Showing Christ (Part 3, 'Bearing Fruit for God's Kingdom')

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

Luke 13:6-9
Two weeks ago, we first showed the congregation what we call a “video postcard,” displaying the pathway to the destination of full maturity as disciples of Jesus Christ. 




Now, why are we making such a big deal about growing as Christ’s disciples?

In Luke 13:6-9, Jesus tells one of His parables. He says, “A man had a fig tree growing in his vineyard, and he went to look for fruit on it but did not find any. So he said to the man who took care of the vineyard, ‘For three years now I’ve been coming to look for fruit on this fig tree and haven’t found any. Cut it down! Why should it use up the soil?’ ‘Sir,’ the man replied, ‘leave it alone for one more year, and I’ll dig around it and fertilize it. If it bears fruit next year, fine! If not, then cut it down.’”

Here, Jesus paints a picture of a vineyard-owner upset that one of his fig vines hasn’t grown. Impatient, the owner tells the caretaker to cut the tree down. The way he sees it, the tree is just taking up space, using water, nutrients, sun, and life that might more productively be used by a new tree that will actually produce figs. But the caretaker wants to give the fig tree more time to do what fig trees are supposed to do, to show the result of all that’s been put into it. He says that he wants to put more manure on it, water it, and dig some space around it to give it the chance to grow. If, after all of that effort, the tree won’t bear fruit, then it will be time to cut it down.

The point Jesus is making is clear. Through His Word, which we can read and hear proclaimed, as well as taste and see in the sacraments of Holy Baptism and Holy Communion, we can know Jesus Christ and the new life that He brings to all who believe in Him; we can grow in Christ, as we mature as followers who daily die to self and rise to the new life God has in mind for us; and we can show that Christ lives in us and so, bear fruit. 

Some see the caretaker in Jesus’ parable as being Jesus Himself. Jesus shields us from the condemnation for sin and hard-heartedness that we deserve and keeps pouring His Word into our lives with one aim in mind: that Christ will so fill us that we will show Christ to the world. We will be people who live for Christ, serve in Christ’s name, share the good news of new and everlasting life through faith in Jesus. The people around us will know that we follow Jesus. That’s what it means to show Christ.

Let’s be honest, taken together, most people in the churches of North America and Europe are like the dormant fig tree in Jesus’ parable. Despite being able to freely receive the Word of God, the word of new and everlasting life that when embraced and trusted, fills a person with the very life of God, most church-goers are indistinguishable from the rest of the world. They’re dead stumps. They’re “go through the motion Christians.” 

And one day, such lukewarm Christians may be cut down, eternally separated from God, because they refuse to let Jesus take up residence in their lives, refuse to let the Word they repeatedly received from the crucified and risen Jesus fill them and impel them to lives of love, service, and witness to the dying world around them.

In John 8:12, Jesus says, “I am the light of the world.” But something miraculous happens to us when we let Jesus, the blazing, luminescent Author of all life, get to us, to enter into us, when we open the door and let Him into the center of our lives. 

We become lights that show others Jesus so that He can change their lives the way He’s changing ours. “You are the light of the world,” Jesus says. “A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house.” (Matthew 5:14-15) Are we giving light to the whole house? The whole world? The whole community?

God’s grace given in Christ is not our private possession and faith is not a private matter. We’re to show it, not with arrogance, but humility; not with pride, but with love. 

1 Peter 2:9 tells you and me as baptized believers in Jesus, “...you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.” In other words, God has poured all of this grace and life made available to us through faith in Jesus not just for our own personal assurance, but so that we can let others know and grow in Jesus too. That’s our purpose in life! There is no other!

This message up to this point is apt to engender two main responses. 

One is indifference. 

The other is an anxious desire to know how we can show Christ, as though showing Christ to others was an item on a holy checklist, the successful completion of which will earn us a place in eternity with God. 

Both reactions are human and understandable. And both of them are completely wrong. 

Nothing I’ve said today alters the truth that we are saved by God’s charitable grace through our faith in Jesus Christ alone. But what I am saying is that if you have been saved by Christ and your faith in Him, you will want to show others how you, although a sinner worthy of eternal condemnation, have been made a saint in God’s kingdom because of the death of Jesus on a cross and the faith in Jesus created in you by the Holy Spirit. In other words, what we should be asking is, How can we get out of God’s way so that Christ is shown through us? Here are a few thoughts on how that happens.

First: We consciously, daily invite Jesus into every part of our lives. The New Testament book of Revelation begins with the resurrected Jesus interacting with seven ancient Christian congregations, one of them Laodicea, a church filled with people indifferent to Jesus. “Here I am!” Jesus tells them. “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.” (Revelation 3:20) We show Christ to others when we let Jesus in.

Second: We spend time in God’s Word so that Christ can take root in our lives. Psalm 1:1-2 uses the term law in the Old Testament sense, meaning God’s Word or the way of life God reveals to His people in His Word when it says, “Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers, but whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on his law day and night.” We need to let God’s Word go deeply into our lives each day if Christ will be shown by our lives.

Third: We worship and receive the sacrament every time we can. I’m so happy to be part of a church that offers Holy Communion every Sunday. And to be part of a church that take God’s Word so seriously. We need God and we need God’s people if we’re to bear fruit for the kingdom.

Fourth: We build listening into our prayer lives. It’s a noisy, busy world. If you can, take time to let God speak to you, to assure you of His presence and His love for you, to guide you, and to challenge you each day. Psalm 46:10 famously tells us, “Be still, and know that I am God…”

Fifth: We don't ignore what God tells us. Some people spend their lives wringing their hands, wondering what God wants them to do. But there’s really no need to wonder! God calls those who trust in Jesus to love God, love neighbor, and make disciples. This is God’s will for our lives, which Jesus expressed in the Great Commandment and the Great Commission. When we’re not sure what to do in situations in our lives, Martin Luther tells us to “sin boldly,” meaning seek God’s guidance, ask wise Christian friends, and then do what we think shows God’s love or helps us share Christ with others. We can’t show Christ to others if we get mired in what’s been called “the paralysis of analysis.” Think and plan, of course. But “Do not quench the Spirit,” 1 Thessalonians 5:19 tells us. In other words, be bold about sharing Jesus in your family, among your friends, and in the world.

These are steps of faith we can take in order to get out of God’s way to show the world the Savior Jesus we want everyone to know.

At Living Water, we’re committed to creating opportunities for everyone touched by the life of this congregation to know Christ, to grow in Christ, to show Christ and so, bear fruit for God’s kingdom. This is the entire reason for our being. Let’s continue to seek to follow Christ faithfully so that together we can fulfill our purpose as a church. We conclude our series next week.

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

After "Love comes to town"

This was a tough Quiet Time with God for me this morning. I hesitated to share it. But I will post it, in hopes that it might help someone else to get real before the Lord.

Look: “If they have escaped the corruption of the world by knowing our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and are again entangled in it and are overcome, they are worse off at the end than they were at the beginning. It would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than to have known it and then to turn their backs on the sacred command that was passed on to them.” (2 Peter 2:20-21) 

Listen: This is a bracing word!  

It reminds me of what the preacher says in Hebrews 10:26-27: “If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left,  but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God.” 

They warn me and all believers against intentional rebellion against God’s will after Christ’s grace has come to our lives. Acts 17:30 says: “In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent.” 

Once “love comes to town,” though, once Christ entered our lives, we could/can no longer claim ignorance of God’s will for us. As beneficiaries of what Christ accomplished on the cross, our desire should be, from simple thankfulness, to seek to live in accordance with God’s will as revealed in His Law. Obedience to the law can’t save me. But obedience to God’s law is the desire of anyone who knows how much God loved and loves us through Christ. One look to the cross should motivate any Christians to seek to live according to God’s will for human beings. Thankfulness should incite me to delight in the law of the Lord and to meditate on it day and night (Psalm 1:1-2) 

Deliberate, intentional sin after one has experienced grace is a kind of “repentance from” righteousness, a walking away from Christ, a choice to stand outside the grace of God. It means that one removes the covering of Christ and once more stands naked before God in sin. And the wages of sin are still death (Romans 6:23). 

That’s a terrifying thing!  

And there have been times when I have intentionally, knowingly wandered away from You, God. I have turned to sin I knew to be wrong. I have done things I knew to be displeasing to you. I took Your grace for granted. I took the benefits of eternal life with You from Christ’s sacrifice of Himself on the cross as my right. But I have no intrinsic right to claim life in Your kingdom. That’s a gift given to those who empty themselves of the sin of this world and tage hold of you! (Acts 3:19; Mark 1:15; Acts 16:30-32; John 3:16-18). 

When, knowing Christ and His grace and Your Law, and still knowingly sin, I am, at the least, on very shaky ground.  

And, as one who is called and presumes to teach Your Word, the ground is even shakier when I intentionally defy You. “Not many of you should become teachers, my fellow believers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly” (James 3:1).  

Respond: God, in Jesus’ name, forgive me for the contempt I have shown to You and to Your Word. Forgive me for taking for granted Jesus, His painful cross, His humiliation, and His death for sinners like me. Forgive me for sinning knowingly, even as Your Holy Spirit told me, “Don’t do this, Mark!” Forgive me and restore me. I call upon You, Lord, with as much authenticity and humility as a human being is capable of, and I beg You, for Jesus’ sake to forgive these and all my sins. Help me to call on Your name and have my relationship with You restored. Send Your Holy Spirit to come alongside of me and speak Your truth--both Law and Gospel--to me, and help me to listen. Fill me and guide me with Your Word and the power of the Holy Spirit.   

Erase from me all the feelings of hatred and contempt and disdain and all the words and actions that come from me reflecting these sins. Forgive me for my covetousness and help me to be content with You and what You have given to me. Forgive me for the ways in which I have hurt others. Forgive me for stewing over what others think of me. Forgive me for focusing on what’s unimportant and forgetting the important to which You call me. Let "daily repentance and renewal" be a feature of my life, an authentic and repeated surrender to you each day so that my life will express the gratitude I have for the gracious gift of Christ. 

In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen

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

How God's Grace Frees Us to Love God's Law

Lutheran Christians, as you may know, love to say that we are saved by God's grace through our faith in Jesus Christ and not by good works. It's a truth that is freeing!

But some take this Biblical truth to mean that God's law, the ten commandments and all the places that amplify and explain them in the Bible, is a bad thing.

But not according to Martin Luther, whose teaching and preaching started the Lutheran movement and the Reformation.

In his newest book, Lutheran Slogans: Use and Abuse, Robert W. Jenson points out Luther began both The Small Catechism and The Large Catechism (the first for laypersons, the second for clergy, with a discussion of the law.

And Luther talked about the commandments in his Large Catechism explanation of the Apostles' Creed, where this statement appears:

The faith...makes us pious and pleasing to God; for through this confession we acquire a desire and affection for all God's commandments.

Says Jenson:

...according to Luther, the reason faith makes us pleasing to God is that it lets us love the law. Faith does not excuse us from the commandments, it makes obeying them a joy, such as is expressed in so many psalms and such as God likes to see in his creatures.

I doubt very much that Luther would be on board with the contempt for God's commands that is in vogue in many contemporary mainline denominations in North America and western Europe.

The denigration of God's moral law, seeing it as irrelevant, inoperative, or even bad, is, so far as I can see, an old false teaching that seems to always be cropping up in Christian circles. The name of this heresy is antinomianism. It argues that because of Christ, Christians are exempt from keeping God's law, even though many of the letters of Paul, the apostle of grace, argues against it.

God's Law, the moral commandments of God, are not the vestiges of a primitive religion, as some smarty pants argue today, but the statement of God's will for all human beings who live on earth until the day of the risen and ascended Jesus' return.

Happily for us, Jesus, perfect God and perfect human, obeyed God's Law perfectly and by His death and resurrection, has erased the Law's power to condemn those who repent and receive the gift of faith in Him.

And when we have faith in Christ, the law, which once only served to hem in our sinful inclinations or to show us, by our inability to obey its commands, how desperately we needed the grace that comes from Christ alone, is transformed for us.

Through Christ, the Law becomes a delight to us, freeing us to spend each day in repentance and renewal through Jesus Christ, as we seek to live according to the Law by which human beings were made by God to truly and fully live!

So, think about that: We are justified by grace through faith in Jesus Christ...because faith in Christ plants a love for God's Law that makes us acceptable to God.

Through faith in Christ, God sets out to sync our hearts, wills, and minds with the heart, will, and mind of God and like the psalmist, we can say: "Happy are those...[whose] delight is in the law of the Lord, and on His law they meditate day and night" (Psalm 1:1-2).