[This is the journal entry from my quiet time with God today. I use the stop, look, listen, and respond format for my quiet time. I stop to confess sins, pray for people and concerns, and then ask God to show me the truth in His Word that He wants me to see and apply that day. Then I read at a chapter of Scripture. This year, I'm following a plan for reading the New Testament created by the Navigators. In this process, I look for the specific verse or verses in which God seems to be most communicating with me in the reading. I then spend time listening, seeking to discern what I believe God is telling me in that passage that has caught my attention. Then, I respond to the truth that I've prayerfully discerned in some way. Today, I looked at 1 John, chapter 1.]
Look: “If we claim that we have fellowship with Him and are walking in the darkness, we are lying and not doing the truth. But if we are walking in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin.” (1 John 1:6-7, Disciples Literal New Testament translation)
Darkness is that place that is outside of fellowship with the God we meet in Jesus. In the prologue to his gospel, John says of Jesus, God the Son Who came to share our human lives: “In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” (John 1:4-5, NIV)
Because we’re born in sin, born with an impulse to get our own ways, to “be like God” as Genesis puts it, we’re born in darkness. I may know the difference between right and wrong because God’s Law is written on my heart. But I still like darkness for several reasons, I think:
1. I don’t want to see my sinful impulse or the sins I commit because of it. I’d rather go on living in the blissful delusion that I’m a good guy, righteous, right with God.
2. I don’t want others to see that I’m not as good a person as I portray myself to the world as being. All too often, I value my appearance over my character. I can be one of those whitewashed tombs Jesus talks about.
3. I don’t want God, when I get around to thinking of Him, to see my sin. Like Adam and Eve, I want to hide from God. But of course, that’s impossible.
In the wilderness, when God’s Old Testament people saw the bright reflection of God in Moses, they begged not to be made to see God face to face. In the perfect presence of God, my imperfections become painfully clear. But when God came into our world in the person of Jesus, the Light invaded this dark planet and today, by the power of the Holy Spirit, the crucified and risen Jesus confronts me. He commands me to repent and to believe in Him so that I can be part of God’s eternal kingdom. In essence, He wants me to:
1. Own the dark places in which I like to live and the dark acts I’ve committed that I try to hide from Him. US Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis said famously about public wrongs, “Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman.” It’s equally true of what Jesus, the Light of the world, does for me when I come into His presence. I can see how desperately I need the forgiveness of God that is available through Jesus. I also can see the clearly-illuminated path to life with God, Jesus Himself.
2. See the perfection of God and thereby see my need to worship Him, not myself, not my desires, not my family, not my country. I’m to worship the God Who made the universe, revealed definitively in Jesus, alone. When Jesus uncupped His hand allowing three of His disciples to see Jesus in His divine perfection, the disciples did the only sensible thing there was to do, they bowed down and worshiped Jesus. In Jesus, I see the ever-new life that He offers to me each day as I follow Him. (Also here.)
According to John in the Bible verse that has my attention today, when I willingly come to the Light of Jesus, God gives me fellowship with all the other confessed sinners who make up Christ’s Church and Jesus’ blood, shed on the cross, washes me clean of my sin, of my preference for and addiction to the darkness.
Listen: Today, God is calling me to absolute honesty in my dealings with Him. He isn’t calling me to a moral perfection of which I am incapable. He’s calling me to own what I try to conceal from Him, to bring it into His Light so that He can set me free from the darkness, the sin, that will otherwise be an ever-bigger wall between Him and me.
John carries this idea forward in the next three verses of his letter: “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us.” (1 John 1:8-10)
I need to run to the Light, not away from Him!
Respond: Today, Lord, not as an exercise in self-abasement or self-recrimination, but from a desire to be renewed in You and Your grace, help me to bring all my darkness into Your presence. Help me to see the sin that clings to me. For the sake of Jesus and what He has done for me and the whole world, forgive me. Help me not to be afraid to walk in Your Light. Help me to see and live in the awesome love revealed in Jesus, a love that cares about me and calls me to live in Your bright kingdom now and always.
“Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts.See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting…” (Psalm 139:23-24)
In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen
Showing posts with label Matthew 23:27. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Matthew 23:27. Show all posts
Friday, September 27, 2019
Sunday, May 29, 2016
Are You Free?
Galatians 1:1-12
Freedom...Liberty.
These are words that get thrown around a lot on national holiday weekends like Memorial Day, when we honor those who have died in defense of our country. They get thrown around a lot during political campaigns too.
Ask the average American about the meaning of freedom or liberty and they might say something, “Freedom means doing or being whatever I want to do or be.”
But the Christian understanding is very different from the idea that freedom is doing whatever I want to do.
And the reason it's so different is this: If I am born in slavery to sin, then every action that comes from “doing whatever I want to do,” will be born not of any freedom I have, but from my slavery to sin.
Even my most altruistic actions can be tinged by thoughts like “I’m really a good person,” or “What’s in it for me?,” or “I scratch your back, you scratch mine.”
In other words, people who do whatever they want to do may not be free at all.
Don't believe me?
Ask the drug addict, or the alcoholic, or the person addicted to gambling, food, or pornography, when they're being honest, if they’re really free.
At a moment of weakeness and truth-telling, ask the person who steals, gossips, or commits adultery of their actions were born of a free will or if, instead, they're not born of a will that “is in bondage to sin” and cannot free itself.
I feel blessed and thankful to live in the United States of America. But even if I’m able to exercise every single freedom guaranteed by our system of government, I still won’t be free in the eyes of God or from the perspective of Christ. Even if I’m free to do anything I want to do, my actions will be dictated by sin.
And, as we all know, “the wages of sin is death” [Romans 6:23].
So, freedom doesn’t mean doing what we want. To we human beings, Proverbs 16:25 says, “there is a way that appears to be right, but in the end it leads to death.”
And freedom doesn’t mean doing what we feel like doing. The worst advice we can give someone is to follow their heart. “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” Jeremiah 17:9 reminds us.
Defining freedom as doing what we want to do is a dead end that leads us away from God, away from life, away from eternity, away from true kinship with other people. It leads to destruction, the devil, and to hell.
But there’s another definition of freedom.
It’s real freedom.
It’s not the freedom to do what the sin that shackles us tells us to do.
It’s the freedom that belongs to those who are moving toward becoming the people that our Creator made us to be.
In the Old Testament, King David confesses to God: “...you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb...My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place...Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.” [Psalm 139:13-17]
The God Who made us can set us free to be all we were made to be because, as our Maker, He knows exactly all that we can be.
This is freedom.
I once heard the true story of a man who used the freedom that many American citizens enjoy. He leveraged his intelligence, training, contacts, and mental, emotional, and physical stamina to become hugely successful. He had a large business in Michigan. On the way to his success, he lost his wife, his kids, and his soul. He was throwing a business-related party at the building from which he ruled his empire. “When you look at all of this,” a guest said to him, “you must feel proud.” “Actually,” the man replied in a rare moment of honesty, “when I look at all of this, it makes me sick.”
Some people might say that that man had lived in complete freedom--no bosses, no accountability, nothing to tie him down. It’s pretty clear when you read God’s Word that that wouldn’t be God’s assessment. Nor, apparently was it the ultimate assessment of that successful man.
The New Testament book of Galatians, which we’ll be delving into over the next few weeks is all about the freedom God can give to us, the freedom to be all that we were made to be. Galatians calls this “freedom in Christ.”
And it’s as relevant today as it was when Saint Paul first wrote the book to Christians in Galatia in about 49 AD. Most experts think that Galatia was a region in part of what we today call Turkey. Paul had founded churches in this region on an earlier mission trip.
But the letter, meant to be circulated among the Christians who worshiped and studied God’s Word together in small house churches, was prompted by a problem in those churches. The issue was freedom.
Please turn to our second lesson for today, Galatians 1:1-12. Take a look at verse 1: “Paul, an apostle—sent not from men nor by a man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead—and all the brothers and sisters with me, To the churches in Galatia: Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.”
Paul begins the letter in a way common to those times. When you and I write an email to someone today, we might say, “Dear Joe” or “Joe.” But in Paul’s day, you’d start out a letter to Joe by telling Joe who was sending the letter first. The opening greetings of letters those days were more like the tags we attach to Christmas gifts today: “From: Paul; To: Joe.”
In this opening though, Paul also moves quickly to establish that he isn’t just another guy writing to them. Paul points that he’s an “apostle,” a word that literally means “sent one.” Paul asserts that he was sent not by just anyone. I was “sent not from men nor by a man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father,” the latter of whom raised Jesus from the dead. By everything Paul writes in the simple opening words of this letter in five verses, he’s saying, “Look, Galatians, what you’re about to read isn’t from me, it’s from God! So, pay attention!”
Are you confident enough in your relationship with Jesus Christ to be able to talk to fellow Christians you love in that way?
Sometimes I am and sometimes I’m not.
But part of being free in Christ is being free to speak with others honestly and lovingly about the truth of God.
And, as followers of Jesus who accept the Bible as God's Word's, we possess the most important truth in the universe!
You’ve heard me quote Jesus’ words from John 14:6 before, but here they are again. Jesus says: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
If you had your Bibles with you and you were turned to John 14:6, I’d ask you to underline the word the in Jesus’ words: He is the way, the truth, and the life. And Jesus is the only way to a relationship with God the Father. “You can’t know God except through Me,” Jesus is telling us. “You can’t have the freedom for which you were made unless you follow Me.”
People need to know this truth!
People you know need to know this truth!
So, we should be as bold and loving in sharing it as Paul was. We shouldn't keep it to ourselves!
If people don’t know that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life--not just as head knowledge, but as the announcement of the only way to life, they will be enslaved to sin and separated from God forever.
Think of it: If by some happenstance, you came upon the cure for pancreatic cancer or AIDs, but thought, “I’d better not say anything. I don’t want to force a chance for new life on people,” you would be rightly regarded as monstrous.
If you have life and freedom from slavery through Christ to share with others, you have to share it. It would be monstrous to keep it to yourself, wouldn’t it?
We have begun the process of building a discipleship culture at Living Water. This is part of what Bishop John and our North American Lutheran Church are calling us to do, of course.
But, more importantly, Jesus calls us to be a congregation that makes disciples, not through programs, not through events, but through each us of sharing Christ’s truth boldly, lovingly, unapologetically, and relationally with the people in our lives, then inviting them to let us as individuals help them to know Jesus personally.
We need to ensure that every single disciple in Living Water who is willing to be used by God will be empowered by God’s Word to make other disciples, to speak the truth in love, to be accountable to other Christian sisters or brothers in our congregation, to live in the freedom that Jesus Christ died and rose to give us.
We need to stop worrying about what others say and just live in the freedom we have in Jesus Christ!
It was from this perspective of freedom that Paul wrote to the churches at Galatia.
Verse 6: “I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you to live in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel—which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let them be under God’s curse! As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let them be under God’s curse!”
Just as there is only one truth, God’s truth, and just as there’s only one way to life with God, Jesus, there’s also, Paul is saying, one Gospel.
Our word Gospel translates a word Paul and the other writers used in the New Testament Greek in which they wrote, euangelion. It means good news.
You all know the good news. It’s in John 3:16-18. Jesus gave the good news to a man named Nicodemus: “For 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. For 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.”
We can turn down the offer of new and everlasting life--the freedom that comes with being a child of God--by refusing to surrender to or believe in Jesus. People enslaved to sin are intrinsically inclined to make that choice of refusing to believe in Jesus.
But the good news is that we can be set free from sin, death, and the self-focus that leads to hell when we take the offer of grace and freedom given to us by the crucified and risen Jesus. Jesus sets us free to live different lives, free lives, with Him for eternity, starting now, today.
In 49 AD, the churches in Galatia were turning their backs on Jesus and freedom from Him. A group of Jewish Christians had come to them and basically said, “What Jesus did on the cross and from the tomb is cool, but if you want life with God, you need to do all the ritual and sacrificial law. You have to get circumcised and be observant Jews if you want Jesus to save you.”
Ever since Adam and Eve bit into the forbidden fruit, human beings have tried to turn their relationship with God into a business transaction: If they were good enough...if they showed up for worship enough...if they plunked enough money in the offerings, they could bargain with God. God would have to hold up His end of the bargain and these outwardly religious people felt, like Americans, free to do whatever they wanted to do.
Jesus scorned the thinking of people like these. He scorns it still. People who buy into this kind of religious thinking were, He once said, like “whitewashed tombs,” righteous looking on the outside who felt free to shaft their parents, neighbors, the poor, and others [Matthew 23:27].
“Deal-making righteousness” (which is no righteousness at all) appeals to our human ego. It makes us feel like we're in control. It makes us feel free. But it really makes us slaves to the things of this world, things that are bound to die.
Paul was concerned that the Galatians were turning away from their freedom in Christ, back to the false freedom of religious bravado and pride, a false freedom that leads to death.
Paul tells them--and us, whenever the world’s idea of freedom tempts us to do things our way rather than Christ’s way--to settle in. He’s about to remind them (and us) of the true Gospel message, the message of true freedom that no human being invented, but comes to us only “through a revelation of Jesus Christ” [verse 12].
And it’s to Paul that we’ll be listening over the next several weeks so that we too, can know the freedom Jesus died and rose to give to those who follow Him. Amen
Freedom...Liberty.
These are words that get thrown around a lot on national holiday weekends like Memorial Day, when we honor those who have died in defense of our country. They get thrown around a lot during political campaigns too.
Ask the average American about the meaning of freedom or liberty and they might say something, “Freedom means doing or being whatever I want to do or be.”
But the Christian understanding is very different from the idea that freedom is doing whatever I want to do.
And the reason it's so different is this: If I am born in slavery to sin, then every action that comes from “doing whatever I want to do,” will be born not of any freedom I have, but from my slavery to sin.
Even my most altruistic actions can be tinged by thoughts like “I’m really a good person,” or “What’s in it for me?,” or “I scratch your back, you scratch mine.”
In other words, people who do whatever they want to do may not be free at all.
Don't believe me?
Ask the drug addict, or the alcoholic, or the person addicted to gambling, food, or pornography, when they're being honest, if they’re really free.
At a moment of weakeness and truth-telling, ask the person who steals, gossips, or commits adultery of their actions were born of a free will or if, instead, they're not born of a will that “is in bondage to sin” and cannot free itself.
I feel blessed and thankful to live in the United States of America. But even if I’m able to exercise every single freedom guaranteed by our system of government, I still won’t be free in the eyes of God or from the perspective of Christ. Even if I’m free to do anything I want to do, my actions will be dictated by sin.
And, as we all know, “the wages of sin is death” [Romans 6:23].
So, freedom doesn’t mean doing what we want. To we human beings, Proverbs 16:25 says, “there is a way that appears to be right, but in the end it leads to death.”
And freedom doesn’t mean doing what we feel like doing. The worst advice we can give someone is to follow their heart. “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” Jeremiah 17:9 reminds us.
Defining freedom as doing what we want to do is a dead end that leads us away from God, away from life, away from eternity, away from true kinship with other people. It leads to destruction, the devil, and to hell.
But there’s another definition of freedom.
It’s real freedom.
It’s not the freedom to do what the sin that shackles us tells us to do.
It’s the freedom that belongs to those who are moving toward becoming the people that our Creator made us to be.
In the Old Testament, King David confesses to God: “...you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb...My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place...Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.” [Psalm 139:13-17]
The God Who made us can set us free to be all we were made to be because, as our Maker, He knows exactly all that we can be.
This is freedom.
I once heard the true story of a man who used the freedom that many American citizens enjoy. He leveraged his intelligence, training, contacts, and mental, emotional, and physical stamina to become hugely successful. He had a large business in Michigan. On the way to his success, he lost his wife, his kids, and his soul. He was throwing a business-related party at the building from which he ruled his empire. “When you look at all of this,” a guest said to him, “you must feel proud.” “Actually,” the man replied in a rare moment of honesty, “when I look at all of this, it makes me sick.”
Some people might say that that man had lived in complete freedom--no bosses, no accountability, nothing to tie him down. It’s pretty clear when you read God’s Word that that wouldn’t be God’s assessment. Nor, apparently was it the ultimate assessment of that successful man.
The New Testament book of Galatians, which we’ll be delving into over the next few weeks is all about the freedom God can give to us, the freedom to be all that we were made to be. Galatians calls this “freedom in Christ.”
And it’s as relevant today as it was when Saint Paul first wrote the book to Christians in Galatia in about 49 AD. Most experts think that Galatia was a region in part of what we today call Turkey. Paul had founded churches in this region on an earlier mission trip.
But the letter, meant to be circulated among the Christians who worshiped and studied God’s Word together in small house churches, was prompted by a problem in those churches. The issue was freedom.
Please turn to our second lesson for today, Galatians 1:1-12. Take a look at verse 1: “Paul, an apostle—sent not from men nor by a man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead—and all the brothers and sisters with me, To the churches in Galatia: Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.”
Paul begins the letter in a way common to those times. When you and I write an email to someone today, we might say, “Dear Joe” or “Joe.” But in Paul’s day, you’d start out a letter to Joe by telling Joe who was sending the letter first. The opening greetings of letters those days were more like the tags we attach to Christmas gifts today: “From: Paul; To: Joe.”
In this opening though, Paul also moves quickly to establish that he isn’t just another guy writing to them. Paul points that he’s an “apostle,” a word that literally means “sent one.” Paul asserts that he was sent not by just anyone. I was “sent not from men nor by a man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father,” the latter of whom raised Jesus from the dead. By everything Paul writes in the simple opening words of this letter in five verses, he’s saying, “Look, Galatians, what you’re about to read isn’t from me, it’s from God! So, pay attention!”
Are you confident enough in your relationship with Jesus Christ to be able to talk to fellow Christians you love in that way?
Sometimes I am and sometimes I’m not.
But part of being free in Christ is being free to speak with others honestly and lovingly about the truth of God.
And, as followers of Jesus who accept the Bible as God's Word's, we possess the most important truth in the universe!
You’ve heard me quote Jesus’ words from John 14:6 before, but here they are again. Jesus says: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
If you had your Bibles with you and you were turned to John 14:6, I’d ask you to underline the word the in Jesus’ words: He is the way, the truth, and the life. And Jesus is the only way to a relationship with God the Father. “You can’t know God except through Me,” Jesus is telling us. “You can’t have the freedom for which you were made unless you follow Me.”
People need to know this truth!
People you know need to know this truth!
So, we should be as bold and loving in sharing it as Paul was. We shouldn't keep it to ourselves!
If people don’t know that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life--not just as head knowledge, but as the announcement of the only way to life, they will be enslaved to sin and separated from God forever.
Think of it: If by some happenstance, you came upon the cure for pancreatic cancer or AIDs, but thought, “I’d better not say anything. I don’t want to force a chance for new life on people,” you would be rightly regarded as monstrous.
If you have life and freedom from slavery through Christ to share with others, you have to share it. It would be monstrous to keep it to yourself, wouldn’t it?
We have begun the process of building a discipleship culture at Living Water. This is part of what Bishop John and our North American Lutheran Church are calling us to do, of course.
But, more importantly, Jesus calls us to be a congregation that makes disciples, not through programs, not through events, but through each us of sharing Christ’s truth boldly, lovingly, unapologetically, and relationally with the people in our lives, then inviting them to let us as individuals help them to know Jesus personally.
We need to ensure that every single disciple in Living Water who is willing to be used by God will be empowered by God’s Word to make other disciples, to speak the truth in love, to be accountable to other Christian sisters or brothers in our congregation, to live in the freedom that Jesus Christ died and rose to give us.
We need to stop worrying about what others say and just live in the freedom we have in Jesus Christ!
It was from this perspective of freedom that Paul wrote to the churches at Galatia.
Verse 6: “I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you to live in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel—which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let them be under God’s curse! As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let them be under God’s curse!”
Just as there is only one truth, God’s truth, and just as there’s only one way to life with God, Jesus, there’s also, Paul is saying, one Gospel.
Our word Gospel translates a word Paul and the other writers used in the New Testament Greek in which they wrote, euangelion. It means good news.
You all know the good news. It’s in John 3:16-18. Jesus gave the good news to a man named Nicodemus: “For 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. For 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.”
We can turn down the offer of new and everlasting life--the freedom that comes with being a child of God--by refusing to surrender to or believe in Jesus. People enslaved to sin are intrinsically inclined to make that choice of refusing to believe in Jesus.
But the good news is that we can be set free from sin, death, and the self-focus that leads to hell when we take the offer of grace and freedom given to us by the crucified and risen Jesus. Jesus sets us free to live different lives, free lives, with Him for eternity, starting now, today.
In 49 AD, the churches in Galatia were turning their backs on Jesus and freedom from Him. A group of Jewish Christians had come to them and basically said, “What Jesus did on the cross and from the tomb is cool, but if you want life with God, you need to do all the ritual and sacrificial law. You have to get circumcised and be observant Jews if you want Jesus to save you.”
Ever since Adam and Eve bit into the forbidden fruit, human beings have tried to turn their relationship with God into a business transaction: If they were good enough...if they showed up for worship enough...if they plunked enough money in the offerings, they could bargain with God. God would have to hold up His end of the bargain and these outwardly religious people felt, like Americans, free to do whatever they wanted to do.
Jesus scorned the thinking of people like these. He scorns it still. People who buy into this kind of religious thinking were, He once said, like “whitewashed tombs,” righteous looking on the outside who felt free to shaft their parents, neighbors, the poor, and others [Matthew 23:27].
“Deal-making righteousness” (which is no righteousness at all) appeals to our human ego. It makes us feel like we're in control. It makes us feel free. But it really makes us slaves to the things of this world, things that are bound to die.
Paul was concerned that the Galatians were turning away from their freedom in Christ, back to the false freedom of religious bravado and pride, a false freedom that leads to death.
Paul tells them--and us, whenever the world’s idea of freedom tempts us to do things our way rather than Christ’s way--to settle in. He’s about to remind them (and us) of the true Gospel message, the message of true freedom that no human being invented, but comes to us only “through a revelation of Jesus Christ” [verse 12].
And it’s to Paul that we’ll be listening over the next several weeks so that we too, can know the freedom Jesus died and rose to give to those who follow Him. Amen
Monday, May 13, 2013
Unity for a Purpose
[This was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, during both worship services yesterday.]
John 17:20-26
In today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus prays, shortly before His arrest and execution, for unity between God and the people who have been won to faith in Christ and unity among those who confess that Jesus is “the way, and the truth, and the life.”
Beginning at verse 20, Jesus prays: “I do not pray for these alone [meaning the disciples who were with Him in first century Judea], but also for those who will believe in Me through their word [Jesus is praying for us here; we have come to believe in Him through the apostles’ word about Jesus.]; that they may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us...”
What is the unity among Christians for which Jesus prays?
Well, first of all, let's remember one thing it is not. It is not coerced uniformity. I knew a man who made this brag about his marriage: “One of the things I’m proudest of is that we’ve been married more than thirty years and we’ve never had one disagreement.” He really was proud of that. But I later learned that his wife had been taking antidepressants and anti-anxiety medications and seeing a counselor for years. He was happy; she was a wreck. That husband and wife didn’t seem to be “one” to me. Unity is not coerced uniformity.
Also, the unity for which Jesus prays for His Church does not mean that Christians will never disagree or get upset with one another. In fact, since the Church is Christ’s body in the world, the group of people given the most important mission in the world--making disciples of all nations--conflict is to be expected.
Jesus publicly disagreed with Pharisees and Saducees for valuing their religion over having a personal relationship with God.
He upbraided His fellow Jews for refusing to believe in Him, though He had come into the world because God loved the world and then died and rose so that all who turn from sin and believe in Him can have eternal life with God.
He called His own disciple, Peter, a Satan for trying to keep Jesus from following God’s plan for Jesus’ cross and resurrection.
Paul and Barnabas, as well as Paul and Peter, had raging arguments.
Sometimes, in the Church, as in our marriages and friendships, it’s only through the clash of ideas that the truth becomes clearer. But that need not threaten unity.
The unity for which Jesus prays is also not about denominational organizations or even our congregations.
As Lutherans, we believe that the earthly institutional Church is not to be confused with Christ’s Church, the body of Christ that exists in both heaven and earth.
In Luther’s Two Kingdoms understanding of how God rules--you remember, the kingdoms of the earth that are ruled through laws, rules, and coercion and the kingdom of God which is ruled by grace among those who believe in Jesus Christ--the institutional Church is not part of the kingdom of God. It’s one of the kingdoms of the earth.
The real Church, says Article 7 of The Augsburg Confession “is to remain forever.” Notice, it's not our buildings, candlesticks, robes, organs, hymnbooks, fellowship halls, office equipment, parsonages, parking lots, and so on that will remain forever. All of those things will one day be destroyed to make way for a new heaven and a new earth, but the Church will remain forever. Article 7 goes on to say that the Church “is the congregation of saints...in which the Gospel is purely taught and the Sacraments are correctly administered.” “For the true unity of the Church,” the Confession then says, “it is enough to agree about the doctrine of the Gospel and the administration of the Sacraments.”
When agreement about the Gospel of new life through Jesus and agreement about the administration of Holy Baptism and Holy Communion exist, along with the commitment to sharing Christ with the world that flows from that agreement, then we begin to experience the unity for which Jesus prays.
I enjoy getting together with Christians of other denominations and heritage. That’s been part of my faith journey. I was baptized in an evangelical Friends Church and was confirmed in a Methodist Church. A Roman Catholic priest preached at my ordination service. He and a Nazarene pastor joined my own Lutheran pastor in laying on hands when I was ordained. I’ve participated in and led prayer and study groups with Methodists, Mennonites, Baptists, Episcopalians, and Pentecostals. I served on or chaired five committees for the Billy Graham Mission in Cincinnati back in 2002, working with folks from every Christian faith tradition. Since coming to Logan, I’ve participated in a number of multi-denominational prayer services, including one just a few weeks ago.
We can and should affirm that Christians of other traditions have Jesus and have eternal life. We can pray with them. We can praise God with them. We can join them in serving our community, as we do through the CHAP emergency food bank and will likely increasingly do through the Inspire shelter for the homeless.
We must avoid the sin of denominationalism, thinking that we have an exclusive claim to God’s truth.
But there is a place for our denominations. As Lutherans, we want the Church to be united. But we have disagreements on fundamental aspects of the Christian faith with our sisters and brothers in Christ in other traditions.
So, we continue to proclaim the good news of new life by God’s grace through faith in the crucified and risen Jesus as we understand it and pray for that day when unity goes beyond institutional affiliations or legalistic checklists of cooperative ventures.
We pray for that day when the whole Church on earth will be united in the pure Gospel and the right use of the Sacraments. And like Martin Luther before us, we will offer to gladly admit our errors and any straying from God's Word if it can be shown to us.
Of course, the unity of an individual congregation can sometimes seem to be threatened over disagreements, too. But we know from other relationships that disagreements aren’t unhealthy. Presbyterian pastor and writer Charlie Shedd once told about a fierce argument he had with his wife Martha one morning. He left home angry. He came back several hours later to an empty house and a note. “Dear Charlie,” it said, “I hate you. Love, Martha.”
Love allows for a little neurosis in those we love and in ourselves. As the sinless Savior Jesus loves and forgives us despite our faults, He makes it possible for us to love and forgive our sisters and brothers in Christ despite theirs.
Of course, Christ doesn’t want us to be united just so we can sit around being happy about our unity. Jesus has a particular purpose in praying for our unity.
Look at verse 23. There, Jesus prays, “...that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me.”
The unity for which Jesus prays has one purpose then: to empower us and lend us the credibility with the world to tell others about Jesus Christ.
I’ve known many churches whose members were so content with each other that they never thought about welcoming others into their fellowship. Listen: A truly united church loves nothing more than making disciples. Members of united churches love telling the spiritually disconnected and lost about the new life that only comes from Jesus Christ, and calling all our fellow sinners to “come and see Jesus Christ.”
The Church is the fellowship of the saved, reaching out to those who are still lost. We reach out in the passionate hope that those not connected to Jesus will be reached by the amazing grace God extends when repentant sinners believe in Jesus Christ!
In John 20:30-31, John explains why he wrote his gospel: “And truly Jesus did many other signs in the presence of His disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name.”
A truly united church, like John, wants to so present Jesus to others that they will come to believe in Him and so have eternal life with God.
A united church has the salvation of the lost as its animating passion and purpose, the very reason for its existence!
Jesus prays for our unity so that the world we touch and reach out to will come to believe in Jesus Christ, the only One Who can give human beings forgiveness of sin and the new life that He died and rose to give to those who believe in Him.
If Christians live in unity for any other purpose, they may be nice people; but they are not a church.
One last thing to note about the unity of the Church is that true unity can’t be manufactured by us. We saints who are also sinners are incapable of making a resolution to be united.
Sometimes, I have our Catechism students scatter to different parts of a room and pretend that a Bible I place on a table is Jesus. Then I tell them to walk toward Jesus.
You know what happens? As they draw closer to Jesus, they also draw closer to one another.
As we draw closer to Jesus, we grow closer to our fellow Christians. We see them as imperfect AND loved people, just like us, all of us in need of daily repentance and of the grace of God given in Christ that can daily make us new again.
Jesus has to pray that His Church will be one with God and one another because Jesus knows we can’t manufacture or coerce our unity; unity is a byproduct of a people who turn their eyes on Jesus.
As we pray, read Scripture, receive the Sacraments, and serve others with a focus on Jesus, our hearts will be more dialed into others, not just ourselves. Words like, “I’m sorry. I was wrong,” will be spoken among us. And more people will understand that they too have been transformed by Jesus to be part of His priesthood of all believers, each with ministries to the Church and to the world.
All of which leads us to May 19.
I cannot tell you how to vote on the question of joining the North American Lutheran Church and leaving the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America next Sunday.
You must decide for yourself as you pray and study God’s Word.
But I do know that a humanly-created unity based on never having differences of opinion is not the unity Jesus wants us to have.
Nor is Christian unity necessarily about affiliation with a particular humanly-created denominational structure (be it the NALC or the ELCA) or with a particular humanly-created congregational corporation.
True Christian unity is rooted in a common belief in Jesus Christ as the way, the truth, and the life, in a common belief that it is only by grace through a faith in Christ that includes repentance and surrender to Jesus. True Christian unity is also rooted in a common belief that in Holy Baptism and Holy Communion, God acts (we don't act, God acts) in our lives to bring grace, forgiveness, and life. And true Christian unity is also rooted in a common commitment to sharing these things with fellow sinners who will be eternally separated from God unless Christians care enough to share the truth of both God’s law and of God’s promise of new life in Christ.
Let the unity that Jesus prays for guide you in your decision on how to vote. Put your decision in Christ’s hands and know that, whatever you decide, God loves you and that I too truly love every member of this congregation. Amen
John 17:20-26
In today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus prays, shortly before His arrest and execution, for unity between God and the people who have been won to faith in Christ and unity among those who confess that Jesus is “the way, and the truth, and the life.”
Beginning at verse 20, Jesus prays: “I do not pray for these alone [meaning the disciples who were with Him in first century Judea], but also for those who will believe in Me through their word [Jesus is praying for us here; we have come to believe in Him through the apostles’ word about Jesus.]; that they may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us...”
What is the unity among Christians for which Jesus prays?
Well, first of all, let's remember one thing it is not. It is not coerced uniformity. I knew a man who made this brag about his marriage: “One of the things I’m proudest of is that we’ve been married more than thirty years and we’ve never had one disagreement.” He really was proud of that. But I later learned that his wife had been taking antidepressants and anti-anxiety medications and seeing a counselor for years. He was happy; she was a wreck. That husband and wife didn’t seem to be “one” to me. Unity is not coerced uniformity.
Also, the unity for which Jesus prays for His Church does not mean that Christians will never disagree or get upset with one another. In fact, since the Church is Christ’s body in the world, the group of people given the most important mission in the world--making disciples of all nations--conflict is to be expected.
Jesus publicly disagreed with Pharisees and Saducees for valuing their religion over having a personal relationship with God.
He upbraided His fellow Jews for refusing to believe in Him, though He had come into the world because God loved the world and then died and rose so that all who turn from sin and believe in Him can have eternal life with God.
He called His own disciple, Peter, a Satan for trying to keep Jesus from following God’s plan for Jesus’ cross and resurrection.
Paul and Barnabas, as well as Paul and Peter, had raging arguments.
Sometimes, in the Church, as in our marriages and friendships, it’s only through the clash of ideas that the truth becomes clearer. But that need not threaten unity.
The unity for which Jesus prays is also not about denominational organizations or even our congregations.
As Lutherans, we believe that the earthly institutional Church is not to be confused with Christ’s Church, the body of Christ that exists in both heaven and earth.
In Luther’s Two Kingdoms understanding of how God rules--you remember, the kingdoms of the earth that are ruled through laws, rules, and coercion and the kingdom of God which is ruled by grace among those who believe in Jesus Christ--the institutional Church is not part of the kingdom of God. It’s one of the kingdoms of the earth.
The real Church, says Article 7 of The Augsburg Confession “is to remain forever.” Notice, it's not our buildings, candlesticks, robes, organs, hymnbooks, fellowship halls, office equipment, parsonages, parking lots, and so on that will remain forever. All of those things will one day be destroyed to make way for a new heaven and a new earth, but the Church will remain forever. Article 7 goes on to say that the Church “is the congregation of saints...in which the Gospel is purely taught and the Sacraments are correctly administered.” “For the true unity of the Church,” the Confession then says, “it is enough to agree about the doctrine of the Gospel and the administration of the Sacraments.”
When agreement about the Gospel of new life through Jesus and agreement about the administration of Holy Baptism and Holy Communion exist, along with the commitment to sharing Christ with the world that flows from that agreement, then we begin to experience the unity for which Jesus prays.
I enjoy getting together with Christians of other denominations and heritage. That’s been part of my faith journey. I was baptized in an evangelical Friends Church and was confirmed in a Methodist Church. A Roman Catholic priest preached at my ordination service. He and a Nazarene pastor joined my own Lutheran pastor in laying on hands when I was ordained. I’ve participated in and led prayer and study groups with Methodists, Mennonites, Baptists, Episcopalians, and Pentecostals. I served on or chaired five committees for the Billy Graham Mission in Cincinnati back in 2002, working with folks from every Christian faith tradition. Since coming to Logan, I’ve participated in a number of multi-denominational prayer services, including one just a few weeks ago.
We can and should affirm that Christians of other traditions have Jesus and have eternal life. We can pray with them. We can praise God with them. We can join them in serving our community, as we do through the CHAP emergency food bank and will likely increasingly do through the Inspire shelter for the homeless.
We must avoid the sin of denominationalism, thinking that we have an exclusive claim to God’s truth.
But there is a place for our denominations. As Lutherans, we want the Church to be united. But we have disagreements on fundamental aspects of the Christian faith with our sisters and brothers in Christ in other traditions.
So, we continue to proclaim the good news of new life by God’s grace through faith in the crucified and risen Jesus as we understand it and pray for that day when unity goes beyond institutional affiliations or legalistic checklists of cooperative ventures.
We pray for that day when the whole Church on earth will be united in the pure Gospel and the right use of the Sacraments. And like Martin Luther before us, we will offer to gladly admit our errors and any straying from God's Word if it can be shown to us.
Of course, the unity of an individual congregation can sometimes seem to be threatened over disagreements, too. But we know from other relationships that disagreements aren’t unhealthy. Presbyterian pastor and writer Charlie Shedd once told about a fierce argument he had with his wife Martha one morning. He left home angry. He came back several hours later to an empty house and a note. “Dear Charlie,” it said, “I hate you. Love, Martha.”
Love allows for a little neurosis in those we love and in ourselves. As the sinless Savior Jesus loves and forgives us despite our faults, He makes it possible for us to love and forgive our sisters and brothers in Christ despite theirs.
Of course, Christ doesn’t want us to be united just so we can sit around being happy about our unity. Jesus has a particular purpose in praying for our unity.
Look at verse 23. There, Jesus prays, “...that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me.”
The unity for which Jesus prays has one purpose then: to empower us and lend us the credibility with the world to tell others about Jesus Christ.
I’ve known many churches whose members were so content with each other that they never thought about welcoming others into their fellowship. Listen: A truly united church loves nothing more than making disciples. Members of united churches love telling the spiritually disconnected and lost about the new life that only comes from Jesus Christ, and calling all our fellow sinners to “come and see Jesus Christ.”
The Church is the fellowship of the saved, reaching out to those who are still lost. We reach out in the passionate hope that those not connected to Jesus will be reached by the amazing grace God extends when repentant sinners believe in Jesus Christ!
In John 20:30-31, John explains why he wrote his gospel: “And truly Jesus did many other signs in the presence of His disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name.”
A truly united church, like John, wants to so present Jesus to others that they will come to believe in Him and so have eternal life with God.
A united church has the salvation of the lost as its animating passion and purpose, the very reason for its existence!
Jesus prays for our unity so that the world we touch and reach out to will come to believe in Jesus Christ, the only One Who can give human beings forgiveness of sin and the new life that He died and rose to give to those who believe in Him.
If Christians live in unity for any other purpose, they may be nice people; but they are not a church.
One last thing to note about the unity of the Church is that true unity can’t be manufactured by us. We saints who are also sinners are incapable of making a resolution to be united.
Sometimes, I have our Catechism students scatter to different parts of a room and pretend that a Bible I place on a table is Jesus. Then I tell them to walk toward Jesus.
You know what happens? As they draw closer to Jesus, they also draw closer to one another.
As we draw closer to Jesus, we grow closer to our fellow Christians. We see them as imperfect AND loved people, just like us, all of us in need of daily repentance and of the grace of God given in Christ that can daily make us new again.
Jesus has to pray that His Church will be one with God and one another because Jesus knows we can’t manufacture or coerce our unity; unity is a byproduct of a people who turn their eyes on Jesus.
As we pray, read Scripture, receive the Sacraments, and serve others with a focus on Jesus, our hearts will be more dialed into others, not just ourselves. Words like, “I’m sorry. I was wrong,” will be spoken among us. And more people will understand that they too have been transformed by Jesus to be part of His priesthood of all believers, each with ministries to the Church and to the world.
All of which leads us to May 19.
I cannot tell you how to vote on the question of joining the North American Lutheran Church and leaving the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America next Sunday.
You must decide for yourself as you pray and study God’s Word.
But I do know that a humanly-created unity based on never having differences of opinion is not the unity Jesus wants us to have.
Nor is Christian unity necessarily about affiliation with a particular humanly-created denominational structure (be it the NALC or the ELCA) or with a particular humanly-created congregational corporation.
True Christian unity is rooted in a common belief in Jesus Christ as the way, the truth, and the life, in a common belief that it is only by grace through a faith in Christ that includes repentance and surrender to Jesus. True Christian unity is also rooted in a common belief that in Holy Baptism and Holy Communion, God acts (we don't act, God acts) in our lives to bring grace, forgiveness, and life. And true Christian unity is also rooted in a common commitment to sharing these things with fellow sinners who will be eternally separated from God unless Christians care enough to share the truth of both God’s law and of God’s promise of new life in Christ.
Let the unity that Jesus prays for guide you in your decision on how to vote. Put your decision in Christ’s hands and know that, whatever you decide, God loves you and that I too truly love every member of this congregation. Amen
Friday, February 19, 2010
True Piety, the Lifestyle God Rewards (Ash Wednesday Sermon)
[This was shared during Ash Wednesday worship at Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, on February 17.]Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21; Psalm 51
“Beware,” Jesus says at the beginning of this evening’s Gospel lesson, “of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven.”
Piety, you know, is a blanket term for acts of devotion toward God. In our lesson, Jesus talks about three different acts of piety: almsgiving (that’s providing monetary and material aid to the poor); praying; and fasting. Good Jews were to do these things in Jesus’ day. They are to do them still today.
And, by His words to us tonight, we see that Jesus presumes that good Christians will do them as well. Notice what Jesus says: “Whenever you give alms…,” not “If you give alms…” “Whenever you pray…,” not “If you pray…” “Whenever you fast…,” not “If you fast…”
As unpopular or as disdained as the word may be, followers of Jesus Christ, you and I are called to strive living pious lives. We're to engage in disciplined devotion to God. That means, among other things, giving to the poor, praying, and fasting. It also means worshiping regularly, sharing our faith in Jesus with others, serving our neighbors, and studying God’s Word. Disciplines like these need to become habits for us.
But, Jesus tells us, we need to watch out for our motives in adopting them.
At a seminar, I once heard the pastor of a megachurch lamenting the motives of a number of people who joined his congregation. The congregation wasn’t just large (20,000 worshiping there every weekend), its members also included a number of wealthy business people. “Our church has become a place for people on the make to network,” I recollect the pastor saying. “I watch them exchanging business cards and I realize that the only reason many come to church is to see and be seen by others.” This guy also said, “Whatever their motives, I trust that, because with God all things are possible, the Word of God will do its stuff and they might find God changing their motives for worshiping every week.” Yet, it makes that pastor sad that so many of the thousands who worship at his church--among them, some of the most regular attenders--are just there to look good. “Beware,” Jesus says, “of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them.”
You all are good enough Lutherans to know that no one’s motives are entirely clean and faultless.
Christians are, simultaneously, saints and sinners, forgiven sinners who trust in Jesus alone for our salvation.
This side of eternity, none of us engage in any otherwise commendable act of piety with absolutely pure motives. But Jesus warns us tonight not to be hypocrites in doing these pious things.
The word hypocrite that Jesus uses is the English version of a Greek word: ὑποκριτής (hupokrites). Hupokrites in ancient times was the term for an actor. In ancient Greek and Roman theater, actors wore masks. The word, hypocrite came to be used for people who strive to look one way to the world, but are really very different under their masks.
“You may be able to fool other people behind the masks you wear,” Jesus is telling us tonight. “You may fool people into thinking of you as a person of faith, when in fact, you just want to create that impression. But you can’t fool God!”
Our acts of piety—including receiving the imposition of ashes on our foreheads on Ash Wednesday—are worthless if they’re just masks we wear.
If we come forward for the ashes, yet don’t really believe that we’re finite mortals who need God or sinners who need forgiveness, who are we fooling? Other people? Ourselves? God?
Our acts of piety are great, but no good if they’re masks. To God, they’re just perfume on a cesspool, lipstick on a pig, or, as Jesus Himself once put it in describing the hypocrisy of the Pharisees, “whitewashed tombs.”
Psalm 51, which we read together earlier, has been attributed to King David. He wrote it, the Old Testament tells us, after the prophet Nathan confronted David for two sins which David had unrepentantly committed. David thought he’d successfully escaped responsibility for these sins: adultery with another man’s wife and the arranged murder his lover’s husband.
The mask of piety that David wore either fooled the people of Israel or they were so impressed or intimidated by David’s power that they said nothing.
But God prompted Nathan to call his king to repentance. David, the most powerful person in Israel, could have simply arranged for Nathan to die. It wouldn’t have been the first time or the last that a ruler covered up his sins with another one.
But, as the psalm shows us, David repented. He confessed his sins. He turned away from them, disavowing them. He asked God to create a new heart within him and to align his life with God’s Spirit.
In other words, David repudiated his own hypocrisy. He took off the mask. He knew that this was all God asks of us: to be real, to be authentic, to admit our sins, to acknowledge our need of God’s help to live as truly human beings. David put it this way in his prayer to God: “You desire truth in the inward being.”
David knew that when the focus of our piety is on God and not on ourselves or the esteem of others, the walls between God and us, between us and joyful living tumble down.
In our Gospel lesson, Jesus says that those who practice authenticity rather than hypocrisy in their devotion to God receive one reward, while the hypocrites get another.
Jesus isn’t saying that we earn eternity.
He is saying that we should aim higher than we are prone to do.
The fact is that, spiritually, we always get what we aim for.
The esteem of others and a comfortable life derived from pleasing the world can come to those for whom those things are important.
But on the day you and I see Jesus face to face, these things will be of no value.
Better to make our aim to connect with and surrender to God!
Then, we’ll not only enter eternity with Christ, Christ will also enter our lives today.
Authentic connection with the God we know in Jesus pays the greatest rewards, now and in eternity.
Make an authentic, honest relationship with Christ your aim and all the best things which God, our Maker and Savior, has in mind for us, will come to be. Amen
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