A lot of them are in Wisconsin. Green Bay is the drunkest. Read the whole thing.
Athens, Ohio, home of the well-known Halloween drunkfest, didn't make the list.
Thursday, May 25, 2017
Today's Hunger for God's Word Isn't Surprising
Thirty years ago, my guess is that if you asked the average churchgoer what one thing attracted them to or kept them attending a particular congregation, the answer would have been music. Music can be important in helping us to worship God, of course. As musician Toby Mac has said, music goes to places that words alone can't.
But, according to this poll from Gallup, sermons or talks that teach more about Scripture is the top reason that people go to worship.
I have seen this in my own ministry. Today, there is wide acceptance among churchgoers of varied worship and musical styles. The worship music wars are over in North American churches, in part I think, because we all are exposed to so many different musical styles that for us to hear such variety in worship isn't jarring.
Today, people care less about packaging--worship form--than they do about what's inside--the message proclaimed. People want to know what God says in His Word, what He calls us to believe and why.
In thirty-two years as a pastor, I've never seen a greater hunger for God's Word than I see today.
This dovetails with my own journey as a preacher. In days past, I looked for great stories to fill my sermons. A good story that helps people to understand the Bible text before them is fine. But too often, I think, I tried to be "cute."
When my former denomination began taking a path away from the authority of Scripture as God's Word and the norm for our life, faith, and practice, I decided that the time for cute was through. If so many people in my former denomination could be hoodwinked into walking away from the authority of God's Word, a central tenet of the Lutheran confessions, I had to quit assuming that everyone knew what the Bible said. I needed to unfold the Scripture again and again.
I know that in my own life, in the craziness of daily living, I can easily lose sight of God's Word, His revealed will for me as a human being, and the center of history, God enfleshed, Jesus, Who died with humanity and rose from death in order to open up eternal life with God to all who believe in HIm. If I as a pastor, won't help people to hear and see what God is saying to them, I let them down.
There are fewer stories in my sermons these days. And the stories are usually shorter. Always, I pray, they're tied to the Biblical text on which I'm preaching on that day.
Christian faith is life and death business. People who come to worship with us who have no faith need to hear God's Word...without me, my stories, or attempts to be entertaining, relevant, or cute getting in the way. People who come to worship and believe, yet need encouragement, help, counsel, strength, reproach, or liberation, aren't helped when sermons are autobiographical and cute.
People need Christ. And they need the Word about Christ, which is found in every word of the Old and New Testament. People don't seem to mind that I don't entertain them. Or wow them.
Hellenistic Jews once approached Philip, another Hellenistic Jew and a follower of Jesus. They told Philip: "Sir, we would like to see Jesus" (John 12:21).
Whether the people who go to Christian worship on Sunday mornings know it or not, they're seeking the same thing. When, in Christian preaching, as well as Christian fellowship, Christian worship, and Christian service, they do see Jesus, they'll be back for more.
The Word of God, when read, pondered, or proclaimed has power! In the New Testament, Paul says, "...faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ" (Romans 10:17). And God assures us in the Old Testament that when His Word is spoken:
And they begin to feel like the apostle Paul:
But, according to this poll from Gallup, sermons or talks that teach more about Scripture is the top reason that people go to worship.
I have seen this in my own ministry. Today, there is wide acceptance among churchgoers of varied worship and musical styles. The worship music wars are over in North American churches, in part I think, because we all are exposed to so many different musical styles that for us to hear such variety in worship isn't jarring.
Today, people care less about packaging--worship form--than they do about what's inside--the message proclaimed. People want to know what God says in His Word, what He calls us to believe and why.
In thirty-two years as a pastor, I've never seen a greater hunger for God's Word than I see today.
This dovetails with my own journey as a preacher. In days past, I looked for great stories to fill my sermons. A good story that helps people to understand the Bible text before them is fine. But too often, I think, I tried to be "cute."
When my former denomination began taking a path away from the authority of Scripture as God's Word and the norm for our life, faith, and practice, I decided that the time for cute was through. If so many people in my former denomination could be hoodwinked into walking away from the authority of God's Word, a central tenet of the Lutheran confessions, I had to quit assuming that everyone knew what the Bible said. I needed to unfold the Scripture again and again.
I know that in my own life, in the craziness of daily living, I can easily lose sight of God's Word, His revealed will for me as a human being, and the center of history, God enfleshed, Jesus, Who died with humanity and rose from death in order to open up eternal life with God to all who believe in HIm. If I as a pastor, won't help people to hear and see what God is saying to them, I let them down.
There are fewer stories in my sermons these days. And the stories are usually shorter. Always, I pray, they're tied to the Biblical text on which I'm preaching on that day.
Christian faith is life and death business. People who come to worship with us who have no faith need to hear God's Word...without me, my stories, or attempts to be entertaining, relevant, or cute getting in the way. People who come to worship and believe, yet need encouragement, help, counsel, strength, reproach, or liberation, aren't helped when sermons are autobiographical and cute.
People need Christ. And they need the Word about Christ, which is found in every word of the Old and New Testament. People don't seem to mind that I don't entertain them. Or wow them.
Hellenistic Jews once approached Philip, another Hellenistic Jew and a follower of Jesus. They told Philip: "Sir, we would like to see Jesus" (John 12:21).
Whether the people who go to Christian worship on Sunday mornings know it or not, they're seeking the same thing. When, in Christian preaching, as well as Christian fellowship, Christian worship, and Christian service, they do see Jesus, they'll be back for more.
The Word of God, when read, pondered, or proclaimed has power! In the New Testament, Paul says, "...faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ" (Romans 10:17). And God assures us in the Old Testament that when His Word is spoken:
...as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it. (Isaiah 55:10-11)The Gallup findings are not surprising to me, then. When people hear God's Word faithfully read and explicated, they know they've heard from the One Who made them, redeemed them on the cross and rose from the dead to give them life, and still lives with them through His Holy Spirit. They've come into contact with the Life-Giver and the Life-Changer. And they want more!
And they begin to feel like the apostle Paul:
...I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead. (Philippians 3:8-11)[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
Monday, May 22, 2017
God is On the Move by 7eventh Time Down
If you're paying attention, you know it's so.
[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
Sunday, May 21, 2017
You don't have to love. You get to love! (AUDIO)
Here.
[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. This is the message from this morning's worship services.]
[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. This is the message from this morning's worship services.]
You don't have to love. You get to love!
John 14:15-21
A renowned theologian made a confession to a group of people who were celebrating his career. “For forty years,” he said, “I’ve told people, ‘You’ve got to love.’ Now I realize that I’ve had it wrong. The message of Jesus is, ‘You get to love.’”
It’s so easy for us to get the message of Jesus wrong.
It’s so easy to become Christian Pharisees, turning Jesus into a law-giver, and boiling our faith down to being obedient to His command (and the entire Bible’s command) that we love God and love neighbor.
But how confident are we of our ability to be perfectly obedient to God’s law of love? I hope not very confident.
Otherwise, the confession of sin we offered to God together at the beginning of worship today was a meaningless exercise.
Even more seriously, if you and I are confident in our ability to obey God’s law of love, we’re placing our trust in ourselves and not in God.
“Wait a minute,” you might say, “I’m not such a bad person. I do a fair job of loving God and loving my neighbor...to a point.”
To those who may be inclined to offer such a hedged defense, may I remind you of what’s involved in God’s law of love, as summarized in the Ten Commandments?
But James reminds us: “...whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it” (James 2:10).
And Jesus tells us that even to think of committing these sins is the same as committing them. “The things that come out of a person’s mouth come from the heart,” Jesus says in Matthew 15:18-20, “and these defile them. For out of the heart come evil thoughts—murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what defile a person…”
Considering these facts, the conclusion reached by the apostle Paul is unavoidable: “...all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God…” (Romans 3:23).
And since “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23), Paul’s question for himself in Romans 7:24 is one that every member of the human race should be asking themselves: “Wretched man [or woman] that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” (ESV)
This, of course, is where Jesus comes in.
God looks on the children He created in His image with compassion, even though we are sinners who fail to abide by His law of love. It saddens Him because He doesn’t want us to condemn ourselves by remaining enslaved to sin, putting our trust in our own “pretty good” behavior. Every baby born into the world today is destined for death and condemnation for sin unless God acts to saves them.
That’s why He sent Jesus to bear the condemnation for sin we deserve and to rise to become our trailblazer to eternity.
And that’s why He sends the Holy Spirit to teach us and to remind us to turn to Christ and be forgiven, turn to Him and live, turn to Him and be given new, eternal lives.
Today’s gospel lesson finds Jesus not laying down laws that will earn us salvation. No such laws exist.
You and I can never be good enough to be saved.
Instead, Jesus describes the life that He, by His death and resurrection, makes possible for those who trust in Him.
He isn’t telling us, “You have to love,” but, “You get to love.”
And, He tells us that we get so much more by the power of His grace and deity.
Let’s take a look at what He says this morning in John 14:15-21.
Verse 15: “If you love me, keep my commands.” Already, Jesus has promised the disciples (including you and me):
Now, let me ask you something: Knowing that God has loved you so much that He does all of this for you as a gift to the one with faith in Jesus, what is the only appropriate response from you (or me)?
Love. Trusting, grateful love!
We love God, as the apostle John writes elsewhere, because God loved us first (1 John 4:19).
Once trust in Christ and gratitude for God’s grace infects a soul, love is the response.
And so, Jesus offers here not so much a command, but an observation. When, by faith, you have come to love God and God resides in you, you will do what God commands.
Not perfectly. Our old sinful selves get in the way.
But as we live in daily repentance and renewal, daily surrender to Jesus, the great arc of our lives will bend increasingly toward Jesus and His loving way of life.
You’ll do that as an almost automatic, involuntary response to the relationship of love with God into which Christ brings you.
After my mother died, I thanked my dad for all the many years he spent caring for her. He said, matter-of-factly, “Well, what else was I going to do?”
What else was I going to do? That’s the question of love.
When, in the words of a great song by B.B. King and U2, “love comes to town,” when it comes to save you and when it comes to take residence in your life, what else are you going to do? Love becomes not a command, but a way of life.
Jesus shows this in His great parable about the last judgment when He says He will say to His sheep: "Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me..." And the sheep will ask Jesus, "When did we do any of that? We don't remember doing any of that!" Jesus says that His sheep are the ones who respond to His love with love for God and love for neighbor, simply living without a thought of getting credit or keeping score! (Matthew 25:31-46)
But how will we love? After all, “love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.” (1 Corinthians 13:4-7)
These verses from the Bible's "love chapter," of course, are often read at weddings. When I read them at weddings, I will often look up at the couples standing before me as they smile smugly, their expressions saying, "Yes, that's our love. That's how we love each other." Really?
How is it possible for us to perfectly keep Christ’s law by loving in the style of the love chapter?
Jesus tells us. Verse 16: “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever— the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live.”
To baptized believers in Jesus, Jesus comes to live. Through His Holy Spirit, Jesus comes to us. He speaks Jesus’ word of truth to us, in us, for us.
When you’ve never dared to open yourself to Christ and His love, talk of the Holy Spirit seems like foolishness.
But we know better.
When Jesus knocks on the doors of our hearts and we let Him in (Revelation 3:20), we know what it is to have life-giving communion with the God revealed in Jesus.
The Holy Spirit lives in believers in Jesus.
The Holy Spirit brings Jesus’ love into the centers of our souls and we know that we’re not orphans and, fortified by His love, He makes it possible for us to love when we can’t.
I’ve told you that one prayer I’ve offered through the years is, “Lord, I find myself incapable of loving so-and-so. Please love them through me.” I find that God not only loves those people through me, over time, He creates within me genuine love for them.
I’m sure that others have offered similar prayers regarding Mark Daniels.
A woman heard me share this years ago and told me months later that she had tried this on her husband. “I’d gotten to where I couldn’t stand him,” she told me, “but after awhile, I began to see him differently and his behavior seemed to change as I loved Him.”
When Christ’s love and the Holy Spirit come to town, when we let Christ and the Spirit lodge within us and we surrender, we will love.
We will keep Christ’s commands without thinking of it. That’s how grace works.
Jesus continues: “On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you. Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me. The one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love them and show myself to them.”
Here’s an incredible thought: The Creator of the universe ushers with faith in Jesus into the same relationship of intimacy, trust, and love He has enjoyed within the Trinity--Father, Son, and Holy Spirit--for all eternity. He wants you beside Him now and in eternity.
When we surrender to the grace that accepts us as we are and works to make us all that we can be, our relationship with God is totally transformed. We are transformed.
“You shall have no other gods before me,” for example, is changed from a command to a promise.
Through Jesus, we know we have no need of other gods.
We don’t look for love, affirmation, success, peace, or hope anywhere else.
We have it all in Jesus!
No other gods will bother us, entice us, or drag us down.
We’ll have the God we meet in Jesus and, through Him, we have life.
The message of Jesus then is that you don’t have to love, you get to love, just like the Lord Who made you, Who died and rose for you, Who speaks His truth to you again this morning.
Through Jesus, you get to be a free, redeemed child of God, now and forever. Hallelujah!
Now live in His love!
[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. This was the message for today's Sunday worship services.]
A renowned theologian made a confession to a group of people who were celebrating his career. “For forty years,” he said, “I’ve told people, ‘You’ve got to love.’ Now I realize that I’ve had it wrong. The message of Jesus is, ‘You get to love.’”
It’s so easy for us to get the message of Jesus wrong.
It’s so easy to become Christian Pharisees, turning Jesus into a law-giver, and boiling our faith down to being obedient to His command (and the entire Bible’s command) that we love God and love neighbor.
But how confident are we of our ability to be perfectly obedient to God’s law of love? I hope not very confident.
Otherwise, the confession of sin we offered to God together at the beginning of worship today was a meaningless exercise.
Even more seriously, if you and I are confident in our ability to obey God’s law of love, we’re placing our trust in ourselves and not in God.
“Wait a minute,” you might say, “I’m not such a bad person. I do a fair job of loving God and loving my neighbor...to a point.”
To those who may be inclined to offer such a hedged defense, may I remind you of what’s involved in God’s law of love, as summarized in the Ten Commandments?
- You shall have no other gods before God.
- You shall not take the name of God in vain.
- Remember the Sabbath to keep it holy.
- Honor your father and your mother.
- You shall not murder.
- You shall not commit adultery.
- You shall not steal.
- You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
- You shall not covet your neighbor’s house.
- You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, his workers, his livestock, or anything that else that is your neighbor’s.
But James reminds us: “...whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it” (James 2:10).
And Jesus tells us that even to think of committing these sins is the same as committing them. “The things that come out of a person’s mouth come from the heart,” Jesus says in Matthew 15:18-20, “and these defile them. For out of the heart come evil thoughts—murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what defile a person…”
Considering these facts, the conclusion reached by the apostle Paul is unavoidable: “...all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God…” (Romans 3:23).
And since “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23), Paul’s question for himself in Romans 7:24 is one that every member of the human race should be asking themselves: “Wretched man [or woman] that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” (ESV)
This, of course, is where Jesus comes in.
God looks on the children He created in His image with compassion, even though we are sinners who fail to abide by His law of love. It saddens Him because He doesn’t want us to condemn ourselves by remaining enslaved to sin, putting our trust in our own “pretty good” behavior. Every baby born into the world today is destined for death and condemnation for sin unless God acts to saves them.
That’s why He sent Jesus to bear the condemnation for sin we deserve and to rise to become our trailblazer to eternity.
And that’s why He sends the Holy Spirit to teach us and to remind us to turn to Christ and be forgiven, turn to Him and live, turn to Him and be given new, eternal lives.
Today’s gospel lesson finds Jesus not laying down laws that will earn us salvation. No such laws exist.
You and I can never be good enough to be saved.
Instead, Jesus describes the life that He, by His death and resurrection, makes possible for those who trust in Him.
He isn’t telling us, “You have to love,” but, “You get to love.”
And, He tells us that we get so much more by the power of His grace and deity.
Let’s take a look at what He says this morning in John 14:15-21.
Verse 15: “If you love me, keep my commands.” Already, Jesus has promised the disciples (including you and me):
- that all who follow Him have an eternal place in His kingdom prepared by Him (John 14:1-4);
- that He is the way to life with God (John 14:6-7); and
- answers to prayers to the Father offered in Jesus’ name (John 4:13-14),
Now, let me ask you something: Knowing that God has loved you so much that He does all of this for you as a gift to the one with faith in Jesus, what is the only appropriate response from you (or me)?
Love. Trusting, grateful love!
We love God, as the apostle John writes elsewhere, because God loved us first (1 John 4:19).
Once trust in Christ and gratitude for God’s grace infects a soul, love is the response.
And so, Jesus offers here not so much a command, but an observation. When, by faith, you have come to love God and God resides in you, you will do what God commands.
Not perfectly. Our old sinful selves get in the way.
But as we live in daily repentance and renewal, daily surrender to Jesus, the great arc of our lives will bend increasingly toward Jesus and His loving way of life.
You’ll do that as an almost automatic, involuntary response to the relationship of love with God into which Christ brings you.
After my mother died, I thanked my dad for all the many years he spent caring for her. He said, matter-of-factly, “Well, what else was I going to do?”
What else was I going to do? That’s the question of love.
When, in the words of a great song by B.B. King and U2, “love comes to town,” when it comes to save you and when it comes to take residence in your life, what else are you going to do? Love becomes not a command, but a way of life.
Jesus shows this in His great parable about the last judgment when He says He will say to His sheep: "Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me..." And the sheep will ask Jesus, "When did we do any of that? We don't remember doing any of that!" Jesus says that His sheep are the ones who respond to His love with love for God and love for neighbor, simply living without a thought of getting credit or keeping score! (Matthew 25:31-46)
But how will we love? After all, “love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.” (1 Corinthians 13:4-7)
These verses from the Bible's "love chapter," of course, are often read at weddings. When I read them at weddings, I will often look up at the couples standing before me as they smile smugly, their expressions saying, "Yes, that's our love. That's how we love each other." Really?
How is it possible for us to perfectly keep Christ’s law by loving in the style of the love chapter?
Jesus tells us. Verse 16: “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever— the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live.”
To baptized believers in Jesus, Jesus comes to live. Through His Holy Spirit, Jesus comes to us. He speaks Jesus’ word of truth to us, in us, for us.
- He does this at the Baptismal font, where we are baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, then “marked by the cross of Christ and sealed by the Holy Spirit forever.”
- He does it in His Word, where we read and hear God’s life-giving truth.
- He does it in the bread and wine, where He says, “Take and eat; this is My body...Take and drink; this is My blood,” offered to bring us forgiveness and effecting the miracle of re-membering us to Christ--breaking down the walls of separation, the walls of sin and death. By this, I mean that when Jesus gives us His body and blood at Holy Communion and says, "Do this in remembrance of Me," He is not saying, "Bring memories of Me to mind." He isn't saying, "Recollect Me." He's saying, "Be remembered to Me. Be reconnected to Me. Be the branches to My vine and take My life into your very body, soul, spirit, and will."
When you’ve never dared to open yourself to Christ and His love, talk of the Holy Spirit seems like foolishness.
But we know better.
When Jesus knocks on the doors of our hearts and we let Him in (Revelation 3:20), we know what it is to have life-giving communion with the God revealed in Jesus.
The Holy Spirit lives in believers in Jesus.
- When we sin, He calls us to repent.
- When we love, He tells us, “good and faithful servant.”
- When we don’t know what to pray, He forms our longing into groaning prayers too deep for words.
The Holy Spirit brings Jesus’ love into the centers of our souls and we know that we’re not orphans and, fortified by His love, He makes it possible for us to love when we can’t.
I’ve told you that one prayer I’ve offered through the years is, “Lord, I find myself incapable of loving so-and-so. Please love them through me.” I find that God not only loves those people through me, over time, He creates within me genuine love for them.
I’m sure that others have offered similar prayers regarding Mark Daniels.
A woman heard me share this years ago and told me months later that she had tried this on her husband. “I’d gotten to where I couldn’t stand him,” she told me, “but after awhile, I began to see him differently and his behavior seemed to change as I loved Him.”
When Christ’s love and the Holy Spirit come to town, when we let Christ and the Spirit lodge within us and we surrender, we will love.
We will keep Christ’s commands without thinking of it. That’s how grace works.
Jesus continues: “On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you. Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me. The one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love them and show myself to them.”
Here’s an incredible thought: The Creator of the universe ushers with faith in Jesus into the same relationship of intimacy, trust, and love He has enjoyed within the Trinity--Father, Son, and Holy Spirit--for all eternity. He wants you beside Him now and in eternity.
When we surrender to the grace that accepts us as we are and works to make us all that we can be, our relationship with God is totally transformed. We are transformed.
“You shall have no other gods before me,” for example, is changed from a command to a promise.
Through Jesus, we know we have no need of other gods.
We don’t look for love, affirmation, success, peace, or hope anywhere else.
We have it all in Jesus!
No other gods will bother us, entice us, or drag us down.
We’ll have the God we meet in Jesus and, through Him, we have life.
The message of Jesus then is that you don’t have to love, you get to love, just like the Lord Who made you, Who died and rose for you, Who speaks His truth to you again this morning.
Through Jesus, you get to be a free, redeemed child of God, now and forever. Hallelujah!
Now live in His love!
[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. This was the message for today's Sunday worship services.]
Saturday, May 20, 2017
A Deluge of Grace, Grace, GRACE!
Here are reflections from my morning quiet time with God today. To see how I approach quiet time, see here.
Look: “Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.” (Romans 5:3-5, NIV)
“And that’s not all: We throw open our doors to God and discover at the same moment that he has already thrown open his door to us. We find ourselves standing where we always hoped we might stand—out in the wide open spaces of God’s grace and glory, standing tall and shouting our praise.” (Romans 5:3-5, The Message)
“Deep and wide / Deep and wide / There’s a fountain flowing deep and wide.” It’s the words of that old Sunday School and camp song that come to mind as I read these amazing words of Paul, beautifully rendered by Peterson in The Message.
In the first two verses of Romans, chapter 5, Paul comes to one of his important therefore statements: “Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God.”
When I compare my life and how I conduct it to the Law of God, I fall short (Romans 3:23). As we confess on Sunday mornings, “We have not loved You with our whole heart; we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.” But, just like Abraham, the patriarch of Biblical faith, Paul says, we are accounted righteous by God through faith in God, Who has now revealed Himself to all the world--Jews and Gentiles--through Jesus, true God and true man. God graciously offered His Son for us so that all who believe in Jesus--Jew and Gentile--share in His victory over death and enjoy eternal reconciliation with God (Romans 5:10).
Paul says that I not only can now boast in my hope of a life of perfect righteousness beyond my grave because of Jesus and my faith in Him, I can even boast about Jesus in the midst of my sufferings.
Why? Because, God forges my character and fits me for authentic human living in this world and in eternity in the midst of suffering as I keep following Jesus!
This results in hope that doesn’t disappoint or put me to shame.
When I go through the worst that this life dispenses, when I experience God’s grace and forgiveness even when I am my own worst enemy and the creator of my own heartaches, I know that God is real. I experience, intimately and first-hand, that God’s grace is real. I know that Jesus’ death and resurrection were for me too.
This is how I have experienced You, God: As the gracious Father, Son, and Holy Spirit Who still loves me, still hears my prayers, still stands by me when I have failed You and I turn back, when I suffer and I rely on You.
It’s through the dark times, as we cling to Your hand, that deeper peace, deeper hope, deeper certainty, and deeper faith are won.
I have come to realize that You love me in spite of me--”...at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly” (Romans 5:6). Wow!
Listen: All of which is why, Peterson’s rendering in The Message caused me to stand up and take deeper notice of Your Word in Romans 5:3-5 today.
When my suffering--real, imagined, or attributable to the devil, the world, or my sinful self--leads me to a deeper walk with You and often in my life, hopelessness is dealt a fatal blow.
Grace gets the last word over my sin.
Life gets the final say over death.
I find myself, as Peterson renders Paul’s letter to the Romans “...standing where [I] always hoped [I] might stand—out in the wide open spaces of God’s grace and glory, standing tall and shouting [my] praise.”
When I trust in You, You set me free to be who You made me to be--Your son--and do what I was made for--reflect Your glory and goodness.
You grant a life-giving tidal wave of living water, slaking my troubled soul with grace. Grace. Grace. Grace! GRACE!
[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
When I connect with You each day, I find that taking in Your grace and love is far more challenging than the proverbial drinking water from a fire hose. It’s like trying to take in an ocean of fresh water in one gulp. You bring a deluge of grace that Paul talks about in Romans 5:5, observing (in Peterson’s rendering): “...we can’t round up enough containers to hold everything God generously pours into our lives through the Holy Spirit!” (A particular challenge for us who are simple jars of clay or paper cups, 2 Corinthians 4:7.)
And, amazingly, that’s in the midst of suffering, as Your grace uses that suffering to forge our characters and deepen our hope. (In the Peterson rendering, “alert expectancy,” is hope, a fantastic way of portraying Christian hope.)
As You daily prove Your faithfulness to me, Lord, I find myself increasingly empowered to live today and am given to standing on tip-toes in alert expectancy of what You are going to do today, tomorrow, and in eternity.
I have often disappointed You, others, and myself. I have sinned. I am a sinner who sins. But when I place my life in Your hands, the hope that You create within me never puts me to shame (Romans 5:5). I, by my actions and thoughts, am the only one who can shame Mark Daniels. But, I thank You, God, that my shame need not define my life nor my eternity. When I trust in You--Peterson renders it as opening the door to You--my shame is erased. My sins are forgiven. You give me new starts. (Romans 5:2, The Message)
Respond: Thank You, God, for undeserved grace. Thank You, Christ, for setting me free from sin and death. Thank You, Holy Spirit, for incessantly pounding through this thick skull of mine that my life is not about what I do, it’s about what You, the three-in-One God have done and are doing for me, doing in me, and my trust in You. I surrender. Now let me bathe in Your deluge of grace. Amen
Thursday, May 18, 2017
Inspiration at the Ford Museum
"Condo again, condo again, jiggedy jig." I'm back in Miamisburg after a few days of vacation in northwestern Ohio and Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Pictured here are my souvenirs from the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum in Grand Rapids. It's a good museum and I recommend a visit, although a few displays need some attention.
I'm a great admirer of President Ford. He didn't seek either the vice presidency or the presidency, but when he became president, whatever you think of his particular policies, he helped to significantly restore Americans' faith in the Constitution and our government.
This was sorely needed after his predecessor, Richard Nixon, attempted to subvert democracy and make himself a kind of elected royal, above both the law and the checks and balances created by our Constitution. Ultimately, Nixon's criminality didn't stand because, as Ford said at his White House swearing-in ceremony, "Ours is a government of laws, not of men."
The Ford Museum was a busy place when we visited yesterday. The Michigan Secretary of State had staff on hand to register citizens to vote. That was needed because, as is true twice a month at the Ford Museum, new citizens were sworn in at the auditorium. It was fun congratulating new fellow citizens after the ceremony!
The items I purchased at the museum include two books. One is about Brent Scowcroft, the national security adviser to President George H.W. Bush. I'm a fan of Scowcroft's foreign policy realism. A second biography is of Nelson Rockefeller, written by one of my favorite presidential historians, Richard Norton Smith. That book has been on my Amazon wish list for some time. But the books were both 75% off at the Ford Museum! So, I couldn't pass them up.
Also purchased: A pocket edition of the Constitution, which I intend to keep close at hand, taking fourth place behind pocket editions of the Bible, Concordia (the Lutheran Confessions), and The Small Catechism.
Two other items: Socks that will be at home on my feet, one with an image of George Washington, the other with Abraham Lincoln's picture.
Contrary to popular opinion, my contacts with politicians and my study of political history over the years demonstrate that there really are people in public service who are principled and patriotic. Gerald Ford was one of them.
Being at the museum was an inspiring experience. People like Ford remind us of what America is supposed to be about.
Here's a link to a post I wrote about Gerald Ford on the day he died in 2006.
[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
Sunday, May 14, 2017
Never Forget the One Who Never Forgets You!
John 14:1-14
Has this ever happened to you?
You go to the grocery store with a list of eight items in your mind. You’re confident that you’ll remember every item because you rehearsed the list over and over again earlier in the day. You get a cart and start to pick up the items. Bananas; check. Lettuce; check. Asparagus; check. Gluten free bread; check. Lunchmeat and cheese; check. Orange juice; check. You look at your cart: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 items.
But what was the eighth again? You think and think, but can’t remember.
You’re still not worried, though. You’ll just saunter up and down the aisles, hoping that you’ll spy the eighth item on your mental list.
The saunter strategy only makes things worse because, as you see things on sale or items you think you might need, you load up your cart with them. It only buries the forgotten item into the deeper recesses of your brain. You keep on forgetting until, just as your garage door goes up, you remember that you needed to pick up the main course for the night, chicken!
Our memories can be faulty. Unless we take the proper precautions, we are all at risk of forgetting the most important things in life. If we’re not careful, we can forget the important things that we know.
This is even true of our relationship with the God revealed to all of us in Jesus. In the rush of daily living, we can forget Jesus.
I’m not talking about forgetting the facts surrounding Jesus. Nobody who knows the Apostles’ Creed or the Nicene Creed is apt to forget that Jesus was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary, was true God and true man, died for our sin, and rose to give life to all who believe in Him.
But, though all of these statements describe life-giving truths about Jesus, knowing them and even memorizing them without knowing Jesus won’t bring us life with God. Only Jesus does that. And only those who maintain a relationship with Jesus, daily turning from sin, daily following Him and trusting in Him, have life with God.
Christian faith isn’t a set of religious propositions. Christian faith is a relationship with God enfleshed, Jesus Christ.
And you know what? Relationships have to be nurtured.
A woman was married to a man who loved her. But he was boring, not flashy, predictable. She had an affair with a man who was none of those things. But after the excitement wore off, she realized that this man didn’t love her the way her husband did. So she committed herself to reconstructing her relationship with her husband. Later, she told a friend, “I took my husband for granted. I’d forgotten who he was and what he did with me and for me. I nearly lost him.”
As our gospel lesson for today begins, the disciples are in danger of losing their relationship with Jesus. Jesus, heading for His crucifixion, speaks to them in what we call His “farewell discourse.” He tells them: “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going.”
The disciples should have known exactly what Jesus was talking about when He claimed to be one with God. They had heard Him say: “Before Abraham was born, I am,” using strange grammar to claim for Himself the same name God revealed to be His to Moses back at the burning bush, Yahweh, I Am (John 8:58). The disciples had heard Jesus say, “I and the Father are one" (John 10:30). They had watched Jesus raise His friend Lazarus from the dead (as well as countless other signs).
They also should have known where Jesus was going. They’d heard Jesus tell Lazarus’ sister, “I am the resurrection and the life” (John 11:25). They had heard Jesus tell 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” (John 3:16).
But now, in the rush of their daily lives, looking down the barrelhead of opposition and death in Jerusalem, they seem to have forgotten everything. They had gotten so accustomed to live with “the Word [made] flesh,” that they forgot that this flesh and blood rabbi they followed was (and is) also God. (John 1:14)
Verse 5: “Thomas said to him, ‘Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?’ Jesus answered, ‘I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.’”
Dr. Jim Nestingen says that Thomas was looking for a roadmap. We don’t need a roadmap. If we know Jesus and follow Him, we know the Way and that’s enough.
Jesus is the way because He’s the foundational truth on which the new creation is built. Any life not built on Jesus is a lie. Other ways promise life, but only Jesus can deliver. Jesus told Pilate: “Everyone on the side of truth listens to Me” (John 18:37).
Jesus is the way because when He ushers us into intimacy with the Father, we are connected to the only One Who can make life or make life new. Thomas should have known all of this already; but he forgot. We too can forget. We too need to be regularly reminded or risk forgetting the Way.
Verse 8: “Philip said, ‘Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.’ Jesus answered: ‘Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you I do not speak on my own authority. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work. Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the works themselves.’”
Philip, one of Jesus’ first followers, the disciple who told his friend Nathanael, “Come and see” (John 1:46), had evidently forgotten the things he had seen and heard: the miracles, the teaching, the changed lives. He demands that Jesus show them the Father. Jesus reminds Philip that Philip had already seen the Father in Jesus. And, Jesus pleads, “If you don’t believe what you’ve seen in Me, then believe in what you’ve seen Me do.”
I sometimes forget Who Jesus is and what He has accomplished for you at the cross and from His empty tomb.
I forget His promises, promises for which His death and resurrection are the downpayment and the guarantee.
I get so caught up in all my doing, that I forget that the God we know in Jesus Christ is the One in Whom “‘we live and move and have our being.' “ (Acts 17:28)
Jesus’ death and resurrection prove that He can deliver on His promises to us, promises like forgiven sin, new life, the presence of God with us along this life’s way.
And promises like the ones He makes at the ends of our lesson today: “Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.”
Jesus promises that the people who remain connected to Him, His Church, will do even greater things than He did during His three decades on earth.
He promises too, that whatever things we ask in His name--in other words, whatever things we ask of God that conform to Jesus' will, that draw others to life through Christ, that reflect His character of love and goodness, Jesus will see that they happen.
Some of you know the amazing thing that happened when my mother was dying a few weeks ago.
At the hospital, my niece contacted a friend of hers who also is a friend of my brother’s and asked her to tell my brother what was going on.
We hadn’t seen my brother in six and a half years. But we had prayed that before either of our parents left this life, there would be a reconciliation. We didn’t want our brother to live with any unnecessary guilt. I dreaded the thought of that.
My brother came to the hospital. We didn’t know that he had only moved back to the Columbus area two weeks earlier! (The God we know in Jesus is the master orchestrator of events!) There was a wonderful reconciliation.
What if we had given up on praying for reconciliation?
What if my niece had given up on trying to reach out for my brother?
What if my brother had turned a deaf ear to the Savior in Whom he believes?
When we remain connected to Jesus, trusting in Him, not everything in this world goes as we want. (After all, this isn't heaven!) But Jesus gives us the strength to endure when all seems hopeless. And He enters the places and the lives into which we invite Him to transform hurt to healing, despair to hope, life to death. In fact, He specializes in doing just those kinds of things.
I have no magic formula on how you can remain connected and intimate with the Savior, Who by His grace, saves all who trust in Him. This is a relationship that requires time, commitment, and work, not as the prices we pay for salvation, but as the sacrifices we willingly to make to remain intimate and alive with the Lord Who sacrificed all for us.
Do you want to always remember Jesus and stay connected to Him? Here’s how:
Jesus never forgets you; please, never forget Jesus.
Amen
[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. This was the message for worship on Sunday, May 14, 2017.]
Has this ever happened to you?
You go to the grocery store with a list of eight items in your mind. You’re confident that you’ll remember every item because you rehearsed the list over and over again earlier in the day. You get a cart and start to pick up the items. Bananas; check. Lettuce; check. Asparagus; check. Gluten free bread; check. Lunchmeat and cheese; check. Orange juice; check. You look at your cart: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 items.
But what was the eighth again? You think and think, but can’t remember.
You’re still not worried, though. You’ll just saunter up and down the aisles, hoping that you’ll spy the eighth item on your mental list.
The saunter strategy only makes things worse because, as you see things on sale or items you think you might need, you load up your cart with them. It only buries the forgotten item into the deeper recesses of your brain. You keep on forgetting until, just as your garage door goes up, you remember that you needed to pick up the main course for the night, chicken!
Our memories can be faulty. Unless we take the proper precautions, we are all at risk of forgetting the most important things in life. If we’re not careful, we can forget the important things that we know.
This is even true of our relationship with the God revealed to all of us in Jesus. In the rush of daily living, we can forget Jesus.
I’m not talking about forgetting the facts surrounding Jesus. Nobody who knows the Apostles’ Creed or the Nicene Creed is apt to forget that Jesus was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary, was true God and true man, died for our sin, and rose to give life to all who believe in Him.
But, though all of these statements describe life-giving truths about Jesus, knowing them and even memorizing them without knowing Jesus won’t bring us life with God. Only Jesus does that. And only those who maintain a relationship with Jesus, daily turning from sin, daily following Him and trusting in Him, have life with God.
Christian faith isn’t a set of religious propositions. Christian faith is a relationship with God enfleshed, Jesus Christ.
And you know what? Relationships have to be nurtured.
A woman was married to a man who loved her. But he was boring, not flashy, predictable. She had an affair with a man who was none of those things. But after the excitement wore off, she realized that this man didn’t love her the way her husband did. So she committed herself to reconstructing her relationship with her husband. Later, she told a friend, “I took my husband for granted. I’d forgotten who he was and what he did with me and for me. I nearly lost him.”
As our gospel lesson for today begins, the disciples are in danger of losing their relationship with Jesus. Jesus, heading for His crucifixion, speaks to them in what we call His “farewell discourse.” He tells them: “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going.”
The disciples should have known exactly what Jesus was talking about when He claimed to be one with God. They had heard Him say: “Before Abraham was born, I am,” using strange grammar to claim for Himself the same name God revealed to be His to Moses back at the burning bush, Yahweh, I Am (John 8:58). The disciples had heard Jesus say, “I and the Father are one" (John 10:30). They had watched Jesus raise His friend Lazarus from the dead (as well as countless other signs).
They also should have known where Jesus was going. They’d heard Jesus tell Lazarus’ sister, “I am the resurrection and the life” (John 11:25). They had heard Jesus tell 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” (John 3:16).
But now, in the rush of their daily lives, looking down the barrelhead of opposition and death in Jerusalem, they seem to have forgotten everything. They had gotten so accustomed to live with “the Word [made] flesh,” that they forgot that this flesh and blood rabbi they followed was (and is) also God. (John 1:14)
Verse 5: “Thomas said to him, ‘Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?’ Jesus answered, ‘I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.’”
Dr. Jim Nestingen says that Thomas was looking for a roadmap. We don’t need a roadmap. If we know Jesus and follow Him, we know the Way and that’s enough.
Jesus is the way because He’s the foundational truth on which the new creation is built. Any life not built on Jesus is a lie. Other ways promise life, but only Jesus can deliver. Jesus told Pilate: “Everyone on the side of truth listens to Me” (John 18:37).
Jesus is the way because when He ushers us into intimacy with the Father, we are connected to the only One Who can make life or make life new. Thomas should have known all of this already; but he forgot. We too can forget. We too need to be regularly reminded or risk forgetting the Way.
Verse 8: “Philip said, ‘Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.’ Jesus answered: ‘Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you I do not speak on my own authority. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work. Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the works themselves.’”
Philip, one of Jesus’ first followers, the disciple who told his friend Nathanael, “Come and see” (John 1:46), had evidently forgotten the things he had seen and heard: the miracles, the teaching, the changed lives. He demands that Jesus show them the Father. Jesus reminds Philip that Philip had already seen the Father in Jesus. And, Jesus pleads, “If you don’t believe what you’ve seen in Me, then believe in what you’ve seen Me do.”
I sometimes forget Who Jesus is and what He has accomplished for you at the cross and from His empty tomb.
I forget His promises, promises for which His death and resurrection are the downpayment and the guarantee.
I get so caught up in all my doing, that I forget that the God we know in Jesus Christ is the One in Whom “‘we live and move and have our being.' “ (Acts 17:28)
Jesus’ death and resurrection prove that He can deliver on His promises to us, promises like forgiven sin, new life, the presence of God with us along this life’s way.
And promises like the ones He makes at the ends of our lesson today: “Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.”
Jesus promises that the people who remain connected to Him, His Church, will do even greater things than He did during His three decades on earth.
He promises too, that whatever things we ask in His name--in other words, whatever things we ask of God that conform to Jesus' will, that draw others to life through Christ, that reflect His character of love and goodness, Jesus will see that they happen.
Some of you know the amazing thing that happened when my mother was dying a few weeks ago.
At the hospital, my niece contacted a friend of hers who also is a friend of my brother’s and asked her to tell my brother what was going on.
We hadn’t seen my brother in six and a half years. But we had prayed that before either of our parents left this life, there would be a reconciliation. We didn’t want our brother to live with any unnecessary guilt. I dreaded the thought of that.
My brother came to the hospital. We didn’t know that he had only moved back to the Columbus area two weeks earlier! (The God we know in Jesus is the master orchestrator of events!) There was a wonderful reconciliation.
What if we had given up on praying for reconciliation?
What if my niece had given up on trying to reach out for my brother?
What if my brother had turned a deaf ear to the Savior in Whom he believes?
When we remain connected to Jesus, trusting in Him, not everything in this world goes as we want. (After all, this isn't heaven!) But Jesus gives us the strength to endure when all seems hopeless. And He enters the places and the lives into which we invite Him to transform hurt to healing, despair to hope, life to death. In fact, He specializes in doing just those kinds of things.
I have no magic formula on how you can remain connected and intimate with the Savior, Who by His grace, saves all who trust in Him. This is a relationship that requires time, commitment, and work, not as the prices we pay for salvation, but as the sacrifices we willingly to make to remain intimate and alive with the Lord Who sacrificed all for us.
Do you want to always remember Jesus and stay connected to Him? Here’s how:
- Be in corporate worship every week you can. We are strengthened by God's Word and God's Truth as we gather in Christ's name.
- Receive Christ’s body and blood, which brings you His life and forgiveness, every time they’re offered. Someone once asked my mentor, Pastor Bruce Schein, how often people should receive Holy Communion. His answer: "Every time you can!" In this supper, Christ comes to us, giving us His very life and imparting His forgiveness to us. Holy Communion is God's Word incarnated. It's a treasure not to be passed by or forgotten!
- Join hands with your Christian family for prayer, study, mutual encouragement and accountability, and service in Jesus’ name.
- And spend time each day personally in God’s Word, asking the Lord what He wants to tell you and how He wants to lead you that day.
Jesus never forgets you; please, never forget Jesus.
Amen
[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. This was the message for worship on Sunday, May 14, 2017.]
Thursday, May 11, 2017
Cincinnati Woo-ing...Still Not As Annoying As the Vuvuzela
The Cincinnati Reds fan who started the Woo thing at Great American Ball Park (GABP) seems like a great guy and is certainly loyal.
But Cincinnati Enquirer sports columnist Paul Daugherty has a good--if overstated--point about how annoying all the woo-ing has become. Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon talked about it on Pardon the Interruption on ESPN.
Daugherty even thinks that GABP ushers should be instructed to give woo-ers a warning, then eject those who continue to annoy other fans with their impressions of Ric Flair. (Or is it Little Richard?)
Meanwhile, woo-ing fans or no, the Reds enter tonight's game against the San Francisco Giants one game out of first in the National League Central Division.
This is a rebuilding year for the Reds. But the way this young team is playing, featuring a surprisingly potent offense and terrific pitching out of the bullpen, the future is looking bright in Cincinnati. Woo!
PS: It can get annoying when overdone, but the woo-ing still isn't as nerve-grating as the vuvuzela.
[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
But Cincinnati Enquirer sports columnist Paul Daugherty has a good--if overstated--point about how annoying all the woo-ing has become. Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon talked about it on Pardon the Interruption on ESPN.
Daugherty even thinks that GABP ushers should be instructed to give woo-ers a warning, then eject those who continue to annoy other fans with their impressions of Ric Flair. (Or is it Little Richard?)
Meanwhile, woo-ing fans or no, the Reds enter tonight's game against the San Francisco Giants one game out of first in the National League Central Division.
This is a rebuilding year for the Reds. But the way this young team is playing, featuring a surprisingly potent offense and terrific pitching out of the bullpen, the future is looking bright in Cincinnati. Woo!
PS: It can get annoying when overdone, but the woo-ing still isn't as nerve-grating as the vuvuzela.
[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
Wednesday, May 10, 2017
Following THE Leader to Life (AUDIO)
Here.
[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. This was shared during worship this past Sunday.]
[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. This was shared during worship this past Sunday.]
Monday, May 08, 2017
Following THE Leader to Life!
John 10:1-10
An old saying tells us that to find out if someone is a leader, just look to see if anyone’s following them. A real leader is one who has earned people’s trust. A real leader is someone who others voluntarily choose to follow because of their willingness to endure everything endured by those they lead.
Leadership of this kind doesn’t conform to the popular picture of a leader. You know, someone at a desk, far removed from most people:
But leadership, from a biblical perspective, is intensely personal and relational.
It’s stunning when we see this kind of leadership in our everyday lives.
An acquaintance of ours, son of the congregation I formerly served as pastor, is General Curtis (Mike) Scaparrotti. Scap is now the commander of NATO. By training and experience, he’s a paratrooper, who has served in Vietnam and Iraq, among other places. During one tour in Afghanistan, although a general, he still jumped from aircraft, joining the men and women of his command in missions, subjecting himself to the same risks that he commanded them to take.
This exemplifies how the Bible understands leadership. In the Bible, a true leader will never ask those she or he leads to do anything the leader isn’t willing to do as well. In the Bible, a true leader is, above all, is a servant.
Leadership of this kind is built on and deepens relationships between people and leader.
Once, in Old Testament times, David was leading his “mighty men” in battle against the Philistines. David was in a stronghold while the Philistines controlled his hometown of Bethlehem. 2 Samuel 23:15 says: “David longed for water and said, ‘Oh, that someone would get me a drink of water from the well near the gate of Bethlehem!’" David was in the midst of a war that found him daily giving his all. He was feeling wistful, nostalgic for the springwater of his hometown. His words were only a wish, the kind of thing you say in passing.
But with David were men with whom he worked and alongside whom he fought each day. They loved David. “So the three mighty warriors broke through the Philistine lines, drew water from the well near the gate of Bethlehem and carried it back to David.”
Three men risked their lives to get water for David. David was moved. And his response shows why his men loved him so. “But he refused to drink it; instead, he poured it out before the LORD. ‘Far be it from me, LORD, to do this!’ he said. ‘Is it not the blood of men who went at the risk of their lives?’ And David would not drink it.” (2 Samuel 23:16-17)
The true leader never thinks that she or he is entitled to the allegiance of those being led, will not enjoy privileges that can’t be enjoyed by all, and honors the sacrifice, work, and loyalty offered by those that she or he leads.
David’s mighty men wouldn’t have undertaken their dangerous mission to get water for just anyone. They did it because David had become their leader. If you want to know if someone’s a leader, look to see if anyone is following.
Of course, David had his times of failure as a leader, times when he forgot what it meant to lead. One year, when he should have been leading his armies in battle, he stayed behind. On one particular morning, he caught sight of a woman named Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah, one of David's loyal soldiers. Bathsheba she was bathing and David liked what he saw. He brought Bathsheba to his royal home. She became pregnant. Then to cover things up, he had Uriah killed in battle. It was a monumental failure of David's leadership, for which he later repented.
Human leaders, even those who know what leadership is from a Biblical, Christian perspective, even those who seek to lead godly lives, sometimes fail. I know that I have. But, as followers of Jesus Christ, God enfleshed, we have a leader Who will never fail us, Who we can follow with complete confidence!
One of the most characteristic word pictures of a leader in the Bible is shepherd. This is a term applied even to God Himself. Our psalm for today, for example, begins with the words, “The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing” (Psalm 23:1).
And Israel’s ideal king, who would eventually be revealed as Jesus, the Messiah King, was to be a shepherd. Centuries before Jesus’ birth, God said through the prophet Ezekiel: “...I myself will search for my sheep and look after them. As a shepherd looks after his scattered flock when he is with them, so will I look after my sheep. I will rescue them from all the places where they were scattered on a day of clouds and darkness.” (Ezekiel 34:11-12)
No matter how confusing life in this fallen world can be, the good shepherd never tires of looking for those who will hear His voice and follow.
No matter how far we may wander from God, when we hear Him call and return to Him, we belong to God forever.
Romans 5:8 reminds us of how much God loves us: “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
You can tell that Jesus is the good shepherd, a true leader in the Biblical mold, and the King of kings by how His love moves people to follow Him. This is what Jesus says in the opening verses of today’s gospel lesson from John 10: “Very truly I tell you Pharisees, anyone who does not enter the sheep pen by the gate, but climbs in by some other way, is a thief and a robber. The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep listen to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice. But they will never follow a stranger; in fact, they will run away from him because they do not recognize a stranger’s voice.” [John 10:1-5]
In the Middle East of today, as in Jesus’ time, sheep of different flocks may sometimes be held in common pens for a time. But when it’s time for one flock to move on for watering or feeding, the sheep in one flock will not follow another shepherd. They know their shepherd’s voice. They trust him. He calls them each by the names he gives to them. He cares for them. When the shepherd calls, his sheep fall in line behind the shepherd. He leads the way, out front, protecting them.
That’s Jesus! When Jesus calls us to take up our crosses and follow Him, He isn’t asking us to do anything He hasn’t already done...for us. The Savior Who calls us to submit our sinful selves to daily crucifixion so that we might rise, made eternally new by God’s grace, has already voluntarily taken on Himself the condemnation of our sins by dying on the cross, then rising again to open up the way of life to all who follow Him.
Jesus is our good shepherd. Hebrews 12:2 says that Jesus is: “...the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”
Jesus is willing to be out front, blazing the trail for us, no matter the pain or the cross, in order to lead us to life with God. And Jesus is the only shepherd, the only leader, who can do this for us!
There are bogus voices in our world that will lead us down the path to death. These voices belong to thieves: humanly-imagined gods and godlets, none of them like the living God we know in Jesus Christ. They tell us that all religions are the same, that all religious systems are roads to the same God.
But Christian faith isn’t a religious system. Christian faith is an intensely personal and eternal relationship that God grants by His grace to all who follow Jesus.
In Jesus’ days, the Jewish sect of Pharisees had boiled faith in the living God of the universe down to a set of rules. They had some 600 rules and basically told folks, "Keep these and you're good to go."
Like the fake religions of our day--from Islam to Mormonism, from Scientology to Hinduism, from Buddhism to Jehovah’s Witnesses--the Pharisees told people that if they behaved in certain ways, good things would happen.
The lying voices of today’s false idols promise people everything from prosperity to satori, from eternal kingdoms on their own planets to the supposed tranquility of nothingness.
They all sell different forms of what we call “works righteousness,” programs for earning your worth or your blessings or your better life.
But the true leader, Jesus, the high priest who can empathize with our weaknesses and has been tempted in every way, but without sin, doesn’t sell a religious program.
Jesus offers Himself, as an act of charitable love from God.
Jesus and His righteousness, not us or our religious works, are what earn us life with God.
Our job is to surrender our sins and our lives and trust in Him as our only God, our only hope.
To all who hear as Jesus calls us to follow, Jesus gives us life. As He says at the end of today’s lesson: “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” (John 10:10)
Some may ask, “What does Jesus mean by a full life?”
Well, He doesn’t mean that we’ll be wealthy necessarily. Some Christians are wealthy, most aren’t; but they’re all blessed.
Some Christians are powerful, some are good looking, some are influential, some lead healthy, long lives. But even the powerless, the unhealthy, the also-rans of the world who confess Jesus as Lord have life and have it to the full.
How much fuller a life can one have, after all, than eternal life with God?
It’s a life lived with God not only through the joys and sorrows of this life, but a life lived as it was meant to be lived by people created in the image of God in the first place...then made new by the Savior King Whose voice daily calls us to follow and believe.
We live in the promise Jesus first shared with 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.” (John 11:25-26)
May we follow our shepherd king, Jesus, always heeding His voice as He calls, and so, live with Him forever. Amen
[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. This message was shared during Living Water's worship services yesterday morning.]
An old saying tells us that to find out if someone is a leader, just look to see if anyone’s following them. A real leader is one who has earned people’s trust. A real leader is someone who others voluntarily choose to follow because of their willingness to endure everything endured by those they lead.
Leadership of this kind doesn’t conform to the popular picture of a leader. You know, someone at a desk, far removed from most people:
- the CEO who gives orders to a work force he’s never met;
- the college president who makes decisions that affect learning in classroom and lab settings she’ll never see;
- presidents who send soldiers, sailors, and airmen into conflicts they’ll never experience.
But leadership, from a biblical perspective, is intensely personal and relational.
It’s stunning when we see this kind of leadership in our everyday lives.
An acquaintance of ours, son of the congregation I formerly served as pastor, is General Curtis (Mike) Scaparrotti. Scap is now the commander of NATO. By training and experience, he’s a paratrooper, who has served in Vietnam and Iraq, among other places. During one tour in Afghanistan, although a general, he still jumped from aircraft, joining the men and women of his command in missions, subjecting himself to the same risks that he commanded them to take.
This exemplifies how the Bible understands leadership. In the Bible, a true leader will never ask those she or he leads to do anything the leader isn’t willing to do as well. In the Bible, a true leader is, above all, is a servant.
Leadership of this kind is built on and deepens relationships between people and leader.
Once, in Old Testament times, David was leading his “mighty men” in battle against the Philistines. David was in a stronghold while the Philistines controlled his hometown of Bethlehem. 2 Samuel 23:15 says: “David longed for water and said, ‘Oh, that someone would get me a drink of water from the well near the gate of Bethlehem!’" David was in the midst of a war that found him daily giving his all. He was feeling wistful, nostalgic for the springwater of his hometown. His words were only a wish, the kind of thing you say in passing.
But with David were men with whom he worked and alongside whom he fought each day. They loved David. “So the three mighty warriors broke through the Philistine lines, drew water from the well near the gate of Bethlehem and carried it back to David.”
Three men risked their lives to get water for David. David was moved. And his response shows why his men loved him so. “But he refused to drink it; instead, he poured it out before the LORD. ‘Far be it from me, LORD, to do this!’ he said. ‘Is it not the blood of men who went at the risk of their lives?’ And David would not drink it.” (2 Samuel 23:16-17)
The true leader never thinks that she or he is entitled to the allegiance of those being led, will not enjoy privileges that can’t be enjoyed by all, and honors the sacrifice, work, and loyalty offered by those that she or he leads.
David’s mighty men wouldn’t have undertaken their dangerous mission to get water for just anyone. They did it because David had become their leader. If you want to know if someone’s a leader, look to see if anyone is following.
Of course, David had his times of failure as a leader, times when he forgot what it meant to lead. One year, when he should have been leading his armies in battle, he stayed behind. On one particular morning, he caught sight of a woman named Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah, one of David's loyal soldiers. Bathsheba she was bathing and David liked what he saw. He brought Bathsheba to his royal home. She became pregnant. Then to cover things up, he had Uriah killed in battle. It was a monumental failure of David's leadership, for which he later repented.
Human leaders, even those who know what leadership is from a Biblical, Christian perspective, even those who seek to lead godly lives, sometimes fail. I know that I have. But, as followers of Jesus Christ, God enfleshed, we have a leader Who will never fail us, Who we can follow with complete confidence!
One of the most characteristic word pictures of a leader in the Bible is shepherd. This is a term applied even to God Himself. Our psalm for today, for example, begins with the words, “The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing” (Psalm 23:1).
And Israel’s ideal king, who would eventually be revealed as Jesus, the Messiah King, was to be a shepherd. Centuries before Jesus’ birth, God said through the prophet Ezekiel: “...I myself will search for my sheep and look after them. As a shepherd looks after his scattered flock when he is with them, so will I look after my sheep. I will rescue them from all the places where they were scattered on a day of clouds and darkness.” (Ezekiel 34:11-12)
No matter how confusing life in this fallen world can be, the good shepherd never tires of looking for those who will hear His voice and follow.
No matter how far we may wander from God, when we hear Him call and return to Him, we belong to God forever.
Romans 5:8 reminds us of how much God loves us: “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
You can tell that Jesus is the good shepherd, a true leader in the Biblical mold, and the King of kings by how His love moves people to follow Him. This is what Jesus says in the opening verses of today’s gospel lesson from John 10: “Very truly I tell you Pharisees, anyone who does not enter the sheep pen by the gate, but climbs in by some other way, is a thief and a robber. The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep listen to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice. But they will never follow a stranger; in fact, they will run away from him because they do not recognize a stranger’s voice.” [John 10:1-5]
In the Middle East of today, as in Jesus’ time, sheep of different flocks may sometimes be held in common pens for a time. But when it’s time for one flock to move on for watering or feeding, the sheep in one flock will not follow another shepherd. They know their shepherd’s voice. They trust him. He calls them each by the names he gives to them. He cares for them. When the shepherd calls, his sheep fall in line behind the shepherd. He leads the way, out front, protecting them.
That’s Jesus! When Jesus calls us to take up our crosses and follow Him, He isn’t asking us to do anything He hasn’t already done...for us. The Savior Who calls us to submit our sinful selves to daily crucifixion so that we might rise, made eternally new by God’s grace, has already voluntarily taken on Himself the condemnation of our sins by dying on the cross, then rising again to open up the way of life to all who follow Him.
Jesus is our good shepherd. Hebrews 12:2 says that Jesus is: “...the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”
Jesus is willing to be out front, blazing the trail for us, no matter the pain or the cross, in order to lead us to life with God. And Jesus is the only shepherd, the only leader, who can do this for us!
There are bogus voices in our world that will lead us down the path to death. These voices belong to thieves: humanly-imagined gods and godlets, none of them like the living God we know in Jesus Christ. They tell us that all religions are the same, that all religious systems are roads to the same God.
But Christian faith isn’t a religious system. Christian faith is an intensely personal and eternal relationship that God grants by His grace to all who follow Jesus.
In Jesus’ days, the Jewish sect of Pharisees had boiled faith in the living God of the universe down to a set of rules. They had some 600 rules and basically told folks, "Keep these and you're good to go."
Like the fake religions of our day--from Islam to Mormonism, from Scientology to Hinduism, from Buddhism to Jehovah’s Witnesses--the Pharisees told people that if they behaved in certain ways, good things would happen.
The lying voices of today’s false idols promise people everything from prosperity to satori, from eternal kingdoms on their own planets to the supposed tranquility of nothingness.
They all sell different forms of what we call “works righteousness,” programs for earning your worth or your blessings or your better life.
But the true leader, Jesus, the high priest who can empathize with our weaknesses and has been tempted in every way, but without sin, doesn’t sell a religious program.
Jesus offers Himself, as an act of charitable love from God.
Jesus and His righteousness, not us or our religious works, are what earn us life with God.
Our job is to surrender our sins and our lives and trust in Him as our only God, our only hope.
To all who hear as Jesus calls us to follow, Jesus gives us life. As He says at the end of today’s lesson: “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” (John 10:10)
Some may ask, “What does Jesus mean by a full life?”
Well, He doesn’t mean that we’ll be wealthy necessarily. Some Christians are wealthy, most aren’t; but they’re all blessed.
Some Christians are powerful, some are good looking, some are influential, some lead healthy, long lives. But even the powerless, the unhealthy, the also-rans of the world who confess Jesus as Lord have life and have it to the full.
How much fuller a life can one have, after all, than eternal life with God?
It’s a life lived with God not only through the joys and sorrows of this life, but a life lived as it was meant to be lived by people created in the image of God in the first place...then made new by the Savior King Whose voice daily calls us to follow and believe.
We live in the promise Jesus first shared with 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.” (John 11:25-26)
May we follow our shepherd king, Jesus, always heeding His voice as He calls, and so, live with Him forever. Amen
[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. This message was shared during Living Water's worship services yesterday morning.]
Friday, May 05, 2017
Inviting people to see Jesus (Quiet Time reflections)
Here's my journal entry from my quiet time with God this morning. To see the format I use for these regular encounters with the God we see in Jesus, go here.
Look: “No one could say a word in reply, and from that day on no one dared to ask him any more questions.” (Matthew 22:46)[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
Throughout chapter 22 of Matthew’s gospel, opponents of Jesus try to trap Him into saying things that will give them an airtight argument for His excommunication and/or execution. But at each trap, Jesus responds with explanations of what His kingdom is truly like. Caesars (governments) will exist on this earth until Jesus finally and fully establishes His kingdom on His return to the earth on the last day; until then, all citizens, including followers of Jesus, should pay their taxes to Caesar. There is no marriage in heaven; so the woman in the Sadducees’ illustration won’t have to choose among her seven husbands in the resurrection. And King David had, in fact, called the Messiah his Lord.
Jesus’ arguments were airtight and logically unobjectionable. It didn’t matter. Jesus’ opponents still saw to it that He was executed. (Not knowing, of course, that they were playing into the plan of God in doing so. The Messiah had to die and rise, to destroy the power of sin over the human race and to rise in order to open up eternity to all who repent and believe in Christ.)
Listen: Human beings don’t always act rationally. They tend to believe what they want to believe--I tend to believe what I want to believe, to be honest--and we’d rather not be confused by the facts. People can, because of our sinful nature, rationalize our ways to almost any decision or construction of the facts.
The facts, drawn from compelling language; ancient literature, Christian and non-Christian; the consistent witness of more than 500 believers in Christ’s resurrection, even in the face of persecution and death; the transformation wrought in the lives of those first followers of Jesus, not to mention the billions of people who have followed Jesus Christ in the centuries since: and many other facts argue in favor of the Gospel. This Gospel tells us that God created this universe, entered it to save us from sin and death, died, rose, and ascended to heaven, and sent His Holy Spirit to help previously timid, unreliable people to trust in Christ and share Him with others. The factual evidence for the Gospel is overwhelming.
Yet, there are people who choose not to listen to these facts, who refuse to believe. They prefer what some call "alternative facts."
Clearly, an airtight logical argument is insufficient to bring someone to repentance and faith through Jesus.
It must be done with our lives.
It must be done with the simple invitation issued to friends, neighbors, and co-workers to “Come and see Jesus.” Come and see Jesus at work in His people. Come and see how Jesus changes my plans, projects, desires, living. See how He’s working in this imperfect life to help me to love God completely and to love others as much as I love and care about myself.
We need to invite people to experience Christ for themselves.
I’m firmly convinced on factual grounds that Jesus, His life, death, and resurrection are all facts. But Jesus is more than just a fact. And faith in Him is more than a set of facts to be learned. Jesus is the foundational Word on which the universe is built. He shows Himself to those willing to see and believe in Him. (He will not force Himself on those who refuse to see or believe in Him.)
Our faith is in a living God and the mission of every Christian is to invite people to come and get to know Jesus for themselves.
“Turning around, Jesus saw them following and asked, ‘What do you want?’ They said, ‘Rabbi’ (which means “Teacher”), ‘where are you staying?’ ‘Come,’ he replied, ‘and you will see.’” (John 1:38-39)
Respond: Jesus, You have given me my mind. So, I must use it to the full extent possible to present factual arguments for the gospel. Help me to do that. But, help me to realize that the most important thing I can do to help others to come to faith or to experience a deepening faith is to invite them to spend time with You...in Your Word, in the sacraments, in the fellowship of believers, and even in my own imperfect life. Help me to show YOU to others in all that I say, do, and am. Get me, my desires, my sins, and my imperfections out of the way so that people can see YOU. Because life can only be found in You. In Your name.
1 Pastor's Response to Yesterday's Executive Order
Yesterday, over on Facebook, I posted this reaction to an executive order signed yesterday that promotes and legitimizes the exercise of political influence by churches and other religious entities.
As a Christian and a pastor, not to mention as an American, I am deeply disturbed by the executive order signed today.
The Church is not a political institution, nor can one draw a straight line from Jesus and a set of political convictions.
To push a political agenda in the name of the God revealed in Jesus Christ is to take God's name in vain.
The mission of the Church is to make disciples, bringing transformation and new life to all who believe.
Churches that seek votes rather than pursuing Christ's great commission are faithless.
Church political engagement is also ineffectual because transformed lives can't be legislated or coerced.
People and societies can only be transformed as a result of the work of God in the lives of people who voluntarily believe in and follow Christ.
This is not a political statement. It's a plea for the Church to refrain from dishonoring Christ through political activity.
This executive order is bad for the Church and bad for America.I later added these comments to the post, as it appeared on a page frequented by colleagues:
We [as Christians] know that the world finds the gospel of Christ offensive.[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
But political activism by the Church makes Christianity odious to non-believers for the wrong reasons.
This order will encourage those who undertake political activity in Jesus' name to extend their activities, harming the spread of the gospel.
Any time the Church receives special treatment from the State, the Church's proclamation of Christ is hurt.
Tuesday, May 02, 2017
Opened Eyes, Burning Hearts
Luke 24:13-35
Today’s gospel lesson begins, as all incidents lived out on the salvation journey wrought by the God we know in Jesus Christ, in grief. But like all such incidents, it ends in life and in joy.
It’s late in the afternoon on the first Easter, the day that Jesus rose from the dead. Two disciples, filled with grief, not yet convinced by the testimony to Jesus’ resurrection given to them by two different groups of their fellow disciples, are walking from Jerusalem, where they witnessed Jesus die, toward Emmaus.
This is where our lesson, Luke 24:13-35, begins: “That very day two of them were going to a village named Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, and they were talking with each other about all these things that had happened. While they were talking and discussing together, Jesus himself drew near and went with them. But their eyes were kept from recognizing him.”
Why were these two disciples kept from recognizing Jesus? Was Jesus engaging in a little heavenly hocus-pocus? No, I think there are two reasons they didn’t know the man walking and talking with them was Jesus.
First, neither one of them was expecting to see Jesus. They had watched Jesus die.
Second, taking all the accounts of Jesus’ resurrection into consideration, one gets the idea that in His risen form, Jesus was the same, but different.
He could express a desire for food. He could be touched. He could show people the wounds He’d incurred during His passion and crucifixion.
But He also could show up in rooms behind locked doors. He seemed capable of being in multiple places at the same time.
Jesus was the same, yet different, just as God’s Word promises that you and I will, beyond our own deaths and resurrections be the same--recognizable as the people we have been in this old creation--yet new, surprising, different, more whole, bathed in eternal life.
Verse 17: “And he said to them, ‘What is this conversation that you are holding with each other as you walk?’ [Jesus always meets people where they are. He often starts with a question, a good way to start any conversation.] And they stood still, looking sad. Then one of them, named Cleopas, answered him, ‘Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?’ And he said to them, ‘What things?’ And they said to him, ‘Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, a man who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, and how our chief priests and rulers delivered him up to be condemned to death, and crucified him. But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things happened.’”
Can’t you hear the hopelessness in the voices of the two disciples here? They had put all of their hope in Jesus. But what had their hope really been in? They had hoped that Jesus would redeem Israel, by which they meant, that Jesus would set the Jews free from the Romans. But it hadn’t happened.
I know a man who was super-active in his church. He was considered a leader in the congregation, a person of prayer. But one day, he just gave up on God, dropped out of church.
What happened? He’d counted on Jesus to make him wealthy and successful. He thought that he had a deal with Jesus: he would be a good guy and Jesus would give him what he wanted. He thought Jesus was a genie subject to his command, rather than the Savior from whom he took commands. When the man’s dream job turned to ashes and when his personal life got hard, he gave up on faith.
Jesus can and does redeem from sin, death, darkness, and futility all who turn from sin and trust in Him. But that doesn’t mean that the lives we live before our own deaths and resurrections will be successful or easy. The Bible reminds us: “If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.” (1 Corinthians 15:19)
And Jesus did pity these two disciples who had placed their trust in Jesus for the wrong reasons. We see this as the two tell Jesus about the strange reports they’ve heard of Jesus rising. “‘Moreover, [they continue] some women of our company amazed us. They were at the tomb early in the morning, and when they did not find his body, they came back saying that they had even seen a vision of angels, who said that he was alive. Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but him they did not see.’ And [Jesus] said to them, ‘O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken!’”
Jesus’ words of admonition remind me of Psalm 14:1: “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’"
Jesus was saying that the two disciples were foolish for not believing that God is God. He chastises them for failing to believe that Jesus Himself could do what He'd said He would, die and rise for the sake of sinners like them like me and you.
The disciples were stuck in the same kind of thinking you hear from modern-day atheists and agnostics who say, “People don’t rise from the dead. Therefore, Jesus couldn’t have risen from the dead.”
These folks are half right: According the ordinary laws of this world, dead people don’t rise, just as, according to the ordinary working of the law of gravity, an apple that falls from a tree will land on the ground below.
But what if, as I walk by that apple tree and see the apple start to fall and, instead of letting it hit the ground, I catch it?* The law of gravity will not have been rescinded; but I will have intervened to change the usual outcome.
Like every other human being, Jesus died.
But then, God the Father did something: He intervened in the normal outworking of this fallen universe’s laws. He changed the outcome and raised Jesus, His Son, to a new and eternal life.
And by His death and resurrection, Jesus both paid the debt we owe to God and neighbor for our sins and then opened up a perfect eternity with God to all who trust in Him.
The God we meet through Jesus can intervene in our lives to make us new.
It’s foolish to think that the One Who made everything in the first place can’t make it new when it gets messed up.
That’s effectively what Jesus tells these two disciples walking to Emmaus.
Jesus now teaches them how the Old Testament had pointed to His death and resurrection. Jesus no doubt mentioned chapters and verses of prophecy.
But more importantly, He must have pointed to the character of the Creator God,
I love this part of the Emmaus narrative! Notice two things.
First, this: Luke tells us that when Jesus broke the bread, “their eyes were opened.”
Does that sound familiar? It should. Think back to Genesis 3:7. Adam and Eve have just violated God’s command that they not eat from the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Until this point, the two had been blind to sin, knowing only good. But, as soon as they eat of the fruit, Genesis says, “...the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked…”
Suddenly, the two now saw how their bodies and their lives could be misused. And they were ashamed.
Now, come back to Emmaus. The two disciples--who many scholars today believe are husband and wife--see Jesus break the bread and they see, not their own capacity for evil, but God’s infinite capacity to forgive, restore, renew, and remake those who turn from sin and trust in Jesus.
Jesus reverses the curse of Eden.
In Him, this couple sees not their own sin, but Christ’s righteousness. That’s what Christ wants all of us to see.
Our sin left uncovered by Christ’s righteousness will damn us. But Christ’s righteousness can cover even the darkest of sins and most awful of hurts in God’s grace, love, and life!
Secondly, notice how Jesus reveals Himself to this couple and makes it possible for them to believe. He does this in two ways:
These are still the ways Jesus reveals Himself to us today. We call them Word and Sacrament: The Word of the Bible which testifies about the loving God we meet in Jesus. And the sacraments, in which Jesus uses common elements like bread, wine, and water to meet us, claim us, shower us with grace, make us new, forgive us, and assure us that He is with us always, now and in eternity.
Jesus is saying to those two disciples and to you and me, that every time we hear His Word and receive the Sacraments, as we are doing together again this morning, He is with us, making us new, replacing our doubts with faith, replacing our sin with His forgiveness.
We can come to Him whatever the current state of our lives--grieving, sad, joyous, contented, depressed, excited, whatever--and He will show Himself to us again. He will open our eyes and remind us once again that He saves by grace and eternally lives with all who surrender to Him and His love.
After their encounter with Jesus in Word and bread, the two disciples run back to Jerusalem. Suddenly, they don’t care if the sun has gone down and they can’t see the ground beneath them as they run to tell the others that they’ve seen Jesus. Their hearts are burning within them and they simply have to add their testimony to that of the others who have encountered Jesus. Their day began in grief and has ended in joy! They have to tell the world about their risen Lord.
Let me ask you: After our encounters with the risen Jesus in the Bible, in Holy Baptism and Holy Communion, can we do any less?
[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. This message was shared during worship this past Sunday.]
*This illustration comes from The Case for Faith.
Today’s gospel lesson begins, as all incidents lived out on the salvation journey wrought by the God we know in Jesus Christ, in grief. But like all such incidents, it ends in life and in joy.
It’s late in the afternoon on the first Easter, the day that Jesus rose from the dead. Two disciples, filled with grief, not yet convinced by the testimony to Jesus’ resurrection given to them by two different groups of their fellow disciples, are walking from Jerusalem, where they witnessed Jesus die, toward Emmaus.
This is where our lesson, Luke 24:13-35, begins: “That very day two of them were going to a village named Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, and they were talking with each other about all these things that had happened. While they were talking and discussing together, Jesus himself drew near and went with them. But their eyes were kept from recognizing him.”
Why were these two disciples kept from recognizing Jesus? Was Jesus engaging in a little heavenly hocus-pocus? No, I think there are two reasons they didn’t know the man walking and talking with them was Jesus.
First, neither one of them was expecting to see Jesus. They had watched Jesus die.
Second, taking all the accounts of Jesus’ resurrection into consideration, one gets the idea that in His risen form, Jesus was the same, but different.
He could express a desire for food. He could be touched. He could show people the wounds He’d incurred during His passion and crucifixion.
But He also could show up in rooms behind locked doors. He seemed capable of being in multiple places at the same time.
Jesus was the same, yet different, just as God’s Word promises that you and I will, beyond our own deaths and resurrections be the same--recognizable as the people we have been in this old creation--yet new, surprising, different, more whole, bathed in eternal life.
Verse 17: “And he said to them, ‘What is this conversation that you are holding with each other as you walk?’ [Jesus always meets people where they are. He often starts with a question, a good way to start any conversation.] And they stood still, looking sad. Then one of them, named Cleopas, answered him, ‘Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?’ And he said to them, ‘What things?’ And they said to him, ‘Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, a man who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, and how our chief priests and rulers delivered him up to be condemned to death, and crucified him. But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things happened.’”
Can’t you hear the hopelessness in the voices of the two disciples here? They had put all of their hope in Jesus. But what had their hope really been in? They had hoped that Jesus would redeem Israel, by which they meant, that Jesus would set the Jews free from the Romans. But it hadn’t happened.
I know a man who was super-active in his church. He was considered a leader in the congregation, a person of prayer. But one day, he just gave up on God, dropped out of church.
What happened? He’d counted on Jesus to make him wealthy and successful. He thought that he had a deal with Jesus: he would be a good guy and Jesus would give him what he wanted. He thought Jesus was a genie subject to his command, rather than the Savior from whom he took commands. When the man’s dream job turned to ashes and when his personal life got hard, he gave up on faith.
Jesus can and does redeem from sin, death, darkness, and futility all who turn from sin and trust in Him. But that doesn’t mean that the lives we live before our own deaths and resurrections will be successful or easy. The Bible reminds us: “If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.” (1 Corinthians 15:19)
And Jesus did pity these two disciples who had placed their trust in Jesus for the wrong reasons. We see this as the two tell Jesus about the strange reports they’ve heard of Jesus rising. “‘Moreover, [they continue] some women of our company amazed us. They were at the tomb early in the morning, and when they did not find his body, they came back saying that they had even seen a vision of angels, who said that he was alive. Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but him they did not see.’ And [Jesus] said to them, ‘O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken!’”
Jesus’ words of admonition remind me of Psalm 14:1: “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’"
Jesus was saying that the two disciples were foolish for not believing that God is God. He chastises them for failing to believe that Jesus Himself could do what He'd said He would, die and rise for the sake of sinners like them like me and you.
The disciples were stuck in the same kind of thinking you hear from modern-day atheists and agnostics who say, “People don’t rise from the dead. Therefore, Jesus couldn’t have risen from the dead.”
These folks are half right: According the ordinary laws of this world, dead people don’t rise, just as, according to the ordinary working of the law of gravity, an apple that falls from a tree will land on the ground below.
But what if, as I walk by that apple tree and see the apple start to fall and, instead of letting it hit the ground, I catch it?* The law of gravity will not have been rescinded; but I will have intervened to change the usual outcome.
Like every other human being, Jesus died.
But then, God the Father did something: He intervened in the normal outworking of this fallen universe’s laws. He changed the outcome and raised Jesus, His Son, to a new and eternal life.
And by His death and resurrection, Jesus both paid the debt we owe to God and neighbor for our sins and then opened up a perfect eternity with God to all who trust in Him.
The God we meet through Jesus can intervene in our lives to make us new.
It’s foolish to think that the One Who made everything in the first place can’t make it new when it gets messed up.
That’s effectively what Jesus tells these two disciples walking to Emmaus.
Jesus now teaches them how the Old Testament had pointed to His death and resurrection. Jesus no doubt mentioned chapters and verses of prophecy.
But more importantly, He must have pointed to the character of the Creator God,
- Who created out of love,
- Who was loathe to give up on the human race,
- Whose passion for us all would inevitably lead Him to stop at nothing--not even death on a cross--to destroy the power of sin and death over our lives.
- The God with this character and these traits would, of course, enter our stories to write new, everlasting endings for all who believe in Jesus.
I love this part of the Emmaus narrative! Notice two things.
First, this: Luke tells us that when Jesus broke the bread, “their eyes were opened.”
Does that sound familiar? It should. Think back to Genesis 3:7. Adam and Eve have just violated God’s command that they not eat from the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Until this point, the two had been blind to sin, knowing only good. But, as soon as they eat of the fruit, Genesis says, “...the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked…”
Suddenly, the two now saw how their bodies and their lives could be misused. And they were ashamed.
Now, come back to Emmaus. The two disciples--who many scholars today believe are husband and wife--see Jesus break the bread and they see, not their own capacity for evil, but God’s infinite capacity to forgive, restore, renew, and remake those who turn from sin and trust in Jesus.
Jesus reverses the curse of Eden.
In Him, this couple sees not their own sin, but Christ’s righteousness. That’s what Christ wants all of us to see.
Our sin left uncovered by Christ’s righteousness will damn us. But Christ’s righteousness can cover even the darkest of sins and most awful of hurts in God’s grace, love, and life!
Secondly, notice how Jesus reveals Himself to this couple and makes it possible for them to believe. He does this in two ways:
- First, He shares God’s Word about Himself.
- Second, He shares bread at the table with them.
These are still the ways Jesus reveals Himself to us today. We call them Word and Sacrament: The Word of the Bible which testifies about the loving God we meet in Jesus. And the sacraments, in which Jesus uses common elements like bread, wine, and water to meet us, claim us, shower us with grace, make us new, forgive us, and assure us that He is with us always, now and in eternity.
Jesus is saying to those two disciples and to you and me, that every time we hear His Word and receive the Sacraments, as we are doing together again this morning, He is with us, making us new, replacing our doubts with faith, replacing our sin with His forgiveness.
We can come to Him whatever the current state of our lives--grieving, sad, joyous, contented, depressed, excited, whatever--and He will show Himself to us again. He will open our eyes and remind us once again that He saves by grace and eternally lives with all who surrender to Him and His love.
After their encounter with Jesus in Word and bread, the two disciples run back to Jerusalem. Suddenly, they don’t care if the sun has gone down and they can’t see the ground beneath them as they run to tell the others that they’ve seen Jesus. Their hearts are burning within them and they simply have to add their testimony to that of the others who have encountered Jesus. Their day began in grief and has ended in joy! They have to tell the world about their risen Lord.
Let me ask you: After our encounters with the risen Jesus in the Bible, in Holy Baptism and Holy Communion, can we do any less?
[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. This message was shared during worship this past Sunday.]
*This illustration comes from The Case for Faith.
"You're not the Placater-in-Chief" (Quiet Time reflections)
These are reflections from my morning quiet time with God. (For more on how I spend my quiet time with God, see here.) I had never previously noticed the thematic cohesion in Matthew 20, until today's quiet time. It's amazing how God can keep speaking to us in fresh ways when we take the time to pay attention to His Word.
Look: Matthew 20 begins with Jesus telling a parable about God’s right to give the same level of generous grace to all, no matter when they come to believe in and follow Him. Jesus says that in the kingdom of God, the last will be first and the first will be last and their standing will have nothing to do with how the world sees things.
Later, James, John, and their mother approach Jesus, asking Him to assure them that, when Jesus comes into His kingdom, James and John will be his right- and left-hand men. The mother who voices this request isn’t particular about which one is higher than the other, but she does want the boys to be one and two in Jesus’ kingdom. But Jesus says: “...to sit at my right or left is not for me to grant. These places belong to those for whom they have been prepared by my Father.” (v.23)
Later still, two other men, blind and unaccompanied by their mommies, call out for mercy to Jesus. Jesus had asked James, John, and their mother, “What do you want?” (v.21). Jesus now asks the blind men, “What do you want me to do for you?” (v.32) The blind men ask to be sighted and Matthew writes: “Jesus had compassion on them and touched their eyes. Immediately they received their sight and followed him.” (v.34)
Listen: While James and John were apostles and would have a special part to play in the kingdom of God, Jesus’ answer to their request (their prayer) was different from the one given to the two blind men.
To James and John, Jesus gave a nuanced no. Jesus tells them that they will, as they so confidently and ignorantly say they can do (v.22), drink the cup that Jesus is about to drink: They would drink of death because, after Jesus’ death, resurrection, ascension, and the arrival of the Holy Spirit, James and John would faithfully exercise their particular callings as apostles, telling others about the way of new life with God through Jesus. They would lose their lives for their faithfulness.
But Jesus told them that only the Father could or would decide where they would be seated in the kingdom of God.
On the other hand, we have no further record of the blind men given sight by Jesus here. They asked for their sight and they followed Jesus. That’s all we know of them.
Maybe they already were followers (disciples) of Jesus when they cried out for mercy. Now, with sightedness, they could physically follow Jesus along with the other disciples. We don’t know.
But several things are clear:
1. The blind men asked for sight, not for power. It’s not just unseemly to ask for power; it's a sin. To crave it. To need it. Jesus asks: “What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?” (Mark 8:36)
2. Matthew avoids indicating what status in the kingdom of God might belong to the now-sighted men or what their status might later have become. He only tells us that they followed Jesus.
This is important. It’s a dangerous business trying to guess other disciples’ status with God. We can’t know the depths of their prayer life or the breadth of their faithfulness. We can’t know the secret sacrifices they may make to follow the Lord. We can’t know all of the temptations and sins with which other believers may wrestle in order to keep following Jesus. Only God knows and only God sees the true nature of a person’s discipleship or the disciple’s place in His kingdom.
Because of all of this, there's a good chance that any judgment we might make about a believer's status in the kingdom would be wrong. God told Samuel not to anoint young David’s handsome older brother: “Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” (1 Samuel 16:7)[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
3. Even if James and John occupied a special, revered office in Christ’s Church on earth, which they did, it doesn’t mean that the blind men don’t enjoy higher status in the kingdom of God. The only One Whose judgment counts when it comes to evaluating our lives is God. He loves all equally. Christ died and rose for all. All who repent and believe in Christ have a share in His kingdom. Status, place, is entirely God’s decision. Period. For each Christian, it should be sufficient knowing that we belong to the God we meet and trust in Jesus. Everything else is self-absorption.
Rather than trying to outguess the sovereignty of God, our call is simply to follow and go where Jesus sends us. I’m a sinner saved only by the grace of God given to those who trust in Jesus.
By grace through faith in Christ I’m granted a place in God’s kingdom. Who am I to argue over the seating arrangements?
Or to concern myself with whether others regard me as a great disciple, faithful, upstanding, wise, smart, important, worthy, exalted, or anything else?
Whatever place I am given in the kingdom of God is more than I deserve and infinitely better than having no place in His kingdom. “I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of the wicked.” (Psalm 84:10)
Respond: You take the lead today, Lord. I will follow. Wherever You want to put me, I will accept. I’m not the leader; You are. You’re not the follower; I am. You’re not the caterer to my desires, the Placater-in-Chief; You are my Lord and my God. Today, help me to treat You that way. In Jesus’ name. Amen
Friday, April 28, 2017
Majoring in God's Majors
These are reflections from my quiet time with God today. I explain quiet time here.
Look: “After Jesus and his disciples arrived in Capernaum, the collectors of the two-drachma temple tax came to Peter and asked, ‘Doesn’t your teacher pay the temple tax?’ ‘Yes, he does,’ he replied. When Peter came into the house, Jesus was the first to speak. ‘What do you think, Simon?’ he asked. ‘From whom do the kings of the earth collect duty and taxes—from their own children or from others?’ ‘From others,’ Peter answered. ‘Then the children are exempt,’ Jesus said to him. ‘But so that we may not cause offense, go to the lake and throw out your line. Take the first fish you catch; open its mouth and you will find a four-drachma coin. Take it and give it to them for my tax and yours.’” (Matthew 17:24-27)
This is another one of those passages that I’ve allowed to slide past my consciousness. In my mind, I think, I connected it to the question about paying the Roman tax which resulted in Jesus telling us to, “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s.”
But this is an entirely different issue, though probably raised, as the other one was, by opponents trying to “get the goods on Jesus.”
The temple tax of two drachmas per year was owed by every Jewish male. The proceeds went to support the operation of the temple. Two drachmas represented two days’ wages for the typical laborer.
Peter is asked, “Doesn’t your teacher pay the the temple tax?” Apparently without caring or knowing about the real answer, Peter says that Jesus does.
I suppose that Peter thought that was the end of it. But when Jesus and the disciples come “into the house” (House often is a codeword in Matthew for the assembled people of God, the Church), Jesus, in the know, asks Peter a seemingly hypothetical question: “What do you think, Simon? From whom do the kings of the earth collect duty and taxes—from their own children or from others?” When Peter rightly answers, “From others,” Jesus says that means that the children are exempt. Then He tells Peter to throw his fishing line into the lake, then open the mouth of the first fish he catches to find four drachma, two for Jesus’ temple tax and two for Peter’s. Jesus does this, He says “so that we may not cause offense.”
I’m not entirely clear here: Is Jesus calling Himself the Child of the great King, God the Father? Or is He calling disciples like Peter children of God through Christ the King? I suppose that either or both of the interpretations is possible and it may not ultimately matter.
But several points are clear.
One, Jesus as the King is exempt from the taxes and all other temporal obligations imposed by earthly kings, even the “earthly authorities” who run the temple. So, Jesus may not, in fact, have paid the tax that Peter so breezily assured the two-drachma tax collectors that Jesus paid. The disciples may have been exempt by Jesus’ reason as well, since they were “children of the King.” As Christians, we also exempt from any coerced “tax” to support Christ’s Church. (This makes the preferred status of “state Churches” in Europe dubious, to say the least.) I take it that Jesus has not paid this tax.
Two, Jesus has, to use a bad pun, “bigger fish to fry” than to dispute over whether He needs to pay the temple tax. So, to avoid giving offense to those for whom this is a big deal, Jesus pays the tax.
In other words, if Jesus not paying the temple tax was going to be an impediment to people following Him, He would pay the temple tax.
The gospel is offensive enough to human sensibilities--the gospel that God took on flesh in Jesus and offers new and everlasting life to all who repent and believe in Jesus. There’s no point in creating artificial, tangential reasons for offending people when what we really want is for them to know Jesus Christ as their God, Savior, and Lord. So, Jesus tells Peter after making the point that He doesn’t “owe” the tax (and maybe His followers don’t either), to pay the tax.[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
Three, Jesus covers Peter’s temple tax obligation. The point here has nothing to do with financial obligations. Jesus isn’t commending a “prosperity gospel” here, because money isn’t what this entire incident is about. He IS NOT saying, "Believe in Me and I'll make you prosperous."
What Jesus is doing here is paying the price for Peter’s obligations. In this sense, it becomes a foretaste of what Jesus will do on the cross. He pays the penalty that we owe God for our sins. The wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23). But “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us...He redeemed us [or bought us out slavery to sin and death] in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit.” (Galatians 3:13-15)
All Peter had to do was receive the gift of two drachma that covered his temple tax obligation.
Peter could have said, “That’s ridiculous! Whoever heard of a four drachma coin landing in the mouth of a fish?” (Although I can think of a man who landed in the mouth of a fish!) Peter could have thought, "I don’t trust such nonsense. I’ll just scrounge together the four drachma and pay it myself." He could have gone to Judas, the treasurer of the group, for the money needed and the whole bone of contention would be erased.
But we have no record of Peter, who often messed up and failed to trust Jesus, doing anything but what Jesus directed.
When we trust Jesus, He pays our debts for sin.
Listen: Lord, what do You want to teach me on all of this, because it’s rich?
One thing, I think, is for me to refrain from doing anything or saying anything that gives undue offense. This doesn’t mean that I should be a mealy-mouth. It means that I should stick to the gospel and stick to loving You and loving others. Even that will cause offense; but if people are offended by Your gospel, so be it. I just need to get out of the way and not offend them because of me, my words, my faults. As Your ambassador, I need to speak Your words and not my own, lest people think I’m speaking in Your name when I’m not.
I need to refrain from any behavior that might destroy my credibility for fulfilling my one mission, making disciples.
I need to refrain from any behavior that might keep me from being the one thing You call me to be, a disciple.
I suspect that this is part of why Jesus says, “All you need to say is simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything beyond this comes from the evil one.” (Matthew 5:37)
Secondly, as a pastor, I need to refrain from laying obligations that You don’t command onto people or even to seem to do so. I’m not conscious of ever having done this with people; but this is an important cautionary lesson.
The temple tax was a kind of work. Yes, giving is part of the Christian life. But whatever giving we do to the cause of Christ in the world should be rendered joyfully, as an outgrowth of a maturing relationship with Jesus, not because someone from the Church reminds us to pay our “temple tax.”
Thirdly, I need to be more trusting. When Jesus told Peter to sink his line into the lake, catch a fish, and pull a four-drachma coin from the fish’s mouth, the record indicates that Peter did just that. There’s no indication that, even when Jesus was tried on trumped-up charges before Pilate, that Jesus’ payment of the temple tax was in dispute.
I need to trust what Jesus tells me to do and who He tells me to be. I need to trust His answers to my prayers, whether the answers are yes, no, or wait. I need to trust that I am forgiven not because of my works but because of what Jesus has done for me on the cross and from the empty tomb.
Respond: Lord, today, help me to major in the majors. Help me to not pursue my own agenda or seek affirmation for myself or the things I want, but help me to only pursue Your agenda, give You glory through my interactions with others, and only say those things needed to help people experience Your concern and love. In Jesus’ name.
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