years ago. The father was a Christian; but his faith was basically confined to Sunday mornings. His son had acquired a deep faith in Jesus while in college. The young man had started sharing his faith in Christ and, despite being on a great trajectory with his new career, decided to take two years off in order to go to a Third World country to do evangelism and mission work. His father was appalled! He was sure that his son could never pick up the thread of his rising career after a two-year absence in some far-off country. “I keep trying to make my son consider,” he told me, “how this is possibly going to help him.”

It was hard for me to help this man understand that, while not all of us are called to spend two years following Christ into a Third World country, his son was doing the right thing. The father viewed the son’s prospective missionary trip as a betrayal: All that money spent on the son’s education was going to waste. But for his son, it was clear: He loved his father, but he loved his Lord even more.

Jesus asks us, “Who do you love more, the things of this world or Me?” That father was conflicted; his son was at peace. When you follow where Jesus leads, despite the conflict roiling around you and sometimes inside you, you have a peace that passes all understanding.

Jesus goes on to say: “Whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it.” (Matthew 10:38-39)

The first disciples would have had no understanding of Jesus at this point. They didn’t realize that Jesus would, on Good Friday, take up a cross and there, experience the death sentence that every one of us deserves for our sin, taking it for us so that we, by faith in Christ, be reconciled with God.

What Jesus is telling us is that, if we are to experience the new life that He has come to bring us now and in eternity, we must allow our old selves to be crucified.

Daily, we need to subject all those sins that we commit, either deliberately or reflexively, to crucifixion.

That means coming to God each day and asking Him to show us our sins so that He can rip them from our lives, even all those sins we like to commit, to be put on the shoulders of Jesus, Who died to consume them from existence forever.

Listen: Sin kills. All sin kills--from taking God’s name in vain to murder, from sexual intimacy outside a marriage of woman and man to gossip, from dishonoring our elders to coveting what our neighbor has, from making idols of our kids to even the pettiest of thievery.

And, if we are to live with the God Who sets sinners free to live as human beings were meant to live, we must daily submit all our sin to crucifixion.

And this is no abstraction. We are born in sin. Sin is such a part of us that it’s part of what composes our personalities, our habits, our ways of looking at the world. It must be crucified. Daily. Hourly. Through constant surrender to Christ.

Like the fog that clings to the ocean at the beach in the morning, it must be burned off by the light of God’s grace given in Christ.

It’s more violent, more painful than that.

Once, a melanoma, a malignant cancer, was found on my leg. It hadn’t grown much. But the cancer had become part of me. It had to be removed. So, one day, I went to the James Center at Ohio State, where a surgeon removed the cancer. It was no longer part of me.

It was a minor surgery; the scar is still there, but the sting lasted only a few days. Taking up our crosses, daily repenting, daily agreeing with God that the sins that have become part of me must go, is vastly more painful than that. And daily repentance for our sin will leave its scars on our psyches and our lives. That’s just the truth!

But as we take up our crosses each day, God goes to work to create our best selves. The sin selves die so that our God selves can live.

Jesus died and rose to make this soul surgery successful!

We often buy Hallmark cards to make people laugh or to comfort them. There's nothing wrong with that. But in describing what may come to us as His disciples, Jesus isn’t sending us a Hallmark.

Life with Christ is, of course, an incredible comfort. All who repent and trust in Christ have life with God that never ends. Christ stands by those who follow Him through this life and will usher us into a perfect eternity with God at the resurrection. That’s true comfort.

But along the way, the disciple will be constantly called to choose Christ over our own temporary comforts.

Christ over the world.

Christ over our family.

Christ over our status.

Christ over self.

Christ over our country.

That may cause us conflict with others, conflict even with ourselves, as we live from day to day. But all who dare to trust in Jesus, day in and day out, live with this comfort from Him: “...the one who stands firm to the end will be saved.” (Matthew 24:13) No Hallmark card can bring that kind of comfort. Only Jesus.

Keep following Him!

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. This was the message prepared for worship today.]

The Light Has Pierced Our Darkness! (Christmas Eve)

Isaiah 9:2-7
Eight centuries before the birth of Jesus, the prophet Isaiah foretold His coming with these words: “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned.”

When considering this passage, Martin Luther, the great reformer, said that darkness here refers to evil, unrighteousness, false notions about God’s Law, errors rooted in relying on human wisdom rather than God’s wisdom, and religion that wrongly believed that we can be saved by being good or doing good.

By that measure, the world is still a dark place. There are still people who ignore God’s command that we love Him and our neighbor and instead, treat others with disrespect or violence...still people who don’t understand that we are saved from sin, death, and pointless living only by faith in the Child Whose birth we celebrate tonight...still people who live in the darkness of unbelief because Christians have not obeyed the risen Jesus’ great commission to make disciples.

But Isaiah prophesied exactly what has happened through Jesus. Though we live in a world covered in darkness, we have seen a great light, the light of God has dawned on this world, bringing a new day.

Luther says that the light Isaiah is talking about here is two things.

First, the light is the Gospel, the good news that, in Jesus’ words spoken to a Jewish teacher Nicodemus in the darkness of a Judean night: “...God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” [John 3:16]

God has pierced our darkness with His Son and offered life to all who will surrender to Him. Jesus comes to us as the Light of the world.

In Him, we can see God clearly despite the darkness that so often engulfs our souls and this world.

In Him, we can see our sin and God’s willingness to forgive the repentant.

In Him, we see that God is  good and loving, that He wants to be reconciled with us for all eternity in spite of our sin.

For some, the offer of the Gospel isn’t enough to incite surrender to God or belief in Christ. They rebel at the thought of a life with God under Christ’s lordship.

In fact, that’s the inborn inclination of everyone here tonight, including, I can assure you, me.

Like our ancestors, Adam and Eve, we want to “be like God.” But, here’s the deal: When we human beings live out our desire to be like God, we can only plunge ourselves and the world we touch into darkness, absolute, dead, eternal separation from God.

And, let's be honest, part of us loves the darkness. I know many people who want enough of Jesus to be saved from death, but not so much of Jesus that they’re forced to make any lifestyle changes. They want to keep most of their lives in darkness, off-limits to Jesus and His Lordship.

If you’re doing that, please take it from someone who's been there, know that, no matter how well you may be fooling yourself, you’re not fooling the risen and living Jesus one bit!

He knows all about our love of darkness. He also tells Nicodemus in John 3:17-19: “...God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.”

Jesus, the true Light of Christmas, is the Gospel, the good news of new life for all who turn from darkness and entrust their lives to Him.

The second thing that the light in our passage from Isaiah is, Luther says: the Holy Spirit.

The news from throughout our world this past week has been dark: the unchallenged Russian/Syrian slaughter of civilians has brought about the devastation of Aleppo; an ISIS-related terrorist drove a truck into a Christmas market in Berlin, killing twelve and injuring 48; the Russian ambassador to Turkey was gunned down at an art exhibit.

Absent the power of the Holy Spirit working in the lives of believers, Christians would seem foolish for trusting that Christ will have the final say about this world, that evil will one day be destroyed, that death will be swallowed up by God.

But let me tell you something: We are not foolish for trusting in Christ! Hundreds of Jesus' first followers--disciples--risked their lives, with nothing to be gained in this world, to tell the world the truth that Jesus rose from death, conquering sin and death.

Today, the Holy Spirit, Who comes to us in our Baptism and reminds us through the Word of God, the sacraments, the fellowship of the Church, and the stubborn commitment of Christians to love and care for their neighbor in spite of everything, the Holy Spirit assures us, reminds us, and connects us to God so that we can believe, we can know, that Jesus has conquered sin, death, disease, and human savagery.

Through the Holy Spirit, God gives us the power to believe the promise of the risen Jesus: “I am with you always.” (Matthew 28:20)

Through the Holy Spirit, we can trust in Jesus and know, with the apostle Paul that “...we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.” (Romans 8:37)

And because of the Holy Spirit’s witness to Jesus destroying the power of sin and death on the cross, we can share in the faith confessed by Job, that Old Testament figure who lost all of his children and property and then was afflicted by disease: “I know that my redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand on the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God…” (Job 19:25-26)

There’s a lot of unbiblical nonsense associated with Christmas. There's also much romanticization of the baby Jesus. Look, babies are wonderful. Their lives are precious. Every human being is sacred in the eyes of God and should be in the eyes of the world.

But it was for far more than the birth of another baby that the angels celebrated and praised God on the night of Jesus’ birth, singing, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.” (Luke 2:14)

Of all the things Christmas is, cute isn't one of them!

Christmas, in fact, was God’s D-Day assault on this sin-imprisoned universe. Just as Europe in the 30s to mid-1940s was imprisoned by evil, so this entire world in which we live is imprisoned by the darkness of the devil and our own sinfulness. Christmas was God’s light piercing our darkness!

The baby Jesus grew to be a Man--true God and true Man--Who would face down temptation and sin to fight for the eternal lives of every person in this sanctuary, every person who has ever lived on this planet, to fight for you, so that by His death and resurrection, He could usher all who believe in Him into the pure, dazzling daylight of God and His everlasting kingdom!

Despite the obstacles presented by this world--a census, Roman rule, a jealous Jewish king and selfish religious authorities--Jesus was, miraculously, born in Bethlehem.

I can imagine the devil writhing in agony on the night of the birth. Even though He would fight Jesus all through His earthly life and fights Jesus and His people to this day, the devil had to know on the first Christmas, just as perceptive Germans knew on D-Day, 1944, that the jig was up.

This baby was God’s foothold in this world, God's beachhead among a people He intended to save.

Christmas was the beginning of a war which God would go on to win on Good Friday and Easter Sunday.

“The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned.”

The Light of the world has come to us through the Gospel--the good news of everlasting life with God for all who believe in Jesus--and the witness of the Holy Spirit.

That leaves us with the most important question of Christmas.

Not “What should I buy for so-and-so?” “Can I prevent Uncle Louie from talking politics?” or “Can I take this back?”

This is the question with which Christmas presents us: “Do I prefer the darkness of the light? Will I welcome Him as my God and King or live in darkness?"

Each day, choose the Light.

Choose Jesus Christ.

Choose life.

That’s the Christmas gift God wants to give you today and always.

Take it; it’s free. You won’t regret it.

Merry Christmas!

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Peace with God

[This was shared during worship with the people and friends of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, this morning.]

Luke 12:49-53
Among the hymns we sing at Christmas time each year is Hark! The Herald Angels Sing. The second line of the hymn, based on the song the angels sang on the night when God came to the world in the human flesh of Jesus, the Christ, says: “Peace on earth, and mercy mild.”

Jesus, the Prince of peace we confess in this hymn, brings God’s peace into this world.

The apostle Paul talks about the peace that Jesus brings in Romans 5:1. Paul writes: “Therefore, having been justified [that is, having been saved from sin and death by God’s grace] by faith [in Jesus], we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Ephesians 2:14, puts things more succinctly when it says of Jesus, “For He Himself is our peace...”

When we turn from sin and trust in Jesus Christ as our only Savior, God, and King, we have peace.

Knowing all of this may be why Jesus’ words in today’s Gospel lesson are so jarring to us. Take a look at the first few words that Jesus speaks in our lesson, Luke 12:49-53: “I came to send fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!”

Those hardly seem like the words of a “Prince of peace,” do they? More like the words of an arson! What is Jesus talking about?

Take a look, please, at another passage of Scripture, Acts 2:1-4. The words describe some of the scene on the Pentecost in Jerusalem fifty days after Jesus had been raised from the dead and ten days after He had ascended back to heaven. The disciples have been gathered for prayer, awaiting what God would do next and what God would have them do next. Then this:

When the Day of Pentecost had fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. Then there appeared to them divided tongues, as of fire, and one sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. 

Now, when Jesus spoke the words that begin today’s Gospel lesson, He knew what lay ahead.

He knew what had to happen in order that you and I, here in Logan, Ohio in 2013, could hear and come to believe in the good news that God so loved the world He gave His only Son so that all who believe in Him will not perish--will not be lost to God forever--but have eternal life.

Jesus knew that before you and I could get the chance to hear, receive, and believe in that good news, He would first have to offer His own life on the cross as the perfect sacrifice for our sins.

He would have to rise from the dead in order to tear down the barriers of sin and everlasting death that otherwise will keep human beings from having peace and life with God.

He would have to send the Holy Spirit into the life of every believer so that every believer could make disciples by sharing the good news of new life for all who believe in Jesus.

In the first verse of our Gospel lesson, then, Jesus is saying that He came to the earth in order to unleash the fire of His Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit, the third Person of the one true God, is the fire that enlightens us about our sin, about our need of God’s grace in Christ, and about God’s love for us given to us on the cross.

After enlightening us, the Holy Spirit then fills the willing with the fire of saving faith in Jesus Christ.

The Holy Spirit is the fire Who, as we repent for sin and turn to Christ alone as our righteousness, burns away our sin, our excuses for sin, and all that is unholy in us.

And the Holy Spirit does this so that, one day, when we come face to face with Jesus, by God’s amazing grace, all that will remain of each of us is the child of God we were made to be. As we submit to Christ, the Holy Spirit unleashed by Christ works in us to make us worthy to stand in the presence of God the Father by the death and resurrection of God the Son, purged of sin and death, living once more in the innocence of Eden God will ultimately give to those who believe in Jesus.

“I can’t wait to get the ball rolling on Good Friday, and Easter, and Pentecost,” Jesus is saying as He sets His face for Jerusalem and all that He will accomplish there for our salvation.

Look now at verse 50. Jesus says: “But I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how distressed I am till it is accomplished.”

Jesus is here underscoring the fact that the fiery Holy Spirit will come to His followers because He has undergone His own baptism, the baptism of His death and resurrection.

You know, every time a person is baptized in the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the Baptism of Jesus’ death on the cross and His resurrection from the tomb is reenacted. We’re submerged in the water and we emerge again made new by God’s grace.

Romans 6:4 says to baptized Christians: “...we were buried with [Christ] through baptism  into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we should walk in newness of life.”

By undergoing the baptism of death and rising from death, Jesus makes it possible for you and me to live.

Through His Baptism, Jesus makes it possible for us to drown our old sinful selves through daily repentance and sorrow for sin and to be raised again to live in His grace as we trust in Him alone as our only hope!

In verse 50 then, Jesus voices His desperate desire to accomplish His baptism so that we can be saved to live with God now and in eternity. If that doesn't make you feel good, nothing will make you feel good. God counts you worth all the suffering and dying that Jesus underwent in order to give you a life that only comes through Christ, and through faith in Christ and His grace and His Word, alone!

Then, in verse 51, we hit these words from Jesus:

“Do you suppose that I came to give peace on earth? I tell you, not at all, but rather division. For from now on five in one house will be divided: three against two, and two against three. Father will be divided against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law."

It’s jarring when Jesus says that He came to earth bring division.

Does this mean that the angels were lying when they sang of "peace on earth" on the night of Jesus’ birth?

Actually, when Jesus says that He came to bring division, He’s using a turn of phrase common in the language He used every day, Aramaic. His turn of phrase here is an Aramaism. He’s not saying that it’s His purpose to bring division. He’s saying that it’s inevitable that He will bring division.

And Jesus is right, isn't He?

Once Jesus shows up or when someone talks about Jesus, people will inevitably have an opinion about Him.

Either they will bow down to Him as God in human flesh--as God incarnate--or they won’t.

Either they will accept His claim to be the only Savior of the world--or they won’t.

And some who reject Jesus for Who He claims to be will do so with hostility, insults, persecution, even death.

Truly: When we confess that Jesus is Lord, we are set smack dab in the middle of a conflict with the same world that nailed Jesus to a cross two thousand years ago!

A wise Christian woman recently told me about a conflict that happened in her church a few years back. Someone had asked this woman, “How can Christians fight like that?” She said, “Because they’re Christians. And because some truths, the truths revealed by God in Scripture, are worth fighting for!"

For that woman, that meant that when the truth of the Gospel, the truth of the Bible, the truth of Jesus’ Lordship were at stake, Christians won’t attack, but they also won’t budge from their good confession. They will proclaim the grace of God given only in Jesus Christ. 

They will proclaim the truth about sin and the truth about the common human need for repentance and for the new life only Christ can give. 

And they will do that even if it makes others upset with them, father against son, mother against daughter, just as Jesus says. 

We might add that they'll do so even if it causes disagreement between church member and church member.

Those who believe in Jesus have peace with God. Yet not all people who hear the good news of new life for those who believe in Christ experience God's peace. They refuse to believe in Jesus. They refuse His peace.

So, peace isn’t yet a fully accomplished fact in this fallen, world. Our peace as believers in Jesus comes from the fact that one day, Jesus will return, closing the curtain on the life of this planet, judging the living and the dead--those who have turned from sin and trusted in Him as their God will live eternally with God, those who haven’t repented or trust in Christ will be condemned and separated from God.

Only then will the kingdom of God will be fully and finally perfected in what the book of Revelation calls “a new heaven and a new earth.” Only then will the peace Jesus came to bring be fully realized.

Until that time, even in the midst of the chaos, sin, and death of this world--in the midst of the chaos, sin, and death that roils inside each of us--and even in the face of opposition from all quarters, believers in Christ experience what the Bible calls a “peace that surpasses understanding,” a peace insusceptible to empirical proof, but a peace nonetheless experienced by anyone who knows that Jesus will never allow any who trust in Him to be taken from Him.

“Peace I leave with you,” Jesus once said to His first disciples--and went on: “My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you...”

We believe that Jesus Christ is the “Prince of peace,” the One Who has come to bring peace to us, even if violent, hateful people refuse His peace and even if others treat us with hostility, misunderstanding, or hatred. Even in these circumstances, even in the moment of death, we have peace with God because of Jesus.

We may find momentary peace and happiness in the sins this world offers. People may enjoy (and should enjoy) the beauties of this world.

But real peace, the peace of God, stays with us even when our lives are going crazy. The peace of God can belong to us even when, like Job, we endure multiple tragedies and our family and friends tell us that we must have done something wrong or that we’re naive to hold onto a God Who lets bad things happen to us in a bad world. The peace of God belongs to us even, when, like our sisters and brothers in Christ in places like Egypt, Ethiopia, and South Sudan, we face persecution, thuggery, and violence. Even then, we still have the peace of God as we hold on tightly to the God we know in Jesus Christ.

A sinful world today rejects Jesus and those who follow Him as much as a sinful world two thousand years ago once rejected Jesus and put Him on a cross. But whether being a Christian is in fashion as it once was or is out of fashion as it is in America today, doesn’t matter. Whether the world or unbelieving Christians--wolves in sheep’s clothing--will live in peace with God’s people who trust themselves, their sins, their pasts, their present, and their futures to Christ alone, the people who do trust in Christ alone will always have peace.

Life daily presents us with a stark choice between peace with the world or peace with God through Christ. Blessed, eternally blessed, are those who choose Christ’s peace. May that be our choice always! Amen