Stand Firm

Luke 21:5-19
What would you do if your entire world was turned upside down?

That’s the question our encounter with Jesus today forces us to answer.

In today’s Gospel lesson, we hear Jesus preparing His first century followers, fellow Jews, for the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem. The first disciples needed to be prepared for this event because, for pious Jews, the prospect of the temple being destroyed was a cataclysmic possibility, an unthinkable tragedy. Losing the temple had the potential for totally turning their worlds upside down.

Go to our lesson for today, Luke 21:5-28, please. (We’re only going to focus on verses 5 to 19 this morning.) The passage begins: “Some of his disciples were remarking about how the temple was adorned with beautiful stones and with gifts dedicated to God. But Jesus said, ‘As for what you see here, the time will come when not one stone will be left on another; every one of them will be thrown down.’”

The disciples admired the temple in much the same way we Americans admire the White House, the Washington Monument, or the Statue of Liberty. All are symbols of our country and what we’ve been taught it stands for. And while we may sometimes be cynical about whether Americans truly believe in the positive things this country stands for, every American would be horrified at the prospect of any of these national symbols being destroyed.

If you can imagine the sense of horror you would feel in the event that someone bombed the Statue of Liberty, then you will experience a small fraction (and only a small fraction) of what the disciples felt when Jesus said that every stone of the temple would be thrown down.

I say “a small fraction” because the temple was much more than the symbol of the Jewish nation. The temple was the place where God dwelt on the earth, in the Holy of holies. For Jesus’ first disciples, all pious Jews, the absence of the temple, if they didn’t place themselves fully under Christ’s lordship, could have have seemed to mean the absence of God.

Jesus had to shake His disciples from their superstitious attachment to stones, mortar, and jeweled walls in order to prepare them for upcoming events.

One of those events was His crucifixion, which would happen in just a few days. Mark 15:38 tells us that when Jesus died on the cross “The curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.” In other words, at the very moment when Jesus offered Himself as the perfect sacrifice for our sins, the impediments that once would have prevented us from experiencing oneness and intimacy with God were destroyed. The veil concealing God from sinful human beings was shredded by God’s grace, given in Christ. All who turn from sin and trust in Jesus are one with God.

At that moment, the temple became irrelevant. Now, nobody would have to make sacrifices to get close to God; the Savior Who sacrificed Himself on the cross makes God known and accessible to all who hear and trust in the Gospel! Jesus was warning the disciples of this fact so that when the walls of the temple came down, their world wouldn’t be turned upside down. They could stand firm.

Of course, whenever we’re given what we consider bad news, which is what Jesus’ pronouncement that the temple would one day be destroyed seemed to be to the disciples, we want explanations. That’s why the disciples ask Jesus in verse 7 of our lesson: “Teacher...when will these things happen? And what will be the sign that they are about to take place?”

So, Jesus gives them signs and explains that before the destruction of the temple, which, we know, did happen at the hands of the Roman Army in 70 AD, many events would happen first. Jesus says that there would be turmoil and false messiahs. There would be wars, earthquakes, famines, pestilences, and even fearful signs from the heavens. In other words, life on Planet Earth would pretty much unfold as it has since Adam and Eve took a bite of fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Then, Jesus warns those first-century disciples: “But before all this [before the temple comes down], they [the enemies of Christian faith, the Romans and the Jews] will seize you and persecute you. They will hand you over to synagogues and put you in prison, and you will be brought before kings and governors, and all on account of my name. And so you will bear testimony to me. But make up your mind not to worry beforehand how you will defend yourselves. For I will give you words and wisdom that none of your adversaries will be able to resist or contradict. You will be betrayed even by parents, brothers and sisters, relatives and friends, and they will put some of you to death. Everyone will hate you because of me.”

Now, Jesus isn't here commending ignorance. He's not saying, "Keep stupid about God and the Bible or the faith that you confess on Sunday mornings." He is saying that as we spend time with God's people worshiping, hearing God's Word, and receiving the sacraments, and that as we spend time daily with God reading and soaking up His Word for ourselves, confessing our sins in Jesus' name and receiving the power of the Holy Spirit as He transforms us, we won't have to prepare to face those who attack Christ or our faith in Him. If we try to plan what we're to say, we'll be using our own limited reasoning and wisdom and we'll be refuted for sure. But if we're steeped in God's Word and filled with His Spirit, our words will be irresistible, irrefutable.

But here in our lesson, Jesus was saying, within decades of His crucifixion and resurrection, the Mediterranean region awash with more than 500 believers who staked their reputations and lives on affirming that they had seen the resurrected Jesus, powerful witnesses to the truth of the Good News about Jesus, disciples would be dragged before authorities and condemned for their faith. The disciples might well have wondered what they had signed up for, when Jesus told them: “Everyone will hate you because of me."

But it’s a truth that the first Christians would learn and pass along to other believers. It’s something they needed to know when their worlds were being upended. The apostle Peter, writing in about 64 AD, told the Christians of Asia Minor: “Dear friends, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that has come on you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice inasmuch as you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed. If you are insulted because of the name of Christ, you are blessed, for the Spirit of glory and of God rests on you.”

Persecution, shunning, hostility.

We Christians who live in America have been largely insulated from such treatment over the past few centuries--partly because we’ve done such a good job of doing exactly what Jesus told us not to do, hide our light, the light of Christ, under a bowl, keeping our faith in Christ on the QT, not rocking the boat by making disciples or praying in public (like when we go to a restaurant). But even here in the United States, we face opposition for our faith in Jesus.

I received an angry message from an atheist friend this past week who basically said that I was living a less than useless life, that all I did to help this country was pray to a god who isn’t there. We’ve all likely been told these things and if we’re not, maybe we need to seek out friendships with atheists and agnostics to give them the chance to say such things to us. It's only when we make ourselves available to hear the world's criticism of our faith in Jesus that we have the opportunity to share the Good News about Jesus with them. And there is a rising and ignorant venom against anyone who bears the name of Christ.

That’s only to be expected. When people think that this world is all there is to this life and that there is no god but us and that we human beings should have our desires gratified, believers who challenge these faulty assumptions will be unwelcome. For much of the world, a Christian in the neighborhood is like a skunk at a garden party. Or worse, Christians who declare that Jesus is Lord are seen as enemies of the state and disturbers of the peace, as they were in Rome, as they are today in places like Syria, Iraq, and even by some among whom we live each day.

If we authentically seek to follow Jesus, we will face opposition. We will be taunted and ridiculed. We may be passed over for promotions because there’s no place for Jesus in our workplaces. Jesus wanted the first Christians to know all of this. He wants us to know this.

Listen: In the face of such realities, we can’t rely on buildings or liturgies, kings or princes, presidents or prime ministers, parties or political philosophies, countries or armies to save us, to give us life.

Only God can save us or give us life.

And God only does that through Jesus Christ. Jesus couldn't be more explicit. He says in John 10:30: "I and the Father are one." And He says in John 14:6: "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me."

We have good news!

Jesus says at the end of our Gospel lesson: “...not a hair of your head will perish. Stand firm, and you will win life.”

Jesus is not here promising that bad things won’t happen to believers, of course. He is promising that when we entrust our whole lives--not just some of our lives and not just when it’s convenient, we are saved from the death that is worse than earthly death, eternal death, the death of eternal separation from God.

He's saying that we're to stand firm in just the way He stood firm when dragged before Pilate and before the high priest. Jesus was subjected to hatred, rejection, violence, false accusations. Jesus never fought back. He never met fire with fire. But He stood firm. That's what you and I are called to do.

Standing firm with Christ means standing for Christ and not for ourselves.

It means doing the will of God when we want to do something else.

It means caring so passionately about the neighbor who rejects Christ that we keep praying for him and her, keep sharing Christ with him and her, even when they attack us.

It means clinging to Christ and not to the things of this world, no matter what.

At the beginning of this message, I said that Jesus’ words force us to answer the question, what would we do if our entire worlds were turned upside down?

The answer is simple, yet always challenging to live out: Even when our worlds are upended, keep holding onto Jesus Christ and His promises. 

It boils down to this. When we hold onto Christ, we have life. When we don’t hold onto Christ, we are dead.

As Jesus puts it elsewhere: “...the one who stands firm to the end will be saved” (Matthew 24:13). That’s a promise worth believing even in a world turned upside down!

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

Stand Firm!

[This was shared during the worship services of Living Water Lutheran Church in Springboro, Ohio, this morning.]

Luke 21:5-19
We’ve heard it a million times: Don’t judge a book by its cover.

It’s a way of reminding us that looks are deceiving.

Often the people for whom we harbor jealousy because they seem to have it totally together, are the very people whose lives are most unhappy, most out of control.

Unassuming people may harbor a depth of character we can hardly imagine.

We should know better.

When the judge and prophet Samuel was sent to Bethlehem in order to anoint one of the seven sons of Jesse as king of Israel, he was about to choose Eliab. Eliab looked like a king sent from central casing.

But look, please, at 1 Samuel 16:7 (page 196 in the pew Bibles): “But the Lord said to Samuel, ‘Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.’” Instead, God ordered Samuel to anoint David to become king.

Don’t judge a book by its cover!

It isn’t just people we judge wrongly. We can have a wrong estimation of churches too.

An acquaintance of mine served a megachurch for over a decade. They had all sorts of programs and thousands showed up for worship every Sunday. Their facilities were impressive, state of the art, massive. Now, there’s nothing wrong with any of that. But my acquaintance once told me that there was something missing in that congregation. Everything about the place was big...except the people’s faith in Christ, except their hearts turned cold to God and to others. They believed in their programs, their buildings, their bigness, not in Jesus.

Similarly, I have known congregations that had tiny memberships and remained tiny precisely because their entire congregational lives were built around maintaining their facilities as a stained glass mausoleums.

Buildings, like this school building, can be tools that God gives to congregations to pursue the mission of the Church: loving God, loving neighbor, loving one another, making disciples for Jesus Christ.

But you really can't judge a book by its cover. And there must be more to being Christians, more to being the Church than what a world that doesn’t know God can see.  

Take a look at today’s Gospel lesson, Luke 21:5-19 (pages 734-735).

Let’s quickly set the stage. As with last Sunday’s Gospel lesson, we’re in the week between Palm Sunday and Good Friday, when Jesus would die on the cross, and ultimately, Easter Sunday, when He would rise from the dead. He’s teaching in the temple in Jerusalem.

In the passage just before our lesson, Luke tells us how Jesus observed a procession of wealthy people leave their gifts in the temple treasury.

But Jesus wasn’t impressed with them.

He was impressed with a widow who gave a pittance, which also happened to be all she had to live on.

The world might be impressed by external shows. God isn’t.

It’s why God told His people through the prophet Amos that He hated their festivals.

What God wants from those who come into His presence is authenticity.

Authentic repentance.

An authentic desire for deeper faith and servant hearts.

David himself knew this. Look at Psalm 51:17 (page 395), part of his prayer of repentance after committing adultery and murder: “My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit [a spirit broken open to God]; a broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise.”

Some would look at David and only see a powerful man who abused his power to sin and then publicly repented as a brilliant PR move. That's not how God saw it. God saw a man whose heart was open enough, whose heart was broken enough, to let God in and to let God’s praises erupt from the depths of his wounded soul.

And what did Jesus tell the Samaritan woman at the well, do you remember? She told Jesus that her people thought the worship of God could only happen on the mountain in her country, while Jesus’ people, the Jews, said it only happened in the temple in Jerusalem. Look though, at what Jesus tells her in John 4:21 (page 742): “Woman...believe Me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem...[then in verse 24] God is spirit, and His worshipers must worship in spirit and truth...”

Not necessarily in candles and organs, not necessarily with guitars and drums, though people can worship God authentically by those means and in many other ways. We always truly worship God in spirit and truth: With broken, open spirits and honesty before God.

Now look at the lesson. “Some of his disciples were remarking about how the temple was adorned with beautiful stones and with gifts dedicated to God. But Jesus said, 'As for what you see here, the time will come when not one stone will be left on another; every one of them will be thrown down.'"

The disciples haven’t been paying attention to what Jesus was conveying in His commendation of the widow rather than the wealthy. The disciples are wowed by the temple.

It may be hard for us to understand how much freight the temple carried for the people of first century Judea.

For the devout, it was the place where God lived in the Holy of holies and the place where they could make sacrifice for their sins.

For nationalists, it was a symbol--like the Statue of Liberty for us--of their country, a symbol they seemed to especially crave as they lived under the rule of the Romans.

For Herod, the puppet king of Rome who built this third temple on the spot of the previous structures, the temple was a bid to win the loyalty of a people who hated him.

It was an impressive place, encrusted with jewels. Its marble columns were more than forty feet high.

But it’s dangerous to judge a book by its cover. Jesus says that as powerful and impregnable as the temple looked, it would one day be reduced to dust. And in 70 AD, the Romans did destroy it.

This was incomprehensible to some people standing nearby in the temple. In verse 7, we read: “Teacher," they asked, "when will these things happen? And what will be the sign that they are about to take place?" This is a control question, the sort of question posed by people who find it hard to trust in God, but what to stay ahead of the curve, have inside information instead of faith in Christ. Today, their number includes Christians who are so obsessed by speculations about the end times that they can't live out simple faith in Jesus.

Next comes the most confusing part of the lesson. Start at verse 8: “He replied: 'Watch out that you are not deceived. For many will come in my name, claiming, 'I am he,' and, 'The time is near.' Do not follow them. When you hear of wars and revolutions, do not be frightened. These things must happen first, but the end will not come right away.' Then he said to them: 'Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be great earthquakes, famines and pestilences in various places, and fearful events and great signs from heaven.'”

I found these verses confusing because the question asked of Jesus was about what signs would point to the destruction of the temple and, here and as the chapter unfolds, Jesus seems to be talking about the end of this world.

And He is.

Like the Old Testament prophets or the apocalyptic books, Daniel and Revelation, Jesus is conflating time. He’s talking about the present, immediate future, and the future of the cosmos.

That’s because since Adam and Eve fell into sin until the risen, ascended Jesus returns to judge this world, raise the dead in Christ, and bring about the final consummation of His kingdom, two things have been going on in the created cosmos.

First: Under the burden of sin and death, humanity has suffered and will suffer from natural and human disasters. Each disaster, a sign of our need of new life.

Second: The good news of that new life that only comes from Jesus Christ will conquer the sin and death of believers in Christ and ultimately, make the whole creation new.

Much will happen until then though. That’s what Jesus wants us to know in the next part of our lesson, starting at verse 12: “'But before all this, they will lay hands on you and persecute you. They will deliver you to synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors, and all on account of my name. This will result in your being witnesses to them.'”

When we entrust our lives to Christ, which is what it means to believe in Him, we can count on the constant possibility of rejection.

Sometimes, people kill Christians for their faith to this day.

Sometimes, they simply cannot comprehend their faith. A woman who used to read my blog once wrote to me: “I can’t understand it. You seem like an intelligent person, a good writer. How can you talk about Jesus as though He were God? It’s such a waste of your life!”

That, friends, is the world in which we are called to be Christ’s witnesses. Jesus doesn’t promise that it will be easy. Yet it’s our call, out of simple gratitude for being saved from sin and death, to be Jesus’ witnesses. In fact, Jesus makes it a non-negotiable of the Christian life. "This will result in your being witnesses to them," is what He says here. In Acts 1:8, Jesus says, "You will be My witnesses."

How can we do that?

Well, not by trying to look good.

Not by memorizing our testimony about Jesus and spouting it like parrots.

Look at what Jesus says starting in verse 14: “...make up your mind not to worry beforehand how you will defend yourselves. For I will give you words and wisdom that none of your adversaries will be able to resist or contradict.”

In other words, don’t worry about looking Christian or sounding Christian. Simply focus on following Jesus.

Let the Holy Spirit teach you through the study of God’s Word, worship with the Church, receiving the Body and Blood of Jesus.

Then God will teach you what you need to say, not only in the face of hostility, but also in response to people who genuinely want to know what you believe as a Christian.

To be Christ’s witnesses, we don’t need a how-to guide, we simply need to pay heed to what the Holy Spirit is teaching us as we draw close to God the Father in Jesus’ Name and learn to pray the prayer David prayed in that same psalm of confession, Psalm 51:15. Would you go back to that with me? David prayed: “Open my lips, Lord, and my mouth will declare your praise.”

In thirty seven years as a Christian and twenty-nine as a pastor, I have seen things I never would have expected. Many segments of American society have moved from indifference to Christian faith to outright hostility.

Ignorantly, intelligent people who know nothing about Jesus, say that Christianity is the source of most of the world’s problems.

And, in other parts of the world, people are killed and persecuted for their faith.

Jesus’ words seem increasingly to have come true.

But the answer is not for us to hunker down or keep the light of Christ hidden under a basket. That would be inauthentic!

The answer is to be open books: In good times and bad, the God Who threw in His lot with us on the cross of Calvary and rose from the dead to give us everlasting life, calls on us to follow Him, to give witness to His greatness and love. Jesus says at the end of our lesson: “All men will hate you because of me. But not a hair of your head will perish. By standing firm you will gain life.”

May we stand firm in our faith and so stand with Christ forever. Stand firm! Amen

Keep Holding On!

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

Luke 21:5-19
As followers of Jesus Christ, we know and cherish the promise that all who repent and believe in Jesus Christ receive the forgiveness and grace that God freely offers the whole world. Believers in Jesus are the only people in the world who have an authentic and eternal hope for life with God. This hope should mean everything to us!

In twenty-six years as a pastor, I have seen that there is a qualitative difference between how those who trust in Jesus Christ face eternity and how those who are without faith in Christ face eternity.

Christians grieve the loss of other Christians, of course. It would be strange and unnatural not to grieve the loss of loved ones and friends. But, as Paul writes in First Thessalonians in the New Testament, believers in Jesus do “not grieve as others without hope” do.

To the grieving sister of His friend, Lazarus, Jesus says in John 11, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in Me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in Me, will never die.”

Elsewhere in the Gospels, Jesus says: “The one who believes and is baptized will be saved; but the one who does not believe will be condemned.”

We can live each day in hope and confidence because we have good news, bought and paid for with Jesus’ blood on the cross. This is the good news to which Jesus points all people in the Gospel of Mark when He says, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent and believe in the good news.”

Jesus has secured an eternity of hope for us!

So, how do we live now? How do we live in this messy, sin-infested, dying world? How do we live today, in all of the moments of our lives?

It’s ironic that today’s Gospel lesson is really all about how to live in the day-to-day world in which you and I live. It's ironic because our lesson, Luke 21:5-19, is the first segment of a section of Luke’s Gospel that is described by the scholars as “apocalyptic.” From our look at Revelation earlier this year, you’ll remember that the word apacalupto, from the Greek language in which the New Testament was written, literally means, “I reveal.”

Apocalyptic literature in the Bible, which includes most of Revelation in the New Testament and Daniel in the Old Testament, basically contains God’s revelation of how this world will end and what lies beyond that end for you and me.

In the apocalyptic words of Jesus quoted in Luke 21:5-38, Jesus does reveal much about the end of the world. But in the verses that make up our Gospel lesson for today, Jesus tells us how to live today.

So, please pull out the Celebrate inserts and turn to our Gospel lesson. Verses 5 and 6 set the stage:

When some were speaking about the temple, how it was adorned with beautiful stones and gifts dedicated to God, he said, "As for these things that you see, the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.”

Imagine Jesus being here with us this morning and someone asking Him if He didn’t agree that Saint Matthew’s sanctuary was beautiful and Jesus saying, “It won’t last. Some day, it's going to be destroyed.” Or, imagine Him being shown, in a single moment, Saint Patrick's Cathedral and the Statue of Liberty in New York City and hearing Him say that every fragment of those places would one day crumble to pieces.

Scenarios like these can only approximate how Jesus’ words about the Temple must have seemed to His first hearers. The Temple in Jerusalem was the living symbol of Judea’s religion and nationhood. It was the place where the presence of the God of the universe came to be among His people.

Yet Jesus says the Temple would be destroyed. Little more than forty years later, it was destroyed, undoubtedly caused by the God Who, in Jesus, said that worshiping Him “in spirit and truth” was more important than having the "right places" for worship. Jesus' words show us that often, places of worship like the Temple devolve into monuments to human egos rather than the places of humility and submission to God they were meant to be. Jesus’ words suggest that some of our most cherished religious traditions may be worthless, especially if in keeping them, we forget about truly worshiping Him as God and King over our lives!

In verse 7 of our lesson, no doubt frightened by Jesus’ words, His listeners ask what sign will be given that the Temple would be destroyed. Read along silently with me at verse 8 for Jesus’ response:

 “Beware that you are not led astray; for many will come in my name and say, ‘I am he!’ and, ‘The time is near!’ Do not go after them.’” 

Jesus warns us to not fall for false messiahs. Years later, in letters like First and Second Timothy, which we looked at a few weeks ago, the apostle Paul warned Christians not to fall for false teachers. Such people still pop up today. They’re on religious TV stations, on the New York Times lists of best selling books, and even in the assemblies of the very Lutheran body to which we belong and that we cherish.

The moments when these false teachers make their plays to lead us away from God can come at any moment, which is why it’s important for us to use as many moments as we can steeping ourselves in God’s Word, getting to know the God of the Bible, not the false versions of God pushed by false teachers. That’s why Sunday School and other opportunities to study the Bible with others are important, even for we adults.

In verses 9 to 11 of the Gospel lesson, Jesus says not to be surprised or frightened by all of the disasters, natural and human-made, that happen in this fallen world.

Then, starting at verse 12, He warns that persecution will naturally befall believers in Him. We’ve seen exactly what Jesus was talking about in recent international events.

• Two weeks ago, a Catholic church in Iraq was attacked during worship; 70 people were killed. 
• This past week, a series of roadside bombs was detonated in Iraq, 11 in all, were set off in Christian neighborhoods there. 
• This past week, in Pakistan, a Christian woman, Asia Bibi, a mother of five, whose crime appears to be that she offered water to some co-workers who deemed her unclean because of her faith in Christ, was sentenced to be hanged for blasphemy. 
• And frequently, all across China, where a groundswell of conversions and baptisms help to make Christianity the fastest growing religion in the world, Christians are, every day, subject to arrest, torture, and execution by the Chinese government. 

Now, there’s all sorts of persecution in the world, of course. Some of it is even perpetrated by those claiming to be Christians. Whenever persecution happens, it is always wrong.

It’s also true that if you proclaim a Lord and Savior Who is more important than you, your family, your country, your neighborhood church, the denomination with which you’re affiliated, or anything else, you will incur opposition, snubbing, and persecution. Bank on it, Jesus says.

All forms of persecution toward those who confess Jesus as Lord and Savior of the world are the death throes of a sinful world Jesus is going to destroy, the early warning signs of the new creation that is already being born in all who repent and believe in Jesus.

In verse 13, Jesus says something peculiar about being persecuted for faith in Him: “This will give you an opportunity to testify.”

If you have a pencil or pen, you might want to circle that word, “opportunity.” In Jesus’ mathematics, Persecution=Opportunity.

Jesus is telling us that when Christians are persecuted, that’s when the depth and reality of our faith shows. It’s easy to confess faith in Jesus on Sunday mornings in a free country. But the authenticity of our confession is seen when being a Christian is marginalized, dismissed, or distorted, as happens today to Christians in America, to Christians in Logan, Ohio.

Listen carefully: God’s primary project in you and me is not to give us easy lives, but to build our characters, to retrofit our sinful natures, and through the work of the Holy Spirit, to recreate us in the very image of Jesus.

The character that people see in us when adversity strikes is our “testimony,” for good or ill. There is really only one way to ensure that our testimony for God is positively Christian and that’s to humbly own up to our imperfections, turn ourselves over to Christ, repent for our sins, and allow the Holy Spirit access to our lives every moment of every day.

And, we need to do those things every single day if we are to become, in Martin Luther’s wonderful phrase, which I’ve mentioned before, “the Holy Spirit’s workshop.”

Acts, chapter 4, in the New Testament, is a very important place in Scripture for me. After a decade of atheism, I came to faith in Christ through the witness and confessions of the Lutheran Church. The first book of the Bible I read as a new Christian was Acts. I chose it because, in recounting the history of the Church in the first three to four decades after the risen Jesus' ascension, it would show me how Jesus' imperfect followers lived from day to day without Jesus being physically present to them. 

I'll never forget coming to Acts, chapter 4. It tells about how the apostles Peter and John, after healing a man in Jesus' Name, were dragged before the religious authorities, beaten, and told never to again speak in Jesus’ Name. "Whether it's right for you to forbid us to speak in Jesus' Name," they said, "we can't say. But we can't help but speak His Name because there isn't another name God has given by which we must be saved." Despite their defiance, the religious authorities released them.

Peter and John, the wounds from the whips still fresh on their backs, sought out the company of the other disciples. They all prayed together. When I first read their prayer nearly thirty-four years ago, I was thunderstruck. It begins: “And now, Lord, take notice of the threats they have made, and allow us, your servants…” And there, I expected them to ask God to help them to exact revenge against the men who had harmed Peter and John, the same authorities who had conspired with the Romans to crucify Jesus and who were then trying to stop the spread of the Gospel. But they didn't pray for vengeance. Instead, they asked God to help them “to speak your message with all boldness.” 

I remember that tears filled my eyes when I read those words and I stopped to pray, “Oh, God, please give me a faith like that!”

You see, God had forged new characters in these first Christians. They weren't interested in obtaining revenge on their persecutors. They only wanted the boldness to share Christ with others, in spite of persecutions.

I don’t know about you, but in my daily life, that’s what I want more than anything! I want to be faithful no matter what!

Persecution and all adversity are, as Jesus tells us, opportunities to live our faith and to share our testimony about Jesus, not just with our words, but with our lives. Jesus promises, you see in verse 18 of our Gospel lesson, that if we will be steadfast in following Him, seeking His help in all the moments of our lives, “not a hair on your head will perish.”

Jesus isn’t offering a cure for baldness here! Nor is He saying that all will go well in this life if we follow Him. He’s saying that, no matter the adversities we experience in this life, we can live each day in the certainty that we will be with Him for all eternity!

“By your endurance,” He says in verse 19, “you will gain your souls.”

Eternity, you see, belongs to those who hold onto Jesus even when the chips are down.

Today, Jesus’ message for us is simple: “Keep holding onto Me! Keep holding onto Me!"

A Pass at This Sunday's Bible Lessons

[I'm not preaching this coming Sunday, as I'll be formally installed as pastor of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio. (The sermon will be provided by our dear friend, Pastor Pat Badkey. Pat and her husband, Steve Fahnestock, were seminary classmates of mine. Through the years, our families have remained close.) I will though, be discussing the Bible lessons for Sunday with the adult Sunday School class at Saint Matthew and one of these texts will be the bases on which Pastor Pat builds her sermon that day. I present passes like these each week as a way of helping the people of Saint Matthew prepare for worship. But because our texts are based on the lesson plan (the lectionary) that goes with the Church Year, others should find them helpful as well.]

The Bible Lessons:
Malachi 4:1-2a
Psalm 98
2 Thessalonians 3:6-13
Luke 21:5-19

Comments:
1. This will be the next-to-last Sunday of the Church Year. November 25 will bring us to the final Sunday of the Church Year, known as Christ the King.

2. One of the apparent themes of these texts is what's known as, the Day of the Lord. We Christians believe that the risen, ascended Jesus will return to the world and that judgment will be rendered. It isn't a day to be feared for those who follow the God of the Bible, believing in Jesus Christ.

3. Another interesting aspect of these texts is that it demonstrates that Biblical faith isn't a black and white thing. God's creation and reign are, for those who want to hamstring God, a bit complicated. For example, the Old Testament book of Malachi, written by a prophet sometime after 530BC, addresses the abuse or neglect of the temple which absorbed Ezra and Nehemiah after the Babylonian exile of God's people. The prophet seems to be saying, "Respect the temple as the place where God dwells on earth and where you worship God together." On the other hand, in the Gospel lesson from Luke, Jesus tells the disciples not to be overawed by the temple of His day. God can't be contained in buildings.

Also, in the Luke passage, Jesus tells the disciples that one day, Christians will be persecuted for following Him, but to not worry about what they'll say beforehand. Yet, in other places in Scripture, writing to a persecuted Church in Asia Minor, the apostle Peter, who was listening to Jesus when He spoke the words in the Gospel lesson, tells the people to always be prepared to give an account for the hope in them. (But to do so with "gentleness and reverence.")

Are these contradictions? I don't think so. Truth is a big thing and is applied in different ways depending on the context.

In the first set of passages mentioned above, the concern of both Malachi and Jesus is respect for God. Temples are respected when people actually worship God in them; that's what Malachi was saying. But temples shouldn't be the objects of our worship. Only God should be. That's what Jesus was saying.

Jesus was counseling His followers not to be afraid and to rely on God. Peter was counseling Christians to grow in their faith, including in their capacity to love those who persecute them; that's how they would be prepared to give an account for the eternal hope in them.

Christian faith is simple. It isn't simplistic.

4. In the mid-sixth century, Israel was overrun by the Babylonian empire, many of its people sent to Babylon as slaves, and the temple in Jerusalem destroyed. Later, the people were allowed to return. They were slow to rebuild the capital city or the temple, a scandalous circumstance which has been addressed, as mentioned above, by Nehemiah and Ezra. But even after the temple was built, God's people were spiritually lackadaisical. These are the circumstances addressed by Malachi.

5. Malachi isn't a proper name. It's a word that means My Messenger, which appears in the opening verse of the book.

6. Traditionally, the New Testament book of Second Thessalonians has been attributed to Paul. As I've explained before, in the ancient world, it was legitimate for someone operating in the school of thought of a revered teacher to write under that teacher's name. There are sufficient differences in nomenclature and word usage for some scholars to suspect that this book wasn't written by Paul. Others though point out that the book is too short to reach an authoritative conclusion about authorship. Nonetheless, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, the Church has seen the Word of God in this wonderful book. (For more on Thessalonica, go here.)

7. Opinion is also divided on what exactly lay behind the idleness of the Thessalonian Christians. Traditionally, it's been thought--and I'm inclined to agree with the thought--that the Thessalonian Christians were sort of a proto-Left Behind gang. According to this this school of thought, they were obsessed with Jesus' return and were convinced that it was imminent. They thought that because life in this world was ending soon, it was pointless to work. They became idle and a bunch of idle, busybodies.

Others say that the Thessalonian church were simply like the rest of the human race, prone to lazily going through life with little thought for living lives that express gratitude to God for life or life made new in Christ.

8. Jesus commends steadfast faith in Him, even in the face of the trials and persecutions He discusses. He also warns Christians against being obsessed with His return. As in the Thessalonian text, we're told to simply be faithful. A story is told, sometimes about Saint Augustine and at other times about Martin Luther, probably apocryphal. But it's a good story nonetheless. One of the great men is approached while hoeing his garden. "What would you do if you knew Jesus were coming back tomorrow?" the questioner asks. Without looking up from his work, it's said that the teacher replies, "Finish this row." If even Jesus was unaware of the hour of His return, it isn't for us to know. Our call is simply to be faithful while we live on this earth.