There Are No Second Class Believers!

[This was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, earlier today. Today is Pentecost Day, the third great festival of the Church Year.]

Numbers 11:24-30
Acts 2:1-20
If there’s nothing else you remember from today’s sermon, please remember this: There are no second class believers!

Our Bible lessons from Numbers and Acts for this Pentecost, the festival of the Holy Spirit, drive this point home. In the whole history of the world, any person who has called on the Name of the Lord is saved from sin and death and futility. That includes you!

Bob Dylan once sang that “even the President of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked.” It was a reminder that all human beings are equal in their failings, flaws, and sins.

Dylan was right. But those who believe in Jesus Christ are also covered by Christ’s sacrifice on the cross for sinners like you and me. We are covered by the grace—the charitable forgiveness and acceptance of God—given to all who repent and believe in Jesus Christ. There are no second class believers!

There are differences in function among us. But that doesn’t make a preacher more important than a plumber, or a theologian more of a Christian than a teacher. The apostle Paul writes in Ephesians 4: “There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all. But each of us was given grace according to the measure of Christ’s gift.”

God always grants the Holy Spirit to every believer, no matter what their individual talents or professions, all for the same single purpose.

Please pull out the special insert and look at our first lesson from Numbers. Now, to those of you who have been participating in Read the Bible in a Year, the background of this particular passage will be familiar. Numbers recounts some of what happened when God’s people, Israel, after more than 400 years of enslavement in Egypt, wandered in the wilderness for forty years before arriving in the land that God had promised them.

Numbers tells us that God’s people tested God (or rebelled against God) seven times in this period. (Likely they tested God even more than that. But Numbers tells us about seven major incidents.) Our text comes in the narration of the second test, a time when not just the people of Israel rebelled against God, but their leader Moses did too!*

Just a short time before, the people had been on the brink of starvation when God started daily to provide them with manna, a mysterious bread-like substance. The people had been grateful for God’s provision for a time. But now the people were whining about wanting to have meat to eat. “We’re tired of this manna!” they said. Fed up with the complaining of the people, God tells Moses, “The people want meat? I’ll give them meat. I’ll give them so much meat that they’ll end up vomiting it through their noses.”

That’s a lot of meat! And it’s this overabundant promise and threat that saw Moses rebel against God. Totally forgetting who had been providing Israel—and him—with “daily bread,” Moses asks where on earth he was supposed to get so much meat? He also wonders what God expected him to do with such a people. Here, Moses is expressing two feelings: doubts about God’s power and frustration with having to be Israel’s earthly leader.

To Moses’ doubts, God asks, “Is the Lord’s power limited?” (Or, more literally, “Is the Lord’s hand too short?”) Here, God was reminding Moses that He was no less powerful than He had been on the day He delivered them from Pharaoh. In the midst of crises, we need to remember that the God Who was helping us yesterday can still help us today.

To Moses’ frustrations, God orders that seventy elders of Israel be gathered near the tent containing the Holy of Holies, where God’s presence lived among His people. There, God poured out His Spirit on the seventy. They began to prophesy. That is, they spoke God’s Word. Moses didn’t need to go it alone in sharing God’s Word with the people. Just as happened on Pentecost ten days after the risen Jesus ascended to heaven, the elders with Moses in about 1400BC, were empowered to tell about “the mighty deeds of God.”

After this amazing event took place, two other Israelites, Eldad and Medad, neither one an elder, who had drawn close to God just as the elders were getting together, gave evidence that God’s Spirit had come to them, too. They began to proclaim God’s greatness. They prophesied.

A young man heard this and found it highly irregular. This guy was like the person who says at a Church Council meeting, “We’ve never done it that way before.” Or even worse, the person at the same meeting who adds, “And we never will.” He didn’t think that Eldad and Medad were authorized to have the Holy Spirit. So, he ratted them out. Hearing this complaint, Joshua begged Moses to stop Eldad and Medad. But Moses wouldn’t do that. “Are you jealous for my sake?” Moses asks Joshua. “Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets, and that the Lord would put His Spirit on them!”

Pentecost celebrates the day when God’s Holy Spirit came to the first followers of Jesus. Just as Jesus had instructed them before He ascended into heaven, they had prayed for the Spirit’s power to come upon them. And He did, empowering them to tell, in ways the thousands gathered in Jerusalem that day could understand, the mighty works of God. That included the mightiest work of all, the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, true God and true human being, so that all who turn from sin and believe in Him can live eternally with God!

The odd thing is that the Holy Spirit had already been given to these believers. In John, chapter 20, the risen Jesus breathed on the first Christians and told them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” But you see, the Holy Spirit can breathe on us anew, even when our enthusiasm is waning or times are tough.

That’s because the Spirit is infinite. He’s not like gas you pump into your car that runs out. And even if you’re full of the Spirit, He can fill you up even more. The Spirit can be “pressed down, shaken together, running over” in us. The Spirit ensures that there are no second-class believers. All who believe in Jesus Christ are given the capacity to trust in God and the ability, within their own spheres of life, to share Christ with others.

Of course, some Christians would rather remain second-class believers. That way, they don’t feel the need to live or share their faith. The excuses are many: “Let the younger ones do it. I did my time.” “I’m not very good at that.” “I don’t know my Bible very well (and I’m not going to try to do so either).” And so on.

But others are happy to have the Spirit’s power to fulfill their calling to spread the Good News of Jesus in their own ways. At a conference, I heard a pastor recount the day he told a carpenter (God likes carpenters, you know) that even in his carpentry shop, he could be an ambassador for Jesus. Tears welled up in the man’s eyes as he asked, “I can do that?”

In recent days, I’ve read about other Christians who have claimed their God-given places as first-class believers who share Jesus with the world. I read about an engineering student who graduated magna cum laude who’d had offers from top firms. But during his junior year, he’d given his life to Christ and subsequently decided to take a lower-paying job with a firm that worked to provide engineering for people in Third World countries.

I read about a teacher who had worked in a suburban school district, but decided that her way of following Christ must take her to an inner-city classroom instead. But she went the extra mile, visiting her students’ homes, trying in her own way to share Jesus. At one home, she discovered that the girl in her class was one of five children, aged 3 to 15, being raised by a single mom in a few rooms, with a few beds, their apartment heated by the kitchen oven being turned on and left open. That teacher didn’t go to the church council to ask for permission to be a Christian. She simply went to some of her prayer partners from church and together, they began taking care of this family, telling them about Jesus as they did.

I read too, about a retired couple who spend most of their time going to the sites of natural disasters, bringing help. The husband even went to Sri Lanka during a civil war. When asked why they do what they do, this guy asked, “What else would we do in our retirement years?” Besides, he went on, his main object in life is to share Jesus with as many people as possible.

All of these people—and millions more—have shaken off the lie about some Christians being more important than others or being more able to spread the Good News of Jesus than others. They’ve committed themselves to sharing Jesus where they are, with the gifts the Holy Spirit has given to them.

Another person like this is our own Mike McGonagle. Once again this year, Mike will be working with our youth on their local mission “trip.” Mike can share Christ in ways that I never could because the Spirit has blessed Mike with gifts I don’t possess. And Mike will tell you that last year’s mission was one of the most gratifying experiences of his life. The service God may call us to render in Jesus’ Name will vary widely, but the Holy Spirit can empower each of us in our own individual serving.

Martin Luther said, “A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none. A Christian is [also] a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all.” In the power of the Spirit, we are both lords and servants, all in the Name of Jesus. There are no second-class believers.

Let today be your Pentecost. Claim all it is that God has called you to be and that the Holy Spirit has empowered you to be: In your own way, dare to tell others about Jesus.

In a word, in the power of the Holy Spirit, the giver of life, take the life God has given to you and LIVE! Amen!

*Moses did this again during the sixth rebellion of the people against God recorded in Numbers.

How Not to Be Creative...and Why You Should Be

Filmmaker Geoff Talbot recently posted on How to Improve Your Imagination, where he made this interesting suggestion:

One simple way of increasing your creativity is to use the law of opposites...When you come up with an idea of what to write, of how to play a character, or of what to paint on that canvas… STOP… and ask yourself what is the opposite of that idea, now create something about that.

In the spirit of Geoff's blog, in which all posts are seven sentences long, and his suggestion on how to be creative, here are seven guaranteed ways toward not being creative:

• Tell yourself, "It's never been done that way before."
• Tell yourself, "It can't be done."
• Never plan.
• Never ask questions.
• Never talk with people who are smarter or wiser than you.
• Never ask for help.
• Never pray.

If this seems like a good plan of action to you, seek immediate medical help. You may have died and not been informed.

You were created in the image of God and God is the Creator. We're all meant to create things, whatever our jobs or stations in life. Be human...create!

God's Sledgehammer is Starting to Help Me See

Tonight, during my fast walk workout, I read chapter 6 of David Platt's extraordinary, Radical. There, Platt challenges American Christians to consider what God might be asking us to give up in order to provide for the needs of "the least of these," including the 26,000 children who die of starvation in the world each day. I find what Platt writes disturbing and exhilarating!

After reading that, I opened my laptop for a look-see at some of my favorite blogs and other web sites before hitting the sack. I came to this post on obedience to God by my bud, Steve Sjogren.

First Platt. Then Sjogren. God is clearly using His subtle sledgehammer to get a message through to me: His grace comes to those who trust in Jesus Christ. But if we trust in Christ, we will obey God, even when the things God seems to tell us to do don't make sense. 

It's scary. But I really want to learn this lesson!

Grilling One Sacred Cow

I hate nostalgia. That's because nostalgia pines for "good old days" that exist only in people's imaginations. This punctures one object of nostalgia.

Great Thought!

Here.

If You're Not Famous...Be Thankful

Rare is the person who can handle success, prominence, or fame. Fame often leads to a sense of entitlement and invincibility. Fame isn't good for a person's soul.

These lessons have been made clear as I, along with the folks of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church, as part of our Read the Bible in a Year project, have been recently reading about Israel's first king, Saul, in 1 Samuel.

Saul was, by turns, diligent in his duties one moment and arrogant in the abuse of power the next.

Saul never seemed to fully understand that, through his anointing as king, he had been made a servant of God and of Israel, not just of himself.

This lack of understanding once led him to quake among the baggage when his people needed him to command them in war. It also led him to disobey God, employing his own faulty judgment instead of depending on God, all in a gambit to win the favor of those he led.

In time, Saul came to view his fame not only as an entitlement, but as an extension of himself and his personal identity. That, in turn, fed a paranoia that--among other things--caused him to seek the murder of his best and most loyal military leader, David, and to treat the members of his own family as chess pieces to be moved around for his purposes.

As I watched an excerpt of the tearful press conference of Representative Anthony Weiner yesterday, I thought of Saul. Maybe if Weiner weren't a six term congressperson from New York, he wouldn't have done the things to which he admitted yesterday. But fame and prominence, even the smallest whiffs of it, can make the most stable and sober of us think that we're "all that."

A sense of entitlement--an idea that whatever might be vices in others really aren't vices in us--can actually come to any of us at any time, even if our name is known to only a handful of people.

Narcissism, total self-interested self-regard,  is something with which we are all born and which it's the job of every parent to wean out of their children.

This inborn trait is what the Bible is talking about when it teaches that we are all born in sin, sin being a condition of self-will over against loving consideration of God or others. (By the way, that's why Jesus says the Great Commandment is to love God and love others. And it's because we can't conquer the condition of sin that leads us to do all manner of stupid, hurtful things, that Jesus calls all people to turn from sin--or repent--and believe in, entrust their lives to, Him. Jesus can erase the power of sin over our lives and help us, in this lifetime, to be recovering narcissists, and in eternity, be utterly free to be the people God originally willed us to be.)

So, if you're not famous, be thankful. It can create such false notions of invincibility, power, and entitlement that it can close your conscience to heeding what's right or correctly identifying what's wrong at any moment in your life.

And if, like me, you're just another ordinary member of the human race, I hope that you can be honest enough to say that, even without fame, you've acted like a person of entitlement who treated God and others with contempt, as though they were bit players in the more important production of your life. If you can muster that level of honesty with God and with yourself, you'll be onto something. You'll be close to surrendering to Christ and His better will for your life.

Finally, if you're prone to join the late night talk show comics in laughing at Anthony Weiner, please don't. His actions are admittedly wrong, even childishly so. But what he needs more than our derision is prayer.

So do we all.

That, of course, doesn't mean that the people for whom we pray shouldn't be held accountable, if their actions are illegal or violate the ethics rules of their professions.

But we can pray for Anthony Weiner or any political leader of either party facing similar humiliation in the face of their own revealed bad judgments and hubris. In 1 Timothy, the first century evangelist Paul writes to a young pastor named Timothy:

First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for everyone, ²for kings and all who are in high positions...

That's what I try to do for all political leaders on a regular bases. If you're skeptical about including leaders in government in your prayers, consider this: It can't hurt!

And while you're praying for them, you can also thank God that you're not famous.

Aiming Toward, "MIssion Accomplished!"

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


John 17:1-11
Please pull out the Celebrate insert from your bulletin and look at today’s Gospel lesson, John 17:1-11. Keep it handy.

In this lesson, Jesus does an extraordinary thing: He lets us listen in on His personal prayer to God the Father.

Now, I don't know about you, but there are things in my personal prayer time that I want to keep strictly between God and me. I don't want anybody listening in.

But Jesus has no secrets. The Word made flesh, is an open book.

The entire Bible, in fact, reveals that God has always been an open book. The New Testament book of Romans reminds us that, “…what can be known about God is plain…, because God has shown it…”

We see God's openness in other ways. The Bible affirms, for example, that God’s law—His will and His commands for humanity—has always been written on our hearts, giving all of us a strong hint, long before we even hear the Name of Jesus, that there is a God Who made and cares about us.

But more than that, God has taken the time and effort and sacrifice to live out His love for us and make it possible for all who turn from sin and believe in Him to live with Him eternally. God has lived His love for us out loud for everyone to see!

In the prologue to his account of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, John the Evangelist says, “The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.”

John goes on to say of Jesus, “No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, Who is close to the Father’s heart, Who has made Him known.”

Jesus has no secrets. Jesus is in the disclosing business.

So, what exactly does He disclose to us in today’s Gospel lesson?

First: He discloses a heart filled with celebration.

One of my nephews, Andrew, is graduating from high school. There’s going to be a celebration later today. The unspoken theme will be: mission accomplished. That's the theme of all graduation parties!

(And sometimes, their theme is "Shwew!")

In His prayer in today's Gospel lesson, Jesus takes a victory lap. He exults in His accomplishment on earth even before He goes to the cross or is raised from the dead.

Jesus knows that He already is what He was sent into the world to be: “the way, and the truth, and the life,” the only way for human beings to know God and the only way to the life that the life-giving God of the universe gives to those who repent and trust in Christ.

Look at what Jesus says He has already accomplished at the moment He utters His prayer.

• In verse 6: “I have made Your Name known to those whom You gave me…” 
• In verse 7: “Now they know that everything You have given me is from You…” 
• In verse 8: “for the words that You gave to me I have given to them, and [they] know in truth that I came from you…”

Jesus’ earthly life had a mission. He came to make God known. All that he said and did was bent to that purpose.

In this prayer, Jesus rejoices in the strength that God the Father and God the Holy Spirit had given Him to accomplish it all and He prays, in essence, “Father, mission accomplished!”

As He prays, Jesus knows, of course, that He has one thing left to do on this earth, one more definitive act disclosing Who He is and Who God is.

He must die.

He must give His life for those given to Him by the Father.

This is the ultimate thing that Jesus discloses to all who are open to the truth. Martin Luther said that if we want to know what God is like, we only need to look to Jesus on the cross.

And that’s why with jubilation, Jesus, God on earth, intent on doing God’s would, on the Friday we call Good, having fully disclosed the heart, mind, and will of God, decide on the cross the moment at which He would breathe His last, call out to the Father, “It is finished,” (“My mission is accomplished.”)  and then give His life to God.

The Father wouldn’t let this be the end for Jesus, though. The sinless Savior Who offered His perfect life as the perfect sacrifice for our sin could not remain dead. He had to be raised up so that all people would know about their chance to turn to Him (turning away from their sin), entrust their lives to Him, and live with God eternally.

So, in this prayer, Jesus celebrates what He accomplishes for the glory of the Father and for our eternal good.

And then: Jesus discloses a request to the Father.

In verse 5, Jesus asks, “Father, glorify Me in Your own presence with the glory that I had in Your presence before the world existed…”

The glory of God was displayed in Jesus in many ways. It was seen when...

• He fed 5000 people with a few scraps of bread and some fish
• He turned water into wine
• He raised His dead friend Lazarus from the grave
• He gave sight to a blind man
• He empowered a paralyzed man to walk again.

The glory of God was seen in Jesus too, when at the waters of the Jordan River, where He was baptized, and on the Mount of Transfiguration, the Voice from heaven said, "This is My Son; listen to Him!"

And yet the glory of God disclosed in Jesus on all those occasions and others we might name, were mere hints, dim reflections, brief tastes of the glory Jesus once enjoyed as God the Son in the halls of heaven before the creation of this world!

Now, in this prayer, having accomplished all that He had set out to do in taking on human flesh, Jesus asks the Father to give that glory back to Him again.

The Father will do just that when He raises Jesus from the dead on the first Easter Sunday and so, makes the Name of Jesus the Name to which eventually, every knee will bow and every tongue confess, “that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of the Father.” 

(It turns out that even those who reject Jesus and will tragically, live with the consequence of their rejection of “the only Son of God” will also, in the end, acknowledge the glory of God seen in Jesus.)

If there is one thing more than any other that Christ’s Church needs today, it’s a renewed sense of the glory of God! 

I’ve mentioned before the woman who approached me after worship one Sunday in a former congregation. She was upset with the words of Psalm 111:10: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom...” (The same words appear also in Proverbs 1:7 and 9:10.)

She affected that voice that some people use when trying to show their piety and said, “I don’t think that we should be afraid of God.” Look, Jesus says that we are His friends when we keep or strive to honor His commandments. He promises to stick closer to us than a brother.

But Jesus, God in the flesh, is not our buddy, not our rabbit’s foot, nor our ATM, nor our good luck charm.

He will be there to judge us at the end of history.

Paraphrasing Bill Cosby’s Cliff Huxtable, Jesus brought us into this world and He can take us out.

He is God almighty.

He alone deserves all our allegiance, honor, loyalty, and thankfulness because, through His “amazing grace,” He saves all who trust in Him from sin and its consequence, death.

We must understand that the God disclosed in Jesus Christ is not a salesperson with whom we can negotiate a price, but the Lord of the universe and that to have Him and the eternity only He can give, we must bow, we must surrender to Him.

It's when we understand this that we’ll be on the road to the wisdom that leads to life.

In this prayer in today's Gospel lesson, Jesus, Who laid His glory by for His time on earth, is reclaiming that glory.

But here’s the really astounding thing.

It’s a theme of the New Testament that the life of Jesus is replicated, reenacted, in baptized believers in Him. All who are baptized and live in daily repentance and renewal can say with the New Testament, “I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ Who lives in me.” 

This is what Luther was getting at when he said that whenever the devil came knocking at his heart's door with temptations, announcing that he was looking for Martin Luther, Jesus went to the door in his place and said, "Martin Luther used to live here. But now I live here. Now, go away and don't come back any more!"

It was because of Christ living in him, that the first century preacher Paul, before his death, could write to the young pastor Timothy with the same sense of fulfillment and jubilation we see in Jesus’ prayer in our Gospel lesson on the brink of His death.

Listen closely to Paul's words (this is from The Message translation):

I’m about to die, my life an offering on God’s altar. This is the only race worth running. I’ve run hard right to the finish, believed all the way. All that’s left now is the shouting—God’s applause! Depend on it, [God is] an honest judge. He’ll do right not only by me, but by everyone eager for His coming.

In his wonderful book, Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream, Pastor David Platt talks about how many American Christians think that Jesus’ call and command for radical discipleship, including the call to love all the world and to carry the good news of Jesus to all the nations applies to other people, not us.

In taking this attitude, millions of Christians turn a deaf ear to the needs of 4.5 billion people who may die today without ever hearing the Good News of new life through faith in Jesus Christ.

And in thinking that Jesus’ call only applies to some spiritual elites, we also deny ourselves the very sense of fulfillment and the enjoyment of God’s glory that Jesus exults in in today’s Gospel lesson and that He wants us to have!

We, each of us, need to consider how we can restructure our personal lives to fulfill the mission Christ has given to each of us, so that we too can exult in the sense of fulfillment from a life spent in giving God glory.

We may not be able to go to foreign countries in pursuing God’s intentions for our lives.

But each of us is called to fulfill the whole mission of Christ’s Church in our own individual lives. Our sponsorship, through World Vision of three year old Toiba in Kenya, involvement with CHAP, the 30 Hour Famine, the PPSST Food Drive, the upcoming local mission trip, Friend Day in November, upcoming servanthood evangelism events, and above all, our personal willingness to share Christ with the spiritually disconnected, are all ways in which we can lead the life of purpose that gives God glory that Jesus Christ wants each of us to experience.

We need to encourage one another in living out our Christ-given mission to the whole world. It’s to help us fulfill this single mission that Jesus prays in verse 11: “Holy Father, protect them in Your Name that You have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.”

When I come to the end of this life, I want to be able to pray with the same sense of jubilation and fulfillment we see in Jesus in our Gospel lesson.

I want to be able to look back on a life in which I loved God, loved the world, and took my part in making some disciples of the world’s 4.5-billion unreached people.

I want to be able to say, “Mission accomplished.”

How about you?

If it’s your desire to fulfill God’s purposes for your life, ask Christ to live fully in you…and then go wherever He leads you. Amen

Christ or Culture?

Will we surrender to God or go along with the culture?

The daily need to answer that question has emerged as one of the major themes as we at Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, spend a year reading the Bible together.*

In Exodus, God commanded His people to have no other gods but Him. Compassion, not egotism, is behind this command. Only God can give life, after all. To follow any other god, literally spells everlasting death. To spare ancient Israel, God's people, from such a fate, God called them to be "holy," a word that means set apart for God.

The ongoing challenge (and demand) God issued to His people is voiced by Joshua, the leader of the Israelites who succeeded Moses, when Joshua says:

Now therefore revere the Lord, and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness; put away the gods that your ancestors served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord.
¹⁵
Now if you are unwilling to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served in the region beyond the River or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”

But the Old Testament honestly reports that the lure of surrounding cultures repeatedly proved overpowering for Israel.

God called Israel into being to bring the possibility of new life from Him to all the world. Eventually, Christians believe, Israel gave birth to the Savior Jesus, God-in-the-flesh.

In Jesus, God issues the same command to all the world that He once issued to Israel. Before His death and resurrection, Jesus said:

³²“Everyone therefore who acknowledges me before others, I also will acknowledge before my Father in heaven; ³³but whoever denies me before others, I also will deny before my Father in heaven." (Matthew 10:32-33)

Again, God commands trust and obedience out of compassion, not egotism. Life only comes through the God made clear to the world in Jesus of Nazareth.

But, as was true of the ancient Israelites, the lure of culture can sometimes prove overpowering. It's easier to follow the little gods you can see than it is to follow the God you can't see at the moment.

Besides, you're likely to find it easier going to go along with the culture than you will if you march to the rhythm of a different drum, especially if it's being played by God.

The contemporary American church isn't immune to going along to get along with the culture.

The conservative version of Christianity upheld by the "Christian Right" is a hyper American nationalism that uses the Bible to justify the rampant materialism and arrogance that non-Christians like Donald Trump readily endorse.

The liberal version of Christianity in vogue in "liberal Protestantism" attempts to put God's stamp of approval on cheap grace (that is, God's forgiveness without our repentance and salvation without trusting surrender to Jesus Christ) and, notably, the legitimization of sexual intimacy outside of marriage between a woman and a man.**

Whether done out of a well-meaning, but unintended, disregard for God's revealed will in Scripture or from an attempt to make their version of Christianity acceptable to a mass audience, both of these caricatures of Christianity are faithless.

They each are guilty of choosing favored cultural mores, rather than choosing to follow the God Who demands our acquiescence to His sometimes inconvenient truth. *

To be a "holy people," a people devoted to God, doesn't imply moral perfection. Christians are imperfect. We sin every day. As I've said elsewhere, we are recovering hypocrites who bring our lives before God each day in repentance, so that God not only can forgive us, but also perform reconstructive surgery on our souls.

To be a holy people, then, is to keep turning to God. It's to acknowledge the deep wisdom underlying Proverbs 3:5: "Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own insight."

Believers in the God of the Bible are called to be subversives who run counter to the culture. "Choose this day..."

The God revealed in Christ or the gods of the prevailing cultures? "As for me and my house..."

*We started on March 9. We read about three chapters a day. Today's reading is 1 Samuel 28-31.


**This is the route chosen by my own denominational body. I pray regularly that it will reverse course.

"Coincidences"

When the "coincidences" that just happen to answer your prayers start to pile up, you may want to re-categorize them as "God-incidences." Thanking God for all the God-incidences He's sent my way this week.

Make cupcakes...

...not war.

This is a truth I'm thankful for...and take advantage of...every day.

"If we confess our sins, [God] is faithful and just to forgive us our sins..." (1 John 1:9). See here.

Unfortunately, He Saw The Trends Quite Clearly

William Booth, a nineteenth century Methodist preacher and founder of the Salvation Army, was evidently asked about what trends he saw unfolding in the twentieth century:

“In answer to your inquiry, I consider that the chief dangers which confront the coming century will be religion without the Holy Ghost, Christianity without Christ, forgiveness without repentance, salvation without regeneration, politics without God, and heaven without hell.” [Source]

Praying that as the twenty-first century unfolds, God will reverse these trends through forgiven sinners who live in daily repentance and renewal.

[Note: I remember that we read Vachel Lindsay's poem, General William Booth Enters Into Heaven, in high school literature class.]

I Love New York!

And this new image of one of my favorite spots on the planet, Times Square, only makes me want to go back again sometime soon.

More on Revelation 20:11-15 from Hanns Lilje

I love the description of Revelation 20:11-15, about which I wrote here, by the late Lutheran scholar, Hanns Lilje (1899-1977):

The great description of the "last judgment"...has been represented...often in art. The element which distinguishes it from the mass of pictorial representations...is its strange, unearthly character. The whole scene is bathed in a transparent light which is not of this world at all...here everything that belongs to our earthly life fades out of sight...God's throne glows with a white radiance...[T]he presence of God is of such transcendent majesty that it can only be described indirectly...


Heaven and earth "flee away"...and fade into the background. They disappear; they are no longer there. This void means that all what made human life on earth possible has vanished. All that is left is a vast open space of spiritual emptiness, in which no human being could breathe or stand--peopled only by the dead in countless numbers, undifferentiated, without any earthly and historical differences, bound together by one thing only: that they are "before the throne of God." This expression really means the "second resurrection." All that the preceding chapters [of Revelation]...have constantly emphasized becomes clear: God has kept the last judgment in his own hands. It only seemed as though the course of history ran counter to his holy will. But no single day in earthly history has been able to detract for one moment from God's sovereignty.

Judgment, Works, the Lake of Fire, and Eternity: What's Up with All That?

The Biblical text on which today's Our Daily Bread devotion is based, Revelation 20:11-15, is interesting to consider in light of the recent publicized prediction made by one man that the world would end on May 21. As I pointed out here, only a misguided person or an unbelieving one would make such a prediction. Jesus makes that clear.

But that doesn't alter the fact that Jesus teaches that one day, life in this world will be brought to an end by God's decision.

Nor does it alter the fact that Jesus and the rest of the Bible teaches that some will spend eternity with God and others will not. (Whether some contemporary Christians believe there's a hell or not, Jesus clearly does believe that hell is real and talked about it quite a lot.)

Nor does it alter Jesus' teaching that one day all lives will be judged by God.

Revelation 20:11-15 tells us about the judgment, the only judgment recorded in the strange last book of the New Testament. Here's what it says (remember that the narrator is John, given a vision of the end of all things--and the beginning of new things--by the risen and ascended Jesus):

Then I saw a great white throne and the one who sat on it; the earth and the heaven fled from his presence, and no place was found for them. ¹²And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Also another book was opened, the book of life. And the dead were judged according to their works, as recorded in the books. ¹³And the sea gave up the dead that were in it, Death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and all were judged according to what they had done. ¹⁴Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire; ¹⁵and anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire.  

Many Christians, maybe especially Lutheran Christians, will be disturbed by the passage telling us, "the dead were judged according to their works." Doesn't the rest of the Bible tell us that we are saved by our faith in Jesus Christ because of the charitable grace God bears for the human race? Doesn't the rest of the Bible--the whole Bible, from Genesis onward--teach that we aren't saved from sin and death by our works?

Yes, the Bible does teach those things. And this passage doesn't disagree with any of it.

Notice that there are two kinds of books mentioned in the passage. One is the single book of life. It contains the names of all who have entrusted their lives to Jesus Christ.

But, another kind of book contains the records of the deeds of every human being.

These books represent the sober fulfillment of something Jesus said in different ways and times during His earthly ministry. For example, in Luke 12:2-3, Jesus says:

Nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known. ³Therefore whatever you have said in the dark will be heard in the light, and what you have whispered behind closed doors will be proclaimed from the housetops. 

At the judgment, our lives will be transparently disclosed for all to see, like on a Jumbotron in a stadium. I cringe at that thought because I am a sinner, though, thank God, a forgiven one who depends on God's amazing grace. But this display of our lives, even what we thought was secret, will happen.

The question to be asked of us at this judgment, whether by those of us who have been saved by grace through faith in Christ or those who have spurned Jesus Christ and will be thrown into the lake of fire (go to hell), will, at this moment, be the same:

What did you do with the earthly life God gave to you?

Jesus, in the Gospel of John, of course, says that those who spurn Him and the new life He freely offers, condemn themselves to hell. He says that in His conversation with Nicodemus:

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. ¹⁷Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. ¹⁸Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God." (John 3: 16-18)

He also says that hell will be the place in which those who have spurned His love will spend eternity regretting their decision.

This is what it means to engage in "gnashing of teeth," as Jesus calls it, to regret forever having blown the opportunity to become the children of God we were made to be:

There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth when you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, and you yourselves thrown out. (Luke 13:28)

Those who spurn surrender to Christ will be thrown into the lake of fire, an image of hell reminiscent of the lifeless roiling storms of primordial chaos in Genesis 1.

God is a God of relationship, Whose highest desire us for us to live in relationship with Him and with others. But God also respects our decisions in these matters.

The occupants of hell will regret the disconnection from God and others they chose in this life and live with that choice in eternal isolation.

Having opted for the "kingdom of me," the little fiefdoms we human beings try to establish in order to rationalize walking away from God and violating God's commandments, God will let those who have rejected Christ live in its deathly confines eternally.

For believers in Christ, the judgment described in Revelation 20 will be a moment also marked by regret that we have often fallen short of the glory of God and failed to live the useful lives God's Holy Spirit empowers those who believe in Christ to live. (Underscoring the importance of living the life style of repentance and renewal.)

But it will also be a moment of gratitude that our sins are covered by the blood of Jesus Christ, an appeal to the Father for mercy that will not be ignored.

And it will be a moment when we resolve to use the new lives given to those who believe in the crucified and risen Jesus, to glorify God to the fullest, whatever task God gives us in eternity.

Rather than being intimidated by this scene from Revelation, we need to simply surrender our lives and our days to the Lordship of Christ. A Christ-ward life today is the only certain preparation for a joyous, useful eternity, spent in the company of God and others.

In this passage, death itself is thrown into the lake of fire. So too are those who have spurned Christ. This is why Martin Luther wrote in his Bible next to Revelation 20:11-15:

"Born once - die twice; Born twice - die once."

Those who spurn Christ will die twice, here and at the lake of fire. Those who are born from above in baptism and who trust in Jesus Christ's grace, who die to sin in order to rise to newness of life, will die only once. 


The vision Christ gave to John, recorded in Revelation 20:11-15, isn't meant as a threat to anyone. Nor should Christians or the Church use it that way.

It states a simple fact, one on full display in every revealing encounter God has had with the human race from Genesis 1 until today: God is sovereign.

And this sovereign God wants to give you life forever with Him.

He will not force it on you. You may take it or leave it.

But why, even if we find faith hard to grasp onto, would anyone leave it?

Why would you try to live this life or face the world to come without the God of the universe by your side?

Even if you're a skeptic, you have nothing to lose and everything to gain by telling God right now:

"Lord, I don't understand everything about you and it's hard for me to believe in You. I do understand that my deeds won't always look so good up on that Jumbotron at the judgment. I want to be clean. I want to live on clean motives. I want to enjoy relationships of trust and love with others. And I understand that these are things that You want to give to me. So, in Jesus' Name, I ask you to help me to have faith, to help me to trust in You, and please, start making me new today. I promise to read Your Word, the Bible; to check in with You in prayer each day; and to get involved with a church where I can serve You and share You along with others who, just like me, are imperfect people who want You in their lives. Amen."

Nor will you have anything to lose if you keep praying (and keep meaning) prayers like that every day for the rest of your life.

Live this life to the full and look forward to eternity--and God's new heaven and new earth--with joyful anticipation!

Faith in Christ can take root in your life and both this life and the one to come will be the better for it.

Be Healthy...Go, Share Jesus!

The healthiest Christians and the healthiest churches are those that look beyond themselves and their four walls. Jesus tells us to go, make disciples, not to wait for them to drop into our laps. You can't go fishing if you don't go where the fish are.

Six Lessons on How to Share Your Faith

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

Acts 17:22-31
At the risk of sending you all for the doors at the outset, I’ll tell you that today we’re going to consider how to witness for Jesus Christ.

I’ve found that most sincere Christians want to share Jesus with others. But things get in our way.

And the biggest of these is fear. We’re afraid of saying “the wrong thing.” We're afraid of offending people the way some Christians do with their high-pressure tactics and their judgmental attitudes.

The result is that we don’t do anything. We don’t witness.

But we need to challenge our fears about sharing Christ.

Penn Jillette, one half of the magician-comedian team of Penn and Teller, is an atheist. Not long ago though, he said this about Christians who allow fear to get in the way of their sharing Christ with others (please consider his words carefully):

“If you believe [he said] that there’s a heaven and hell and people could be going to hell—or not getting eternal life or whatever—and you think that, well, it’s not really worth telling them this because it would make it socially awkward. . . . How much do you have to hate somebody to not [be a witness for Christ]? How much do you have to hate somebody to believe that everlasting life is possible and not tell them that?”

Even a thoughtful atheist understands a responsibility shared by every baptized believer in Jesus Christ. We Christians need to understand that responsibility too.

Pull out one of the pew Bibles and turn to page 703, please. Look at 1 Peter, chapter 2, verse 9. It reminds Christians, “You are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, God’s own special people.” Then Peter explains why God has made us these things: “That you may proclaim the praises of Him Who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.”

Indifference to the eternal destinies of others is not an option for those of us who follow Jesus Christ!

You and I haven’t been saved from sin and death just so we can sit around at church luncheons and visit with friends with whom we share a common faith…enjoyable as that is.

All baptized believers in Jesus have been made priests. A priest has two jobs: to represent people to God through our praying and to represent God to people through our witnessing for Christ.

Witnessing is the job of every Christian believer.

Disciple making is the job of every Christian believer.

After 35 years as a Christian, I confess that I’m embarrassed by my lackluster performance as a witness for Christ. What about you? And what are both you and I going to do about it? How will we witness for Christ?

Look now, please, at our second lesson, found on the Celebrate insert, Acts 17:22-31. Here’s the scene: It’s about 50AD and Paul, a tentmaker by trade, has set up shop in Athens, Greece, as he had already done in other ancient cities previously, looking for the chance to share Christ with others. Like him, whatever our profession, our real job is to share Christ in word and deed.

After spending parts of his days talking with others about Christ in the marketplace and the synagogue, Paul goes to the place in the city where all the leading thinkers go to talk things out, the Areopagus. It had once been a place where judicial judgments were rendered and had become a place where people talked about and debated ideas.

Here then from Paul's time at the Areopagus, recorded in our first Bible reading, are six lessons to teach you and me how to share Christ with others.

Lesson #1: Be ready, whenever the opportunity presents itself, to witness for Christ. In our second lesson, Peter tells us, “Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you…”

Paul was ready!

Digging into God’s Word, as we’re doing through Read the Bible in a Year, and helpless dependent prayer to God, are two essential ways God prepares us to tell others about the hope that we have in Christ.

Jesus tells us that we can be bold witnesses even when we confront people with hard hearts who persecute us for our faith. When we need the right words, Jesus says, “the Holy Spirit will teach you…what you ought to say.” Study God’s Word and pray; you’ll be ready to witness for Christ.

#2: Never be hostile. In Athens, Paul experienced a city that held to values and beliefs very different from his own. The Athenians worshiped all sorts of gods and godlets, rather than honoring the one God of the universe revealed over time to Israel and, ultimately, in Jesus.

The Athenians also loved the latest fads and the freshest big ideas. They lacked the steady joy and stability that Paul had through the singular focus of all his allegiance and belief on Jesus Christ.

Paul could have upbraided the Athenians for their faithlessness and flightiness.

But instead, as the Eighth Commandment (You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor), teaches Christians to do, Paul put the most charitable construction on the life and culture of the faithless city. Read his words in verse 22: “Then Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said, ‘Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way.’” Paul wasn't hostile. He was charitable toward the unbelieving, spiritually disconnected people he met in Athens. We should be too.

Most unbelieving or spiritually disconnected people you and I know aren’t sinister atheists joined with Satan in a knowing conspiracy. They’re people who haven’t met the real God the Father or the real God the Son, Jesus.

Your unbelieving friends are just like you: sinners in need of a Savior. They would like to know God. They just haven’t been introduced to Him yet.

You can be the one to do the introductions.

Never be hostile!

#3: Meet people where they are. That’s what Paul does in verses 23 to 28. He mentions a statue to an unknown god, no doubt erected there by Athenians fearful of the bevy of gods they worshiped, who, by and large, viewed human beings as play things to be toyed with.

Paul meets the Athenians where they are, saying that this unknown God had been revealed for all to know. He’s the God of all creation, first revealed to the Israelites and now plain for all to see in Jesus. Meet people where they are, so you can help them see all that God is and the life-giving relationship He wants to give to them.

#4: Enter the worlds of your unchurched friends. Paul, we see, had spent time listening to and reading the Athenians’ own poets and philosophers. He was interested in them.

We need to show an interest in our unchurched friends. (And by the way, if you don't have any unchurched friends, do what Paul did: Make them!)

We have to be interested in others. One of the things that impresses me in reading the story of evangelist Billy Graham's life is that when he went to Wheaton College, where he might have been expected to major in Religion or Christian Ministry, he chose to major in Anthropology. He felt called to share the Gospel around the world and to do so, he wanted to understand people from around the world.

Paul was confident that the God revealed in Jesus was (and is) the one true Creator and Savior of the universe. But he was not arrogant. He entered the world of these unbelieving people with an appreciation of their value in the eyes of the God Who had died and risen for them.

God inspired my friend, Pastor Steve Sjogren, to create modern servant evangelism. Through practical outreaches like giving cold water or Coke to people at busy intersections, re-upping nearly expired parking meters, or giving away coupons to be redeemed at filling stations, all in the Name of Jesus, the stereotypes of churches as places of judgment that just want people’s money are undermined.

One of Steve’s outreaches involves cleaning toilets in places of business: bars, restaurants, filling stations, convenience markets. (He trained me in this outreach and later, the youth of my previous congregation used to go with me to do this.)

It’s an eye-opener when a harried clerk is told by two people holding cleaning kits, “We’re here to clean your toilets” and when the clerk asks why, hearing, “We’re trying to share God’s love in a practical way.”

Steve tells about what happened at one business where he and another church members did this outreach. As he cleaned the toilet in the men’s room, the clerk approached him and asked, “Why are you doing this again?” Steve said, “We just think that if Jesus were walking on the earth today, He probably would be cleaning toilets for busy people like you.”

The man said, as tears formed in his eyes, “That’s the kind of thing I think He would do today, too.”

Jesus is God Who entered a sinful world to share His life with people in desperate need of Him. As Jesus’ ambassadors, we need to be willing to enter the worlds of others and love them into relationship with Jesus.

(Later this summer, by the way, we’re going to do some kindness outreaches here in Logan so that we too, can share Jesus in practical ways with our unchurched neighbors.)

#5: When the time is right, make sure you convey the way to reconciliation with God. Look at verse 30. Paul says, in the Daniels paraphrase: “OK. You’ve been ignorant about this unknown God until now. But now, you know. He calls us all to experience oneness with Himself by repenting for our sins and entrusting our lives to Jesus Christ.” Paul also says, you see, that there will be a judgment day. All people will be judged, but those who have been made righteous (that is, made right with God) by believing in Christ will be with God forever.

And, he points out, the guarantee for that has been sealed by Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. We need point people to repentance and faith in Jesus as the way to reconciliation with God.

#6: Don’t go on and on. (This is something Ann has been trying to teach me for years!) Paul’s words about Jesus’ resurrection raised controversy. He chose not to argue. Instead, he left, willing to let the Holy Spirit use the short speech he had made to nudge people toward faith in Christ.

This is what social historian and pastor Leonard Sweet calls “nudge evangelism.”  The quickest way to turn people off to God is through long harangues.

It’s best to give people something to think about so that the next time they encounter you or another Christian, they’ll want to know more about Jesus.

People are always nudged to Jesus; they are never dragged to Him.

The Bible tells us that it’s the Holy Spirit Who makes it possible for people to believe in Jesus.

And Jesus says that it is He Who will build His Church, not us.

But, if we will ask God to help us to be faithful witnesses, God can and will use our witness to nudge people to faith in Christ.

So, these are today's six lessons on how we can be faithful witnesses for Jesus Christ to the unchurched and the unbelieving:

• Through Bible study and prayer, be ready.*
• Never be hostile. 
• Meet people where they are. 
• Enter the worlds of the unchurched. 
• When the time is right, make clear the way of reconciliation with God, which is repentance for sin and faith in Jesus Christ alone. 
• And don’t go on and on.

Now, I’ll follow my own advice, refraining from going on and on.

But, by all means, as you leave here today, go determined to share Jesus Christ with unbelieving and unchurched neighbors with boldness, love, and humility. Amen

*Of equal importance is regular worship with fellow believers, active engagement in church life, and regularly receiving Holy Communion. More on these things another time. They're all assumed here as this was a sermon given to a congregation of people who do these three things.

The Object of Christian Faith: God's Glory, Not Our Comfort

These days I am really enjoying a book recommended to me by our son, Philip. The book is called Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream by David Platt. This book inspires and challenges me to divest myself of a "culture Christianity" and to instead, Christ's call to radical repentance and radical discipleship. This was especially true of these words, which I read yesterday:

God blesses his people with extraordinary grace so they might extend his extravagant glory to all the peoples of the earth. This basic, fundamental truth permeates Scripture from beginning to end. Yet I wonder if we unknowingly ignore [this]...

We live in a church culture that has a dangerous tendency to disconnect the grace of God from the glory of God. Our hearts resonate with the idea of enjoying God's grace. We bask in sermons, conferences, and books that exalt a grace centering on us. And while the wonder of grace is worthy of our attention, if that grace is disconnected from its purposes [to empower believers to glorify and share the God made known in Christ with others], the sad result is a self-centered Christianity that bypasses the heart of God.

If you were to ask the average Christian sitting in a worship service on Sunday morning to summarize the message of Christianity, you would most likely hear something along the lines of "The message of Christianity is that God loves me." Or someone might say, "The message of Christianity is that God loves me enough to send his Son, Jesus, to die for me."

As wonderful as that sentiment sounds, is it biblical? Isn't it incomplete, based on what [we see] in the Bible? "God loves me" is not the essence of biblical Christianity. Because if "God loves me" is the message of Christianity, then who is the object of Christianity?

God loves me.

Me.

Christianity's object is me.

Therefore, when I look for a church, I look for the music that best fits me and the programs that best cater to me and my family. When I consider the house I will live in, the clothes I will wear, the way I will live, I will choose according to what is best for me. This is the version of Christianity that largely prevails in our culture.

But it is not biblical Christianity.

The message of biblical Christianity is not "God loves me, period," as if we were the object of faith. The message of biblical Christianity is "God loves me so that I might make him--his ways, his salvation, his glory, and his greatness--known among all nations." Now God is the object of our faith and Christianity centers around him. We are not the end of the gospel; God is.

[The bold emphases are mine.]

"Never Alone"

That's the title of a sermon based on tomorrow's Gospel lesson, John 14:15-21, which I wrote three years ago, here. I hope you find it helpful.

Tomorrow, I'll be preaching on Acts 17:22-31, a favorite passage of mine.

"You've Got Mail"

Fun!

May 28: Ninth Anniversary of This Blog

Tomorrow marks the ninth anniversary of this blog.

Frankly, I had no idea what a blog was when I started this one. I was just looking for a place to "park" my Sunday sermons and the columns I then wrote for a weekly Community Press newspaper in the Cincinnati area.

As you can see from perusing the archives on the right, it took some time for me to build up steam as a blogger. After a time though, it became a daily exercise and remained so for a few years. I believe that it sharpened my skills as a communicator, as the newspaper column had previously, and so I enjoyed the discipline of daily blogging.

What with changes that have come to my life in recent years, the blogging has become less frequent. But I still enjoy it a lot.

The blog has brought interesting people into my life, most of whom I've only "met" online. I have been able to actually meet several of my blogging colleagues though, back when I attended the first GodBlogCon at Biola University in California. That was a real treat!

But I truly have enjoyed corresponding with people from all over the world and count it a pleasure to have made your acquaintance in this way.

Though I have rarely advocated political positions here, I have, because of my interest in history and my past involvement with politics, sometimes written about politics and history. I seem to be doing a lot less of that these days. My focus is tighter as I take my cue from the apostle Paul, striving not to be distracted by the noisy and unimportant, and knowing nothing but the crucified Christ.

Besides, time and experience have shown me that I know a lot less about "everything" than I once thought I did. Preachers aren't pundits and that includes me. But of the God made known in Jesus Christ I am certain and I learn more about Him all the time; that's why I talk so much about Him here.

A few tidbits:

• The blog was originally called, Better Living, which was the Norman Vincent Peale-sounding name I had chosen some years before for the newspaper column I wrote beginning in 1998.
• The first post was a column I had written in September, 2011 regarding what to tell children about the terrorist attacks of that month.
• There have been a total of 5112 posts, many of them short "pointers," directing people to other places on the Internet. But there's been a lot of original writing here, some in embarrassingly great need of editing, ranging from grammatical correction through dramatic paring down, all the way to merciful deletion of entire posts. Despite the flaws, I've decided to leave it all here: the good, the bad, and the really ugly.
• I don't know for certain when I added SiteMeter to track visits to the blog, although I believe it was sometime in 2005. Since its installation, there have been a total of 724,443 visits to the blog, with 1,187,139 page views.
• Along the way, I've written a number of serials, most written especially for the blog and some being sermon series and sets of devotions used in the congregations I've served during these past nine years, Friendship Lutheran Church near Amelia, Ohio (I was there from 1990 to 2007) and Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio (where I've served since November 2007). My favorite sets of blog posts include the Happiness Project, 40 Days to Servanthood, Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address, the Promise and the Perils of Democracy, Opening Your Spiritual Gifts, and two sets of posts I did, one on how Christians might think about immigration reform and another on how they might think about the 2008 presidential elections. (In neither of these last two sets of posts did I advocate specific positions. I simply sought to give people Biblical prisms through which they might consider the issues at hand.) (By the way, you can use the search function at the top of this blog page to look for anything mentioned above that might interest you. You can also do separate Google or Yahoo searches.)
• There are several posts that seem to attract traffic every day. One was written six years ago, just before my wife and I celebrated our thirty-first wedding anniversary, about the lessons I'd learned regarding marriage. Another dealt with the phenomenon of tiny houses. And another is one which I think simply attracts the traffic of those looking for photographs relative to the Holocaust and Holocaust Remembrance Day.

I hope that you've enjoyed your visits here. 

I also pray that God uses this blog not just to present Christ to readers, but also, I hope, to demonstrate that if God can love and redeem and use an imperfect, sinful person like me, God can love and redeem and use anyone!

Recent Pic/Videos from Days Off and Vacation (Part 1)

Earlier this week, we took two-and-a-half days to vacation, visiting my wife's brother and his wife in Virginia. We saw some sights in both Virginia and West Virginia together. Below is a little travelogue of that adventure, along with videos and photographs from some recent days off.

Here I am rhapsodizing about a beautiful morning we spent in northwestern Ohio at the home of friends near Napoleon. That section of the state is reclaimed swampland and is great farm country. It was May 11 and it was only later that day, with all the rain we've had in the Midwest, that farmers were able to get into their fields to plant crops. We were there for a sad occasion: the funeral of a dear friend who was a member of our first parish, Bethlehem Lutheran Church near Okolona.

This boring video was taken on the banks of the Kanawha River in West Virginia. The Kanawha is a tributary of the Ohio River and, as you can see, on May 22, was quite swollen. It was a gorgeous, sun-drenched day for travel. I sat in the backseat, reading most of the time, while my wife drove and my mother-in-law rode shotgun...just the way I like it.

While I gassed up the car, Ann cleaned the windshield. I also shot this video, taken at a filling station as we closing in on Roanoke. The "hills" to which I refer are, of course, actually mountains. Duh!

As I dorkily announce at the beginning of this video, here we were traveling along the New River in Virginia. Catch the mountains. Gorgeous territory! (As in people, so in geography: God doesn't make junk!)

It sounded like an aviary in the Virginia neighborhood where we stayed on Sunday and Monday nights. On Monday morning, I took a stroll and listened to the birds. This one, up on a utility wire, particularly caught my attention.

What follows are some images from our trip to Floyd, Virginia, the seat of Floyd County. If you're looking for the 60s, Floyd is one place where you might find them. Aging hippies live there, leavening the place with galleries, organic food shops, and liberal politics. It's a really neat little town.

Marking the difference in Floyd is an emporium called The Republic of Floyd. That caught Ann's attention because here in Hocking County, the town of Athens, home of Ohio University, in nearby Athens County, is often referred to as "the Republic of Athens" for characteristics like those of Floyd.

The Floyd County Court House, a small building staffed by hospitable people, has, like many southern court houses, a monument to Confederate veterans of the Civil War, in addition to one honoring US veterans.

Floyd has a big blue grass music festival every year, apparently a major draw. It's happening this coming weekend.

There's also a big classical music festival in the works for Floyd.

We had an early Monday lunch at a neat Irish pub called Annie Moore's in Roanoke.

In Franklin County, Virginia, we got to meet several German Baptist families who are involved with organic farming. We visited the produce stand of one such family and later the store of a family who own an organic dairy. (The ice cream was incredibly rich there, and a huge but delicious violation of my heart-healthy diet!)

More to come later.

Don't Be Troubled; Follow Jesus!

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

John 14:1-14
This morning, as we continue to celebrate Jesus’ resurrection from the dead on the first Easter Sunday, our Gospel lesson from John takes us to a time when Jesus was teaching His disciples just before His arrest and crucifixion. Please pull out your Celebrate inserts and read what Jesus has to tell us in John 14:1-14.

Verse 1 says: “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me.” Jesus speaks these words in the Upper Room just before His betrayal and arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane. The disciples sense that Jesus will refuse to wage a war to chase the Romans who occupy their country from Jerusalem. He won’t make Himself king by force. The pall of death hangs over them, a sense that their Master was going to be killed.

Whether they realized it or not, the disciples knew that the people of their world—Jews and Gentiles—like Adam and Eve, the first sinners, and like all of us who descend from them, wanted to “be like God.” And what better way to clear the way to being God-like than to kill off Jesus, the Word made flesh, God incarnate?

But Jesus tells the disciples not to be troubled. That may seem like an impossible command. But it’s not.

The fact is that troubles come to us, each and every day. But we need not be troubled by our troubles. Yesterday, Becky handed me a little sack containing three crosses. She told me, “Give these to anyone who needs a little reminder.” You see, during Danny’s recent hospitalization and heart bypass surgery, she had found a similar cross in the gift shop at Mount Carmel Hospital in Columbus. When things got scary, Becky touched that cross just to remind herself that Jesus was with her. When troubles come, we can place them and ourselves in the hands of Jesus. Troubles that overwhelm others will not trouble the follower of Jesus Christ!

Verse 2 tells us why we can go through life untroubled. Look at what Jesus says: “In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.”

Man, I love this passage! Everyone who repents for their sin and entrusts themselves to Jesus—which what Jesus means when He speaks of believing in Him—can spend each waking moment of this life knowing that the risen Jesus, Who has conquered death through His death and resurrection, is readying a place for us with Him in eternity! That puts the troubles we face in this life in perspective. Wherever followers of Christ arrive in this life, it isn’t our final destination.

But we dare not be flippant about that. Eternity with God is a free gift. But claiming it doesn’t come cheap.

In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus says that we can have none of Him or His gifts unless He takes precedence over everything—our fathers, mothers, wives, children, even our lives.

Look now at verses 4. Jesus says: “And you know the way to the place where I am going.” Whether they realized it or not, the disciples knew the way Jesus was going. They understood that the only way Jesus could claim the kingdom He had come into the world to establish was through a cross. And the only way we can claim the life that Jesus wants to give to us is for us to submit the crucifixion of our old selves, with all its self-driven sinfulness.

That’s not something we like. A man told me about an affair he’d been having for several years. He said: “I hate myself for doing this. I love my wife. I tell myself that I’m breaking things off. But, then I set up a time to meet the other woman.  I want her.”

I think that this man wanted me to tell him, “There, there. God understands how hard it is for you. You just can’t help yourself. Keep on doing what you’re doing.”

But the fact is that while Jesus loves sinners just as we are, He also calls us away from our sin. He calls us to enlist the help of the Holy Spirit to resist temptation. He calls us to follow Him, even when it isn’t easy. He calls us—He commands us—to yield ourselves to Him, even when doing so will lead us away from the sins we enjoy. We can't hold onto Jesus and our sins at the same time. We must let go of one and hold on to the other.

Elsewhere, Jesus says, “…the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction [that is, to hell], and there are many who take it…the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it…”

Anyone who would follow Jesus and take up the resurrection He offers to those who do, must also submit to the crucifixion of our old sinful selves. We must die to ourselves so that Jesus can raise us from the dead and take us into eternity with Him. And we must do this day in and day out as long as we're breathing and tempted by sin.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer put it memorably: “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.” Death to self is painful; but it’s the only way to God and the wholeness He wants for us.

In the next few verses, let's be honest, Thomas and Philip play dumb. Look at verses 5 and 6 of our lesson: “Thomas said to him, 'Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?' Jesus said to him, 'I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.' The way that Jesus is going to eternity, to resurrection from the dead, also leads through a cross and death. And the only way you and I will reach eternity with God is through faith in Jesus Christ.

Faith in Jesus is more than intellectual assent. Faith in Jesus is betting everything you have—your whole life—on Him alone.

It’s submission to that crucifixion of self I mentioned.

It’s trusting that beyond all that troubles us, Jesus is there.

It’s trusting that as we let go of our sins—all our idolatries, materialistic cravings, gossip-mongering, hatred, thievery, sexual intimacies outside of the marriage between a man and a woman, and dishonoring of parents, whether lived, thought, or fantasized—beyond all that—Christ will give us a life filled with real living.

Faith is trusting that Christ will fill us with all the joy, peace, and excitement we try to steal when we sin, but that Christ gives freely when we surrender to Him.

Faith is trusting that Christ will catch us when we fall into His arms!

Psalm 139 is a prayer to the same God we meet in Jesus: “If I climb to the sky, you're there!  If I go underground, you're there! If I flew on morning's wings to the far western horizon, You'd find me in a minute— you're already there waiting.”

Christ waits for you and me today. He’s already prepared places for us. But only the repentant who follow Him through the cross will live in those places with Him.

In verses 8 through 11, Jesus deals with a request made by Philip. Philip tells Jesus, “Show us the father and we will be satisfied.”

This is interesting coming from the apostle Philip. Philip was one of the very first to spread the news that Jesus was the long-sought Messiah, the Christ, God’s anointed King. Early in John’s Gospel, we’re told that Philip went to Nathanael and said, “We’ve found the one that Moses and the prophets said was coming. He’s Jesus of Nazareth.” When Nathanael skeptically asked if anything good could come from a blighted little town like Nazareth, Philip had said, “Come and see.”

Philip was a visual person. He had once seen Jesus and believed that Jesus was the Messiah.

But now, facing the troubling proposition that Jesus would be killed and no longer with him and his fellow disciples, Philip wanted to see God the Father.

Jesus tells Philip, “If you’ve seen Me, you’ve seen the Father.”

Some people, sometimes because of their troubles and fears, sometimes because of their boredom and lack of faith, want to see God.

Others, maybe to make themselves seem important or pious, will even claim to have special knowledge of God, including when Jesus is returning to the earth.

But the fact is that God can already be seen clearly by those who dare.

He can be seen in Jesus, on the pages of Scripture, in the waters of Holy Baptism, in the bread and the wine of Holy Communion, and in this fellowship of recovering hypocrites and sinners that the Bible calls “the body of Christ,” the Church.

The Bible introduces us to Jesus and when we see Him, we have seen the Father.

Our Gospel lesson ends with Jesus making a big promise. In verses 12 to 14, Jesus says: “Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father. I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it.”

While on earth, Jesus performed miracles, signs pointing to His identity as Lord of the universe. But He also voluntarily limited Himself in that time to living one human life.

Today, the risen Jesus can be everywhere simultaneously. He's here right now as we gather in His Name. He's in heaven at the same time. He can be with billions of others who call to God in His Name all at the same time.

The risen Jesus carries our prayers and our lives before the Father. And while we know that life on this earth isn’t and never will be perfect, I’m confident in saying that everyone here, either in their own lives or in the lives of family members, has been touched by all that Jesus does through His people.

Whether it’s to bring healing, hope, or simple direction for our lives, Christ uses His Church to do greater things than He accomplished while on earth.

The Church is the conduit by which Christ’s grace and power is brought into the world each day. A woman approached me after worship. I had never met her before, but our church—one of my previous congregations—had prayed for her. Her cancer was in remission. “I don’t know what my future holds,” she told me. “But I knew when the people of the Church were praying for me. God became very present to me. And that has changed me forever.”

I later  presided over that woman’s funeral. A life had been changed for eternity because Jesus is still empowering His people to pray, repent, believe, proclaim, love, and serve their way to doing greater things than He accomplished during his three decades of life on earth.

Whatever troubles we face, we know where we are going and we know that Christ will do great (and unexpected) things through those who follow Him. We need not be troubled. That's because Jesus is “the way, and the truth, and the life,” the one and only way to God for the whole human race. Keep following Jesus and keep sharing Him, confident of the place He's preparing for you. Amen!

Forever Young

See here.

Check out Psalm 92:

It is good to give thanks to the Lord, to sing praises to your name, O Most High;
²
to declare your steadfast love in the morning, and your faithfulness by night,
³
to the music of the lute and the harp, to the melody of the lyre.
⁴
For you, O Lord, have made me glad by your work; at the works of your hands I sing for joy.
⁵
How great are your works, O Lord! Your thoughts are very deep!
⁶
The dullard cannot know, the stupid cannot understand this:
⁷
though the wicked sprout like grass and all evildoers flourish, they are doomed to destruction forever,
⁸ but you, O Lord, are on high forever.
⁹
For your enemies, O Lord, for your enemies shall perish; all evildoers shall be scattered.
¹⁰
But you have exalted my horn like that of the wild ox; you have poured over me fresh oil.
¹¹
My eyes have seen the downfall of my enemies; my ears have heard the doom of my evil assailants.
¹²
The righteous flourish like the palm tree, and grow like a cedar in Lebanon.
¹³
They are planted in the house of the Lord; they flourish in the courts of our God.
¹⁴
In old age they still produce fruit; they are always green and full of sap,
¹⁵showing that the Lord is upright; he is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in him.

Christians Having Fun...by Being Christians

Earlier today, a bunch of folks from Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan and friends had a blast...by being Christian!

This was "pick-up, sort, and deliver" day for our PPSST! Community Food Drive.

The letters, PPSST, stand for pasta, peanut butter, spaghetti sauce, soup, and tuna. Here's how PPSST unfolded:

On Saturday, May 14, members of Saint Matthew distributed empty sacks provided to us by the Kroger store in Logan, with a note attached. The sacks were left at 700 Logan doorsteps. The attached note told folks that the following Saturday, May 21, sometime after 11:00AM, we would pick up sacks filled with the PPSST items.

Of course, members of Saint Matthew also added items they wanted to give as well.

After we picked up the items today, their expiration dates were checked, then sorted and boxed.

Then, we took the items to Hocking County Job and Family Services, which works with the unemployed and needy persons in our community. This dedicated government agency knows the needs of people and will distribute the collected food to persons on their clientele lists. Any additional food items we might receive beyond today will go to the Clearing House Assistance Program (CHAP) emergency food bank.

This is the third year that we've undertaken this particular servanthood project. As usual, it was a lot of fun!

This year, it acquired an additional letter; it used to be PSST! But it's still a great practical way for us to join our neighbors in sharing the love of Christ with others.

We've distributed empty sacks and picked up filled ones in different Logan neighborhoods in each of the first three years. The response has been great everywhere we've gone.

On a monthly basis, Saint Matthew members donate food items to CHAP. That, PPSST, and other undertakings are all examples of how we strive to obey Jesus' great commandment to love God and love others.

[Phyllis is a blur as she sorts items.]

[Some of the boxes filled with food taken to Job and Family Services.]

[By the way, this is some of what I had in mind when I wrote about Christians getting on with the business of living, here.]

When Will the World End? Who Cares?

Though they may disagree on particulars, all Christians believe that one day, Jesus will return, bringing an end to this universe and fully establishing the new heaven and the new earth the Bible talks about.

That's why many of us, including we Lutherans, confess in the Nicene Creed, the most widely accepted statement of Christian belief in the world, that Jesus "will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end."

But anyone who claims to know the day, month, hour, or year of Jesus' return either is, at worst, a counterfeit Christian or, at best, a misinformed one.

A quick look at words of Jesus cited in three of the New Testament books--Matthew, Mark, and Luke--known as "gospels" will show this. Jesus says:

"Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.

"But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father." (Mark 13:31-32)

For an attentive Christian, these words raise a question which, ultimately, we may find unanswerable: If Jesus is God enfleshed and if He and the Father are one, as He teaches and as we believe, then how is it possible for the Father to know the date of Jesus' return without Jesus knowing it?

I personally can only speculate that as part of God's risk of subjecting Himself to temptation and sin and being human in order to bond with the human race for whom Jesus came to die and rise, it was decided that God the Son would be walled off from any unfair advantage over the rest of us in matters like knowing when this world will end. It may be a topic for discussion in eternity one day, though I suspect that by then, it won't matter much to us.

But the real take-away from Jesus' words is that He claimed to have no knowledge of when He would return to close the curtain on life in this world.

And why would that be? Because it's not important to know.

Following the words of Jesus cited above, He also says:

Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come. It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his slaves in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to be on the watch. Therefore, keep awake—for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn, or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly. And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake.”

Jesus' point is clear. Don't waste time speculating. Don't waste money on billboards and ads in major newspapers saying you know the date of Jesus' return. Nobody, no matter how convinced or convincing they may be, knows. Our job is just to be ready for His return.

And who is ready?

• All who have taken up Jesus' offer on the free gifts of forgiveness of sin and everlasting life by turning from sin (repenting) and entrusting their lives to Him (believing).
• All those who, out of gratitude for the free gifts of Jesus, seek to live out the great commandment (love God, love others) and the great commission (make disciples, new followers of Jesus, by sharing the true story of what Jesus did through cross and empty tomb for everyone).

I don't know when Jesus is returning. Nobody on earth has a clue about that. But you'll be ready if you let Jesus be the ultimate boss (Lord) of your life. Now, trusting in Him, get busy with living!*

*This is exactly what the members of our congregation, Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, are going to do--get busy--as we conduct our community food drive today. Sharing Jesus in practical ways is one of the things we Christians need to be about, not speculating on when the world will end.