Showing posts with label Romans 7. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Romans 7. Show all posts
Friday, May 08, 2020
Sunday, January 26, 2014
Prayer (Third in a Series)
[This was the prepared sermon for this morning's services with the people and guests of Living Water Lutheran Church in Springboro, Ohio.]
Genesis 3:1-7, 22-24
Over the past several weeks, we’ve been looking at the Lord’s Prayer as a model for all our praying. Today, we’re going to look at the sixth petition of the prayer: “And lead us not into temptation.” This petition raises questions like: What is temptation and why should I resist it? If God wants me to not sin, why does He even allow the temptation to sin happen?
For some answers, let’s go back to the garden of Eden, where the first human beings were subjected to the first temptation to sin. Please turn to Genesis 3:1-7, 22-24, pages 2 and 3 of the pew Bibles.
Adam and Eve were naive. As created, they were without sin, in sync with God and each other. In Genesis 2:25, we’re told: “And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.” As created, Adam and Eve had desires, like pleasing God, pleasing and loving one another, doing the work God had given them to do. As they would later learn and as we learn when we’re paying attention, sin is nothing but desiring otherwise good things at the wrong times, or in the wrong ways, or for the wrong reasons. The desires of Adam and Eve were altered in destructive and death-dealing ways because of their unwillingness to resist the temptation to sin. The agent who brought temptations to them was the serpent, who we can take as a stand-in for Satan. But the devil didn’t make them do it, any more than the devil or anyone else can make us sin. Caving into temptation is always an inside job. As Jesus notes in Matthew 15:19, it’s from hearts turned from God’s purposes (or corrupted) that that our sins come.
The serpent asks the woman in Genesis 3:1, "Did God really say, 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden'?" The woman answers truthfully in verses 2-3: "We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, 'You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.' " So far, so good. The woman is doing well in this interchange with temptation. Like Jesus, who would be tempted in the wilderness many thousands of years later, Eve is able to resist the serpent because she knows and remembers the Word of God. If you and I are serious about resisting temptation and living lives that express our thanks to God for the gift of new life that belongs to all who turn from sin and believe in Jesus Christ, we will take the time to read the Word of God and so know the mind and the will of God. We’ll also pray and ask God to help us resist temptations to sin.
Unless we keep in prayerful contact with God, temptation can make our brains go fuzzy. We become susceptible to having God’s Word twisted and turning us inside out. We find it easy to rationalize away the seriousness of the sins to which we’re being tempted. Look at verses 4 and 5, please. "You will not surely die," the serpent said to the woman. "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."
Notice what the serpent is doing here. First: He’s trying to drive a wedge between God and the woman. In effect, he’s asking, “Why is God such a spoilsport? What pleasure is he trying to deny you? What right does God have to hold anything back from you?” When you and I are tempted to sin, we might be hounded by similar thoughts: “It’s just a little thing. The company (or the government, or the school, or the church) will never miss it.” Or, “I think I’m entitled to a little pleasure after all these years of living with such an uncaring husband (or wife).” Or, “This isn’t really gossip. I’m just passing on information so that my friend will be better informed and know what to pray about.” Rationalizations like these drive wedges between God and us.
The second thing the serpent is doing with the woman is telling the truth in a lying way. It was true that the woman wouldn’t die--at least not right away--for her sin. Eve and Adam, who had heretofore, known only good would, to their regret and shame, know about evil after biting into the fruit and that would, eventually, bring their deaths. But the serpent didn't tell the whole truth. When the sin to which we're tempted offers momentary thrills or pleasures or when it makes us feel powerful or exceptional, we become susceptible to listening to such lies. When we're hell-bent on sin, we don't care about the fine print. We get separated from God, from others, from our best selves, from life.
The third thing the serpent is doing is this: Effectively telling the woman that she has a right to be just like god. Listen: Human beings are the pinnacle of creation, the only of God’s species made “in the image of God.” But we are not God and according to the Word of God, we never will be. But all temptation, in a way, tries to feed us this lie. We see what happens when we forget the Word of God and allow temptation to get in the way of our relationship with God in verse 6: “When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.”
Because we’re born in sin, self-centeredness is the human default mode. We’re born with a passion for ourselves that has to be taught by the grace given in Christ to make room for God and others. We have to be forcibly displaced from the thrones of our lives so that as we and our inborn selfishness are crucified in repentance, Christ can rise in us and make us new people each day. That’s why we need the Savior Jesus to bridge the gap between us and make it possible for our fellowship with God and with others to be restored through a bond of love borne of Jesus’ death and resurrection.
Now, it would be easy for us to say that since we’re born as sinners who want to sin and God loves us so much, it must mean that God approves of our sin. Pastor Erwin Lutzer once knew a kleptomaniac, a person with a compulsion to steal. He told Lutzer, “I’ve always wanted to steal as far back as I can remember. There’s no question in my mind that it’s genetic.” He may have been right; he may have been genetically predisposed to kleptomania. But even if the klepto was “born that way,” it wouldn’t mean that God gave him the green light to steal. Everyone of us is genetically predisposed to sin and each of us like some sins more than we like others. Yet every one of is told to obey the ten commandments and to repent when we violate them. And all of us are commanded by Jesus to pray, “Lead us not into temptation.” And we’re all told to turn from sin and to trust in Christ alone for life with God and for all that we truly need, now and in eternity. The good news is that if we want to resist the temptations to which we feel ourselves subjected, the God we know in Christ can help us resist temptation. In James 4:7-8, we’re told: “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you.” When tempted by sin, move closer to God. The temptation to sin will lessen.
But, if God wants us to stay away from sin, why did God allow temptation to come to Eve and Adam...and to us? Think of things in this way: God intended for you and me to have a special relationship with Him. God could have created robots who, as He loved them, had no choice but to love God back. But God wants a true relationship of love with us. God wants us to choose to love Him. And the only way we can choose to love Him is if we have the option not to love Him, not to obey His will for our lives. Without our having the option to not have faith in the God we know in Christ, our confessions of faith are meaningless. That’s why God allowed (and allows) temptation in this world.
Now here’s the scary thing: Because of the genetic predisposition to sin you and I have inherited from Adam and Eve, we do not have free will when it comes so sinning or not sinning. “We are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves,” we say. In Romans 7, the apostle Paul writes about his own bondage to sin: “...what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate [sin], that I do...” He then confesses that it’s sin that dwells within him. Paul would have thrown up his hands in despair, resigned to being forever separated from God, consigned to hell for eternity, except for one thing. He says in Romans 7:24-25 (page 786 in the pew Bibles): “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God--through Jesus Christ our Lord!” Whenever we repent for sin--turn away from it, renounce it--and trust in the crucified and risen Jesus as our God, God forgives our sins and gives us the power to resist temptation today and to look forward to eternity with God!
Temptation doesn’t come from God. James 1:13 says: “No one, when tempted, should say, ‘I am being tempted by God’; for God cannot be tempted by evil and He Himself tempts no one.” We are tempted instead by the desires that come to us from the devil, from a sinful, fallen world, and from our own corrupted DNA. But, when facing temptation, we have a great promise from God. 1 Corinthians 10:13 tells us: “No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to [all people]; but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it.”
What temptation are you facing today? It could be the temptation to fudge on your taxes or Medicare forms, to lie about the work you did on the school project, or something else. We can be infinitely creative in finding ways to violate God’s moral law, the ten commandments. Whatever temptation you face, if you’re intent on living a life that thanks God for the cross and empty tomb of Jesus, God will give you a way of escape from both temptation and sin. Keep your eyes on Jesus and He will divert your attention from death to keep you on the pathway to everlasting life with Him.
Pray, “Lead me not into temptation, Lord. In Jesus’ Name and by the Holy Spirit’s power, help me to resist this temptation.” If you’re like me, you probably have to pray that prayer hundreds of times every day. But, I promise that when you pray that prayer sincerely, with a heartfelt desire for God above all else, God will lead you in the right direction. Your relationship with God, the most important relationship you can have, will grow stronger, your character will grow stronger, and you will move closer to being the person God made you to be in eternity. And, as we learn to live in greater dependence on God, we know more of the true joy that Adam and Eve experienced before giving into temptation.
“Lord, lead us not into temptation.” Amen
Genesis 3:1-7, 22-24
Over the past several weeks, we’ve been looking at the Lord’s Prayer as a model for all our praying. Today, we’re going to look at the sixth petition of the prayer: “And lead us not into temptation.” This petition raises questions like: What is temptation and why should I resist it? If God wants me to not sin, why does He even allow the temptation to sin happen?
For some answers, let’s go back to the garden of Eden, where the first human beings were subjected to the first temptation to sin. Please turn to Genesis 3:1-7, 22-24, pages 2 and 3 of the pew Bibles.
Adam and Eve were naive. As created, they were without sin, in sync with God and each other. In Genesis 2:25, we’re told: “And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.” As created, Adam and Eve had desires, like pleasing God, pleasing and loving one another, doing the work God had given them to do. As they would later learn and as we learn when we’re paying attention, sin is nothing but desiring otherwise good things at the wrong times, or in the wrong ways, or for the wrong reasons. The desires of Adam and Eve were altered in destructive and death-dealing ways because of their unwillingness to resist the temptation to sin. The agent who brought temptations to them was the serpent, who we can take as a stand-in for Satan. But the devil didn’t make them do it, any more than the devil or anyone else can make us sin. Caving into temptation is always an inside job. As Jesus notes in Matthew 15:19, it’s from hearts turned from God’s purposes (or corrupted) that that our sins come.
The serpent asks the woman in Genesis 3:1, "Did God really say, 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden'?" The woman answers truthfully in verses 2-3: "We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, 'You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.' " So far, so good. The woman is doing well in this interchange with temptation. Like Jesus, who would be tempted in the wilderness many thousands of years later, Eve is able to resist the serpent because she knows and remembers the Word of God. If you and I are serious about resisting temptation and living lives that express our thanks to God for the gift of new life that belongs to all who turn from sin and believe in Jesus Christ, we will take the time to read the Word of God and so know the mind and the will of God. We’ll also pray and ask God to help us resist temptations to sin.
Unless we keep in prayerful contact with God, temptation can make our brains go fuzzy. We become susceptible to having God’s Word twisted and turning us inside out. We find it easy to rationalize away the seriousness of the sins to which we’re being tempted. Look at verses 4 and 5, please. "You will not surely die," the serpent said to the woman. "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."
Notice what the serpent is doing here. First: He’s trying to drive a wedge between God and the woman. In effect, he’s asking, “Why is God such a spoilsport? What pleasure is he trying to deny you? What right does God have to hold anything back from you?” When you and I are tempted to sin, we might be hounded by similar thoughts: “It’s just a little thing. The company (or the government, or the school, or the church) will never miss it.” Or, “I think I’m entitled to a little pleasure after all these years of living with such an uncaring husband (or wife).” Or, “This isn’t really gossip. I’m just passing on information so that my friend will be better informed and know what to pray about.” Rationalizations like these drive wedges between God and us.
The second thing the serpent is doing with the woman is telling the truth in a lying way. It was true that the woman wouldn’t die--at least not right away--for her sin. Eve and Adam, who had heretofore, known only good would, to their regret and shame, know about evil after biting into the fruit and that would, eventually, bring their deaths. But the serpent didn't tell the whole truth. When the sin to which we're tempted offers momentary thrills or pleasures or when it makes us feel powerful or exceptional, we become susceptible to listening to such lies. When we're hell-bent on sin, we don't care about the fine print. We get separated from God, from others, from our best selves, from life.
The third thing the serpent is doing is this: Effectively telling the woman that she has a right to be just like god. Listen: Human beings are the pinnacle of creation, the only of God’s species made “in the image of God.” But we are not God and according to the Word of God, we never will be. But all temptation, in a way, tries to feed us this lie. We see what happens when we forget the Word of God and allow temptation to get in the way of our relationship with God in verse 6: “When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.”
Because we’re born in sin, self-centeredness is the human default mode. We’re born with a passion for ourselves that has to be taught by the grace given in Christ to make room for God and others. We have to be forcibly displaced from the thrones of our lives so that as we and our inborn selfishness are crucified in repentance, Christ can rise in us and make us new people each day. That’s why we need the Savior Jesus to bridge the gap between us and make it possible for our fellowship with God and with others to be restored through a bond of love borne of Jesus’ death and resurrection.
Now, it would be easy for us to say that since we’re born as sinners who want to sin and God loves us so much, it must mean that God approves of our sin. Pastor Erwin Lutzer once knew a kleptomaniac, a person with a compulsion to steal. He told Lutzer, “I’ve always wanted to steal as far back as I can remember. There’s no question in my mind that it’s genetic.” He may have been right; he may have been genetically predisposed to kleptomania. But even if the klepto was “born that way,” it wouldn’t mean that God gave him the green light to steal. Everyone of us is genetically predisposed to sin and each of us like some sins more than we like others. Yet every one of is told to obey the ten commandments and to repent when we violate them. And all of us are commanded by Jesus to pray, “Lead us not into temptation.” And we’re all told to turn from sin and to trust in Christ alone for life with God and for all that we truly need, now and in eternity. The good news is that if we want to resist the temptations to which we feel ourselves subjected, the God we know in Christ can help us resist temptation. In James 4:7-8, we’re told: “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you.” When tempted by sin, move closer to God. The temptation to sin will lessen.
But, if God wants us to stay away from sin, why did God allow temptation to come to Eve and Adam...and to us? Think of things in this way: God intended for you and me to have a special relationship with Him. God could have created robots who, as He loved them, had no choice but to love God back. But God wants a true relationship of love with us. God wants us to choose to love Him. And the only way we can choose to love Him is if we have the option not to love Him, not to obey His will for our lives. Without our having the option to not have faith in the God we know in Christ, our confessions of faith are meaningless. That’s why God allowed (and allows) temptation in this world.
Now here’s the scary thing: Because of the genetic predisposition to sin you and I have inherited from Adam and Eve, we do not have free will when it comes so sinning or not sinning. “We are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves,” we say. In Romans 7, the apostle Paul writes about his own bondage to sin: “...what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate [sin], that I do...” He then confesses that it’s sin that dwells within him. Paul would have thrown up his hands in despair, resigned to being forever separated from God, consigned to hell for eternity, except for one thing. He says in Romans 7:24-25 (page 786 in the pew Bibles): “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God--through Jesus Christ our Lord!” Whenever we repent for sin--turn away from it, renounce it--and trust in the crucified and risen Jesus as our God, God forgives our sins and gives us the power to resist temptation today and to look forward to eternity with God!
Temptation doesn’t come from God. James 1:13 says: “No one, when tempted, should say, ‘I am being tempted by God’; for God cannot be tempted by evil and He Himself tempts no one.” We are tempted instead by the desires that come to us from the devil, from a sinful, fallen world, and from our own corrupted DNA. But, when facing temptation, we have a great promise from God. 1 Corinthians 10:13 tells us: “No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to [all people]; but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it.”
What temptation are you facing today? It could be the temptation to fudge on your taxes or Medicare forms, to lie about the work you did on the school project, or something else. We can be infinitely creative in finding ways to violate God’s moral law, the ten commandments. Whatever temptation you face, if you’re intent on living a life that thanks God for the cross and empty tomb of Jesus, God will give you a way of escape from both temptation and sin. Keep your eyes on Jesus and He will divert your attention from death to keep you on the pathway to everlasting life with Him.
Pray, “Lead me not into temptation, Lord. In Jesus’ Name and by the Holy Spirit’s power, help me to resist this temptation.” If you’re like me, you probably have to pray that prayer hundreds of times every day. But, I promise that when you pray that prayer sincerely, with a heartfelt desire for God above all else, God will lead you in the right direction. Your relationship with God, the most important relationship you can have, will grow stronger, your character will grow stronger, and you will move closer to being the person God made you to be in eternity. And, as we learn to live in greater dependence on God, we know more of the true joy that Adam and Eve experienced before giving into temptation.
“Lord, lead us not into temptation.” Amen
Sunday, May 19, 2013
How God's Peace Comes to Us
[This was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio during the 10:15 service today.]
Acts 2:1-21
Pentecost already was an important day on the Jewish calendar when the day we Christians often call the first Pentecost happened.
For Jews, Pentecost was the fiftieth day after Passover. While Passover celebrated ancient Israel’s deliverance from slavery in Egypt, Pentecost celebrated the giving of the law, the ten commandments, by God through Moses to Israel (and all the world) at Mount Sinai.
That may seem strange to us. We don’t like laws. They hem us in, keep us from doing what we want to do, control us. And some human laws can be unjust and oppressive.
But ancient Israel saw God’s Law, the ten commandments and the moral laws that stemmed from them, as good things, as blessings that sketched out the boundaries of what they called shalom, a place of peace with God and neighbor. So the ancient Israelites sang songs about God’s Law! “Oh, how I love Your law!” Psalm 119:97 says, for example, “It is my meditation all day long.” (1)
But God's people had a problem. They loved God’s law. They couldn’t keep it.
If following God’s law was like staying on a paved road, disobeying it was like falling into a ditch of muddy water. And like kids who have just taken a bath, Israel loved heading for the ditches of sin: the ditch of idolatry, the ditch of materialism, the ditch of wanting to fit in with others and ignore the will of God, the ditch of adultery and fornication, the ditch of false witness and character assassination, the ditch of self will, the ditch of thievery and false business and political dealings.
Through the centuries, God sent prophets to call the people out of the ditches and onto the road of God’s laws and commands. But Israel was like one of its first-century AD sons, the apostle Paul, who confesses in Romans 7: “I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my members [that is, in my very self] another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive [the law of sin]...”
Human beings are born captives to sin, death, and the devil. The Bible says that because of our captivity, there’s only one fate we deserve: “The wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23).
Life in the ditches leads inevitably to separation from God, separation from life. Yet, we can’t help ourselves. We’re born ditch-seekers. Some of us like some ditches better than others. But from the moment we’re born, we’re like lemmings programmed by the sin we inherit from our parents to head for the mud, to do the very sin we hate! We can hear and know God’s law and even delight in it. But we cannot keep it.
Our only hope is the Gospel, the good news. Now, the Gospel can’t be reduced to a concept or a happy feeling, though some people try. “The Gospel,” they say, “is about God’s love. God is love. Love. Love. Love. Everything’s cool.”
In fact, the Gospel springs from a particular true story. It’s the true story of how God took on flesh in a particular human life. It’s the true story of Jesus, born of a virgin so that He would not inherit the sin that the rest of the human family inherits from our parents; Who was the perfect once-and-for-all sacrifice for the sins of the world; Who rose from the dead and offers the benefits of His sacrifice--new life--to all who believe in Him as their God and Savior.
The Gospel is about Jesus Christ, Who came to replace the evil kingdom of sin and the dying kingdoms of this world with the kingdom of God for all who repent and believe in Him.
The new kingdom that Jesus died and rose to bring into being isn’t opposed to the law God gave through Moses. In fact, in some ways, Jesus makes God’s Law even more demanding than we remember it from Catechism class.
In the Sermon on the Mount, for example, Jesus says, “You have heard it said...‘You shall not murder’...But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, ‘You fool,’ you will be liable to the hell of fire.” Jesus is saying that it’s not enough to simply obey the letter of God’s law. He cuts to the spirit of the law, which would, if we were capable of keeping it, create the kingdom of peace with God and peace with neighbor that Jesus had to come to earth to bring.
So, Jesus says to anyone who thinks that His death and resurrection are a free pass, a letter of indulgence, allowing human beings to heedlessly and unrepentantly do whatever we want no matter how disobedient or contemptuous of the will of God it may be, that they are wrong.
“Do not think,” Jesus says in Matthew 5, “that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have not come to abolish but to fulfill...unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”
Our situation would be hopeless were it not for the fact that Jesus Christ, the One Who delivers this stern message, has done for us what we can’t do for ourselves. He has obeyed the law. Perfectly.
Jesus has kept the law and so, by His innocent death for us, has conquered the law and its stern verdict against every one of us!
Romans 8:1-4 tells us this:
Those who are saved by God’s grace through their faith in the crucified and risen Jesus Christ are pulled out of the ditch of sin and death and set on the narrow way of life, the way that follows Jesus.
We are rescued from the kingdom of death and the kingdoms of this world and we become part of the eternal kingdom of heaven. It’s something we celebrate and praise God for here at Saint Matthew every Sunday!
For a Christian to use the phrase penned by Saint John in 1 John 4:8--”God is love”--is to mean something very specific. It means that the God Who is horrified by my sin and Who knows that sin is an eternal death sentence, loves me--loves you--so much that He threw out a lifeline which, if we will grasp hold of it in faith, will pull us out of the ditch and mire of sin and lift us into His kingdom.
That lifeline is Jesus.
He says:
All of which brings us back to Pentecost.
The first chapter of Acts shows us that the first Christians experienced how Jesus’ grace can change people’s relationships with God and with each other. Jesus forgave them for abandoning Him and denying Him on the night of His betrayal. Through the crucified and risen Jesus and their faith in Him, God pulled them from the ditches of shame and guilt. They were right with God and learning what it meant to live in the kingdom of heaven.
But their minds, like ours, were still fogged by sin. So they ask, “Lord, will You at this time restore the kingdom of Israel?”
Jesus tells them they need to pray, to quit striving and start surrendering. Then, the power of God’s Holy Spirit, the power that created the universe, would come to them. That’s exactly what happened on the Pentecost of our second lesson.
Like the first disciples, all who believe and are baptized receive the Holy Spirit. But, you may have noticed something: The world is a ditch and it’s so easy to wallow in it sins. This side of our own resurrections, we will never be completely free of sin.
And, acting in our own strength or on our own impulses, we can make things worse. We too often let the distance grow between Jesus, our lifeline and rescuer, and us, in our everyday lives. We become strangers to the One Who died and rose for us.
That’s why we confess our sin and affirm our faith again each time we receive Christ’s body and blood.
That’s why Martin Luther taught Christians to live in daily repentance and renewal. That’s the kind of life I hope and pray you’ll live, Kirsten, as you begin life as an adult Christian today.
As we submit our lives to the control and grace of Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit can empower us to live differently. “...[T]he fruit of the Spirit,” the Bible says, “is love, joy, peace, longsuffering [that means patience], kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law.” The Holy Spirit can help us experience the life of the kingdom of heaven, the life of shalom, of peace with God, peace with others, peace with others.
The Pentecost crowd must have wondered how this kind of peace could come to them. So do we. How can we know peace in the midst of chaos? How can we have serenity in the midst of this world’s uncertainties?
Peter knew the answer to those questions, not because he was perfect or arrogant or intelligent. Peter knew the way to peace because like the other first followers of Jesus, he had seen it revealed, heard its voice, received bread and wine from its hand, touched the hem of its garment, saw it crucified and resurrected. Peter knew the one way to the peace for which we long.
In Acts 2:21, the last verse in our lesson, he shares it with the crowd. Quoting from an Old Testament passage that used the word Yawheh, I AM, God’s Name given to Mose the lawgiver and which we translate in our Bibles as LORD, Peter commended to the crowd the One he and his fellow disciples had come to call, “Lord." He commended the Lord Jesus to them. Peter told the crowd, “...whoever calls on the Name of the Lord shall be saved.”
Today, this week, the Holy Spirit can empower you to live each day in the assurance that, no matter how crazy, conflicted, or even horrible and tragic the world may be, as you submit your sins, your hopes, your decisions, your family, your whole life to Jesus Christ, you are saved, again and again...from sin, from death, and from the devil. You are saved from the gossip that tears you down, from the fears that haunt you, from the temptations that allure you.
Jesus Christ is in heaven at the Father’s right hand. But if you believe in Him and call His Name, you are not and you never will be alone.
The Holy Spirit has come to let you know that whoever calls on the Name of the Lord Jesus--when you call on the Name of the Lord Jesus--you are saved, safe forever in the arms of God, empowered forever to leave the ditch behind and walk as freed, redeemed, and forever loved children of God. Amen!
(1) The book, Lutheran Slogans: Uses and Abuses by Lutheran theologian Robert W. Jenson, provides a great discussion of the places of Law and Promise in a Biblical understanding of the Gospel. The conversation on chapter 5 of this book, conducted by my colleagues in the Association of Confessional Lutherans of Ohio this past week, was timely and helpful for the preparation of this sermon!
Acts 2:1-21
Pentecost already was an important day on the Jewish calendar when the day we Christians often call the first Pentecost happened.
For Jews, Pentecost was the fiftieth day after Passover. While Passover celebrated ancient Israel’s deliverance from slavery in Egypt, Pentecost celebrated the giving of the law, the ten commandments, by God through Moses to Israel (and all the world) at Mount Sinai.
That may seem strange to us. We don’t like laws. They hem us in, keep us from doing what we want to do, control us. And some human laws can be unjust and oppressive.
But ancient Israel saw God’s Law, the ten commandments and the moral laws that stemmed from them, as good things, as blessings that sketched out the boundaries of what they called shalom, a place of peace with God and neighbor. So the ancient Israelites sang songs about God’s Law! “Oh, how I love Your law!” Psalm 119:97 says, for example, “It is my meditation all day long.” (1)
But God's people had a problem. They loved God’s law. They couldn’t keep it.
If following God’s law was like staying on a paved road, disobeying it was like falling into a ditch of muddy water. And like kids who have just taken a bath, Israel loved heading for the ditches of sin: the ditch of idolatry, the ditch of materialism, the ditch of wanting to fit in with others and ignore the will of God, the ditch of adultery and fornication, the ditch of false witness and character assassination, the ditch of self will, the ditch of thievery and false business and political dealings.
Through the centuries, God sent prophets to call the people out of the ditches and onto the road of God’s laws and commands. But Israel was like one of its first-century AD sons, the apostle Paul, who confesses in Romans 7: “I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my members [that is, in my very self] another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive [the law of sin]...”
Human beings are born captives to sin, death, and the devil. The Bible says that because of our captivity, there’s only one fate we deserve: “The wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23).
Life in the ditches leads inevitably to separation from God, separation from life. Yet, we can’t help ourselves. We’re born ditch-seekers. Some of us like some ditches better than others. But from the moment we’re born, we’re like lemmings programmed by the sin we inherit from our parents to head for the mud, to do the very sin we hate! We can hear and know God’s law and even delight in it. But we cannot keep it.
Our only hope is the Gospel, the good news. Now, the Gospel can’t be reduced to a concept or a happy feeling, though some people try. “The Gospel,” they say, “is about God’s love. God is love. Love. Love. Love. Everything’s cool.”
In fact, the Gospel springs from a particular true story. It’s the true story of how God took on flesh in a particular human life. It’s the true story of Jesus, born of a virgin so that He would not inherit the sin that the rest of the human family inherits from our parents; Who was the perfect once-and-for-all sacrifice for the sins of the world; Who rose from the dead and offers the benefits of His sacrifice--new life--to all who believe in Him as their God and Savior.
The Gospel is about Jesus Christ, Who came to replace the evil kingdom of sin and the dying kingdoms of this world with the kingdom of God for all who repent and believe in Him.
The new kingdom that Jesus died and rose to bring into being isn’t opposed to the law God gave through Moses. In fact, in some ways, Jesus makes God’s Law even more demanding than we remember it from Catechism class.
In the Sermon on the Mount, for example, Jesus says, “You have heard it said...‘You shall not murder’...But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, ‘You fool,’ you will be liable to the hell of fire.” Jesus is saying that it’s not enough to simply obey the letter of God’s law. He cuts to the spirit of the law, which would, if we were capable of keeping it, create the kingdom of peace with God and peace with neighbor that Jesus had to come to earth to bring.
So, Jesus says to anyone who thinks that His death and resurrection are a free pass, a letter of indulgence, allowing human beings to heedlessly and unrepentantly do whatever we want no matter how disobedient or contemptuous of the will of God it may be, that they are wrong.
“Do not think,” Jesus says in Matthew 5, “that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have not come to abolish but to fulfill...unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”
Our situation would be hopeless were it not for the fact that Jesus Christ, the One Who delivers this stern message, has done for us what we can’t do for ourselves. He has obeyed the law. Perfectly.
Jesus has kept the law and so, by His innocent death for us, has conquered the law and its stern verdict against every one of us!
Romans 8:1-4 tells us this:
There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.Think of that: We who are “in Christ Jesus,” we who quit trusting in ourselves and who trust instead, in Jesus Christ, who let God crucify our sinful selves and our sinful desires day by day, are no longer condemned for our failure to keep the law!
Those who are saved by God’s grace through their faith in the crucified and risen Jesus Christ are pulled out of the ditch of sin and death and set on the narrow way of life, the way that follows Jesus.
We are rescued from the kingdom of death and the kingdoms of this world and we become part of the eternal kingdom of heaven. It’s something we celebrate and praise God for here at Saint Matthew every Sunday!
For a Christian to use the phrase penned by Saint John in 1 John 4:8--”God is love”--is to mean something very specific. It means that the God Who is horrified by my sin and Who knows that sin is an eternal death sentence, loves me--loves you--so much that He threw out a lifeline which, if we will grasp hold of it in faith, will pull us out of the ditch and mire of sin and lift us into His kingdom.
That lifeline is Jesus.
He says:
For God so loved the world [including you and me] that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. (John 3:16-18)Jesus is the lifeline!
All of which brings us back to Pentecost.
The first chapter of Acts shows us that the first Christians experienced how Jesus’ grace can change people’s relationships with God and with each other. Jesus forgave them for abandoning Him and denying Him on the night of His betrayal. Through the crucified and risen Jesus and their faith in Him, God pulled them from the ditches of shame and guilt. They were right with God and learning what it meant to live in the kingdom of heaven.
But their minds, like ours, were still fogged by sin. So they ask, “Lord, will You at this time restore the kingdom of Israel?”
Jesus tells them they need to pray, to quit striving and start surrendering. Then, the power of God’s Holy Spirit, the power that created the universe, would come to them. That’s exactly what happened on the Pentecost of our second lesson.
Like the first disciples, all who believe and are baptized receive the Holy Spirit. But, you may have noticed something: The world is a ditch and it’s so easy to wallow in it sins. This side of our own resurrections, we will never be completely free of sin.
And, acting in our own strength or on our own impulses, we can make things worse. We too often let the distance grow between Jesus, our lifeline and rescuer, and us, in our everyday lives. We become strangers to the One Who died and rose for us.
That’s why we confess our sin and affirm our faith again each time we receive Christ’s body and blood.
That’s why Martin Luther taught Christians to live in daily repentance and renewal. That’s the kind of life I hope and pray you’ll live, Kirsten, as you begin life as an adult Christian today.
As we submit our lives to the control and grace of Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit can empower us to live differently. “...[T]he fruit of the Spirit,” the Bible says, “is love, joy, peace, longsuffering [that means patience], kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law.” The Holy Spirit can help us experience the life of the kingdom of heaven, the life of shalom, of peace with God, peace with others, peace with others.
The Pentecost crowd must have wondered how this kind of peace could come to them. So do we. How can we know peace in the midst of chaos? How can we have serenity in the midst of this world’s uncertainties?
Peter knew the answer to those questions, not because he was perfect or arrogant or intelligent. Peter knew the way to peace because like the other first followers of Jesus, he had seen it revealed, heard its voice, received bread and wine from its hand, touched the hem of its garment, saw it crucified and resurrected. Peter knew the one way to the peace for which we long.
In Acts 2:21, the last verse in our lesson, he shares it with the crowd. Quoting from an Old Testament passage that used the word Yawheh, I AM, God’s Name given to Mose the lawgiver and which we translate in our Bibles as LORD, Peter commended to the crowd the One he and his fellow disciples had come to call, “Lord." He commended the Lord Jesus to them. Peter told the crowd, “...whoever calls on the Name of the Lord shall be saved.”
Today, this week, the Holy Spirit can empower you to live each day in the assurance that, no matter how crazy, conflicted, or even horrible and tragic the world may be, as you submit your sins, your hopes, your decisions, your family, your whole life to Jesus Christ, you are saved, again and again...from sin, from death, and from the devil. You are saved from the gossip that tears you down, from the fears that haunt you, from the temptations that allure you.
Jesus Christ is in heaven at the Father’s right hand. But if you believe in Him and call His Name, you are not and you never will be alone.
The Holy Spirit has come to let you know that whoever calls on the Name of the Lord Jesus--when you call on the Name of the Lord Jesus--you are saved, safe forever in the arms of God, empowered forever to leave the ditch behind and walk as freed, redeemed, and forever loved children of God. Amen!
(1) The book, Lutheran Slogans: Uses and Abuses by Lutheran theologian Robert W. Jenson, provides a great discussion of the places of Law and Promise in a Biblical understanding of the Gospel. The conversation on chapter 5 of this book, conducted by my colleagues in the Association of Confessional Lutherans of Ohio this past week, was timely and helpful for the preparation of this sermon!
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