Life from God

[Below, you'll find live stream video of yesterday's worship services from Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, along with the text od the message for the day. Yesterday was Holy Trinity Sunday.]

Matthew 28:16-20

On this Holy Trinity Sunday, God, Whose revealed name is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, comes to us in His fullness. He does so, as Jesus says elsewhere, so that you “may have life, and have it to the full…” (John 10:10)

God is going to give you life again this morning in our Gospel lesson, which recounts the last words of the crucified and risen Jesus recorded in Matthew’s gospel.

We need to receive life from God–actually we need to receive God’s life from God–because we are sinners prone, like stupid sheep, to wander away from God and the life that He alone can give to us.

Without life from God, the Author of life, we are dead.

To understand how God is going to give life to you again today in our Gospel lesson, it would be helpful to consider the witness of our first lesson–Genesis 1:1-2:4 in the Old Testament–and see how God gave life at the birth of all the physical universes He created. Genesis 1:1-3 says: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.”

What happens here? God the Father speaks the Word, Who as we know from the Gospel of John, is Jesus, and the Holy Spirit makes it possible for the “formless, dark, deep”--dead and lifeless–to hear or receive God’s Word.

Wherever God’s life-giving Word, Christ Himself, is heard, life happens.

It is this Word, full of life, gospel, good news, that causes nothing to become something, that causes the dead to come alive!

It was of this Word that the apostle Paul wrote in Romans: “...it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile.” (Romans 1:16)

So, the Father speaks Christ the Word and the Spirit wings that Word into dead darkness in order to bring, as 2 Timothy in the New Testament tells us, “life and immortality to light.” (2 Timothy 1:10)

Now that we know how the Trinity–Father, Son, and Holy Spirit–gives life, we’re ready to receive life from Him in Matthew 28:16-20 today.

You know the incident well. The eleven remaining apostles–after betraying Jesus, Judas has died–go to a mountain to which Jesus has commanded them to go. There, they meet the risen Jesus!

This surely is a moment of joy, right? Not entirely. Matthew says, “When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted.” (Matthew 28:17)

Matthew doesn’t tell us what the disciples doubt. They can’t doubt that Jesus is risen: Jesus is standing in front of them. So, what are they doubting?

The root of the word translated as “doubted” here is διστάζω, a compound word the two parts of which are double and stand. When we doubt, it’s because we’re not sure about where we stand.

When you know where you stand with God, you can worship Him.

When you’re unsure, you doubt not only that you can worship but whether God will accept your worship.

As they wobble and kneel in the presence of Jesus, at least some of the eleven likely doubt that Jesus will forgive them.

Peter may wonder, “Can Jesus forgive me for denying Him?”

The others may wonder, “Can Jesus forgive us for abandoning Him when trouble came?”

They all may wonder, “Are my sins so great that I’m beyond the forgiveness of Jesus?”

What about you? Do doubts like these ever assail you?

“I lied to make myself look good,” you may think.

Or, “I lusted for another man’s wife or another woman’s husband.”

Or, “I was dishonest about money.”

Or, “I have been unwilling to forgive so-and-so for how they hurt me.”

Do you doubt that God’s grace in Christ is for you? Do you sometimes think that Christ died and rose for everybody’s sin but your own?

Friends, the God we know through Jesus Christ knows how you feel and not just because as God, He knows everything you think and do. He knows because He already took all your sin and all mine into Himself and was crucified with it. He knows your sin from the inside out. He knows how horrible it is. He knows how, when you look only to yourself in the light of God’s law–His commandments–that you feel you must be eternally condemned. He was experiencing the condemnation of God’s Law on you when He cried from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46)

But forsakenness is not the end that God desires for any of us.

After reminding the eleven on the mountaintop that all authority on heaven and earth has been given to Him because He has conquered sin, death, and the devil through His death for us and His resurrection for us, Jesus speaks life to sinners like you and me. (I’m rendering the words in verse 19 here literally.) “As you are going, keep being my disciples in all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit…” Here are the Gospel words that bring you life!

Jesus tells disciples who have messed up, sinned, and betrayed or denied Him, “You are still My disciples. Keep being My disciples. Keep turning back to Me for forgiveness and life.”

Listen, the God Who tells His disciples that, in His power, we are to forgive others seventy times seventy times, is ready and able to forgive and give life to us infinitely more than that!

That’s not a license to sin, of course, it’s freedom to live assured that our Father in heaven forgives us our trespasses and views us as His very own disciples, children, friends.

And it means that we can turn to Him for forgiveness each day because “He remembers that we are dust,” dead dust into whom He breathes the Holy Spirit, the only One Who can give us life! (Psalm 103:14)

We can live in the freedom of being God’s own children because we have been baptized and called to faith in the name–notice it’s name, not names–the name by which God saved us at the waters of Holy Baptism: the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

This is the name by which God has reveals Himself to us.

And it’s this His name He has placed on us to claim us as His own.

By this name, we sinners are saved and made saints.

And this name assures us that prodigals though we are, we can turn to Him and live.

Not only that, we can baptize others and know that they too have been made God’s children. As Peter reminds us, “baptism…saves you.” (1 Peter 3:21) 

Then Jesus says, finishing the sentence started in verse 19 (I’m rendering His words in verse 20 literally from the Greek again): “...teaching them [the nations] to keep guard over all the things that I have given you to keep guard over. And behold, I am with you all the days until the completion of the age.” (Matthew 28:20, literal translation)

To keep guard of the things that Christ has given to us is to hold the sacred trusts of the Law that condemns human sin and the Gospel that sets us free as God’s message for all nations.

It means to repent when God’s Word calls us to repentance and it means to believe when God’s Word of absolution–in the name of Jesus, all your sins are forgiven–is declared. It means telling the world what Jesus tells us in Mark 16:16: “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.”

Sisters and brothers in Christ, because the triune God has spoken the Gospel Word to you, giving you both the gift of repentance and the gift of faith in Jesus, sin no longer has the power to condemn you. You are forgiven.

This promise isn’t just for eleven apostles on a mountaintop in Galilee two-thousand years ago. It’s for you too. Again this morning, dear saints in Christ, in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, you are forgiven and you belong to God forever. Amen

Tonight's Weeknight Bible Study on Romans, Chapter 8

Who God Is: The Apostles' Creed (Back to Basics: Revisiting the Catechism)

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

Genesis 1:1
Job 33:4
Romans 3:22-24
John 14:25-26
1 Corinthians 12:3

Last week, as we began this series, Back to the Basics: Revisiting the Catechism, we took a 30,000-foot view of the Ten Commandments through the prism of Martin Luther’s Small Catechism.

Tonight, we move into the Catechism’s second part, the Apostles’ Creed. 

In The Large Catechism, which he wrote for adult disciples and pastors, Luther explained the rationale for starting with the commandments, then moving to the Creed: “So far we have heard the first part of Christian doctrine. We have seen all that God wants us to do or not to do. Now there properly follows the Creed, which sets forth to us everything that we must expect and receive from God...the Creed teaches us to know [God] fully…” He then writes: “...the Ten Commandments are set so high that all human ability is far too feeble and weak to keep them…” 

In other words, when the proud delusion of our goodness, righteousness, and worthiness of life with God, of life beyond the grave, is punctured by God’s Law, then we are ready to meet the God Whose fondest hope is to give new and righteous lives to the dead and dying sinners the commandments show us to be.

If the Ten Commandments show us the chasm between the pure and omnipotent God of the universe and us unrighteous and powerless human beings, the Creed shows us that this same God cares about us so much that He creates (and re-creates) us, redeems us (or buys us back from sin and death) through Christ, and sanctifies us (makes us holy, set apart, fit for everlasting life with Him). 

The Apostles’ Creed, of course, can’t be found in the Bible and wasn’t written by the apostles themselves. 

But it does summarize what the apostles, Jesus’ designated first teachers of His gospel word, taught, and is accepted by every major Christian tradition in the world. 

In the Creed, we see that God bridges the chasm between God and us, allowing us to know Him personally and eternally. So, let’s come into God’s presence again tonight through the doorway of the Creed.

The Creed is divided into three parts, each corresponding to the three Persons of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. 

The first article is almost deceptively simple: “I believe in God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth.” It goes by so quickly that we may miss something. The Old Testament rarely referred to the Creator of the universe as Father. It’s Jesus Who teaches those who have been saved by God’s grace through faith in Him to address God as, “our Father.” “This, then, is how you should pray,” Jesus tells His Church, “‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name’” (Matthew 6:9) 

In the first words of the Creed then--I believe in God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth, we see that God is both infinite, eternal, and almighty on the one hand, and loving, accessible, and our Father on the other.

The catechism emphasizes that God didn’t just create the universe with its stars and planets, suns and black holes. He also made us and He’s still in the creating business: “I believe that God has created me and all that exists [isn’t it interesting that Luther starts by talking about how God created me and then mentions “all that exists”?], that He has given me and still preserves my body and soul, eyes and ears,” etc. 

And then, Luther explains, “He does this purely out of fatherly and divine goodness and mercy, though I do not deserve it.” And then Luther says in a burst of joyful worship, “Therefore I ought to thank, praise, serve, and obey Him. This is most certainly true!”

The Creed then shifts to the second article, dealing with the Second Person of the Trinity, God the Son, Jesus the Christ (or, Jesus the Messiah, the Anointed King). It summarizes the basics about Jesus: 

• that He was born of a virgin, not because the normal way of human conception and birth are wrong, but because if God was going to create a new human race, He couldn’t do so through an ordinary human being inheriting the sins of his or her parents; 
• that He suffered, died, was buried; 
• that He rose again from the dead;
• that He is now on the right hand of the Father in heaven, interceding for those who dare to believe in Him; and
• that He will come back to this world to finally and fully, make all things right, ushering those who have believed in Him into eternity with God and consigning all who have rejected Him to the condemnation in hell they have chosen.

In the Small Catechism, Luther talks about how Jesus offered His own innocent life on the cross in order to free us “from sin, death, and the power of the devil.” And then, Luther tells us the reason that God the Son did these things is the same one for which the Father created us and all that exists: His absolute goodness. “He has done all this,” Luther writes, “in order that I might be His own, live under Him in His kingdom, and serve Him in everlasting righteousness, innocence, and blessedness, even as He is risen from the dead and lives and reigns for all eternity. This is most certainly true!”

There were some in the early centuries of the Church who misunderstood the nature of the Trinity, the Biblical teaching that we worship one God Who is in three Persons. But the Creed, Luther says, summarizes what we see in the gospels, that Jesus is “true God, begotten of the Father from eternity and also true man, [was] born of the virgin Mary--is [just like the Father] my Lord.” 

The Gospel of John tells us that Jesus is the Word of God Who was with God the Father and was one with God before the creation. 

The New Testament book of Colossians tells us that everything created by God is created through God the Son and for Him. 

Jesus says of Himself, “I and the Father are one.’ (John 10:30) 

And, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.” (John 14:9) 

Jesus has revealed the Father’s heart for the fallen human race and from this great love, gives Himself on the cross for us so that all who believe in Him everlasting life with God.

But how can people born in sin, inclined to worship ourselves, or other people, or the things of this world we see rather than the God Who, right now, we can’t see? 

How can people for whom the basic psychological developmental conflict from birth is trust versus mistrust, trust in Who God is and what He has done for us in Christ?

This is where God the Holy Spirit, subject of the Third Article of the Creed, comes in. He is the One Who makes it possible for us to believe. 

In the Small Catechism, Luther writes of Him: “I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to Him; but the Holy Spirit has called me through the Gospel, enlightened me with His gifts, and sanctified me [that is, set me apart for God] and preserved me in the true faith.” 

The apostle Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 12:3: “...no one can say “Jesus is Lord” except in the Holy Spirit.” 

It’s the Holy Spirit speaking the Word of the Gospel to us through the pages of Scripture, the proclamation of the Gospel, the witness of other Christians, and the Sacraments of Holy Baptism and Holy Communion, Who makes it possible for us to have saving faith in Jesus Christ.

The Creed reminds us that God, perfect in righteousness, hates the rift between Himself and the children He creates, redeems, and to whom He seeks to give ever-new life. He hates all the death and suffering that our sin condition unleashes on us in this life. And He seeks to give us new life. 

This is the gracious God we know in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. 

Next week, we begin a discussion of three ways that this perfect God strengthens His relationship with us, as well as our faith in Him.

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

The Holy Trinity: How God Loves

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

John 8:48-59

Two-thousand years before the birth of Jesus, three strangers appeared beneath the oak trees at a place called Mamre, where a husband and wife and their party were staying. The couple had come from a place in what we know today as Iraq, Ur. Practicing the hospitality that was part of their faith in the God they had come to know and worship, the couple--Abraham and Sarah--welcomed the threesome to their dwelling and fed them a feast. Over the course of their visit, the three made a promise that in one year, Sarah, an old woman, would give birth to the son promised to them by God. They come to realize that they are in the presence of God.

Later, the three strangers engage in a private conversation. “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do? [they ask] Abraham will surely become a great and powerful nation, and all nations on earth will be blessed through him. For I have chosen him, so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just, so that the Lord will bring about for Abraham what he has promised him.” [Genesis 18:17-19] 

Was God talking to Himself? 

Yes, said Saint Augustine, a 4th century Christian scholar and founder of the Augustinian order of monks of which Martin Luther would be a member four millennia after Abraham and Sarah welcomed the Lord--Yahweh, I AM. In that conversation among the three leaving Abraham, God was talking to Himself, Augustine believed. I agree with Augustine.

If so, it’s not the first time the Bible records God doing that. In Genesis 1:26, we’re told that God spoke to Himself: “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness...”

These Bible passages give us hints at what Jesus later made explicit in the Great Commission, that there is one God in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God’s three-in-one nature is part of the mystery of God’s identity and being, but the Trinity--a term never used in the Bible that we use to describe what God has revealed about Himself--is more than just an odd theological concept. God’s triune nature is essential to Who He is, whether we’re ever able to fully understand it or not.

From the oaks at Mamre, fast forward two thousand years to our Gospel lesson. Jesus is in the temple in Jerusalem. He’s teaching. He’s met opposition. Among the opponents are those who had believed in Him, but are now turned off by the challenge of being His disciples. (That happens a lot.) These people are so upset with Jesus that they accuse Him of having a demon [John 8:48]. (They also accuse Him of being a Samaritan, reflecting their prejudice against folks from Samaria.)

Jesus then ushers them (and us) into the mysterious realm of the Holy Trinity. “I am not possessed by a demon,” said Jesus, “but I honor my Father and you dishonor me. I am not seeking glory for myself; but there is one who seeks it, and he is the judge. Very truly I tell you, whoever obeys my word will never see death.” Jesus is pointing to the Father Who judges sin. Jesus seeks to bring the Father glory, not Himself, just as the Father seeks glory for Jesus, not Himself.

This is the nature of the love that exists within the Trinity: self-giving love that doesn’t seek for itself, self-sufficient love that didn’t need to create the universe or the human race in God’s image, but chooses to do so out of pure, giving love. It was this same love, Jesus said, that brought Him to the world. "For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son..."

If you really honored God, Jesus tells His fellow Jews, you would see that I am God and you would honor Me too. The crowd is scandalized. “Now we know that you are demon-possessed! Abraham died and so did the prophets, yet you say that whoever obeys your word will never taste death. Are you greater than our father Abraham? He died, and so did the prophets. Who do you think you are?” Jesus replied, “If I glorify myself, my glory means nothing. My Father, whom you claim as your God, is the one who glorifies me. Though you do not know him, I know him. If I said I did not, I would be a liar like you, but I do know him and obey his word. Your father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day; he saw it and was glad.”

This pious crowd is paralyzed with anger at Jesus. Who did He think that He was? They should know the answer to that question by now. They should remember what the three strangers--identified in our English translations of our Bibles as L-O-R-D, all four letters capitalized, translating Yahweh--I AM, the name God, would reveal to be His own to Moses--had said that day by the oaks of Mamre. Yahweh had said: “Abraham will surely become a great and powerful nation, and all nations on earth will be blessed through him.” [Genesis 18:18]

It was through Jesus that God’s promise to Abraham that Abraham and all people who trust in Yahweh would be made righteous and would become a great eternal nation, the kingdom of God. Through God the Son made flesh, all who turn from sin and believe, are members of God’s new creation. 

Abraham, Jesus says, had heard this promise and if Abraham had been standing in the temple that day, he would have been filled with joy. But the crowd of skeptics in John 8 aren't thinking as Jesus says Abraham would think at all. Verse 57: “You are not yet fifty years old,” they said to him, “and you have seen Abraham!” “Very truly I tell you,” Jesus answered, “before Abraham was born, I am!”

Jesus’ response isn’t grammatical. But it is definitive. Yes, Jesus is saying, I know exactly what Abraham thought. Not only am I older than Abraham, I made Abraham. I gave life to everything that breathes and moves. “Before Abraham was born, Yahweh, I AM!”

Now, this is such a stunning claim that if it isn’t true--if Jesus isn’t, as we sing at Christmas, God in flesh appearing, if He isn’t the second person of the triune God, the crowd would be right to be scandalized. As C.S. Lewis’ famous formulation puts it, either Jesus is a liar; a madman, or precisely who He claims to be. As Lewis writes: “You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God; or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”

Jesus didn’t intend for the crowd in the temple to see Him as a great teacher or a magnetic leader who might give them what they wanted. Jesus wanted them (and us) to see is that He is the loving God of the universe in human flesh, Who bears our sin and death on the cross and is raised by the Father to bring the death of sin and death to all who trust in Him. 

It’s to help the people who are rejecting Him in our lesson to see Who He is that Jesus provokes a confrontation with them. It’s why He provokes a confrontation with us in every burning word of Scripture. 

Is Jesus God in the flesh? 

Is He the incarnation of the God that Abraham saw back at the oaks of Mamre? 

If He is, then why would any of us mess around with living lives of unrepentant sin, that break faith with our Creator and our Redeemer, that dehumanize us, that fail to love God or neighbor? Why would we insist on our right to take His name in vain? Why would we justify adultery, in mind or body? Why would we make excuses for murder, physically or through the poison of gossip? Why would we want to take ourselves and our own desires more seriously than we do the will of the One Who made us and brought salvation to us on the cross? Why do we often choose to worry rather than trust in Him? It was for these sins and more that Jesus died for you and me and seeks to set us free, covering them over with His forgiving grace, and putting us at liberty to live as human beings are meant to live.

On hearing Jesus’ claim to be God, verse 59 says: “At this, they picked up stones to stone him, but Jesus hid himself, slipping away from the temple grounds.”

As I reflect on this passage, I wonder, did the crowd want to stone Jesus because they thought He was dishonoring-- blaspheming-- 

God? Or did they want to stone Him because they knew that He was God enfleshed and saw their chance to take advantage of His weakness, His voluntary acceptance of the limits of humanity? 

“This is the heir,” the tenants in Jesus’ parable in Matthew’s gospel say of the son who stands for Jesus in the story. “Come, let’s kill him and take his inheritance.” Going all the way back to the garden, humanity has been looking for a way to declare our independence of our Maker, to “be like God.” It was for this reason that the world would later crucify Jesus. Get rid of God and the sinners can run the concentration camp, the lunatics can run the asylum!

“But,” as Peter says in the Pentecost sermon, a part of which makes up our second lesson today, “God raised [Jesus] from the dead.” 

And it’s here that we see the practical implications of this strange doctrine of the Trinity. It was out of love that God the Father sent God the Son. It was this same love that caused the Father to bring Jesus back to life. Not love for Himself, but from love for the Son and love for us that the Father raised the Son to new life and through Him, raises all who trust in Jesus to new life. 

Without God’s triune nature then, we could not know that "God is love." Without God's triune nature, we could not be saved. 

Nor could we know or believe in this God, because it’s God the Holy Spirit, the comforter sent in love by God to call us to faith, who makes it possible for us to believe and to have life in Jesus’ name.

If you remember nothing else about the Trinity, remember this: It’s from the love that God has known within Himself--the love the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have for each other--that He loves you and makes you His own through Christ. 

The Trinity is how God loves. It's also how He loves us. Three times over, He loves us, and we are eternally the richer for it! Amen

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