As a Lutheran Christian, it is OK to say you have “accepted” Jesus, but only in the sense that it is a passive acceptance. Like being shot, you can “accept the fact” that you have been shot, or being caught in a tornado, you can “accept” it as happening to you; so it is when you are captivated by Christ (your old life is over). You can accept, or receive, or recognize that God has claimed you. Notice the difference, though. God is the one working, deciding, choosing; not you. God wants so desperately to be your God, and be merciful to you, that he finally won’t leave such an important choice up to you. Instead, he calls, gathers, enlightens, and chooses by the power of the Holy Spirit when he sends you a preacher [a baptized, believing Christian] who announces “You are forgiven on account of Christ.”
Sunday, February 03, 2013
What Lutheran Christians Mean When They Say, "I've Accepted Jesus"
This from D.J. Lura's wonderful, What's a Lutheran, Don'tcha Know:
The Ministry of the Church (The Augsburg Confession, Part 5)
We’re continuing our sermon series on what it means to be a Lutheran Christian, using what The Augsburg Confession proclaims about Biblical faith as our guide. Today we’re going to look at the Biblical foundations for Article 5 of the Confession. The topic is The Ministry of the Church.
But before we tackle that, I think that we may need to clear up any possible misunderstandings from last week’s discussion of justification.
The doctrine of justification boils down to this: We deserve condemnation, death, and eternal separation from God for our sin. Despite what we deserve though, God came into our world in the person of Jesus, took the punishment for sin we deserve, and then rose from the dead. Today, God offers forgiveness of sin and eternal life with God to all with faith in Jesus Christ as a free gift that we can do nothing to deserve or earn.
Faith in Jesus is foreign to our sinful natures though. So, even the ability to have faith or trust in Him isn’t something we can decide to have. Faith in Jesus Christ is a gift.
So, if even faith is a gift from God, the question arises, “Does that mean everybody will be saved?” If there’s nothing we can do or must do to be saved from sin, death, and hell and if life with God is a gift, does that mean everybody lives with God for eternity?
The short answer is, according to Jesus Himself, "No. Not everybody is saved.” After all, even when a gift is offered, it isn’t always received. That's why Jesus says in Mark 16:16: "The one who believes and is baptized will be saved; but the one who does not believe will be condemned."
In Revelation 3:19-20, the risen and ascended Jesus is speaking to the members of a church of lukewarm believers in Laodicea, a city in Asia Minor, what is now known as Turkey. Jesus is disgusted with them. They’re nice people. But they compartmentalize their lives, keeping God in what they think is “His” place, while keeping Him out of “their” places.
Look at Jesus’ words in Revelation 3:19-20: “As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten [In other words, if God loves you and you claim Him as your God, you can expect that He will sometimes discipline you and put your life back on the right track.] Therefore be zealous and repent [Turn away from sin and turn toward God. Now look at what Jesus says next.] Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come into him and dine with him, and he with Me.”
Saving faith in God comes to those who acknowledge Jesus when He knocks. But Jesus does all the work. Faith happens when we hear Jesus calling to us and we say, “I’m here, Lord.”
But that leads to another question: How do the doors of people’s lives come to be open to Jesus? How do people come to saving faith in Christ?
Please turn to Romans 10:9. It says:
“Wait a minute,” someone might say, “I learned more about Jesus from my mother or my father or a Sunday School teacher or a friend than I ever did from a pastor in the pulpit.”
If that crossed your mind, notice I didn’t say that the gift of faith in Jesus enters people’s lives through pastors. I said it happened through the preaching of God’s Word about Jesus.
If the only people in Christian congregations preaching God’s Word about Jesus are the pastors, then no Christian congregation is fulfilling the mission Christ has given to it.
The calling of every Christian is mentioned in 1 Peter 2:9. Peter writes: “But you [that’s you, if you’ve received the gift of faith in Jesus] are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, [God’s] own special people, [here comes the purpose statement] that you may proclaim [proclaim: The word in the Greek in which Paul first wrote this passage is kerusso, a word that is also translated as preach] the praises of Him Who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.”
It is the call and ministry of every person who believes in Jesus Christ to preach the gospel, the good news of freedom from death and hell for all who believe in Jesus Christ.
Every believer in Jesus Christ is called to be a preacher because, whether in a chapel or sanctuary, in the waiting room of a hospital ICU, in a funeral home, at a gas station, grocery store, mall, gym locker room, on the job, or on a Facebook page, everyone we encounter every single day needs to hear about Jesus.
People who don’t know Jesus need to have His Word preached to them so that they can receive the gift of faith.
People who do know Jesus need to have His Word preached to them so that their grasp of the gift of faith in Jesus will be made stronger.
If you are a believer in Jesus Christ, you are called to daily ask for the guidance of God’s Holy Spirit on how you can sensitively, lovingly, and persuasively, by both words and deeds, preach the Word about Jesus Christ to all the people you meet.
This is the ministry of the Church.
It is the only ministry of the Church.
As member of Christ’s body, the Church, it’s your ministry too.
We are to preach the Word about Jesus so that others have the chance to open the doors of their lives to Christ and come to faith in Him and so, have eternal life with God.
That’s what Article V of The Augsburg Confession confesses (page 13 of the buff and brown books in the pew racks):
God creates faith in Christ in people to whom Christians, including sometimes, even pastors, preach the Word about Jesus.
I was excited, but a little discouraged. I was going door-to-door on a fall afternoon in Cincinnati, telling people who would listen that a new Lutheran congregation was coming to their community and asking if they’d like to know more about Jesus Christ or this new church that hadn’t even had its first worship service.
I kept records. In the first month of doing this, I’d already knocked on hundreds of doors and i actually spoke with 1 person for every 60 doors on which I knocked. (None of this was an efficient way to start a congregation, by the way. But it's what I was ordered to do by the Division for Outreach of the ELCA and I dutifully followed my orders.) As I went from place to place, a lot of people I could tell were at home didn’t come to the door when I knocked or rang their bells. Rejection isn’t fun. But I kept going.
I walked up to one house where I thought I had saw a couple a few moments before, the woman putting up orange and black bunting because the Bengals were playing the next day.
I rang the bell. Nothing. No sound. I waited, counting off the ten seconds I would stand there until I trudged off to the next house. One-one-hundred. Two-one-hundred. I got to nine-one-hundred, when the door swung open. A woman of about 40 stood there.
A little startled, I got off to a slow start introducing myself and explaining why I was there. I handed my brochure to her. She looked at it and looked back up at me with piercing blue eyes. Little did I know that this was an appointment made by God.
Linda and her husband Bob had two teenage sons. They had never been involved in a church. But when Linda’s dad died unexpectedly just a few weeks earlier, the words from the Bible read at the funeral and the words about Jesus preached by the pastor had stirred something in her. So too had the words and cards of comfort from Christian friends who talked about the help they got from Christ when facing tough times in their lives. God’s Word about Jesus was being preached to her. She needed Jesus. She needed faith. God sent the church, including at that moment, me, to speak God’s Word about Jesus to her.
I didn’t read Bible verses to Linda. I just invited her to get on a mailing list through which she could learn more about Jesus and this new congregation.
Sometimes it takes people years of hearing God's Word from many different sources for them to really hear the Word about Jesus. It often has to be spoken in many ways by many different people: friends, family members, co-workers, pastors, before faith takes hold.
Most often, I find, people keep the doorways into their souls closed. They won’t let Jesus in. They're too scared of giving up their freedom, too frightened to yield control over their lives to Christ.
But sometimes, the doors swing open, Jesus walks in, faith happens, and a life is changed forever.
That’s what was starting to happen for Linda on that October Saturday in Cincinnati, Ohio. She didn’t work to have saving faith. The Church just did the ministry to which it was called and faith came to her door. And Jesus did all the work!
Tomorrow, you may have an appointment set by God with someone who needs to hear the Word about Jesus. They may not open their lives to Jesus when you invite them to worship, Bible study, a project of service in Jesus’ Name, or tell them how Jesus helps you in your life.
But, if Christians are heeding Jesus’ command to pray for people to preach His Word to those who need to hear it and if all of us in Christ’s Church will be faithful in preaching Jesus’ word, you won’t be the only person God sends to knock on their doors.
Just speak the Word about Jesus in your own way at the times God shows you and leave the results to God. That’s how people come to believe in Jesus.
That’s also the only ministry of the Church.
That’s your ministry.
May we all do it faithfully because sharing Jesus with others, it turns out, is a big part of what it means to truly be a Lutheran Christian. Amen
[This is the sermon prepared to be shared at both the 8:30 and 10:15 AM worship services this morning with the people and guests of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio.]
But before we tackle that, I think that we may need to clear up any possible misunderstandings from last week’s discussion of justification.
The doctrine of justification boils down to this: We deserve condemnation, death, and eternal separation from God for our sin. Despite what we deserve though, God came into our world in the person of Jesus, took the punishment for sin we deserve, and then rose from the dead. Today, God offers forgiveness of sin and eternal life with God to all with faith in Jesus Christ as a free gift that we can do nothing to deserve or earn.
Faith in Jesus is foreign to our sinful natures though. So, even the ability to have faith or trust in Him isn’t something we can decide to have. Faith in Jesus Christ is a gift.
So, if even faith is a gift from God, the question arises, “Does that mean everybody will be saved?” If there’s nothing we can do or must do to be saved from sin, death, and hell and if life with God is a gift, does that mean everybody lives with God for eternity?
The short answer is, according to Jesus Himself, "No. Not everybody is saved.” After all, even when a gift is offered, it isn’t always received. That's why Jesus says in Mark 16:16: "The one who believes and is baptized will be saved; but the one who does not believe will be condemned."
In Revelation 3:19-20, the risen and ascended Jesus is speaking to the members of a church of lukewarm believers in Laodicea, a city in Asia Minor, what is now known as Turkey. Jesus is disgusted with them. They’re nice people. But they compartmentalize their lives, keeping God in what they think is “His” place, while keeping Him out of “their” places.
Look at Jesus’ words in Revelation 3:19-20: “As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten [In other words, if God loves you and you claim Him as your God, you can expect that He will sometimes discipline you and put your life back on the right track.] Therefore be zealous and repent [Turn away from sin and turn toward God. Now look at what Jesus says next.] Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come into him and dine with him, and he with Me.”
Saving faith in God comes to those who acknowledge Jesus when He knocks. But Jesus does all the work. Faith happens when we hear Jesus calling to us and we say, “I’m here, Lord.”
But that leads to another question: How do the doors of people’s lives come to be open to Jesus? How do people come to saving faith in Christ?
Please turn to Romans 10:9. It says:
...if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved...[slip down to verse 12] For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek [or Gentile, meaning non-Jews], for the same Lord over all is rich to all who call upon Him. For ‘whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.’ [Now, please pay close attention here.] How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher?...The gift of faith in Jesus Christ enters people’s lives through the preaching of God’s Word about Jesus. Preaching about Jesus is how Jesus knocks on our doors so that He can give faith in Him to us.
“Wait a minute,” someone might say, “I learned more about Jesus from my mother or my father or a Sunday School teacher or a friend than I ever did from a pastor in the pulpit.”
If that crossed your mind, notice I didn’t say that the gift of faith in Jesus enters people’s lives through pastors. I said it happened through the preaching of God’s Word about Jesus.
If the only people in Christian congregations preaching God’s Word about Jesus are the pastors, then no Christian congregation is fulfilling the mission Christ has given to it.
The calling of every Christian is mentioned in 1 Peter 2:9. Peter writes: “But you [that’s you, if you’ve received the gift of faith in Jesus] are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, [God’s] own special people, [here comes the purpose statement] that you may proclaim [proclaim: The word in the Greek in which Paul first wrote this passage is kerusso, a word that is also translated as preach] the praises of Him Who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.”
It is the call and ministry of every person who believes in Jesus Christ to preach the gospel, the good news of freedom from death and hell for all who believe in Jesus Christ.
Every believer in Jesus Christ is called to be a preacher because, whether in a chapel or sanctuary, in the waiting room of a hospital ICU, in a funeral home, at a gas station, grocery store, mall, gym locker room, on the job, or on a Facebook page, everyone we encounter every single day needs to hear about Jesus.
People who don’t know Jesus need to have His Word preached to them so that they can receive the gift of faith.
People who do know Jesus need to have His Word preached to them so that their grasp of the gift of faith in Jesus will be made stronger.
If you are a believer in Jesus Christ, you are called to daily ask for the guidance of God’s Holy Spirit on how you can sensitively, lovingly, and persuasively, by both words and deeds, preach the Word about Jesus Christ to all the people you meet.
This is the ministry of the Church.
It is the only ministry of the Church.
As member of Christ’s body, the Church, it’s your ministry too.
We are to preach the Word about Jesus so that others have the chance to open the doors of their lives to Christ and come to faith in Him and so, have eternal life with God.
That’s what Article V of The Augsburg Confession confesses (page 13 of the buff and brown books in the pew racks):
So that we may obtain this faith, the ministry of teaching the Gospel and administering the Sacraments [Holy Baptism and Holy Communion] was instituted. Through the Word and Sacraments, as through instruments, the Holy Spirit is given...He [the Holy Spirit] works faith, when and where it pleases God, in those who hear the good news that God justifies those who believe that they are received into grace for Christ’s sake. This happens not through our own merits, but for Christ’s sake...(Sharing the Sacraments of Baptism and Communion are “preaching the Word of God,” by the way, because in the water, bread, and wine, God’s words of promise make the Word about Jesus visible to us. In these Sacraments, we can “taste and see the goodness of the Lord.” More on the sacraments another time.)
God creates faith in Christ in people to whom Christians, including sometimes, even pastors, preach the Word about Jesus.
I was excited, but a little discouraged. I was going door-to-door on a fall afternoon in Cincinnati, telling people who would listen that a new Lutheran congregation was coming to their community and asking if they’d like to know more about Jesus Christ or this new church that hadn’t even had its first worship service.
I kept records. In the first month of doing this, I’d already knocked on hundreds of doors and i actually spoke with 1 person for every 60 doors on which I knocked. (None of this was an efficient way to start a congregation, by the way. But it's what I was ordered to do by the Division for Outreach of the ELCA and I dutifully followed my orders.) As I went from place to place, a lot of people I could tell were at home didn’t come to the door when I knocked or rang their bells. Rejection isn’t fun. But I kept going.
I walked up to one house where I thought I had saw a couple a few moments before, the woman putting up orange and black bunting because the Bengals were playing the next day.
I rang the bell. Nothing. No sound. I waited, counting off the ten seconds I would stand there until I trudged off to the next house. One-one-hundred. Two-one-hundred. I got to nine-one-hundred, when the door swung open. A woman of about 40 stood there.
A little startled, I got off to a slow start introducing myself and explaining why I was there. I handed my brochure to her. She looked at it and looked back up at me with piercing blue eyes. Little did I know that this was an appointment made by God.
Linda and her husband Bob had two teenage sons. They had never been involved in a church. But when Linda’s dad died unexpectedly just a few weeks earlier, the words from the Bible read at the funeral and the words about Jesus preached by the pastor had stirred something in her. So too had the words and cards of comfort from Christian friends who talked about the help they got from Christ when facing tough times in their lives. God’s Word about Jesus was being preached to her. She needed Jesus. She needed faith. God sent the church, including at that moment, me, to speak God’s Word about Jesus to her.
I didn’t read Bible verses to Linda. I just invited her to get on a mailing list through which she could learn more about Jesus and this new congregation.
Sometimes it takes people years of hearing God's Word from many different sources for them to really hear the Word about Jesus. It often has to be spoken in many ways by many different people: friends, family members, co-workers, pastors, before faith takes hold.
Most often, I find, people keep the doorways into their souls closed. They won’t let Jesus in. They're too scared of giving up their freedom, too frightened to yield control over their lives to Christ.
But sometimes, the doors swing open, Jesus walks in, faith happens, and a life is changed forever.
That’s what was starting to happen for Linda on that October Saturday in Cincinnati, Ohio. She didn’t work to have saving faith. The Church just did the ministry to which it was called and faith came to her door. And Jesus did all the work!
Tomorrow, you may have an appointment set by God with someone who needs to hear the Word about Jesus. They may not open their lives to Jesus when you invite them to worship, Bible study, a project of service in Jesus’ Name, or tell them how Jesus helps you in your life.
But, if Christians are heeding Jesus’ command to pray for people to preach His Word to those who need to hear it and if all of us in Christ’s Church will be faithful in preaching Jesus’ word, you won’t be the only person God sends to knock on their doors.
Just speak the Word about Jesus in your own way at the times God shows you and leave the results to God. That’s how people come to believe in Jesus.
That’s also the only ministry of the Church.
That’s your ministry.
May we all do it faithfully because sharing Jesus with others, it turns out, is a big part of what it means to truly be a Lutheran Christian. Amen
[This is the sermon prepared to be shared at both the 8:30 and 10:15 AM worship services this morning with the people and guests of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio.]
Saturday, February 02, 2013
You Know You're from Ohio If...
Love this shirt I got a while back. Click on the images to enlarge and be able to read more readily.
I love my Buckeye state!
I love my Buckeye state!
"Gut Check: A Quick Audit"
Short, provoking blog post here. (Thanks to Marie Wikle for tweeting a link to Tony Myles' post.)
"I'm gonna swandive, baby, right into the irresistible future!"
"It's not about luck,
"It's not about fate,
"He's the Fisher of men,
"I'm gonna take the bait"
(Irresistible Future by Randy Stonehill and Phil Keaggy)
Amen!
"It's not about fate,
"He's the Fisher of men,
"I'm gonna take the bait"
(Irresistible Future by Randy Stonehill and Phil Keaggy)
Amen!
Friday, February 01, 2013
9 Thoughts on the Angry Pastor and the Restaurant Server Who Went Viral
My buddy, Steve Sjogren, first alerted me to the image of a receipt on which a pastor refused to leave a tip because she already gave 10% to God. He suggested I might want to blog on the story.
Since then, I've learned more of the details:
Was Applebee's right in firing the server? Probably. Whether it was in the company manual or not, she seems to have willfully violated the privacy of another person for what she characterizes as a lighthearted prank. It hardly seems that.
Was the pastor wrong to refuse to pay the tip and to do so invoking both God and her calling as a pastor? I feel so. I also think that she was right to apologize.
Here's a look at the receipt and Pastor Bell's note.
The entire incident evokes all sorts of thoughts and feelings from me.
1. Let's start with the anger seen in the question, "I give God 10%, why do you get 18" and in the scratches through the levied tip amount.
Anger in itself is not a sin. Jesus, God in the flesh, got angry. (More on that later.) And Ephesians 4:26 tells Christians: "Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger."
The takeaway from that passage? If you're angry, don't use it as an excuse to assault another person, verbally or otherwise.
Instead, seek out the person with whom you're angry and, with the idea that you could be wrong, in part or in full, explain your grievance. Seek to get things resolved. (If that sounds like the way Jesus tells Christians to resolve disputes among themselves in Matthew 18:15-20, it should.)
Bell's angry note resolved nothing. In fact, it caused all kinds of problems, for her and for her server.
2. Scripture says that God loves cheerful givers who give "not reluctantly or under compulsion" (2 Corinthians 9:7). Pastor Bell's note made her seem like something other than a cheerful giver! The note comes across as saying that her offerings to God aren't given in grateful response to God for Jesus' death and resurrection, but an obligation she has to keep. "God coerces me to give 10% of my income to Him," she seems to be saying, "You can't coerce an even bigger percentage out of me."
I have to ask myself, "Do I ever unwittingly begrudge God the things I should want to give to Him simply because I know He loves me and I want to love Him back?" I hope not.
3. I feel that Bell mentioned being a pastor in order to give credence to her anger. The message seems to be, "As a pastor, I speak for God. Therefore it isn't just me who's mad at me, it's God too."
That might have carried weight with some people. It clearly didn't with Bell's server.
And here's a news flash for all pastors: Most people in today's society don't respect pastors. They don't regard pastors as authority figures. And most people think that the main thing churches and pastors want from them is money. Your being a pastor does not legitimize your anger! In fact, it should curb it. Not all anger is illegitimate, but its expression by pastors should be rare and thought-through.
If Pastor Bell's server wasn't a Christian, this was the lesson she took away from the pastor's scrawl: We Christians and we pastors are just as self-righteous, angry, and money-grubbing as many people say we are. From Pastor Bell's contrite response to the situation, I doubt that's the impression she wanted to leave with her server.
And I guarantee if you were a spiritually disconnected restaurant server who got dumped on like this by a customer identifying herself as a pastor, you wouldn't be very likely to wake up on Sunday morning and say to yourself, "I want the joy that pastor has. I think I'll go to church today!"
4. I'm not piling onto Pastor Bell here. She has apologized and I believe her apology. But there is a larger lesson here: If Christians or pastors want credibility for the faith we confess, we won't get it by coming across as bullies.
The gospel of Matthew says that the crowds who heard Jesus "were astounded at His teaching, for he taught them as one having authority" (Matthew 6:29). But what Jesus taught wasn't new. Or exotic. And He didn't usually push His "heft" around. Jesus was a servant. He wasn't even too proud to wash the feet of His disciples while telling all who follow Him to be servants, too (John 13:1-16). If God in the flesh served us, even dying on a cross for us, how much more should those of who bear His Name--Christians, we're called--be servants of others.
It's only in being servants, whether we're pastors or plumbers or presidents, that we Christians have any authority.
And, like Jesus, we're to only use our authority (read: the influence we earn through our servanthood) in ways that build people up, even the people we may have to criticize and to whom we may need to speak unwanted truths in love (Ephesians 4:15).
5. Is there ever a time when church leaders should get mad? If Jesus is any example to us, then we must conclude that there are times when anger and setting people straight is warranted. Like when believers who should know better turn their backs on the will of God, or treat each other hatefully, or otherwise sin unrepentantly.
But Jesus never "went off" on prostitutes or extortionist tax collectors. He never blew up on those who were known to have no relationship with God. Jesus always used kindness to lead the spiritually-disconnected to repentance and faith in Him.
On the other hand, Jesus often let some people have it, people like self-righteous Pharisees and temple money-changers who knew God's Word by heart, yet ignored it. His anger then, was aimed at the same purpose as His kindness, to call believers to repentance and faith in Him. For Jesus, anger was a tool expressing God's will and even God's love, not a display of self-indulgence.
Pastors and all Christians are better off to assume that most of the people they meet know nothing about the God revealed in Christ and do all they can to extend to them the same grace, patience, and kindness that Christ shows Christians every single day.
6. Let's assume for just a second that the 18% tip charge came at Pastor Bell out of nowhere. Was it right to just go off on the server?
The better path might have been to ask to speak to the manager about the restaurant's automatic tip policy (and still have left the server with some sort of tip).
Pastor Bell says that she did leave a $6.00 cash tip on the table after writing her note. That amounts to a 17.6% tip, almost the amount that the receipt had charged her in the first place. This tells me that she may have been trying to make a point that she didn't mind leaving tips, only having a particular amount put on her charge account.
I'm glad she left the server a tip. After all, "the laborer deserves to be paid" (1 Timothy 5:18) and most restaurant servers accept lower wages in order to be able to accept patrons' tips. It's not fair to hold a restaurant's policy you find unacceptable against a server who didn't set the policy.
7. In the Internet era, anything we say or do has the potential for going viral. In fact, our deeds can "go viral" even without the Internet, in the swirling cesspool of gossip. This is one more reason I often pray, "God, give me the right words and the right silences. Grant that everything I say, do, and am will bring you glory."
I can't tell you (and won't tell you for fear of it going viral) how often I've gotten in the way of God answering that prayer, not because God couldn't answer it, but because of my words, deeds, and thoughts, I refused to let Him answer it. In the Name of Jesus Christ, I repent for that.
8. Our actions can have unintended consequences for others. Chelsea, the Applebee's server, was, in my judgment, wrong to publish Pastor Bell's signed receipt on the Internet. But her getting fired was in part caused by Bell's ill-advised note. The server still bears responsibility for her action; no one made her send the image of the receipt out onto the Internet. But no note, no appearance on the web, no kerfluffle, no irate call from a violated customer, no firing.
If the server was going to publicize this incident, she would have done better just to post about it on Twitter without Bell's name. I know that the image of the receipt was more powerful than a tweet would have been. But the server would still have her job, while maybe sensitizing some who saw her post on Twitter to be considerate in tipping serving personnel.
9. A final thought: This receipt makes me wonder, "What are the ways in which I indulge my own anger or general sinfulness rather than stopping and asking God to control my thoughts, words, and actions?" How can I be more faithful to Christ while interacting with people in my everyday life?
Those are haunting questions, ones worth praying about.
Since then, I've learned more of the details:
A Friday night meal at Applebee’s resulted in more than either the customer or a waitress working that night bargained for after a pastor’s refusal to pay a tip was shared online.Is billing customers 18% for tips a good policy? Probably not and probably not smart either. While many restaurant patrons are no doubt cheap, inconsiderate of the hard work done by servers and other restaurant personnel, a customer alienated because of a set charge for tips is not likely to return, meaning no business and no tips.
Though the embarrassed patron has apologized for her actions, the old adage of the customer always being right may have some truth to it, as the waitress who posted photo evidence of the tip snub lost her job for doing so.
The trouble began last Friday, when Pastor Alois Bell went to the local chain restaurant with several others following a service at Truth in the World Deliverance Ministries.
When the bill came, she did not include a tip on the signed copy of her receipt. She did, however, include the reason why.
“I give God 10 [percent],” the note on the receipt read. “Why do you get 18?”
The waitress, who has been identified only as Chelsea by The Consumerist, posted a picture of the note on the popular user-powered news site Reddit, along with the caption, “My mistake sir, I’m sure Jesus will pay for my rent and groceries.”
“I originally posted the note as a lighthearted joke,” she told The Consumerist. “I thought the note was insulting, but it was also comical. I posted it to Reddit because I thought other users would find it entertaining.”
Her post instantly got the attention of other users, and eventually the news media. The popular story also got back to its source – Bell – on Wednesday, though she was less amused than others who had seen it before her. She called the Applebee’s where she had eaten to voice her frustration over the sharing of the image, which includes her signature.
Chelsea was fired by managers at the restaurant following the call, despite reportedly being a model employee before this incident...
In an interview with The Smoking Gun, Bell apologized for her actions, which she described as “lapse in [her] character and judgment,” adding that she did leave a $6 cash tip on the table for the waitress who served them that night – who was not Chelsea.
“My heart is really broken,” she was quoted as saying. “I’ve brought embarrassment to my church and ministry.”
Was Applebee's right in firing the server? Probably. Whether it was in the company manual or not, she seems to have willfully violated the privacy of another person for what she characterizes as a lighthearted prank. It hardly seems that.
Was the pastor wrong to refuse to pay the tip and to do so invoking both God and her calling as a pastor? I feel so. I also think that she was right to apologize.
Here's a look at the receipt and Pastor Bell's note.
The entire incident evokes all sorts of thoughts and feelings from me.
1. Let's start with the anger seen in the question, "I give God 10%, why do you get 18" and in the scratches through the levied tip amount.
Anger in itself is not a sin. Jesus, God in the flesh, got angry. (More on that later.) And Ephesians 4:26 tells Christians: "Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger."
The takeaway from that passage? If you're angry, don't use it as an excuse to assault another person, verbally or otherwise.
Instead, seek out the person with whom you're angry and, with the idea that you could be wrong, in part or in full, explain your grievance. Seek to get things resolved. (If that sounds like the way Jesus tells Christians to resolve disputes among themselves in Matthew 18:15-20, it should.)
Bell's angry note resolved nothing. In fact, it caused all kinds of problems, for her and for her server.
2. Scripture says that God loves cheerful givers who give "not reluctantly or under compulsion" (2 Corinthians 9:7). Pastor Bell's note made her seem like something other than a cheerful giver! The note comes across as saying that her offerings to God aren't given in grateful response to God for Jesus' death and resurrection, but an obligation she has to keep. "God coerces me to give 10% of my income to Him," she seems to be saying, "You can't coerce an even bigger percentage out of me."
I have to ask myself, "Do I ever unwittingly begrudge God the things I should want to give to Him simply because I know He loves me and I want to love Him back?" I hope not.
3. I feel that Bell mentioned being a pastor in order to give credence to her anger. The message seems to be, "As a pastor, I speak for God. Therefore it isn't just me who's mad at me, it's God too."
That might have carried weight with some people. It clearly didn't with Bell's server.
And here's a news flash for all pastors: Most people in today's society don't respect pastors. They don't regard pastors as authority figures. And most people think that the main thing churches and pastors want from them is money. Your being a pastor does not legitimize your anger! In fact, it should curb it. Not all anger is illegitimate, but its expression by pastors should be rare and thought-through.
If Pastor Bell's server wasn't a Christian, this was the lesson she took away from the pastor's scrawl: We Christians and we pastors are just as self-righteous, angry, and money-grubbing as many people say we are. From Pastor Bell's contrite response to the situation, I doubt that's the impression she wanted to leave with her server.
And I guarantee if you were a spiritually disconnected restaurant server who got dumped on like this by a customer identifying herself as a pastor, you wouldn't be very likely to wake up on Sunday morning and say to yourself, "I want the joy that pastor has. I think I'll go to church today!"
4. I'm not piling onto Pastor Bell here. She has apologized and I believe her apology. But there is a larger lesson here: If Christians or pastors want credibility for the faith we confess, we won't get it by coming across as bullies.
The gospel of Matthew says that the crowds who heard Jesus "were astounded at His teaching, for he taught them as one having authority" (Matthew 6:29). But what Jesus taught wasn't new. Or exotic. And He didn't usually push His "heft" around. Jesus was a servant. He wasn't even too proud to wash the feet of His disciples while telling all who follow Him to be servants, too (John 13:1-16). If God in the flesh served us, even dying on a cross for us, how much more should those of who bear His Name--Christians, we're called--be servants of others.
It's only in being servants, whether we're pastors or plumbers or presidents, that we Christians have any authority.
And, like Jesus, we're to only use our authority (read: the influence we earn through our servanthood) in ways that build people up, even the people we may have to criticize and to whom we may need to speak unwanted truths in love (Ephesians 4:15).
5. Is there ever a time when church leaders should get mad? If Jesus is any example to us, then we must conclude that there are times when anger and setting people straight is warranted. Like when believers who should know better turn their backs on the will of God, or treat each other hatefully, or otherwise sin unrepentantly.
But Jesus never "went off" on prostitutes or extortionist tax collectors. He never blew up on those who were known to have no relationship with God. Jesus always used kindness to lead the spiritually-disconnected to repentance and faith in Him.
On the other hand, Jesus often let some people have it, people like self-righteous Pharisees and temple money-changers who knew God's Word by heart, yet ignored it. His anger then, was aimed at the same purpose as His kindness, to call believers to repentance and faith in Him. For Jesus, anger was a tool expressing God's will and even God's love, not a display of self-indulgence.
Pastors and all Christians are better off to assume that most of the people they meet know nothing about the God revealed in Christ and do all they can to extend to them the same grace, patience, and kindness that Christ shows Christians every single day.
6. Let's assume for just a second that the 18% tip charge came at Pastor Bell out of nowhere. Was it right to just go off on the server?
The better path might have been to ask to speak to the manager about the restaurant's automatic tip policy (and still have left the server with some sort of tip).
Pastor Bell says that she did leave a $6.00 cash tip on the table after writing her note. That amounts to a 17.6% tip, almost the amount that the receipt had charged her in the first place. This tells me that she may have been trying to make a point that she didn't mind leaving tips, only having a particular amount put on her charge account.
I'm glad she left the server a tip. After all, "the laborer deserves to be paid" (1 Timothy 5:18) and most restaurant servers accept lower wages in order to be able to accept patrons' tips. It's not fair to hold a restaurant's policy you find unacceptable against a server who didn't set the policy.
7. In the Internet era, anything we say or do has the potential for going viral. In fact, our deeds can "go viral" even without the Internet, in the swirling cesspool of gossip. This is one more reason I often pray, "God, give me the right words and the right silences. Grant that everything I say, do, and am will bring you glory."
I can't tell you (and won't tell you for fear of it going viral) how often I've gotten in the way of God answering that prayer, not because God couldn't answer it, but because of my words, deeds, and thoughts, I refused to let Him answer it. In the Name of Jesus Christ, I repent for that.
8. Our actions can have unintended consequences for others. Chelsea, the Applebee's server, was, in my judgment, wrong to publish Pastor Bell's signed receipt on the Internet. But her getting fired was in part caused by Bell's ill-advised note. The server still bears responsibility for her action; no one made her send the image of the receipt out onto the Internet. But no note, no appearance on the web, no kerfluffle, no irate call from a violated customer, no firing.
If the server was going to publicize this incident, she would have done better just to post about it on Twitter without Bell's name. I know that the image of the receipt was more powerful than a tweet would have been. But the server would still have her job, while maybe sensitizing some who saw her post on Twitter to be considerate in tipping serving personnel.
9. A final thought: This receipt makes me wonder, "What are the ways in which I indulge my own anger or general sinfulness rather than stopping and asking God to control my thoughts, words, and actions?" How can I be more faithful to Christ while interacting with people in my everyday life?
Those are haunting questions, ones worth praying about.
Thursday, January 31, 2013
Long Time Users of Violent Video Games Are More Aggressive
Previous research has shown a link between extended use of violent video games and increased aggression and anger by players. But now a new study conducted at The Ohio State University confirms it:
Video games, Netflix, and cable and satellite TV are all convenient babysitters. But are parents who fail to set limits on their kids' consumption of these things doing them--or society--any favors? Probably not.
Brad Bushman is a professor at OSU, who teaches a course in violence in the media, and recently participated in the research project on violent video games.Read the whole thing.
"Violent video games make people more and more and more aggressive over time. They have a cumulative effect," Bushman said.
In the study, Bushman had students play violent video games over three days, then had them compete against each other.
"The winner gets to blast the loser with loud noises through headphones and the noise is a mixture of noises that most people really hate," Bushman said.
What he found was that the more someone played the violent video games, the more they made their opponent want to suffer in another game.
"These games decrease helping behaviors and they decrease feelings of empathy and compassion. For others, they make people numb," Bushman said.
Video games, Netflix, and cable and satellite TV are all convenient babysitters. But are parents who fail to set limits on their kids' consumption of these things doing them--or society--any favors? Probably not.
Mark Sheldon's Profile of the 2013 Reds Outfield
Very encouraging. And with Billy Hamilton percolating in the minors, the future looks bright in the outfield for the Reds.
Wednesday, January 30, 2013
Viewing the Old Testament from a New Testament Perspective
I'm reading New Testament scholar N.T. Wright's The Last Word: Beyond the Bible Wars to a New Understanding of the Authority of Scripture.
I don't agree with everything Wright says. (After all, he says so much and, as a colleague recently quipped, Wright is such a prolific writer that he's at risk of not having a single unpublished thought.)
But The Last Word is definitely worth reading, especially for Wright's explanation of how the first Christians, proclaiming the crucified and risen Jesus, were forced to think through the continuities and discontinuities between the Old Testament and the good news about Jesus Christ that they were proclaiming in their preaching, teaching, and writings. (Those writings--the Gospels, the epistles, and others--became the New Testament, of course.)
The writers of the New Testament saw Jesus as the ultimate expression of Israel's "office" to be "a light to the nations" and the Church as having been grafted onto God's people by God's grace through faith in Christ (Romans 11). This view didn't rely simply on explicit "proof texts," but on the whole witness to God's character and intentions found in the Old Testament.
So, Wright argues that the "new covenant" God makes with the world through Jesus and given to believers today by the power of the Holy Spirit, isn't so much "new" as it is the definitive fulfillment of Israel's story. (This is perhaps the overarching theme of the Gospel of Luke and the other New Testament book written by Luke, Acts, by the way.)
After Jesus' death and resurrection and the giving of the Holy Spirit, some things about the faith practices commended in the Old Testament were no longer necessary.
As Wright would seem to say, this doesn't mean that the parts of the Old Testament we may today find strange or even alarming were "bad." Even those parts of the Old Testament we may think of as being no longer operative were inspired by the Holy Spirit and are part of God's Word.
But if you see the Old and New Testaments as the story of God's efforts to save the human race from ourselves, our sin, and death, you see that the Old Testament presents the beginning of God's efforts: After the fall of Adam and Eve, God set out on the long journey to first, create a people--the Jews--who would bear witness of Him and learn to live with His undeserved grace and often deserved chastening, all with the idea of bringing His efforts to stunning climax on the first Easter, then ushering in the moment when the Church would hit the streets (and the byways) with the news that God so loved the world, He gave His only Son so that all who believe in Him will not perish, but have eternal life with God!
Wright uses the analogy of a journey to explain the Bible's continuing story and how, with the unfolding of this story, some aspects, once critical to the journey, were no longer essential:
No, in fact, that's not what I'm doing. Nor is it what any other advocate of confessional, orthodox Lutheran Christianity that I know of, like Carl Braaten, is doing either.
First of all, speaking for myself, I'm not a Biblical literalist. I don't believe, for example, that trees, rocks, birds, or mountains actually praise God. Yet there are passages of Scripture that speak of these sorts of things. There are many different genres of literature: history, poetry, proverbs, and so on.
But I do believe, as Martin Luther put it, in paying attention to the plain sense of Scripture. For example, when the Old Testament writers repeatedly affirm that there is one God, they plainly mean it. And when the New Testament writers say that Jesus was born of a virgin, was sinless God-enfleshed, died on a cross, and rose from the dead, they plainly mean what they confess. To see these kinds of affirmations being made in Scripture is not to be a literalist, but one who takes the Scripture to mean what it means to affirm as factual.
Second, I believe in taking my cues from what the New Testament writers who, as Wright points out, while not thinking that they were composing "the New Testament," did believe that they were producing a definitive account of God's definitive self-disclosure in Jesus. They believed that some of what was in the Old Testament, while still God's Word, weren't to be carried any further in the journey of salvation.
That's why the preacher of Hebrews opens his sermon:
That means that some parts of the Old Testament journey are no longer relevant. For example, it's no longer necessary to offer sacrifices for sin. Jesus is the definitive sacrifice for sin (Hebrews 9:28, 1 Peter 3:18), the Lamb of God, Who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29).
This sacrifice is so definitive that the risen Jesus could say of Himself:
Since the kingdom of God isn't confined to a particular place--and, in fact, is eternal--the civil laws God gave for the operation of Israel in its promised land is also no longer needed.
But the moral law, embodied in the ten commandments and related commands sprinkled throughout the Old Testament, are still valid. They serve three purposes to us today:
If only for the stimulation he may give a Christian to think about these issues, I highly recommend The Last Word.
I don't agree with everything Wright says. (After all, he says so much and, as a colleague recently quipped, Wright is such a prolific writer that he's at risk of not having a single unpublished thought.)
But The Last Word is definitely worth reading, especially for Wright's explanation of how the first Christians, proclaiming the crucified and risen Jesus, were forced to think through the continuities and discontinuities between the Old Testament and the good news about Jesus Christ that they were proclaiming in their preaching, teaching, and writings. (Those writings--the Gospels, the epistles, and others--became the New Testament, of course.)
The writers of the New Testament saw Jesus as the ultimate expression of Israel's "office" to be "a light to the nations" and the Church as having been grafted onto God's people by God's grace through faith in Christ (Romans 11). This view didn't rely simply on explicit "proof texts," but on the whole witness to God's character and intentions found in the Old Testament.
So, Wright argues that the "new covenant" God makes with the world through Jesus and given to believers today by the power of the Holy Spirit, isn't so much "new" as it is the definitive fulfillment of Israel's story. (This is perhaps the overarching theme of the Gospel of Luke and the other New Testament book written by Luke, Acts, by the way.)
After Jesus' death and resurrection and the giving of the Holy Spirit, some things about the faith practices commended in the Old Testament were no longer necessary.
As Wright would seem to say, this doesn't mean that the parts of the Old Testament we may today find strange or even alarming were "bad." Even those parts of the Old Testament we may think of as being no longer operative were inspired by the Holy Spirit and are part of God's Word.
But if you see the Old and New Testaments as the story of God's efforts to save the human race from ourselves, our sin, and death, you see that the Old Testament presents the beginning of God's efforts: After the fall of Adam and Eve, God set out on the long journey to first, create a people--the Jews--who would bear witness of Him and learn to live with His undeserved grace and often deserved chastening, all with the idea of bringing His efforts to stunning climax on the first Easter, then ushering in the moment when the Church would hit the streets (and the byways) with the news that God so loved the world, He gave His only Son so that all who believe in Him will not perish, but have eternal life with God!
Wright uses the analogy of a journey to explain the Bible's continuing story and how, with the unfolding of this story, some aspects, once critical to the journey, were no longer essential:
When travelers sail across a vast ocean and finally arrive on the distant shore, they leave the ship behind and continue over land, not because the ship was no good, or because their voyage had been misguided, but precisely because both ship and voyage had accomplished their purpose. During the new dry-land stage of their journey, the travelers remain--and in this illustration must never forget that they remain--the people who made that voyage in that ship.An argument that gets made against orthodox Lutherans like me is that we are literalists about the Bible. Setting up this straw man, advocates of revisionism then set out to demolish it with all sorts of references to strange and foreboding laws from the book of Leviticus. "If you don't support everything commanded in Leviticus," they ask, "how can you be so inflexible about upholding the ten commandments as God's irrevocable will for the human race? The commandments are in the Old Testament, too, you know. Aren't you throwing out some of the Bible and keeping the parts you like?"
No, in fact, that's not what I'm doing. Nor is it what any other advocate of confessional, orthodox Lutheran Christianity that I know of, like Carl Braaten, is doing either.
First of all, speaking for myself, I'm not a Biblical literalist. I don't believe, for example, that trees, rocks, birds, or mountains actually praise God. Yet there are passages of Scripture that speak of these sorts of things. There are many different genres of literature: history, poetry, proverbs, and so on.
But I do believe, as Martin Luther put it, in paying attention to the plain sense of Scripture. For example, when the Old Testament writers repeatedly affirm that there is one God, they plainly mean it. And when the New Testament writers say that Jesus was born of a virgin, was sinless God-enfleshed, died on a cross, and rose from the dead, they plainly mean what they confess. To see these kinds of affirmations being made in Scripture is not to be a literalist, but one who takes the Scripture to mean what it means to affirm as factual.
Second, I believe in taking my cues from what the New Testament writers who, as Wright points out, while not thinking that they were composing "the New Testament," did believe that they were producing a definitive account of God's definitive self-disclosure in Jesus. They believed that some of what was in the Old Testament, while still God's Word, weren't to be carried any further in the journey of salvation.
That's why the preacher of Hebrews opens his sermon:
Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also created the worlds. (Hebrews 1:1-2)And John could write:
The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth through Jesus Christ. (John 1:17)Jesus didn't repudiate the Old Testament. As He said, "For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished" (Matthew 5:18). But Jesus fulfilled the Old Testament, meaning that everything that God had been aiming for in calling together His people, Israel, culminates perfectly in Jesus, true God and true human, a son of Israel, the Lord of Israel, the Lord of heaven and earth.
That means that some parts of the Old Testament journey are no longer relevant. For example, it's no longer necessary to offer sacrifices for sin. Jesus is the definitive sacrifice for sin (Hebrews 9:28, 1 Peter 3:18), the Lamb of God, Who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29).
This sacrifice is so definitive that the risen Jesus could say of Himself:
The one who believes [in Christ] and is baptized will be saved; but the one who does not believe [in Christ] will be condemned (Mark 16:16).Unlike Wright, I believe that the New Testament, in conveying the continuities between the Old and New Testaments, between faith in the Old Testament era and faith today, allows us to discern the three types of Old Testament law that Philip Melanchthon describes in his explanation of justification in The Apology to the Augsburg Confession:
1. sacrificial/ritual lawSince Christ is the once-for-all-time sacrifice for sin, the benefits of which are given to all who trust in Christ and His promises, Old Testament sacrificial law is no longer needed.
2. civil law
3. moral law
Since the kingdom of God isn't confined to a particular place--and, in fact, is eternal--the civil laws God gave for the operation of Israel in its promised land is also no longer needed.
But the moral law, embodied in the ten commandments and related commands sprinkled throughout the Old Testament, are still valid. They serve three purposes to us today:
1. As a hedge on our inborn impulse to self-centered behavior (original sin). God's law, the Bible says, is written on our hearts. Even those with no knowledge or respect for God have some sense of how we are to relate to others. Without the law written on human hearts, the world would be an even more tragically sinful place than it is.As I say, Wright doesn't agree with this Lutheran view of God's Old Testament law. Yet, I think its validity is revealed in how the New Testament deals with those "continuities and discontinuities" that Wright so well explains.
2. As a mirror that allows us to see our true distance from God, a tool God can use to drive us to Christ when we learn that Christ died for sinners and gives new life to those who believe in Him.
3. As a guide for those who, knowing that they are saved from sin and death by Christ, want to express their thanks to God in their daily lives.
If only for the stimulation he may give a Christian to think about these issues, I highly recommend The Last Word.
That "Presidential Grub" is Resilient Stuff
Ann Althouse makes it plain that she thinks departing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was shooting less than straight when she said that isn't presently inclined to run for the presidency in 2016. Althouse asked her readers to "assess the degree of [baloney]" (my translation) in Clinton's statement.
But I don't think one can assess Clinton too much blame for being disingenuous about her White House ambitions.
For one thing, even in this era of "it's campaign time all the time," it's not "nice" to admit wanting to be President when crews are still cleaning up after the most recent Inauguration, even though those who run without craving the office like cocaine are dismissed for lacking "fire in the belly."
On top of that she's got people still fanning the flames of her presidential ambition addiction. It doesn't need much encouragement.
Nor would the ambitions of anyone under the age of 80 who has ever had the presidency clearly in their sights, within reasonable reach. (Sometimes it doesn't even need to have been in "reasonable reach." Remember Harold Stassen?) Lincoln once observed, “No man knows, when that Presidential grub gets to gnawing at him, just how deep in it will get until he has tried it."
I'm guessing, no woman knows either.
But I don't think one can assess Clinton too much blame for being disingenuous about her White House ambitions.
For one thing, even in this era of "it's campaign time all the time," it's not "nice" to admit wanting to be President when crews are still cleaning up after the most recent Inauguration, even though those who run without craving the office like cocaine are dismissed for lacking "fire in the belly."
On top of that she's got people still fanning the flames of her presidential ambition addiction. It doesn't need much encouragement.
Nor would the ambitions of anyone under the age of 80 who has ever had the presidency clearly in their sights, within reasonable reach. (Sometimes it doesn't even need to have been in "reasonable reach." Remember Harold Stassen?) Lincoln once observed, “No man knows, when that Presidential grub gets to gnawing at him, just how deep in it will get until he has tried it."
I'm guessing, no woman knows either.
Tuesday, January 29, 2013
Sometimes It's About Being at the Right Place at the Right Time
No Excuse for Boredom
As you can imagine, I got a particular charge out of reading this post by my son over on Facebook today. I still believe that there's no excuse for boredom.
When Sin Happens
Sin happens any time we use a gift from God in the wrong way, at the wrong time, for the wrong reason, or with the wrong person.
Sin is like opening a gift meant for someone else (things like their life, their property, sexual intimacy God has reserved for their spouse) and taking its contents for ourselves.
Sin is like opening a gift meant for someone else (things like their life, their property, sexual intimacy God has reserved for their spouse) and taking its contents for ourselves.
Lose Myself
In the absence of a video for the song, Lose Myself, from TobyMac's LP, Eye on It, here's one created by a fan. Great song!
"[Jesus] called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it." (Mark 8:34-35)
"[Jesus] called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it." (Mark 8:34-35)
Monday, January 28, 2013
Leadership Lessons from Lincoln
Mark Roberts writes: "I find it fascinating the extent to which Lincoln’s leadership of our nation was directly related to his leadership of himself."
The same was true of Washington and Eisenhower. You will not long lead others if you cannot lead yourself. And, I would add, you're not likely to be able to lead yourself for positive, worthy ends unless you're following Christ.
The same was true of Washington and Eisenhower. You will not long lead others if you cannot lead yourself. And, I would add, you're not likely to be able to lead yourself for positive, worthy ends unless you're following Christ.
Why?
The Islamists presumably want to go back to some pristine Islamic past. So why would they set ablaze manuscripts from that past? In the end, I suppose, all radical political -ists have no ideology or religion other than their two deities: nihilism and winning.
"The Most Important Aspect of Leadership"
What is it? Check out this post by John Schroeder, inspired a piece written by Mark Roberts.
I've been reading the blogs of these two men for a long while now and had the privilege of spending time with them at the first GodBlogCon in 2005.
I've been reading the blogs of these two men for a long while now and had the privilege of spending time with them at the first GodBlogCon in 2005.
5 Things God Wants You to Know About Sex, Plus 1 He Wants You to Know About Forgiveness
"You can get a large audience together for a strip-tease act--that is, to watch a girl undress onstage," C.S. Lewis, friend of J.R.R. Tolkien and creator of The Chronicles of Narnia, wrote.
"Now suppose," Lewis went on, "you come to a country where you could fill a theatre by simply bringing a covered plate on to the stage and then slowly lifting the cover so as to let every one see, just before the lights went out, that it contained a mutton chop or a bit of bacon, would you not think that in that country something had gone wrong with the appetite for food? And would not anyone who had grown up in a different world think there was something equally [strange]* about the state of the sex instinct among us?"
That question, written for a series of radio talks the English writer gave on the BBC that later became Mere Christianity, speaks with equal power to us today when, if anything, the obsession with things sexual has only increased.
I think it's time to consider what God has to say about sex. So, just to introduce this subject, I'm going to arbitrarily present you with 5 things God wants you to know about sex. (Plus 1 thing God wants you to know about forgiveness.)
Here we go...
1. God invented the sexes. Genesis 1:26-27 tells that the trinitarian God (one God in three Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) had a conversation with Himself in which He said, "Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness...So God created humankind in His image...male and female He created them."
2. God invented sexual intimacy for marriage between a wife and her husband.
Sexual intimacy is the way these two different but complementary bearers of Gods image seal the oneness of their marriage.
In Genesis 2:24, we're told: "Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh."
Many centuries later, when God came into the world in the person of Jesus Christ, He underscored God's intent that sexual intimacy was to be an act between a man and a woman who are married. He said, "Have you not read [in Genesis] that the one who made them at the beginning [God] 'made them male and female,' and said, 'For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh'?" (Matthew 19:4-5)
3. God invented sexual intimacy as a means by which husbands and wives physically affirm their oneness, give each other pleasure, and, sometimes, produce children.
In the Old Testament, a woman named Sarah, long after she'd gone through menopause, hears God tell her husband Abraham that she will give birth to a son, who will become the ancestor of many nations. Sarah laughs and asks, "After I have grown old, and my husband is old, shall I have pleasure?" (Genesis 18:12)
I once asked a Hebrew scholar of the Old Testament, a Lutheran who received his doctorate from Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, and he confirmed that, in the original Hebrew in which Sarah's words are rendered in the Old Testament, the pleasure to which Sarah referred included the pleasure of intimacy with her husband and the physical pleasure to which such intimacy can lead, as well as the pleasure of bearing a child.
By the way, Sarah did again enjoy pleasure with her husband, both in their sexual intimacy and in the birth of their son, Isaac.
4. People who engage in sexual intimacy outside of marriage are stealing a blessing from God that He intended only for a husband and a wife who, before witnesses, declare in the presence of God, to build their lives on Him.
God views every act of sexual intimacy apart from the marriage bed of a husband and wife as theft, in much the same way that He regards murder as stealing a life that He has given or every use of His Name for anything other than prayer, praise, or thanksgiving to Him as a theft of His good name. The New Testament calls sex outside of marriage fornication and sees it as a violation of the Sixth Commandment, "You shall not commit adultery."
Like all the sins enumerated in the Ten Commandments, God's moral law, the punishment for violation of this command as a sin, is eternal separation from God.
Sexual intimacy is like fireworks: Great when set off at the right times; worthless and even dangerous when used under other conditions.
5. Living together is not an option for those who want to follow the God we know in Jesus Christ into forgiveness for sin and everlasting life with God.
"I see so much divorce or I've been hurt before," people planning on moving in with someone tell me. "Moving in together helps us to learn if we're compatible."
That's about the dumbest thing I have to hear people tell me as a pastor!
Living together will give you no idea about how compatible your prospective marriage will be or how long it will last. In fact, data I've run across from time to time reveals that married couples who started out living together have higher divorce rates than those who wait to take up residence together after they've said, "I do."***
There's a simple reason for that: When you're shacking up, there's always a net.
Until you commit yourself publicly, under God, with a dedication to building your marriage on God, you can always bug out.
Getting married is a bit like what my friends and I would do when we were kids. We'd find a good place to play ball and some scaredy-cat would say, "I don't think we can play there." That's when one of us would take all the balls, bats, and ball gloves we had and fling them far over the fence. Now, we were either going to see things out by climbing over the fence and playing ball on the lot or just leave everything behind.
Of course, couples should spend time getting to know one another before saying, "I do." But sexual intimacy is a gift God wants to be reserved for the married.
It's only after you've committed yourself in marriage to the other person that you are all-in. No amount of "playing house" will simulate marriage.
And why would you want to accept anything less than marriage anyway? When God wants to give you a Porsche, why would you settle for a Gremlin?
6. BONUS POINT: God can forgive any sin. If you've already had sex outside of marriage, God is willing to forgive the sin of any who want to turn away from (what the Bible calls repent) for a sin and turn to the God we meet in Jesus Christ. (Turning to Christ, repenting, by the way, is a continuous struggle even for the most seasoned Christians I have known, including me.)
If you're already living with someone in a sexual relationship, I urge you to move away from one another now, even if you're engaged to be married.
It will help you to see that sexual intimacy isn't just something you do to punctuate a night out or a night with seemingly nothing else to do. You will be restoring sexual intimacy to its proper place as total giving of a husband to a wife and of a wife to a husband that God intended it to be, no holding back.
Almost everyone is blessed with the physical capacity for a sex life. But just as you should only eat food when you're hungry or use God's Name when you're speaking to Him, for Him, or about Him, sexual intimacy is only for people in marriages between husbands and wives. Any other use of this precious gift is dissing the God Who created the gift. My guess is that you don't want to do that.
*Lewis's original word here was queer. But he used the term in 1952, long before it became commonplace to use it for anything other than an adjective for strange.
**Probably not uncoincidentally, the explosion of our culture-wide sexual-obsessions has been accompanied by a similar almost grotesquely pornographic interest in food, if shows like The United States of Bacon on the Food Channel, of which my wife and I caught about five minutes the other night before being so grossed out, we turned off the TV. What was a farfetched absurdity to Lewis in 1952--lust for food--is a craving obsession in 2013, it seems.
***I couldn't care less about marriage licenses, by the way. As an added service to couples whose weddings I perform, I fill out the state paperwork. But frankly, I think the state ought to get completely out of the marriage business. So, my arguments in favor of marriage have nothing to do with the often and rightly dismissed, "piece of paper." When I talk about marriage here hasn't got a thing to do with any piece of paper!
"Now suppose," Lewis went on, "you come to a country where you could fill a theatre by simply bringing a covered plate on to the stage and then slowly lifting the cover so as to let every one see, just before the lights went out, that it contained a mutton chop or a bit of bacon, would you not think that in that country something had gone wrong with the appetite for food? And would not anyone who had grown up in a different world think there was something equally [strange]* about the state of the sex instinct among us?"
That question, written for a series of radio talks the English writer gave on the BBC that later became Mere Christianity, speaks with equal power to us today when, if anything, the obsession with things sexual has only increased.
I think it's time to consider what God has to say about sex. So, just to introduce this subject, I'm going to arbitrarily present you with 5 things God wants you to know about sex. (Plus 1 thing God wants you to know about forgiveness.)
Here we go...
1. God invented the sexes. Genesis 1:26-27 tells that the trinitarian God (one God in three Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) had a conversation with Himself in which He said, "Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness...So God created humankind in His image...male and female He created them."
2. God invented sexual intimacy for marriage between a wife and her husband.
Sexual intimacy is the way these two different but complementary bearers of Gods image seal the oneness of their marriage.
In Genesis 2:24, we're told: "Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh."
Many centuries later, when God came into the world in the person of Jesus Christ, He underscored God's intent that sexual intimacy was to be an act between a man and a woman who are married. He said, "Have you not read [in Genesis] that the one who made them at the beginning [God] 'made them male and female,' and said, 'For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh'?" (Matthew 19:4-5)
3. God invented sexual intimacy as a means by which husbands and wives physically affirm their oneness, give each other pleasure, and, sometimes, produce children.
In the Old Testament, a woman named Sarah, long after she'd gone through menopause, hears God tell her husband Abraham that she will give birth to a son, who will become the ancestor of many nations. Sarah laughs and asks, "After I have grown old, and my husband is old, shall I have pleasure?" (Genesis 18:12)
I once asked a Hebrew scholar of the Old Testament, a Lutheran who received his doctorate from Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, and he confirmed that, in the original Hebrew in which Sarah's words are rendered in the Old Testament, the pleasure to which Sarah referred included the pleasure of intimacy with her husband and the physical pleasure to which such intimacy can lead, as well as the pleasure of bearing a child.
By the way, Sarah did again enjoy pleasure with her husband, both in their sexual intimacy and in the birth of their son, Isaac.
4. People who engage in sexual intimacy outside of marriage are stealing a blessing from God that He intended only for a husband and a wife who, before witnesses, declare in the presence of God, to build their lives on Him.
God views every act of sexual intimacy apart from the marriage bed of a husband and wife as theft, in much the same way that He regards murder as stealing a life that He has given or every use of His Name for anything other than prayer, praise, or thanksgiving to Him as a theft of His good name. The New Testament calls sex outside of marriage fornication and sees it as a violation of the Sixth Commandment, "You shall not commit adultery."
Like all the sins enumerated in the Ten Commandments, God's moral law, the punishment for violation of this command as a sin, is eternal separation from God.
Sexual intimacy is like fireworks: Great when set off at the right times; worthless and even dangerous when used under other conditions.
5. Living together is not an option for those who want to follow the God we know in Jesus Christ into forgiveness for sin and everlasting life with God.
"I see so much divorce or I've been hurt before," people planning on moving in with someone tell me. "Moving in together helps us to learn if we're compatible."
That's about the dumbest thing I have to hear people tell me as a pastor!
Living together will give you no idea about how compatible your prospective marriage will be or how long it will last. In fact, data I've run across from time to time reveals that married couples who started out living together have higher divorce rates than those who wait to take up residence together after they've said, "I do."***
There's a simple reason for that: When you're shacking up, there's always a net.
Until you commit yourself publicly, under God, with a dedication to building your marriage on God, you can always bug out.
Getting married is a bit like what my friends and I would do when we were kids. We'd find a good place to play ball and some scaredy-cat would say, "I don't think we can play there." That's when one of us would take all the balls, bats, and ball gloves we had and fling them far over the fence. Now, we were either going to see things out by climbing over the fence and playing ball on the lot or just leave everything behind.
Of course, couples should spend time getting to know one another before saying, "I do." But sexual intimacy is a gift God wants to be reserved for the married.
It's only after you've committed yourself in marriage to the other person that you are all-in. No amount of "playing house" will simulate marriage.
And why would you want to accept anything less than marriage anyway? When God wants to give you a Porsche, why would you settle for a Gremlin?
6. BONUS POINT: God can forgive any sin. If you've already had sex outside of marriage, God is willing to forgive the sin of any who want to turn away from (what the Bible calls repent) for a sin and turn to the God we meet in Jesus Christ. (Turning to Christ, repenting, by the way, is a continuous struggle even for the most seasoned Christians I have known, including me.)
If you're already living with someone in a sexual relationship, I urge you to move away from one another now, even if you're engaged to be married.
It will help you to see that sexual intimacy isn't just something you do to punctuate a night out or a night with seemingly nothing else to do. You will be restoring sexual intimacy to its proper place as total giving of a husband to a wife and of a wife to a husband that God intended it to be, no holding back.
Almost everyone is blessed with the physical capacity for a sex life. But just as you should only eat food when you're hungry or use God's Name when you're speaking to Him, for Him, or about Him, sexual intimacy is only for people in marriages between husbands and wives. Any other use of this precious gift is dissing the God Who created the gift. My guess is that you don't want to do that.
*Lewis's original word here was queer. But he used the term in 1952, long before it became commonplace to use it for anything other than an adjective for strange.
**Probably not uncoincidentally, the explosion of our culture-wide sexual-obsessions has been accompanied by a similar almost grotesquely pornographic interest in food, if shows like The United States of Bacon on the Food Channel, of which my wife and I caught about five minutes the other night before being so grossed out, we turned off the TV. What was a farfetched absurdity to Lewis in 1952--lust for food--is a craving obsession in 2013, it seems.
***I couldn't care less about marriage licenses, by the way. As an added service to couples whose weddings I perform, I fill out the state paperwork. But frankly, I think the state ought to get completely out of the marriage business. So, my arguments in favor of marriage have nothing to do with the often and rightly dismissed, "piece of paper." When I talk about marriage here hasn't got a thing to do with any piece of paper!
Sunday, January 27, 2013
What Is 'Justification'? (Augsburg Confession, Part 4)
Have you ever had to prove yourself to somebody?
Maybe it was a teacher or a coach.
Or the relative you disappointed, the woman you were trying to woo, or the man you loved.
Maybe it was an old boss or the person you wanted to be your new boss.
When you want to prove yourself to someone, you work hard at it. You put in more effort, extra hours, all for the sake of winning over a person whose approval or disapproval stands between who you are and who you want to become.
In fact, it seems like much of our lives can be spent, in one way or another, doing things to justify our existences, doing things to prove our value. That fact about our lives is either going to make the message of today’s sermon deeply upsetting or the most freeing word you’ve ever heard! Here's a preview of what's to follow: You don't have a thing to prove!
In the sermon series in which we're involved now we’re considering the question, “What is a Lutheran Christian?” To find the answer, we’re looking at one of the basic statements of faith produced by the Lutheran movement, The Augsburg Confession, written by Martin Luther’s colleague, Philipp Melanchthon back in 1530.
Today, we look at what both the New Testament and Article 4 of the Confession call, “justification.” Luther said that on this article, the Church “stands or falls.” Lutherans have always believed that justification is “the chief article of our faith.” Justification is at the center of Biblical Christianity.
So, what is justification? Two weeks ago, we talked about Article 2 of the Confession, the one dealing with original sin. We said that original sin is the lack of trust in God and love for others with which we are born. Like David in Psalm 51:5, we all, if we’re honest, can say, “Indeed, I was born guilty, a sinner when my mother conceived me.”
The Greek New Testament words for guilty, justify, justification, and even righteousness are borrowed from the language used about criminal justice. Think about how a legal system works: A person is accused of a crime. A judge or a jury will either find him or her innocent or guilty. Justice, a word that sounds like justify, is done. A person convicted of a crime is guilty. A person found not guilty is acquitted; they’re justified in the eyes of the court; they’re innocent, right in the eyes of law, just as being righteous is to be right in the eyes of God.
But what hope do we have if we’re born guilty? If we come into this world alienated from God and have an irresistible orientation to violating the will of God for human beings as revealed in the Ten Commandments, what hope do we possibly have as we stand before God, the righteous judge?
The world, including most of its religions, answers those questions by saying that we need to get busy to win over God in the same ways we try to win over the people of this world: work, work, work.
But the problem with that answer is that from the moment you were conceived, you inherited a debt for sin to God so big that it makes the national debt look like chump change. Even if you had a million lifetimes to make things right by being a nice person, you still couldn’t pay off the debt you owe to God for your sin.
Our position is stated well in Isaiah 64:6: “...we are all like an unclean thing. And all our righteousnesses [all our violations of God’s holiness] are like filthy rags. We all fade as a leaf and our iniquities [our sins], like the wind, have taken us away.”
To the charge of sin, it must be said, each one of us is guilty. And the Bible makes it clear that there is nothing we can do to expunge sin from our souls and that God will not tolerate any particle of sin in His presence. There’s nothing we can do to prove ourselves worthy of salvation.
That’s just the way things would stay in all of our lives were it not for something that God does for us because He loves us. That something is called justification. So, what is justification? Please pull out the buff and brown editions of The Augsburg Confession you’ll find in the pew racks and turn to Article IV, Justification. It says:
So, here’s a little test for you, just five questions, each with a single one-word answer. Feel free, Lutherans, to say the answers out loud. Ready?
What must you to become worthy of being in God's presence?
NOTHING.
What must you do to prove yourself worthy of heaven?
NOTHING.
What can you do to get the forgiveness of sin?
NOTHING.
What can you to earn everlasting life with God?
NOTHING.
What can you do to get God’s presence and help with you through the uncertainties of this life?
NOTHING.
You can do nothing to gain all these blessings because, in Jesus Christ, God has already done everything you need to receive them!
“Now wait a minute!” I can imagine someone saying. “It says we have to believe in Jesus. Isn’t faith something we have to do in order to be saved?”
We ask this because it violates our arrogant pride to take something for nothing, even from God.
It sticks in our craws to have to admit that, like every other ordinary human being in history, we’re garden variety sinners, in need of God’s forgiveness.
It gives our sense of self-sufficiency--the idea that we can be good enough and strong enough on our own steam--a firm smackdown from the God Who made us and has the final say over our lives!
But the fact is that even the faith to believe that Jesus Christ gives me forgiveness and eternal life is a gift I can do nothing to receive, or earn, or deserve. Turn please, to Ephesians 2:8. It says: “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God...”
Even the faith we need to receive the justification that God gives through Christ is a gift.
You can not manufacure faith.
You can’t earn faith.
You can’t steal faith.
You can’t even inherit faith from your parents by being a dutiful pew-occupying Lutheran.
Faith in Jesus Christ is a personal gift God gives to us one person at a time.
Faith can only come to you when you stop “doing,” put down your dukes, and let God give you the faith that in Jesus Christ, God declares you justified, righteous, right with God. Innocent despite all the evidence to the contrary.
So, what about good works?
What about giving food to the CHAP food bank; money for the world hunger efforts of Lutheran World Relief, funneled through the ELCA; health kits for the ministry of Lutheran World Federation; the prayers we offer for the missionaries of the World Missionary Prayer League; our sponsorship the little Ethiopian girl, Toiba Seid, through World Vision; and the things we do for southern Ohio through Lutheran Social Services?
Don’t our good works count for something?
Good works have a place in the life of a Christian. They’re a way of telling God, “Thank You” for the free gifts of faith, justification, and new life we receive through Jesus.
But our good works won't make us any more loved by God than we were when stubbornly refused to repent for our sins. Our good works won't make us any more redeemed than we were the hour we first believed. We’ll talk about the place of good works in Christians’ lives later in this series.
But for now, this morning, this week, let this simple truth soak into your hearts again:
There’s nothing you must do to be justified by God.
There’s nothing you can do to be justified by God.
It is Jesus Christ Who has proven your value and your worth for all eternity. You were worth His death on the cross.
It is Jesus Christ Who justifies sinners.
Not you.
Not me.
Not our works.
Not being nice.
Christ has done it all.
Christ alone.
Thanks be to God! Amen
[This was prepared to be shared during both worship celebrations with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, where God has granted me the undeserved privilege of being pastor.]
[Although anything cringe-worthy, misinformed, or otherwise embarrassing to the cause of Christ in this sermon is solely attributable to moments when I wasn't paying attention to God's guiding, I did find D.J Lura's approach Article 4 of the Confession extremely helpful!]
Maybe it was a teacher or a coach.
Or the relative you disappointed, the woman you were trying to woo, or the man you loved.
Maybe it was an old boss or the person you wanted to be your new boss.
When you want to prove yourself to someone, you work hard at it. You put in more effort, extra hours, all for the sake of winning over a person whose approval or disapproval stands between who you are and who you want to become.
In fact, it seems like much of our lives can be spent, in one way or another, doing things to justify our existences, doing things to prove our value. That fact about our lives is either going to make the message of today’s sermon deeply upsetting or the most freeing word you’ve ever heard! Here's a preview of what's to follow: You don't have a thing to prove!
In the sermon series in which we're involved now we’re considering the question, “What is a Lutheran Christian?” To find the answer, we’re looking at one of the basic statements of faith produced by the Lutheran movement, The Augsburg Confession, written by Martin Luther’s colleague, Philipp Melanchthon back in 1530.
Today, we look at what both the New Testament and Article 4 of the Confession call, “justification.” Luther said that on this article, the Church “stands or falls.” Lutherans have always believed that justification is “the chief article of our faith.” Justification is at the center of Biblical Christianity.
So, what is justification? Two weeks ago, we talked about Article 2 of the Confession, the one dealing with original sin. We said that original sin is the lack of trust in God and love for others with which we are born. Like David in Psalm 51:5, we all, if we’re honest, can say, “Indeed, I was born guilty, a sinner when my mother conceived me.”
The Greek New Testament words for guilty, justify, justification, and even righteousness are borrowed from the language used about criminal justice. Think about how a legal system works: A person is accused of a crime. A judge or a jury will either find him or her innocent or guilty. Justice, a word that sounds like justify, is done. A person convicted of a crime is guilty. A person found not guilty is acquitted; they’re justified in the eyes of the court; they’re innocent, right in the eyes of law, just as being righteous is to be right in the eyes of God.
But what hope do we have if we’re born guilty? If we come into this world alienated from God and have an irresistible orientation to violating the will of God for human beings as revealed in the Ten Commandments, what hope do we possibly have as we stand before God, the righteous judge?
The world, including most of its religions, answers those questions by saying that we need to get busy to win over God in the same ways we try to win over the people of this world: work, work, work.
But the problem with that answer is that from the moment you were conceived, you inherited a debt for sin to God so big that it makes the national debt look like chump change. Even if you had a million lifetimes to make things right by being a nice person, you still couldn’t pay off the debt you owe to God for your sin.
Our position is stated well in Isaiah 64:6: “...we are all like an unclean thing. And all our righteousnesses [all our violations of God’s holiness] are like filthy rags. We all fade as a leaf and our iniquities [our sins], like the wind, have taken us away.”
To the charge of sin, it must be said, each one of us is guilty. And the Bible makes it clear that there is nothing we can do to expunge sin from our souls and that God will not tolerate any particle of sin in His presence. There’s nothing we can do to prove ourselves worthy of salvation.
That’s just the way things would stay in all of our lives were it not for something that God does for us because He loves us. That something is called justification. So, what is justification? Please pull out the buff and brown editions of The Augsburg Confession you’ll find in the pew racks and turn to Article IV, Justification. It says:
Our churches teach that people cannot be justified before God by their own strength, merits, or works. People are freely justified for Christ’s sake, through faith, when they believe that they are received into favor and that their sins are forgiven for Christ’s sake. By His death, Christ made satisfaction for our sins. God counts this faith for righteousness in His sight...Think of what that means: The Judge cast aside His robes, then volunteered to take our sentence--the eternity of separation from God we deserve--on Himself. The Bible says that the wages of sin is death, but Jesus, totally innocent God and man, took those wages and paid for our sins in full on the cross. The guilty can do nothing to make themselves acceptable to God. But God does all that for us through Christ. The apostle Paul explains it this way in Romans 3:22-26 (I’m starting at the end of verse 22):
For there is no difference; for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus Whom God set forth as a propitiation [Propitiation is an act designed to gain favor.] by His blood, through faith, to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance [in God’s patience] God has passed over the sins that were previously committed, to demonstrate at the present time [pay attention here, please] that He might be [both] just [that means, just in condemning us for sin] AND the justifier [the one who renders the verdict of innocent] of the [person] who has faith” [in Jesus Christ!]We are born slaves to sin, inheritors of death without hope of protection from our rightful condemnation and hell. But through His shed blood on the cross, Jesus redeemed or bought out of slavery to sin and death everyone who believes in Jesus. This is the greatest miracle God has ever done: The very Judge Who convicts us, justifies us by dying on the cross for us!
So, here’s a little test for you, just five questions, each with a single one-word answer. Feel free, Lutherans, to say the answers out loud. Ready?
What must you to become worthy of being in God's presence?
NOTHING.
What must you do to prove yourself worthy of heaven?
NOTHING.
What can you do to get the forgiveness of sin?
NOTHING.
What can you to earn everlasting life with God?
NOTHING.
What can you do to get God’s presence and help with you through the uncertainties of this life?
NOTHING.
You can do nothing to gain all these blessings because, in Jesus Christ, God has already done everything you need to receive them!
“Now wait a minute!” I can imagine someone saying. “It says we have to believe in Jesus. Isn’t faith something we have to do in order to be saved?”
We ask this because it violates our arrogant pride to take something for nothing, even from God.
It sticks in our craws to have to admit that, like every other ordinary human being in history, we’re garden variety sinners, in need of God’s forgiveness.
It gives our sense of self-sufficiency--the idea that we can be good enough and strong enough on our own steam--a firm smackdown from the God Who made us and has the final say over our lives!
But the fact is that even the faith to believe that Jesus Christ gives me forgiveness and eternal life is a gift I can do nothing to receive, or earn, or deserve. Turn please, to Ephesians 2:8. It says: “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God...”
Even the faith we need to receive the justification that God gives through Christ is a gift.
You can not manufacure faith.
You can’t earn faith.
You can’t steal faith.
You can’t even inherit faith from your parents by being a dutiful pew-occupying Lutheran.
Faith in Jesus Christ is a personal gift God gives to us one person at a time.
Faith can only come to you when you stop “doing,” put down your dukes, and let God give you the faith that in Jesus Christ, God declares you justified, righteous, right with God. Innocent despite all the evidence to the contrary.
So, what about good works?
What about giving food to the CHAP food bank; money for the world hunger efforts of Lutheran World Relief, funneled through the ELCA; health kits for the ministry of Lutheran World Federation; the prayers we offer for the missionaries of the World Missionary Prayer League; our sponsorship the little Ethiopian girl, Toiba Seid, through World Vision; and the things we do for southern Ohio through Lutheran Social Services?
Don’t our good works count for something?
Good works have a place in the life of a Christian. They’re a way of telling God, “Thank You” for the free gifts of faith, justification, and new life we receive through Jesus.
But our good works won't make us any more loved by God than we were when stubbornly refused to repent for our sins. Our good works won't make us any more redeemed than we were the hour we first believed. We’ll talk about the place of good works in Christians’ lives later in this series.
But for now, this morning, this week, let this simple truth soak into your hearts again:
There’s nothing you must do to be justified by God.
There’s nothing you can do to be justified by God.
It is Jesus Christ Who has proven your value and your worth for all eternity. You were worth His death on the cross.
It is Jesus Christ Who justifies sinners.
Not you.
Not me.
Not our works.
Not being nice.
Christ has done it all.
Christ alone.
Thanks be to God! Amen
[This was prepared to be shared during both worship celebrations with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, where God has granted me the undeserved privilege of being pastor.]
[Although anything cringe-worthy, misinformed, or otherwise embarrassing to the cause of Christ in this sermon is solely attributable to moments when I wasn't paying attention to God's guiding, I did find D.J Lura's approach Article 4 of the Confession extremely helpful!]
Friday, January 25, 2013
Worry
Saw this magnet at a store in the Short North of Columbus, where Ann and I got to spend some time a few weeks ago.
If Only
Just the other day, the teens of our youth group were telling me how grossed out they were by some of their classmates at school not heeding the requirements of this sign.
It would be great if all businesses (and schools, for that matter) posted signs something like this one. (Although it does need a little editing: I'm not sure how people can pull their shirts and shoes up over their underwear.)
Thanks to Glen VanderKloot and Belleville Farmers Market for posting this on Facebook!
[See also: On Seeing Three Penguins at Kroger.]
Everyone's Invited!
In a parable He once told, Jesus said that when we have parties, don't invite the folks you know best or the rich neighbors. They'll all feel obligated to return your favor. Instead, Jesus said, "Invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind..." (Luke 14:12-14).
In Jesus' time, "the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind" were often excluded from worshiping God because they were considered impure. There are people today's society may consider too impure to associate with or too impure to be objects of God's blessing and love.
But God wants to include all people in His kingdom, His eternal party, in which the return of His rebel people to fellowship with Him is celebrated forever.
And what God wants should be the desire of every Christian who, by grace through faith in Jesus Christ alone, has already become part of God's kingdom.
The Bible teaches that the only ones to be "excluded" from God's kingdom are those who have decided to exclude themselves.
They do this by rejecting Jesus and the Gospel (the Good News) about Him and God's revealed will for the human race.
As Jesus says in John 3:18, referring to Himself in the third persons, "Those 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."
We Christians are to invite others--no matter how different from or like us they may be--to know and follow Jesus because we remember that we too are sinners saved by God's charity (grace). As Jesus tells us, "For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted" (Luke 14:11).
I hope that all of us who believe in Christ will exalt God by inviting others to "come and see" Jesus in our churches and in our lives (John 1:46) so that, they can turn from sin and trust in Jesus for life.
[Jesus said:] "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent and believe in the good news" (Mark 1:15).
And here's the good news, according to Jesus, "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" (John 3:16).
Let's not give any of our friends, relatives, or others a reason to exclude themselves from God's kingdom.
Let's invite them to the "feast that has no end" so that they too can be part of the celebration that starts now and lasts for all eternity for those who believe in Jesus!
[Read here. It inspired this post.]
In Jesus' time, "the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind" were often excluded from worshiping God because they were considered impure. There are people today's society may consider too impure to associate with or too impure to be objects of God's blessing and love.
But God wants to include all people in His kingdom, His eternal party, in which the return of His rebel people to fellowship with Him is celebrated forever.
And what God wants should be the desire of every Christian who, by grace through faith in Jesus Christ alone, has already become part of God's kingdom.
The Bible teaches that the only ones to be "excluded" from God's kingdom are those who have decided to exclude themselves.
They do this by rejecting Jesus and the Gospel (the Good News) about Him and God's revealed will for the human race.
As Jesus says in John 3:18, referring to Himself in the third persons, "Those 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."
We Christians are to invite others--no matter how different from or like us they may be--to know and follow Jesus because we remember that we too are sinners saved by God's charity (grace). As Jesus tells us, "For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted" (Luke 14:11).
I hope that all of us who believe in Christ will exalt God by inviting others to "come and see" Jesus in our churches and in our lives (John 1:46) so that, they can turn from sin and trust in Jesus for life.
[Jesus said:] "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent and believe in the good news" (Mark 1:15).
And here's the good news, according to Jesus, "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" (John 3:16).
Let's not give any of our friends, relatives, or others a reason to exclude themselves from God's kingdom.
Let's invite them to the "feast that has no end" so that they too can be part of the celebration that starts now and lasts for all eternity for those who believe in Jesus!
[Read here. It inspired this post.]
Thursday, January 24, 2013
A Horrible Phenomenon: Elder Abuse
Elder abuse is a horrible matter to consider. But sunlight is the best disinfectant. Consider:
God commands: "Honor your father and your mother." God empower us to keep this command with faithfulness and joy.
[Thanks to Ohio Update for linking to this article over on Twitter.]
The number of Americans 65 and over is projected to nearly double by 2030 because of the 74 million baby boomers born in 1946-64, and the number of people 85 and over is increasing even faster rate. The number of seniors being abused, exploited or neglected every year is often estimated at about 2 million, judging by available statistics and surveys, but experts say the number could be much higher. Some research indicates that 1 in 10 seniors have suffered some form of abuse at least once.Read this important news report.
God commands: "Honor your father and your mother." God empower us to keep this command with faithfulness and joy.
[Thanks to Ohio Update for linking to this article over on Twitter.]
Steal My Show!
As Rick Warren puts it in one of the most subversive published sentences in recent history, "It's not about you."
It's not about me.
I didn't make this universe.
I'm not a self-made man.
It's not about me.
It's about the God we know in Jesus Christ. He's the only One worth giving glory or celebration.
He's done it all for us:
- He made us.
- Then, when we fell prey to sin and death, He became one of us, died for us, and rose for us.
- Today, He gives new and everlasting life to all who repent and believe in Him.
Jesus teaches us to pray, "Your will be done." Learning to live that out, but it also introduces us to the only way to live. When we live by the world's code of, "My will be done," destruction and death and discord are the inevitable results.
So, whatever we may have in mind, may we learn to step aside and let the God we know in Jesus bring about His will in our lives and in the life of the world.
Lord, steal our shows!
Do You Get Facebook Envy?
Have you ever trolled through your news feed on Facebook, observed the seemingly perfect lives of your "friends" and felt that your own life wasn't as fulfilling as theirs?
If you've had such feelings, it appears you're not alone.
But my experience suggests that the postings of some on Facebook are the equivalent of the "perfect annual Christmas newsletter," that genre of perky self-congratulation and personal promotion that masquerades as a celebration of the birth of Jesus.
I stay on Facebook, for one reason, because it's a great way to communicate with members of our congregation on upcoming events and other news about the church. It also allows me to be in touch with old friends. (Our last high school reunion, our fortieth, was largely organized via Facebook!) I also see what's going on with the members of my extended family, with whom I would otherwise be in touch personally or by phone only sporadically.
I like Facebook. But I have seen some destructive things come out of Facebook usage.
For example, the very use of the term "friend" to describe people you follow and who follow you can create misunderstandings, anger, and hurt feelings when people realize that the person who the social media site has told you is a friend is really only an acquaintance or a business associate.
Unfriending a person can also cause considerable pain and misunderstanding. But there can be a variety of reasons for a Facebook "friend" to "unfriend' you:
Truth is, Facebook, originally created as a "meet and greet" for college-age singles has, in some ways, contributed to the "adolscentization" of our culture. Sometimes scrolling down my Facebook news feed is like walking down the hallways of a high school. The vapid, pointless content is eminently scroll-throughable.
But there are good things about Facebook. Here's what I most appreciate and look for in my news feed:
Others will simply present slices of their lives to friends, acquaintances, and associates. On Facebook, as in all of life, it seems to me, it's best to just be yourself.
But not too much of yourself, please! One of my favorite passages in Merle Miller's oral biography of Harry Truman (a book that admittedly, may not be altogether reliable), involves a conversation Miller had with one of the thirty-third president's cousins. She was asked about life in Independence, Truman's hometown and hers. She said that she greeted people with, "How are you today?" But she most emphatically didn't want to know the answer. Let's be honest: Being yourself is good policy. But so is being your whole self with only a few trusted intimates.
If seeing a person with volumes of birthday greetings makes you envious--Remember wanting to be "popular" back in middle school and high school?--just ask yourself this question. Have you got a close friend with whom you can share anything? If so, that's worth more than a stack of birthday greetings on Facebook.
If you don't, remember that the best way to have a friend is to be one. And don't look for a friend on Facebook. Look for her or him in life. That's the best place to live.
Like most things in life, in itself, Facebook is morally neutral. It's a means of communication. And my advice to those who, like some in the German research, are brought down by the self-congratulation of many Facebook participants is simple: Limit your time on Facebook or leave the site altogether. Your life won't be any worse off for not being "on Facebook." It might be better.
If you've had such feelings, it appears you're not alone.
A study conducted jointly by two German universities found rampant envy on Facebook, the world's largest social network that now has over one billion users and has produced an unprecedented platform for social comparison.If you attach much credibility to the postings of those Facebook friends who seem to use most of their posts to brag about how wonderful their lives, children, parents, spouses, children, and vacations are, I could understand how you might develop a case of "Facebook envy."
The researchers found that one in three people felt worse after visiting the site and more dissatisfied with their lives, while people who browsed without contributing were affected the most.
But my experience suggests that the postings of some on Facebook are the equivalent of the "perfect annual Christmas newsletter," that genre of perky self-congratulation and personal promotion that masquerades as a celebration of the birth of Jesus.
I stay on Facebook, for one reason, because it's a great way to communicate with members of our congregation on upcoming events and other news about the church. It also allows me to be in touch with old friends. (Our last high school reunion, our fortieth, was largely organized via Facebook!) I also see what's going on with the members of my extended family, with whom I would otherwise be in touch personally or by phone only sporadically.
I like Facebook. But I have seen some destructive things come out of Facebook usage.
For example, the very use of the term "friend" to describe people you follow and who follow you can create misunderstandings, anger, and hurt feelings when people realize that the person who the social media site has told you is a friend is really only an acquaintance or a business associate.
Unfriending a person can also cause considerable pain and misunderstanding. But there can be a variety of reasons for a Facebook "friend" to "unfriend' you:
- The "friend" tires of your negative ranting about the state of the world.
- The "friend" has reason to believe that you take her or his posts and turn them into gossip bearing little resemblance to what they've posted.
- The "friend" may feel that you've portrayed yourself as a bosom buddy to him or her, intimating greater closeness than exists, reaping whatever benefits--psychological or otherwise--from your "relationship."
- The "friend" considers you an acquaintance, not a friend.
- The "friend" wants to simplify her or his presence on Facebook.
- The "friend" wants to relate to you by way of a group, rather that at a more personalized level.
- And, maybe, as the German research shows, the "friend" is getting depressed with your posts. (I can't imagine giving someone else the privilege of depressing me, but I can see that it's possible.)
Truth is, Facebook, originally created as a "meet and greet" for college-age singles has, in some ways, contributed to the "adolscentization" of our culture. Sometimes scrolling down my Facebook news feed is like walking down the hallways of a high school. The vapid, pointless content is eminently scroll-throughable.
But there are good things about Facebook. Here's what I most appreciate and look for in my news feed:
- A funny thought someone has just had. Just yesterday, a member of the congregation I served, posted that driving through the kind of snow we experienced in this area last evening made her think of the Milennium Falcon going into hyperspace. It made me laugh out loud, because I've often thought the same thing.
- A thought about life or faith. My son is great at posting short paragraphs containing some new insight he's gained through his living, praying, working, and studying. I love it when people share things like that.
- A link to an article someone found enjoyable or interesting.
- A prayer request, whether offered for the the "friend" himself or herself or on behalf of others. In the past 72 hours, I've been able to pray for the moms of a number of Facebook friends who were all being hospitalized.
- Announcements about births, baptisms, weddings, deaths, funerals, and other life events. These allow Facebook "friends" to be connected and to "rejoice with those who rejoice" and "weep with those who weep" (Romans 12:15).
- Pictures and videos of life events are also often nice to see.
- Anything about the Cincinnati Reds or the Ohio State Buckeyes. ( I understand that these might not be everyone's cup of tea.)
Others will simply present slices of their lives to friends, acquaintances, and associates. On Facebook, as in all of life, it seems to me, it's best to just be yourself.
But not too much of yourself, please! One of my favorite passages in Merle Miller's oral biography of Harry Truman (a book that admittedly, may not be altogether reliable), involves a conversation Miller had with one of the thirty-third president's cousins. She was asked about life in Independence, Truman's hometown and hers. She said that she greeted people with, "How are you today?" But she most emphatically didn't want to know the answer. Let's be honest: Being yourself is good policy. But so is being your whole self with only a few trusted intimates.
If seeing a person with volumes of birthday greetings makes you envious--Remember wanting to be "popular" back in middle school and high school?--just ask yourself this question. Have you got a close friend with whom you can share anything? If so, that's worth more than a stack of birthday greetings on Facebook.
If you don't, remember that the best way to have a friend is to be one. And don't look for a friend on Facebook. Look for her or him in life. That's the best place to live.
Like most things in life, in itself, Facebook is morally neutral. It's a means of communication. And my advice to those who, like some in the German research, are brought down by the self-congratulation of many Facebook participants is simple: Limit your time on Facebook or leave the site altogether. Your life won't be any worse off for not being "on Facebook." It might be better.
Tuesday, January 22, 2013
How Christian Are Our Churches?
Earlier today, my son Philip, observed on his Facebook account:
I responded:
What we should truly find disconcerting in the church is that so many of us are cultural Christians. We are partisans to ideologies, political beliefs, or even advertisements. We remove Scripture from the Gospel and wrap it around our ideology of church, then declare, "Here I stand upon this idol that will fall."What insightful and disturbing thoughts about American cultural religion served up with a veneer of Christian religiosity!
I responded:
That says it all, Phil!
That's why the Lutheran movement has so much to offer to the whole Christian family and to a world in need of Christ.
The world needs the five "solas," the five alones:
- By Scripture alone!
- By faith alone!
- By grace alone!
- By Christ alone!
- To the glory of God alone!
Luther said, “Whatever your heart clings to and confides in, that is really your God”
The one true, living, life-giving God is the only one revealed in Christ, Who inspired the only book from God, the Bible, Who saves people from sin and death not by their works or ideologies, but ony as an act of His charitable grace extended on His initiative and not any human beings', only to those who open themselves to the creation of faith in Jesus Christ within them!
"There is salvation in no one [and nothing] else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved" (Acts 4:12).
All other ground--ideologies, patriotism, family, sexual identity, ethnic identity, racial identity, money, prominence, the world's affirmation--is sinking sand. When we put our trust in the world's godlets, including ourselves, we die. When we put our trust in the God made plain to all in Christ, we live, now and in eternity.
Only Christ can make a person right with the One Who made us all.
Only Christ can set us free to be the people we were made to be by God.
Only Christ can set us free from the godlets that lie to us about where peace and hope are found, and set us free to live as children of God.
It's a sin that both in churches that call themselves liberal and those that call themselves conservative, they worship idol versions of God, versions in which the God they claim to follow is made in their image. He likes their politics. He likes their political parties. He likes their political policy preferences. He's even in accord with their preferences on how items in the federal budget ought to be expended. (We see this all the time in the ELCA, which is moving away from Christ by steady, alarming increments every day, it seems.)
I'm not part of a conservative Church or a liberal Church. I'm part of Christ's Church, one body that exists wherever Christ's Gospel is rightly proclaimed and His Sacraments are rightly administered.
Christ will not be pushed into the boxes we like. His task is not to let Him be a milquetoast we make over in our image, but to make us over in His image all those who dare to surrender to Him and dare to have their old selves killed so that their new selves can rise in the process of daily repentance and renewal in Christ's Name.
When we believe in Jesus, we submit to a kind of violent revolution that goes on in our lives--our minds, our wills, our emotions--every day. We give the inventor the right to retool us to function as we were made to function. We give the author the right to rewrite all the dreadful chapters we've come up with on our own. We let God restore us to our right minds, no longer functioning as zombies in a death march in which the tune is played by the gods that, first, we choose, and then call their tune to their devotees, robbing them of any real meaning for their lives, and then leave them writhing in eternal separation from God.
The Church needs to be about living for and pointing the world to Christ as our only hope.
If the Church cannot speak with clarity about the only Source for life and hope--Jesus Christ--the world is in trouble. And the failure of the body of Christ to live for Christ alone is an abomination, damnable. May God have mercy on us!
Great thoughts, Philip!
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