Impossible Righteousness...Forgiving Christ

[This message was shared during worship this past Sunday with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Matthew 5:21-37
I was baptized as an infant. 

As I was growing up, I loved going to church and I loved Jesus. 

In my pre-school and elementary school years, I broke all the Sunday School attendance records.

I was president of my third-grade Sunday School class. 

I starred in all the church plays. (I remember vividly playing the apostle Paul imprisoned with Silas, both of us shackled with construction paper chains!) 

My dad told Ann this past Thursday, “After we came home from church on Sundays, we had church again because Mark would re-preach the pastor’s sermon almost word for word.” 

My great-grandmother called me her “little preacher.” 

According to my pastor, I was the star pupil in Catechism class. When I got a 92 on an exam, he handed it back to me and said, “You could do better, Mark.” 

Here’s the deal: I believed in Jesus. 

To the extent that I was able to understand, when I heard His Word calling me to turn away from sins, I did that, asking for God’s forgiveness. 

And when I heard His Word, with its power to save and create faith, I believed.

But, as you know, when I was about fourteen, I stopped believing in Jesus. I was an atheist...for more than ten years. 

No trauma caused this change. I was just an adolescent who thought that science had somehow disproven God’s existence, as though knowing the answers to the what, when, and how of the universe somehow also answered the questions of its why and who. 

On top of that, my dad was working eighty hours a week, we had transferred to a different church to which none of us felt connected, and, I suppose, getting five kids ready for church was a mountain my folks found too difficult to climb. 

The upshot of it all was that I lost my faith. 

I no longer had a relationship with Jesus. 

I was dead, lost, just like the prodigal son, who knew about and had experienced the love of his father, but walked away from that relationship until he came to his senses and returned. He had been lost but was found. He was dead but was alive again. 

The amazing thing is that through the preaching and teaching of the Lutheran congregation that was Ann’s home church in Columbus, I heard the Law that convicted me of my sin and I heard the Gospel that brought me once more to faith in the crucified and risen Jesus. I was lost but was found. I was dead but was made alive.

Over the past two Sundays, as we’ve listened to Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, we’ve heard Him make a series of gracious declarative statements about us. He has conferred status on us that we do not deserve, but which He gives by grace through the faith in Him that His Word creates within us. 

“Blessed are you…” Jesus has told us. 

“You are the salt of the earth,” He has said. “You are the light in the world.” 

Elsewhere in the New Testament, we hear echoes of Jesus’ gracious words for Christian disciples: “...you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession...Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.” (1 Peter 2:9-10) 

And what do we do to get the incredible gift of life with God that u starts now and culminates in perfection in eternity? Nothing. 

As Ephesians 2:8 reminds us: “For it is by grace you have been saved through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God.”

But the Bible reminds us that, just like the Prodigal Son and just like Mark Daniels, it’s possible for Christians to walk away from God and the salvation He gives through Jesus. The apostle Paul tells the young pastor Timothy, “The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons.” (1 Timothy 4:1) 

There is evidence of the devil’s work in churches all around the world today--in those that say that God saves everyone no matter how contemptuous they may be of Christ or God’s Word as well as in those that say God only saves those who follow their rigid rules. 

Here’s the deal: When God saves us in Christ, we are saved. But God doesn’t hold believers in shackles. 

If we refuse to hear His Word calling us to repentance and faith, we erect a wall between God and ourselves. 

This is why Jesus warns, “...every kind of sin and slander can be forgiven, but blasphemy against the Spirit [that is, refusing to let the Holy Spirit convict us of sin or convince of us Christ’s power to save us] will not be forgiven…” (Matthew 12:31). 

God gives life. 

He declares you His own through faith in Jesus. 

But He will not stop you if you choose to walk away from life with Him.

All of this, I believe, lay in the background of Jesus’ words in today’s gospel lesson, Matthew 5:21-37. 

If almost all of Jesus’ words up to this point in the Sermon on the Mount have been Gospel--pure, undeserved grace, His words today are Law, showing us the depths of our sin and our need of His grace. 

At the end of last Sunday’s lesson, Jesus said, “...unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 5:20) And, we said that we have that righteousness through Jesus, Who covers those who repent and believe in Him with His righteousness. 

In today’s gospel lesson, Jesus shows us how high a standard for righteousness God has for human beings. 

He says that not only are we not to murder but that even anger against fellow Christians can be sinful. 

He says that to look at someone lustfully is a violation of the sixth commandment, “You shall not commit adultery.” 

He says that divorce apart from a spouse’s disloyalty is a sin. 

And He says that our truthfulness should be such that we needn’t resort to oaths. 

Quick poll, no need to raise hands, two questions: How many feel like you’ve been innocent of all these sins as God interprets them? 

And if you feel utterly innocent, the second question is this: How long have you been in living in denial about yourself? 

Truly, no human being measures up to the standards for purity of life and thought that we find in these words about the righteousness we need for entering the kingdom of heaven. 

This is what Scripture teaches. “There is no one righteous, not even one,” we’re told in Romans 3 and elsewhere in Scripture.

When I first began digging into God’s Word with a group at that Lutheran congregation in Columbus, I began to see the depths of my sin and rebellion against God. I wondered if I wasn’t doomed to separation from God, now and always. 

But I ran into passages of Scripture like this (listen carefully, please): 

God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation. (Romans 5:8-11)

If we take our cues from the world, accepting its standards, being pacified by its entertainments and rewards, relying on ourselves, following our own deceitful hearts, we will drift from God. 

But if we remain attentive to God’s Word, we will hear God’s call to repent--to turn from sin--and we’ll be saved by His gospel. Christ will transform us. He will make us new each day. 

This is the work God does in us when we read, study, and listen to His Word together and on our own, when we worship and receive the sacraments: God saves us from our sin and replaces it with the righteousness of Jesus. 

That’s grace! 

And for that, this old sinner says, “Thank You, God!” Amen

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

Pray (Part 4, The Disciple's Life)

[This is the fourth of a five-part series, The Disciple's Life, being shared on Wednesday nights with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, during Lent.]

1 Thessalonians 5:17
Luke 11:1-4

In Luke’s gospel, we’re told, “One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said to him, ‘Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples.’”

This is a strange passage for several reasons, I think.

One strange element is that, as faithful Biblical Jews, you’d think that Jesus’ disciples would need no instruction on prayer.

Another odd element here is the reason the unnamed disciple gives for asking Jesus to give instruction on prayer: because John the Baptist had taught his disciples, his students, how to pray.  Did the disciple think that Jesus had been remiss in not teaching them about prayer? Or was he motivated by competitive desire to keep up with John’s disciples?

Or was he simply impressed by the amount of time Jesus spent in prayer?

Or did he have a rising understanding of the fact that a disciple of Jesus should be a person of prayer?

We don’t know the answers to any of these questions, really.

But we do know that Jesus took the question seriously. The disciple invited Jesus to teach them on prayer and Jesus did.

Luke tells us: “He said to them, ‘When you pray, say: ‘Father, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us. And lead us not into temptation.’” (Luke 11:2-5)

We commonly use variants of these words of Jesus in our public prayer. And that’s a good thing because, as Luther observed, if we genuinely pray the petitions of the Lord’s Prayer, we will have prayed everything we are called to pray as Christians.

But I think that, as Christian disciples, we should also look at the Lord’s Prayer as a model for how a Christian is to pray, whenever we pray.

Often, we view prayer as presenting lists of requests to God. And God does want to hear our requests. That’s why, after teaching the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus goes on to say, “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” (Luke 11:9) We should never be afraid of bringing anything to God.

But the prayer Jesus teaches also shows us that God doesn’t want just our prayer lists. The God we know in Jesus Christ wants a relationship with those who confess that Jesus is Lord. Through Jesus, God gives us the privilege of knowing Him as our Father.

God wants to do something else in our praying. Eugene Peterson, the Presbyterian pastor and Old Testament scholar who created The Message translation of the Bible, has written of prayer: “Prayer is the way we work our way out of the comfortable but cramped world of self and into the spacious world of God.”

When we reach up to God in worship, praise, and thanksgiving--when we reach up to our Father in prayer, when we truly pray, God alters our perspectives on life, death, the world, eternity, ourselves, our sin, our sisters and brothers in Christ, and everything else.

In prayer, God seeks to change us. Prayer is a two-way street. In response to God’s accessibility to us purchased by Christ’s death on the cross, we reach out to Him. But, as we move toward God, He moves toward us.

And when that happens, those who are desperate enough, helpless enough, and trusting enough will find themselves changed by God. As Christians “pray continually” (1 Thessalonians 5:17), even when they offer up the same prayer petitions repeatedly, as we do when we pray the Lord’s Prayer, God will change what they mean when they pray them.

The more that we interact with God in authentic, humble, submissive prayer, the more God’s viewpoint and our viewpoint will meld.

God will use the prayer of faithful Christian disciples to stretch us toward heaven so that God’s basic project in our lives--making us more like Christ--will be advanced.

So, be careful how much you pray, how earnestly you pray. God may turn your world upside down.

You may become less concerned about your own desires and more concerned with God’s will.

You may become less afraid of what this life and this world may throw at you and more sure that nothing can separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus.

You may find yourself less impressed by the baubles of this world and more enamored with the riches of God’s gracious kingdom.

You may start letting go of your stranglehold on this world and instead, hold onto Christ with everything in you.

The petitions Jesus urges on us in His prayer are, if we let them do their work on us, bound to blow our cramped little worlds to bits.

Consider the petitions that Jesus teaches us in the Lord's Prayer.

“Hallowed be your name.” So much of our lives is about getting ahead in the world, about having good credit, about having a good reputation. But our greatest concern, Jesus says, should be honoring God’s name. Jesus implores us to ask God to set us free of our worry over “I, me, mine.”

Then Jesus says to pray, “Your kingdom come.” In this petition, we ask that the God we know in Christ would rule over us, that He would call the shots in our lives. Here, we give God the keys to our lives and we become passengers, not drivers.

Jesus teaches us to pray, “Give us each our daily bread.” You have to get to the third petition before Jesus tells us to pray for ourselves. And even then, He doesn’t teach us to pray for security, ease, happiness, or wealth; He says to pray only for what we need to live today. This is a declaration of complete trust in the God. What would our lives be like if we prayed that God would give us only what we need and free us from worrying about everything else? We would worry less, enjoy our blessings more, and be, in Saint Paul’s phrase, “hilarious givers.”*

Jesus then teaches us to pray, “Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us.” (Luke 11:4) Prayer without confession of sin is as meaningless as prayer without faith in Christ or an awareness of our utter need of God. Jesus warns us elsewhere, “...every kind of sin and slander can be forgiven, but blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven.” (Matthew 12:31) To blaspheme the Holy Spirit is to ignore Him when He is convicting us of a sin, to change the subject when, during our times of prayer, God is impressing upon us our need to repent. If we refuse to repent when the Holy Spirit is calling us to repent, we’re calling God a liar and we erect a wall between the grace of God and our lives. We must not take this petition lightly if we are to be Christ’s disciples. If the Holy Spirit convicts us for our sin, we need to repent.

Finally, Jesus teaches us to pray, “Lead us not into temptation.” James 1:13 warns us, “When tempted, no one should say, ‘God is tempting me.’ For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone…” So, what is Jesus teaching us to pray in this petition? Martin Luther says that Jesus is telling us to pray that God will “guard and protect us” from temptation, that we won’t be deceived by the temptations of “the devil, the world, and our sinful nature.” And, Luther says, in this petition we also ask God to prevent us from being deceived or led into “false belief, despair, and other great and shameful sins.”

Disciples pray.

Continually.

But as they do, they don’t try to change God.

Disciples pray, above all, to ask God to change them. To change us.

That takes courageous faith. May we never be afraid to truly, humbly, openly, expectantly pray.

More next week.

*Most English translations render the phrase in 2 Corinthians 9:7, as "cheerful givers." This is a good translation. But the Greek word translated as cheerful is ἱλαρός (hilaros) from which we get the English word hilarious.

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. You're invited to worship with us on Sunday mornings at 8:45 am and 11:00 am. We're located at 667 Miamisburg-Centerville Road, Centerville, Ohio 45459.]