The Crucified Christ Alone!

[Below, you'll find live stream video of both of today's worship services from Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, and the text of the message shared during the services. Jesus Christ is all we need! Have a good week.]





1 Corinthians 1:18-31

This morning, I begin with a confession: I have sinned against God and others and violated my ordination vows, though I didn’t realize it at the time.

My sin started innocently enough. I looked at “seeker-sensitive” churches drawing huge numbers of people and commandeered their “secret sauce.” Its foremost ingredient was the preaching of its pastors.

The preachers who drew the crowds, whether they were ultraliberal, ultraconservative, or evangelical/Calvinist, focused on ethics, personal happiness, and how to get ahead in life. They preached messages people called “relevant.”

Some of them told people to be justice-seekers or peace-makers. They preached on passages of Scripture like our first lesson for today, Micah 6:1-8, and gave people step-by-step procedures to being peace-makers and justice-seekers.

Others looked at passages like our Gospel lesson, Matthew 5:1-12, and produce sermon series about nine things people could do to get God’s blessings. I heard one of these preachers give his formula for sermon creation: (1) Tell them what you want them to know; (2) Tell them what you want them to do.

God forgive me, folks, there was a time when I bought into this nonsense.

Only later did I realize that this formula was unchristian. “Do this and you’ll be right with God and others,” was my unspoken and false message.

I preached “sermons” on topics like How to Divorce-Proof Your Marriage, Eight Steps to Success, Raising Faithful Children, How to Foster Friendships. My sermon titles sounded like how-to books by motivational speakers.

But the crucified and risen Jesus was getting pushed to the side.

There are big problems with this approach.

One is that almost everyone would agree about how we’re supposed to live our lives; yet none of us does live fully as we’re supposed to live. How-to preaching will lead us either to despair over our failure to live up to religious dos and don'ts or to pride in how well we think we’re doing.

A second problem with this approach is that it causes people to take confidence in the works they do rather than in the God we know in Jesus Christ. Jesus says, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.” (John 6:29) Our justification in the eyes of God and our hope for this life and the next have nothing to do with the things we do. Our hope is in Jesus Christ alone!

I never completely abandoned proclaiming or teaching the truth of Christ’s Gospel. But the Word of God is an all-or-nothing proposition for Christ and His Church. I was effectively preaching a “Christ and these how-to lists” message, as if Jesus Christ wasn’t enough of a Savior.

I was beginning to realize how much I needed to repent when a crisis developed in the Lutheran denominational body of which I was (and many of you were) formerly a part. That denomination was, in its way, turning away from the Word of God, including both the Law that condemns our sin and the Gospel about Jesus that sets us free from condemnation. I was appalled by what was happening.

But as I read God’s Word and prayed, I realized that I was part of the problem.

In the quest for “relevance” and crowds (which never materialized, by the way), I was making the people who heard my weekly versions of “what do I want them to know and what do I want them to do” sermons susceptible to false gospels that tell people to rely on their works, their thoughts, or their emotions rather than on Jesus Christ only! I repented before God and told Ann that I never wanted to preach another “cute” or worldly sermon for as long as I lived.

In today’s second lesson, the apostle Paul says, “Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified…” (1 Corinthians 1:22-23)

What Paul is saying is that people in the world have things they demand from the Church in order for them to consider the Christian message “relevant” to their lives. In Paul’s day, his fellow Jews demanded miraculous signs before they would listen to the Church. And the Greeks, a term Paul here uses for non-Jews, Gentiles, demanded the Church be a dispenser of wisdom. Above all, the world of Paul’s time (and our own), wants the Church to tell it exactly what it wants to hear. “Tell us we’re right on our politics, our view of what’s true and what’s not, our take on personal morality, then we might pay attention to you.” But Paul says the Church and Christians must refuse to be “relevant” dispensers of how-to worldly wisdom. “We preach Christ crucified!”

When we hear or when we proclaim the message of Christ crucified, there are two things God reveals.

First, we see the depths of our sin and the deadly consequences of them. In the eyes of the holy, righteous God of the universe, the One Who made us, every sin we commit, whether in thought, word, or action, is a capital offense, making us worthy of death. A single lie, one misuse of God’s name, a solitary fantasy of sexual immorality, a passing word of gossip: These, along with sins like idolatry, greed, murder, or the refusal to honor those in authority, warrant the same punishment from God: death, eternal separation from God, everlasting condemnation in hell. We know all of this is true because on the cross, we see Jesus, God the Son, perfect in His sinlessness, dying for our sin. Christ crucified shows us that sin–our sin–is fatal and that, unless something is done for us, Jesus’ prayer from the cross, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken me?” will be our constant cry from hell.

Second, in Christ crucified, we see what God has done to spare us the consequences of our sin. On the cross, Jesus does what we cannot do for ourselves: He offers Himself as the perfect sacrifice for our sins. He takes the punishment we deserve. He does everything needed to make us right with God. We are born sinners with no right to live. But the God unwilling to easily part with us because of His love for us has gone to the cross for us. As Paul writes elsewhere: “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8)

He goes on: “Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him! For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! Not only is this so, but we also boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.” (Romans 5:9-11) Dear friends in Christ, you are deeply loved by God. Christ crucified brings this love to you. Christ crucified and risen reconciles you to God now and forever!

Our call is simple then: To turn from our sin and turn to Christ.

So, what about passages like Micah 6?

Or Jesus’ Beatitudes in Matthew 5?

Aren’t these blueprints for our salvation, behaviors we can adopt that will make us acceptable to God and give us the good life.

No, that’s not what they are at all!

If you and I were capable of adopting them, capable of loving God and loving neighbor, Jesus wouldn’t have needed to go to the cross. But like Paul, we are bound to confess, “I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out…” (Romans 7:18)

God’s Law is meant to cause us to see that we are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves and assure us that we can turn to Jesus, the One Who sets us free from our bondage and then takes up residence in our lives so that, as we trust in Him, the goodness, love, and obedience to God that is foreign to our natures, begins to be manifest.

Jesus Christ sets us free from our sin and self-absorption and lives in those who are baptized in His name and who trust in Him!

The Christian can say with Paul: “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” (Galatians 2:20)

The world doesn’t need wowing signs or worldly wisdom. Neither do we.

All we need is Jesus Who died and rose again.

Jesus doesn’t promise to make us popular or powerful.

He doesn’t promise to give us health or wealth in this world.

He doesn’t promise us that He’ll cause this life or this world to make sense.

He promises us forgiveness of sin, new and everlasting life with God, and the assurance that He is always with us.

No matter what a confused and dying world (or we ourselves sometimes) may think, the crucified and risen Jesus Christ–and Jesus Christ alone–is all we need.

You can trust in Him!

Amen

The Blessed Life

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

Matthew 5:1-12

When I was a kid, I loved reading DC comic books. I enjoyed the evil-fighting exploits of Superman, Supergirl, Batman, the Justice League of America, and the Teen Titans.

I also read the tales of an alternative world known as Bizarro World.

In Bizarro World, Wikipedia notes: “society is ruled by the Bizarro Code which states ‘Us do opposite of all Earthly things! Us hate beauty! Us love ugliness! Is big crime to make anything perfect on Bizarro World!’ In one episode, for example, a salesman is doing a brisk trade selling Bizarro bonds: ‘Guaranteed to lose money for you.’”

In the panel above, we see a typical husband and wife, who, like everybody else on the planet, are bizarre versions of Superman and Lois Lane. “Oh my!” Bizarro Lois declares. “This am awful! Him got all A’s on his report card!” (That kind of made me want to live on Bizarro World.)

Well, you get the idea.

I’ve taken you on this excursus through great literature for a reason.

In today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus shares the opening salvo in His three-chapter long Sermon on the Mount, a section we call The Beatitudes. The word beatitude comes from the Latin word beatus, meaning fortunate, happy, well-off, or blessed.

Whenever beatitudes are uttered in the Bible, because Jesus wasn’t the first person to give beatitudes, the speaker is not saying, “You will be blessed” or "You will be blessed if," but “You are blessed now and in the future.”

Beatitudes were meant to describe the current situation of those to whom they were spoken.

And every beatitude is from God...not from the world, not from coincidence or luck, not from the sweat of our brow or our effort...but from God alone. It’s better to be blessed than to be lucky because blessings come from God while luck doesn’t exist.

And so, in the Beatitudes, Jesus isn’t laying down a new law that He expects us to keep.

Jesus isn’t saying, “If you do these things, you will be blessed.”

Jesus isn't saying, "If you behave in these ways, life will be all sunshine."

Jesus, in fact, is describing life in an alternative world He calls the Kingdom of Heaven. (Or more literally, the Reign of the Heavens.) He is saying that all who seek to follow Him each day are blessed. They live in His kingdom in all circumstances.

In this kingdom, Jesus says:

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. [When Jesus speaks here of the poor in spirit, he speaks both of those who financially poor, as well as of those who recognize that their lives are impoverished without the God we meet in Him at the center.]

"Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

"Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. [The meek are those who don’t push their weight around, insisting on getting their own ways, but pray that God's will be done.]

"Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. [Jesus is speaking of those who are hungry and thirsty both for being right with God--justified by grace through faith in Christ--and for doing the right and loving thing for others, even those who hate us.]

"Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.

"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. [To be ‘pure in heart’ means to seek God and seek to do His will only even when it isn't what the world commends.]

"Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. [To be a 'peacemaker' here has nothing to do with war or military conflict and everything to do with forgiving as we’ve been forgiven, turning the other cheek, and seeking to help others to experience the peace with God we have in Jesus.]

"Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

"Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

How does that sound to you?

If we’re honest about answering that question, it all may sound a bit like a bizarro world to us, a place where everything the world thinks of as blessings are turned on their head.

Who, after all, likes being poor?

Who likes to grieve?

Who likes it when bullies and big shots bulldoze their way over us?

Who feels good when being persecuted?

And yet, Jesus says that in His kingdom, people who experience these things while living with Him, are comforted, will inherit the earth made new by Him, will be called children of God, are blessed. Who wants to sign up?

And yet, friends, this is the world--the kingdom or the reign of heaven--that Jesus came into the world, died, and rose to give to all who turn from sin and trust in Him as their God, King, and Savior.

And not just after we die and, by the power of God, are raised to live with God in eternity, but right now, Jesus says, for those on whose ears His Word of grace, forgiveness, and new life fall, are in this kingdom.

The Beatitudes then are pure gospel, pure promise from God, a catalog of promises to those who heed His call to follow Him.

They are declarations of blessing made by God the Son to all who trust in Him alone to be their God and King.

As we follow Jesus together in His Church, we will be blessed today even amid the sin, darkness, messiness, and hurt of this world AND we will be blessed eternally in a world made perfect on Jesus’ return.

When Jesus comes to us, incites our faith in Him, makes us part of His people, stands with us to the close of this age, and gives us life beyond this age, we are part of His kingdom and are blessed no matter what happens to us along the way.

Let me show you what I mean. I'm going to take a poll.

Raise your hands if members of this congregational family or others of which you've been a part have encouraged you or prayed for you?

Raise them if you’ve received notes of condolence or get well cards from Christians?

Show me how many of you, in Sunday School, Bible study, a small group, during a private conversation with a committed Christian, or even during worship, have heard something that has sparked or deepened your faith in Jesus?

How many have grown in your faith as Christian friends came along to support you in tough times, times the world wouldn’t have called you blessed but cursed?

How many of you have, in Christians from this and other churches, seen Jesus at work?

In the beatitudes, Jesus is telling us that when, in the fellowship of His Body, the Church, His gospel Word of life has come to us and created faith within us, we experience God’s blessings.

When we are poor and when we mourn.

When the world takes advantage of or derides our faith in Jesus.

When we are persecuted.

When we hunger, thirst, and crave to live as people made right with God by grace through faith in Jesus.

When we, unaccountably, want to do right even to our enemies.

When we are empty and turn to Jesus and He fills us again with Himself, we are blessed!

In all of these circumstances, as well as in the joys, the laughter, the excitement, and the fulfillment, as we walk together with Jesus, we live in the reign of the King of the world Who wants us more desperately than any lover ever could or ever has.

To a world perishing in its sins, intent on getting its own way, this kingdom of heaven Jesus gives to us seems as laughable and strange as Bizarro World did to me when I was kid.

But this kingdom is as real and more enduring--eternally enduring--than anything this dying world can offer.

So Jesus' message for us today is simple.

Don’t turn Him away. When He calls you, follow Him. When you wake tomorrow morning, walk with Him. Pursue this God we know in Jesus so that He can bless you and save you today and always!

That is the blessed life! Amen

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

The Blessed Life

Matthew 5:1-12
The beatitudes found in Matthew 5:1-12, our gospel lesson for today, are often misunderstood. They're often seen as a list of virtues we need to pursue. But that isn't really what they're about at all.

In them, Jesus isn’t saying, “Act this way and you’ll be saved.” Instead, He’s saying, “Because You have been saved by God’s grace through faith in Me, this is how You’ll be set free to live.”

The beatitudes show us what disciples set free from sin, death, and the darkness of this world, look like.

Disciples, Jesus will say repeatedly to us today, lead blessed lives. Scholars tell us that the word we translate as blessed, makarios, means to be favored by God. This blessed life is connected to having faith in the God we meet in Christ. To live in a faith relationship with Christ is to be blessed, now and in eternity. That doesn't mean that everything in this life will go well. Remember that Jesus has told us: "In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world" (John 16:33).

But in Revelation 14:13, part of John’s vision of heaven, we’re also told: “‘Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on.’ ‘Yes,’ says the Spirit, ‘they will rest from their labor, for their deeds will follow them.’”

According to Jesus, the blessed life depends entirely on faith in Him. So, let’s look at Jesus’ portrait of how He blesses the lives of disciples.

Matthew writes: “Now when Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him and he began to teach them. He said: ’Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.’”

When people spoke of being poor in first century Judea, just like today, it meant to be without, to be impoverished or beggarly. But Jesus here (unlike in Luke’s gospel, where Jesus' sermon on the plain is recorded) says that those who are "poor in spirit” are the blessed ones. What does it mean to be “poor in spirit”?

It means to be utterly dependent on God’s grace. It means to have no pretense of personal perfection.

In a parable in Luke 18, Jesus shows what unpretentious dependence on God's grace this looks like. Two men go to the temple. One is a Pharisee, who tells God: “I thank You I’m not like other people,” then goes on to catalog all the rotten things other people do and lists the good things he does. But Jesus says that in the temple is a tax collector, a member of a class of people known for their shifty ways and their vast wealth. The tax collector, Jesus says, is so humble before God that he can’t lift his eyes toward heaven and prays simply, “God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” Jesus says in Luke 18:14: “I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

Despite his wealth, the tax collector was “poor in spirit.” We are poor in spirit when we recognize that we’re nothing without God, that we desperately need the crucified and risen Jesus to justify our existences.

Arrogance leads to hell; humble faith in Christ yields everlasting life with God.

Verse 4: “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.”

The word translated as comforted is, in the original Greek in which Matthew wrote, paraklethesontai. It means to come close beside or to call, encourage, or exhort from nearby. To me, it brings to mind the image of a coach like John Wooden, his hand on the shoulder of a player, either exhorting him to do better or encouraging him to buck up under the weight of it all.

This word translated as comforted is related to one of the words that Jesus uses for the Holy Spirit, Paraclesis, the Comforter.

When disciples grieve over loved ones lost (or over any loss), the Holy Spirit comforts them with the promises of God, promises authenticated by Jesus’ death and resurrection.

Promises like: “Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the LORD your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you." [Deuteronomy 31:6]

Or, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die.” [John 11:25-26]

Christians grieve their losses, of course. But we “do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope.” [1 Thessalonians 4:13] Even in our mourning, we are blessed, favored, by the reality that the Savior in Whom we trust has secured everlasting life for all who turn from sin and follow Him. That’s true comfort!

Verse 5: “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.”

The word translated as meek doesn’t mean weak. To be meek is to be gentle, reserved, to exhibit God’s strength under God's control. Picture a jet engine that possesses enormous power. But that power is harnessed for the the purpose of carrying people or goods from one place to another. Jet engines are, except in tragic situations, subject to the will and the dictates of the pilots who fly them and the engineers who design them.

Meekness is like that. Jesus' disciples--you and I who believe in Jesus Christ--are filled with the power of God. But God calls us to only use that power for His purposes, according to God's will.

When the meek brag, it's only to brag about how good God is. Paul exhibits meekness in 2 Corinthians 11:30 when he writes: “If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness.” Paul knew that God shines through, not our arrogance, but our weaknesses.

The meek don’t bully or gossip. They don’t need to play those games: The meek are confident of their place in God’s kingdom because they know what Christ has done for them and they place their total trust in Christ.

The meek look out for others because they know that God is already looking out for them.

Our world, our country, and our churches would be better off if there were more people who lived out the meekness of Christian discipleship.

Verse 6: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.”

There is nothing a disciple of Jesus Christ more craves than being in a right relationship with the God revealed in Jesus. It's to give us and to keep giving to us that relationship that Jesus tells us to “repent and believe in the good news” of new life through Him. [Mark 1:15]

It’s why daily repentance and renewal--daily midcourse correction--is to be part of the Christian’s life.

Those who hunger and thirst for rightness with God pray with the psalmist: “Show me your ways, Lord, teach me your paths. Guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my Savior, and my hope is in you all day long.” [Psalm 25:4-5]

This is the disciple's prayer because disciples want nothing to stand between them and God. In Psalm 73:25, Asaph confesses to God: “earth has nothing I desire besides you.”

This is why a daily quiet time with God, in which we repent for our sins, read and reflect on God’s Word as it applies to us each day, and ask for God’s help has become like breathing for many Christians. It helps to satisfy the disciple’s longing for God!

Verse 7: “Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.”

To be merciful is to be compassionate, living in the light of what God has done for us in Christ. The disciple says, “Because God is eternally merciful to me through Jesus Christ, I will be merciful to my neighbor.”

Verse 8: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.”

Disciples pray with King David: “Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.” [Psalm 51:10] To be pure in heart is to be a sinner covered in the forgiveness God makes available to us only through Jesus.

Disciples know the truth of Acts 4:12, which says of Jesus: “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.”

Verse 9: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.”

From the perspective of heaven, a peacemaker isn’t someone who negotiates the ends of wars, important though that is. A peacemaker isn't someone who refuses to argue because, truly, there are some things worth arguing about.

To understand what Jesus means when He talks about being a peacemaker, we have to understand the Bible's understanding of peace.

Peace, or shalom in the Hebrew of the Old Testament, eirene in the Greek of the New Testament, is peace with God.

To have peace is to be in sync with God and His will.

We lay down our rebellion against God’s will.

We accept the Lordship of Jesus over our lives.

We accept that, as our Maker and Redeemer, the God we know in Jesus has every right to tell us what do in our relationships, our work, our leisure, our money, even our sex lives.

Peacemakers are ambassadors for Christ. One scholar says that a peacemaker “bravely declares God’s terms [for peace] which makes a person whole.”

Those terms are simple: Repent and believe in Christ.

Paul says that God “has committed to us the message of reconciliation [or peace with God]. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God.” [2 Corinthians 5:19-20] Peacemakers are evangelists, witnesses for Christ. That’s what peacemakers do.

Verses 10 to 12 tell us: “Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

It seems a strange thing for Jesus to say that we are blessed or enjoy God’s favor when we’re persecuted. We think that we’re blessed when everything goes our ways. But sometimes the things we want, the things that we’re sure are what’s best for us, aren’t the things that God says are best for us. “‘...My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,’ declares the LORD” in Isaiah 55:8.

Our ways are often easy, selfish, self-destructive.

But God’s ways always lead us life, to becoming our better selves. Jesus calls disciples to take an eternal view of things.

“What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?” Jesus asks [Matthew 16:26]

The world may applaud or even reward people for being self-promoting egotists. But all the money and security this world may give to those looking out for number one will vanish the moment we draw our last breaths.

And eternity is a terrible place to go without God!

Sometimes, those who follow Jesus are persecuted or put down for their faith. They may lose their lives. They may have to make sacrifices of their time, money, or status with others. They may run into opposition when they tell others about Christ, read God’s Word, pray in public places, stand against injustice, fight on behalf of those who can’t fight for themselves, feed or house the homeless, or welcome those hated by others. But Peter, one of the first to hear Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, writes: “...if you suffer for doing good and you endure it, this is commendable before God.” [1 Peter 2:20]

Disciples know that the God Who has saved us from sin and death through Jesus Christ will have the final say in our lives. We are blessed!

Let’s pray each day that God will help us to display God’s grace and goodness through lives devoted to loving God, loving neighbor, sharing Christ, and making disciples. Around here, we call all of that reaching up, reaching in, and reaching out. That’s the blessed life for which Christ has saved us.

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. This was the message during worship this morning.]

We've Had the Revolution...Now What?

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

Matthew 5:13-20
This past week, we have witnessed a kind of revolution happening in Egypt. It looks as though this revolution will result in the end of a long period of iron fisted rule. But assuming that the pro-democracy demonstrators there are successful, there will be questions the people of Egypt will be asking of themselves soon. They’re questions like, “What now?” “How do we go forward?” People who go through revolutions always wrestle with questions like these in their aftermath.*

Last Sunday’s Gospel lesson, taken from the opening verses of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, was a place where Jesus laid down an absolutely revolutionary life, one that puts the world’s standard operating procedures on their heads.

In it, Jesus described people as blessed the world might see us unfortunate, at best. Jesus, it turns out, wasn’t just laying down God’s law in the Beatitudes, but also describing a way of life that seeps into the minds, hearts, and wills of those who cultivate daily closeness to Jesus Christ. Even if we have questions about all that though, because of what Jesus has done for us on the cross, because of His resurrection, and because of the new life we know He offers to all who repent and believe in Him, we hear the Beatitudes and we want to sign up for the Kingdom of heaven.

But after Jesus, through His death and resurrection, works this revolution of transforming us from the enemies of God we were when we were born into the friends of God we become when we are born from above, we have questions: What now? How do we go forward? Jesus starts to answer those questions in today’s lesson. Please take out your Celebrate bulletin inserts and look at today’s Gospel lesson.

Now, as you read the opening verses of the lesson, you’ll have to keep the Beatitudes in mind. In verses 13 and 14, Jesus is saying, “You blessed ones are the salt of the earth. You blessed ones are the light of the world.”

With that in mind, read verse 13 along with me silently, please: “You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot.”

Most of us love salt. It enhances the flavor of food. But salt is also a great preservative. Those who walk with Jesus preserve what is true and godly. Without moralizing or judging, true followers of Jesus remind us all of God’s will, God’s love, and God’s ability to express His power through weak people surrendered to Him.

Ernest Gordon was a young Scotsman studying Philosophy and History when World War II broke out. He joined the military and was captured by the Japanese in the summer of 1942. He and his fellow prisoners were given rations of one lump of rice each day. They were tortured daily and were worked incessantly, under blazing sun and torrential rain. The brutalization included savagery and thievery among the prisoners themselves, who stole food from other prisoners too weak to defend themselves. Gordon, suffering from multiple diseases, was sent to a holding hut, one where all those certain to die went. One prisoner though, dared to do something that no prisoner had previously done. He cared for weaker prisoners. He took Gordon under his wing, giving him massages, encouraging words, and the occasional smuggled banana. Improbably, Gordon survived and through his benefactor something else happened. Though he had never been interested in God, Gordon came to follow Jesus Christ. He would later say, “'Faith thrives when there is no hope but God.” Folks, the man who cared for Gordon, a Christian, was salt of the earth. He preserved the kingdom way of life. In a place of horrors, he preserved the life of love and compassion and righteousness Jesus sets us free to live. That’s the kind of life we’re called and commanded to live too.

Read verse 14, please: “You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hidden. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.”

Over the past several weeks, several of our lessons have featured variations of the phrase, "light of the world." In the Old Testament, we’re told how God called the people of Israel into being to be a light to the nations, showing the world the one true God of the universe, preparing for the arrival of the Messiah. Jesus comes and we’re told in the New Testament that He is the light of the world. In today's lesson, Jesus is saying that those who follow Him—you and me—are to give light to the world. His fellow Jews would have found Jesus’ imagery unmistakably clear. The temple in Jerusalem was built on a high mount. From it, God’s people exalted God before the world.

Now, we Gentile Christians who, the New Testament says, have been grafted into the people of God by the grace given in Jesus and our faith in Him, are to lift Jesus up before all the world. Faith in Jesus Christ is a public thing. Jesus commands us to be lights in this darkened world; we’re to let everyone know about the new life that only comes through Jesus.

That can be a hard way to live. Many Christians, in fact, are like the young man desperate for a girlfriend who asked an unpopular young woman he didn't much like to go steady. She was elated until he said, “But let’s not tell anyone else about it. It’ll be our little secret.” “Don’t keep your relationship with Me hidden,” Jesus says. “Live it out loud.” If we keep our faith in Christ a personal thing, doesn’t Jesus have every right to think that we’re ashamed of Him?

In what Jesus has said so far, we see that we are blessed—saved by the undeserved, unearned grace of God—in order to be blessings to others. But this amazing grace does not bring an end to the commands— laws—of God given in the Old Testament.

Read what Jesus says next, starting at verse 17: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfil. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished…”

So, what law is Jesus talking about? We know that the Old Testament contains dietary laws that God rescinded in the New Testament. We know that ritual laws revolving around sacrifices are no longer needed because Jesus is the Lamb of God Who takes away the sin of the world, once and for all.

Jesus here is referring to the moral laws in the Ten Commandments. These laws are inviolable for all time. Want to know the will of God for your wallet, your mouth, your sex life, your soul? It’s all there in the Ten Commandments and they haven’t changed in 3500 years. Jesus says they won’t change until heaven and earth pass away. They remain as protective fences meant to steer us always toward life at its best.

But you and I know that we can’t successfully obey these laws. The law can’t save us from sin and death. Only Jesus can do that. So why does Jesus still say the law is important?

Lutheran Christians have considered this question and said that there are three purposes that the Law still has.

• First, the law acts as a curb on the sinful impulses of all people, even before they know Jesus Christ. 
• Second, the law drives us to Jesus for grace and forgiveness. When we’re honest, we acknowledge that while we understand God’s commands, we don’t keep them. Our inborn sin prevents us from keeping them. Desperate, we turn to Jesus, seeking the same mercy He showed to the repentant thief who hung on a cross next to Jesus and to whom Jesus promised, “Today, you will be with Me in paradise.” 
• But for the followers of Jesus, there is a third use of the Law. It’s a guide for us. Having been freed by grace from sin and death, the Ten Commandments become a road map for us. God told the prophet Jeremiah to tell His people centuries ago: “stand at the crossroads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way lies…[to] walk in it, and find rest for your souls.” God was telling the people to remember His commands for them and so be led back to Him. When God’s law drives us to Jesus, it leads us to the place where life is found, where rightness with God, with our neighbors, and with ourselves is found.

Now, look at the last verse of our lesson. Jesus says, “For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”

This passage used to trouble me a lot! The Pharisees were righteous in their own eyes, but not in God’s. They thought that they were great people who had conquered their own sin. But, in their arrogance, they completely lacked the love for God and neighbor that the Law commands.

So, what, I wondered, did Jesus mean by seeming to tell all His followers to try to out-righteous the spiritual snobs He called hypocrites and whitewashed tombs?

Then I realized something: We will be more righteous than the Pharisees—we are more righteous than the Pharisees—when we are humble enough to let the shed blood of Jesus cover our sins and wash us clean. We will be righteous, right with God, when we rely completely on the God we know in Jesus Christ, and not our own wisdom, not our own pretended goodness.

For twenty years, I’ve been doing my taxes using the TurboTax computer program. And every year, I make the same mistake. I’ll be working on some part of my return and figure that I know something better than the program. I input data where I think it should go and totally mess things up. If I could get back all the hours I’ve spent on the unnecessary, grief-inducing side roads I’ve created for myself, rather than simply following the prompts the program gives, I probably could have done something productive with my life.

The Law is still important. It contains prompts from God, pointing us not only to the right way to live, but also to the One Who wants to lead us into His Kingdom. Unless we let the law lead us each day to Jesus, it will condemn us. But if we let it drive us back to Jesus whenever our lives go off course, we will be right with God, in sync with His purposes for our lives. We will be the salt of the earth who preserve what is godly and good. We will be the light of the world who show others the way to Jesus. We will be graced. We will be blessed. The Kingdom of heaven will be ours. Amen

*This approach to the sermon, how to live after the revolution, is that taken by N.T. Wright in his commentary on this text, found in Matthew for Everyone. I so liked his approach, finding that it so clarified what Jesus is doing in the sermon, that I couldn't resist using the same approach myself here.

By the Way, We're Still in the Epiphany Season

You may have wondered why the Gospel lesson for yesterday was Matthew 5:1-12. This is Epiphany Season, after all, a time when the Gospel lessons revolve around those instances in Jesus' life and ministry when His deity was revealed. What does yesterday's lesson, encompassing the opening of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, have to do with this Epiphany theme?

Consider the setting in which the sermon happens: "the mountain." It was to the top of a mountain that God called Moses back in the Old Testament book of Exodus. There, God gave Moses the Ten Commandments.

It was on mountain- and hill- tops that ancient peoples built shrines, altars, and temples to their deities. It was on Mount Zion in Jerusalem that God's people built the Temple. And God was deeply offended, repeatedly, when His people used other hills and mountains to erect altars to foreign deities, just to "cover all the bases."

When the one true God of the universe entered the world in the person of Jesus Christ, He called His followers to be with Him on the mountain to let them know more fully Who He is and what He wills. He showed Himself to be more than a "new Moses"; Jesus is God Himself calling us to be in relationship with Him.

Nevertheless Blessed

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

Matthew 5:1-12
It was Lent and the congregation I then served was holding joint midweek worship services with another Lutheran congregation. We were spending forty days talking about why bad things happen to faithful people and how we, as followers of Jesus, cope with that reality. I preached at the first service. But I looked at the pastor of the other congregation and didn’t feel good about our topic.

You see, he had already gone through so much: the untimely deaths of his mother, a daughter, and his wife, amid other sorrows.

“I don’t feel qualified to even talk about this subject,” I said, “because, compared to many of you, I have had little pain or adversity in my life.” The next week, my colleague responded to my confession in his sermon by saying, “Don’t worry. You will.”

Those were wise words. The reality that none of us is exempted from pain and adversity causes many people to give up on trusting in God. What does Jesus say to that?

Our Gospel lesson for this morning, Matthew 5:1-12 contains the opening words of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, including the few verses we call the Beatitudes. It’s a bit dangerous to preach on this text. Most Christians are so familiar with these words that they may think they have no need of hearing any more about them and so, are apt to mentally check out before the preacher even starts.

But there’s another danger in looking at the Beatitudes. That’s deciding just exactly what Jesus’ intent was in giving them. Martin Luther said that in these verses, Jesus is laying down a law so formidable that none of us can keep its provisions and so, we will be driven to Jesus in repentance and so receive new life. Some have said that these are ideals for which we’re called to strive as Christians. Others say that these are the principles that Christians must manifest when taking over the reins of political power, striving to bring the kingdom of heaven into the world by the force of our wills. And there are other interpretations of Jesus' intent. Who’s right?

In spite of the danger, let’s take a look at this passage together. Please pull our your Celebrate inserts and turn to Matthew 5:1-12. Now, to get something from an individual passage of Scripture, before we look at its content, we have to look at its context: What happens in the Biblical book before the passage in question appears? And how are some of the key words in the passage usually used?

In Matthew, chapter 4, preceding the verses of our lesson, Jesus begins His ministry, John the Baptizer is arrested, and from that time, Matthew says, “Jesus began to proclaim, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.’” There are two words Jesus uses in that line that can help us make sense of the Beatitudes: Repent and Heaven.

Some people hear the word “repent” and automatically think that they’re being knocked down or judged. The call to repent is a call to all of us to examine ourselves and confess our sins to God, of course. But to repent also means to simply turn to Jesus, away from whatever might be distracting us from Him. When Jesus calls us to repent, He is calling us to turn to Him for the grace and new life only He can give.

Jesus also says that the “kingdom of heaven has come near.” We’re inclined to think of heaven as a place up in the sky where we’ll live in the sweet by-and-by. But that’s not how Jesus or most of the Bible used the word, “heaven.” In the Bible, heaven is the place where God is and God can be with us anywhere, anytime. In Jesus, heaven has invaded our world and He invades our world whenever we call His Name.

Later in Matthew, chapter 4, Jesus calls the first disciples from their fishing nets and then, to show them what the kingdom of heaven looks like, Jesus proclaims the good news and heals people.

Always a great teacher, Jesus begins by showing His students—His disciples—what His kingdom looks like. When we reach chapter 5, where this morning’s lesson is found, Jesus is ready to describe it to them, to help them to better understand not only what they have seen, but also the way of life to which they’ve now been called.

Look at verse 1 of our lesson, please. It says that Jesus went up the mountain and His disciples came to Him. In the Old Testament book of Exodus, God called Moses to the top of Mount Sinai to give Moses the Ten Commandments, the substance of the covenant God was making with His people. The people of Israel didn’t ascend the mountain. Moses was an intermediary between God and His people. But Jesus is the bringer of a new covenant from God. He invites those who want to be in a new and everlasting relationship with God to come to Him. The disciples take Jesus up on His invitation.

Jesus then gives a series of statements about who is “blessed.”

• Blessed are the poor (or humble) in spirit. 
• Blessed are those who mourn; they will be comforted. 
• Blessed are the meek (that is, those who repudiate the world’s power trips and instead boldly follow Jesus); they will inherit this earth. 
• Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness (that is, for a right relationship with God); they will be filled with good things in a feast of love and plenty that Jesus will serve His followers for all eternity. 
• Blessed are the merciful, the pure in heart, those who bring the reconciliation of God available to all through Jesus Christ—the peacemakers, for they will be in Jesus’ kingdom. 
• Blessed are you when you are spurned, rejected, rebuffed for your faith in Christ. 

The word in the original Greek of our text that’s translated as “blessed” can also be translated as fortunate or the recipients of wonderful news. But not everything Jesus talks about here seems blessed, fortunate, or wonderful.

Who wants to be poor in spirit, to mourn, or to experience the world turning against us for our faithfulness to Christ?

And do we have to attain certain heavenly levels of mercifulness, purity, and disciplemaking to get into Jesus’ kingdom?

I have some bad news and some good news for you this morning, what Luther and the Lutheran Confessions might call some law and some gospel.

The bad news is that, yes, these words do have the force of God’s law. God expects us to be merciful, pure in heart, and people intent on enacting reconciliation between God and others. We’re to be God’s middlewomen and middlemen, what the New Testament calls “ambassadors for Christ.” That’s not always a comfortable position. But God wants us to occupy it.

Compounding the bad news is something all of us, in the waning days of January, our New Year’s resolutions likely already a shambles, should be able to understand: We cannot muster enough will power to be the kinds of people Jesus says are the ones who occupy the kingdom of heaven.

But, here’s the good news. Jesus isn’t telling us to shape up and act right. One author asserts that: “[Jesus’] sermon is not a list of requirements, but…a description of the life of people gathered by and around Jesus…”

People who are living the life Jesus describes in the Beatitudes are often the last to know it. I’ve mentioned before my friend, Sig, who passed away some years ago now. Sig was an engineer at Cincinnati Milacron. So was a man who was part of the church in the Cincinnati area that I served for seventeen years, Bill. Their paths crossed just a few times because they worked at different plants, on different projects. But when Sig learned that Bill had joined the congregation I pastored, Sig told me, “He had a major influence on my faith years ago.” When I told Bill, he said, “I have no idea what I might have done.”

I wasn’t surprised by that. In another part of Matthew’s gospel, Jesus talks about the final judgment of humanity. He pictures Himself telling one group of people that they made their choices in this lifetime; when they ignored the needs of others, they were ignoring Jesus. They would live with their choices for eternity. Jesus says He will look at another group of people and say, “When you fed the most overlooked of the world, or clothed the naked, or visited the imprisoned, or gave water to the thirsty, you were serving me. You were paying attention to Me.” This group—the righteous—Jesus says, will be baffled. They won’t remember doing any of the good things Jesus extols.*

Through Jesus, the kingdom of heaven gets inside of us and we hardly know that as we keep returning to Jesus day in and day out, in

• prayer, 
• worship, 
• the reading of Scripture, 
• receiving the Sacraments, and 
• serving and witnessing in Jesus’ Name,

we are being changed from the inside out.

When the kingdom of heaven gets inside of us, we’re not conscious of our mercy, purity, or faithfulness. We’re not making lists. We're not tracking our good deeds.

This fact is hidden in plain sight at the very beginning of our Gospel lesson, verse 1. Look at it again: “When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after He sat down, His disciples came to Him.” You might want to underline the last five words of that verse: His disciples came to Him.

The kingdom of heaven enters us,

• we are changed from the inside out, 
• we are fitted for eternity with God, 
• we enter the process of transformation to become the people God made us to be, 
• we are able to face anything this life brings, 
• we are blessed forever by one simple thing: 

By coming to Jesus, the Savior Who comes to us.

We all fall short of the glory of God; nevertheless, those who turn to Jesus Christ and who keep turning to Jesus Christ in spite of humiliations, grief, and adversity, are filled with God’s glory, now and in eternity.

A few mornings ago, Sarah told us about an acquaintance, a capable and caring manager, who was downsized out of his job in a large corporation. This was after other major setbacks in his life. Sarah asked if Ann and I would join her in prayer for this man. So there, in her bedroom, huddled together, we did just that. I don’t know how God is going to answer that prayer. But I do know that when we draw close to Jesus, the kingdom of heaven comes to us!

Here's a secret none of you probably know: Life in this world is not fair. Jesus acknowledges as much in the Beatitudes.

But when we keep turning to Jesus, we will be blessed!

And, no matter what happens in your life, you can always believe that!

*The two groups will experience very different ends, too. In Matthew 25:46, Jesus says that those who ignored others and so, ignored Him, "will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life." This shouldn't surprise us. In Matthew 10:32-33, Jesus says, "Everyone who acknowledges Me before others, I also will acknowledge before My Father in heaven; but whoever denies Me before others, I will also deny before My Father in heaven."

God: Irrevocably Faithful

In his book, God Gives Second Chances, Pentecostal preacher R.T. Kendall writes about the strange phenomenon of people who have turned away from God, yet remain the Church, sometimes in positions of leadership, and still evidence the spiritual gifts God has given to them. He writes:

People ask, How can a person's gift flourish when they are living in sin [whatever the sin might be]? I can only answer with Romans 11:29: "For God's gifts and his call are irrevocable"...This verse refers principally to God's own decree that He will not change His mind, but Paul is also saying that whether or not a person has repented of their sins is not a necessary condition for receiving or maintaining a spiritual gift...Spiritual or ministerial gifts are sovereignly bestowed on a person, not because of one's good works...

I thought of Kendall's point during my morning devotions using today's installment of Our Daily Bread. Written by David C. McCasland, it's based on 1 Kings 10:23, 11:1-10. That passage is about ancient Israel's third and most powerful king, Solomon.

When Solomon came to the throne, he was just a boy and overwhelmed by the responsibilities that had been thrust upon him. Early in his reign, Solomon was visited by God in a dream. "Ask what I should give you," God told him. Solomon told God how daunting his responsibilities were and then made his request: "Give your servant...an understanding mind to govern your people, able to discern between good and evil..." (1 Kings 3:3-14). Solomon asked for the gift of wisdom and God granted it to Solomon.

Solomon possessed that wisdom until the end of his days. We're told that he was the wise composer of Proverbs and of the more world-weary Ecclesiastes, which, as McCasland points out, in spite of a depressing fixation on life's supposed "vanity" (or futility), ends with this bit of wisdom:

Fear God and keep his commandments; for that is the whole duty of everyone. For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every secret thing, whether good or evil (Ecclesiastes 12:13-14).

But, though given the gift of wisdom by God irrevocably, Solomon misused his gifts to walk away from God and to buttress his level of comfort and power in this world. He did this at the expense of his own relationship with God and that of his country. (See Jesus' words here.) Look at the verses on which the Our Daily Bread piece for the day is based:

Thus King Solomon excelled all the kings of the earth in riches and in wisdom.

King Solomon loved many foreign women along with the daughter of Pharaoh: Moabite, Ammonite, Edomite, Sidonian, and Hittite women, ²from the nations concerning which the Lord had said to the Israelites, “You shall not enter into marriage with them, neither shall they with you; for they will surely incline your heart to follow their gods”; Solomon clung to these in love. ³Among his wives were seven hundred princesses and three hundred concubines; and his wives turned away his heart. ⁴For when Solomon was old, his wives turned away his heart after other gods; and his heart was not true to the Lord his God, as was the heart of his father David. ⁵For Solomon followed Astarte the goddess of the Sidonians, and Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites. ⁶So Solomon did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, and did not completely follow the Lord, as his father David had done. ⁷Then Solomon built a high place for Chemosh the abomination of Moab, and for Molech the abomination of the Ammonites, on the mountain east of Jerusalem. ⁸He did the same for all his foreign wives, who offered incense and sacrificed to their gods.
11

⁹Then the Lord was angry with Solomon, because his heart had turned away from the Lord, the God of Israel, who had appeared to him twice, ¹⁰and had commanded him concerning this matter, that he should not follow other gods; but he did not observe what the Lord commanded. 

What happened to Solomon was a personal tragedy, of course. But his splintered allegiance also impacted his people, God's chosen people. Along with Solomon and his 1000 wives, they embraced false gods, their allegiance to God alone fractured. They embraced dependence on things like power, wealth, and sexual adventurism, rather than on God alone. When spiritual leaders or people whose faith we admire turn from God, it can have a terrible effect on us all.

In fact, when any member of the Church "defects" from God, it can effect many people. And sometimes, their defection may be unknown to us and unnoticed even by the defectors themselves. That's the focus of something that Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote about in the portion of The Cost of Discipleship I read last evening.

Bonhoeffer talks about Jesus' discussion of wolves in sheep's clothing, people who never did believe or who have departed from faith, who may be in the midst of the Church:

The disciples of Jesus must not fondly imagine that they can simply run away from the world and huddle together in a little band. False prophets will rise up among them, and amid the ensuing confusion they [that is, the the followers of Jesus in His Church] will feel more isolated than ever. There is someone standing by my side, who looks just like a member of the Church. He is a prophet and a preacher. He looks like a Christian, he talks and acts like one. But dark powers are mysteriously at work...Inwardly he is a ravening wolf: his words are lies and his works are full of deceit. He knows only too well how to keep his secret dark, and go ahead with his work. It is not faith in Jesus Christ which made him one of us, but the devil...His ambitions are set on the world, not on Jesus Christ. Knowing that Christians are credulous people, he conceals his dark purpose beneath the cloak of Christian piety, hoping that his innocuous disguise will avert detection. He knows that Christians are forbidden to judge, and he will remind them of it at the appropriate time...Thus he succeeds in seducing many from the right way. He may even be unconscious himself of what he is doing.* The devil can give him every encouragement and at the same time keep him in the dark about his own motives.

That, to me, is both chilling and instructive. Like the proverbial frogs in the kettle, unaware that the temperature of the once cold water in which they settle is being brought to a boil, we can become so accustomed to the evil around us and within us, that, without our even knowing it, we defect from the God Who sent His Son Jesus to die and rise for us and in Whom, with our words, we may even confess every Sunday morning.

But faith in Jesus is not just words.

Our Gospel lesson for tomorrow, Matthew 5:1-12, which includes the beginning portion of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount in which Jesus shares what are called the Beatitudes, we read this:

When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him.

We cannot and, as Christians, should not seek to, control the faith or beliefs of others. And we cannot control the things that happen to us in our lives. But we can do this: We can, like the disciples on that mountaintop, come to Jesus. And when we fail, we sin, or we get hurt by life, we keep coming to Jesus.

God is irrevocably faithful. And if we will come to Jesus each day, whatever befalls us, we will not only be blessed, we will know that we are blessed, and live in the Kingdom of heaven now and in eternity.

*My underline.

Who is "Pure in Heart"?

In studying the lesson on which I'll be preaching this Sunday, Matthew 5:1-12 (The Beatitudes), I've been looking at Dietrich Bonhoeffer's chapter on the passage in The Cost of Discipleship. I love what he says about, "Blessed are the pure in heart; for they shall see God":

Who is pure in heart? Only those who have surrendered their hearts completely to Jesus that he may reign in them alone. Only those whose hearts are undefiled by their own evil-and by their own virtues too. The pure in heart have a child-like simplicity like Adam before the fall, innocent alike of good and evil: their hearts are not ruled by their conscience, but by the will of Jesus. 

The old saw about letting your conscience be your guide is foolish nonsense. Unless our consciences are guided by the God revealed in Jesus Christ, we will always drift into self-delusion, harm to ourselves and others, and dishonor to the One Who made us. (I know. Being an imperfect sinner, I "drift" a lot, which is why I repent--that is, turn back to Jesus for forgiveness and new direction and new life every day.)

Martin Luther famously told the Diet of Worms, "My conscience is captive to the Word of God." God grant that I will be just such a captive and so be set free to be an innocent child of God, my true self.