Life for the Journey

[Below you'll find the live stream video of this past week's Maundy Thursday service with the people ad friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, and the text of the message.]



Luke 22:7-20

On Maundy Thursday, we remember two things about the meal Jesus shared with the twelve apostles on the Thursday before His crucifixion.

First, we remember the new commandment, or, as in the Latin from which the word Maundy comes, a new mandatum, a new mandate, that Jesus gives to His Church on Thursday of the first Holy Week. Jesus commands, mandates us to love each other with the same self-sacrifice with which He has loved us. If that commandment doesn’t alarm us and drive us to repent for our sin, asking God to love others through us, we’re living in a state of denial. That’s because none of us can fulfill this commandment in our own power or goodness. We need Jesus, remembering that He tells us the total truth when He says, “apart from me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5)

The second thing we remember on Maundy Thursday, the topic that will occupy us this evening, is Jesus’ institution of the sacrament of Holy Communion.

Holy Baptism, of course, is the sacrament by which Jesus gives us new life, Holy Communion is the sacrament by which Jesus sustains us in our life with Him. After Jesus was baptized at the Jordan River, He was led by the Spirit to face temptations in the wilderness. After you and I are baptized, until we die and are called from the dead by Jesus to live with Him in a sinless eternity, we still live in this world, wrestling with the temptations and tests thrown at us by the devil, the world, and our own sinful selves. The Gospel of Matthew tells us that after Jesus was in the wilderness for forty days, God sent angels to minister to, to take care of, Jesus. (Matthew 4:11) In Holy Communion, Jesus ministers to you and me directly and personally. He gives us His own sinless, eternally triumphant self. “This is my body given for you…,” He says. And, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.” (Luke 22:19-20)

Our Gospel lesson for tonight begins with Jesus sending two of His disciples–Peter and John–into Jerusalem to make preparations so that He could celebrate the Passover Seder with His disciples. In sending Peter and John, we see that Jesus is bringing both the fulfillment of the old covenant and instituting the new covenant. Under the old covenant, the one between God and His people, the Jews, it was customary for two men from a family to go to the outer courts of the temple in Jerusalem so that the Passover lamb their families would eat during the Seder dinner could be slaughtered. They would then take the slaughtered lamb back to the homes or inns in which the meal would take place. But, in a break from tradition, Peter and John weren’t sent to do this on behalf of their biological families. Jesus would have this meal with His new family, the family of God called together by His Gospel Word, the Church. You’ll remember Jesus once said, “My mother and brothers are those who hear God’s word and put it into practice.” (Luke 8:21) Here are Peter and John putting Jesus’ Word into practice, preparing to celebrate a meal that encompasses not just one’s relatives, but all people who believe in Jesus.

Passover was the central festival of the Jewish calendar. It memorialized that moment when God’s people, then enslaved in Egypt, were set free and sent off to the land God promised them. Before the first Passover, God instructed His people to prepare for the tenth and final plague God brought on Egypt. The angel of death would take the life of the firstborn in every home and barnyard in Egypt unless the blood of a sacrificed lamb was smeared on the doorposts of those places. Blood is the means by which oxygen, the breath of God, gives life to every human being and every vertebrate animal. Blood is the means by which carbon dioxide, the toxic gas produced by respiration, is taken out of the tissues of the body. Blood then is life. When Cain killed his brother Abel in the Old Testament book of Genesis, his blood–his taken life–cried out to God. At the first Passover, the blood of the lambs, whose death was for the people who trusted in God, barred death access to the lives of the firstborn.

Another festival of the Jewish year was Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. On this day, a perfectly unblemished lamb was sacrificed at the temple. The lamb bore the sins of God’s people from the previous year. After it was sacrificed, the priest would sprinkle the people with the blood of this perfect lamb. By this means, the people were covered with life from God and the toxic impurity of their sin was removed from them. The problem was that under the old covenant, the effects of the sacrifice lasted, at the most, only a year. And so year after year, God’s guilt-plagued people were called to offer yet another lamb, to be covered once again by its blood. Even at that, people would often offer sin sacrifices throughout the year.

Friends, we too, would be plagued by sin and uncertainty about our standing with God were it not for one thing: Jesus has instituted a new covenant in which we can rest. John the Baptist talked about this new covenant when, pointing to Jesus, He said, ““Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29) The sin of the world, of the whole world, of every time and every place, including our sin, yours and mine.

Under the old covenant, priests daily, made sacrifices of lambs, doves, and grain to first, purify themselves of their own sin before they then offered sacrifices of people who came to the temple laden with guilt. Nothing but these constant sacrifices could assure people their sins were forgiven or carry them from death to life. But, referring to Jesus as our great high priest, the book of Hebrews tells us, “Unlike the other high priests, [Jesus] does not need to offer sacrifices day after day, first for his own sins, and then for the sins of the people. [Sinless Himself] He sacrificed for their sins once for all when he offered himself.” (Hebrews 7:27)

In Holy Communion, we don’t sacrifice Jesus on the cross again. That’s bad theology, intimating that what Jesus did on the cross wasn’t good enough. Controlling the timetable and circumstances ordained by God, Jesus offered the sacrifice of His innocent body and blood on the cross once and for all. This is why when biblically heedless people ask you when you were saved, you can confidently answer, “On a hill outside Jerusalem two thousand years ago.” Jesus has already done everything necessary for your sins to be forgiven by God and for you to have life with God. As I’ve said before: When Jesus said before dying on the cross, “It is finished,” He meant it! The apostle Paul wasn’t lying when He said, “If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” (Romans 10:9) We become Christians not because we’ve made a decision for God, but because God made a decision for us. He decided to die for us! “While we were still sinners,” the Bible says, “Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8) So, friends, in Jesus Christ, our sins are already forgiven. The only question is, do we believe in Him?

This is where Holy Communion comes in. While our salvation has already been accomplished and God’s decision for us is unchangeable, even when the Holy Spirit’s Word has convinced us to believe in Jesus, we can get wobbly in our walk with God. The devil, the world, and our sinful selves constantly press us toward unbelief. They lie to us, telling us we’re not good enough, that Jesus didn’t really die and rise, that we’re too bad and the world is too bad for the good news of new and everlasting life with God through faith in Jesus to be true. On top of that, life can batter us with setbacks, tragedies, and difficulties. “Pastor, I believe in Jesus,” someone told me recently, “but my life is so hard right now.” Holy Communion happens when the word of Jesus, along with Jesus’ promises to us, meets the bread and the wine and Jesus tells us, “This is My body and This is My blood. What I accomplished at the cross and tomb was for you. Your sins are forgiven. My good news is for you. I will never leave you nor forsake you. (Hebrews 13:5) Though your sins are like scarlet, I make your life as white as snow (Isaiah 1:18). As far as the east is from the west, so far have I removed your sin from you. (Psalm 103:12) I am with you always, to the close of the age. (Matthew 28:20) All who believe in Me will not perish, but have everlasting life. (John 3:16)”

Friends, life in this world is hard. But we are blessed that during our journey through this life, Jesus gives us Himself, body and blood, in, with, and under the bread and the wine, and fills those who receive Him in faith with life that never ends. Amen

When I doubt that I'm forgiven

[These joyous journal reflections are from my quiet time with God this morning. I hope that you find them helpful in your walk with God...and, more importantly, that they'll incite you, if you don't yet do it, to keep a daily quiet time with God yourself.]

Look: “Now Joshua was dressed in filthy clothes as he stood before the angel. The angel said to those who were standing before him, ‘Take off his filthy clothes.’ Then he said to Joshua, ‘See, I have taken away your sin, and I will put fine garments on you...I will remove the sin of this land in a single day. In that day each of you will invite your neighbor to sit under your vine and fig tree,’ declares the Lord Almighty.” (Zechariah 3:3-4, 9-10)

Zechariah was a prophet in late 6th.-century BC Judah. The Persians were allowing God’s people who had formerly been taken into exile by the Babylonians, now vassals of the Persians, to return to their homelands. Zechariah hears from God that the promised land had been wrested from God’s people because of their idolatry and other sins. Now the people were going back and Zechariah encounters the high priest Joshua. (This is not the Joshua who succeeded Moses as the leader of God’s people in the wilderness. This Joshua lived many centuries later.)

Here’s the high priest: In filthy rags, representing the sins of Judah (and presumably his own). But God removes Joshua’s filthy clothes, replacing them with “fine garments.” God’s gracious forgiveness is swift in its impact: He removes the sins of the nation in a single day. And its impact goes beyond those He forgives: Infected by His grace, the forgiven invite their neighbors to sit with them in the shade of their vines and fig trees. God’s forgiveness for us creates within us a humility and a love for others that cannot be contained. I think of the early Christians, the forgiveness of God in Christ, when embraced transforms our lives and our relationships with others, including our unbelieving neighbors.

Listen: This is an awesome passage! Despite being a preacher of the gospel--the good news of forgiveness and new life for all who repent and trust in the God Who comes to us in Jesus Christ, I sometimes cling to my filthy rags. I do this not only in the sense of committing again sins for which I have authentically repented, but also when I allow myself to doubt that God can forgive or has forgiven the sins that I lay at his feet. I give God my filthy sins, lay my sins bare before God, accept the clean garment of forgiven sin, and then cling to the old sins, struggling to believe that God could actually forgive me.

The Gospel of Jesus says that God can forgive all of my sins! So does this passage!

It’s akin to the words of Psalm 103:12: “...as far as the east is from the west, so far has he [God] removed our transgressions from us.”

God calls me to trust that in Jesus Christ, I am forgiven and I am made new. “... if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” (2 Corinthians 5:17)

No matter how hard it may be for us to accept that God could possibly forgive us, our call is to “clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the flesh…” (Romans 13:14). In other words, our repentance is only complete after we accept the forgiveness God freely offers through Jesus to all who repent.

Repentance that stops at regret for sin is no repentance.

Repentance that ends in self-recrimination and doubts that God could possibly forgive me is not repentance.

Repentance is composed of a sorrow for sin, a trusting turn to God through Jesus to confess, and grateful acceptance of the forgiveness of God given, not because I deserve it, but because Jesus has earned it for all who trust in Him, including me.

When the power and truth of God’s forgiveness clothe us in Christ’s righteousness, a humble gratitude takes hold, making it possible for we forgiven to love others as we’ve been loved by God.

Respond: Thank You, Lord, for this reminder of Your forgiving grace. Help me to discard the filthy rags to which I so readily cling. Today, help me to cling to Christ alone. Throughout this day, on the half hour, remind me to thank You for Your forgiveness. In Jesus’ name. Amen

[I think Martin Luther had the right attitude as to how Christians should respond to the temptation, whether from the devil, the world, or our sinful selves, to doubt that God forgives repented sin. He wrote, “So when the devil throws your sins in your face and declares that you deserve death and hell, tell him this: ‘I admit that I deserve death and hell, what of it? For I know One who suffered and made satisfaction on my behalf. His name is Jesus Christ, Son of God, and where He is there I shall be also!’” AMEN!]

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

Forgiven and Forgiving: Life in Jesus' Kingdom

[This is the message that was shared during both worship services with the people of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, earlier today.]

Matthew 18:21-35
At the end of last Sunday’s gospel lesson, Jesus describes how people living in His Kingdom, the people of His Church, are to resolve things when we believe we have been sinned against.

As today’s gospel lesson begins, we can almost read Peter’s mind as he asks Jesus, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?” (Matthew 18:21)

“I’m willing to forgive someone who’s doing me wrong,” Peter seems to be saying. “But. Lord, if they keep sinning against me, when do I get to stop forgiving?”

Jesus tells Peter how many times he is to forgive a fellow believer: “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times” (Matthew 18:22).

Some translations render Jesus’ words as “seven times seven.” Others put it, “seventy times seven.” Various ancient copies of Matthew’s gospel can support any of those translations. But we can’t get hung up here and miss Jesus’ point.

In Jewish thought, seven is the perfect number. It was, according to Genesis, the number of days in the first week of God’s creation and it was on the seventh day that God rested from His labor. Seven is the number of completion and eternity.

So, how often are we to forgive our fellow believers, our sisters and brothers who by their confession of the crucified and risen Jesus, live in the Kingdom of heaven? Jesus says always.

Completely.

Totally.

Eternally.

Repeatedly.

Continuously.

While Peter stands there, undoubtedly slack-jawed and wondering why he would forgive anyone continuously and how he he could possibly do it, Jesus tells what has become one of his most famous parables. He begins: “Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like…” Whenever Jesus uses phrasing like this, it’s a signal that the entire fictional illustration He’s about to share tells you what life in His kingdom is like. This is how things work among God’s people, the Church, Jesus is telling us.

Jesus says: “...the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand [The word here in the Greek in which Matthew wrote his gospel is murion, from which we get the English word, myriad...ten thousand] bags of gold was brought to him. Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt. At this the servant fell on his knees before him. ‘Be patient with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay back everything.’ The servant’s master took pity on him, canceled [In fact, the word in the Greek is a form of the verb, aphiemi, literally, released, the word most commonly used in the New Testament for forgave. The king forgave, released the servant from the man who owed the king so much…] the debt and let him go.” [Matthew 18:23-27]

The first thing we learn from the parable about the kingdom of heaven is that it’s where Jesus’ disciples are set free, released! 

By the power of Jesus’ death on the cross, when He offered up His innocent body and blood in payment for the massive debt we owe to God for our sin, our debt is canceled. All who trust in Jesus and what He did for us on the cross, are set free of all we owe God for the ways our lives have violated His holiness:

• all the gossip and misuse of God’s name, 
• all the dishonesty and covetousness, 
• all the adultery and failure to worship God instead of ourselves or our kids or the world, 
• all the financial sleight of hand. 

We are set free to be the people God made us to be! As we sing in the traditional liturgy: “Worthy is Christ, the Lamb who was slain, whose blood set us free to be people of God.”

And when we come together on Sunday mornings, confessing our sins, because of what Jesus did for us and your faith in Jesus, you can believe that when I say, “As a called and ordained minister of the Church of Christ, and by His authority, I therefore declare to you the entire forgiveness of all your sins,” or words like these, it's all true!

“As far as the east is from the west, so far has [God] removed our transgressions from us!” (Psalm 103:12)

Christians needn't say, "I hope that  I’m forgiven.” You are forgiven because Jesus died and rose to bring His forgiveness to all who trust in Him. That’s the first thing the kingdom of heaven is like for those who believe!

Jesus goes on with His parable in verse 28: ““But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred silver coins. He grabbed him and began to choke him. ‘Pay back what you owe me!’ he demanded. His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay it back.’ But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. When the other servants saw what had happened, they were outraged and went and told their master everything that had happened. Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ In anger his master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed. This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”

The second thing we learn from Jesus' parable about the kingdom of heaven, the Church, is: It’s the dominion of God in which disciples of Jesus forgive others as we’ve been forgiven.

After teaching us to pray, elsewhere in Matthew’s Gospel, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us,” Jesus says: “...if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.” (Matthew 6:14-15)

If, after being assured of God’s absolution--His forgiveness of our sins--during worship on Sunday morning, we harbor grudges or hold things against others, refusing to release them from the debts they owe us, God will clap the chains and manacles back on our lives. Our lives will come back under an eternal death sentence. We will lose our forgiveness. We’ll lose our freedom.

The servant forgiven so much by the king in Jesus’ parable should have been so grateful for his freedom that he readily forgave the man who owed him so little. Instead, he used his freedom as a license to play God over his fellow servant. No matter how often we go to worship, or how many Bible verses we memorize, hurricane victims we help, or mission trips we go on, unless we forgive others as Christ desires to forgive us, we will not be forgiven. We’ll still be imprisoned in our sin.

It’s possible that after Jesus told this parable, Peter was as slack-jawed as he he’d been before Jesus told it. And maybe we find this teaching intimidating. I know that I do!

But the call and command of Jesus in this parable are simple and, if we take them seriously, liberating and life-giving.

Think of what Jesus accomplished for us on the cross and what the Father accomplished for us when He raised Jesus from the dead, think of all of that, as a massive, eternal blank check imparting never-depleted riches of forgiveness and new life to all who turn from sin and trust in, believe in, surrender their lives to, Jesus.

God never tires of forgiving those who genuinely repent and believe in Him. He forgives in perfect seventy-seven times fashion.

In turn, Jesus frees us from the burden of keeping score. He frees us from having to figure out who owes us for hurting us.

Jesus frees us to treat others with the same grace, mercy, and forgiveness He has given to us.

He frees us to get on with the true living of life: loving God, loving neighbor, making disciples.

By the grace of God given in Christ, we are forgiven.

By that same grace, we can forgive others.

Seventy times seven, in utter eternal perfection.

That’s what life in the kingdom of heaven is like, here on earth and in eternity.

Amen

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

Forgiveness: Hard and Beautiful

[This was shared today, during a Living Water Lutheran Church women's retreat. I subjected people to listening me sing parts of a few of my songs.]

After teaching the disciples how to pray--including the petition, “...forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors”--Jesus says in Matthew 6:14-15: “... if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.”

The God we know in Jesus is in the forgiving business. That’s why John the Baptist said of Jesus: “Behold, the Lamb of God Who takes away the sin of the world.” Jesus is the ultimate sacrificial lamb. He offered Himself to take away the power of sin over our lives “once and for all.” Jesus’ self-sacrifice and our faith in Jesus ensures that we’re set free to live with God for eternity, even now in the messiness of this life. The forgiveness of God offered in Jesus is great news. But Jesus says that in order to claim the Father’s forgiveness, we need to be forgiving. If we don’t forgive, Jesus tells us, “your Father will not forgive your sins.”

The word that Jesus uses that we translate as forgive is, in the Greek in which Matthew rendered the Lord’s Prayer, a form of the word aphiemi. It’s a verb that literally means to send away from, or release, even divorce or separate from. Psalm 103:12 conveys the picture of forgiveness as God sending our sins far from us, when it says: “...as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.” When Jesus brings God’s forgiveness to the repentant believer, we are released, set free, and our sins are sent packing! “The wages of sin is death,” Romans 6:23 says, “but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

When we’re forgiven through Christ, the boulder of sin that prevents us from claiming the life Jesus died and rose to give us is removed from our path. “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” [Jesus asked the woman caught in adultery.] “No one, sir,” she said.“Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.” That woman was released from the debt she owed to God for her sin and her sins were sent away. She could walk with God. That’s what forgiveness lets us do.

But forgiveness is hard. The first thing that makes forgiveness hard is that we have to admit that, whether in our thinking or in our actions, we’re in the wrong. Yet, if we’re to receive forgiveness, we have to be open to confessing our sin. One of the most courageous prayers in the Bible is Psalm 139:23-24: “Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”

When I listened to the first drafts of Georgeann’s, Nancy’s, and Dawn’s presentations for this weekend, I urged them to be unafraid to share what they felt comfortable in sharing as they spoke with you. It’s when we see each others’ hearts and lives honestly and appropriately shared, that the message of Christ can be best transmitted between people. So, I’m going to follow my own advice and make a complete fool of myself on this subject of forgiveness.

I write songs...or more accurately, mostly I write parts of songs, most of them never getting completely finished. I started writing songs when I was eight years old after I'd watched The Al Jolson Story and realized for the first time that songs didn't just appear. People actually wrote them. I thought, "That's a good job." So, I went to my bed room, sprawled out on the floor, and wrote my first song. It was only later that I realized that it was written to the tune of The Daring Man on the Flying Trapeze. But it got the ball rolling. I can't not write songs, probably coming up with an average of three song ideas a day. They come to me as I experience life and as I observe the lives of others.

A few years back, I became conscious of a sin into which I’d fallen (it’s amazing how long we can live in denial about our sins, isn’t it?). I confessed. And then, a song came to me. Here's the first verse. (And the embarrassing and vulnerable part.):

What I did was wrong
And there isn’t any way I can make it seem that it was right
Which is why I try avoiding detection in Your light.
It’s a foolish game that I try to play
Running from You see me anyway.
What I did was wrong.

I once sat through an evening with an agnostic man. We talked late into the night. He unfolded a lifetime of regrets, exposing his sins to me.

As I was getting ready to leave, he smiled and told me, “They say that confession is good for the soul. I guess it is.” I told him that yes, confession can be cleansing. But unless we let Jesus take away the garbage, our sin will always be with us.

Forgiveness comes when we let Jesus take our sins away. That’s when we’re released. Many people realize that they’ve sinned; but they’re never forgiven because they don’t give it to the Savior Who wants to nail our sins to the cross and kill off their power over us forever.

And that leads to another song fragment. A friend committed a damaging sin and had no sense of regret for it. On the night we learned of it, I drove to lead a Bible study, thinking about what I would say to my friend had he not cut off contact with all us. This song started to come to me:

Everybody falls off their pedestals and tumbles to the ground
And there’s no point in feigning strength when we all have fallen down
But when I’m made weak
By the things that I seek
I know someone who’s strong
I lift up a prayer
And I know that He’s there
And somehow I can carry on. 

Through the joy and through the pain
Through all the driving rain
In the deep heart of a bleak night
I know my Lord is there
Through the laughter and the tears
Through all the raging years
When all my hope has left sight
I know
I know
I know my Lord is there.

What I wanted to tell my friend is, “Don’t run from God! Don’t run from those who come to you in the name of God. There may be some hard words that need to be heard. There may be some repentance and an honest dealing with your faults. But Jesus shows that God wants what’s best for you. God wants to forgive you and give you a fresh start.” I never got to tell him any of that.

So, forgiveness is hard, first of all because we have to admit that we’re wrong (we have to be vulnerable) and secondly, because it entails surrender to God, the only way we’re to experience the truth that God loves us and is always there for us!

But to me above all, it’s Jesus’ implacable demand that we forgive, that we lay down our demands that others pay up on the debts that they owe to us in order to receive God’s forgiveness, is what makes forgiveness so hard.

When we hear or read about this demand, we seem to automatically think of our need to forgive other people: the people who have wronged us, hurt us, or harmed us. But I think that there are two others apart from other people we must forgive in order to be set free by God’s forgiveness.

The first is this. We must forgive God.

The truth, of course, is that God never wrongs us. Even when He disciplines us or refuses to give us what we want, God doesn’t wrong us.

In Hebrews 12:7-8, we’re told to, “Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as his children. For what children are not disciplined by their father? If you are not disciplined—and everyone undergoes discipline—then you are not legitimate, not true sons and daughters at all.”

In other words, whatever bad we experience in this world doesn’t come from God’s hand, but if we will go through it clutching God’s hand, our faith will grow, our character will grow. We will be transformed into the image of the Savior Who died and rose for us.

Besides, as someone has said, when we see that God is all we have, we come to realize that God is all we need.

When Paul asked God to remove that mysterious thorn in his flesh, God turned him down three times and finally told Paul: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” (2 Corinthians 12:9) When we’re weak enough to lay our sins at the foot of the cross, God fills with the strength to live forever!

The other person we need to forgive is, for me, the most difficult one of all to forgive: myself.

Three years ago, I came to be the pastor of Living Water. I believe that it was God’s call to come here and I love this church.

But I have also found it hard to forgive myself these past three years because of how I handled my leaving Saint Matthew, the church we served before.

There were people who had gone to battle on our sides in defense of the Lordship of Jesus and the authority of God’s Word. They were people to whom we’d grown close. They’d endured nastiness, recrimination, and shunning from others. And though I’d intimated that it might be best for me to leave and eliminate a lightning rod of controversy as the congregation moved to the North American Lutheran Church, I caught people off guard when I announced that we were coming to Living Water. Four people in particular, all of whom had firmly stood with Christ and the Bible, felt betrayed by me. They felt lied to and I’ve carried guilt for that ever since. People in whom I've confided have tried to counsel me to receive grace and forgiveness for my repented sin, but mostly, I've insisted on holding onto my guilt, even after Saint Matthew folks have expressed their forgiveness.

I did this even though I’ve long known that there’s a certain egotism associated with refusing to accept forgiveness that’s been offered by God and by others. It’s as if I was saying, “I know that God forgives me and I know that others forgive me, but my standards are higher.” That’s egotistical!

And it’s probably also needy.

I needed to be reminded by God’s Word and by other disciples that even when I don’t feel forgiven or forgivable, Jesus died and rose to make it possible for me to be released--set free, divorced--from my sins. To be forgiven!

Maybe that’s why I often remind people of the promise in God’s Word: “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved!”

That includes you. Don’t withhold from yourself what God freely gives to all who call on Him with repentance and belief, forgiveness.

All of which leads me to one more humiliating self-disclosure in the form of a song that is completed and which I even shared with the congregation last year. It’s called Confession and Absolution Song and it’s about forgiveness. There’s a part for you, if you care to join in:

Father, forgive us for all of our sin
Come, Holy Spirit, make us clean within
Through Jesus Christ, we know You're our Friend
Alleluia
Alleluia 

A Friend indeed, but also our King
The One to Whom all creation sings
Our needy selves are all we can bring
Alleluia
Alleluia

Now all who call on the name of the Lord
The One Who saints and angels adore
You have new life and life evermore
Alleluia
Alleluia

Forgiveness is God’s sweetest gift and it’s ours through faith Jesus, Who died and rose for us. Alleluia!

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

The Way of Life

[This was shared during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church on Sunday, December 6, 2015.]

Luke 13:1-14

Some of our vacations over the years have taken us through mountains in places like West Virginia and Colorado. Whenever we drive through mountains, I think about all that was involved in building the piece of highway we’re on. Mountains and foothills had to be blasted through and dug out, low areas filled in with concrete, dirt, and gravel. Road-builders create straighter, clearer paths to the places we want to go.

Our Gospel lesson for this morning tells us about a road-builder we call John the Baptist. According to Luke, the writer of the book from which our lesson is taken, John fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah, written hundreds of years before the birth of Jesus. Luke cites Isaiah 40:3-5; they make up verses 4-6 of our Gospel lesson. John the Baptist, Luke tells us, is “a voice of one calling in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him. Every valley shall be filled in, every mountain and hill made low. The crooked roads shall become straight, the rough ways smooth. And all people will see God’s salvation.’”

Long before John was born, God had defined John’s mission in life. He was to be a road builder who would create a clear pathway for “all flesh” to “see the salvation of God.” 

How did John do this? 

And what does it have to do with us?

This morning, we’re going to focus on just the first six verses of our Gospel lesson. We'll look at Luke 3:1-6. Luke writes: “In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar—when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, Herod tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip tetrarch of Iturea and Traconitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene—during the high-priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, ...” 

From what Luke tells us with this list of kings and priests, scholars believe that John the Baptist’s ministry began in 28 or 29 AD.

But Luke wants us to know more than just when John the Baptist began his ministry. He wants us to know why John began his ministry. If we were reading Luke straight through, we already would have gotten a hint back in Luke 1:52. Mary, the virgin God chose to be the mother of Jesus, tells Elizabeth, then in the sixth month of her pregnancy for John that “[God] has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble.”

The world kowtows to the Caesars, the kings, the wealthy, and the powerful, but people who believe in the God revealed to all the world through Jesus Christ know Who’s really in charge. They know too that God is at work even when most people think that God has disappeared. Even when terrorists, despots, and superstars are “getting away with murder,” God is still moving the world and all who trust in Him toward a certain destiny, ensuring that at a time both the Old and New Testaments call “the day of the Lord,” all will be made right. On that day, despots will get their comeuppance and those who trust in the Lord will step into the joy of their inheritance from God. Rulers will be brought down from their perches of power and the lowly will be lifted up.

Back in verse 2 of our Gospel lesson we’re told that: “the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness.” These words are a clear signal that like Jonah, Hosea, and Joel, to whom God’s Word came in the Old Testament, John the Baptist was to be a prophet, a tough calling.

The word from God that the prophets were expected to spread was often a message that people didn't want to hear, but needed to hear if they were going to have right relationships with God. 

The lives of the prophets were, as a result, often difficult. Many were killed, just as John the Baptist would be, not because God had abandoned them, but because they were being faithful to the word God gave to them. 

And people then, no less than today, didn’t want a God Who told them what to do.

In Luke 3:3, we read, “[John] went into all the country around the Jordan, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” 

Out in a wilderness like the one where God had spent forty years preparing His people to enter the promised land, John preaches the message that he’s been given by God. It’s simple: “Repent.” 

This is how John the Road Builder did his job of creating a pathway by which people could see God’s  salvation given in Christ. 

Repentance, to this day, remains the only roadway by which we can find salvation from sin and death, the only roadway by which we can have peace with God and peace within ourselves.

The Bible teaches that all of us are born in sin. That’s why God sent Jesus into the world. He took our sin on His own shoulders on the cross. He rose from the dead to tear down the walls of sin and death for us and to allow us to enjoy peace and intimacy with God. 

But sin can set us down pathways so far from Jesus that even if we’ve been churchgoers all our lives, regarded as “good people” by the rest of the world, we can get to the point where we can’t really see Jesus any more. 

To see Jesus, the arrogant must be laid low and the lowly must be lifted up. 

We need a straight, clear path to the salvation God wants to give to all people through Christ. John pointed people (he points us still today) to the pathway of repentance as the way to salvation through Jesus.

To many people today, repentance is a dirty word. A woman sent me an angry email a few years back complaining that in a message I’d shared on a Sunday morning, I’d intimated that all of us in church that day--including me--might have reason to be repentant. She didn’t like that at all. 

Truth is, we all recoil at accepting responsibility for our sinful thoughts and actions. This is why Jesus tells us that to be with Him, we must take up our crosses--that is, admit our sin--and follow Him. We must be honest: We cannot receive Jesus as the One Who saves us from our sins until we can acknowledge that we have sins from which we need to be saved.

For many people though, repentance is a great word, a joyful word! That’s because true repentance is made up of two elements. First: It means to be sorry for my sin. Second: It means to trust that when I confess my sins to God through Jesus, God will forgive me and I will be at peace with God. 

The believer in the God we know in Jesus is filled with the assurance voiced by King David in Psalm 103:12: “...as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.” They know the joy of repentance.

Imagine two people, each headed for the same destination. One takes a mountain path, following ever upward through switchbacks and hairpin curves, sure that she’s headed in the right direction, only to find herself at the pinnacle of a mountain, nowhere close to where she intended to go. 

The other person, with the same destination, descends into a deep valley, slogging through swamps and streams, equally certain that he’s going right, only to find himself mired in mud, his destination nowhere in sight.

These two people illustrate the lives of people who have lost their ways in life, far from the God we know in Christ. 

The only way off the mountain paths of egomania and selfishness that lead us away from Christ is through repentance. The selfish person must say, “You’re right, Lord. I’m not in charge. I’m not God. I’m not entitled. Forgive me and let me be Your child.”

Similarly, the only way off the lowly path of self-condemnation is through repentance. The lowly person says, “You’re right, Lord. I’ve been expecting too little of my character, I’ve thought too little of myself, and so, given myself a pass for engaging in sin that dehumanizes me. I thought that who I am and what I’ve done didn’t matter. But You died and rose for me. Because of that I know that I matter! Forgive me for denying the truth about myself and lift me up to live as Your child.”

And then the repentant person, whether they started from a position of lowliness or arrogance, trusts Jesus to be as good as His promise to give life, peace, hope, and the power to live with purpose to those who believe in Him.

Romans 8:1 says: “...there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus...” Let that sink in for a moment. There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus!

Those who repent--who own and regret their sins and trust Christ to forgive them--know what that passage is saying: Though we are sinners who deserve condemnation, Christ sets the repentant free to live as the human beings we were all meant to be!

Chances are that if you’re like other Christians (including me), you follow Jesus well sometimes. But sometimes, you lose your way. You sin and maybe you find, as I find, that the more you sin or ignore the will of God, the easier it becomes to sin again and the harder it can become to really worship God or to have peace with God or peace with yourself. 

This is why regular, daily repentance is so important. It clears away the blindness of our sin, helping us to see how deadly our sin is. It helps us to see the God we know through Jesus, the love He has for us, and the life He gives to those who turn their backs on sin and follow Him.

It was while repenting that David wrote in Psalm 139:23-24: “Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me,and lead me in the way everlasting.”

John the Baptist was a road-builder. But the road to life with God and the second chances of God are open even today to all. We travel the road of repentance when we turn from sin and trust in Christ alone for life. May this be the road we travel each day.