Called to Be Readers and Doers of God's Word

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

Mark 7:1-23
Please go to the end of today’s gospel lesson, to Mark 7:20-23. Jesus says:

“What comes out of a [person], that [is what] defiles a [person]. For from within, out of the heart of [people], proceed evil thoughts, adulteries [tha'st sexual intimacy outside of marriage by people already married], fornications [that’s sexual intimacy outside of marriage, something that is always wrong], murders, thefts, covetousness [that’s craving the possessions, status, or relationships of other people], wickedness [this is maliciousness or cruelty], deceit, lewdness, an evil eye [looking upon anyone with hate], blasphemy [dishonoring God], pride [arrogance], foolishness [acting apart from the revealed wisdom of God].” Now look where Jesus says all of these human behaviors and attitudes start: “All these things come from within and defile a [person].” 



This is the conclusion to which Jesus drives in today’s long gospel lesson. It’s true to say, as Martin Luther teaches in The Small Catechism, that evil comes from “the devil, the world, and our sinful selves.” But no one can force us to sin. Only we can defile ourselves.

We perpetrate sin when, after flirting with sin, we allow it to take charge of our thoughts and actions. Sin is an inside job!

The devil doesn't make us sin.

And we can’t claim that we sin because we’re following orders or because we need to go along to get along with others.

Nor can we say that we sin because we are the hapless victims of our own inborn sinful impulses and inclinations.

Nobody and nothing that pushes us from outside ourselves can make us sin. Any sin that ever defiles us starts within us.

If you are mired in some sin this morning, you will only get free when you can admit, "I am the only one to blame for this" and then turn to the crucified and risen Christ to seek forgiveness and the strength to live a clean life with Him at the center of it all.

Jesus happens to teach this lesson that it’s what comes from inside of us that dirties our lives and souls because of a confrontation He has with the Pharisees. The Pharisees thought that if they kept certain religious rules and traditions, external actions, they would make themselves holy and clean.

They thought, for example, that if people washed their hands before eating, it would mark them as people of faith and goodness. They were horrified that Jesus’ disciples didn’t engage in their religious washing ceremony before dinner. Today, of course, we know that washing or sanitizing our hands is a good way to prevent disease. But the Pharisees knew nothing about hygiene. Jesus says that no matter how many times a day we wash our hands, we won’t be clean on the inside apart from repentance and faith in Him.

The Pharisees who confronted Jesus also believed in something called Corban. Corban was a religious creation. God’s law says that we are to honor our fathers and mothers. That may mean providing for their needs when they are no longer able to do so. Under the Pharisees’ law of Corban, they could piously tell their parents, “The money I was going to use to help you, I’m going to give to God instead.” Giving to the cause of the God we know in Christ through our church is an essential part of the Christian life. But if we ignore God’s will for our lives just to impress God, we’re not only disrespecting those we have been commanded to care for, we’re sinning against God. God cannot be bought off!



We inevitably will sin against God any time we replace God’s Word and God’s will with our traditions, our reasoning, our wisdom, our feelings, our preferences. A young woman once told me, "It can't be wrong that my boyfriend and I are having sex. We love each other so much." She and her boyfriend were replacing the revealed will of God with their own supposed wisdom!

Whenever we trust our hearts more than we trust what God teaches us in His Word, we defile ourselves and wander from God.

So, how do we avoid going down the path of the Pharisees encountered by Jesus in today’s gospel lesson? How do we ensure the things going on inside of us--the attitudes that lead to our behaviors--are godly and clean? 
 


We must stay open to maintaining a strong personal relationship with the God we know in Jesus Christ. A relationship with God is a gift of grace given to us through Jesus Christ. All who repent and believe in Christ have life with God. But it can be a huge challenge to de-clutter lives of ways of thinking and seemingly pious traditions that prevent the crucified and risen Jesus from calling the shots in our lives!

I believe that this de-cluttering begins and is built on regularly spending time in God’s Word, the Bible. The Bible is no ordinary book. It gives life. Hebrews 4:12 says: “...the word of God is living and powerful...”

The Bible, unlike any other book, also is incorruptible, meaning that, unlike the things of this world, it cannot die and fills with incorruptible life to all who believe in the God it reveals. First Peter 1:23 says that Christians born from above through water and the Word at Baptism, are “born again, not of corruptible seed, but incorruptible, through the Word which lives and abides forever.”



The Bible also claims to be God’s gift of milk, bread, solid food, and even dessert for His people. The apostle Peter tells us to “crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation.” God wants us to grow up in our faith by feeding us on His Word. Most people in America own Bibles. But most never crack them open. Consequently, they never experience the joy and assurance of living day to day with God’s gracious guidance in their lives. They’re like people starving to death even though they have refrigerators full of food.*



God gives us His Word because He wants us to know Jesus Christ as the only way to forgiveness for sin, a right relationship with God, and everlasting life.

He also wants us to be able help us grow up and thrive as believers in Christ.

When we fill up on God’s Word, it crowds out the attitudes and behaviors that otherwise will defile our lives and separate us from God. It sets our lives moving in God’s direction.

And when we stock our minds with the truths of the Bible, we won’t mistake our human ways of thinking or our pious traditions for the will of the God Who made us.

You may say, “But, pastor, the Bible is hard to understand.” It can be and, in this lifetime, you and I will never understand everything about the Bible. But I guarantee that we will never understand anything about the Bible if we never read it. There are also great translations of the Bible that are easier to understand. Ask me about them and I’ll help you find the one that’s right for you.

You can also understand the Bible better if you read and discuss it with other Christians. That’s why our Sunday School classes and Read the New Testament in a Year discussion groups are so important. If you’re not involved in a study like this, I urge you to get involved. If the studies we have are at times inconvenient for you, get with me and I’ll help you get a group organized that is at a better time for you and, maybe for others as well.

You may also say, “Pastor, I don’t have the time to read the Bible and get involved with a discussion group.” Let me tell you something: A man I know of had to have heart bypass surgery. Before his surgery, he exercised only sporadically. He said that he didn’t have the time. After the surgery, he remarked, “It’s amazing the amount of time I could find for exercise when I realized that without it, I was hastening the end of my life.” He’s now approaching age 80, healthy, and still exercising every day. 



When we don’t exercise our spiritual muscles through regular reading and group study of God’s Word, along with prayer, intentional service in Christ’s Name, regularly worshiping and receiving Christ’s body and blood, and regularly telling others the good news of Jesus Christ, we grow flabby in our faith.

We also create holes in our souls which will give room for evil thoughts and sinful behaviors. Ephesians 4:27 tells us, “do not make room for the devil."

When instead, we make room for God’s Word, worship, service in Christ's Name, and so on, our inner life changes. We have peace with God and we can live our lives in that peace, no matter what the world may think of us, do to us, or say about us. 


Of course, it’s not enough to simply know about or be able to talk about the Bible. I’ve always loved learning, stockpiling facts. Because of this trait, I confess that sometimes I’m satisfied to just add to what I know about the Bible, failing to translate the faith I know about into tangible everyday living. But, in places like James 1:22, part of our second lesson for today, God’s Word tells us to “be doers of the Word, and not hearers only.”

That’s why I love this suggestion from Pastor Rick Warren: After you’ve read or discussed a passage of Scripture and prayed about it, asking God to tell you what He wants you to do based on what He’s taught you in the passage, write down, on a piece of paper or type into your computer or smart phone, the “action step” you’re going to take based on God’s Word.

“This action step should,” writes Warren, “be personal (involving you), practical (something you can do), and provable (with a deadline to do it).”

I’m asking God to help me define action steps every time I read the Bible. I want to more faithfully live the faith in Jesus I confess. I hope you’ll join me in adopting this habit. Read the Bible, then plan to tangibly live what God tells you in it.

It’s time for we Lutherans who claim that the Bible is the authoritative Word of God to knock off our excuses and actually start reading and standing under the authority of the Bible again!

It’s time to put our faith into action!

Let God’s Word be the final authority over your life.

Let its truth fill you so that, as you yield control of your life to Christ, what you say and do and feel comes from your God and not from your sin.

Let God's Word fill you with its power and life today and every day. Amen

*I'm grateful for the insights of Pastor Rick Warren, in his book The Purpose Driven Life, for the preceding two paragraphs.

TobyMac's 'Me Without You'

The style of both the melody to this new TobyMac song, Me Without You, and its accompanying video are similar to those associated with Owl City's Good Time.

But unlike Owl City (Adam Young), Toby McKeehan has been around a long time now, a venerable force in Christian music whose music has routinely crossed over to other music charts.

The LP from which this song is taken, Eye On It, was released this past week and is currently #1 over on iTunes. That's tremendous and, to some, shocking crossover appeal!

Me Without You is an electronica-hip hop ode to the God revealed in Jesus Christ.

I like it. But it's far from TobyMac's best work. In fact, all this past week, at every opportunity--in my car or at home--I've been playing Free at Last, the 1992 release of the rap/hip hop/rock band he led at the time, dcTalk. It is incredible and, I suspect, likely to endure as a classic for long years to come.

I also love McKeehan's earlier solo projects, Momentum and Portable Sounds.

The guy is massively talented and, like Paul McCartney, Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, and U2, relentlessly creative. Even when he's not at his best, he still does memorable music!

See here.

'Good Time'

I admit it: I like 'Good Time' by Owl City (Adam Young) and Carly Rae Jepsen. It's simple, fun, and catchy!

Midskill Jobs Shrinking in the US

Here.

Fewer Teens Driving

This may be a good thing.

Real Christian Unity

In Romans 15:5, in the New Testament, the first-century preacher Paul begins a lengthy blessing, asking God to help Jewish Christians and non-Jewish Christians to live in unity.

Unlike so many calls for Christian unity today, his words were neither a horse whip nor a guilt trip designed to force people into organizational oneness.

Paul writes:

May the God of steadfastness and encouragement grant you to live in harmony with one another, in accordance with Christ Jesus..." (Romans 15:5, italics mine)

If the unity of a congregation or of a denomination is achieved apart from being in accord (or agreement) with Christ, it's not united.

Being united in accordance with Christ Jesus includes at least things like:

• Accepting the divinity and humanity of Jesus, His virgin birth, His sinlessness, His death given in sacrifice for sinful humanity, and His physical resurrection.
• Accepting the authority of Jesus, as God, to teach us definitively about things like salvation and condemnation, heaven and hell, right and wrong, grace, forgiveness, repentance, faith, love, servanthood, and hope.
• Accepting that Jesus, is as He claims, the only way for human beings to be reconciled to God and that those who turn from sin and surrender their lives to Him have the gracious gift of new and everlasting life with God.

Unless congregations and denominations can agree on basic truths like these, there is no unity, no matter how people may be guilted or bullied into organizational acquiescence.  (Clubbed into the club.)

There's a lot of false, organizational unity in many denominations these days, but very little of the true unity that exists among those who, by God's grace, enjoy a unity born of seeking to live in accordance with Christ Jesus.

Churches who root their unity in history, tradition, causes, sentimentality, justice, human reason, or anything other than Jesus lack true, Biblical unity.

Living with the Mystery of Unanswered Prayer

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

Mark 14:35-36
As followers of Jesus Christ, we Christians confess faith in a God of promises. The Bible, the book we hold to be the perfect Word of God, uniquely inspired by the Holy Spirit, is filled with God’s promises, many already fulfilled, many yet to be.

Some of the promises God makes aren’t pleasant. And some can cause us confusion, even challenge our faith in God.

One that falls in this latter category can be found in Luke 11:9-10. Jesus makes this promise about prayer: “So I say to you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he [or she] who seeks finds, and to him [or her] who knocks it will be opened.”

These words of promise come by way of amplifying what Jesus teaches us to pray in the seventh petition of what we call the Lord’s Prayer in the last line of Luke 11:4: “But deliver us from the evil one.”

In an explanation of this petition of the Lord’s Prayer in The Small Catechism, Martin Luther writes: “We pray in this petition...that our heavenly Father would deliver us from every type of evil--whether it affects our bodies or souls, property or reputation...”

But you may have noticed something: Generations of faithful believers in Jesus have prayed this prayer, yet evils of all kinds have befallen them and the people for whom they’ve prayed.

In the Name of Jesus, people beg for blessings, but loved ones die, jobs are lost, reputations are subjected to destructive gossip, wars rage.

In telling us to “ask...seek...knock,” has God made a promise He cannot keep or is unwilling to keep?

What are we to think and believe when the things for which we pray don’t come to us?

I’ve called this “the mystery of unanswered prayer.” In a way, this is a misnomer.

A member of the congregation approached me this past week and asked, “Is this the Sunday you’re going to talk about unanswered prayer?” I said it was. He smiled and asked, “Is there such a thing?”

It was a rhetorical question because, of course, for the believer in Jesus who brings her or his petitions to Jesus, there are no unanswered prayers.

But there are answers to prayers we don’t like, that bring pain to us or to those we care about.

And there are many things that I hope God will make clear to us when we stand before Him after those of us who have believed in Jesus are resurrected from the dead.

In the meantime, we have our questions.

One thing that should comfort us when we confront prayers not being answered as we ardently hope they will be is the experience of Jesus Himself.

Look to the verse just before our gospel lesson, Mark 14:34. Jesus is in the garden of Gethsemane, where He’s gone to pray. He tells the disciples: “My soul is exceedingly sorrowful even to death...”

Jesus, in a sense, always stood in two worlds. As a human being,  Jesus voluntarily experienced all the difficulties that we human beings experience--physical pain, relational rejection, death. Isaiah 53:3, written at least six centuries before Jesus’ birth had foretold of Jesus that He would be, “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.”

It was necessary for our salvation for Jesus to be acquainted with the grief that comes to every human being. It was necessary because only the death of a perfect unblemished Savior could be a sacrifice pure enough to free us from the death sentence you and I deserve.

So, one of the worlds in which Jesus lived was this world, the one in which you and I live, the world in which every baby who has ever been born has eventually, died.

That’s why, as He faced suffering and death, Jesus was “exceedingly sorrowful.”

After asking His disciples to wait and watch while He went to pray, verse 35 says that Jesus “fell on the ground, and prayed if it were possible, the hour might pass from Him.”

“Father,” Jesus is begging, “deliver Me from evil. Deliver me from the cruel intentions of Satan, the evil one.”

In His agony, Jesus must have prayed this prayer in different ways repeatedly because, look at what we read in verse 36: “And He said, ‘Abba [the very intimate term Jesus has taught us to use at the beginning of the Lord’s Prayer], Father, all things are possible for You. [I know that You can keep this from happening, Lord.] Take this cup away from Me [The cup, in the Old Testament, symbolizes judgment and God the Father expects Jesus to drink the cup of judgment--to undergo death--for us all. Jesus begs that He won’t have to drink this cup of suffering and death. Then He prays...] nevertheless, not what I will, but what You will.”

You see, Jesus lived in another world as well as in this one. He lived also in the kingdom of God.

It is the kingdom in which, if Jesus would be faithful to His call to die for us, He would rise into and live in for all eternity.

It is the kingdom He came to bring to all who will turn from sin, submitting daily to the crucifixion of their old sinful selves, and place themselves in the hands of Jesus--believing in Him--as trustingly as Jesus placed Himself in the hands of God the Father on the night He prayed in the garden.

And so, in the garden, from the perspective of this world, Jesus prayed, “Deliver us from evil.”

But at the same time, as a citizen of the kingdom of God, He prayed, “Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

Folks, listen: You and I are people of this world who live in the kingdom of God by faith in Christ, but who only vaguely understand the grand purposes of God, especially God’s purposes for our own lives. We see, as Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 13:12, “in a mirror, dimly.”

It’s only after own resurrections, beyond the gates of death, safely removed from the stranglehold that sin and death have over this world, that “we will know” God and God’s purposes completely, just as God already knows us completely.

God the Father had an answer for Jesus’ prayer for deliverance from the immediate evils He faced that night in the garden. The answer was, “No.”

The reason for this NO seems apparent to me. Had Jesus been delivered from the threats of the Romans, Herod, Pilate, and other conspirators that night, the moment God had long ago planned as the precise moment--what the Greek of the New Testament calls the kairos moment--when the Savior would die and rise to give new and everlasting to those who repent for sin and believe in Jesus might have passed.

And having been allowed to cave into His understandable fears of suffering, rejection, and death and moved out of the will of God, Jesus Himself and all of us who depend on His death and resurrection to give us life, would have been delivered not from, but into, the hands of the evil one for all eternity.

In other words, the Father said, "No" to Jesus' prayer for protection from the immediate evils Jesus faced in order to say, "YES!" to protecting Jesus and us from the ultimate evil of eternal separation from God. The people who were around Jesus at the time of His suffering and execution never would have guessed that God would bring good from all that bad. And I believe that God often says no to our prayers for protection from the immediate evils we perceive in order to say to yes to His protection from evil for us for eternity.

I can’t pretend to know God’s will for our individual lives.

I don’t know why some people seem to suffer more than others.

Or why faithful people die at young ages.

Or others go through undeserved horrors in their personal lives.

But I do take great comfort and encouragement from the God of promise.

For example, I’m strengthened by the promise of the risen Jesus when He says, “I am with you always, even to the close of the age.” So, even now, as I try to live in this world and in eternity, too, God is by my side, empowering my choices and decisions, helping me to love God and love others, giving me strength and hope!

And I look forward with anticipation to that moment in eternity when Revelation 21:4 tells us that God “will wipe away every tear from [our] eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.”

By the way, earlier I didn’t share all of what Martin Luther said about the seventh petition of the Lord’s Prayer--”But deliver us from evil”--earlier.

He says that we’re to ask in this prayer not only for deliverance from the effects of evil on our bodies, souls, property, and reputations, but also that “at last, when our hour of death comes, [our heavenly Father] would grant us a blessed end to our earthly lives, and graciously take us from this world of sorrow to Himself in heaven.”

Luther is pointing to the ultimate deliverance from evil we all should crave.

And knowing that, through faith in the crucified and risen Jesus, our residence in that world is guaranteed can give us a new passion for fearless living in this world.

Unafraid about our ultimate destination, we can be generous in loving and giving and spreading the good news of Jesus and fighting for justice the poor and despised.

After all, death is not the worst thing that can happen to a Christian.

But knowing about our ultimate deliverance can also give us a new sense of understanding when our prayers aren’t answered as we want them to be. We know that God has a plan, even when we’re not in on its details.

This is what Paul is getting at in Romans 8:18: “I consider the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed to us.”

This side of the resurrection, God’s answers to our prayers will often baffle us.

But we know that on whatever path God may call us to take in this life, He will be beside us always and that, as the cross and empty tomb of Jesus attest, He is committed to loving us into His kingdom, where, finally...

the questions will be answered,

the suffering will be ended,

the tears will be no more, and

we will be delivered from all evil. Amen

What Jesus Doesn't Promise

"Jesus...did not offer His disciples a life of prosperity and ease but called them to self-sacrifice and identification with Him."

See here.

'Gilligan's Island' and a Misspent Childhood

File this under "Misspent Childhood."

On Monday, when I walked into the activities room of our local hospital, where I was going to give Holy Communion to interested residents, the activities director was asking trivia questions. "Here's one for you," he said when he saw me. "What were the names of the regular characters on 'Gilligan's Island'?"

I said, "Gilligan, Skipper, Mary Ann, the Professor, Ginger the movie star, and Mr. and Mrs. Thurston Howell III."

"What was Mrs. Howell's name?"

"Lovie," I replied.

"You're right," he said.

What a waste of brain cells! I can't believe I can remember stuff like that and then forget more important things. Too bad you can't clean out your memory the way you can with your computer and only keep what's important.

Too bad too that I spent enough time in front of the TV set as a kid to remember junk like this, but couldn't remember what an Isosceles Triangle is on threat of death.

"Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale..."

"Lunchtime Churches"

This concept is exciting to me.

It's good for Christians to remember that the first church building wasn't built until the fourth century, some three hundred years after Jesus' death and resurrection. Church isn't a building, it's the people of God gathered in Christ's Name and sent to spread the message that all who turn from sin and believe in Jesus Christ have everlasting life.

Church can happen anywhere!

Prayer (Part 3 of a 4-Part Series)

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

Genesis 3:1-7, 22-24
Over the past several weeks, we’ve been looking at the Lord’s Prayer as a model for all our praying. Today, we’re going to look at the sixth petition of the prayer: “And lead us not into temptation.” (Or, "Lord, don't allow us to be led into temptation.)

The earlier petitions of the Lord’s Prayer may find us wanting to raise objections. But this petition causes us to raise lots questions, like:

• What exactly is temptation and why should I resist it? 
• If God wants me to not sin, why does He allow temptation to sin happen? 

Questions like these are almost accusatory in tone, indicting God for perceived unfairness. But are they fair to God?

For some answers, let’s go back to the garden of Eden, where the first human beings were subjected to the first temptation to sin.

Please turn to our first lesson for today, Genesis 3:1-7, 22-24.

Before delving into that passage, let your eyes go up to Genesis 2:24-25 for a moment. In verse 24, where we’re told that, “...a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” One man, one woman, one flesh united under the blessing and guidance of God: This is God’s definition of marriage and it’s one that, according to both Matthew 19:5 and Mark 10:8, Jesus, God in the flesh, would underscore thousands of years later.

The first human beings were naive and guileless, without sin, and totally in sync with God and each other.

In Genesis 2:25, we’re told: “And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.” Mark Twain once said, “Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to.” As created, Adam and Eve had no need to blush. They had desires, of course: to please God, to love and please one another, to do the work God had given them to do. But they knew nothing about sin, which is desiring otherwise good things at the wrong times, or in the wrong ways, or for the wrong reasons. Soon though, the desires of Adam and Eve are going to be altered in destructive and death-dealing ways because of their unwillingness to resist the temptation to sin.

The agent who brought temptations to them was the serpent, who we can take as a stand-in for Satan.

The serpent asks the woman in Genesis 3:1, “Has God told you that you can’t eat of any of the trees in the garden.” The woman, whose husband we’re told in Genesis 3:6, was right there with her, answers truthfully in verses 2-3: “We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden; but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die.’”

So far, so good. The woman is doing well in this interchange with temptation. Like Jesus, who would be tempted in the wilderness many thousands of years later, Eve is able to resist the serpent because she knows and remembers the Word of God.

If you and I are serious about resisting temptation and living lives that express our thanks to God for the gift of new life that belongs to all who turn from sin and believe in Jesus Christ, we will take the time to read the Word of God and so know the mind and the will of God. We’ll also pray and ask God to help us resist all temptations to sin.

But, unless we keep in prayerful contact with God, temptation can make our brains go fuzzy. We become susceptible having God’s Word twisted and turning us inside out. We find it easy to rationalize away the seriousness of the sins to which we’re being tempted.

Look at verse 4. “Then the serpent said to the woman, ‘You will not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’” Notice what the serpent is doing here.

First: He’s trying to drive a wedge between God and the woman. In effect, he’s asking, “Why is God such a spoilsport? What pleasure is he trying to deny you? What right does God have to hold anything back from you?”

When you and I are tempted to sin, we might be hounded by similar thoughts:

“It’s just a little thing. The company (or the government, or the school, or the church) will never miss it.”

Or, “I think I’m entitled to a little pleasure after all these years of living with such an uncaring husband (or wife).”

Or, “This isn’t really gossip. I’m just passing on information so that my friend will be better informed and know what to pray about.”

Rationalizations like these drive wedges between God and us.

The second thing the serpent is doing with the woman is telling the truth in a lying way. The woman wouldn’t die...right away...for her sin. Eve and Adam, who had heretofore, known only good would, to their regret and shame, know about evil after biting into the fruit and it would, eventually, bring their deaths.

But the serpent didn't tell the whole truth. He left parts of the truth out of the telling. When the sin to which we're tempted offers momentary thrills or pleasures or when it makes us feel powerful or exceptional, we become susceptible to listening to such lies. When we're hell-bent on sin, we don't care about the fine print. We develop spiritual amnesia, forgetting that all unrepented, unforgiven sin will always leave us dead and separated from God, from others, from our best selves, from life.

Third: The serpent is effectively telling the woman that she has a right to be just like god. Listen: Human beings are the pinnacle of creation, the only of God’s species made “in the image of God.” It was for us that God took on flesh, died on a cross to take our punishment for sin, and rose from the dead to open up eternity to all who believe in God the Son, Jesus Christ. But we are not God and, contrary to the teachings of some religions like Mormonism, according to the Word of God, we never will be. But all temptation, in a way, tries to feed us this lie.

We see what happens when we forget the Word of God and allow temptation to get in the way of our relationship with God in verse 6: “So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate.”

Adam and Eve rebelled against God and through the inheritance we all receive from them, ensured that, at birth, each of us is a sinner with an inborn love for doing what we want to do.

We’re born knowing all about evil, which is why maybe the first concept every one of us understands as babes in the cribs is: “I, me, mine!”

Self-centeredness is our default mode and we’re born with a love for ourselves that has to be taught by the grace given in Christ to make room for God and others. That’s why we need the Savior Jesus to bridge the gap between us and make it possible for our fellowship with God and with others to be restored through a bond of love borne of Jesus’ death and resurrection.

Now, it would be easy for us to say that since we’re born as sinners who want to sin and God loves us so much, it must mean that God approves of our sin.

Pastor Erwin Lutzer  once knew a kleptomaniac, a person with a compulsion to steal. He told Lutzer, “I’ve always wanted to steal as far back as I can remember. There’s no question in my mind that it’s genetic.” He may have been right; he may have been genetically disposed to kleptomania.

But just because he was genetically predisposed to theft--just because he was “born that way”--didn’t mean that God gave him the green light to steal.

Everyone of us is genetically predisposed to sin and we all like some sins more than we like others. Yet every one of is told to obey the ten commandments and to repent when we violate them. And all of us are commanded by Jesus to pray, “Lead us not into temptation.” And we’re all told to turn from sin and to trust in Christ alone for all that we need, now and in eternity.

And if we want to resist the temptations we feel ourselves subjected, the God we know in Christ can help us resist temptation. In James 4:7-8, we’re told: “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you.” When tempted by sin, move closer to God and further from the sin.

But, if God wants us to stay away from sin, why did God allow temptation to come to Eve and Adam...and to us?

Think of things in this way: God intended for you and me to have a special relationship with Him. As some of you have heard me say before, God could have created robots who, as He loved them, had no choice but to love God back. But God wanted (and wants) a true relationship of love with us. God wants us to choose to love Him. And the only way we can choose to love Him is if we have the choice not to love Him, not to obey His will for our lives. Without our having the option to not have faith in the God we know in Christ, our confessions of faith are meaningless. That’s why God allowed (and allows) temptation in this world.

Now here’s the scary thing: Because of the genetic predisposition to sin you and I have inherited from Adam and Eve, we do not have free will. “We are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves,” we say. Martin Luther called this “the bondage of the will.” Turn to Romans 7:15, please. Paul writes about his own bondage to sin: “...what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate [sin], that I do...” A few verses later he confesses that it’s sin that dwells within him. Paul would throw up his hands in despair, knowing that he would be forever separated from God, consigned to hell for eternity, except for one thing.

Look at verse 24: “O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? I thank God--through Jesus Christ our Lord!” Whenever we repent for sin--turn away from it, renounce it--and trust in the crucified and risen Jesus as our God, God forgives our sins and gives us the power to resist temptation today and to look forward to eternity with God!

James 1:13 says: “No one, when tempted, should say, ‘I am being tempted by God’; for God cannot be tempted by evil and He Himself tempts no one.”

We are tempted instead by the desires that come to us from the devil, from a sinful, fallen world, and from our own corrupted DNA.

But, when facing temptation, we have a great promise from God. Turn please to 1 Corinthians 10:13. “No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to [all people]; but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it.”

What temptation are you facing today? It could be the temptation to fudge on your taxes or Medicare forms, to lie about the work you did on the 4H project, or something else. We can be infinitely creative in finding ways to violate God’s moral law, the ten commandments. Whatever temptation you face, if you’re intent on living a life that thanks God for the cross and empty tomb of Jesus, God will give you a way of escape from both temptation and sin.

Pray, “Lead me not into temptation, Lord. In Jesus’ Name and by the Holy Spirit’s power, help me to resist this temptation.”

If you’re like me, you probably have to pray that prayer hundreds of times every day in the face of multiple temptations.

But, I promise that when you pray that prayer sincerely, with a heartfelt desire for God above all else, God will lead you in the right direction.

Your relationship with God, the most important relationship you can have, will grow stronger, your character will grow stronger, and you will move closer to being the person God made you to be in eternity.

And, as we learn to live more as the people God made us to be, we know more of the true joy that Adam and Eve experienced before giving into temptation.

“Lord, lead us not into temptation.” Amen

Prayer (Part 2 of a 4-Part Series)

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

Matthew 6:7-15
Sometimes, at the end of a youth group devotion or during a Catechism class unit, I’ll ask a young person if they would offer a prayer. Honestly, I don’t do this to embarrass anybody. Maintaining any good relationship entails the commitment of time and energy and communication. This is no less true of our relationship with the God we know through Jesus Christ. So, I want to encourage young people to feel that they can talk with God any time without flowery or pretentious language.

The fact is that whenever any of us pray, no matter our age, no matter if we offer our prayer publicly or privately, we may get a little tongue-tied or experience brain-freezes or become totally confused by life. I know that’s true for me!

Fortunately, those who believe in Jesus and approach God in prayer in Jesus' Name know that their prayers don’t have to be perfect. Romans 8:26 says: “[God’s Holy] Spirit also helps us in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us [that means, the Holy Spirit speaks up for us] with groanings which cannot be uttered.”

Whenever we’re overwhelmed by life, knowing that we need God, but not knowing what to pray, we not only have the advocacy of the Holy Spirit, though. We also have a pattern for prayer that Jesus has given to us. It’s what we call the Lord’s Prayer.

Last Sunday, using the version of the Lord’s Prayer found in the gospel of Luke, we looked at what we call the introduction and the first and second petitions of the prayer. Today, we’re going to consider the third, fourth, and fifth petitions, the next three things Jesus says you and I should be seeking from God when we pray.

Please turn to Matthew 6:7-15 in your Bible. Slide down to verse ten of our gospel lesson, where we find the third petition of the Lord’s Prayer: “Thy will [or Your will] be done.”

In instructing us to pray in this way, Jesus isn’t asking us to ask God for anything that He Himself wasn’t willing to pray for or live with. You remember that before He was arrested, tried, and murdered for our sins, Jesus prayed in the garden of Gethsemane: “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will.” Even when He knew with perfect clarity all of the suffering that the Father's will would bring to Him, Jesus prayed that God's will would be done.

Jesus is teaching us here that there’s more to being a Christian than cashing in on His promise to give new and everlasting life to those who believe in Him.

That's because believing in Jesus is more than accepting the propositions that He is God the Son or that He died for human beings or that He physically rose from the dead. As the New Testament book of James says: “You believe that there is one God; you do well: the demons also believe, and tremble.”

When Jesus says that all who believe in Him will be saved, He means that all who entrust their whole lives to Him will be saved. Those who trust Jesus are the people who can say (or are willing to ask God to help them to pray) things like this:

• “Here is a sin of which I’m really fond and over which I feel I have no control, God. But I accept that when You and I disagree about what’s a sin, you’re right and I’m wrong. Help me to resist temptation to sin in this way.” 
• Or, “Lord, I really want this job or want to keep this job. But if You have some other plan, Your will be done.” 
• Or, “I want to be with this person. But if You say, ‘No,’ I’ll do what You want.” 

Sometimes, of course, God’s will may not be entirely clear to us. But know this: God will never will us to do what is contrary to what He has revealed about Himself in the Bible.

When we feel unclear about God's will for us, we also have a promise from Jesus. As we live in relationship with Him, seeking His will in prayer, and reading God’s Word in the Bible, Jesus says in John 16:13 that the Holy Spirit will guide us in truth. In fact, the closer we grow to Christ, the more God’s will and our will get in sync.

The fourth petition of the Lord’s Prayer represents a shift in emphasis in the prayer. Up to this point, Jesus has instructed us to pray for things that are helpful to us both today and in eternity. Here, we begin to ask God to things that are important to us today. In Matthew 6:11, Jesus teaches us to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread.”

Martin Luther reminds us in The Small Catechism that Jesus has in mind here more than just the bread or food we need day in and day out, but everything we need to live every day.

But, we may wonder, why should we have to ask God for what we need each day? When I was a kid, I didn’t have to go to my parents and say, “Hey, Dad! Hey, Mom! You remember those three square meals you gave me yesterday? I’m going to be needing something similar today.” They knew I needed food, water, shelter, an education, medical care, love, and other things every day. They didn’t have to be reminded.

God doesn’t have to be reminded of our needs, either. He knows them better than we do ourselves. Jesus teaches us to pray in this way, I think, for three reasons:

First: So that we will remember and acknowledge that no matter how hard or ingeniously you and I may work, all that we have comes from God.

People may say (as I've sometimes heard them say), “I work hard for everything I have. What does God have to do with it?”

The answer to that question is simple: Where did the brain and the brawn you use to do that work come from? And who is the ultimate source of all the things you work so hard to attain?  These are gifts from God! James 1:17 in the New Testament says: “Every good and perfect gift is from above, and comes from the Father...”

Second: We pray, “Give us this day our daily bread” to teach us contentment.

There’s nothing wrong with ambitions, wanting to achieve great things, living up to our God-given potential, or trying to provide for our families’ needs.

But it’s also important to remember, as the New Testament tells us, “we brought nothing into this world and it is certain we can carry nothing out. And having food and clothing, with these we shall be content.”

How much of what we work so hard to get can be categorized as “needs” and how much as “wants”?  So often, the reason we focus on our "wants" is because of a basic insecurity we have about ourselves, a need we feel to justify even taking up space in the universe. At other times, we focus on what we want because, like Adam and Eve, we want to "be like God" and feel a sense of entitlement to superiority over the "normal people" of the world.

In the prayer from the book of Proverbs that made up our first Bible lesson for today, we read: "Give me neither poverty nor riches—Feed me with the food allotted to me; lest I be full and deny You, and say, “Who is the Lord?' Or lest I be poor and steal, and profane the name of my God" (Proverbs 30:8-9)

A third reason I think that Jesus teaches us to ask God for our daily bread is to remind us to share our abundance with others.

God has engineered this planet so that there is more than enough of everything that all six-billion of earth’s inhabitants needs. Jesus teaches that God “makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.” Those with plenty--including plenty of knowledge on how to create sustainable agriculture in inhospitable soils and climates--are told by Jesus’ commandment to love God and to love others as we love ourselves, to share our plenty with those who have little. There’s plenty of daily bread to go around if we will simply share with one another.

In the fifth petition, Jesus teaches us to pray, “Forgive us our debts [or trespasses], as we forgive our debtors [or those who trespass or sin against us].”

Of all the petitions in the Lord's Prayer, this one may be the most counter to the ways our culture thinks. The prevailing thinking of the world is illustrated by the title of the best-selling album in the United States this past week: God Forgives, I Don't by hip-hop artist Rick Ross.

If being told to pray, “Thy will be done” (“You take control, God”) makes us wince, being told to pray, "Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us," may absolutely make us want to throw our hands up in despair!

Does Jesus want us to pray that God will forgive people who have hurt us, robbed us, gossiped about us mercilessly, lied to us? More than any of these things, actually, Jesus commands us to forgive people like these who have made our lives miserable!

Look at what Jesus says in Matthew 6:14-15 of our gospel lesson: “...if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”

Jesus isn't saying that if people have hurt us, we have to keep placing ourselves in situations in which they can hurt us again. He is saying that if we want the forgiveness and new life that His death and resurrection can secure for all who repent for sin and believe in Him, we must forgive, we must let go of our resentment and bitterness.

It’s a homely illustration I’ve used in sermons before (and even during the Bible study at Von Bora Circle this past week), but think of what Jesus tells us here in this way. Imagine that you’re going through your life holding onto all your grudges and resentments. As long as you’re holding onto those, refusing to forgive others, you cannot grasp the hand of Jesus offering you forgiveness for your sins and pulling you to eternal life with God.

Letting go of our resentments does not come naturally to us. You and I are born in sin, which means that if there is anyway that we can lord it over others, feeding our fantasies of being morally superior, to being “like God,” in some way, we’re inclined to exploit those opportunities. But that’s the way to death.

We think that by holding grudges we’re in some way imprisoning or hurting the people we refuse to forgive. But the opposite is true. Someone has said, “Bitterness is like drinking poison and waiting for another person to die.”

Unforgiven sin kills. Jesus has opened up the possibility of forgiveness and new, everlasting life to all who will repent and believe in Him. So, why would we want to throw away eternal life just for the momentary--or even lifelong--satisfaction of feeling superior to someone who has hurt us?

Sometimes bitterness, an unholy superiority complex can sneak up on you.

I may have mentioned the experience I had one day while praying. Something just didn’t seem right. I felt physically and spiritually exhausted. “God,” I said, “what’s wrong?”

At that moment, I refused to fill the silence with my words and instead just waited on the Lord. You know the promise of God in Isaiah 40:31: “Those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength...” Or the words of Psalm 46:10: "Be still and know that I am God."

After a few moments, God whispered to my soul in the silence. I knew what was wrong. Bitterness had infected my relationship with someone. I asked God to forgive my sin and to help me forgive the person with whom I was bitter.

Like everyone, I suppose, I still find bitterness and an unforgiving spirit sometimes welling up within me. But I’ve found an effective antidote, a supernatural cure for my natural impulse to sin. Whenever I find myself harboring bitterness toward anyone, I pray for them. I ask God to bless them. I ask God to show Himself to them that day and to help them to feel loved by Him. I militate against my sinful orientation and ask God to help me see things His way and to live His way.

I’ve heard that you can’t hate someone for long if you pray for them. I’ve found that to be true.

And Jesus says that you can’t claim the love of Christ if you’re not willing to throw away bitterness. That’s why Jesus teaches us to pray, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”

An authentic prayer life will include the elements Jesus teaches in the third, fourth, and fifth petitions of the Lord’s Prayer. We pray to God:

• “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” 
• “Give us this day our daily bread,” and 
• “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.” 

May God teach us all to pray in these ways.

By God’s grace, we’ll talk about prayer more next Sunday.

Curiosity: Unadulterated Wonderfulness!

In the midst of the bad news that haunts our media, the landing of Curiosity on Mars (along with the images it's beginning to send back to the folks of NASA) is unadulterated wonderfulness!

As they have so often in the past, the folks at NASA exemplify the good things that human beings can do when working together in teams for a common lofty purpose. And who can imagine what we will learn about our universe from Curiosity?

Who's Open-Minded?

This from Craig Keener: "Signs [of a miraculous nature] were accorded high evidential value in antiquity. That the modern Western educated elite tends to denigrate them is more a commentary on our culture than theirs; most cultures in the world today (virtually all cultures not influenced by deistic rationalism or atheistic Marxism) accept diverse forms of supernatural activity. Thus those who reject miracles merely on the basis of philosophical a prioris may do so as ethnocentric dogmatists rather than as genuinely open-minded intellectuals."

Prayer (Part 1 of a 4-Part Series)

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

Luke 11:1-4
In my years as a pastor, I’ve found that prayer is one of the biggest objects of confusion, insecurity, and, at times, even doubt that exists for Christians.

People ask, “What can I pray to God about? Are some things too trivial to bring up with God? Will God be mad at me if I ask for the wrong things? What am I supposed to say?”

On top of basic questions like these, there are times when almost every Christian feels that God has turned a deaf ear to their desperate prayers for the health, safety, or lives of their loved ones. In circumstances like these, we may wonder where God is, if God is, or, if God is there, why He isn’t responding as we devoutly beg him to respond.

Today, we begin a four-part sermon and worship series on prayer. Three weeks from today, we’ll consider the mystery of unanswered prayer. But today and over the next two Sundays, we’ll consider how to pray and, along the way, why.

In our gospel lesson, Jesus, within sight of His disciples, is pictured as doing what He often did during His earthly ministry: Praying.

As we’ll see in coming weeks, this doesn’t mean that praying is solely a personal matter. There’s a time and a place for both private prayer and group prayer with our fellow believers in Christ.

In any case, Jesus‘ disciples were taken with the fact that, at every opportunity He had, Jesus spent time in prayer to His Father. Seeing how important prayer was to Jesus and remembering that John the Baptist had taken time to teach his disciples how to pray, the disciples make a simple request. “Lord,” they say to Jesus, “teach us to pray.”

In response to their request, Jesus proceeded to share with them what we call the Lord’s Prayer.

Matthew has a slightly different version of the same prayer that we see in today’s lesson from Luke.

And the version we use during worship is sort of a blending of the Matthew and Luke versions, along with the addition of a “word of glory,” or a doxology--”For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever and ever”--that the Church has been adding to the prayer ever since the late first century.

Nonetheless, when Jesus was asked how to pray, He shared this prayer.

That doesn’t mean that all our praying should parrot the Lord’s Prayer. Jesus warns us against prayer that’s mere repetition. In Matthew 6:7, Jesus says: “...when you pray, do not use vain [that means meaningless] repetitions as the heathen do.”

Vain repetition isn’t prayer! But in the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus teaches what we need to know about how to pray. So, what exactly does He teach us?

Go to our gospel lesson, please: Luke 1:1-4 and look at verse 2. Jesus begins the prayer with, “Our Father in heaven.”

In The Small Catechism, Martin Luther calls this the introduction to the prayer. And, though only four words in length, it’s amazing: Through Jesus Christ, we are given the privilege of an intimate relationship with the Creator of the entire universe!

As many of you know, the word translated as Father is, in the Aramaic language in which Jesus daily spoke and first taught this prayer, Abba, a word used by small children of their daddies. Galatians 3:26 in the New Testament says that “in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith.” That’s why we’re privileged to call the first Person of the three-persons-in-one God our Father!

In teaching us to address God the Father so intimately, Jesus is telling us that God is never too busy to hear from those who follow Jesus Christ.  I've heard Pastor Bill Hybels talk about when he was a small boy, his hard-driving, workaholic father had a dedicated telephone with a number known only to Bill. When Hybels' father gave young Bill the number he made clear that no matter what he was doing, no matter how important the meeting or how important the person with whom he was meeting, he would always answer Bill's call. Decades later, Hybels still remembers that telephone number! In Jesus Christ, you and I can know that our heavenly Father is anxious to hear from us, no matter what else may be happening in the universe!

Jesus once told the story of a widow who had been swindled and who sought justice from a corrupt judge, a judge who only found in favor of plaintiffs who paid him bribes. Initially, the judge wouldn’t hear the poor widow out. But she wouldn’t stop nagging the judge. She petitioned him constantly. In Luke 18:4, the corrupt judge in Jesus' parable caves. He says: “‘Though I do not fear God nor regard man, yet because this widow troubles me I will avenge her [I will give her the justice she seeks], lest by her continual coming [after me] she weary me [or wear me out].”

Now, don’t misunderstand this parable. Jesus is not saying that our Father in heaven is like that unjust judge. Jesus says that if an unjust judge who has no respect for God or people can eventually be forced into listening to a poor widow’s pleas, how much more will the pure and incorruptible God Who sent His only Son so that all who believe in Him will have everlasting life be quick to hear us when we call to Him?

The God Who, through Jesus, we know is our Father, wants to hear from His children and we need never hesitate to call out to Him.

The late Lutheran writer R.A. Dell, whose Senior Catechism taught generations of young Lutherans what the Christian faith is about, pointed out that in Luke 18:1, Jesus says that believers “ought to pray.” Jesus commands Christians to pray. But Dell also puts his finger on why Jesus makes this command when he says, “Prayer is a communion with God, in which we bring all our joys and sorrows to Him as our dear Friend.” We call God our Father because prayer is the intimate conversation that God our Father and our best friend wants to have with us!

But we dare not forget that prayer is also an encounter with the Lord of the universe Who is infinitely greater than us in power and goodness!

God is the friend of believers in Christ. But He is not our buddy!

When we come before Him, we should be ever mindful of God's holiness and power.

Go back to Luke 11:2 and read the first petition of the Lord’s Prayer, the first thing Jesus teaches us to ask from God in prayer: “Hallowed be Your Name.”

Jesus teaches us that when we come to God in prayer, we need to acknowledge that God isn’t a genie or a rabbit’s foot; God is the King and Creator of all, Who deserves to be loved, feared, honored, respected, and surrendered to.

The hardest lesson a parent must teach her or his child is that the child isn’t the center of the universe. It's a hard lesson to teach and it's a hard lesson to learn! You and I are born in sin, meaning that Adam and Eve have passed onto you and me a desire to “be like God.” But when each of us decides what is right in our own eyes, placing our own desires and impulses first in our priorities, our lives and the life of the world gets out of whack. Everything that is wrong with our world is the result of this kind of sinful me-first thinking.

When we pray that God’s Name and God’s will be hallowed--respected, revered, held in awe--we are saying, “God, I bow my knee to You and I beg You to put the world right by ensuring that You and Your good will are of first importance in the world!” 

This petition that God’s Name will be hallowed and respected and praised by us and by the world bears a relationship to the second commandment. There, God tells us, “You shall not take the Name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold guiltless those who take His Name in vain.”

To do anything vainly is to do it for no good purpose, uselessly. When we use God’s Name as a swear word, or as a witty punctuation, as so often happens on sitcoms these days, we are violating the holiness of God’s Name.

It’s a privilege to be given access to God by knowing Him and His Name. That’s why Luther says that “we should fear and love God so that we do not use His Name superstitiously or to curse, swear, lie, or deceive, but call upon Him in every time of need, and worship Him with prayer, praise, and thanksgiving.”

When we ask that God’s Name be hallowed, we’re asking that He would give us the faith to use His Name only to petition Him in Jesus’ Name, to praise Him for His goodness and grace, and to thank Him for His blessings.

By praying that God's Name will be hallowed, we militate against our inborn selfishness and re-orient our hearts, minds, and wills toward pleasing God the creator, not his creatures.

Back to Luke 11:2. The second petition Jesus teaches us to pray is, “Thy kingdom [Your kingdom] come.” Praying as Jesus prayed to His Father, having advanced to the second petition, we find that Jesus still doesn't want us to pray for what we want. In the second petition, ee’re still praying that God will help us put God’s priorities first.

God’s kingdom is God’s reign. God’s kingdom exists when and where people voluntarily submit to the rule of the Lord we know in Jesus Christ, where people take up their crosses (that is, acknowledge their sin), repent, and believe in Jesus Christ as their only God and Lord, and so, have the assurance of life with God, now and in eternity. As Luther says, “God’s kingdom comes when our heavenly Father gives us His Holy Spirit, so that by His grace we believe His holy Word and live a godly life now and in eternity.”

King David was encouraging the people of ancient Israel (and Christians who, through Jesus, have come to believe in Israel’s God), to live under the reign of God when he sang in Psalm 46:10: “Be still and know that I am God! I am exalted among the nations...”

I am convinced that, in these times, there is no more important prayer for us to pray than that God’s kingdom will come, that there will be a worldwide turning from sin and to faith in Christ.

The world, with its rampant materialism, sexual promiscuity, sexism, violence, and hatred for Christ and the Word of God, needs a new awakening to the goodness of God and to our need of the new life that only comes from the crucified and risen Jesus Christ.

We need to realize that being a follower of Jesus Christ isn’t about being a nice person or keeping our mouths shut in the face of evil.

Those who live in the kingdom of God love all their fellow sinners while hating all sin, whether it's the sin inside themselves or the sin enslaving the world to Satan and hell.

We need for God to come and reign over us, to turn our lives and the lives of our churches, our countries, and our world to Jesus Christ.  

So, how do we pray?

• First, believing in Christ, we come to God our Father, authentically and helplessly as children who need Him for life and guidance, forgiveness and hope. 
• Second, we pray that His Name will be respected and honored, first by us and also by the world. 
• And third, we pray that His kingdom, which comes without our help but which we can only receive through faith in Christ, will come to us afresh each day, finding us truly submissive to Jesus, tapping into the power of the Holy Spirit to live lives of devotion and holiness. 

These, Jesus says, are the starting points of true prayer.

More next Sunday. Amen

Speaking of 'Matchbox'

Peaches: Yummy!

Took a break from sermon preparation today to enjoy some of these fresh-from-the-farm peaches that my wife had peeled and sliced. They were wonderful! She bought them from an orchard store (where they also have delicious apples!) in Laurelville, Ohio.

Every time I have peaches, I can't keep from doing my best Ringo impression: "Well, if you don't want my peaches, honey, please don't shake my tree." (The song is Matchbox. Of course, it was originally written and recorded by Carl Perkins, but I love the Beatles' version.)

Faith and Works?

This is an awesome, thought-provoking, and helpful piece based on James 2:14-26 in the New Testament.

You can see why the young Martin Luther, excited with the insight that we are only saved from sin and death by the grace of God through our faith in Jesus Christ, was driven a bit crazy by some of the things that James writes in those verses. (Faith, by the way, includes repentance for sin and trust in Christ to erase the power of sin and its result, death, over our lives.)

But, of course, James is not, in these verses, disputing the power of faith--simple trust--in Christ to save.

He is saying that faith is more than simple intellectual assent to the truths taught in the New Testament, such as that Jesus is the fulfillment of God's law and the Old Testament, that He is the "Lamb of God Who takes away the sin of the world," and that all who follow Jesus alone have life with God forever (John 3:16-18; John 14:6; Acts 4:12). 

True faith, James is pointing out, infects the life of those who believe and, as a result, they live differently.

Among other things, they are more loving toward God and neighbor, they seek to undertake acts of mercy and kindness and justice, and, speaking the truth in love, they share with their neighbors Jesus' call repent (turn from sin) and believe in Him in order to have new and everlasting life with God. Jesus calls all of this "bearing good fruit."

As we trust in Christ, daily turning to God for forgiveness of sins in Jesus' Name and daily being renewed by the grace and goodness of God, two important things will happen in the lives of believers:

(1) We'll be motivated to do the will of God;

(2) Often without our even knowing it, God will supernaturally empower us to do His will. (Check out, for example, the reactions of "the blessed" in Jesus' parable of the final judgment in Matthew 25:31-46. They were so operating in utter dependence on Christ in their daily lives on earth that when Jesus lauds them for their good works, they express unawareness of those works.)

This isn't to say that there aren't times when Christians don't have to say, "OK, Lord, this isn't something I want to do. But it's your will. So, I'll do it." (Even Jesus prayed that way in the garden of Gethsemane asking the Father to create some other means by which human beings could be reconciled to God. It turns out that there was no other way. So, Jesus accepted the cross and died for our sins.)

The thing God wills us to do may be to give money to provide housing for the homeless, speak out against prejudice, help a neighbor who gets on our nerves, forgive a family member who has hurt us, refrain from a sin that excites us, or tell a friend a hard truth about their sin and its consequences.

But as we consciously accept God's will for us in particular situations, God will build our faith, lift us by His grace, and fill us with His supernatural power to do the good of which we are, by nature, incapable on our own. God will help us to do good and righteous deeds that are otherwise foreign to those of us who are "born in sin" (Psalm 51:5).

Keep drawing closer to Christ and, however imperfectly or haltingly or infected with the inevitable mixed motives of human beings who haven't gotten to heaven yet you may act or feel or think, you will bear good fruit.

Acts 1-3: Christ's Church Begins (Read the New Testament in a Year Discussion, August 1, 2012)

As you may know by now, the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, are in the midst of reading the New Testament together in a year's time. Each week, we have discussion groups that look at the week's readings.

Last night, we looked at Acts 1 to 3. One inaccuracy on my part from the discussion: I was asked if Sadducees still existed. I said yes and cited a picture I had seen recently of a Sadducee priest. That was incorrect. The picture I saw in Eerdman's Handbook to the Bible was of a Samaritan high priest. The Sadducees passed out of existence after the Romans destroyed the temple in Jerusalem in 70 A.D. The Jewish Virtual Library contains interesting and useful information on the Sadducees, Pharisees, and Essenes here.

Among the primary sources of the information I present here are:

• Study through the years, especially what I learned about Luke under my professor and mentor, Pastor Bruce Schein;  
• The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament by Craig Keener; 
• Acts, from the Interpretation Bible Commentary series, by William Willimon

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Listening in on an Apostle's Prayers

This is a rather faint and scratchy recording of this Saint Matthew's Chapel Holy Communion worship service, held at 8:30 this morning. The Bible lesson was Ephesians 3:14-21.

We Need Never Be Afraid

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

John 6:1-21
Did you notice anything strange in the gospel lesson from John?

The first fifteen verses of the passage deal with Jesus feeding a group of 5000, using just five loaves of barley and two fish to pull it off. In fact, there was a lot of untouched food left over! It’s an incredible miracle, a sign of His authority over the elements of the world, of His compassion for people, of Jesus being more than just a good man.

The last six verses recount a stormy ride on the Sea of Galilee taken by Jesus' disciples. And it’s here that something that may seem strange to us happens. Or, more accurately, something that, after reading the gospels of Matthew and Mark, we might expect to happen, but isn’t mentioned.

Turn please to John 6:16-21. We’re told: “...when evening came, His disciples went down to the sea, got into the boat, and went over the sea toward Capernaum...it was already dark, and Jesus had not come to them. Then the sea arose because a great wind was blowing.” (Just imagine being in a boat out on Lake Erie facing a wind like some of those we’ve been experiencing around here lately.) “So when they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and drawing near the boat and they were afraid. But He said to them, ‘It is I; do not be afraid.’ Then they willingly received Him into the boat, and immediately the boat was at the land where they were going.”

Neither John nor Mark, in their gospels, mention that after Jesus identified Himself, Peter said, “Lord, if it’s really You, call to me and let me walk on the water to you.” Matthew tells us about this and about how, having taken a few steps, Peter looked at the wind and the waves and lost his faith in Jesus to do the impossible and began to sink into the waters.

Now, these differences in detail shouldn’t rock our worlds! Each of the gospel writers tells us about Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection in his own way, touching on particular themes. John even tells us that he leaves out some details. Turn to John 20:30-31. These words come toward the end of the gospel and they constitute John’s “mission statement,” his reason for writing his gospel. He says: “And truly Jesus did many other signs in the presence of His disciples; but these [that is, the one John recounts in his gospel] are written than you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name.”

Keep those two verses tucked in your mind as we look at another detail surrounding Jesus walking on the water that John doesn’t include, but which both Matthew and Mark mention.

Look first at Matthew 14:32. It says: “And when they [Jesus and Peter] got into the boat, the wind ceased.”

Now, please go to Mark 6:51: “Then He [Jesus] went up into the boat to them, and the wind ceased.”

Matthew and Mark both say that the moment Jesus got into the boat, the wind stopped. That’s a pretty amazing occurrence, isn’t it, another sign that Jesus is Lord and God of the universe? Wouldn’t you think that John, who shows us signs of Jesus’ identity so that we can believe in Him and have the forgiveness of sins and new life only Jesus can give, would mention it?

But John doesn’t mention it. All He says is that the disciples rode the waves through the storm, saw Jesus walking on the water, and that their boat landed safely on the other side after Jesus climbed into the boat.

So, why doesn’t John tell us about the calm that came to the Sea of Galilee?

Maybe because it isn’t really important. In fact, my guess is that John deliberately left out the detail about the becalmed wind to make a point. What do I mean?

You know, if I dared to let you listen in when I have my time of personal prayer each day, one minute would not have passed before I would begin to blush in embarrassment. That’s because, on reflection I realize that, more often than I like, my prayers can be so childish, immature. I run into a problem here, a challenge there, and instead of asking God for guidance, or courage, or wisdom, or faith, I ask God to just take away the problem.

Now, don’t get me wrong: God is so compassionate, He’s even willing to hear us when we pray the most childish, even selfish, things. For God, the fact that we pray to Him is a lot more important than what we pray. The God we know in Jesus Christ is a great artist: Our imperfect prayer petitions are like ill-formed messes of clay offered up to God, which God can turn into masterpieces of His design. But when we’re going through storms in our lives, as unpleasant and hard and sad as the storms that may afflict us can be, our ultimate concern shouldn’t be whether Jesus takes the storms away or not, but whether we’re riding the storm out while following Jesus.

I’ve known some people whose lives were mostly spent in pleasant circumstances whose faith in Christ was destroyed by the smallest hint of adversity. But I’ve also known people who have endured more tragedy than most of us can imagine. The storms were fierce in their lives. Yet their faith in Jesus, their belief in His presence with them now and in His promise of eternity to all who repent for sin and believe in Him, actually was strengthened during their storms.

Nobody wants to experience adversity or pain in their lives. But God can use life’s storms to strengthen our faith in Christ.

In fact, if we pay attention to the experiences of believers like Job in the Old Testament or Paul in the New Testament, we see that, while Satan is the ultimate author of all evil in the world, sometimes God allows adverse experiences to befall us in order to teach us to rely more deeply on Him and less so on ourselves.

There’s a story told a goldsmith. He was explaining what it takes to refine a piece of gold to turn it into something beautiful and useful. It all has to be done at a precise temperature, he explained. And the timing has to be just so. “How,” someone asked, “do you know when the gold has reached perfection?” “That’s easy,” he said, “when I can see my reflection in it.”

In Jesus Christ, we know that God is a compassionate miracle worker. Each of us can name experiences either in our own lives or in the lives of others where we know that Christ has intervened  to give healing, strength, encouragement, or new starts in our personal lives, our jobs, our relationships.

But sometimes the winds still blow against us.

Sometimes things happen that we will not be able to understand or explain until, after our own deaths and resurrections, we see Jesus face to face.

In the meantime, God allows the circumstances of our lives to re-form our characters so that, one day, in eternity, when He looks at us, He will see Himself--His love, His perfection--reflected in us.

This is what John, the author of our gospel lesson, means when he writes to believers in Christ in another book of the New Testament: “Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when He [Jesus] is revealed [when we see Jesus on the Day of the Lord], we will be like Him...” 

One of the biggest misconceptions into which Christians can fall is the notion that being part of the Church is like being a member of a civic club. You know: You join, throw some money into the till, and get goods and services for which you pay. “Membership has its privileges.”

That’s not what being a member of Christ’s eternal fellowship, the Church, is about!

You see, Jesus Christ has already paid our membership dues for the Kingdom of God. He did that when He died on a cross, taking our punishment for sins, and rising from the dead to give life to those who turn from sin as the ultimate authority over their lives and instead, entrust their lives to Jesus as their only God, King, and Savior.

The privilege of being part of Christ’s Church is the privilege of being remade in the image of Christ as we daily surrender our lives and wills to Him.

The privilege of being a Christian is knowing that the God Who, out of His amazing grace, saves from sin and death those who believe in Jesus, isn’t in the business of just getting us out of the pain we encounter in this life. He's playing for much higher stakes! He’s reshaping our characters for eternity!

We still have storms in this life. The adverse, painful winds still rage in this fallen world. People die young, lose their jobs, know the heartache of divorce, go bankrupt, die of starvation, face persecution for their loyalty to Jesus and the Word of God.

But there are two other things that the last six verses of our gospel lesson should teach us.

The first is this: When they received Jesus into the boat, they landed safely on the shore. When we take Jesus into every experience of our lives, whatever adversities we face, we can know that He is with us. Nothing can separate us from Him.

And finally this: The translations of John 6:20 in most English versions of the Bible aren’t good. Our translation says that Jesus told the frightened disciples: “It is I; do not be afraid.” That rendering really misses the point of Jesus’ words. In the Greek in which John wrote, he quotes Jesus as saying, "Ego eimi," meaning literally, "I am." It's a strange thing to say--"I am; do not be afraid." Strange, until you remember the name that God gave Moses to refer to Himself when Moses encountered Him in the burning bush thousands of years before the birth of Jesus. The name was "Yahweh," the Hebrew for I AM.

When storms hit in life, as they inevitably do, those who follow Jesus Christ can remember that we belong not just to the One Who calms storms, as the other gospel writers affirm, but the only One Who can give us strength during the storm and life beyond the storm: God, the great I AM, Who took on flesh and died and rose to give new life to all who believe in Him, Jesus Christ!

We need never be afraid.

Mission Trip 2012 Video

From June 24 to 29, five youth and three adults from Saint Matthew participated in Group Workcamps' Week of Hope in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Along with 58 other Christian youth and adults, we served others in Jesus' Name in Grand Rapids. We also worshiped together, prayed together, studied God's Word together, sweated a lot, and had tons of fun. We slept in sleeping bags on hard floors and church youth groups took turns fixing breakfasts and dinners and cleaning up the facility in which we stayed through the week, the church building of Zion Reformed Church in Grandville.

We had no idea before we left Logan, but when we arrived we learned that a group from Immanuel United Methodist Church, whose building is located just a few blocks from Saint Matthew's facilities, also were participants. It was great being in Grand Rapids with them!

Group Workcamps puts on lots of these camps across the country every year.

This video gives a flavor of what the week was like. The video portion was taken on my cell phone and the stills were taken by Week of Hope staffers.

Soul Man by Sam and Dave is the song to which one member of our group, along with friends from Logan, pantomimed during a talent show.

Get Down by Audio Adrenaline is a song with which we sang and danced during the programs each day. "Ev'rytime I'm down the Lord lifts me up, yeah!"

The theme of the week was Made and refers to Revelation 21:5, in which the risen and ascended Jesus proclaims, "See, I am making all things new!"

Audio of 'Read the New Testament in a Year' Discussion (John 19 to 21)

The people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio are reading the New Testament together in a year's time. On Wednesdays, participants who are interested gather for weekly discussion groups at either 11AM or 7PM. This is audio of this past Wednesday evening's discussion (July 25). We discussed John, chapters 19 through 21, an account of Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection.

A source from which I read here is Craig Keener's outstanding reference book, The IVP Background Commentary: New Testament.

During the discussion of John 21:11, I mentioned that my seminary professor, the late Pastor Bruce Schein, said that the 153 fish of the miraculous catch was "the perfect catch." I couldn't then remember why Schein had said this. But this is what he says in in his wonderful book, Following the Way: The Setting of John's Gospel:

"There are 153 fish in the net, a perfect catch fishermen would say--a third always goes to the boat, a third to fishermen, and a third to the provider of nets."

Ripley and the Underground Railroad

Ripley, Ohio is celebrating its bicentennial this coming week. An Ohio River town, Ripley was an important stop on the Underground Railroad for slaves seeking freedom from the pre-Civil War South. This release from the Ohio Historical Society has information not only on Ripley's planned celebrations, but also a few interesting looking books.

Welcome to Orwell's World: The Chick-fil-A Controversy

Chick-fil-A president Dan Cathy recently underscored his belief, based on both the Old and New Testament, including the words of Jesus Himself, that the covenant of marriage is between a man and a woman (a husband and a wife), period.

A firestorm of protest ensued. The mayors of both Boston and Chicago have said they would like Chick-fil-A not to operate in their cities.

But the last time I checked, the freedom of speech and the freedom of religion still are guarantees in the United States. Mr. Cathy's exercise of those freedoms in no way threatens the freedoms of others.

Personally, I believe that his position is the correct one. I also believe in full civil rights for all people, including those who are gay and lesbian.

These are not mutually exclusive positions. Indeed, both spring from the same place: a belief in the God of love revealed to the world in Jesus Christ.

Christians have no interest in coercing others to agree with every facet of Biblical morality. Indeed, it's only when people are free to disobey the will of God that confessions of repentance for sin and faith in Christ have any meaning.

Out of love for God and others, my call as a Christian is to speak God's truth in love. Fully cognizant of my own sinfulness and utter dependence on Christ's grace for forgiveness and life with God, I don't pretend to be better than others. I don't think Dan Cathy pretended superiority either. Nor did he express "homophobia" or hatred in the statement he made on God's will for marriage.

The Christian is free from the enslavement of sin and death, but not at liberty to say that God is wrong in His revealed will for the human race. When God and we disagree on something, the Christian is bound to admit that God is right and we are wrong. God clearly does not approve of some things. Injustice, prejudice, thievery, deception, gossip, using His Name for anything other than prayer, praise, and worship, and sex outside of marriage are some of those things that displease God. Not to earn God's love in Christ, but to express gratitude for it, Christians seek to align their lives with God's revealed will.

And the Christian who is grateful for the undeserved gifts of Christ's grace is commissioned to speak the truth that God has revealed: the truth about what is sin and the truth about the forgiveness of sin and new life that belongs to all who repent and entrust their lives to Christ.

People may not like to hear what we believe are God's revealed truths, but no one is threatened by their expression. And it is sloppy, Orwellian thinking to describe sentiments that spring from love as "hate speech."

But in the United States of 2012, the intolerance exhibited by the mayors of Boston and Chicago and those who agree with them are seen as tolerance, while Christians who accept the rights of others to engage in behaviors God reveals to be sinful, while having the temerity to underscore what they believe God teaches, are called intolerant. That is Orwellian.

Should This Be Filed Under, "No Surprise"?

JULY 24, 2012

Many Financial Pros Feel Pressure to Compromise Ethics

30% of financial services professionals say their compensation or bonus plans create pressure to compromise ethical standards or violate the law, according to a survey in the U.S. and UK conducted for the law firm Labaton Sucharow. 22% of female respondents say they'd face retaliation if they reported wrongdoing in the workplace, compared with 12% percent of male respondents.

Source: Professionals Feel Unethical Behavior May Be a Necessary Evil and Have Knowledge of Workplace Misconduct, According to Labaton Sucharow Survey

This came in today's Daily Stat from the Harvard Business Review. Maybe the only shocking thing about the findings is that such a small percentage of financial services professionals feel pressured to play fast and loose with ethics or the law.

If that seems cynical, I hasten to add that feeling the heat to cheat isn't itself unethical, criminal, or sinful.

When internalized, the pressure to cheat may be described with the Biblical term, temptation. Being tempted to sin isn't to do wrong.

And, if we're honest, we've all been tempted to do wrong.

That's part of being human.

 Jesus Christ, truly God and truly human, experienced temptation, but unlike the rest of us, never sinned. Christ not only has conquered sin and death for those who repent for sin and believe in Him, He also understands what it's like to be tempted...to be human. Hebrews 4:15, in the New Testament, says, "[In Christ]...we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin."

When faced with temptation, the God revealed to us in Christ can help us. "No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone," 1 Corinthians 10:13, also in the New Testament, says, "God is faithful and he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it."

 Of course, if we don't want to avoid sin or successfully elude the temptation to do so, there is no help to be had from God. While God wants to help us, He won't force His help on us.

But, honestly, it's better to run away from sin (and all its consequences) into the arms of God than to run to sin. Take it from one who knows.

Shepherd for the Harassed and Helpless

Here's the somewhat scratchy and hard-to-hear audio of this past Sunday's 8:30 AM Chapel Holy Communion Service at Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio.

The Biblical text used is Mark 6:30-34, 53-56:

³⁰The apostles gathered around Jesus, and told him all that they had done and taught. ³¹He said to them, “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.” For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat. ³²And they went away in the boat to a deserted place by themselves. ³³Now many saw them going and recognized them, and they hurried there on foot from all the towns and arrived ahead of them. ³⁴As he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things.
⁵³When they had crossed over, they came to land at Gennesaret and moored the boat. ⁵⁴When they got out of the boat, people at once recognized him, ⁵⁵and rushed about that whole region and began to bring the sick on mats to wherever they heard he was. ⁵⁶And wherever he went, into villages or cities or farms, they laid the sick in the marketplaces, and begged him that they might touch even the fringe of his cloak; and all who touched it were healed.

Barry Larkin Inducted Into Baseball Hall of Fame

Barry Larkin was a great hitting shortstop for my fave Cincinnati Reds for nineteen years. I am so glad that, yesterday, he was inducted into Baseball's Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. He had a true Hall of Fame career and is deserving.

Now, I hope that through the veterans committee, another Cincinnati shortstop, David Concepcion, will be admitted to the hall. Concepcion was the best shortstop of his era and deserves to be honored as a Hall of Famer.