The Old Testament Book of Genesis, Part 28

The Old Testament Book of Genesis, Part 27

Prepared to Meet Jesus

[Here is today's 11:00 AM worship service from Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. Below that is the text of the message that was shared during worship.]



Luke 3:1-20

Advent, the season of the Church Year through which we move these four Sundays before Christmas, is like Lent, the season that comes before Easter. Both Advent and Lent are seasons of preparation. Both seasons remind us to daily prepare ourselves to meet Jesus face to face.

But how exactly do you and I prepare for seeing Jesus in person? The short answer is through daily repentance.

A life of daily repentance is a life of constant turning back to God. We have to keep turning back to God because our inborn, treasonous hearts--the old sinful Adams and old Eves we all are at our cores--constantly want to go our own ways, no matter how doing so may hurt God, or others, or ourselves. We are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves. We do fail to love God with our whole heart and love our neighbor as we love ourselves. If you and I follow our hearts, as the world so often tells us to do, or if we follow our thoughts, the things that “make sense” to us, our feelings and our thoughts will inevitably lead us away from Jesus Christ and away from the life and salvation, which is the eternal restoration of our bodies, minds, and spirits, that only Jesus can give to us. We have a daily need to repent, to turn back to Jesus, the life-giver. As Martin Luther said, “All of a Christian’s life is one of repentance.”

But what does that mean? The crowds who come to undergo John the Baptist’s “baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” and hear John in today’s lesson wonder the same thing. After he’s called them a “brood of vipers,” children of the devil who, through the serpent, tempted the human race to sin and death, he tells them to “bear fruit in keeping with repentance.”

Now, we need to take a brief side-trip here. As you’ve heard me say before, John’s baptism should not be confused with Holy Baptism. John’s baptism was one in which people who heard John’s call to repent in preparation for the return of Jesus pronounced that they were sinners who needed to be saved from their sin and their death.They turned from their sin to be ready to see Jesus. Holy Baptism, as instituted by Jesus, is a sacrament in which God acts and God pronounces, not us. In Holy Baptism, in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, God drowns our old sinful selves and raises us up as children of God. Holy Baptism is God’s Word moving over the water in the font to create new life, as happened when God’s Spirit moved over ancient chaos and created the universe. Holy Baptism is the Word of God speaking a Word akin to what the Father spoke to Jesus when Jesus was baptized and when He was transfigured. “This is My child.,” God says of the baptized. “She or he belongs to me because of what Jesus has done for them. I claim them for all eternity!” In Holy Baptism, God’s Word invades us to constantly drown our old sinful selves and raise our new, eternal selves who, when hearing God’s Gospel Word about Jesus, are given the gift of faith in Jesus. First Peter tells us, the water of Noah’s flood “symbolizes baptism that now saves you also...It saves you by the resurrection of Jesus Christ.” (1 Peter 3:21) John’s baptism could not and did not save the way Holy Baptism does. The Spirit enables us to say, “Because I am baptized, I belong to Jesus!” John himself summarizes the difference between these two baptisms in today’s lesson: “I baptize you with water. But one who is more powerful than I will come, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.” (Luke 3:16) When the fire of Holy Baptism comes to us, it’s to help us see our sin and to burn it out of existence. When the Holy Spirit Himself comes to us in the sacrament, it’s to fill us with the very life of Jesus, the risen Savior!

Confronted with the reality of their sin, the crowd in our Gospel lesson asks John, “What should we do then?” (Luke 3:10) What, in other words, does a repentant life, a life preparing to meet Jesus, look like? The answer to those questions will, in a way, look different in every life. Although we all are tempted and we all sin, each of us is confronted with temptations and sins that are unique to ourselves alone. And so, John tells the tax collectors, “Don’t collect any more than you are required to,” (Luke 3:13) He tells soldiers of the occupying Roman army, “Don’t extort money and don’t accuse people falsely—be content with your pay.” (Luke 3:14) But, because we all deal with temptation and our sinful natures, John also tells everyone listening, “Anyone who has two shirts should share with the one who has none, and anyone who has food should do the same.” (Luke 3:11) The point is that a repentant life, a life turned constantly to Jesus for forgiveness and life, will, as John puts it, “produce fruit in keeping with repentance.” (Luke 3:8) And, he warns us in so many words, don’t begin to think that because you’re a member of the church or because your parents were pious or because you were in a Bible study once or because you chucked a few bucks into the Salvation Army bucket at Kroger at Christmastime, you are eternally saved. You’re not saved by works, whether your own or someone you’re related to. You’re only saved by Jesus!

All of which is to say that even we who are baptized need to daily repent. In Holy Baptism, when we share Jesus’ death and resurrection, God declares, out of His love and grace, “You are mine! You are My child, indelibly marked with the cross of Christ and sealed by the Holy Spirit, forever.” But even the most dearly loved of children, even those who once declared their bottomless love for their parents, can wander away from home. It’s possible for a person to be baptized and catechized, yet become contemptuous of God’s grace, intent on making their own way in the world, and to lose life with God. And every Christian should pray for those wandering from God and ask God for opportunities to share the Gospel with them. After all, what will eternity be like for those people, baptized or unbaptized, who say they have no need of Jesus? John the Baptist tells us that Jesus will not force Himself on anyone. He will allow those who turn away from Him to live without Him for eternity. “His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn,” John says, “but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.” (Luke 3:17)

Right after noting these words of John’s, Luke, our gospel writer today, says, “And with many other words John exhorted the people and proclaimed the good news to them.” (Luke 3:18) Do John’s words seem like good news to you? The good news in John’s word to us today is this: Every person prompted by the Holy Spirit and the Word of God, who turns to Jesus and confesses their sins will be forgiven. When we confess our sins: our resentments and our pettiness, our prejudices and our unholy thoughts, words, and actions, our worship of self and our worship of things, when we lay our sinful selves before Jesus each day, Jesus will forgive us our sins and send His Holy Spirit to empower us to live in the undeserved grace that God gives to all who trust in Jesus.

In the end, I think of repentance as a two-act play. In Act One, the Holy Spirit convicts us of our sin and our need to stay on course with Jesus by confessing our sins and all our needs, perceived and real, to Him. In Act Two, the Holy Spirit convinces us that, by His death and resurrection, Jesus has washed away our sin with His life-giving blood, and shows us that what we need above all else is “our daily bread,” Jesus Himself. As we respond to the Holy Spirit’s call to play our parts in this play, God will daily prepare us to meet Jesus face to face. Today, heed Jesus’ words found elsewhere in Scripture: “Repent and believe the good news!” (Mark 1:15) When we repent and believe in Jesus and His good news, we are ready to see Jesus face to face. Amen

The Old Testament Book of Genesis, Part 26

The End Times

[Below is the video of worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio, for this First Sunday of Advent, November 28, 2021. Beneath that, you'll find the video of our 11:00 AM worship service. That is our modern worship service. We also have an 8:45 traditional worship service. The congregation's building facilities are at 667 Miamisburg-Centerville Road, Dayton (Centerville), Ohio 45459. We presently are worshiping in our Mission Outreach Center on Sunday mornings.]

Luke 21:25-36

Today is the First Sunday of Advent. Advent means coming or arrival. In this Advent Season, we anticipate celebrating Christmas Day, when God the Son, Jesus, arrived in our universe. We also anticipate the Day when Jesus will return. 

In this second coming, Jesus won’t be a helpless baby, come to offer His sinless life on a cross to take our deserved punishment for sin. This time, the risen and ascended Jesus will come in glory to bring the final consummation of the Kingdom of God, a Kingdom in which all who have trusted in Him will live, forgiven and new, with God eternally.

The First Sunday of Advent is always about the end times, times that lead to Jesus’ return. After these times, when Jesus returns, will come the single moment when the unrighteous, those who have spurned Christ and His offer of forgiveness of sin and new life through faith in Him, will be sent away from God. 

It will be in that moment too, when the righteous, those who have been made righteous not by their own efforts, but through Holy Spirit-created faith in Jesus, will come to live in the new heaven and the new earth. Death, tears, anxieties, temptations, and sin will all be in the rearview mirror for those who trust in Christ!

In this morning’s Gospel lesson, Luke 21:25-36, Jesus shifts away from teaching the disciples (and us) about the destruction of the temple, an event that will happen about thirty-seven years after He speaks here, to talk about the last days of the fallen universe and all that will happen with it. 

You’ll remember that this entire time of teaching from Jesus began when the disciples asked Him, “[W]hen will these things happen? And what will be the sign that they are about to take place?” (Luke 21:7) Jesus doesn’t say when they’ll happen. As Jesus, after His crucifixion, risen and about to ascend to heaven, will later tell the disciples, “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority.” (Acts 1:7) 

But as our lesson for today begins, He does talk about the signs pointing to the end: “On the earth, nations will be in anguish and perplexity at the roaring and tossing of the sea. People will faint [die is likely a better translation than faint] from terror, apprehensive of what is coming on the world, for the heavenly bodies will be shaken.” (Acts 21:25-26)

According to Jesus, in the end, the whole universe will convulse and thrash and deteriorate as it lurches toward its inevitable end. There will be no escaping it. 

Of course, it’s not just the cosmos that lurches to an end. Each and every one of us, heirs of the sin we inherit from our parents and filled with the death that sin unleashes in us, will one day die. And just as we don’t know when the cosmos will end, we also don’t know when we will end. 

For most people, thoughts of the end of this world or of their own lives will come as entirely and only bad news. And to be honest, I don’t look forward to the process of my life’s end, whether that process is fast or slow. As you’ve heard me say before, I agree with the guy who said, “I don’t mind dying. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.”

But, according to Jesus, neither you, I, nor the cosmos have any choice in this matter. In a fallen universe, even the righteous suffer. 

In our lesson and elsewhere, by the way, Jesus does not say that Christians will fly away, O Lordy. In fact, the passage that’s usually cited to support this false teaching which only arose in 1830, nearly two thousand years after Jesus died and rose, 1 Thessalonians 4:17, doesn’t support this notion at all. 

Literally, the apostle Paul writes there, “Then, we the remaining living, together with them [that is, with those who died believing in Jesus, who Jesus raises on the last day] will be caught away in the clouds [not referring, as we’ll see to clouds high above us, but the clouds that, according to Psalm 104:3, God rides like a chariot and which, as happened at Jesus’ transfiguration, will descend to Creation to reveal Jesus and His Kingdom...will be caught away with the clouds where Jesus is King] for meeting [here, the word used here is one usually used of crowds going to welcome people like kings] in the air…” 

And it’s this last word, air, that puts the lie to the non-biblical idea of rapture. The word Jesus uses here is ἀέρα, which specifically refers to the air lower to the ground that we can breathe, not the thin air above the earth. The idea is that we will join Jesus in His Kingdom which will finally come to the earth, answering the petition of the Lord's Prayer He teaches us to pray, "Thy kingdom come...on earth as it is in heaven."

So, when the end time comes, believers in Jesus or not, there will be no escaping the cosmic disruptions. As long as this universe clanks along, the words of Jesus about God the Father remain in force: “He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” (Matthew 5:45) 

But we need not yield to despair. Jesus’ daunting description of the end things should tell us since there are no exemptions from reality to be found in this fallen creation and there is nothing we can do, no work we can perform, no cave we can run to in order to insulate us or move us beyond the death of the world, we need Jesus! We need Jesus to make sense of our living and dying, to give us hope,  purpose, and an eternal future with God beyond this dying cosmos.

That’s why what Jesus says next in our lesson is so important. “At that time they [that means, the whole world] will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. When these things begin to take place, stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” (Luke 21:27-28)

For the follower of Jesus Christ, there is everlasting hope beyond the world’s end times. 

Despair is replaced with hope, not because of what we have done, or because of our supposed goodness but solely because of what Jesus Christ has already done for us on the cross and from the empty tomb! When Jesus said with His dying breaths on the cross, "It is finished," He meant it! There, He took our sin into His body and covered ours with His sinless righteousness.

There’s a lot of despair in our world today. We have a novel virus that continues to kill: two friends of my extended family died of the disease just this past week. And we are right to take appropriate precautions when dealing with it. After all, God calls us to exercise good stewardship over the bodies and lives He has given us and to love our neighbors. But COVID-19 need not lead us to despair. Nor should inflation, disruptions in supply chains, political gridlock, climate change, or anything else in this world lead us to despair. These are all SOP--standard operating procedures--in a fallen creation and have been since Adam and Eve slurped fruit juice onto their birthday suits. But Jesus is greater than all that might drive us to despair--over our own sin which condemns us, over our deaths, over the cataclysms that will befall this world, our temporary home.

Friends, today Jesus tells us that it’s going to get worse before it gets better. 

But then, He says, for those who turn away from despair and self-worship and sin and self-sufficiency and sin and turn instead to Jesus for salvation and life, it will be very much better, eternally better. 

Our call now is to keep following Jesus, to receive His forgiveness, to daily seek His power to walk away from temptation and despair, to “watch, and pray” that we aren’t swept along by the hopelessness and lazy dissipation of this world so that, by God’s grace through faith in Jesus Christ, we will when Jesus comes back “be able to stand before the Son of Man.” And that will only happen when, by the power of God's Word, we give heed to that Word, and the Holy Spirit creates saving faith in Jesus within us.

You've heard me talk about the wonderful way that Martin Luther describes the final judgment. Standing before God will be two groups of sinners. One group of sinners, confident of their own goodness and the belief that they're "good enough" for God's Kingdom, even if they'd never given God any thought, will stand naked in their sin. There will be nothing to commend them for eternal life in the Kingdom and they will therefore be condemned and eternally separated from God.

But God will look at another group of people who don't dare to come before God in their own supposed righteousness or goodness. But by God's grace through faith in Christ are covered in Christ's righteousness. And when God looks at them, He'll see them, not in their sin, but He will see Jesus Christ. He'll see sinners who have been sainted as a gift through faith in Christ.

As we trust in the Gospel Word about Jesus we receive in Scripture and the Sacraments, we are fit for eternity, covered by Jesus and not condemned by our own unrighteousness. 

Jesus is coming back. 

We don’t know when. 

But as we turn to Jesus as our help and hope, we will be ready whenever the end happens. 

Amen

The Old Testament Book of Genesis, Part 25

The Old Testament Book of Genesis, Part 24

Here, we look at chapter 29 of Genesis.

People of the Truth?

[This message was shared at Saint Peter Lutheran Church in Walburg, Texas, where my son is pastor, earlier today.]

John 18:33-37

On this Christ the King Sunday, Jesus tells Pilate and us: “Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.” (John 18:37)

These words are really a smackdown of Pilate and the religious authorities who wanted the Roman governor to execute Jesus. 

During Jesus’ earthly ministry, others had encountered Jesus and listened to His words and understood or at least had an inkling of Who Jesus was. And is. 

There was John the Baptist who said of Jesus, “Behold, the Lamb of God Who takes away the sin of the world.” (John 2:29) 

There was the Samaritan woman Jesus met by the well outside of Sychar, who told others, “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?” (John 4:29) 

There was the man whose lifelong blindness Jesus ended who, on being told by Jesus Who He was, said, “Lord, I believe” and worshiped Jesus. (John 9:38) 

In John, chapter 11, we read of the day when Jesus brought his friend Lazarus back to life four days after his death. Many saw what Jesus did and believed in Him. (John 11:45) 

But Pilate and the religious leaders don’t see or accept that Jesus is the long-promised Christ, the Messiah King. The reason for that, Jesus says, is that they are not “of the truth.”

But what does it mean for you and me to be “of the truth”? Three things, I think.

First of all, it means being willing to accept the facts about Jesus staring us in the face. The blind man, confronting the blindness of these same religious leaders in seeing that Jesus had come from God, couldn’t comprehend their unbelief. “...this is an amazing thing!” he tells them. “You do not know where [Jesus] comes from, and yet he opened my eyes….Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a man born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.” (John 9:30, 32-33) If a person is unwilling to see the truth, they won't see it.

A friend of mine sank into drug addiction over which she had no control. She finally entered a twelve-step program and she has been in recovery for decades. This woman sometimes runs into other addicts who want her help in pointing them to the recovery she has in her life. But many of these people walk away when my friend tells them, “My willpower has nothing to do with where I am now in my life. When dope had me firmly in its grip, I asked Jesus for His help. And I keep doing it day by day.” 

This woman’s restored life is a strong testimony of Jesus’ kingship, His power to deliver us all from all our addictions the false idolas of this world, gods like power, beauty, popularity, ease, the latest thing, gossip, or (dare I say it on the Sunday before Thanksgiving?), food. But there are some who hear their story and refuse to believe that Jesus Christ can redeem their desperate situations.

To be “of the truth” also means being willing to have a King like Jesus we can’t control. When I was in college and was planning on going to the same parties my friends were going to, I always insisted on being the one to drive to them. That way, I was in control of when I left or stayed at the party and others would have to follow my lead. And while I may have been an extreme control freak, we all like to be in control, don’t we? 

Pilate and the religious leaders wanted to keep Jesus under their control. But this desire is nothing new. 

Back at the beginning of human history, Adam and Eve fell into sin because they wanted to “be like God.” They wanted to be in control. 

Our sinful natures make us all born control freaks. When we’re open to living “of the truth,” we learn to give up control to Jesus our King. 

As we do, He forgives our sins, covers our unrighteousness with His righteousness, and gives us life with God that never ends. In this world, the Holy Spirit begins to teach followers of Jesus the joy of living in God’s power and not in our own.

To be “of the truth” also means understanding that the kings of this world, no matter how powerful, die, and therefore, can’t be the repository of our hope. “Put not your trust in princes, in a son of man, in whom there is no salvation," Psalm 146:3-4 tells us. "When his breath departs, he returns to the earth; on that very day his plans perish.” 

Pilate and the religious authorities had given up all hope for any kind of life beyond the grave. Their hope was in the things of this dying world, in their own accomplishments and power. 

But those who are “of the truth,” people open minded enough to be willing to follow Jesus, agree with the words of musician Bruce Cockburn, “You can take the wisdom of this world / And give it to the ones who think it all ends here.” 

You and I, like Pilate and the religious leaders and every human being born into the world in the usual way, are born in sin, in bondage to sin, death, and separation from God and are incapable of saving ourselves. Thank God though, He has acted and still acts to save us for life with God now and in eternity through Christ our King.

Jesus, you’ll remember, once told a parable of a farmer who scattered seed in his field. There were four different kinds of soil on which the seed fell. It was only the seeds that landed in fertile soil that took root and flourished. Jesus later explained that this good soil was like people who are open to the Word of God about Jesus--the Word that gives us God the Son, perfect and sinless, Who bears our sin within His body on a cross so that when He dies, kills the power of sin and death over all who believe in Him. 

To be “of the truth” is to be receptive to this Word, willing to accept the facts about Jesus’ kingship when they’re staring us in the face, willing to have a King like Jesus we can’t control, and knowing that while all the kings of this world die and cannot offer us life or hope, peace or forgiveness, Christ our King, Jesus, can do all of this and more.

Fine, some may say, “I’m willing to believe, but it seems no matter how hard I try, I can’t believe.” Or, “I can’t believe enough.” 

Here’s my advice: Quit trying! You can’t decide to follow Jesus or believe in Him. None of us can. Our human natures get in the way of that. 

But the Word about Jesus has the power to give us faith in Him day by day.

The apostle Paul says that faith in Christ comes by hearing--by receiving--that Good News Word about Jesus. To be receptive to Christ being our King is as simple as being open to Him when He comes to you in the Bible as you read or hear it, in Holy Baptism when Christ makes you His own, and in Holy Communion when He gives you His body and blood and forgiveness. 

These are what we Lutherans call “the means of grace,” the tools God uses to give all who are open to saving faith in Jesus, the One Who says of Himself, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” (John 14:6) 

Folks, I urge you to receive Jesus every time He comes to you, every time He offers Himself to you, every time His Law calls you out for your sin and calls you to confess it, and every time His Gospel tells you that Christ gave His sinless life so that all who believe in Him are, despite their sins and imperfections, acceptable for eternal life with God. 

Being receptive, open, to Jesus and His Word is what Jesus means when speaking of people who are “of the truth.” It’s these “people of the truth” in whom God’s Word grows a harvest of faith.

People of Saint Peter Lutheran Church, people “of the truth,” I pray precisely that kind of harvest of faith in each of you, a harvest of life with God now and in eternity, a life open to Jesus, the Truth, the King on whom you can build your life today and the King, Who by God’s grace through faith in Jesus, God has freed you to be with God forever and ever. Amen

The Blessed Life

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



Mark 5:1-12

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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