For the Whole Church (including me): Make Disciples, Not Excuses!

This is a message meant for all Christians, including the one I see every time I look into the mirror.

The Church must stop blaming culture for its failure to be and make disciples of Christ. The Roman culture into which the ascended Jesus first sent His Church was far more secular and overtly hostile to belief in the one God revealed in Jesus than is true of North American culture today.

The time for bellyaching and blaming others for our failure to be the Church that Jesus has commissioned us to be has past.

Our call is clear: Do the Great Commission. Our authority to do so is clear: Jesus Himself gave it. (Matthew 28:19-20) Let's resolve together, Christians: No more excuses!

Pray, just as Jesus commanded us, for God to send workers into the harvest, Christians to share the good news of new and everlasting life for all who turn from sin and trust in Jesus with the whole needy, disbelieving world. (Matthew 9:38)

Pray that God will help you grow as a disciple each day through daily quiet time in the Bible, through regular involvement in groups of laypeople who meet and pray together and stand under God's Word and are accountable to each other, through regular worship of God with God's people in the Church. (More than 1.3 times per month, the current pathetic average among church members in the US these days.)

Ask God to bring unbelieving people into your life who you can befriend, serve, share Christ with, and, by the power of the Holy Spirit, make disciples.

I'm tired of excusing my failures as a Christian called to make disciples by blaming our secular culture. The underground and non-State-sponsored churches in nations like China and Russia are making disciples despite government hostility and cultural opposition. The risen Jesus is bigger than any culture.

Instead of whimpering in our holy huddles, feeding on the deadly diet of self-righteousness, as so often happens with Christ's Church these days, let's move into the world with the boldness that comes from knowing we belong to the living God Who has conquered the world through Christ's cross and with the humility of those who know that we have been saved by grace through faith in Christ.

Let's live believing the revealed truth that Jesus is the only way to life with God (John 14:6; Acts 4:12) and, moved with compassion for all of our neighbors everywhere, make disciples.

Let's make disciples, not excuses.

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Who can't change?

The only people who can't change are the ones who won't change.

— Mark Daniels (@MARKJDANIELS) April 4, 2017

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Calico Skies by Paul McCartney

"It was written that I would love you
"From the moment I opened my eyes...

"I will hold you for as long as you like
"I'll hold you for the rest of my life..."



[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Jesus' Sign of Power

John 11:1-53
A dictionary defines the word, sign, as “an object, quality, or event whose presence or occurrence indicates the probable presence or occurrence of something else.” Signs never point to themselves, they always point us to something else.

The gospel of John is often called “The Book of Signs” because it’s built around seven signs performed by Jesus.* 

John tells us elsewhere in his gospel that “Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book.” But John chose to tell us about just these seven signs so that we could come to “believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.” (John 20:30-31) (This includes the eighth and perfect sign: Jesus’ glorification, His death and resurrection.)

There are some Christians who claim that miracles should be happening every day of our lives. In one way, they’re right: Whenever a person comes to believe--trust in--Jesus, God grants them eternal life with Him. But if miracles happened every day, they wouldn’t be miracles at all, but, as one preacher says, “ordinaries.”

Jesus’ signs brought the miraculous in-breaking of God into this world, pinpricks of God’s light and sovereignty into our darkness, pointing to God, not themselves.

If people think that miracles--miracles like superabundant finances, never-failing health, conflict-free relationships, perfect fulfillment at work, being brought back from the dead--are the norms for Christian disciples, they misunderstand Jesus and His Gospel.

Today’s gospel lesson, John 11:1-53, recounts a spectacular sign performed by Jesus...the one which, according to John, solidified the intentions of the Jewish religious elite to see Jesus crucified by their Roman overlords.

As has been true over the past several weeks, John’s account of Jesus’ raising Lazarus from the dead, all that led up to it, and what resulted from it, is too long for us to examine verse-by-verse. We’ll go section by section.

In verses 1-16, we learn that Jesus’ friends, Martha and Mary, are facing a crisis. Their brother, Lazarus, is dying. Jesus knows this, but doesn’t tell the disciples.

Instead, Jesus waits for two days before saying or doing anything. Why? One Bible scholar suggests that Jesus felt the need to spend those two days in prayer, discerning what He should do.

I think there’s good reason to believe that’s true, as we’ll see later in the lesson. But just on first blush, there are several reasons why Jesus might have used these two days to pray.

First of all, Jesus loved His friend. But Jesus also never performed a miraculous sign for His own benefit. Jesus likely wanted to ensure that healing His friend was the Father’s will and not His own.

Another reason: Bethany was just two miles from Jerusalem. In just the previous chapter, we see that the last time He was in Jerusalem, there had been efforts to stone Him and to arrest Him. Of course, Jesus’ entire life was spent preparing for the time when He would go to Jerusalem to offer His life: ”the lamb of God Who takes away the sins of the world.” (John 1:29) But Jesus would not go to Jerusalem until it was His time, the time appointed by God the Father. (John 7:30) Jesus had to make sure that the Father wanted Him to go to Jerusalem and His cross at this time.

When you and I confront decisions or try to discern whether what we want conforms to the will of God, we need to spend time waiting and praying. If a thing is right, God will give us peace, permission, and prompting. If it isn’t the right thing, we won’t sense God giving us His green light.

Eventually, Jesus and the disciples learn that Lazarus is dead. The disciples are the voice of common sense when Jesus tells them that they need to go to Judea, where Bethany is located. If Lazarus is dead, there’s nothing Jesus can do, they reason, and besides, Jesus would be walking into a death trap.

But Jesus won’t be dissuaded. Thomas, his voice dripping in sarcasm, becomes the first person in our lesson to say more than understands: “Let us also go, that we may die with him.” (John 11:16)

What Thomas didn't realize is that when we throw in with Jesus, it means death to our old selves, the willing crucifixion of our sinful, selfish ways of living, so that Jesus can raise us to new life.

In verses 17 to 37, Jesus goes to Bethany, where He encounters Lazarus’ grieving sisters and their grieving neighbors. Each are disappointed in Jesus.

• “Lord,” Martha [says in verse 21], “if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”
• In verse 32, Mary says: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”
• And later, the townspeople ask each other: “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?” (John 11:37)

The mystification and even, maybe, anger felt by the people in Bethany who had believed in Jesus doesn’t mean that they’ve lost their faith in Him. We see this in an interchanged between Jesus and Martha. Jesus assures Martha: “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?” (John 11:25-26) Martha responds with a confession of faith despite her grief and tears: ““Yes, Lord I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God,who is to come into the world.” (John 11:27)

You’ve heard me say it before: The only people who get mad at the God we know in Jesus are the ones who believe in Him; you don’t get mad at a God that you don’t believe is there. We may struggle in our faith, like Thomas, Martha, Mary, and the people of Bethany. But if we will wait and pray, God will give us peace and sustain us with the promise underwritten by Jesus’ death and resurrection: All who have the Son in their lives have life with God that cannot be taken from us.

The sign Jesus performs next points to this reality. In John 11:38-44, Jesus goes to the tomb and orders the stone rolled away from its doorway. Martha protests. It’s been four days and the body will have begin to decompose and smell. But, remember that Jesus has already prayed about this. He deliberately waited until He was sure that Lazarus was dead so that Lazarus’ death, as He puts it, will happen “for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it.” (John 11:4) Jesus will perform a sign that will allow all present to “see the glory of God,” so that they can believe. (John 11:40)

Just before Jesus raises Lazarus, He prays again, a prayer of thanksgiving that God had guided Him during those two days of prayer: “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me.” (John 11:41-42) Jesus’ time of waiting and praying assured Him that He was doing His Father’s will.

Now consider: If Jesus, God the Son, God in the flesh, needed such an investment in waiting and praying before acting, how much more do we need to wait and pray each day?

After uttering this prayer, Jesus called Lazarus from the dead, out of the dark tomb into the light of day.



[A mostly accurate rendering of Jesus' raising of Lazarus from the dead as portrayed in Jesus of Nazareth. This film is my favorite portrayal of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection. The words spoken by the John character here are based on Jonah 2:6.]

All who saw this sign were bound to talk about it...and they did! And anyone who heard about it would have been amazed.

But not everyone is happy with it. The unhappy ones, the Jewish religious elite in Jerusalem, see Jesus as a provocateur, sure to incite the Romans to assault their people. The religious leaders in Jerusalem say: “If we let [Jesus] go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and then the Romans will come and take away both our temple and our nation.” (John 11:48) (They say this even though the Romans had taken away their nation long years ago!)

Instead of trusting in Jesus, Whose signs gave glory to God and not Himself, the religious leaders put their trust in the power of Roman swords.

It’s always a mistake to put more stock in or be daunted by the power of earthly rulers than we do in God.

Long after the last ruler of this world has died, Jesus, the King of kings, crucified, risen, and ascended will hold the field alone!

Psalm 118:9 says: “It is better to take refuge in the LORD than to trust in princes.”

Who do you put your trust in today, Jesus or earthly rulers? Jesus or the things of this world that will someday be reduced to ashes by the hand of God? Jesus and His grace or this world and your fears? This is a choice we must make each day.

As we come to the end of our lesson, Caiaphas, the high priest, becomes the second person in this incident to say more than he personally understands. He tells his fellow priests that instead of worrying about what impact Jesus might have on the Romans, they needed a simple solution. They should kill Jesus off, he said, and save the nation. “...it is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish.” (John 11:50)

Caiaphas thinks that if they get Jesus executed, that will be the end of things. The nation will be spared the Roman sword and life can go on as it had before this Disturber from Galilee arrived.

In plotting to send Jesus to a cross, Caiaphas is actually playing right into God’s plans.

Jesus came into the world to do exactly what Caiaphas proposes: to die on behalf of sinners so that they might not perish.

“I have a baptism to undergo, and what constraint I am under until it is completed!” Jesus says in Luke 12:50.

Jesus had performed a seventh sign with the goal of showing His identity and, as a result of the world's rejection of Him that resulted, to go to the cross for you and me.

From a worldly perspective, Jesus’ fate is sealed when He raises Lazarus from the dead.

From the perspective of God, this sign is the final confirmation that the One Who performs it is “the Word made flesh,” the Messiah Who came to die and to rise and to give new life to all who trust in Him.

We human beings sometimes presume that we are and ought to be in control.

But the universe, life, death, and resurrection are in the hands of the God we meet in Jesus alone.

That’s important to remember because life in this world can sometimes go wrong. But if you follow Jesus, no matter what the sarcastic or the cynical or the powerful of the world may say, you will never be wrong.

Amen

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

*Seven Signs Performed by Jesus in John’s Gospel:
1. Changing water into wine (John 2:1-11)
2. Healing the royal official’s son in Capernaum (John 4:46-54)
3. Healing the paralytic at Bethesda (John 5:1-15)
4. Feeding the 5000 (John 6:5-14)
5. Walking on the water (John 6:16-24)
6. Healing the man born blind (John 9:1-7)
7. Raising Lazarus from the dead (John 11:1-45)

Fear is no excuse for hatred

Fear is no excuse for hate.

In Portland, a man who is not Muslim and escaped his homeland because of religious persecution, came back home from a recent trip to find his place vandalized, painted with anti-Muslim messages. Such hatred is neither Christian nor American.

It is stupid and misinformed.

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Where temptation comes from

These are some recent reflections on my quiet time with God. For details on what's involved in quiet time, see here.

Look: “...each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed” (James 1:14).

Just before this, James says that we shouldn’t blame God when we’re tempted by sin. God isn’t in the tempting business.

I know that there have been times when I’ve blamed God for the sins that tempt me. Or I blame him for the sins to which I’ve caved. Whether I blame God overtly or subliminally, it’s all the same: Somehow, God is at fault for my feeling tempted. At other times, I may doubt God’s sovereignty. But I can be very devout in upholding the notion of God in being in control when temptations come or when I sin. “If God hadn’t allowed such and such to happen…” “If God hadn’t brought so and so into my life…” “If God hadn’t allowed such and such a thought to come into my brain…”

These thoughts echo the words of Adam and Eve after God confronted them with their sin. “The woman you [God] put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it,” Adam says (Genesis 3:12). “The serpent deceived me, and I ate,” Eve says (Genesis 3:13). Somehow, we want to blame God or the circumstances of our lives for our sin. I do, for sure.

But the real reason I find temptation so enticing isn’t with God. Adam was with Eve when they both were being dogged by temptation (Genesis 3:6). And this is what tempted them: “...the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom” (Genesis 3:6).

As James puts it, they were “dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed.”

Listen: My temptations, sins, and inclinations to sin don’t come from You, Lord! I can’t blame You for them. You don’t create our temptations (James 1:13). They are entirely inside jobs, the result slowly of those particular aspects of my personality and character that most entice me.

But I’ve recently been memorizing this promise from Your Word:

“No sin has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. But God is faithful; He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out, so that you can endure it” (1 Corinthians 10:13).

We can only be tempted when we allow our desires to be controlled by our sinful impulses. And the devil, the sinful world, and our sinful selves are very good at tempting us to make use of good things or even good people in the wrong ways, at the wrong times, for the wrong reasons. 

Respond: God, Your Word says, “Take delight in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart” (Psalm 37:4). Help me to delight in You and so, desire what You want for me, which is always for my eternal good. When I am tempted, as I will be, since even Jesus was tempted and it’s an inevitable part of human life, help me to turn to You, trusting that You will provide a way out, allowing me to endure for the greater joy of life with You (Matthew 24:13). In Jesus’ name.

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Do Christians and Muslims worship the same God?

John 14:6
Acts 4:12
A week ago, I attended the Centerville mayor’s annual Faith Leaders Breakfast. A representative from each of the faith organizations was asked to say a few words. A man from a local Islamic mosque told us, “We all worship one God.”

Muslims are told this and taught to say this to non-Muslims. In Quran 29:46, Muslims are instructed to tell Jews and Christians: “And our God and your God is one; and we are Muslims [in submission] to Him."

That’s great PR. But is it the truth?

Do Christians and Muslims worship the same God?

Nabeel Qureshi, the noted author and Christian apologist, a convert from Islam, writes in his book, Answering Jihad: A Better Way Forward, that even after he had become a Christian, he thought that the God of Christianity and the Allah of Islam were essentially the same. After all, Christianity is the fulfillment of the promises God made to the world through ancient Israel, and Islam, like Mormonism, is a legalistic derivative of Christianity. The Bible and the Quran both mention people like Adam and Eve, Abraham, and so on.

But, after he'd spent time in God's Word, Qureshi came to realize that the God of Christianity and the Allah of Islam are very different in nature, being, and attitude toward the human race.

Above all, we see this through the prism of the Trinity, the Christian belief that God has revealed Himself to be one God in three Persons. Jesus and the apostles taught this reality without ever using the term “trinity.”

Before He ascended to heaven, for example, the risen Jesus told His Church, “...go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit…” (Matthew 28:19), putting Himself and the Holy Spirit on the same level as God the Father.

During His earthly ministry, Jesus claimed: “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30).

And one of the most famous benedictions in the New Testament invokes our three-in-one God: “May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all” (2 Corinthians 13:14).

For Jesus and the early Church to claim that He and the Holy Spirit were co-equal to God the Father would have been blasphemous if it weren’t true. Yet Jesus and the first Christians could never be rightly accused of being blasphemous or disrespectful of God.

Even the Old Testament implies the existence of this mysterious three-in-one God in several places. One example: When God creates the universe in the Old Testament, we read that God said: “Let us make mankind in our image…” (Genesis 1:26). Who was God speaking to when He said “let us make” the human race? He certainly wasn’t suggesting that the animals, plants, moon, stars, or planets join Him in doing what only He could do, give life. And there's absolutely nothing to support the idea that God was using the royal "we." No, God was talking to Himself: “Let us make…”

But the Trinity is more than an arcane teaching, the Trinity just makes sense. First John 4:8 tells us that “God is love.” Only a God Who knows what love is and how to give love away would have even thought of creating the universe. If God weren’t practiced in and committed to love, He would have preferred to, as the Brits say, “keep himself to himself.” But when God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Who has experienced from all eternity, the joy of giving love away, that superabundance of love feels compelled to express itself in every molecule and every supernova and every human being God has ever made, every part of the universe for which He became human, died, and rose.

This understanding of God is central to what we believe as Christians.

It’s simple:

• No Trinity; no creation. 
• No Trinity; no salvation. 
• No Trinity; no Gospel.
• No Trinity; no Church.

The God worshiped by Christians is Trinitarian. Everything He has done, from making us, to saving us, from making us part of His Church, to making us holy by the power of His own Spirit springs from His Trinitarian nature. God would not be God if weren't one God in three Persons. That's not the version of deity that Muslims worship.

We can also see how different the Christian and Muslim views of God are when we consider one of the most common names we Christians use in talking to God.

When Jesus was asked by the disciples how to pray, He began the prayer with: ‘Our Father in heaven…’” (Matthew 6:9).

Jesus was telling all who approach God in His name to regard God as our loving Father.

Islam, on the other hand, is revolted by the idea of God being our Father. Quran 5:18 says: “the Jews and the Christians say, "We are the children of Allah and His beloved." [Tell them] ‘Then why does He punish you for your sins?’ Rather, you are human beings from among those He has created. He forgives whom He wills, and He punishes whom He wills.”

Notice that repentance, faith, or a heart open to God mean nothing to Allah. To Islam, Allah is a mercurial dictator who may give you a break...or not. Allah rules entirely by fiat. And Muslims don’t see how Christians can believe that God would dirty His hands by claiming to be related to human beings as our Father.

Islam also rejects the idea that Jesus, Who said, “...before Abraham was, I AM” (in other words, “before Abraham was, Yahweh”) (John 8:58) and Who accepted the worship of people like Thomas, Peter, and the blind man from this past Sunday’s Gospel lesson, is God.

Quran 5:72 insists that anyone who believes that Jesus is God, the One we Christians proclaim as “the Word made flesh” (John 1:14) will be forbidden a place in Paradise, their only refuge fire, from which they can receive no help. In other words, the Quran teaches that if we believe that Jesus is God, we are going to hell.

Islam also rejects the idea that Jesus is God’s Son.

Jesus teaches, famously of course, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).

But the Quran says: “No son did Allah beget, nor is there any god along with Him.”

Jesus says, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). The Quran says, effectively, that Jesus is lying.

Islam tries to have it both ways: to claim a share in the God of Israel ultimately revealed to the world in Jesus, Who they rename Allah, as their own, while repudiating much of what God has revealed to the world in Jesus.

The God of the Bible is a heartsick lover Who beckons us to turn from sin and turn to Him to live, a God Who despised His own dignity so that by sacrificing Himself on the cross, He could win us back from from sin and death. 

The Allah of Islam is like the Greek and Roman gods, who neither give nor promise grace, who sport with the human race while floating above it all, moving only from indifference to anger with humanity.

Christians and Muslims do not worship the same God.

But this shouldn’t make Christians smug. Ephesians 2:8 reminds us: “...it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God.”

Rather than being smug, we should be thankful for Christ’s gift of salvation and new life to us.

We are blessed to be baptized and to have heard the Gospel from faithful people so that we have the chance to know God! We’ve been saved by God’s grace through faith in Jesus. That’s a lot to be thankful for, but we can claim no credit for it; it's God's work alone!

And from sheer ratitude, we have every reason to be faithful to the great commission Jesus has given to us, to make disciples of all peoples.

That includes those who are trapped in Islam.

May we be grateful and, by the power of the Holy Spirit, may we be faithful in lifting up Christ to our neighbors, all of our neighbors.

For we believe exactly what the first century Church believed of Jesus: “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.” (Acts 4:12)

Let’s show and tell the world this truth in every way God opens to us!

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. This message  is the fourth installment of the midweek Lenten series at Living Water, Tough Questions.]

Apostles' Creed, Part 1

I like this two-and-a-half minute explanation of what we Lutheran Christians mean when we say that we believe in "God the Father, Creator of heaven and earth."



[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Good Monday News

"Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us..." (Galatians 3:13). (Christ did this when, despite His complete innocence, He bore the weight of our sin on the cross, where He was executed.)

We can never keep God's moral law to perfection. If we make our personal conformity to God' moral law the standard on which we ask God to judge our lives, we will be found wanting and never enter God's kingdom.

But if we believe in Christ and His gospel of new life for all who turn from sin and follow Him, we enter God's kingdom on Christ's merits, not our own.

We are saved by grace through faith in Christ alone.

(Check out Ephesians 2:8-10; Romans 3:28; John 3:16-18; Acts 4:12; Romans 3:21-22).

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Knowing Jesus

John 9:1-41
In last Sunday’s gospel lesson, a Samaritan came to have life with God when, to her surprise, Jesus told her every sin she’d ever done while still reaching out to her with love and respect. In today’s lesson, a blind man comes to see that Jesus was “the Son of Man,” a phrase from the Old Testament book of Daniel for God Himself on the earth that He created.

Jesus promises that all who see Him for Who He is in this way and trust Him as their God and Savior will have life with God for eternity.

But as our gospel lesson shows us today, seeing Who Jesus is and trusting faith in Him are two different things. The gap between knowing about Jesus and knowing Jesus can only be measured in eternity.

It isn’t easy to believe. In his book, The Cost of Discipleship, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Lutheran theologian, says: “Salvation is free, but discipleship will cost you your life.”

The blind man in today’s lesson learned this truth the hard way, deserted and rejected by his family, his neighbors, and religious leaders. But at the end of the lesson, you realize that he became a true disciple, willing to give up on everything the world in which he lived held dear for the privilege of being Jesus’ disciple today and in eternity.

Let’s take a look at John 9:1-41.

In verses 1-7, at the beginning, Jesus and His disciples encounter a blind man. The disciples want to know whose sin was at fault for his blindness.

We human beings love to believe in neat explanations for the messiness that exists in our world. It helps us feel that we’ve got a handle on things we can’t explain. But this world is messy because the condition of sin has imprisoned the entire universe.

This means that bad things, hard things, and sad things happen even to faithful people.

So, Jesus says that it was neither the man’s parents or the man himself who caused the his blindness. But there was a purpose for Jesus encountering the man that day, Jesus says: “...this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him” (John 9:3).

Jesus then creates a bit of mud, smears it on the man’s eyes, and tells the man to wash himself in a nearby pool. He does so and, as John puts it understatedly, “[he]...came home seeing” (John 9:7).

When the once-blind man’s neighbors find out, they want to learn how it happened. They smell a conspiracy. “This isn’t really the blind man who used to beg,” some of them say. “Yeah,” others say, “he’s an impostor who just looks like the guy.”

The neighbors don’t like that this guy is healed. It upsets the status quo. It makes them envious that a miracle has happened to him. It introduces mystery into a world they thought they’d figured out. They don’t like it that something so good happened to a man who they, like the disciples, thought deserved his blindness. Most conspiracy theories start in this way, folks. But, in verse 9, the formerly blind man tells them: “I am the man.”

The neighbors still aren’t sold on the truth. Or, at least, they don’t want to see the truth that stands before them. So, in verses 10-12, they start to grill the healed man. “How did this happen?” they ask skeptically. The man replies: “The man they call Jesus made some mud and put it on my eyes. He told me to go to Siloam and wash. So I went and washed, and then I could see” (John 9:11).

I love his simple testimony: He met Jesus. Jesus told him what to do. He did it. Now, he could see.

Such simplicity in this circumstance is noteworthy. This man isn’t stupid. He can tell, as surely as you and I can tell when we read John’s account of this “conversation,” that the neighbors are getting hostile. Who is this uppity man to claim that a miracle was done for him?

Instead of talking about some miracle wrought by the preacher they’d been hearing about, it would have been more acceptable to them for him to say, “I was never really blind. I only pretended to be blind so that I could spend my days begging.”

Or, he could have left Jesus out of it altogether: “I washed in the pool of Siloam and it cured me.”

But, instead, he attributes the miracle to Jesus.

The crowd doesn’t like this. Some of you know that an atheist once told me after I’d shared some of my story of coming to faith in Christ after years of atheism that I never could have been an atheist. “If you were an atheist,” he told me, “you still would be.” But God can break through the sin, pride, and pain of this fallen world and bring good.

That’s what Jesus did for the blind man.

It’s what He did when He died on the cross and rose from the dead, offering new, eternal life to all who trust in Him.

It’s what He did when He gave me faith in Him to replace my atheism.

In verses 13-16, the neighbors take the man to the Pharisees, the experts in God’s Law. When the situation is laid before them, they’re scandalized to learn that Jesus performed this miracle on the sabbath.

This proved, some of them say, that Jesus couldn’t be from God. Others disagree. The Pharisees are in gridlock.

They turn to the blind man and ask who he thinks Jesus is. The Pharisees don’t want the man’s real opinion. They’re pressuring him to turn on Jesus, to renounce the whole thing, to say that his blindness AND Jesus are frauds.

Once more, the man doesn’t buckle under pressure. Jesus, he says in verse 17, “is a prophet.” A prophet, of course, is a person called by God to speak God’s Word to the world. Now, you and I know that Jesus actually is the Word of God. Jesus is way more than just a prophet; but He is that too. The man says of Jesus what he so far knows of Him. He tells the simple truth. His honesty is moving.

After their pressure fails to cause the man to renounce Jesus, they enlist his parents’ help. “Yes,” they say in verses 18-19, showing the spines of jellyfish, “that’s our son. But we don’t know anything about his story. He’s old enough to fend for himself. Bye!”

In Matthew 10:36, Jesus warns those who would follow Him that “a man's enemies will be the members of his own household.” When we follow Jesus, we can’t expect that all of our family and friends will be happy about it. Being a Christian who seeks to humbly follow Jesus is not making a popular choice.

The formerly blind man is so innocent about the ways of power and going-along-to-get-along, that when the Pharisees ask him to tell them again how he’d come to be sighted, he doesn’t take the hint. He was supposed to admit that he was part of a hoax. Instead, he asks: “Do you want to become his disciples too?” (John 9:27).

At this, the Pharisees tell the man that he must be Jesus’ disciple and that there’s no way of knowing whether Jesus is from God or not.

Now the once blind man says what was becoming obvious to him: “If this man [Jesus] were not from God, he could do nothing” [John 9:33].

At this, the once-blind man, alone among his neighbors and people, abandoned by his parents, condemned by the religious leaders of his country, was thrown out...excommunicated (John 9:34). The good religious leaders rejected him as one unworthy of God.

In the very next verse, we read about this exchange between Jesus and the formerly blind man: “Jesus heard that they had thrown him out, and when he found him, he said, ‘Do you believe in the Son of Man?’ ‘Who is he, sir?’ the man asked. ‘Tell me so that I may believe in him.’ Jesus said, ‘You have now seen him; in fact, he is the one speaking with you.’ Then the man said, ‘Lord, I believe,’ and he worshiped him.’”

The blind man saw Who Jesus was--God in the flesh--and so believed in Him and worshiped Him. This is the second miracle in our lesson.

The first was the miracle of restored sight.

The second was the gift of everlasting life when the man who had received his sight believed in Jesus.

This is the miracle that belongs to all who believe in Jesus. May we never lose our sense of awe and wonder at this miracle. The God Who made everything, Whose holiness we have repeatedly violated, became one of us, led a life free of sin despite temptation, and gave Himself on a cross we earned. Now He offers us life with God for eternity when we turn for sin and, like the once-blind man, believe in Him.

Jesus wasn’t done teaching others the way to life through this blind man, though.

In verse 39, Jesus says, “For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind.”

The Pharisees were offended. “Are we blind too?” they ask Jesus (John 9:40).

Jesus’ response: “If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains” (John 9:41).

In other words, the Pharisees could see that Jesus was the Son of Man, the Messiah, the Christ, the King of kings, the Lord, God.

But if they admitted to knowing all of that, they would be compelled by faith to let go of the stranglehold they had on power, position, and the lives and consciences of the people they bullied.

The Pharisees who rejected Jesus knew about God, but they refused to know God when He stood in front of them.

They recognized that Jesus is God’s Son. But they were comfortable in living apart from the living God. (And do you know what you call living apart from God? Death.)

The Pharisees chose blindness and so, Jesus says, they were condemned.

But the blind man focused on Jesus.

In ancient days, the rabbis said that Adam and Eve were created blind. They said that the two were totally dependent on God to lead them and that He only led them to places of freedom and peace, places where they were set free to be all that God had made them to be.

But, when they caved into the temptations of the serpent, eating the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, “...the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked...” (Genesis 3:7).

Now, the rabbis said, having fallen into sin, the two were cursed with sightedness. They experienced more than just the good in which God had led them; they now could also see the evil ways they could use their lives.

Sin ensnared them.

Sin fooled them (and has fooled every generation of human beings since) into thinking that it’s possible to live apart from God.

The vision of the entire human race has been clouded by a universe full of idols vying for our trust and our worship, leading us to selfishness, self-promotion, self-loathing, darkness, and death. Now, of course, the rabbis' teaching about this is a bit fanciful. But it does make an important point: When we take our eyes off of the God we know in Jesus Christ, making Him our True North, we lose sight of the only One Who can give us life. We go off course.

When the once blind man came to believe in Jesus, he was set free from his sin and from death. He didn’t just know about God; through Jesus, He came to know God Himself. He saw Jesus as His God and King.

That’s what Jesus makes possible for us see and experience too. May we follow Jesus and never lose sight of Him as “the [only] way, and the [only] truth, and the [only] life” (John 14:6). Amen

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. This is the message prepared for worship this morning.]

Living in freedom, facing the lure of slavery (Quiet Time Reflections)

These are my reflections on my time with God today. (To explain the format that follows, see here.)

Look: “I identified myself completely with him [Christ]. Indeed, I have been crucified with Christ. My ego is no longer central. It is no longer important that I appear righteous before you or have your good opinion, and I am no longer driven to impress God. Christ lives in me. The life you see me living is not “mine,” but it is lived by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I am not going to go back on that.” (Galatians 2:19-21, The Message)

“But when Peter came to Antioch, I opposed him in public, because he was clearly wrong.” (Galatians 2:11, Good News Translation)

“When I saw that they were not walking a straight path in line with the truth of the gospel, I said to Peter in front of them all, ‘You are a Jew, yet you have been living like a Gentile, not like a Jew. How, then, can you try to force Gentiles to live like Jews?’” (Galatians 2:14, Good News Translation)

When you recognize that the Law can’t save you from sin and death and that salvation can only come by the grace of God given to those who believe in Jesus, you’re set free to live like Paul reports living in these verses from Galatians 2.

It’s not that God’s Law is irrelevant, of course. Jesus said: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them” (Matthew 5:17). The Law, enumerated in the Ten Commandments, isn’t bad. It’s from God. It’s good. As I often tell people, God’s Law identifies the markers of the blessed life, the shalom life.

But we can’t keep it. Christ could and did. And because of that, He was able to be the perfect sacrifice for my sin.

Christ’s call is for me to trust in His righteousness, to believe in Him and the power of what He accomplished on Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday for me. Jesus obediently bore my sin on the cross, destroying the power of sin and death over me. He frees me from their power to destroy me eternally.

So, I’m free.

Listen: So, why then do I so easily slide back into slave thinking?

I’m like the ancient Hebrews set free by God from their slavery in Egypt, who look back longingly on the familiar certainties of the enslaved state. “We remember the fish we ate in Egypt at no cost--also the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions and garlic,” they said [Numbers 11:15]. “If only we had died by the LORD's hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted…” [Exodus 16:3].

Today, there are people in Russia who willingly submit to the reinstitution of Tsarist, Stalinist, oligarchic ways because, despite the oppressions, the Gulags, the imprisonment, impoverishment, and murders of those who oppose the regime, the food shortages, the limited opportunities, and the culture of lies, all of that legalism was what they knew. They look back nostalgically and acquiesce like sheep to the reinstitution of their slavery.

In me, legalism is (supposed) certainty. Though I am often blind to my sin, sometimes I can see my covetousness, idolatry, and subtle thievery. I can count--like widgets in a factory--when I take God’s name in vain, when I indulge lustful thoughts, when I fail to love.

Legalism deals with the quantifiable outgrowth of my sinful nature. But it doesn’t challenge and can’t change that sinful nature itself.

“Ah,” I can say, “I just committed such and such sin. ‘God, forgive me for Jesus’ sake.’” Under legalistic thinking, repentance becomes then, less than what it’s meant to be, both heartfelt sorrow for violating the holiness of God and a joyous restoration to God through the grace of God given in Christ...and more of a business transaction, the muttering of a formula that we suppose will please God and do us good until the next time we willfully ignore His will.

Legalism also gives me the fatal luxury of thinking: “Now that I’ve paid my dues and given the Old Man in Heaven the outward obeisance He seems to want so badly, now I can judge other people from my perch of moral superiority.”

I would never express myself as baldly as I have in the previous two paragraphs. But this is what I effectively think when I approach God and my sin with a business mentality.

Legalism also can assure me that because I look good to other people, I must look good to God too.

But the Law can’t save. The Law can only show us our distance from God and our need to be saved.

There’s nothing any of us can do to be acquitted of the law’s correct condemnation of us.
And no one can keep the Law so perfectly as to warrant being right with God, forgiveness, or new life. The Law, in itself, leads only to condemnation and death.

Only the Gospel--the good news--of new life for all who believe in, trust in, follow Jesus can give us forgiveness, rightness with God, life can save or set us free.

Jesus says: “...“Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it” (Matthew 16:24b-25).

Jesus puts those who believe in Him in an entirely different relationship with God and the Law. Jesus sets us free, as we see Paul in these verses from Galatians was free, to live out of and speak the truth.

Jesus sets us free to be who we were made to be.

He sets us free to not worry how the world may marginalize us, pigeonhole us, or hate us.

There’s nothing that the world can do to us that will take away our freedom as people made new by the grace God gives to all who believe in Jesus.

Why then do I so often fail to live in the freedom that is my baptismal birthright as a Christian?

A short list:

(1) Fear. I often tell people that I’m not afraid of being dead; I’m afraid of dying. I’m afraid of all the ways we can “die” in this world: losing my job, losing my reputation. I love to quote Romans 8:31-39 and believe what it teaches--that nothing can separate believers from the God we know in Christ Jesus. But I still fear what this world can do to me. It can be more scary to live in the freedom that Christ offers than in the slavery of what the world will offer when I’m willing to “play ball.”

(2) Because I live here, I know this world; I only know the place Christ has prepared for me (John 14:3) by faith (Hebrews 11:1; Romans 8:24).

I can get afraid over losing out on what this world offers by betting my whole life on life in the nest world. There’s a bit of Lot’s wife in me (Genesis 19:26). I get so used to life in this world that I forget that, as a believer in Christ, I’m a refugee and stranger here (1 Peter 2:11-12; Hebrews 11:13).

(3) I forget that God has a perfect plan for me. It’s a plan that may entail long stretches of unhappiness in this world, because Christ never promised that He would make us happy in this life. This world, ticketed for destruction, will never be able to give me the joy for which I long or for which I was made. For now, I can only see “through a glass darkly” (1 Corinthians 13:12).

But when we believe in Christ, we live in the certainty of God’s presence and favor in this world, so long as we continue to trust in Him.

We also live in the certainty that a new heaven and a new earth that will fulfill our deepest longings, undistorted by our sin. “‘What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived’ -- the things God has prepared for those who love him” (Isaiah 64:4; 1 Corinthians 2:9).

(4) I want the credit. In my sinful heart, I want others to think what a terrific person I am: how together, how kind, how good. My legalistic mind figures if people say all of these good things about me, and if I’m regarded as such a great guy, it will mean that I am good and great. Like Adam and Eve, I want to “be like God.”

If I accept the truth that without You, Lord, I can do nothing good (John 15:5), that my supposed adherence to Your law, affirmed by the accolades of others who only see me on the outside, won’t make me good (in fact, only You are good, according to Mark 10:18), then receiving Your gracious gift of righteousness despite my unrighteousness is the only thing that makes sense.

But when I do that, I admit that I deserve no credit.

And that, whatever good I do is really from You, an instance of You empowering me to do what I could never do on my own: “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows” (James 1:17).

The Law allows me to live with the fatal fiction that I am my own god and that I am capable of doing things that matter for eternity on my own steam.

Grace allows me to walk in the good works You have prepared for me beforehand (Ephesians 2:8-10), works powered by, filled by, and made eternity-changing by You and my reliance on You alone.

Knowing that I belong to Christ forever can set me free to love God, love neighbor, fight for justice, share Christ, make disciples. I don’t worry about what the neighbors say. I don’t worry about whether I live or die. I don’t worry about getting the credit. I just live. The Gospel of Christ imparts such freedom.

No government, philosophy, economy, job, nor any other thing on earth can give that freedom. Only You can, Jesus!

Respond: Father, I repent, for failing to live in the freedom of the Gospel...for turning You into less than God, into a vendor with whom I can make deals...for ignoring how, by reverting to legalism, I pour contempt on Jesus’ cross and what He did for me there...for being afraid of a world You have already conquered (John 16:33)...for treating this world as my ultimate destination...for exchanging the freedom of being Your child for the certain slaveries of the finite things this world has to offer.

Today, help me to live in the freedom and boldness I see in Paul in these verses in Galatians.

Today, help me to speak Your truth in love (Ephesians 4:15).

Today, help me to keep my eyes on eternity, knowing, for one thing, that’s the only way that I can do anything worthwhile in this world. In Jesus’ name.

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Called, even when I don't feel qualified (Quiet Time Reflections)

I'm a few days behind on my daily schedule for quiet time with God. So, it was especially good, in the midst of what's been a busy period, to have that time with Him this morning. You'll find an explanation of my quiet time with God includes here.

Suffice it to say that with quiet time, I stop to confess my sins and pray; look at a chapter of Scripture; listen for what God is telling me in the passage (God generally seems to draw my attention to one or two verses), some new truth, some old truth underscored, some new insight about God or my faith; and respond to what God has told me. Again, the explanation linked above will tell you a bit more.

This morning, I read Galatians 1. Here's where God led me:

Look: “I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ.” (Galatians 1:12)

In this passage, which comes early in his letter to the Galatian Christians, Paul is establishing his status as an apostle of Christ’s Church. Apostles were part of a unique and time-bound group disciples. An apostle is, considering the Greek New Testament from which the word comes to us, literally, a called out one, a disciple from among the disciples as leaders within the Church and evangelists to the world. To be an apostle, a disciple had to have experienced personal contact with Jesus (Acts 1:21-22) and to have personally seen the resurrected Jesus. Paul, earlier called Saul, came to fit this bill belatedly on the road to Damascus, where as a zealous Pharisee looking for the excommunication or death of believers in Jesus, He was encountered and called by the risen and ascended Jesus to apostleship (1 Corinthians 15:8; Acts 9:1-19).

Because of the apostles’ personal knowledge of Jesus and their call to apostleship by Jesus, buttressed by the understanding of Him they gained through their knowledge of God’s Old Testament Word, the teaching of the apostles about the life, office, ministry, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus has always been considered normative by the Church. The Holy Spirit has used the apostles to assure us of the truth of God’s Word in Christ and the truthful witness of both the Old Testament and New Testament.

So, in this verse, Paul is making an important assertion to the first century church at Galatia: Their drift toward “another gospel,” one that doesn’t conform to the revealed truth about God personally witnessed by the apostles, including Paul, and affirmed by the Old Testament (and today by the New Testament that measures up to the apostles’ teaching) puts the Galatian Christians’ salvation at risk.

To take hope in any false gospel is to follow a false god, even if those who have wandered from Jesus carelessly refer to their false deity as Jesus.

Paul is trying to get their attention: I didn’t make up the gospel you once confessed believing; it’s from Jesus, God enfleshed, Himself.

Listen: The era of the apostles is ended, of course. But the Church (and that includes me) is still called to teach the truth about Jesus.

We’re to share the gospel, the good news, that out of love for our fallen, sinful human race, God entered our world as a perfect human being, true God and true man, then, although sinless, made Himself the perfect sacrifice for our sin (Acts 1:8).

To confirm Jesus’ power over sin and death and to show that His promise of new and everlasting life for those who repent and believe in Him can be counted on, Jesus was raised by God the Father.

Jesus then spent forty days on the earth giving further instruction to the disciples, His Church.

Then, ascending to heaven, He went to the throne room of the Father, sitting at His right hand in order to intercede for those who believe in Him and offer prayers in His name and to be at the ready for the moment when the Father will say that it’s time for Jesus to return to the earth in order to consummate history.

We know all of these things, not just because we’ve heard them from preachers, theologians, Sunday School teachers, parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, or friends. We know them because because of the revelation from Jesus Christ we receive when we hear and read God’s definitive Word, certified by the apostles like Paul, that we encounter in the Bible.

AND, we can point others to knowing these truths, receive salvation, and be disciples when we, like the apostle Paul, live like disciples of Jesus with a message and a way of life others need. This is urgent business because, it’s as true today as it was the day this statement was first made by the apostle Peter when speaking of Jesus: “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).

Respond: Help me and all the disciples of Your church who seek to build our lives on the true gospel of Jesus to be bold in sharing Christ, Your Word, and making disciples (Acts 4:29).

Help me to say, believe, and live out of the truth that Paul talks about in Romans: “...I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile” (Romans 1:16).

Today, Lord, help me not to hide the light of life with You that I’m privileged to have with Jesus. Help me to shine it everywhere I go and give Your light away to everyone I can. (Luke 11:33)

Forgive me for too often slinking by in the world. Today, help me to share Your message or to position myself relationally to earn the right to share Your gospel with others. In Jesus’ name.

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. ]

How can a loving God send people to hell? (AUDIO)

Here.

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Prayer

This was the invocation prayer for the City of Centerville Mayor's Faith Leaders Appreciation Breakfast on March 22:

Gracious God, we thank you for the gift of relationship with you. We thank you for the privilege of living in this community and working, together and individually, for the good of the people who live here. Thank you for the leaders of our city government, who respect the role of the faith community in the life of Centerville Ohio. We thank you for all city employees who keep our streets safe, respond in times of need, and ensure out safety, freedom, and opportunities for healthy living, We thank you too, for all who have prepared this meal. We thank you that you have given us the food that has been prepared. Above all we thank you, in this season of Lent, for the gift of Christ who gives us an eternity of hope for life with you and eternal freedom. In Jesus name. Amen

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

How can a loving God send people to hell? (Tough Questions, Part 3)

Ezekiel 18:23-32
John 3:16-18

The latest Pew Research polling I’ve seen says that 72% of the American people believe that there is a heaven and 58% say that there is a hell.

Of course, it doesn’t really matter what we think. There are simply some things in life that are facts, whether we like them or not.

The Bible and Jesus Himself affirm that heaven and hell are real...and it doesn’t matter if 3 in 10 don’t believe in one or that 4 in 10 don’t believe in the other. To not believe those two things is to call Jesus a liar and a liar could hardly be a trustworthy Savior.

Nonetheless, Christians and non-Christians alike wrestle with our tough question for tonight: How can a loving God send people to hell?

As Christians, we wrestle with it, of course, because the entire record of God’s self-disclosure as found in Scripture and as seen in Jesus, supports the assertion of 1 John 4:8: “God is love.”

The creation of which you and I are a part argues that God is loving. This universe is, when you think about it, completely unnecessary. God is totally self-sufficient. He didn’t need to give life to the universe. Yet He created we human beings in His image and placed us in a creation which, though marred by our sin, still retains the marks of a Creator intent on providing us with everything we could ever need or want.

Just as husbands and wives who care for each other don’t really need children, yet choose to have children anyway in order to give fulfillment and greater expression to their love, God, Who doesn’t need us, created us to give fulfillment and expression to His love.

But we see the ultimate expression of God’s loving nature in the Person and work of God the Son, Jesus Christ. Jesus told Nicodemus: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” [John 3:16-17]

You and I deserve death and condemnation for our sin. But Jesus took the punishment we deserve so that all who turn from sin and surrender to Him will have eternal life with God. Only love can explain why an innocent Savior voluntarily bore death in order to save people who don’t deserve saving, in order to give life to those who, without Him, would be separated from God, the Source of life, for all eternity.

“Yes,” we may say, “I believe that God is loving. But what about hell? Would a loving God send anyone to hell?” This appears to be the attitude of many interviewed by Pew Research; more people are willing to believe in heaven than they are to believe in hell.

In answer to our question for tonight, I point to a few facts.

First, Jesus talked three times as much about hell as He did about heaven.

If you don’t believe me, print, say, the Gospel of Matthew, from biblegateway.com. Then, go read the gospel, with two different highlighters in hand, one yellow and the other green. Highlight every time Jesus talks about hell with one color and highlight heaven every time He talks about heaven with the other. This exercise won’t demonstrate that hell is more important than heaven. But it will show that Jesus wanted us to have a clear understanding about the eternal stakes involved in our lives and the lives of those we love when it comes to following Him or not.

Clearly, Jesus believed in the reality of a state of total, eternal separation from God, the Giver of Life.

Second, God doesn’t want anyone to be condemned or separated from Him.

In the Old Testament, God says through His prophet Ezekiel: “Do I take any pleasure in the death of the wicked? declares the Sovereign Lord. Rather, am I not pleased when they turn from their ways and live?” (Ezekiel 18:23)

The whole point of God calling Israel into being was that it would be a light to the nations, pointing the whole world to a saving relationship that only the God we meet in Jesus Christ can give.

The whole point of Jesus coming to earth and dying on the cross, was to save us from separation from God, to save us for life with God.

Third, the Bible shows us that there are many nice people in this world who will choose hell over life with God, heaven.

Do you remember Jesus’ encounter with the rich young man in Matthew 19:16-22? By all appearances, this young man was a nice person. He evidently believed that God is real and kept the commandments that have to do with caring for one’s neighbor.

But Jesus said that the young man lacked something. Jesus could see that the young man’s idol, taking the place of God in his life, was money and possessions. Elsewhere, you know, Jesus says that if anything in our lives causes us to sin, we need to remove it from our lives. So, Jesus tells the man to sell everything he has, give it to the poor, and then, follow Him.

Matthew tells us that: “When the young man [that nice young man] heard this, he went away sad, because he had great wealth.” We don’t know what happened later in that young man’s life. But we do know that as of Matthew 19:22, he had chosen hell over heaven. And Jesus didn’t stop him.

Jesus won’t stop anyone from choosing hell. Truth be known, hell is our default choice as human beings anyway. Unless the saving Word of Jesus Christ is shared with us and the Holy Spirit is unleashed in us through Baptism or the prayers of caring Christians, you and I wouldn’t even be able  to believe in the God revealed in Jesus. [1 Corinthians 12:3; Romans 10:17]

As a result, many people think that their own goodness will be “good enough.” But at the judgment, there will be no such thing as “good enough”: We will either be covered in the forgiveness of Jesus, washed clean by the blood He shed on the cross; or, we will stand naked in our sins before God. And facing God naked in our sins at the judgment, friends, won’t be good enough.

So, does a loving God send people who don’t believe in him to hell?

The answer, I think, is “Yes and no.”

God loves us and wants us to be with Him forever. But He doesn’t force heaven on us.

Just as good parents let go of their adult children, God lets us go.

As Jesus puts it in John 3:18: “Whoever believes in [God’s only Son] is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.”

Effectively paraphrasing Jesus, C.S. Lewis writes: “There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘Thy will be done.’ All that are in hell choose it.”

Like Lewis, I would love to be able to tell people that no one will go to hell. It would make me more popular. Sadly though, it wouldn’t be the truth.

But it's not because the loving God we know in Jesus Christ sends people to hell. God lets those go to hell who refuse to believe that they need saving or that they need Christ to save them.

If that seems as tragic to you as it does to me--more importantly, if it seems as tragic to you as it does to God--then it ought to give greater urgency to all of us doing the one and only job Christ has given His Church: sharing the good news of forgiven sin and everlasting life through faith in Jesus Christ alone with everyone we know, making disciples.

Let’s pray and work on that one mission together and individually, every day. Amen

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. This was the message for this evening's midweek Lenten service. It's the third installment of a Lenten series, Tough Questions.]

All I Know by Art Garfunkel

It was the prolific Jimmy Webb who wrote this beautiful song recorded by Art Garfunkel.

Released on the LP, Angel Clare, co-produced by Garfunkel and Roy Halee in 1973, the song was backed by the now-famous coterie of studio musicians, The Wrecking Crew.

I guess that this song is written from the perspective that the love between a woman and a man can be complicated.

So, what's stopping us?

John 4:5-42
The fourth chapter of the gospel of John, with its account of Jesus’ encounter with a Samaritan woman and what results from it, is among my favorite places in Scripture.

I've taught on this passage many times. But, so far as I can remember, I’ve never preached about it. A thirty-eight verse lesson is a big bite to chew for preacher and congregation. Yet, the whole passage goes together as a cohesive unit and, in it, there are important things God has to tell us. So, this morning, let’s supersize, and listen to what God says to us in this meeting between Jesus--God the Son, the Word made flesh--and a woman who’d spent her entire life deep in the sins of human flesh.

[Samaritan Woman at the Well by He Qi]

Jesus has left Judea accompanied by His disciples, with whom He’s headed to their common home region of Galilee.

They have to cut through a sliver of Samaria to get there.

Now, the Samaritans could trace their lineage back to Abraham and Sarah, the ancestors of all Jews, and lived in what had once been the northern portion of Israel. They were then, partly, Hebrews or Jews by heritage. But they had formed their own separate kingdom, the northern kingdom, with its own earthly ruler and their own center of worship. This happened after the death of Solomon in Old Testament times.

The Samaritans endured the scorn of the people of Judah to the south because they had intermingled the worship of Yahweh, I AM, with the worship of other gods; had removed themselves from Jerusalem as the place they offered sacrifices; had intermarried with unbelievers; and mixed the falsehoods of other religions with the revealed truth of God. And do you know what you get when you mix the revealed truth of God and the falsehoods of other religions? Nothing but falsehood that leaves you far from God.

Samaritans were hated by the Judeans, which is one reason why Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan scandalized them; they regarded the Samaritans as low-lives.*

When Jesus and the disciples got to the outskirts of the Samaritan village of Sychar, Jesus sat down at the well because He was exhausted, and the disciples went into the village to see if they could buy some food.

Take a look at what happens next, starting in John 4:7. “When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, ‘Will you give me a drink?’”

Then verse 9: “The Samaritan woman said to him, ‘You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?’ (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, ‘If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.’ ‘Sir,’ the woman said, ‘you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?’ Jesus answered, ‘Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.’ The woman said to him, ‘Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.’”

Jesus starts out His conversation with this woman not by looking down on her. Jesus gives her dignity. He makes her feel that she has something to give to Him, even though His people demean Samaritans; even though He’s a man and she’s a woman living in an age in which women were to be seen but not heard; even though you and I know that He’s God in the flesh.

Sometimes, we Christians are guilty of looking down on people we think are less than us. If we reach out to them, we can be patronizing, our attitudes and words signaling the message, “Look at me being nice to you, even though you don’t deserve it.”

Jesus asked the woman if she would do something for Him. Sometimes the best act of loving service we can do for others is to let them serve us. When we do this, we give them respect.

A few weeks ago, my dad handed me a covered bowl of green beans and boiled potatoes, to take home. I could have said, “Dad, you don’t have to do that. You made that for mom and you and if I take any of it, there will be less for you.” But I thanked dad and took the green beans and boiled potatoes home with me.

I heated them up and, I have to tell you, they were delicious. I phoned my dad to tell him so. I genuinely appreciated this touch of home that I remember from my childhood at those times when dad sometimes fixed our meals.

But, I think it also made my dad feel good being able to do something for me...again.

That’s how the Samaritan woman felt.

But she was also stunned! She couldn’t believe a Jewish man was speaking to her.

Then, she gets practical: Jesus had nothing in which to hold water. And Jesus tells her that if she asked, He would give her water that would last forever.

This appealed to her because the Samaritan woman was likely even hated by her fellow Samaritans.

This is why she was at the well at the sixth hour, noon. As we’ll see, the woman was of less than sterling morals and had she gone to the well at the times when all the other women of the village were there--in the morning or at dusk--she would have been subjected to shunning or insults.

No wonder she jumped at the prospect of getting a never-ending supply of water!

How many people do we Christians alienate because we think that their morals don’t measure up?

How many people fail to drink Christ’s living water because we Christians refuse to dole it out to people whose sins we deem more odious than our own?

We can be guilty of making these kinds of judgments even though we know, to name a few examples:

• that homosexuality is no worse a sin than pride,
• that murder is no worse a sin than failing to love our neighbor,
• that adultery is no worse than taking God’s name in vain.

The woman has given Jesus an opening for sharing more than a bucket of water. He, in turn, wants to give her the eternal life available to all who entrust their past and present sins, along with their whole lives, to Him in faith.

Verse 16: “He told her, ‘Go, call your husband and come back.’ ‘I have no husband,’ she replied. Jesus said to her, ‘You are right when you say you have no husband. The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.’”

By treating this woman with respect, Jesus has now earned the right to be honest with her.

We earn the right to share God’s Word and God’s sometimes uncomfortable truth with our neighbors when we treat them with respect.

Jesus knows that this woman has had five husbands and that now she’s shacking up with another man without the benefit of marriage, the rite instituted by God to be the exclusive place of intimacy between a man and a woman.

But Jesus is calling attention to more than just the woman’s adultery and fornication.

In the Old Testament, God referred to Himself as the husband of His people Israel (Isaiah 54:5-6) and He compared the idol worship that characterized life in Samaria as adultery (Jeremiah 3:20).

We commit adultery against God whenever we let anything--our jobs, our families, our country, our security--anything take the place in our lives that belongs exclusively to God.

In the New Testament, Jesus is called the Bridegroom to His bride, the Church (Revelation 21:2; Revelation 19:7; Mark 2:19).

Jesus is confronting this woman for the adultery she was daily committing both with the man with whom she lived and with the false gods she worshiped along with her people.

Now, this woman understands that Jesus is more than just a Jewish man at a Samaritan well. She tells Jesus that He must be a prophet. And then, she does something secular people often do when they meet someone who professes faith: She started talking religion.

I have this happen to me all the time. I'll be on a plane having a conversation with the passenger next to me. The conversation may go on for a time when they ask me what work I do. When I tell them that I'm a pastor, suddenly they start talking religion. Often they'll come up with the weirdest combination of religious ideas you can imagine. A woman once told me, "I believe in Jesus and stuff. But I also believe in reincarnation." Oy! We had quite a little talk after that.

People do this with me all the time. When they learn that I’m a pastor, they feel the need to start talking about their own religious beliefs, trying to prove to me how righteous they are.

But you know what? My opinion of people’s righteousness is totally unimportant. The only One Whose opinion matters is God. And God says that we are only righteous when we stop trying to justify ourselves and instead, humbly surrender to Him and trust in Jesus Christ for life. When we believe in Jesus, God covers us in Jesus' righteousness, the only brand of righteousness that impresses God or gains us entrance into God's kingdom.

Jesus refuses to accept any of this woman’s religious talk. Verse 21: “...a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem,” He says. Then in verse 23, He tells her: “...a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks.”

At this, the woman shifts gears and starts talking about the Messiah. And it's here Jesus confronts her with the most amazing thing she will ever hear in her life. Verse 26, Jesus tells the woman:

“I, the one speaking to you—I am (Yahweh) he.”

What happens next is truly stunning.

This woman, who has been avoiding contact with anyone, runs back to the village to tell everyone: “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?”

If you remember nothing else from today’s message, remember this: The time to tell others about Jesus is now!

This woman doesn’t wait to go to seminary or attend a class or become familiar with all sixty-six books of the Bible. She has met Jesus. Now she's telling people about Jesus.

We make all sorts of excuses for not telling others about Jesus. Things like: “I’m not well enough informed.” “What if they ask me a question I can’t answer?”

The Samaritan woman was too excited about encountering Jesus to keep it to herself.

How excited are you about Jesus, our Living Water?

If you and I believe in Jesus, we have no excuses for not telling others about Him. Or, for failing to get to know Him better each day ourselves.

The woman got over herself to tell others about Jesus. We need to get over ourselves too!

In verse 39, the Samaritan woman tells the people of Sychar: “He told me everything I did.” “He knows all my sins,” she’s saying, “and He offered me the living water of forgiven sin and resurrection life through faith in Him anyway!”

The villagers come running to Jesus and say in verse 42: “We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world.”

Who could you establish a relationship with so that you could, like the woman at the well, earn the right to invite others to come and see Jesus?

Begin praying about that this week, please.

There’s a world of people like her--people running from their sins, running from others, running from life, running from God--who would come running to God if only you and I would tell them about Jesus, the living water.

So, what’s stopping us?

*Notice that after Jesus has told the parable of the Good Samaritan, the man who identified which of the three men who had encountered the wounded man on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho couldn't even bring himself to say that it was the Samaritan who had fulfilled God's law of love. The Judeans were loathe to ascribe anything positive to a Samaritan, even a fictional one. This is how bigotry can cloud the human heart.

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. This was the message for worship this morning.]