Two Reasons to Rejoice!

[Below you'll find live stream videos of the 8:45 AM traditional and 11:00 AM modern worship services with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio yesterday morning, as well as the prepared text for the sermon of the day. Have a good week!]





Luke 10:1-20

In today’s Gospel lesson, Luke tells us about Jesus sending seventy-two of His disciples to places Jesus is planning to visit that haven’t yet met Him. 

Jesus sends the group, He says, “like lambs among wolves,” comparing the role He’s giving them as His followers and spokespeople to being like dumb, defenseless prey–sheep–among wolves, among the fiercest of predators. 

He tells them to, in His name, heal the sick, cast out demons, share God’s peace, and tell all the “wolves” that, in Him, God’s Kingdom has come into the world. 

And, if traveling among hostile people wasn’t daunting enough, Jesus tells them not to take a purse, a bag, or even sandals. They’ll have to depend on “the kindness of strangers” who receive their Word about Jesus.

Now, be honest. If you were among those seventy-two early followers of Jesus, wouldn’t you be tempted to approach Him to ask, “Lord, could I be excused?” 

But all seventy-two went, and later “returned with joy and said, ‘Lord, even the demons submit to us in your name.’ ” (Luke 10:17)  They had stepped out in faith as Christ’s representatives in a sinful world and learned that evil, the devil, and the demons of hell were no match for the power of Jesus at work in them as believers. 

Jesus exulted with them! “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven,” Jesus tells the seventy-two. (Luke 10:18)

Then Jesus makes two stunning statements that will occupy the rest of our time this morning. 

First, He says: “I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy; nothing will harm you.” (Luke 10:19)

Now, this text has been misinterpreted and misunderstood by both well-meaning Christians and not-so-well-meaning through the years. 

Heretics like Joel Osteen use texts like this one to tell us that if we really believe, we'll be invincible, have good health, and enjoy wealth. According to this thinking, Jesus, Who was impoverished and crucified, would be counted as one who failed to believe in God the heavenly Father. All the apostles and every martyred, ill, or impoverished believer in Jesus over the past two thousand years would also be counted as faith failures.

“If you really believe in Jesus,” others will say, “you’ll handle this poisonous snake to prove it." In this, these either misinformed or deliberately disinforming people ignore Jesus' words to the devil, "Do not put the Lord your God to the test." (Luke 4:12, c.f., Deuteronomy 6:16)

None of this is what Jesus is talking about at all here. In the Bible, serpents and scorpions often appear as images of evil. And, of course most Christians believe that the serpent that tempted Adam and Eve into sin was the devil himself. (Genesis 3:1-14) Instead, what Jesus is telling not just the seventy-two disciples in our lesson, but to you and me as modern-day disciples too is this: He has given us power over the devil and over evil right now.

We may find this hard to believe. There’s a lot of evil in our world. And, let’s be honest, there’s a lot of sin in each of us as well. 

I’ve been pursuing Jesus as my God and Savior for forty-five years now. But I am sometimes shocked at how easily I cave into temptation: how quick I am to judge people's eternal salvation, how easily I fall into gossip, and how thoughtlessly I slip into sinful thoughts and behaviors. 

Sin is such a part of my inborn nature and, because of it, I’m so thick-headed and hard-hearted, that it’s usually only after I've thoughtlessly sinned when I’m reading or hearing God’s Word, or about to receive the Sacrament–when, in other words, I come face to face with God and I see the chasm between His holy perfection and my unholy sinfulness–that I realize again that I am a sinner in desperate need of the grace and forgiveness God gives in Jesus. 

So, given all the evil that’s around us and all the evil that’s within us, how can Jesus possibly say that we already have the power to overcome our enemy, the devil and that the devil can’t prevent us from being part of His eternal kingdom?

If we constantly look at the world or ourselves, we will never be able to believe that Christ has given Christians power over the devil and evil. We’ll live in an enclosed feedback loop of evil that will lead us to doubt that Christ has forgiven us, that God loves us, or that we have been saved by God’s grace through Holy Spirit-powered faith in Jesus.

But, when we fix our eyes on Jesus and on God’s Word, we will see that as followers of Jesus, we do have power over evil. We have the power from Jesus to crush the devil under our feet. 

Back in the garden of Eden, after Adam and Eve had fallen into sin, God told the serpent that from Eve would come an “offspring,” Jesus. God told the serpent, “He will crush your head…” (Genesis 3:15) “

The reason the Son of God appeared,” we’re told in 1 John 3:8, “was to destroy the devil’s work.” And that’s exactly what Jesus, the Son of God, has done. 

That’s why Jesus’ last words from the cross–”It is finished”--aren’t words of defeat or despair. They’re words of triumph and hope! “I have accomplished what I set out to do,” Jesus is saying. 

He came as the sacrificial “Lamb of God, Who ho takes away the sin of the world!” John the Baptist had said of Jesus. (John 1:29) And that's what Jesus proved to be.

The preacher of Hebrews tells us: “Since the children [that is, the human race] have flesh and blood, he [Jesus] too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil— and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.” (Hebrews 2:14-15) 

The threat that the devil constantly holds over our heads–the thing that drives us to act like gods with no accountability to God or neighbor–is the fear of death. (Which, in a pathetic attempt to elude reality, often leads us to the denial of death.) 

But through His death and resurrection, Jesus has set us free from death, along with the fear or denial of it.

Jesus has covered those who turn to Him with His power over the devil and death. 

So, in the power of Jesus’ grace, we can be sure that no matter how often the devil tries to tell us that we’re unworthy, unrighteous, or unclean, or how we may feel on any given day, or what random doubtful thoughts may cross our minds, we belong to God forever.

And when we confront the evil in us or the evil around us, we can, like the seventy-two who went among God’s enemies, meet...

the world’s skepticism with God’s kindness, 

the world’s hatred with God’s love, 

the world’s evil with the saving good news of Jesus Christ that all who believe in Jesus Christ have the forgiveness of sin, the presence of God in their lives today, and everlasting life with God!

Now, quickly, to Jesus’ second stunning statement to us today. He says: “However, do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.” (Luke 10:20) 

Our greatest source of joy as Christians is that, through Jesus, our names are written in heaven. We belong to God forever. 

The early Church baptized whole households, certainly including children and babies, in obedience to both Jesus’ baptismal command and His command that children be brought to Him. (Luke 18:16) But whenever we’re baptized, the apostle Peter says, “baptism…saves you…by the resurrection of Jesus Christ…” (1 Peter 3:21) In Baptism, God makes a covenant with the baptized, immersing them in Jesus’ death and resurrection, making them His child and part of His Church, calling the baptized to believe in Jesus, sending the Holy Spirit to empower the baptized to believe. 

I was baptized as an infant and I’m convinced that because God made a promise on that day to be my God, He made sure that there were always Christians in my life, calling me to believe in Jesus. That included my wife and the people of our home church wielding nothing but the Gospel Word about Jesus and the water of Holy Baptism and the bread and wine of Holy Communion. 

By these means coming from outside of yourself and not from the world or yourself, God assures you of His love for you, that Jesus died and rose for you, that He has rescued you from sin, death, and the devil, and gives you saving faith, and writes your name in heaven.

And so today, friends, Jesus gives us two reasons to rejoice. 

We can rejoice that He shares the victory over evil and the evil one He has given us through His cross and resurrection. 

But even more amazingly and graciously, we can rejoice that all who turn to Jesus belong to God forever! Amen

Meeting God in the Fine Silence

[Below you'll find live stream video of both of today's worship services from Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, along with the prepared message for the day. But note that when I actually preach, there were a few additions.]





1 Kings 19:9b-21

Our text today is the first lesson, 1 Kings 19:9b-21. In looking at it, we must begin with two fundamental facts.

The first is this: Life is hard. Even God the Son, Jesus, experienced this when He came into this world and we are no more exempt than Him. 

The second fact is this: God is still in charge, still at work to put the world right, and, still present among us, here, in the midst of the challenges, burdens, suffering, contention, and grief. The risen Jesus promises those who trust in Him, “...surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (Matthew 28:20)

Most of the world finds this second fact hard to believe. Most people’s expectation is that if God is for real and really working, everything should be easy, we should get what we want. Even those who confess faith in Jesus as God the Son are tempted to think that their faith in Jesus entitles them to a place on Easy Street. The God we know in Jesus doesn’t promise that the pain and death of living in a fallen and condemned world will be erased when we follow Him. He promises to give us strength and peace in the midst of this world and to give us everlasting life with God in a new world at the end of this one. He promises us the forgiveness of sins we don’t want to acknowledge. He gives reconciliation with a God we may not really be sure we want to be around, but would rather keep at arm’s length. We can be like Moses, who wanted to avoid and evade God (Exodus 3:1-4:14). Or like the ancient Israelites who told Moses, “...do not have God speak to us or we will die.” (Exodus 20:19). Or like Simon Peter, who told Jesus, “Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!” (Luke 5:8)

The human attempt to evade and avoid God or to make Him over in a way more acceptable to us is nothing new. After the reign of ancient Israel’s third king, Solomon, God’s people split themselves into two nations. The southern kingdom was Judah, with its capital and worship life centered in Jerusalem. The northern kingdom, called Israel, had its capital and worship life centered in Samaria. As long as these two kingdoms existed, whatever their economic or military status, they mostly limped along spiritually, sometimes trusting in God but mostly not. They chased after other gods that promised them what they wanted. Sometimes, they tried combining the worship of Yahweh with worshiping various idols. (Exactly what we see happening in the world and in the Church today.)

From 874 to 853 BC, a king named Ahab ruled in Israel. Ahab was married to a Phoenician princess named Jezebel. Jezebel introduced the worship of a fertility god called Baal among God’s people. Ahab built a temple to Baal in Israel. The Baal cult promised fertile soil, high crop yields, success. God, Yahweh, seemed helpless as His people abandoned Him. Finally, God sent the prophet Elijah to Ahab to announce that because of the faithlessness of  king and people, there would be a drought in Israel. God was calling His people to turn back to Him.

The drought lasted three-and-a-half years, until a gathering at a place called Mount Carmel. There, 450 prophets of Baal asked their idol to rain fire down from heaven. Elijah built a stone altar to God, poured gallons of water on and around it, burnt offerings to God, and prayed. God sent fire down that consumed the altar, the offerings, the wood, and the stone, reducing it to dust. The people saw, for a while anyway, that the God they had betrayed was in control of the world, not Baal. They killed the false prophets. And soon, Elijah announced that God would soon send rain.

This was a victory for God. God had used Elijah to bring it. Queen Jezebel now vowed to kill Elijah. Elijah ran away, to a place called Mount Horeb, also known as Mount Sinai, the place where God had given Moses the Ten Commandments. Elijah hid in a cave. Why did Elijah run and hide? Maybe he thought that once God called His people away from Baal worship and back to Himself, his life would get back to “normal.” But after doing the will of God, he was proclaimed an enemy of the state. Whatever his reasoning, Elijah had had enough. He didn’t want to do the will of God or speak God’s Word any longer. He seems to have hidden from not just Jezebel, but also from God.

God finds Elijah though. ‘What are you doing here, Elijah?” God asks (1 Kings 19:9) You can almost hear the self-righteousness and self-pity as Elijah says: “I have been very zealous for the Lord God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, torn down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too.” (1 Kings 9:10) This last claim isn’t true! Elijah witnessed how many in Israel had just turned back to God. Elijah’s self-righteousness had isolated him not just from others, but from God. That can happen to us too.

But God doesn’t give up on sinners, not even those in Christ’s Church! He doesn’t give up on you. God tells Elijah to step outside the cave and wait for Him to pass by. Here, our lesson says: “Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave.” (1 Kings 19:11-13)

When God does miracles in our lives–hears our prayers, brings healing, restores relationships, those are loving acts of a sovereign God that point us to rely on Him for life and salvation. But we can become miracle addicts. “What have you done for me lately, God? What big thing are you going to do next? Why isn’t my life in this world perfect yet?” This appears to have been Elijah’s attitude after the contest at Mount Carmel. Nine hundred years after the events in our first lesson, after Jesus fed 5000 on a few pieces of bread and fish, a crowd chased after Him. “Very truly I tell you, you are looking for me,” Jesus told the crowd, “not because you saw the signs I performed but because you ate the loaves and had your fill.” (John 6:26)

Today, if our faith in God depends on anything other than what God has already done for us in Jesus Christ, we’re in trouble. We’re running away from God. We’re putting our faith in signs rather than in God. Elijah looked for God in gale force winds, an earthquake, in fire. But God came to Him “in a gentle whisper,” literally, “a sound of fine silence” in the original Hebrew. Jesus sometimes performs notable miracles today. We give Him thanks and praise when He does. But we can most reliably find the Lord Who, in His death and resurrection, has finished everything needed to save us from sin, death, and darkness and to give us life with God that never ends not in miraculous signs or in showy religious acts. We find Him most certainly in the fine silence of His Gospel Word, the baptismal font, and the bread and the wine of Holy Communion. By these understated means, we receive greater gifts than healing or ease. After all, every healed person eventually dies and every person allowed to live with ease in this world goes to the grave. Instead, by the means of Word and Sacrament by which the Holy Spirit gives us the gift of faith in Jesus, we receive God’s forgiveness and everlasting life. By these simple means, we are assured that God loves us, that God is with us, and that we belong to Him for all eternity. Quite simply, in the Gospel Word about Jesus and in Baptism and Communion, we receive God. And for those of us so prone by sin to huddle in our caves of self-righteousness and self-justification, to be able to receive God and the everlasting life that God alone can give us through Christ in these quiet ways, is a more stupendous blessing than any victory we may experience in this life! What we learn is what God showed Elijah outside that cave on Mount Horeb, that the God we meet in Jesus Christ is all we really need. Amen

 

The Law and the Gospel

[Below you can find live stream video of this past Sunday's worship services with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, AND the prepared text for the message.]





Galatians 3:23-4:7

The categories of Law and Gospel are well known to most Lutheran Christians.

God’s Law, we say, can’t make us righteous, because none of us can obey God’s Law. That Law can only show us that we have no hope of receiving God’s blessings in this life or the next based on our own goodness or good deeds. Romans 3:22 puts it simply: “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” The righteousness that allows human beings the privilege of calling the God of the universe, “our God, our Lord, or our Father,” isn’t something we can earn by human effort. Or even by human effort assisted by God. We’ll never make ourselves righteous, acceptable in God’s kingdom, by resolving to be righteous. We all fall short. That’s what God’s Law, succinctly listed in the Ten Commandments, tells us. 

Our only hope for righteousness is the Gospel, the good news. A Lutheran theologian of the last century described the Gospel like this: “​​The Gospel is the forgiveness of sins, nothing else. It is not a theory about the possibility of forgiveness, not a [mere] religious message... The Gospel of Jesus Christ is something quite different. [It tells us, ‘Your sins are forgiven you.’ (Luke 7:48)] That is His Gospel.” [Hermann Sasse]

The Gospel then is that Jesus, God the Son, has done for us what we could never do for ourselves. He has perfectly obeyed God’s Law for human beings, then, sinless Himself, bore condemnation and death for our sin that we deserve so that our separation from God is ended eternally!

Forgiveness, reconciliation, and all the other benefits of the Gospel happen to us when the Holy Spirit, through the Gospel Word about Jesus, gives us faith in Jesus.

The Gospel declares that Jesus has already died and risen to make you righteous.

Faith is the gift of God that allows us to say, “Jesus is Lord!” And, “Jesus is my Lord!” (1 Corinthians 12:3)

So if we can’t be made righteous in the eyes of God by our performance of God’s Law, what purpose does the Law serve?

The apostle Paul talks about that question as well as the power of the Gospel in today’s second lesson, Galatians 3:23-4:7.

He starts our lesson with a one-verse history of the whole human race before the coming of faith: “Before the coming of this faith, we were held in custody under the law, locked up until the faith that was to come would be revealed. So the law was our guardian until Christ came that we might be justified by faith. Now that this faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian.”

Before anyone knew it was possible to believe in the God Who reveals Himself to us in the crucified and risen Jesus, the whole human race was held in check by God’s law.

This was true even of people who had never heard of God’s law, which the Bible says, is written on every human heart [Romans 2:15]. 

C.S. Lewis explains how this is so in Mere Christianity. Some cultures may say that you should only have one wife and others say you can have many, Lewis notes. But the moral code of no culture says that you can have your neighbor’s wife. And while different cultures may have different ideas of what constitutes murder, no culture says that murder is OK.

Who taught us that these were the right values?

No one needs to be taught God’s law; we know it from birth. 

This law, Paul says, had an important role before saving faith was made available to any of us. Before God gave the gift of faith in God to Abraham, who anticipated the coming of Jesus, and Israel, who also awaited the coming of Jesus, or to the rest of us in Jesus, God the Son, God’s Law was our guardian. That word, in the original Greek, is paidagogos, or pedagogue, a word that means leader of a child.

In the first-century Roman world, a pedagogue was a household slave whose job it was to oversee the life and upbringing of wealthy men’s children. The pedagogue was there to keep the heirs safe and out of trouble, to preserve and prepare them for adulthood and their inheritance. 

That, Paul says, is like the function of God’s Law in the lives of those who don’t yet have faith in Jesus. The law paints a picture of what righteousness that is pleasing to God is like. The Law says that the righteousness that makes someone fit for life with God is one in which idolatry, murder, lying, adultery, sexual promiscuity, false witness, gossiping, and covetousness are absent. A righteous life is one of absolute selflessness and love for God and love for others. The Law then lays out a way of life that’s impossible for we sinners to live. But because all of us, more or less, know what’s right and wrong, even though we don’t always like to acknowledge it, the Law does give us lessons on how best to live. It’s our teacher, our pedagogue and it constrains most people most of the time from being total selfish thugs.

When I was growing up, my dad had to teach me to do the right thing. He was the law for me, my pedagogue. I obeyed him because I didn’t like the consequences when I didn’t. Once I reached adulthood, knowing that I could trust my dad and his love for me (I had a kind of faith in my dad), I did things he asked me to do, not out of fear of punishment, but out of gratitude for and trust his love for me. Dad didn’t need to act as my pedagogue any longer.

Once the gift of faith in Jesus has come to us, we no longer need the pedagogy of the Law. We’re spiritual grown-ups, no matter our age, baptized believers who have claimed our inheritance in Jesus. By faith in Christ, we live in the kingdom of God.

Following Jesus then, isn’t about adding another item to your to-do list. It’s about believing in Him and His undying love for us.

As I visited one of our shut-ins this past week, she mentioned how great it was knowing, as Romans 8 says, nothing can separate the believer in Jesus from the love of God. 

So, Paul says in Galatians 3:26-29: “...in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.” When this happens, Paul goes on to say, God sends “the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, ‘Abba, Father.’ So you are no longer a slave, but God’s child; and since you are his child, God has made you also an heir.” 

These are important words. They show that after Jesus, everything has changed!

In only a handful of verses in the Old Testament is God called Father. But faith in Jesus entitles us to know God as precisely that. That’s why Jesus teaches us to pray, “Our Father, Who art in heaven…”

Paul says that when we are set free by the Gospel to approach God in this way,  the Holy Spirit is telling us that we no longer live under the Law, but are heirs who have an eternal inheritance in God’s Kingdom!

To be sure, God’s Law will still call the person saved by God’s grace in Christ to seek to live in accordance with the will of God. That law will keep calling us to love God and love neighbor, to be kind to those hated by others, to keep sexual intimacy within the bounds of marriage between a man and woman, to make disciples, to refrain from covetousness and stealing, and so on. We will be called to daily take up our crosses and follow Jesus (Luke 9:23), meaning living a lifestyle of daily repentance and renewal.

But the Gospel completely changes our motivation for seeking to do God’s will on earth as it’s done in heaven.

In Jesus’ famous parable of the Prodigal Son, you remember, we meet two sons.

One son thinks he must earn his inheritance from his dad and is sure that he’s behaved so well that he deserves that inheritance. This older son doesn’t really trust his father–or believe in him–despite outward appearances of being a good son. This is the son who lives under the Law because he views his relationship with his dad as a deal: He’ll be good, however begrudgingly, and his dad will have to give him the inheritance.

The other son, at the end of the story, realizes that he’s done nothing and can do nothing to earn  his inheritance. But, unlike his older brother, he trusts his dad to be gracious to him even when, after many sins, he returns. And, of course, when he does return, the father welcomes the prodigal home with greater love than he could ever have imagined. This is what it’s like to be given the gift of faith in Jesus that assures us our eternal inheritance! This is what life is like when we live under the gracious forgiveness and new life God gives to us in the Gospel.

Dear friends, turn to Jesus and embrace the faith in Him the Holy Spirit has given to you. Turn to Jesus, knowing that He has already done everything necessary to make you right with God, to let you live in the freedom of the Gospel. That’s the way to everlasting life with God. Amen