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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This has always been so! 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And how do we do that? 

We don’t. We don't do anything!

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

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

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

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

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

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

That’s why Holy Baptism is so important. 

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

Ambition

[This is the journal entry for my quiet time with God today. I hope that you'll find it helpful if you wrestle with the same temptations and sins with which I daily wrestle. To see how I approach my quiet time with God, read this.]

Look: “41 When the ten heard about this, they became indignant with James and John. 42 Jesus called them together and said, ‘You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. 43 Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, 44 and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. 45 For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.’” (Mark 10:41-45)

Jesus had just foretold His crucifixion and resurrection a third time when James and John approached Him with a request. They wanted to be His right- and left-hand men when He came to glory. They had no idea what they were asking for. Meanwhile, the other ten disciples hear about the brothers’ impudent desire and start haranguing about it. Clearly, they thought that they had equally valid claims to be elevated once Jesus fully ushered in His kingdom.

That’s when Jesus calls for a huddle. He says that the greats among the Gentiles (to be read here as, the fallen world) lord their authority over others. But, Jesus says that’s not how things go in the kingdom of God that He has brought into the world.

Listen: What’s interesting to me as Jesus explains what it means to be great in His kingdom is that He doesn’t put down the desire to be great. Instead, He redefines greatness. “...whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all.” Then Jesus says that we must take Him not only as our King and Savior; we must also take Him as our example: “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” That phrase, Son of Man, references Jesus’ deity, His status as God enfleshed. Although Jesus has been given all authority (Matthew 28:19), He doesn’t lord it over people.

Instead, He became a servant: becoming human, subjecting Himself to human limitations, death, and temptation, washing the disciples’ feet, dying for the sins of the world.

That’s the point of the hymn that Paul quotes in Philippians 2:5-11:

5 In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:
6 Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
7 rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.
8 And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death— even death on a cross!
9 Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, 10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11 and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Aspiring to greatness is not a bad thing. But we must redefine our understanding of greatness. Greatness is achieved not be ascending above others. Greatness is something to which the human ego, human pretensions, and human sensibilities must descend. In the Kingdom of God, the way up is the way down.

To be great in God’s eyes and God’s kingdom is to dare to be a servant of others, to not toot our own horns, to not tell stories about my life in which I’m the hero, to not try to be the first one in line, to not resent others’ success, to not seek affirmation or accolades from the fickle world, to not put other people down in order to lift myself up.

It means to honor God, to share Christ, to show consideration and respect to others no matter how we may feel about them, to pray for those who rub us the wrong way or who have done us wrong, to pray for those we don’t understand, to help the poor, the despised, the neglected, to surrender all to Christ.

This is daunting. Even when I seek to be a selfless servant, I often find myself thinking, “Wow! I’m being a selfless servant.” That’s hardly the thinking of a selfless servant.

But instead of giving into despair, which Luther, in The Small Catechism, identifies as one of many “great and shameful sins,” I need to repent and ask God to change our ways of thinking. From an earthly, human point of view, I can’t see how God can make a selfless servant out of this bundle of selfish ambitions and desires. God though, can do anything. As Jesus says a few verses earlier in regard to those who worship their own wealth being able still to gain entrance into the kingdom of God: “With man this is impossible, but not with God; all things are possible with God.” (Mark 10:27)

God can save sinners like me. He can transform the self-absorbed into the selfless disciple, if my ambition is to be great in the eyes of heaven and not in the eyes of the world.

Knowing God’s grace and my own depravity, I would even say that if I want to want to be a selfless disciple while the old Adam is still saying, “Not really,” God will bring His transforming grace into my life and transform me.

I simply need to let Jesus in, to ask Him to work on me, to fill me with the Holy Spirit, to crowd out the old Adam in me with Himself, and to shut the old Adam down, to tie him up, and to destroy his power, as well as the power of the devil and the sinfulness in the world, over me.

“Here I am!” Jesus says to the Christians in the ancient city of Laodicea who had become blase about their faith in Him. “I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.”

If I aspire to greatness in the kingdom of God, I must daily repent and daily be renewed by the power of God’s saving Word and His Holy Spirit’s life-giving power. Sometimes I want this; but, Lord, I do want to want it. Since I’m giving you that inch into my life, please, Lord Jesus, take a mile! Take all of me!

Respond: Lord, help me today to pray for those who, over the course of my life, have been my detractors, those I have hurt, and those I have found difficult. Help me not to think about what people think of me. And help me to point others to You. Help me not to aspire to be honored by the world in any way, but only to live a life that honors You. Today, I ask You, Lord, to crucify the old Mark with all his vain ambitions so that the new Mark, the Mark turned to You alone for life and affirmation, may rise with renewed vigor. In Jesus’ name. Amen

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

Noah, the Flood, Christ, and Baptism

This is from my quiet time journal. Quiet time is a period I try to spend with God about five days a week. To see how I approach it, read here.

If you haven't yet been baptized and would like for Christ to claim you in this way, I urge you to contact a local congregation close to you to set up a time to talk about the meaning of baptism and what faith in Jesus is all about. Here is a list of congregations in the denomination of which I'm a part; one may be close to me. (In sharing this list, I'm not insinuating that Lutherans are the only Christians around. It's just offered as a handy list for your convenience.)

Look: “And when the Lord smelled the pleasing aroma, the Lord said in his heart, ‘I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the intention of man's heart is evil from his youth. Neither will I ever again strike down every living creature as I have done. While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.’” (Genesis 8:21-22) 

After the world-destroying flood, Noah and his family worshiped God. They offered a sacrifice which we can infer was no pro-forma performance, but an act of true worship and gratitude to God for His grace. 

In the Old Testament we see that God has no regard for “going through the motions” worship. 

For example, God says through the prophet in Amos 5:21-24: “I hate, I despise your feasts, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them; and the peace offerings of your fattened animals, I will not look upon them. Take away from me the noise of your songs; to the melody of your harps I will not listen. But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” 

And in his great prayer of repentance, King David notes: “...you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it; you will not be pleased with a burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.” (Psalm 51:16-17) 

In the New Testament, John recounts Jesus’ conversation with a Samaritan woman by a well near the village of Sychar. Perceiving that Jesus is a prophet, the woman tells Jesus that His people (the Jews) saw Jerusalem as the proper place to offer worship to God, whereas her people thought it was properly offered in Samaria. But Jesus told her: “...the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him…” (John 4:23) 

What God wants when we worship Him, pray to Him, and interact with Him is authenticity: authentic repentance, authentic praise and honor. No going-through-the-motions. No trying to find the right feelings or the right words or the perfect gestures. No desire to get what we “need” (read, want) out of it, whether it’s goosebumps or material well-being. 

Noah’s worship pleased God. And it wasn’t because Noah was perfect or “religious,” whatever that means. Nothing had changed about Noah or Noah’s family or the human race of which they were a part. 

Before the flood began, Genesis 6: “The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” (Genesis 6:5) It was human evil that caused God to regret making human beings and to cause the flood (Genesis 6:6). After the flood, Genesis says, “... the intention of man's heart is evil from his youth” (Genesis 6:21). Nothing had changed about the human race. 

But God hadn’t changed either. I see from the verses that so struck me today how much God loves us, in spite of our evil. He doesn’t want to see us destroyed. He loves us and wants to spare us the consequences of our sinfulness (“the wages of sin is death”: Romans 6:23). God wants to extend His grace to us. When we meet His grace with our trusting faith, as Noah and his family did, God saves. God acts on our behalf. 

Listen: God entered our world in the Person of Jesus Christ (John 1:1-2, 14; Colossians 1:15-20) in order to immerse His sinless life fully in the chaos of our sin and death and, after dying, rising in order to open up the only pathway to a resurrected life with God.
Jesus referred to His submersion into death and His rising to life as His baptism: “I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how great is my distress until it is accomplished!” (Luke 12:50) 

And it is through baptism into Christ, the baptism of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (Matthew 28:19) that we are today spared the consequences of sin and death. The old self dies and the new self, the Christ self, rises. 

First Peter talks about how Jesus’ accomplishment is sacramentally imparted to us. Recalling Jesus’ death and resurrection, Peter writes: 

“For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, because] they formerly did not obey, when God's patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water. Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him.” (1 Peter 3:18-22) 

After this amazing action of God, giving us a share in Christ’s victory over sin and death through our Baptism, our call is just this: to trust, to believe, just as Noah and his family did. 

 

As the apostles told their jailer: "Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved--you and your household." (Acts 16:31) 

Authentic faith in God as revealed to all the world in Jesus. 

Authentic repentance in Jesus’ name. 

This is what God asks of us whose hearts and minds are still soaked in evil. His promise of new life with Him will hold, overcoming our sin and death; our part is to trust in Him and His promises. 

Respond: Today, Lord, help me to trust in You and not lean on my own understanding (Proverbs 3:5-6).

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

The Only Worthy One

Today, for my quiet time with God, I read Revelation 5. To see how I approach quiet time, see here. Below is my journal entry for this morning.

Look: “Then one of the elders said to me, ‘Do not weep! See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed. He is able to open the scroll and its seven seals.’” (Revelation 5:5) 

The scroll, containing God’s plan for saving human beings from sin and death, is in God’s right hand. Its perfection is signified by its being sealed seven times. 

As John sees and experiences this vision, he’s driven to despair. Because no one is found who is worthy, that is, no one is without sin, to open the scroll, humanity is doomed.
But then one of the elders reassures him. The Lion, Who also has the appearance of a Lamb who has been murdered (Revelation 5:6), is worthy, the elder says. This is "the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world" (John 1:29).

I'm unworthy of opening the scroll. 

The human race is unworthy of opening the scroll. 

But the Lion Who is the Lamb, Jesus, true God and true man, can and does open the scroll because with His blood, He “purchased for God persons from every tribe and language and people and nation” (Revelation 5:9). 

Listen: Jesus is able to save me from sin and death, to save me from myself. And Jesus alone is able to do this. 

Only He is able to break open the scroll and unleash life on and bring into the kingdom those who believe in Him. 

I can’t break open the seal myself. I’m incapable of offering myself and making a perfect atoning sacrifice for my sin (or anybody else’s). I can’t perform my way into God’s kingdom. Intellectually, I know this is true. But I am sure that at some level, I still harbor the legalistic notion that I can be good enough to deserve the kingdom of God. I can’t be. My good works can’t break the seal. 

Nor can the seal be broken by anyone or anything else. Revelation 5:3: “...no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth could open the scroll or even look inside it.” That means that it can’t be broken by religions. Buddha, Allah, Mohammad...none of them are true God and true human, none of them died for my sins, none of them were raised from the dead by God the Father. 

Only One has conquered sin and death. Jesus says: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). 

Jesus says: “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.” (John 3:16-18) 

Jesus is the One Who has earned the right to break the seals on our behalf by dying for us, although we weren’t worthy of the sacrifice of the sinless Lamb of God. “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8) 

Jesus is God. Jesus a sinless Man Who bore all of our sins and took our punishment for them. Jesus is the only way to life with God. 

It’s telling that, in Revelation 5, after Jesus steps forward to break the seals of the scroll, not only do the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders who have been worshiping the Father, now worship Jesus as well, but they each hold “golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of God’s people” (Revelation 5:8). 

Before His crucifixion, during His time on earth, Jesus had said: “Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive, and your joy will be complete” (John 16:24). The One Who breaks the seals is the one to Whom and through Whom the prayers of God’s people must go. To speak to God in any name other than that of Jesus, is to send letters to the wrong address. 

(This doesn’t mean that parroting the words, “in the name of Jesus,” acts like a good luck charm for our prayers. To pray in Jesus’ name means also that one understands that we only dare approach God’s throne in the name, in the power, and in light of the self-sacrifice of Jesus. In other words, we pray in Jesus’ name when we have faith in Jesus as our Lord, God, and King.) 

The bowls of incense containing the prayers of God’s people are brought to Jesus. He is the only way to God. 

Respond: In many ways, this is a despairing day. So much bad news from Washington and other parts of the country and the world. And there is bad news from among our friends. I want God’s kingdom to break into this world in its fullness, banishing the bad, the sad, the sinful, toppling the arrogant and the foolish. 

But I must not regard Jesus’ seeming delay in making all things right as a bad thing. “The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead, he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” (2 Peter 3:9) I have repenting to do. I have witnessing to do. 

Since I’m not the one who can break open the scroll and its delay might actually be to my advantage, giving God more time to break me of my sin and fashion Christ in me (2 Corinthians 3:18), I should not weep (or sigh, or complain, or bemoan, or rail against rotten people, or murmur, or give into misplaced spiritual pride, or despair over my own sin). 

I should worship the God revealed by God the Holy Spirit in God the Father and God the Son, Who has saved me by grace through faith in Him, and be about my business. My business is Matthew 28:19: “...go and make disciples of all nations...”
God, help me to be focused on worshiping You and making disciples today. In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen

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

The Right Clothes?

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

Matthew 22:1-14
This is going to be tough today because Jesus presents us with tough words in our gospel lesson. But I promise if you will be patient and receptive to what Jesus has to say, discomfort will give way to joy.

Let's begin with the basics.

The God you and I know in Jesus Christ is, to use a term popular these days, inclusive in His love. By that, I mean, God loves all people.

But the God we meet in Jesus is also exclusive in His standards. As Jesus Himself puts it, “not everyone who calls [Him], ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 7:21).

God loves us just as we are; but He loves us too much to leave us the way He finds us.

God will welcome us, but He will not welcome our sins into His kingdom. He insists that we set them in His hands and leave them behind.

And if you and I think that we are going to be part of God’s eternal kingdom while still clinging to our favorite sins, we are setting ourselves up for eternal regret.

If following Jesus doesn’t make us fundamentally different people than we would be if we’d never heard of Jesus, we may not be following Jesus.

For you and me, this is the message of the parable that Jesus tells in this morning’s gospel lesson, Matthew 22:1-14. It’s an important message.

As has been true in our gospel lessons over the past several weeks, Jesus is still in the temple on the Monday after the first Palm Sunday, days before He would be arrested and murdered.

As has also been true over these same weeks, Jesus once more tells a parable to the chief priests and elders who hate Him.

Jesus has already made it plain that the chief priests’ and elders’ reliance on their goodness will mean nothing on the day when God judges every human being. All that will matter then, for them and for us, is whether we believe in the Messiah, Jesus, as our King, turning from sin and trusting in Him to give us life and make us fit for eternity.

If we follow Jesus, we live; if we refuse to follow Jesus, we won't live.

But Jesus isn’t finished making His point. So, He says, starting in verse 2: “The kingdom of heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son. He sent his servants to those who had been invited to the banquet to tell them to come, but they refused to come.”

You all know enough about the wedding practices of first-century Judea to know that friends and family were informed that marriages had been arranged, but the invitations came later, on the spur of the moment. The groom and his party would arrive at the house of the bride and messengers were sent out to say, “The wedding will be in a few minutes. Come on.” You’d have to be ready with your wedding clothes at a moment’s notice.

Here in the parable, the groom’s father, a king, representing God the Father, invites people to join in the wedding celebration and feast for his son, representing God the Son Jesus. But in the parable, people refuse to come to the banquet.

These are like the folks who view church membership as a "get out of hell free" card, but remain indifferent to the will of the Father or the Lordship of the Son. They’re too busy with their own agendas to be caught up in God’s agenda.

And God’s agenda is clear: It’s to repent and believe in Jesus, not just as a ritual we go through on Sunday mornings. We are to turn from sin and trust in Jesus as God’s truth and the only way to live every single day.

We must daily heed the invitation to the eternal banquet of Jesus Christ as articulated by Paul in Romans 12:1-2: “Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.”

Are you and I listening to the Father’s invitation to the banquet everyday?

Or are we doing our own things?

Jesus’ parable continues at verse 4: “Then he sent some more servants and said, ‘Tell those who have been invited that I have prepared my dinner: My oxen and fattened cattle have been butchered, and everything is ready. Come to the wedding banquet.’”

God is patient. He spent centuries preparing His chosen people for the arrival of the Groom, Jesus. And He’s patient with Gentiles, the non-Jews: He’s given His Church centuries to share Jesus with others, to invite them to life with the Messiah Christ.

God has prepared everything for those who turn from sin and follow Jesus. The invitation is inclusive. God wants everyone to say, "Yes!" to His invitation to eternal life.

Jesus goes on at verse 5: “But they paid no attention and went off—one to his field, another to his business. The rest seized his servants, mistreated them and killed them.”

This, Jesus says, is how God’s prophets and preachers, including John the Baptist, were treated: with indifference, or roughed up, or killed off.

Even the pious don’t like to have God telling them what to do. I know that I don't.

The fact is that God’s truth, and His call and commands on our lives, can sometimes be tough for us to take.

How do we react, for example, to God’s call and command that we love our neighbors as we love ourselves? As any parent knows, love isn't the same thing as approval. You still love your child even when you don't approve of the choices they sometimes make. So, how good are we at heeding God's command that we love the neighbors of whom we may or may not improve?

Including our Muslim neighbor.

Our gay neighbor.

Our Latino neighbor.

Our Democratic or Republican neighbor.

Not just in real life, but on Facebook and Twitter, when we’re watching TV.

Every time we fail to love others as we love ourselves, effectively speaking or acting on the devil’s lie that we're God, judge, and jury over others, we walk away from God's love and from Christ and we drive another nail into His innocent flesh.

Verse 7: “The king was enraged. He sent his army and destroyed those murderers and burned their city. Then he said to his servants, ‘The wedding banquet is ready, but those I invited did not deserve to come. So go to the street corners and invite to the banquet anyone you find.’ So the servants went out into the streets and gathered all the people they could find, the bad as well as the good, and the wedding hall was filled with guests.”

Jesus’ first hearers included fellow Jews who wanted nothing to do with Him. They refused to welcome Him or acknowledge Him as God in the flesh, but were intent on killing Him. As soon as Jesus finished telling this parable, in fact, the chief priests and the elders of the temple began plotting how to get Him crucified.

That's because Jesus is here signaling that even if His fellow Jews aren’t going to receive Him, the invitation to follow and belong to God for eternity is going out to everybody, including Gentile outsiders (the riff-raff) like you and me!

Invite everyone, God is saying through Jesus. It’s why Jesus tells His Church: “make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19) and “you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8).

Who are you and I inviting to Jesus’ kingdom these days?

I’m not talking about who you’re inviting to worship or the programs of our church. I mean, who are you and I inviting among your neighbors and friends without a connection to Jesus to know Jesus, to follow Jesus?

And are we intentionally seeking to strike up friendships with people who don’t follow Jesus so that you can have the privilege of inviting them to know Jesus?

Are we cultivating your own relationship with Jesus so that, in Peter’s words, we’ll “be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks [us] to give the reason for the hope that [we] have” through our relationship with Jesus, an answer to be offered “with gentleness and respect”?

If we’re not doing these things--and I'm asking them of myself as much as I'm asking them of you--why not?

God has prepared the banquet for everyone.

Now comes the most disturbing and, maybe, important part of an already-disturbing parable. Verses 11-14: “But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing wedding clothes. He asked, ‘How did you get in here without wedding clothes, friend?’ The man was speechless. Then the king told the attendants, ‘Tie him hand and foot, and throw him outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ For many are invited, but few are chosen.”

Look, folks: This is not about wearing the right thing in the presence of God. As long as your attire is modest, God doesn’t care about the clothes you wear..at church or anywhere else.

In our church in Cincinnati, a man and his wife in their sixties always sat with a young man in his thirties during worship. The two man always sat next to each other. Having met at church, they became good friends. The older man showed up every week in a three-piece suit, dressed to the nines. The young man often arrived on his motorcycle, sporting a do-rag, earrings, a three-day beard, a T-shirt, and torn jeans. They were as different as two people could possibly be. But they enjoyed worshiping together. They both realized that what's on the inside is vastly more important than what's on the outside!

Personally, I’m happy to see people worship God whether they’re wearing jeans and flip-flops or three-piece suits. 

I'm sure that God is too! 

But nobody can enter the kingdom of heaven and be with God if they aren’t clothed in God’s righteousness, if their sins aren’t covered by the forgiveness and grace God gives to those who dare to turn from their own desires and submit entirely to the Lordship of Jesus and the will of God over their lives. 

Romans 13:14 tells us, “clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the flesh.” The proper attire for entrance into the kingdom of heaven is the righteousness that comes from faith in Jesus Christ! 

If we’re clothed in anything but the righteousness of God that comes to those who make repenting and believing in Jesus their daily lifestyle, we will be, in Jesus’ words, thrown outside in the darkness, weeping, gnashing our teeth, snarling eternal regret. 

That’s a daunting thought and it should remind us that faith in Christ isn’t like belonging to the Kiwanis or the Pinochle Club; it’s life and death business. Eternal life and death business.

God’s love is inclusive. He loves the whole world. Everyone’s invited.

But entrance into His kingdom is exclusive. It’s open to only those willing to be retrofitted for eternity by the grace He bears for all people through Jesus Christ.

It’s open only to those willing to die to getting our own way and to live the life of God’s will be done.

Clothe yourself in Jesus.

And when He calls you to lay aside a sin, jettison a sinful attitude, or befriend a fellow sinner, do it.

Let Jesus lead your life and all of its decisions.

Trust in Him.

Then you’ll be clothed in His righteousness and ready for anything, even the eternal banquet that awaits all who trust in Christ. Amen

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

The Three-in-One God (Augsburg Confession, Part 1)

To begin this morning, a personal word. I’m not exaggerating when I say that I would have no joy in this life and no hope for eternity were it not for the witness of Lutheran Christianity.

Baptized in an evangelical Friends church, confirmed in a United Methodist congregation, I know that I had many times heard the good news--the gospel--of Jesus Christ, that God so loved the world that He sent Jesus to die and rise so that all who turn from sin and believe in Him will have life with God for eternity. But the message never took with me and following a decade of youthful atheism, it was only after I’d heard and experienced the Lutheran understanding of the Gospel that I could say with firm and informed conviction, “I believe in God the Father...I believe in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord...I believe in the Holy Spirit.”

So, the Lutheran witness for Christ is more precious to me than I can ever explain.

But what is a Lutheran?

It has never been more important for Lutherans to know the answer to that question than it is today.

There’s a rising tide of ignorance about God in today’s world. Ignorance about God comes in two forms. People can be ignorant because they choose to ignore God’s revealed truth or people can be ignorant because they simply don’t know.

This latter form of ignorance is the sadder because it means that no informed, loving person with faith in Christ has ever shared the message of Christ with them. Christians must be prepared always, in the words of 1 Peter 3:15, “to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you.”

Jesus says, “The one who believes and is baptized will be saved; but the one who does not believe will be condemned.” If we have a scintilla of compassion for other human beings, we must know what we believe and why and be prepared to lovingly and respectfully share our belief.

But what does this have to do with being a specifically Lutheran Christian? Aren’t there other Christian churches?

Yes, there are other Christian churches and Lutherans have never been so arrogant as to say that we’re the only ones who have Biblical Christianity right.

But as we will see during the Sundays to come, Lutheran Christians have a particular understanding of Biblical Christian faith. Historically we have said, paraphrasing Martin Luther, “This is what we believe. But if you can show us by Scripture and plain reason based on Scripture that we are wrong, we will lay down our Lutheran confessions of faith and admit that we were wrong.” Otherwise our stance is, “Here we stand.”

We take our stand because the movement that began when that young monk Luther posted 95 theses on a church door on October 31, 1517, isn’t about petty, unimportant issues. It’s about life and death and eternity issues.

Get these issues wrong and there will be many people living without the joy that comes from having Christ in your life every day. Get these issues wrong and millions of people who might otherwise be reconciled to God through Christ will be separated from God for eternity. And these things will happen not because other Christian denominations and traditions aren't sharing the Gospel, but because there are lots of people like me in whom the Gospel never would have made a connection apart from the unique Lutheran witness for Christ.

That’s why what we’re about in the Church--trusting in, following, and sharing Jesus Christ--should be the most important thing in your life, whatever your job, whatever your station!

It’s especially important for us to know what it means to be Lutheran Christians today because, sadly, many in our own denomination seem intent on turning their backs on confessional Lutheran Christianity and taking us with them. We can’t let that happen!

The structure around which these sermons will be built is The Augsburg Confession. Christians, especially Lutheran Christians, have always been in the explaining business. We try to explain God to the outside world. We try to explain God to ourselves. We do that not because we think the Bible is deficient. The Bible is the inspired Word of God. And it conveys all the truth about God that a person needs to believe and live out faith in Jesus Christ.

But what do we believe about the Bible?

How do we understand what God is telling us in the histories, hymns, wisdom sayings, prophecies, apocalyptic visions, and teachings that make up the Bible?

And how do we then explain what we have come to understand of these things?

That’s where the Augsburg Confession comes in. You can, if you want, read the background of the confession that you’ll find in the front section of the tan and brown editions that are in all the pew racks this morning. The Augsburg Confession was written by Philipp Melanchthon in 1530 to explain what members of the evangelical movement (the good news movement), later called Lutherans, believed.

Lutherans have always included the Augsburg Confession in its Book of Concord, a set of statements of Christian faith that summarize what we Lutherans believe about the God of the Bible. In the constitutions of the ELCA, the Southern Ohio Synod, and Saint Matthew Lutheran Church, we say the same. There’s no better place to find the answer to the question, “What is a Lutheran Christian?” than to look to the Augsburg Confession.

Now, I had a road map all laid out for this series. I was going to cram all twenty-eight articles of the Augsburg Confession into ten weeks of preaching. But as I banged my head against the wall on this sermon the other day, I told Ann, “If I introduce the Confession and talk about two of its articles, I’ll end up with a fifty-page sermon.” “Then, slow it down,” she said. “Nobody cares if you take ten sermons or fifty, just as long as each one of them helps us in our faith.” I hate it when the Holy Spirit tells Ann what I should do! So, we’re going to slow things down. Understanding what it means to be a Lutheran Christian warrants taking things slow.

Please turn to page 11 in The Augsburg Confession and look at Article 1, God. It starts our: “Our churches [that is, our Lutheran churches] teach with common consent that the decree of the council of Nicaea [the council held in the 4th century in the Turkish city of Nicaea that produced the Nicene Creed] the unity of the divine essence and the three persons is true. It is to be believed without any doubt. God is one divine essence who is eternal, without a body, without parts, of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness. He is the maker and preserver of all things, visible and invisible...Yet there are three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit...These three persons are of the same essence and power...” 

So, like other Christians, we Lutherans believe that there is one God in three Persons Who is Lord of all creation. The word Trinity, which describes this truth about God, never appears in the Bible. But the word trinity is a bag in which Biblical truth is carried. It’s just a shorthand way of describing what the Bible reveals to us about God. But where does the Bible tell us that God is one God in three persons?

Let’s start at the beginning. Turn to Genesis 1:26. God, the sole creator of the universe, says: “‘Let Us make man in our image, according to Our likeness...” Question: Who is God talking to? There is only one Creator of the universe and He’s talking to at least one other person about creating. This is our first indication that the one God Who creates is more than one person.

Flash forward to Genesis 18:1. Abraham and Sarah have been waiting many years for God to fulfill His promise of giving them a son through whom God would make them the parents of nations. “Then the Lord appeared to [Abraham] by the terebinth trees of Mamre, as he was sitting in the tent door in the heat of the day.” The Lord--a translation of God’s Name, Yahweh, which means I AM--appeared to Abraham. “So [Abraham] lifted his eyes and looked, and behold, three men were standing by him...” It would appear that when God showed up to meet Abraham face to face, Abraham saw God as three persons.

Now flash forward again, some 2100 years after the death of Abraham, to Jesus to learn more about this mystery. Look at John 8:58. Jesus tells a group questioning His authority: “Most assuredly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I AM.” Jesus is staking His claim that He is Yahweh, God. Yet this same Jesus also prays to God the Father, a hint that God can be three and yet also one.

Take a look at another passage, Matthew 28:19. Jesus knew and believed the words of Moses from Deuteronomy in the Old Testament: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord your God [Yahweh your God], the Lord is one” (Deuteronomy 6:4). He knew too that worship given to anyone other than God is idolatry, a violation of the first commandment. Yet, Jesus allowed people to worship Him. And, after rising from the dead, just before ascending to heaven, Jesus gives this commission to His Church: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit...”

Jesus puts both Himself and the Holy Spirit on the same level as God the Father. Anyone who would do this could rightly be regarded either as a horrible liar or a madman. Yet we know that Jesus was neither madman nor liar. The Bible teaches and Lutheran believe that there is one God in three persons.

So, we come to this familiar question: What does this mean?

Maybe the most important thing about the Trinity for us is that God, within the fellowship of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, had all the fulfillment, love, and relationship any living being could want. God didn’t need to make the world. God didn’t need to make us. And God didn’t need all the grief and heartache we have caused Him by our rejection of Him and the hurt we cause to other people who, just like us, are made in the image of God. God doesn’t need to do any of these things. He doesn’t really need anybody else.

But God chose to give us life. God chose to become one of us in the person of Jesus Christ, to bear our sins on a cross, to die taking the execution for sin we deserve, then rose from the dead to tear open eternity to all who repent and believe in Jesus Christ.

God chooses to this day to give new life to all who trust in Christ.

God is filled with love!

His willingness to step outside of the sure comforts of perfect relationship He enjoys within the Trinity to reach out to us shows us just how loving this God--Father, Son, and Holy Spirit--truly is.

And that’s more than enough of God’s Word for us to know and soak up today...or any day, for that matter. Amen

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

Faith Tidbit #12

Why did God bother to reveal the birth of Jesus to magicians from the East, people who didn't even worship the God of Israel? While Jesus said that His personal mission was to "the lost sheep of the house of Israel," in His ministry, He also showed that He had come to be Savior of the world. Forty days after His resurrection, just before He ascended to heaven, Jesus met the eleven surviving apostles. Then, He gave the Church its "great commission," the core of which says, "...make disciples of all nations..." The epiphany given to the wise men said that Jesus had come not just to save God's people, Israel, but the whole world.