It's All About the Truth

[This message was shared during Ash Wednesday worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, last night.]

Ecclesiastes 3:20
As we all know, before the risen Jesus ascended into heaven, He told the Church to tell the world about Him and to make disciples. But, from a marketing standpoint, Jesus has made that a difficult task.

For example, the passage of Scripture that informs the designation of this as Ash Wednesday is Ecclesiastes 3:20, where we’re told: “All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return.” The Message translation/paraphrase of the Bible renders that verse this way: “We all end up in the same place—we all came from dust, we all end up as dust.”

Happy talk, huh?

Want some more happy talk? Here’s a terrible Valentine’s Day confession on my part: I’m not keen on having floral arrangements in my house. Flowers are pretty outside. But when they come into a house and fill the place with their fragrance, all I can think of is funerals.

Most of us don’t really like funerals. Funerals may give us strength, encouragement, peace, and hope from God’s Word and the fellowship of the Church. But they wouldn’t happen if people we cared about didn’t die.

I'm willing to be that if you and I had the choice between going to a movie, a game, a restaurant, or a funeral, I doubt that the funeral would be anyone’s first choice. Death isn’t a topic we like to consider, whether it’s the death of someone else or our own deaths. (As someone has said, "I don't mind dying as long as I don't have to be there when it happens.")

And yet, we set aside a day on the Church calendar every year dedicated to reminding us that you and I are dust and to dust and you and I shall return, that we’re going to die.

That’s a marketing problem for Christians.

When I look at how other things are marketed on TV, radio, and the Internet, I don’t see the promise of death.

The commercials for resorts market fun in the sun, an endless party.

The weight loss people market a new you who will attract the opposite sex.

The beer people do much the same.

The insurance companies, furniture stores, car dealers, diamond merchants, online retailers: Not one of them feature death in their marketing.

If anything, they tend to pitch their products as being able to help us fend off death, overcome our human limitations, even make us godlike in our control of aging, illness, money.

This applies even to the funeral home people whose commercials make only oblique reference to how hard, relentless, and unforgiving death is.

But we Christians gather each year at the beginning of Lent to put ashes on our foreheads.

So, why the difference between the Church and the world?

Here it is: The world wants to believe a lie; the Church seeks to live the truth.

There are actually two lies that the world, along with the devil and our sinful selves, wants to believe.

The first lie is that everything is vain and futile, that we’re going to die, so just “eat and drink and be glad.” This was the futile conclusion reached by King Solomon, a man who used the wisdom given to him by God to make himself wealthy and powerful at the expense of his own integrity, faith, and salvation.

This lie is rooted in the notion that there is no way out, that all are going to die, and that the grave or the crematorium will be the inevitable end of us. So, this way of thinking goes, you should do anything and everything you want. Nothing matters. Just grab whatever your version of the good life is and enjoy it till you die.

The fact is that for the person who trusts in the God you and I meet through Jesus Christ, this life isn’t the whole story.

Even Job, the man in Old Testament times who endured so much sorrow, could say centuries before Jesus died and rose, as a person of faith: “I know that my redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand on the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God; I myself will see him with my own eyes—I, and not another. How my heart yearns within me!”

Job trusted that despite his own sins and mortality, the God Who made the heavens and the earth, could also give life again to those who repented and trusted in God.

What Job believed by faith is now available to all who believe in the crucified and risen Jesus, God in the flesh, Who offers us beyond the grave or the crematorium.

The New Testament tells us: “...if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” (2 Corinthians 5:17)

We are ashes and dust. We must understand that. It shows us how finite and dependent on God we are, how much we need Jesus to save us from ourselves.

But as surely as God scooped up dust from the earth and animated it to give life to the first human being, He gives new, eternal lives to those who turn to Christ for life. This life isn’t pointless or futile when we seek, by the help of the Holy Spirit, to live it for Jesus Christ!

The other lie the world tries to sell is the idea that death isn’t that big a deal. It’s just a speedbump to eternity. In this view, everyone’s going to have life with God, whether or not they’ve paid any attention to Jesus, the only One Who can give us life with God, in their whole lives on earth. These people see death as a hiccup.

This lie is the very one that the serpent told Adam and Eve in the garden. When the serpent learned that God had told the couple that if they partook of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they would die, the serpent said: “You will not certainly die” (Genesis 3:4). He chose not to add the fine-print caveat, right away. “You will not die right away…” Instead, he portrayed God as being stingy with His blessings because he didn’t want Adam and Eve to know about or experience the consequences of evil.

The serpent then said: “God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:5). Again, the fine print was missing. The serpent should have said, “you will be like God, knowing good and evil. But because you’re creatures, not the Creator, you won’t be able to handle the knowledge of evil like God, Who is perfect and holy, can. It will be like kryptonite in your hands. It will be like a flame to a moth. It will kill you.”

This neglected fine print reminds me of the ten to fifteen seconds in the middle of every prescription drug commercial. After telling you how wonderful their product is, the advertisers add a bunch of disclaimers including one that can be summarized: It could kill you.

In the garden of Eden, the FDA hadn’t been invented yet. So, naively cynical, Adam and Eve bought the lie of endless life apart from God hook, line, and sinker.

Christians know that death is a big deal.

Death is real.

We must reckon with the reality of it.

We are born sinners and sinners die.

Medicine may extend our lives for a time. It may enhance our lives for a time. And that’s wonderful.

But in the words of that twentieth-century poet, the late Robert Palmer, we know that “no pill’s gonna cure my ill.”

The gospel tells us that we must turn away from our sin (we must repent) and trust that Jesus will give us life even after we die.

Jesus, the One Who rose from the dead, promises: “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)

So, why ashes? Three reasons.

First, ashes remind us of our dust-iness, our mortality, of our utter dependence on God. Dust could never turn itself into a human being made an image of God. Only God could make something as magnificent as human beings from a clump of dust. Every human being can say with King David, "I am fearfully and wonderfully made" (Psalm 139:14).

Second, ashes remind us of the judgment which this old creation will undergo. The apostle Peter tells us that when Christ brings down the curtain on this creation: “The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything done in it will be laid bare.” (2 Peter 3:10) We must not grow too attached to this creation as it is.

Third, ashes represent repentance and renewal. Sometimes, our forestry service conducts controlled burns. Forests often erupt in natural fires. They’re God’s way of bringing renewal. Foresters cooperate with natural fires by confining them to certain areas, allowing old brush and threatening plant life to be burned away and for new life to emerge. From the ashes emerge the sprigs of new trees. Jesus once spoke of the resurrection life that would emerge from His death: “...unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.” (John 12:24) Just so, when we repent, dying to our sins and our sinful desires and, instead seek to live in utter dependence on Christ, we are given new life from God. As often as we repent and trust in Christ, God will keep renewing us all through eternity. (Martin Luther said that the Christian is to live in daily repentance and renewal.)

We commemorate Ash Wednesday each year because we believe in telling ourselves, each other, and the world the truth: Death is real, but death is not the end for those who trust in Christ.

These ashes--you and I--have new life through faith in Jesus.

Paul puts it better in Romans 8:1: “...there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”

If the ashes on our foreheads remind you of that tonight, then this symbolic beginning of the Lenten season will have done its work. Amen

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

A 'Melania Makeover' and the Value of a Human Being

The New York Post has the story of a seemingly attractive woman who feels the need to look like someone else, in this case like Melania Trump.

This is not much different--only be degree--from the person who feels the need to derive their sense of identity and worth from having someone else's name on their clothing, be it jerseys, sneakers, dress shoes, t-shirts, ties, suits, or other articles of clothing.

If you don't know by faith in God that, through Christ, you are acceptable in the eyes of the only One Whose opinion matters, you become subject to the temptation of subordinating your own unique personhood to other people or things, all so that you can feel powerful or worthy.

But God has already shown you your infinite value by sending His Son Jesus to die on the cross for you, where he bore the punishment for sin that we all deserve. Then He rose from the dead to open up the perfection of eternal life spent in God's presence to all who trust Christ for forgiveness, life, and the certainty of their worthiness.

Trust in Jesus, not face lifts, hair coloring, sneakers, a career, a house, a car. None of those things can deliver what only Jesus can and does give to those who repent and believe in Him: a certainty of their worth, the presence of God and the support of His Church today, and the promise of life with God beyond death.

[UPDATE: This situation also reminds me of the former Rachel Dolezai, one-time leader of the Spokane NAACP chapter, who, it turned out, claimed to be black when, in fact, she is white. We are all "fearfully and wonderfully made" (Psalm 139:14), no matter how difficult that may be for us to accept.]

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

3 Things to Remember

[This was shared this morning during the 10:15 worship service with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio.]

Ephesians 2:11-22
Our second Bible lesson for today, Ephesians 2:11-22, was written to a Gentile (that is, non-Jewish) Christian community in the first century who lived in an area then called Asia Minor, which you and I know as Turkey.

But there is more than musty history to be found in these verses. In the midst of the demands and challenges of our everyday lives, these verses remind us to do three things:

• Remember who we were. 
• Remember who, by grace through faith in Christ, we are. 
• Remember who, by grace through faith in Christ, we are to be. 

Please go to our lesson, Ephesians 2:11-22.

Look first, please, at verses 11 to 13. We’re told, “Therefore remember that you, once Gentiles in the flesh—who are called Uncircumcision by what is called the Circumcision made in the flesh by hands—  that at that time you were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.”

To understand this passage, we must remember a simple Biblical truth: God is the giver of life. Without a connection to God, we are dead, even if we have a strong pulse and heartbeat. We are dead in our sins and we face an eternity divorced from life and an earthly lifetime of futility and meaninglessness without connection to God.

While the Bible tells us that there have always been people who have believed there was a God and who sought Him in their own ways, God first disclosed Himself and His nature to a single people, the descendants of Abraham and Sarah, the Jews. The Jews were called by God to be His own people.

God evidently had His reasons for focusing His attention and energy on one people.

For one thing, the Jews were meant to be “a light to the nations,” showing the whole world the glory of God.

For another, the Jewish people became a laboratory showing the whole world how God’s law, grace, and forgiveness work, what repentance and faith are all about.

What we see when we read the Old Testament’s account of God’s interactions with the Jewish people is that He is no different from the God we encounter in the New Testament in the Person of Jesus. (See here and here.)

Look at Genesis 15:6. God has promised Abraham that he and his wife Sarah will have a son and become the ancestors of nations. It’s an outlandish promise--almost as outlandish as promising eternal life to those who repent and believe in Christ. Abraham and Sarah were old, well beyond child-bearing or child-rearing years. Yet look at Genesis 15:6: “And [Abraham] believed in the Lord, and He accounted it to him for righteousness.”

Now, flip back to Ephesians 2:8 and see the remarkably consistent way by which God brings salvation or righteousness to imperfect sinners like you and me: “For by grace [that’s God’s charity] you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God.”

Verses 11 to 13 of our lesson tell us that the miracle of salvation, once a gift belonging only to the Jews now belongs to all who believe in Christ. As verse 13 says, “now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.”

It used to be that only Jewish men who had been circumcised, along with their wives, daughters, and sisters, could claim to be God’s people, reconciled to God, one with God. Those who weren’t Jewish were aliens, foreigners, strangers to God. But God has brought all who believe in Jesus close to Himself.

It’s good though, to remember who we once were without Christ. It’s good to remember that, in spite of not being “members of the club” and in spite of our sin, Christ welcomes all who repent for sin and believe in Him with open arms.

Nobody I know is more critical of me than me. There are times when I get so angry at myself, thinking, “How many times do you have to commit the same sin before you learn your lesson? How many more times do you intend to disappoint God with your hard-headedness and hard-heartedness?” But then I go to God in prayer and I read His Word and I’m reminded of passages like Isaiah 1:18, where God says: “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall be as wool.”

Or, Jesus’ words from the cross, “Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.”

I remember who I once was: A sinner without hope. Through Christ, like all who believe in Him, I have been transformed: a forgiven sinner with an eternity of hope.

Look at the next section of our second lesson, Ephesians 2:14-18. It says: “For He [Christ] Himself is our peace, who has made both one, and has broken down the middle wall of separation, having abolished in His flesh the enmity, that is, the law of commandments contained in ordinances [this refers to the Jewish ritual and civil laws, not to the moral laws, like the ten commandments, which still stand], so as to create in Himself one new man from the two, thus making peace, and that He might reconcile them both to God in one body through the cross, thereby putting to death the enmity. And He came and preached peace to you who were afar off and to those who were near. For through Him we both have access by one Spirit to the Father.”

I heard a man say of his son, “He came out of the womb, cigar in hand, barking out orders.” Truth is, we all came into the world that way, more or less. The Bible, in Psalm 139:14, tells us that each of us is “fearfully and wonderfully made.” But, we also come equipped with an inheritance from our imperfect human parents: an insatiable commitment to having things our own way, a desire to “be like God.” King David speaks for us all in Psalm 51:5, when he writes: “Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.”

We are born at war with God. But Jesus Christ has come to make peace between God and us.

Peace with God is what Christ has come to give to us. But it’s a peace that can only be ours when we surrender to Christ!

Jesus wants us in His eternal kingdom. But we can’t get in if we insist on holding onto our sins, if we insist that our favorite violations of God’s will for human beings are “no big deal.”

To God, every sin--from taking His Name in vain to sexual intimacy outside of marriage between a man and a woman, from murder to false witnessing (what we call gossiping)--every sin is an assault that disrupts and destroys the peace in which He wants His creation to live.

1 John 1:8-10 contains words familiar to most Lutheran Christians: “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, [God] is faithful and just to forgive our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make [God] a liar and His word is not in us.”

The  peace of God comes to those honest enough to admit their sin and honest enough to own their need of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection to change their lives. In Romans 5:1-2, the apostle Paul writes: “Therefore having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through Whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.”

In Christ, repentant believers in Jesus have peace with God and even with those who hate us.

I once read about a Lutheran pastor and psychologist doing graduate work in a major US city in the east. We’ll call him Bill. Bill began attending a local congregation and made himself known to the pastor. The pastor was happy to have Bill in the congregation and took Bill up on his offer to help in any ways he could. Bill saw a few congregants in counseling situations and occasionally led worship and preached.

As time went on, Bill became aware that, to some parishioners, the pastor seemed like an angry person whose venom was creating a lot of ill-will. Bill initially discounted it until one Sunday, just before a service at which Bill was to preach, the angry pastor lit into Bill, accusing him falsely of all sorts of maliciousness.

The service began and, silently, Bill begged God to help him get through it, knowing that the entire time the pastor was staring at him with searingly angry eyes. Bill says that God not only gave him peace internally, but also peace in his relationship with that pastor. He was eventually able to get the pastor to the help he needed for healing.

In Christ, God makes peace with you and if you will let Him, He promises that--in the words of Philippians 4:7--”the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.”

Remember by grace through faith in Christ who you are right now: a person at peace with God and with others.

Look, please, at the final verses of our second lesson, Ephesians 2:19-22: “Now, therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.”

After remembering who we were without Christ and who we are with Christ, Ephesians reminds of who we are becoming through Christ. Once foreigners to God, now members of God’s own household, confident of God’s love for us and His presence with us right now, we also have a lot to look forward to.

Through the witness of the apostles and the prophets found on the pages of our Bibles, God is building us up to be part of a temple, the very place God lives. And, as much as we may like our church buildings, it isn’t in brick, mortar, or plaster that God lives, but in people who dare to give their lives to Jesus Christ. As someone has said, “Christians don’t go to Church. They are the Church.”

And it’s this Church into which you and I are being built for all eternity. It’s the Church in which sin, death, grief, and futile toil will come to an end. Every tear will be wiped from our eyes and we will live with joy and purpose alongside all who have trusted in the Name of Christ.

The world has brought sad and tragic news to our doorsteps this past week. This life is fragile and fleeting. But when we who trust in Jesus, remember who we were, who we are, and who our God is making us to be, we do not despair.

This morning, we thank God for Christ and we recommit ourselves to that commission which Christ has given to every follower of Jesus. Turn to that commission, please, in Matthew 28:19-20. The risen Jesus commands all who have been saved by His grace:

“Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” 

God has given us His peace through Christ. Share that peace with others by sharing Christ with them. That’s the work to which you and I are called while on earth. May it be our way of life. Amen!

Temptation and the Only Way to Handle It

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

Matthew 4:1-11
We know the story of Jesus being tempted in the wilderness almost by heart. It comes up every year on the First Sunday in Lent.

Fresh from the amazing moment of His baptism in the Jordan River, when a voice from heaven had said, “This is My Son, the Beloved, with Whom I am well pleased,” Jesus, goes into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.

There’s comfort to be found in this incident. It reverberates with a truth to which the preacher in the New Testament book of Hebrews points when he says of Jesus: “…we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin.”

As we go through the season of Lent, it’s good for us to remember that Jesus endured the wilderness and the Garden of Gethsemane and Good Friday and the cross—times of temptation, testing, and terror—not because He had to, but because He wanted to. He chose to endure these things for the same reason that He underwent John the Baptist’s baptism of repentance even though Jesus had nothing for which to repent. Jesus did all these things “to fulfill all righteousness,” to connect with us at the deepest and most intimate level, to go through all that we go through, so that having endured even death itself, He could be raised to life again and share His resurrection with all who turn from sin and trust in Him to give us new lives!

All of that is implied in the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness. And it’s incredible!

But today, I want to ask you to try to look at this incident with fresh eyes. As you do, I’d like to ask you to keep two questions in mind:

• What is temptation? 
• And, How can temptation be handled? 

Jesus confronted three temptations from the devil: to turn stones to loaves of bread; to throw Himself down from the top of the Temple, betting that God and His angels would prevent Him from being hurt; and to take control of all the nations of the world simply for bowing down and worshiping the devil.

There’s nothing inherently wrong or evil in what the devil tries to entice Jesus into doing in these temptations. Jesus would, in fact, at different times later in His ministry, do things very similar to what the devil prompts Jesus to do in the wilderness. Jesus would later turn some fish and bread into a feast for a crowd of 5000. He would walk on water, something at least as amazing as levitating in the air after throwing oneself from the top of a temple. He would also be the one to bring the kingdom of God into the world.

So, what’s the difference between temptation and a harmless suggestion? Two things: Motivation and timing.

• When Jesus later fed the 5000, He didn’t do it for Himself; He did it for a crowd that He could see was hungry and Who needed to know Who the real bread from heaven is. 
• When Jesus walked on the water, He did it to foster and encourage the flagging faith of apostles to whom He would soon entrust the mission of sharing the gospel with the world. 
• When Jesus brought the kingdom of God to the world, He did so unencumbered by any debt to the evil from which He came to save a sinful, needy world. 

Jesus’ motivation was never to serve Himself, but us. Temptation is the enticement to do otherwise good things for the wrong reasons or at the wrong times or in the wrong ways and for ourselves.

But how do we handle temptation when it comes to us, as it does every single day? There are, I think, three ways we can choose to deal with temptation, only one of which works.

One of the wrong ways is logic. (We sometimes call this “common sense.”) If Jesus had used logic or common sense to resist temptation, He might have told Himself, “My mission is to live and die without sin. Only a sinless sacrifice of Myself on behalf of the human race will fulfill that mission. Therefore, I must withstand temptation.”

How do you think that would have worked? When you’ve been without food for forty days, logic doesn’t cut it. You want to eat! Jesus might well have become so desperate with hunger that He could have built an equally logical argument for caving in to the devil’s temptations. “After all,” Jesus could have thought logically, “My ultimate aim is to take control of the world’s kingdoms. What difference does the method make?”

Of course, had Jesus followed logic, the jig would have been up for us all. Sin and death would have kept their power over us and God, mired in sin Himself, would have been made powerless to help us. If we rely on common sense or logic to get us through our temptations, we will not stay true to God.

Another method people use to try to deal with temptation is to follow their hearts. We hear this advice all the time. “Follow your heart,” we’re told. Jesus could have tried this, but he didn't. Listen: Following your heart when it comes to life’s tests and temptations may be the quickest road to hell you can find.

Jeremiah 17:9 says, “The heart is devious above all else; it is perverse—who can understand it?”

Ecclesiastes 9:3 says, “the hearts of all are full of evil; madness is in their hearts…”

Our emotions are afflicted by sin. Had Jesus relied on His emotions when the devil tempted Him, He would have caved into the temptations in a heartbeat! Hunger and other desperate experiences affect our emotions and when we rely on our “heart” to guide us, we make really bad choices.

How might Ohio State’s football coach Jim Tressel have reacted to the emails sent to him by attorney Christopher Cicero if he had chosen not to let emotions (or logic) get in the way? I’m not picking on Coach Tressel. We’ve all tried dealing with life’s tests and temptations by following our hearts or our logic. The difference is that the media isn’t around to report when our bad decisions blow up in our faces.

There’s a third way to handle temptation and Jesus exhibits it in our lesson today. Please go to our Gospel lesson on the Celebrate insert and look at verse 4. To the devil’s suggestion that He turn stones to bread, we're told:

But he answered, "It is written, 'One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.'" 

If you have a pen or pencil handy, you might want to underline those words and take the insert home with you to consider during the week.

First spoken by Moses to the Israelites just before they entered the promised land, those words tell us how Jesus handled temptation and how we can handle temptation. Jesus knew that only the word of God gives us life! God’s Word that spoke creation into being also fills the pages of His book, the Bible. And so, to deal with temptations to diverge from God’s clear commands for human beings, commands that we can see clearly in the Ten Commandments, we steep ourselves in God’s Word. We spend time each day reading it, praying about it, discussing it with Christian friends. We consider it in its entirety and not just individual verses or aspects of it that please us or that we can use to justify doing the wrong we want to do. Emotions will lead you astray. Common sense will too. But the Word of God will never let you down!

A prominent southern California preacher told about a conversation he had with a young man about a night that changed the young man’s life.* Bored, he went to a bar and started drinking and flirting with a good looking woman. He was unmarried. She was divorced. “Let’s go to Las Vegas,” the woman suggested.

The young man immediately put his glass down, paid the bartender, took the woman’s arm, and headed for her car. She told him to drive and snuggled closely to him as they roared through the night.

But then, maybe remembering what he had been taught as a child, the thought crossed the young man’s mind that this was a pretty cheap thing for him to do. He caught sight of himself in the rearview mirror and remembered that he was, as the Bible puts it, “fearfully and wonderfully made,” a child of God with incredible potential for good. He began to feel disgust and self-loathing for what he was about to do, something he had done with other women many times before. He couldn’t do this.

He pulled the car off to the side of the road. "What are you doing?" she asked. “I’m getting out,” he told the woman. “It’s your car. Go on to Vegas if you want to…I’ll thumb a ride back.” He shut the car door and watched the woman speed away angrily. “Suddenly,” the young man told the preacher, “I felt ten feet tall! I never felt so good in my life!”

Folks: God wants to help you have moments of triumph like that, moments when you opt for the dignity that goes with being a citizen of God’s kingdom instead of just another hopeless sinner looking out for number one on the highway to hell.

Jesus Christ went to a cross for you. He rose from the dead for you. He did this so that you can share in His victory over sin and death. He gives those who believe in Him the same power to resist temptation that He had in the wilderness, the power of the Word of God.

He also promises to those of us who, unlike Him, aren’t perfect, the opportunity for second chances for godly living like that young man took when climbed out of that car and walked away from sin. (I've been taking Jesus up on second chances for over thirty years now!)

But Jesus offers even more to those who, through the power of God’s Word, face down temptations and evil. Please pull out a pew Bible and turn to page 557. Look at a single verse there, Matthew 10:22. Jesus says:

And you will be hated by all for My Name’s sake. But [the one] who endures to the end will be saved.

Persevere in trusting in Jesus. 

Read His Word and be ready to face all that life throws at you. 

Read His Word and walk more intimately with the God Who wants to save you from all that would destroy you, Who wants to give you life as God designed it to be lived. 

Hold onto Christ and His Word and you’ll hold onto life. Amen

*Retold here.