The Blessed Life

Below is the video of last Sunday's 11:00 AM worship service with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. Beneath that is text of the message shared then.]



Mark 5:1-12

In my younger years, when I read Matthew 5:1-12, today’s Gospel lesson, I completely misunderstood it. With each “Blessed...” that Jesus speaks, I thought He was saying things like, “You’ll be blessed if you’re a peacemaker” and “You’ll be blessed if you hunger and thirst for righteousness.” It seemed to me that in every line, Jesus was laying down the Law, giving me marching orders as a Christian. “If you want to be blessed,” I thought Jesus was telling me, “you’ll do these things, act in these ways, think like this.” I was wrong!

There are movements in the Church that continue to read these words of Jesus in this way. Some churches tell people that they will be saved and that they will be blessed if they ask Jesus into their hearts, if they decide to follow Jesus, if they decide to get baptized as a sign of their decision for Christ. Proponents of the “prosperity gospel” say people will be blessed, by which they mean people will have money, if they obey not only God’s laws, but others they throw in from their own misreading of the Bible. Some churches tell people they’ll be blessed with good health if they only believe enough.

But legalistic, performative religion that keeps telling us to be good or be better is not Christian faith! Romans 10:4 reminds us that, “Christ is the culmination of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes.” That means that Jesus Christ, truly God and truly human, the new Adam, the first-born of the new human race, has perfectly fulfilled the demands of God’s Law, the Law you and I are incapable of keeping. Jesus offered His perfectly sinless, righteous life on the cross in payment for our sin so that when He rose from the dead, affirmed and approved by God the Father, He could give His righteousness to all who, by the power of the Holy Spirit working through the Word and in the Sacraments, confess that, “Jesus is Lord!” (1 Corinthians 12:3)

Jesus’ words in today’s lesson are not the words of a self-help guru telling us how to be blessed. They’re not new laws meant to make you get busy at becoming a better person or a better Christian.

Although we often call the words Jesus speaks here, “The Beatitudes,” there are many beatitudes strewn throughout the Old and New Testaments. A beatitude, quite simply, describes elements of living in God’s blessedness. A more useful synonym for the word blessed Jesus uses today, might be, one Lutheran pastor has suggested, saved. For example, “Saved are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” This helps drive home the fact that in the Beatitudes, Jesus isn’t giving us prescriptions for salvation or “the good life,” but descriptions of what life is like for people who trust in Him. “When you are saved by grace through faith in Me,” Jesus is telling us, “this is what life in the Kingdom of Heaven is like, even in this fallen world!”

Let’s consider today just two of the Beatitudes Jesus gives today and see how He describes the lives of those saved by His grace and not through their efforts to be good or better people. “Blessed,” Jesus says, as we’ve already mentioned, “are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 5:3)

What does it mean to be “poor in spirit”? It means that when I look at myself, particularly in light of the perfect righteousness of God revealed in Jesus, I take no confidence in my righteousness. I see that I am a sinner in need of a Savior. To be “poor in spirit” is to be honest with God and myself. I’m open to the righteousness of God that we receive only as we daily repent and trust in Jesus and His righteousness. “For it is not the one who commends himself who is approved,” we’re told in 2 Corinthians 10:18, “but the one whom the Lord commends.” It’s only the spiritually weak and impoverished who are filled with the strength and righteousness of Jesus. There is great freedom in this, friends! When we rely on Jesus’ righteousness and not our own, we don’t have to pretend to be anything but who we are: grateful children of God!

Think now of the final of Jesus’ beatitudes for us today: “Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 5:10) We’re fortunate to live in a country in which there is no official infringement on our freedom of religion. We can gather freely for worship and Bible studies. We can pray over our meals in restaurants. We can tell others about Jesus. We can serve our neighbors in Jesus’ name.

But there are subtle forms of persecution. Believers are often shunned or pigeonholed by others because we believe in Jesus. We’re the objects of uninformed stereotyping. A few weeks ago, our daughter was talking with a woman who told her what a terrible person her father must be, “Don’t you know that all pastors are thieves?”

In describing life in His kingdom, Jesus says that Christians are to expect persecution of all kinds. He’s saying, “If you’re following Me, this is going to happen. If you’re persecuted for following Me, it means you’re on the right track. It means you’re drawing life from the right Lord and Savior.”

Christians should expect persecution. The apostle Peter told the churches in first-century Asia Minor, “Dear friends, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that has come on you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you.” (1 Peter 4:12) Persecution of different kinds is a byproduct of being saved by Jesus Christ from sin, death, and darkness.

I was telling a member of Living Water the other night, some of what Ann and I experienced when we fought for the authority of God’s Word, the Bible, in a previous parish. A former pastor organized opposition. Area pastors, not even members of the congregation, came to meetings and impugned the integrity of members who were standing on God’s Word and told me, obliquely, that I was being arrogant. One night, a doped-up, drunk man plowed into both of our vehicles, totaling them both. While we waited for the police to show, the driver toted a pistol to my porch. In the midst of it all, I had a heart attack that should have killed me. If you follow Jesus, you will be persecuted by the devil and the world and sometimes, even the Church. But you will also be blessed, living in the presence of Jesus, assured that nothing can separate you from His love!

This must not lead us to self-righteousness or to closing ourselves off to the world though. Think of Jesus and how His life was blessed just as He describes blessedness in today’s lesson. He was poor in spirit; He completely depended on God the Father, never speaking a Word beyond what the Father gave Him to speak. (John 12:49) He was meek. “I am gentle and humble in heart,” He says in Matthew 11:29. Jesus hungered and thirsted only to do the will of the Father, even when He faced the brutality of the cross. He was merciful, praying God’s forgiveness for those who drove nails into His hands and feet and mocked Him. Jesus was pure in heart, keeping His eyes fixed on God through cross and empty tomb. Jesus is the peacemaker, who is the bridge between God and the fallen human race. He is the “one mediator between God and mankind…” (1 Timothy 2:5) Jesus was persecuted, enduring the rejection of Jews and Gentiles alike, so that He could win life with God for us all.

The point? Just this: The blessed life is the life saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. And, as we turn to Him each day in repentance and faith, when we receive the Word of God that convicts us of our sin and convinces us of God’s grace given to us in Jesus Christ, when we trust that He makes us His child in Holy Baptism, and when we trust that He comes to us, body and blood, in, with, and under the bread and the wine, we are living in His kingdom. No matter what happens to us in this world, as we turn to Jesus, we are blessed--we are saved. Jesus’ life fills the lives of those who believe in Him and we are blessed. That’s what Jesus teaches us in the Beatitudes. Amen

Living Today

[Below you'll find, first, the video of today's 11:00 AM worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. It's the modern service. We have a traditional service at 8:45 on Sunday mornings. Beneath the video is the text of the message for the day.]

Mark 13:1-13

The temple in Jerusalem of first-century Judea was impressive. It was made of more than 100-tons of stone. It was built to impress. That’s why the words of one of the disciples at the start of today’s Gospel lesson, Mark 13:1-13, are understandable. “Look, Teacher!” the unidentified disciple says to Jesus, “What massive stones! What magnificent buildings!”

But Jesus is unimpressed. That’s because Jesus knows not only that the temple is going to be destroyed in 70 AD, He also knows that He and His death on the cross are about to make the temple and the sacrifices that took place there, forever obsolete. After Jesus offers His body and blood on the cross, no sacrifice of animals or grains will ever again be needed. Instead, people will only be “​​made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.” (Hebrews 10:10) So, Jesus hits the disciples with what they see as an alarming prophecy. “Do you see all these great buildings?” Jesus asks the disciple. “Not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down.” (Mark 13:2) Jesus’ words stunned the disciples. So much so that later, four of them--Peter, John, James, and Andrew, the first four to be called by Jesus--approach Jesus with a question. “Tell us,” they say to Jesus, “when will these things happen? And what will be the sign that they are all about to be fulfilled?” (Mark 13:4)

You’ve heard me say before that if we give Jesus an inch, He’ll take a mile. We may come to God the Father with prayer in Jesus’ name with nothing more than a bundle of confusion and half-baked, half-sinful desires. But because we come to God in Jesus’ name, the Holy Spirit will turn our jumbles into prayers for God’s Kingdom to come and for God’s will be done in the lives of the people for whom and in the circumstances about which we pray. “We do not know what we ought to pray for,” the apostle Paul says, “but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans.” (Romans 8:26) This is true of the disciples’ and others’ encounter with Jesus in today’s gospel lesson. The disciples thought they needed to know how to live if the temple, the place where sacrifices were made, disappeared. Instead, Jesus knows that what we all need to know is how to live because, at His cross, He became the perfect, definitive sacrifice for our sin, and how we who trust in Jesus are to live until that day when we see Jesus face to face. Bishop Dan Selbo says that Jesus here tells us how to live today in light of tomorrow. And he said that there are five ways Jesus tells us to live in our lesson. I think he’s right.

First, Jesus tells us that we’re to be confident of His return. Jesus says elsewhere in Mark’s gospel that one day, “people will see the Son of Man [Jesus] coming in clouds with great power and glory. And he will send his angels and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of the heavens.” (Mark 13:26-27) Because we know that Jesus will return, we who trust in Him as our God and Savior can live confidently. Jesus has done everything necessary to destroy the power of sin and death over our lives. The future of the cosmos and our personal destinies are in His hands. And there’s nothing we can do or must do to be right with Him. We simply bring our sins and our trust to Him and He covers us in His victory over sin and death. We can look to Jesus’ return confident that by His Word and Sacraments and the faith in Christ they have created in us, we belong to God forever!

Second, Jesus says that we’re to be careful not to be led away from Christ. “Watch out that no one deceives you,” Jesus tells us. “Many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am he,’ and will deceive many.” (Mark 14:6) We’re to be wary of anyone or anything that leads us away from Jesus. If a legalistic Christian tells you that you have to observe certain days or eat certain foods to gain the freedom from sin and death Jesus has already earned for you at the cross, don’t listen to them! If what are called “antinomian” Christians tell you that it doesn’t matter what you do--that you can even sin unrepentantly--close your ears to their nonsense. If family members, spouses, friends, political leaders, celebrities, hobbies, fads, or obsessions are pulling you away from Christ, you need to be careful and turn back to Jesus. Jesus is the only One worthy to be followed. Be careful about who you listen to.

Third, Jesus says we’re to be cautious. There are religious kooks and crooks who will tell us they’ve figured out when Jesus is coming back. But Jesus says, “When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be earthquakes in various places, and famines. These are the beginning of birth pains.” (Mark 13:7-8) “The sinful world is gonna be the sinful world,” Jesus is saying. The best way to ensure that we don’t become desperate or stupid in the face of false messages is to live in daily fellowship with the God we know in Jesus. Read God’s Word. Pray. Fellowship with and in accountability to Christ’s Church. Stand under Christ’s grace and authority alone. I have been astounded in recent years to see how much hope that people who call themselves Christians put in political leaders and political parties, left and right. But Psalm 146 tells us: “Do not put your trust in princes, in human beings, who cannot save. When their spirit departs, they return to the ground; on that very day their plans come to nothing. Blessed are those whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord their God.” (Psalm 146:3-5) Be cautious about signing on to causes or philosophies or candidates.

Fourth, Jesus says to construct our lives on things that last. The God we know in Jesus is the only sure foundation, not any human works. The apostle Paul says in Ephesians 2:8-9: “...it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast.” A life that lasts, a life that endures through the chaos of this world and perseveres into eternity with God, is built on the God we know in Jesus Christ alone! Psalm 127:1 reminds us, “Unless the LORD builds the house, the builders labor in vain. Unless the LORD watches over the city, the guards stand watch in vain.”

Fifth, Jesus tells us to commit each day to following Him. He warns  Christians that, “Everyone will hate you because of me.” But then He promises, “the one who stands firm to the end [in following Him] will be saved.” (Mark 13:13) And since the One making this promise has died for us and risen from the dead, we can trust that promise. In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus says, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.” (Luke 9:23) During Advent, which starts on November 28, we’re asking all of our members to read a chapter a day of the Gospel of Luke in whatever English translation helps you best to hear God’s Word for you. Through His Word, God will help you to follow Jesus each day.

The world can throw all sorts of things at us. Jesus tells us to live today in light of the eternal tomorrow He gives to all who believe in Him: confident of His return; careful of not being led away from Jesus; cautious in discerning the words of those claiming to speak for Jesus; constructing our lives on Jesus alone; and committing each day to following Jesus. Jesus has told us, as you know well, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6) Jesus is where grace, life, and truth are, no matter what’s going on in the world. When you build your life on Jesus even when the world is falling apart, when you endure in following Him, you will always be safe in God’s hands. Amen

Jesus Sets the Captives Free

[Here's the Reformation Sunday message from last week. Beneath that, you'll find the video of our church's modern worship service. The people of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, would love to welcome you for in-person or online worship any Sunday.]

Romans 3:19-28

There’s a legend told about a man who stood trial for murder. The case was decided by the judge, without a jury. It didn’t take long for the prosecution to present its case. And the evidence of the man’s guilt was so overwhelming that the defense had no case. After the defense rested, the judge considered the verdict.

Back in the courtroom, the judge commanded the defendant to rise as he pronounced his judgment. “There isn’t a shred of evidence that casts doubt on my finding,” the judge said. “You are guilty as charged. You deserve death for your crime. That is the sentence I impose.” The defendant hung his head in shame. Then, the judge stunned the courtroom by declaring, “But I will take your punishment and will be executed in your place. You are free to go.”

It’s funny the reactions people have voiced when I’ve told this legend over the years. Some see the analogy I’m trying to draw and say, “But I’m no murderer!” Others complain that the defendant got off scot-free and should have been made to do something for his freedom. Still, others have told me that the judge in the story was a chump. But I tell you, friends, that this legend really tells us in parabolic form what this Reformation Sunday is all about, what our faith as Biblical, Lutheran Christians is about.

We see this reflected in our second lesson for this morning, Romans 3:19-28. Romans, you know, is a letter written by the apostle Paul to the Christians in the city of Rome in about 55 AD. Our lesson is at the cusp between the beginning of the letter in which Paul talks about the fallenness of the human race and the second part in which he talks about how God addresses and overcomes that fallenness.

This passage, a German pastor of the nineteenth century said, could be divided into three parts, each with an important message for us. The first part is contained in its opening verses: “Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God. Therefore no one will be declared righteous in God’s sight by the works of the law; rather, through the law, we become conscious of our sin.” (Romans 3:19-20)

The moral law of God, summarized in the Ten Commandments, is forever reflective of God’s good and perfect will for the human race. God wills that we should worship only Him because only God can give us life. God wills that we should honor our parents, not steal, not commit adultery, not engage in sexual intimacy outside of marriage, not lie, not covet. He wills that we should love God completely and love others as much as and in the same ways as we love ourselves. But, if you’re honest, you will have noticed something as I briefly reviewed God’s moral law just now: that never in your life, never on a single day of your life, have you ever perfectly obeyed God’s will for your life. Neither have I. In this section of our second lesson for today, we see that this is what the moral law proves: We are sinners, incapable of doing what God expects of us. That is, we are incapable of being righteous. Think of it. Righteousness is the basic requirement for entry into God’s kingdom and none of us is and none of us is capable of making ourselves righteous. We are all at least as guilty as the murderer in our legend.

Martin Luther, the young German monk and priest born in 1546, wanted desperately to be righteous, to have a life with God. But he saw his sin, his unrighteousness, too clearly. Until he became a student of Scripture, he thought that he was eternally damned. But he began to see that he could be free of sin and death when he considered verses like those that come next in our second lesson. Paul writes: “...But now apart from the law the righteousness of God has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,  and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood—to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished…” (Romans 3:21-25)

If the opening verses tell us about what the Law proves about you and me, these verses tell us what Jesus Christ gives to us! Think of it: The righteous judge of the universe sheds His blood for us, to cover us with His righteousness. Jesus offers Himself up to death and damnation for sin in our place! Like the judge in our legend, Jesus takes our rightful punishment. But Jesus doesn’t force His righteousness on us. The convicted murderer might have defiantly told the judge in our lesson: “I will not accept my need for your righteousness. I will stand on my own two feet. I will prove that your verdict is wrong or that I had the right to take that other man’s life.” People effectively say similar things to God all the time. They insist that they’re not that bad and that their lives are good enough not to need Jesus’ righteousness. I even heard this from so-called Christians. “I think I’m a pretty good guy,” they say with what they think is modesty. No, friends, the Law says none of us is that good and that we need, desperately need, Jesus’ righteousness.

This brings us to the third part of our lesson: “he [Jesus] did it [that is, died for us on the cross] to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies [That is, Jesus on the cross shows us both that our sin deserves death, that’s just, and that God shoulders our guilt for us, He justifies...] those who have faith in Jesus. Where, then, is boasting? It is excluded. Because of what law? The law that requires works? No, because of the law that requires faith. For we maintain that a person is justified by faith apart from the works of the law.” (Romans 3:26-28)

This last section, folks, tells us, “This is what faith receives.” When the gift of faith in Jesus Christ comes to us through the Word of God in the Bible and in Holy Baptism and Holy Communion, we believe that despite our unrighteousness and sin, Jesus Christ died and rose for us. We receive the good news, the gospel, that, not because of our good works, which will always fall short of righteousness or moral perfection, but because of what God the righteous Judge has done for me in the crucified and risen Jesus, we are forgiven. We are new. We belong to Jesus Christ for all eternity! When Martin Luther was assailed by doubts about His salvation, he cried out, “But I am baptized!” In other words, God has acted. I have been crucified and raised with Christ. God has spoken and neither the devil, nor the world, nor my sinful self can separate me from the Savior Jesus to Whom I turn in faith! This is the truth that faith in Christ receives, that we are justified, made right with God, by our faith in Jesus Christ alone. “For God so loved the world [God so loved you] that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16)

Jesus sets the captives free, all those in bondage to sin and death. To all who receive Him with faith, Jesus gives the freedom to live with God now and forever. This was the truth, Luther said, that opened the gates of heaven for him. As we turn in faith to Jesus each day, may those gates open wider and wider for us as well. Amen

Old Testament Book of Genesis, Part 23

Old Testament Book of Genesis, Part 22

The Old Testament Book of Genesis, Part 21

The Old Testament Book of Genesis, Part 20

Seeing Like Blind Bartimaeus

[Below is both the message from yesterday's worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio and a video of the entire service. Have a good week. God bless you.]

Mark 10:46-52

The Gospel writers--Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John--tell us that Jesus, during His earthly ministry, brought sight to several blind people. 

Jesus loved doing that. We can only speculate as to why. 

One possible reason Jesus loved to give sight to the blind is that, despite the fact that God performed miraculous signs through them, no Old Testament prophet ever was used by God to restore sight to blinded people. By giving sight to the blind, Jesus was signaling to a disbelieving world that, in Him, they see far more than a prophet dependent on God. In Jesus, they see--we see--God Himself.

Another reason Jesus may have loved giving sight to blind people is that blindness is nearly impossible for medical science to overcome, especially among those born blind. The inborn underdevelopment of the optic nerve during pregnancy, called optic nerve hypoplasia, is one of the three top causes of visual impairment in children. It still cannot be cured. When Jesus restored sight to people blind from the womb, He rewired their bodies, demonstrating that, as God the Son, He has power over everything. The man whose sight Jesus restores in chapter 9 of John’s Gospel exults, “Nobody has ever heard of opening the eyes of a man born blind!” (John 9:32)

Of course, there’s another kind of blindness. Physical blindness is a result of the human condition of sin, not, as Jesus says elsewhere because the person born blind or struck blind has sinned and God is punishing them. God is no monster. The condition of sin, of alienation from God and from the life that only God can give though, is at the bottom of all our woes: sinful thoughts and actions, disease, deterioration, death, discord, war, greed, sexual immorality, and so on. The condition of sin into which we all are born is also the ultimate reason for what we might call spiritual blindness: an unwillingness to trust God as God, a desire to push ourselves forward while pushing others down, a hard-heartedness toward God and others.

Today’s Gospel lesson, Mark 10:46-52, comes at the end of a section of Mark’s gospel in which Jesus has spent a lot of time talking about what it means to be His disciple--one who trusts in and follows Him--and telling the disciples what’s going to happen to Him in Jerusalem. He will go to a cross for our sin there and be raised by the Father. Throughout the section, the disciples seem blind to what Jesus shows them. Told that in the Kingdom of God, the last will be first and the first will be last, the disciples still argue over which of them is the greatest, and James and John ask if they can’t be Jesus’ right-hand men, lording it over the rest of the disciples, once, as they think will happen, Jesus becomes an earthly king.

And then, outside of Jericho, heading for Jerusalem, Mark tells us: “As Jesus and his disciples, together with a large crowd, were leaving the city, a blind man, Bartimaeus (which means “son of Timaeus”), was sitting by the roadside begging.”

Earlier in Mark’s book, when a rich man came to Jesus asking about eternal life, Mark didn't mention the rich man’s name. But he names  Bartimaeus. The name means son of Timaeus or son of honor. We don’t associate being a beggar with honor. But in those days, if you weren’t able-bodied, you were expected to beg to earn your keep and the people of God were expected to give to any beggars they encountered. Still, beggars didn’t enjoy exalted social positions. But Mark takes the time to tell us the name of Bartimaeus for an important reason, I think: God knows your name. God cares about you as an individual. God is concerned for your concerns and needs!

You matter to God even when the world tries to tell you that you’re nobody. By faith, Bartimaeus saw, despite his low position, that he mattered to God. He knew too, could see better than others despite being blind, Who Jesus is. “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” Bartimaeus shouts. (Mark 10:47) It’s interesting what Bartimaeus says here. In the Greek in which Mark wrote his gospel, the phrase Bartimaeus uses is, “Kyrie, Elieson,” “Lord, have mercy,” a phrase that often comes up in our worship. When we cry for mercy from God, we’re asking for every good thing that God might give to us, asking God not to give us the bad we deserve as human beings. In crying out for mercy, Bartimaeus was saying, “I’m no better than the rest of the human race, Lord. I’m a sinner. But, Jesus, I see that You are good. Help me!”

What happens next is predictable, I suppose. Often, when I ask God for His mercy, certain of His goodness and love, it seems that the devil, the world, and my sinful self are quick to say, “Be quiet, Mark! Who are you to ask for the help of the perfect God of the universe?” That’s what happens to Bartimaeus. The crowd around Jesus condemns him and tells him to be quiet. A sinful world and the sin inside of us want to tell us when we think to approach the God we know in Jesus for mercy, “Stay in your place! You’re not important enough, rich enough, powerful enough, learned enough, beautiful enough to bother God.” But Bartimaeus, despite his blindness, sees Jesus through the eyes of faith. So, he shouts out again, “Son of David [a title reflecting Bartimaeus’ awareness that Jesus is the Messiah], have mercy on me!” (Mark 10:48)

Jesus instructs His disciples to call Bartimaeus to Him and then asks the blind man, “What do you want me to do for you?” (Mark 10:51) Is that not the most remarkable question imaginable! Here’s Jesus, God in the flesh, on His way to suffering and the cross. But He stops for a nobody that the world wants to hush and asks, “What do you want me to do for you?” A woman once told me, “I never ask God for things. I suppose He has plenty of other things to do.” She was like the crowd around Bartimaeus. They thought that Jesus was too great to be bothered with Bartimaeus. But Bartimaeus sees that because of Jesus’ divine and perfect greatness, He’s willing to stop everything to hear everyone’s cry for mercy: from that of the tiniest child with her bedtime prayers to the most celebrated billionaire in need of God’s forgiveness.

Bartimaeus tells Jesus, ““Rabbi, I want to see.” (Mark 10:51) When giving sight to blind people elsewhere, Jesus did things like make mud with His spittle and put the compound on their eyes. With another, He pressed His fingers onto the blind person’s eyes. But here we’re told: “‘Go,’ said Jesus, ‘your faith has healed you.’ Immediately he received his sight and followed Jesus along the road.” (Mark 10:52) Without flash, pop, or even a press release, Jesus acceded to the request of a blind man who already saw clearly with eyes of faith that Jesus is our God and Savior!

We know that God doesn’t answer all of our prayers exactly the way we would like. As I reminded the church council this past week, if miracles were constant, we wouldn’t call them miracles; we would call them ordinaries. But through the eyes of faith in the crucified and risen Jesus, we, like Bartimaeus, can see something very clearly: God intends that the last word over our lives won’t be sin or death. God means for the last word He speaks over us while we live and when we die is this: His mercy. The healing of Bartimaeus and Jesus’ death on the cross shake us from our spiritual blindness and make us see that to all who trust in Jesus, His mercy will always and eternally more than meet our need; His grace will trump our sin; His resurrection will overcome our death. Before he ever saw Jesus, Bartimaeus believed in Jesus. May we, before that day when we encounter Him face to face in eternity, see Jesus with the eyes of faith too. Amen

[The painting, Christ and Bartimaeus (Mark 10:46-52), is by the Bulgarian artist, Julia Stankova. You can view a gallery of her work here.]

The Old Testament Book of Genesis, Part 18

I neglected to post the YouTube video of part eighteen of our study of Genesis from this past Tuesday night. Here it is.

The Old Testament Book of Genesis, Part 19

Jesus is Our Sabbath Rest

[Here's the message from this past Sunday's worship services with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. Have a good week!]

Hebrews 4:1-16
Today, the preacher speaking in our second lesson, Hebrews 4:1-13, pleads with Christians not to miss out on the Sabbath rest God has in mind for us. 

When he talks about Sabbath rest, he’s not referring to a particular day of the week. The early Church realized that Jesus’ death and resurrection meant that every day is meant to be a day of sabbath rest for those who believe in Jesus. Not a day without work perhaps, but a day of Sabbath rest.

The apostle Paul lamented over Christians who thought they had to keep the Jewish calendar to be saved from sin and death. “You are observing special days and months and seasons and years!” Paul tells them. “I fear for you, that somehow I have wasted my efforts on you.” The Christians to whom Paul wrote missed the whole point of Sabbath rest. 

The Small Catechism tells us what this Sabbath rest is about when it explains the Third Commandment--”Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy”--like this: “We should fear and love God so that we do not despise His Word and the preaching of it, but acknowledge it as holy, and gladly hear and learn it.” 

For the Christian, Sabbath rest isn’t about a day; it’s about a relationship of trust in Jesus, God the Son, created by God’s Word under which we daily stand. It’s the rest in which we can live, whether we're working or resting, in hard times or easy, in sickness or in health, because we live under the lordship of Jesus and the authority of His Word.

Now, all of this should be obvious to we disciples of Jesus. It’s the Word of God, after all, that proclaims the truth about our need for a Savior and about Jesus being that Savior that brings us salvation from sin, death, and futile living. 

The Law in this Word convicts us for our sin and the Gospel in this Word convinces us that even we, sinners though we all are, are saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ alone. 

More than that, it’s this Word and not we or our decisions or our good works, but this Word alone, that creates just such faith in Jesus. As the Bible says, “...​​faith comes from hearing the message [that is, the Gospel message about Jesus, crucified and risen], and the message is heard through the word about Christ.” (Romans 10:17)

When speaking of Sabbath rest, we might as well use the words like peace or calm, rather than rest. It's to be ours all the time. 

So, why is it that our days can seem like disconnected chains of chaos and demands, uncertainty and questions and deadline? 

Why do we often feel far from God? 

And what difference does it make if we live in God’s Sabbath rest anyway?

The New Testament book of Hebrews is a sermon by an unknown preacher, given to Jewish Christians in about 70 AD. Since Jesus’ death and resurrection about forty years earlier, the Gospel message had been proclaimed throughout the Roman Empire. Christian faith, with its proclamation of Jesus as “the Lord” and “the Son of God,” among other names, was seen by some Roman authorities as treason. That’s because the ways Christians described Jesus were the ways that Romans described their emperors. 

The Roman government hoped to divide the early Church by promising Jewish Christians that if they renounced faith in Christ, their persecution would end. Remember that in this very year, 70 AD, the Romans overran the Jewish rebellion in the holy land, destroying the temple in Jerusalem and ending the nation of Israel forever. To the Jewish Christians, the Roman offer had to be tempting. But the preacher in Hebrews pleads with his fellow Jews not to turn away from Christ. To turn from Christ is to turn from Yahweh, from God Who has entered our world in human flesh and become the perfect once-and-for-all-sacrifice for sin that renders the old Jewish rites of Sabbath and sacrifice null and void and sets us free, through faith in Christ, to live in God’s sabbath rest now and in eternity!

In our lesson, the preacher asks his fellow Jewish Christians not to make the same mistake their ancestors made in the wilderness between Egypt and the promised land some 1600-years earlier. He says that the promise God made to the ancestors of sabbath rest in the land God would give them still existed for them...and it exists for us today, not in a faraway land, but in our everyday lives. He writes: “...since the promise of entering [God’s] rest still stands, let us be careful that none of you be found to have fallen short of it. For we also have had the good news proclaimed to us, just as they did; but the message they heard was of no value to them, because they did not share the faith of those who obeyed.” (Hebrews 4:1-2) 

The “good news” for those ancient Hebrews had been rest in God’s kingdom in Palestine. 

The good news that comes to us in Jesus is vastly superior: peace and oneness with God, rest in His grace, His acceptance of us despite our sins and imperfections, the assurance that, no matter what, as we live in the faith Jesus, we will live in His peace, His rest.

Jesus told the first disciples, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.” (John 14:27) This sabbath rest, this constant peace even amid chaos, is ours when standing under God’s Word, we believe in Jesus. 

A troubled woman approached me. Her marriage was difficult. Nothing seemed to go right. I asked her if she’d tried reading some of God’s Word and praying a bit each day. “I don’t think I have the faith to do that,” she told me. “Try it anyway,” I suggested. A few weeks later, she told me, “I took your suggestion. Things haven’t changed that much. But I’m more at peace.” You see what happened. First, she stood under God’s Word and, through it, He helped her believe in Jesus, Who then poured Himself and His peace into her life. That is sabbath rest.

When the first generation of Israelites to be freed from slavery in Egypt turned their back on God and His promises, it took the form, first of idolatry and syncretism--that’s the mixing of faith in God with belief in other deities, including our favorite god, us. It also displayed itself in an unwillingness to hear God’s Word, trust in His promises, or follow the leadership of Moses. Moses’ faith even fell short. Moses and the first generation didn’t believe at critical times during the wilderness wanderings and so, didn’t enter the promised rest. As Psalm 95, which the preacher in our second lesson cites, says, God decided, “[t]hey shall never enter my rest…” (Hebrews 4:3)

But, the preacher reminds us that “Now we who have believed enter that rest…” Hebrews 4:3) This is our good news. Jesus has slipped the bonds of death so that He can fill us with life, eternal life when we trust in Him. He gives us Sabbath rest.

What chaos and temptations are you facing today? 

Is something pushing you away from God at work or at school? 

Are you being tempted by some sin, some violation of the ten commandments, in your personal life? 

Are you accosted by demands and challenges in your family life--a sick loved one, a disagreement, worry over money, concern for a child? 

We have all faced and often daily face such chaos. But there is good news for us! In Hebrews 4:15, the preacher says of Jesus: “...we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin.” 

Jesus has already conquered our chaos and promises sabbath rest to those who stand under His Word and trust in Him not only in eternity but today. “Today,” our second lesson tells us, “if you hear his voice [in His Word], do not harden your hearts.” (Hebrews 4:15) 

Be open to Jesus and His Word. 

Let Jesus and His Word give you the peace of God that passes all understanding. 

Jesus is your Sabbath rest. Rest in Him. Even now. Amen